In spite of the heroic efforts of the undertakers and makeup as thick as rhinoceros hide, troweled on the dead teenager’s face, the mark was still clearly evident.
CHAPTER
twelve
he day after the funeral Karla went to the doctor and got more Halcion. Taniniy Lyn Homolka was buried near the Homolkas’ house, in Victoria Lawn Cemetery’, where the carillon plays eight-track tapes. For some reason it was always playing the theme from The Sound of Music—“the hills are alive, with the sound of music… .” They had put Tammy’s school picture on the tombstone, along with an engraved soccer ball at
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the top and a bronzed pair of soccer shoes at the base. Soccer was Tammy’s game.
On the weekend of January 12, Karla’s mother and father decided to go to a hghting show in Toronto. Karel and Dorothy went to the same show every year, combining a httle business with pleasure. This year, it was different. They really needed to get away. Karla’s sister Lori went to visit her grandparents in Mississauga.
Under the circumstances, Paul and Karla decided the best thing to do was for Paul to go out and get another girl and rape her. Since they had the house to themselves, he could bring her back there. And this time they would make sure she lived.
Paul went out and found a girl and brought her back. Karla watched from the doorway while Paul had sex with her on the floor of her bedroom. But it was not like a rape at all—no screaming or anything. Neither Paul or Karla had any idea who she was so, they just called her the January Girl.
Paul took the January Girl out to a deserted road around Lake Gibson and let her go. He was only mildly concerned that she might have seen his license plate as he drove off They never heard anything more about the January Girl. The encounter had not been much fun for Karla, but Karla was not sure whether or not she could stand any more fun. Now she just wanted to concentrate on the wedding and get back to work.
Karla knew Paul was unhappy about not having Tammy to play with anymore. She knew that he blamed her. She did not mind that Paul had loved Tammy. She had loved her, too. She certainly had not meant to kill her. Tammy’s death was a tie that inextricably bound her and Paul together. But it was not exactly the tie she had had in mind. Karla decided to cheer up Paul. She decided to pretend she was Tammy, the way she had the summer before, only better.
This time they would make a movie and in the movie Karla would become her dead sister, Karla told Paul. Karla said she was very good at pretending, and with this performance she would bring Tammy back to life. Paul was very happy. He set up the video camera in the basement. Karla would make a wonderflil wife.
The movie opens with an extreme close-up of Karla’s vagina. The shot is held so long it looks like a still picture. It was as if Paul were studying it, trying to figure out just what it was.
The camera pans to reveal Karla, stark naked, with her legs spread wide apart, playing with herself The setting is the same as it had been in the video they made with Tammy Lyn, except in this one there is no Christmas tree. Behind Karla, a fire dances in the fireplace.
“Now watch Karla play with herself,” says Karla. She holds up her hand. “Watch. There’s the hand, and watch what it does.”
Paul Bernardo walks into the frame fully dressed with two drinks. He sits down and Karla helps him unbutton his shirt.
“A bit more to drink and then, ahh … I’ll sit back and relax,” he says, appreciating her. With her long blond hair and impeccable skin, Karla is a naked Barbie doll, whose arms and legs move and bend in specific, deliberate ways.
“Let me suck those titties,” Karla says and she does. He takes a sip of his drink and responds, “It’s tough to be the king.”
She strips him leisurely, as lovers do. When she gets his pants off, Karla puts her nose to his penis and announces, “I love you. Snuffles.” There is not even a hint of a giggle in her voice.
“I loved it when you fucked my little sister,” Karla says casually. “I loved it when you fucked Tammy. I loved it when you took her virginity.” Between statements, Karla sucks him and it seems to work, particularly when she tells him he is the “king.”
“It’s my mission in life to make you feel good,” Karla declares.
Paul looks right into the camera and says: “That’s why I’m gonna marry her.”
“I’m glad you made me lick her cunt,” Karla says, stripping off her flimsy teddy top and continuing her labor.
“Are you a full-fledged dyke?” he asks, referring to her “lesbian act.”
