Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  The Overkill video description also rewrites history by saying that Aileen was ‘deceptive in her elegance’ - it seems that they’ve bought the classic femme fatale image. In reality, Aileen was a tall, tough-looking heavy drinker who hung out at Hell’s Angels bars and whose swearing could put a ship’s parrot to shame.

  The eyes have it

  Despite this, one born again Christian decided that Aileen wasn’t capable of murder, that it was a set up. She came to this conclusion after seeing photos of the serial killer and allegedly reading her eyes. This woman said that she wished she could set the seven-times-killer free, but settled for formally adopting her.

  At least one feminist writer suggested that Aileen was in jail for daring to be openly homosexual and said that she had only shot the seven men to defend herself. And an Aileen Wuornos Defense Group was formed, also claiming that she had been wrongly convicted, that each death she’d caused was indeed self-defence. Websites told surfers how they could write to her and support her. Presumably these parties were embarrassed when she ultimately told the truth…

  Update

  Seven years after she was sentenced to death, Aileen Wuornos gave an interview from prison (broadcast on the internet via Court TV) in which she admitted that she’d made her self-defence claim up. She said that Mallory, the first victim, had started talking to her as if she was a guy. He’d told her that he’d served time for rape - and hearing this had made her decide to kill him. ‘It was situational insanity,’ she said to the interviewer. The words sound wrong for her, like textbook psychology that she’s read or been told by someone else.

  She says, truthfully, ‘I have been so stepped on,’ and admits that she was a prostitute from the age of sixteen. She says that she went to churches for help but that they wouldn’t assist her because she wasn’t part of their congregation. She tried to become a police officer when she was twenty but they turned her down. The inference is that she had no option but to kill the seven men - but at one stage she’d had money from her brother’s estate and she’d had a wealthy husband. She hadn’t had many breaks, but she’d had some.

  She says ‘you can’t rejuvenate me.’ She probably means can’t rehabilitate her. She alleges that at the time of the shootings she was drinking between six and twelve beers daily and that the victims ‘just fell like a sack of potatoes.’ At the time, she explains she was working eight to twelve hours a day on the highways, soliciting five days a week. Ty, her lover, would have two days off and Aileen would take the same days off to be with her. By the end of 1989 she wasn’t making good money any more so shooting the victims gave her access to their belongings, which she pawned or sold.

  ‘I’m extremely sorry this happened’ she says rather than using the more direct and responsible ‘I’m extremely sorry I did this.’ But she doesn’t look sorry - its clear that her grandfather beat all normal feeling out of her years ago.

  Throughout the interview, she frequently repeats her claim that the police were trailing her for five months but didn’t immediately arrest her because they were in the throes of organising a book and movie deal. She’s been told that certain film producers were only interested in a female serial killer - so Wuornos believes the police wanted to make sure she murdered several times.

  There’s some truth in her story - Nick Broomfield, the documentary film maker produced a film on the subject called The Selling Of A Serial Killer. (Not seen by this author.) He found that the police planned to sell Hollywood exclusive rights to their investigations and that talks on the subject were held a month before her arrest. He also alleges that anyone who wants to interview Aileen has to pay various people who know her and others within the judiciary.

  ‘You got some dangerous cops out there,’ Aileen says in her Court TV interview. She also suggests, passing the buck, that ‘law enforcement let me become a serial killer’ and that ‘they need to care about God and righteousness.’

  Her religious conversion runs through much of her speech. ‘I believe I’m totally saved and forgiven by Jesus Christ,’ and ‘I’m totally, totally into Jesus Christ.’ She adds that there are angels waiting for her on the other side.

  Meanwhile, life on Death Row is far from heavenly. She claims she’s had ‘sonic pressure running through my cell for like three years’ and ‘4800 food trays tainted since 1994’ and that love drove her to crime. In truth, hate drove her to crime.

  She does not come over as likeable - but in fairness she has not been raised to believe she is likeable. Her speech is drawling, simplistic and often repetitive. Her Defense Attorney claims that Aileen has the emotional level of a child aged two to three. She is currently working her way through the appeals process but if her appeals fail she will probably go to the electric chair by 2007.

  13 Karma Chameleon

  The public and private sides of Karla Leanne Homolka

  Karla was born on the 4th May 1970 by Caesarean section, the first child of Karel and Dorothy Homolka. Karel was a Czech refugee who had been moved from school to school by his travelling farmworker father. His parents had fled from Czechoslovakia to Canada when he was seven to escape its communist regime. A handsome, small built man, he settled in Ontario with his wife Dorothy, a Canadian citizen. The couple - and many of their relatives - initially inhabited a trailer park.

  The early years were financially uncertain ones as Mr Homolka originally ran a picture-framing business with his relatives. Dorothy had given up her secretarial job to be a full time mother to baby Karla. Dorothy was an excellent household manager as she had run her parent’s household as a child after her mother became seriously ill.

