Female Serial Killers

by Peter Vronsky

  Bernardo then went out and bought some quick-dry cement. Returning home, he encased the ten body parts into blocks of cement, and then stacked them in the basement. Leaving the bloodied tent still standing, he went to the animal clinic and picked up Karla. He took her down to the basement and had her put away the tent and clean out the body tissue and hair from the drain. Homolka testified that she used lemon-scented Lysol cleaner to clean up the basement.

  The couple then went upstairs and had dinner. Bernardo asked Homolka not to serve any meat for a while, but laughed and joked how light Leslie’s head was when he had cut it off.

  The next evening, when Bernardo picked up Homolka from work, he told her that the concrete blocks were in the trunk of the car. The couple drove out to Lake Gibson, where they used to have sex when they were first dating, and threw the blocks into the water.

  The remainder of the two weeks was busy for Homolka as she prepared the last details of her wedding. When she was being fitted for her wedding dress, several of her friends noticed the bruises on her arms, but Homolka explained that she got them from handling dogs at the clinic.

  On Saturday, June 29, 1991, the lavish wedding took place at the exclusive tourist town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. While Niagara Falls is a trashy and carnivallike town, full of cheap motels, casinos, and souvenir stands on the site of the famous waterfalls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, twenty minutes away, is an elegant, Loyalist colonial settlement with an important theater center. At about the same time that Bernardo and Homolka were getting married, a fisherman was pulling out of Lake Gibson one of the concrete blocks Bernardo and Homolka had tossed in—the one they had not tossed far enough away from shore. That night, unaware that the police were piecing together Leslie Mahaffy’s body, Bernardo and Homolka counted the money they had collected during the wedding. They had nine thousand dollars to spend on their honeymoon in Hawaii.

  On November 30, 1991, it is suspected that Karla and Paul might have kidnapped, drugged, and murdered 14-year-old Terri Anderson as she was leaving her church parking lot. Her body was found floating in the waters of Port Dalhousie. After finding traces of LSD in her system, however, the coroner officially ruled her death as accidental drowning.

  The Murder of Kristen French

  After the murder of Leslie Mahaffy, Bernardo spent the next ten months beating Homolka and stalking and raping other victims. On the Thursday afternoon before the Easter weekend of April 1992, Bernardo decided he needed another “virgin.” He told Homolka to put her hair into a nonthreatening ponytail and the two drove over to the Holy Cross Catholic high school, about half a mile from where Terri Anderson disappeared. Bernardo had already staked out the school. He was aroused by the school uniforms the girls wore: short plaid skirt, white blouse, and knee socks—a fairly common theme in erotic and pornographic media.

  As students poured out of the school, Bernardo scanned the girls looking for one that suited his desire. He picked out 15-year-old Kristen French, a serious and studious young woman in grade 12. Bernardo followed her in his car. When he saw that she was walking alone, he passed her and pulled into a church parking lot just ahead. As Kristen came up toward the car, Karla called her over asking for directions. Standing in the open door of the auto, Karla had spread a map on the car’s roof and asked Kristen to show her where they were. Kristen felt no fear in approaching the handsome young couple. As she began to scan the map, Bernardo circled behind her and pushed her into the vehicle. While Homolka held Kristen down in the backseat, Bernardo drove to their home.

  Bernardo and Homolka both sexually assaulted Kristen for a period of three days. As before, everything was videotaped. During the nights, they kept her drugged on sleeping pills, tied and locked in the closet.

  In the video, Bernardo urinated on and attempted to defecate on Kristen and had her chant, “I’m your 15-year-old Holy Cross sex slave,” and “You’re the most powerful man in the world. You deserve anything you want…You’re so nice, powerful, sexy. So much in control of everything. Nobody can overpower you. Nobody…you’re the king. The master. The king of all kings. The best man in the whole world. It’s good that I’m getting punished.”

  Bernardo had Karla put on Tammy’s similar schoolgirl uniform–type outfit and climb into bed with Kristen. He then ordered them to perform oral sex and masturbate each other. Bernardo barked out commands from behind the camera like a psychopathic film director: “Start licking at the bottom and work your way up to the top…Come on, let’s hear some love stuff.”