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“That was different,” responds Karla. “It was my little sister.”
“Love in the family,” Paul says smugly. “Do you believe in that concept?”
“You know I had fun doing it,” she says, still busy with his anus. “You know I liked it.”
“What did it teach you?”
“Well, we like little girls. We like to fuck them. If you’re gonna fuck them, I’m gonna lick them.”
When Paul asks her how old the girls should be, Karla suggests “thirteen.” Her reasoning is that at that age they should still be virgins.
“You should break their hymens with Snuffles,” she offers, “They’re our children and I think you should make them even more ours.”
“I think you’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Paul is breathing a bit heavily. “Good idea. When did you come up with this idea?”
“Just now,” Karla purrs, agreeing with him that these other virgins would be the closest thing they could get to Tammy.
“I think the king should turn over, ‘cause the little slave has some more things to do and say,” she says, controlling the pacing.
Paul obediently shifts position and Karla pulls out a single red rose. It’s as though she has a prop box just off camera and is ready for anything. She strokes his chest and thighs with its petals, telling him that they will place this particular rose on Tammy’s grave the next day, because it has touched him in “intimate places.”
In the dim hght, she gets up and goes behind the sofa and pulls out a paper bag. From the bag she pulls a pair of peach-colored panties.
“I have something special for you,” Karla announces. “Tammy’s underwear to rub all over your body.
“I never want you to forget the time that you took her virginity. When you popped her hymen.”
“Best orgasm ever …“he breathlessly proclaims.
“What did it last? Sixty seconds?” she asks, concentrating on rubbing his penis with her dead sister’s panties.
“Oh yeah, sooo intense.” …
“I didn’t give you my virginity …” Karla explains. “So I gave you Tammy’s. I love you enough to do that.”
“And what else?” Paul asks, loving it when she talks that talk.
“Well. We did something a few days ago,” she says, teasingly. “We raped a little girl. Down here in my room. You went out and you found her, got her, brought her back to the house. Brought her downstairs, I was shocked. You fucked her.”
Karla keeps up her handiwork, but looks him straight in the eyes and then hugs him. “I let you do that. Because I love you. Because you’re the king.”
He can barely speak. He grunts.
“I want you to do it again,” she says, capturing his curiosity, bringmg him back from the edge of orgasm.
“When?” he asks, sitting back on his haunches while Karla considers her answer and slowly caresses his erect penis.
“This summer. Because the wintertime is too hard,” she says, finding this new concept difficult to explain with his penis in her mouth.
“If you want to do it fifty times more. We can do it fifty times,” she says, rubbing him with both hands. “We can do it every weekend. We can do it whenever we can.”
“So why do you want … why do you want to let me do it?” Paul asks.
“Because I love you. Because you’re the king. ‘Cause you deserve it,” she says matter-o
f-factly, agreeing that she will join him when they get “virgin cunts,” and she will be there to help him “go from one cunt to another” and “one ass to another.” She says she will go in the car with him, if that’s what he wants.
“Or I’ll stay here and I’ll clean up afterwards, hke I did on Sunday,” she offers. “I’ll do everything I can, ‘cause I want you to be happy, ‘cause you’re the king and I love you.”
Paul touches her with an ice cube. It is time to go upstairs.
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The screen flickers and then comes back to Hfe. The second part of the movie opens on Paul and Karla in Tammy Lyn’s bedroom.
“Put this in focus here … focus it right.” He is giving himself camera instructions. The camera moves in and out of focus before it settles sharply on the portrait of Tammy Lyn that Karla is holding over her face.
“There is my little virgin there. Tammy Lyn Homolka, fucked only by me. Broke her hymen and everything. I wish I still had it today, Kar … 1 think part of the blood is on that white thing that was there.”
“I think so,” Karla agrees. Paul is now reclining on the waterbed with his legs spread wide apart. Karla hands him Tammy’s portrait and then pulls her long blond hair right over her face to enhance her thespian deception.