  Now she found that her beautiful blonde-haired and blue-eyed daughter Karla had asthma which tended to come on when she got over excited. As a result, she was often hospitalised at Christmas and other special events.

  Mr Homolka had very little formal education and even after many years residing in Canada his grasp of spoken English remained volatile. His salary was equally variable so he and Dorothy had a financially unstable early marriage. But when he started selling velvet paintings and costume jewellery outside shopping malls his fortunes improved.

  The increase in income allowed the couple to plan for another baby, so two years after Karla’s birth they had a second blonde-haired daughter whom they called Lori. And three years after that they had a third equally blonde baby girl, Tammy Lyn. Lori and Tammy also had asthma but it didn’t prevent them or their older sister Karla from taking part in numerous school activities. Tammy would eventually be one of three girls to die at Karla’s hand…

  When Karla was almost eight her parents moved the family to a small house with an outdoor pool in a nice area. She was given her own room to which she would occasionally bring a friend. The house and garden were often filled with the Homolka’s neighbours who they got on well with. An animal lover, Karla soon acquired two cats, two rabbits and various hamsters. From an early age she was interested in being a vet.

  Her father had now taken a job with a lighting company and was often away on the road selling lighting fixtures. When he was home he sometimes withdrew into himself and his daughter Lori would later suggest that he needed help. Karla certainly saw her mother as the stronger and more energised character - Dorothy arranged pool parties and cleaned and baked. Dorothy also confided to a friend that she was glad that her husband Karel was away a lot as he exhausted her with his frequent demands for sex.

  School days

  Karla was quiet at junior school and considered something of a loner. She favoured pretty frilly dresses and her contemporaries thought she had a princess-like, Alice In Wonderland look. She excelled at English and got over eighty percent for many subjects. She loved to play at - and draw - houses and adored her dolls. She had a stay-at-home mother during these years so clearly saw the house as the woman’s domain.

  Some of her peers remember her as being attention seeking, understandable in a family where all three daughters looked increasingly alike and h
ad similar sporting interests. Several family photos show the blonde Homolka girls smiling for the camera but their faces look tense and Lori’s nails were bitten to the quick.

  Karla’s teenage years

  By senior school Karla enjoyed drama and skating, subjects which got her noticed. She also joined the French club and did well at the language as her IQ of circa 130 put her in the top two percent of the populace. Yet when she tried out for the choir she was so shy - or so determined to be noticed as different - that she made all her classmates turn their chairs to face the other way. Teachers would remember her as bright, non-conformist and intense and her fellow students would concur that she was different and slightly weird.

  After twelve years at home, Dorothy went back to work, taking a job as a hospital administrator, work which brought home a regular paycheck. Unfortunately Karel made it clear to some of her co-workers that he fancied them and suggested he’d be willing to leave his wife. And according to a source in Stephen William’s impressively detailed book on the case, Invisible Darkness, Dorothy suggested that a threesome - herself, the woman that Karel fancied and Karel - might save the Homolkas rocky relationship.

  By now Karel’s daughters were sometimes calling him names, perhaps safe in the knowledge that English wasn’t his first language. Karla herself would later hint to psychiatrists that her father wasn’t too bright - and in a letter she’d refer to both her parents as assholes. In general, she now talked too much and seemed even more obsessed with her appearance than other teenagers. She would spend hours talking dramatically on the telephone to her more conservative friends. The schoolgirl Karla’s punk-dyed hair, monochrome clothes and multiple earrings gave the illusion of confidence - but there was increasing uncertainty at home.

  Karla’s father had always enjoyed a drink so the house was full of alcohol and friends were offered it on every occasion. But he increasingly went on drinking binges, many of which would last all day. Karla’s schoolfriend Kevin would hear from Karla that the house was in a state of almost constant tension, with her father brooding or both parents arguing. Young Karla found the shouting matches distressing and often phoned Kevin in tears. She also told other friends that she wanted to leave home as soon as possible and spoke of university as a way out.

  That said, Karla would go to her father if her mother refused her anything. But when he’d been drinking he’d misinterpret whatever she said and would become verbally abusive. At one stage she reported that he’d called her a whore - and his joking name for his own wife was ‘the old bitch.’ It’s not known if Karla was physically chastened by either parent but after one argument with her father she tearfully phoned a friend and admitted she’d locked herself in her room.

  A cry for help

  When she was sixteen or seventeen she showed faint marks on her wrists to schoolfriends and admitted that she’d cut herself because sometimes she didn’t want to live. Friends put this down to attention seeking - and psychiatrists would later describe her personality as histrionic, borderline. Karla had been brought up in a home where the lack of money was always a topic for discussion - so now she wanted to marry a rich man who would buy her a big house and many other material things. She and her sisters continued to suffer from asthma, and there’s often an emotional component to this.