  Karla told police in her interview:

  “So we dressed in almost identical uniforms and we put on makeup and we were giggling and laughing and it seemed like we’re just friends getting ready to go out, kind of thing, we were doing what Paul had told us to do. I had all little perfume samples and she wanted to try some.”

  One is immediately incredulous—the raped and beaten, captive victim wanted to try perfume samples! Ridiculous. But there it was in the videotapes, which surfaced later. As Homolka and Kristen stood in front of the bathroom mirror with cosmetics lined up on the counter, Bernardo switched on his video camera.

  (Video recording starts.)

  HOMOLKA: So what kind of perfume do you like?

  KRISTEN: Eternity or Giorgio.

  HOMOLKA: Yeah, I like Giorgio as well. I have some of that new perfume, Halston. I haven’t worn it yet, but maybe I will today.

  BERNARDO: Okay, girls, you know what I want you to do. Each one of you pull up your skirts at the same time. Okay, now bend over. Give me a nice ass shot.

  (Kristen does what she is told.)

  BERNARDO: Good girls. Okay back to work.

  HOMOLKA: Let’s see what we have here.

  KRISTEN: Eternity.

  HOMOLKA: Oh, Eternity. I like it. That’s Escape. I hate that one.

  KRISTEN: Really? Can I smell it?

  HOMOLKA: It’s gross.

  KRISTEN: I’ve never used it.

  HOMOLKA: I was at work one day, and I bought one of those magazines, like Mademoiselle, and then the whole place stunk because of that perfume in a page. I’ve got others here to try, like Alfred Sung.

  KRISTEN: Can I try this one?

  HOMOLKA: Sure.

  Explaining the scenes recorded on the videotape, Homolka recounted in court how Bernardo held a contest between her and Kristen. They were instructed to select and put on makeup and perfumes. Bernardo explained, “The one who smells the best is the winner and won’t get fucked by me up the ass.”

  BERNARDO: Tell the camera. Mmm, gorgeous, gorgeous.

  (Bernardo leans forward and smells Kristen. He then smells Homolka.)

  BERNARDO: No way, lady. This is not a nice smell.

  HOMOLKA: (Sniffing Kristen’s neck.) That is a nice smell.

  BERNARDO: (To Kristen.) Even though you smell the best, I’m still going to fuck you up the ass anyways. She’s my wife, after all. And she’s got brownie points on her side.*

  The videotape revealed some surreal episodes in Kristen French’s three-day ordeal at the hands of Bernardo and Homolka. There were moments when one would not guess that Kristen was a captive in the hands of homicidal psychopaths who were raping her and were about to murder her.

  Some of these horrific episodes are reproduced here because they illuminate the subtle dynamics between a victim and her killers—the razor’s edge between life and death at the hands of a serial killer. In the midst of her nightmarish ordeal, Kristen French cleverly and desperately attempts to survive and manipulate her captors. In one video segment, Kristen and Karla are videotaped by Bernardo having sex with each other:

  HOMOLKA: I like you, Kristen.

  KRISTEN: I like you, too.

  HOMOLKA: Do you want to have some fun?

  KRISTEN: Sure, okay. How come your teeth are so straight?

  HOMOLKA: I don’t know. How about yours?

  KRISTEN: (giggling) You’re silly.

  HOMOLKA: (Undressing Kristen.) Don’t be so nervous. It’s okay.
<
br />   KRISTEN: Am I shaking?

  HOMOLKA: No. Just try to feel at home. You have nice legs.

  KRISTEN: This one’s kind of short.

  HOMOLKA: That’s okay.

  KRISTEN: Can I ask you a favor? Before I leave, can I see your dog…without it attacking me?

  (Homolka looks up toward Bernardo behind the camera.)

  HOMOLKA: It’s up to him.

  BERNARDO: Yeah, sure. Before you leave.

  KRISTEN: I like dogs.

  BERNARDO: Me, too.

  Some interpreted Kristen French’s easygoing banter with Homolka and Bernardo as symptoms of her succumbing to Stockholm syndrome—where shocked and disorientated captives begin to relate to and associate themselves with their captors. In Kristen’s case, it is unlikely. It is clear from Kristen’s dialogue that she had her wits about her and was cleverly attempting to create a context in her relationship with her captors in which her release would be inevitable. Kristen positively said, “Before I leave, can I see your dog?” A courageous and brilliant attempt at survival and one that could have potentially worked had she been in the hands of serial killers with a slightly different profile.*

  While Kristen was held captive, Bernardo would go out of the house on two occasions to get takeout food, leaving her alone with Homolka. The moment Bernardo was out the door, Kristen desperately pleaded with Karla to let her escape, but Karla refused.