“I loved her so much. So nice and warm,” Paul ruminates. He looks at the picture lovingly, while Karla climbs on to the bed and bends her head to his crotch and once again begins her work. Her hair cascades over his groin and abdomen. Buying right into the performance, he says, “Hi, Tammy.”
“Hi, Paul,” Karla says. “You know this is your favorite outfit.” Karla is wearing an outfit that she has culled from Tammy’s closet—a very short glen-checked skirt that is hiked over her hips, exposing her bare buttocks. She is also wearing a taut black sweater.
“I am your Httle virgin. I’m glad Kar doesn’t know about us,” she begins, introducing the charade. “She knows I’m bad but … she doesn’t know that I do all these things.”
“I didn’t know she knew anything,” Paul says, right into it now. Karla has successfully become Tammy.
“Does she know I suck you off? Does she know that I’m your virgin?” Karla/Tammy asks.
“Yes.”
“That you broke my hymen with Snuffles. That you made me bleed. That you were the first boy to ever enter this body? Does she know that? Mmm?” All the while Karla/Tammy continues to stroke and suck his penis. Their activity causes the water in Tammy’s bed to slosh. Through broken blinds, the
camera records the fact that it is dark outside. Karla/Taniiiiy provokes him with images of anal and lesbian sex acts, and reminds him of his masturbatory sojourns into the teenager’s room.
“Oh, Tammy, you’re the best orgasm m the world by far,” Paul says as the blond hair in front of him moves, rhythmically, persistently between his legs, rocking the stuffed animals and cartoon characters that sway on the waterbed next to him.
It takes Karla fifteen mmutes to get him off and she works really hard at it. When he finally comes, she looks directly into the camera, smiles broadly, obviously tired, and waves. As he walks over to the crotch-high camera, his engorged penis fills the screen before it goes to black.
Their love deepened, immeasurably.
thirteen
fter Dorothy Homolka went back to work in January, she went around telling everyone at the Shaver Clinic that she could never have made it through the funeral without Paul. Then she decided to tell Karla co kick him out of the house.
She also told everyone that she and Karel were nearly broke, so the staff at the hospital took up a collection for her. At the same time she was crying poor, Dorothy told Lynn McCann that she and Karel had $15,000 saved and the funeral had only
cost them $5,000. Lynn also believed there was no mortgage on their house.
Dorothy had started telling anyone who would listen that she did not want Paul and Karla’s wedding to happen; she could no longer afford it—they were on the verge of losing their house. Under circumstances like hers, how could she possibly think about a wedding, anyway?
Again, Dorothy told Lynn a different story. She said she had had a big talk with Karla and asked Karla to cut back, have a smaller wedding. The wedding she was planning was going to cost over twenty thousand dollars and that was a ridiculous burden, regardless of the emotional and financial strain that her sister’s death had caused. Paul seemed to have no relationship with his parents, so they were not going to be any help. Karla flatly refused to cut back at all.
When Dorothy told Karla to boot Paul, she explained that the family needed to be alone with its grief They needed time to heal. This declaration enraged Karla. “How can you do this to us?” she exclaimed. “You know that we need to be together.”
When Karla told Paul, it upset him and he became quiet. He had mentally and physically severed whatever ties he had to his mother and father and Scarborough, but he took the news stoically and went back home. If that was the way it was going to be, then so be it. The Homolkas’ duplicitous behavior was duly noted. Nobody double-crossed Paul Bernardo and got away with it.
His exile lasted one week. On Friday, January 18, 1991, Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School held a memorial service for Tammy Lyn Homolka in the school auditorium. Paul picked Karla up at the Martindale Animal Clinic and dropped her off Under the circumstances, Paul refused to attend. Karla chose not to sit with her parents and sister during the service.
Afterward, Paul was waiting for her. Over dinner, at Jack Astor’s, a downscale St. Catharines joint along the Ontario Street strip, they resolved to find a place where they could live happily together. They would call a real-estate agent and find a nice house to rent. Dinner for two was $35.99, including a glass
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of wine. From the restaurant it was an easy half-hour drive back toward Toronto and the Relax Inn in Burlington, where they rented a room for the night.