  “What Do You Know About Dying?”

  On the third day, Kristen French began to openly resist Bernardo, refusing to obey his commands—not the behavioral path a Stockholm syndrome victim takes. Bernardo then showed her the videotape of Leslie Mahaffy being raped and tortured, saying to Kristen, “You know who that is, don’t you? What happened to her will happen to you if you don’t do what I tell you.”

  Kristen was horrified to recognize the face of the girl who had been reported missing and had been found dismembered at Lake Gibson.

  Despite the horror of recognizing Mahaffy, the courageous 15-year-old Kristen French refused to comply further with Bernardo’s perverted demands and defiantly countered, “There are some things worth dying for.”

  Bernardo responded with a sustained cycle of vicious punches and kicks to her body. Homolka and Bernardo raped her again several more times before Bernardo commenced beating her yet again. One of the last images on the video was of Kristen lying tied up and battered almost into unconsciousness. On the video, she spits out at Bernardo: “I don’t know how your wife can stand being around you.”

  “Just shut up, okay. Just shut up,” Bernardo is heard saying on the video, just before turning the camera off.

  Shortly afterward, Bernardo took an electrical cord and wrapped it around Kristen’s throat. He carefully timed himself for seven minutes as he held his grip. Karla says she heard Bernardo whisper in Kristen’s ear as he killed her: “What do you know about dying?”

  If in Dante’s Inferno there was a “He-Said-She-Said Psycho Newlyweds Game Show,” then Bernardo and Homolka would have been star contestants. While Homolka testified that Bernardo killed the girls, Bernardo stated that Homolka killed both of the girls when he left them alone with her. Bernardo said he wanted to keep Kristen French as a sex slave and not kill her. Homolka became jealous, he asserts, and killed Kristen. This is conceivable, for along with American Psycho, the other book that Bernardo had on hand at the time was Perfect Victim, by Christine McGuire and Carla Norton. The book was a true-crime account of a 20-year-old woman who was kidnapped in California and kept as a sex slave for seven years by a married couple. Furthermore, the autopsy report on Leslie Mahaffy showed bruising on her back consistent with a pair of knees pressed there the size and shape of Karla’s.

  Karla testified that Bernardo had killed Kristen because the couple was due at her parents’ house for Easter dinner. She stated that Bernardo had forced her to clean up the evidence. Because there might be carpet fibers in Kristen’s hair from Bernardo’s rug, rather than destroying her precious rug, Karla stupidly hacked off Kristen’s hair and collected it in a bag. She and Bernardo then carried her body into the bathroom and submerged it in the tub. She was scrubbed clean, because Bernardo told Karla that the police were able to lift fingerprints from flesh. He ordered Karla to douche Kristen’s vagina and anus of Bernardo’s seminal fluids. Bernardo burned her clothes, hair, and the sports bag she was carrying in the fireplace, and then collected the ashes. He meticulously wiped clean the glass face of Kristen’s watch, and then shattered it.

  To make it seem like the killers lived in Burlington, where Mahaffy had been kidnapped, Homolka and Bernardo planned to dump Kristen’s body on Leslie Mahaffy’s grave, but they couldn’t find it. In the end, they tossed Kristen out by an illegal dumpsite. She was found naked and shorn of her hair fourteen days after she had gone missing.

  Bernardo and Homolka went on for another eight months. There were beatings, Bernardo was out stalking and raping women, Homolka and he engaged prostitutes for three-way sex. Bernardo was drinking heavily and beating Karla almost daily, and was now striking her in the face and pulling out clumps of her hair. Once Bernardo threw her down into the cold cellar, turned off the light, and bolted the door, screaming down to his terrified wife, “Leslie’s coming for you! She’s down there in the basement. Right where I cut her up.” Karla spent the night locked in the dark basement.

  Bernardo drove around with Karla in the car, pointing out women he was stalking and telling her he was going to rape them next. Once, while watching a woman on the street, he masturbated, making Karla look the other way. At other times, he had Karla perform fellatio on him as he watched his potential victims. She stupidly stood by her man.

  “I Hope They Let Me Do My Hair in Jail. I Would Just Die If My Hair Went to Hell.”

  Bernardo owned a Mag-Lite—a long-handled flashlight manufactured out of solid gun barrel–hard steel. They are carried by many police officers because of their durability and usefulness as a baton. There are several cases of individuals being killed from blows of a Maglite wielded by a police officer. When Bernardo began to beat Karla with the flashlight, she finally ran. Bruised and swollen, she showed up at her parents’ house on January 5, 1993. They immediately took her to an emergency ward at a hospital and Bernardo was charged with assault that night.

  So that Bernardo could not find her, the Homolkas sent her to Toronto to stay with her aunt and uncle. There the tenants of the building nicknamed the mysterious blonde with the bruises under her eyes “Raccoon Face.” Within weeks, however, Homolka was out partying at a disco and quickly found herself a new lover. She told him nothing about her past other than that she was going through a “bad divorce.”

  In the meantime, Bernardo was rambling around the empty house, shouting for Karla. “Snuggle Bunny, are you home, Karly Curls?” He recorded a videotape directed to Karla in which he threatened suicide: “I need you, Kar. I love you, my princess, my queen, my everything. I think about you every day now…I realize now you’re never coming back. Fucking kills me, pal. I wish I just could have been given a second chance to make things right…I know you had to leave, and I don’t blame you. In fact, it was the best thing you could have done for me. It snapped me out of whatever state I was in. It made me realize how much I care for you…You are the most special person who ever touched my life. Yes, even more than Tammy. When you know you’ve lost it all, and there’s no one to turn to, death’s welcome mat is the only place you can go…Okay, I fucked up this life, right? When I go to the other side, okay, I’m going to make it better for you there. I’m going to set something up real nice. So when you come, it’ll be all right. You know what I’m saying?”

  When it ended, it ended fast, but dirty. Bernardo had been one of the many suspects in the Scarborough rapes and had resigned himself to giving police his DNA sample when his description matched that of the rapist. Three weeks after Karla left Bernardo, a DNA sample finally came back to the police. In the wake of government-funding cutbacks, it had tak
en twenty-six months to run the tests. Paul Bernardo, the polite young accountant, was their man. The police immediately erected a twenty-four-hour surveillance around Bernardo. They followed him as he stalked women in his car.

  When the police discovered that Bernardo was living in the Niagara region, it was not long before they began to suspect him of the Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French murders. Detectives visited Karla Homolka and asked her if she had ever cut anyone’s hair and whether she was ever in the church parking lot from which French was kidnapped (without telling Homolka why they were asking). Homolka was in a state of panic. On February 17, 1993, Bernardo was arrested and charged with the Scarborough rapes.

  Homolka broke down and made a full confession to her aunt and uncle. She was immediately taken to a lawyer. The police, meanwhile, began a forensic search of Bernardo’s house for evidence. Wearing spacemanlike suits so that they did not contaminate the site, the police forensic technicians tore out the walls, they drilled holes in the floor, they wrenched out the plumbing, they ripped out the carpeting, pried loose the baseboards, vacuumed up every loose hair and piece of lint, and dusted every square inch for fingerprints. The police technicians spent seventy-two days inside the Port Dalhousie death house—and found little to nothing with which to link Bernardo to the murders of the two girls.

  Karla Homolka, in the meantime, had been told by everybody—doctors, police, nurses, social workers, family, and friends, all unaware of her role in the crimes—that obviously she was a battered wife. She was a victim here. Soon Homolka began to believe it herself and cleverly read up on battered woman syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder, mastering the jargon and its symptoms. In describing her relationship with Bernardo, Karla frequently used the terms “cycle of abuse” and “learned helplessness,” terms set out in Lenore Walker’s definitive 1979 book, The Battered Woman. Whenever police would come up with something Homolka had neglected to mention, like, for example, her luring and drugging—on her own initiative—of Jane Doe for Bernardo to rape, Homolka would claim post-traumatic stress–related memory loss as a result of her victimization by Bernardo. Despite the fact that Karla was living at home with her family and Bernardo was visiting her only on weekends, Karla claimed she was helpless to resist Paul’s demands to assist him in the Christmas drugging and rape of her little sister.