It was fortuitous that Paul and Karla found their dream home that weekend at 57 Bayview in Port Dalhousie. If the bottom had not faUen out of the real-estate market just after the Delaneys bought the house and spent close to one hundred thousand dollars in renovations, the pink-clapboard. Cape Cod-style bungalow on a corner lot would not have been there to rent.
Paul liked water, and they both liked the illusion of style. Port Dalhousie is a small harbor town built around the natural harbor where Twelve Mile Creek empties into Lake Ontario. It was originally setded after the American War of Independence in 1812 by a small group of disgruntled soldiers called Butler’s Regulars and a flank of American settlers called Loyalists. Port Dalhousie was the original site of the Welland Canal. Many years before, the canal entrance had been moved a dozen miles south to Port Weller. Now Port Dalhousie was a suburb of St. Catharines, about ten minutes from the city center. Its history gave the town some distinction, but peace and quiet were the essence of its modern appeal. Now its settlers were well-to-do retirees, lawyers, doctors and even Dr. Wade, Karla’s veterinarian boss.
The Delaneys—Rachel and Brian—had made a successful hobby of buying houses, fixing them up, and flipping them. They had been doing it for years, with various partners. But 57 Bayview was by far their most ambitious project, and now they were bleeding Hke stuck pigs. Brian, a part-time male model in his mid-fifties who also owned and operated an extermination business in St. Catharines, was under pressure—not only financial.
His wife, Rachel, an insurance executive ten or fifteen years his junior, hked to close. She was a stickler for quick resolutions. If they could not sell it at something near their asking price of $269,000, then they had to rent it. Otherwise, it was an open vein and they would lose everything. After trying unsuccessfully to sell It for half a year, they had just put it up for rent.
Paul and Karla fell in love with the house and the Delaneys
Williams
fell in love with Paul and Karla, in whom they saw closu
re and resolution. The Delaneys did not stop to ask who this teenager and her fast-talking, jobless, bankrupt fiance were or how they could possibly afford such steep rent.
The Delaneys did a perfunctory credit check—only on Karla. Karla was not old enough to have a bad credit rating, but she was a local girl and that meant a great deal to people like the Delaneys.
The rent was set at $1,150 per month. Paul said he was an accountant, so it did not matter much that Karla’s monthly take-home pay was less than the rent. When the check for the first and last month cleared, that was all the character reference Paul and Karla’s new landlords needed. They walked away, counting their blessings.
Paul and Karla were ecstatic. That Saturday night they checked into the Journey’s End motel on the outskirts of Port Dalhousie. They needed to be close to their new home. They went to the movies and saw TIte Godfather III at the Pen Center Cinema. They walked by the Number One Pet Center, where Karla got her start. Their love strengthened.
On Monday, Paul ordered the cable-television service and changed the address on his driver’s Hcense to 57 Bayview Drive. On Tuesday night, they celebrated at the Port Mansion, a bar in Port Dalhousie. Their house was three times the size of the Homolkas’ tiny tinderbox and very chic. It had a Jacuzzi. It had space. It had French doors. It gave Karla real attitude. Fuck her parents, she thought. This was what they got for their inconstancy: buried their youngest—now say goodbye to their oldest.
In Karla’s wedding planner, she noted that “Patience,” by Guns N’ Roses, was their favorite song. She’s Having a Baby, their favorite movie, and “Saturday Night Live” and “The David Letterman Show” their favorite television programs. On January 30, 1991, Karla marked, in big block letters: “M O V E!” And they did.
On February 19, Karla wrote her friend Debbie Purdie a long letter. She told her all about her research into Rottweilers and their bloodlines, and how much they cost, and how com—
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mitted Paul was to getting her a dog. “Deb, I really, really want a dog bad now!”
Invisible darkness : the strange case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka Page 13