  Beginning to rebel, Karla’s favourite song became Fight For Your Right To Party, possibly because her parents preferred her to bring her friends home rather than for her to go out on the town where they couldn’t keep an eye on her. Her father was protective towards all three of his beautiful daughters, referring to them as ‘his girls.’ But Karla was now a young woman who wore handcuffs on her jacket as a fashion statement and who toyed with the idea of becoming a detective. She needed an identity - and a man - of her own.

  Meeting Paul

  Whilst still a schoolgirl, Karla had taken part time work in a pet store and was very good at it. She seemed to love the animals she was selling, and made sure that they were properly exercised, watered and fed. Indeed, her boss was so impressed that he sent her to an out of town Pets Convention with a female friend.

  The convention took place in October 1987 and involved an excited Karla staying in a hotel overnight. She wanted to make the most of this unusual freedom, so flirted heavily when she met tall, blonde and handsome Paul Barnardo and his friend in the hotel’s coffee bar. The two men made a habit of cruising around and picking up girls and the charming Paul enjoyed far more conquests than the average male.

  Karla was a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl who looked younger than her years, Paul a trainee accountant aged twenty-three who liked very young teenagers. Karla and her friend and Paul and his friend talked, laughed and eventually went up to the girls’ room. Someone put off the light and within moments Karla and Paul were having sex on top of her bed. The other couple lay there in embarrassed silence listening to over three hours of enthusiastic coupling sounds before everyone eventually fell asleep.

  Paul was Karla’s second lover and she fell hard, telling friends that she’d fallen in love with him the moment she set eyes on him. He was physically attractive and superficially charming and they were sexually very compatible and willing to experiment. They made a striking couple, both tanned and blonde and sometimes dressed in identical T-shirts. She was tiny and classically feminine-looking whilst he was broad shouldered and tall.

  Beauty hides the beast

  But behind Paul’s handsome face and fit body lurked a hatred of women. It was a hatred that had been sculpted from years of abuse from his completely dysfunctional family. His parents wouldn’t allow any of his childhood friends into the house - and his mother’s idea of a family meal was to open a tin of macaroni. Yet the family were affluent, spending money on nice cars and a big house.

  Ken, who Paul originally thought was his father, would veer between ignoring him and shouting at him. Ken hit all three of the children if they took a few seconds to respond to his commands and Marilyn screamed at them with the slightest provocation. She became increasingly hypochondriacal, though - unlike most toxic parents - she ultimately had the courage to seek psychiatric help. But one day in a fit of rage she told Paul than Ken wasn’t his biological father, but the result of an affair she had had.

  In some ways, Paul should have been glad as by now Ken had been exposed as a Peeping Tom and would later be convicted of sexually abusing a minor. But Paul had admired Ken’s immaculate dress sense and his success in accountancy and was desolate to find out that a stranger was his real dad.

  Ken often made derogatory remarks about women and Paul now began to do the same. By his late teens he was talking of how much he’d like to rape a girl and said he dreamed of setting up a ‘Virgin Farm’ where young girls would do whatever he desired.

  He started making obscene phone calls to a friend’s ex-girlfriend in 1986, the calls eventually being traced by the police. Paul then had a restraining order placed on him. Soon his activities would escalate into much more serious crimes. He committed his first rape, of a girlfriend, several months before meeting Karla, and would go on to rape many others, becoming known in the Canadian press as the Scarborough Rapist. He pounced on his victims as they walked home through Scarborough’s darkened streets.

  Paul and Karla’s early relationship

  At first Paul wooed the teenage Karla with flowers and cuddly toys. He also ingratiated himself with her family until they started referring to him as the son they had never had. Paul lived an almost two hour drive away from Karla’s house and was soon exhausted by driving back and forward between the two houses, so her parents invited him to start sleeping over each weekend on the settee.

  One source suggests that Karla couldn’t talk to her mother about sex so Paul had to sneak into her bedroom when the rest of the family were sleeping. Another source says that Dorothy knew Paul stayed in Karla’s room and would tap on the door to alert him each morning so that he was out of there before Mr Homolka came downstairs.

  What
is certain is that the couple were having increasingly adventurous sex. Karla had worn handcuffs on her jacket as a fashion statement and now invited Paul to use them on her. Later he asked her to buy a dog chain which he would tighten around her neck whilst they made love.

  Karla clearly found this powerplay exciting and started to refer to Paul as her ‘big, bad businessman’ but when she told her school girl friends they were shocked. Like most teenagers they were somewhat puritanical and harsh in judging others, and decided that the couple’s roleplay was unnatural. But at this stage Karla and Paul’s sexual games were consensual and they weren’t hurting anyone else.

  As the months passed, this was to change. Like most sadists, Paul was looking for his girlfriend’s Achilles heel, finding out facts with which he could belittle her. He found it when Karla admitted that she wasn’t a virgin, having had sex with a previous boyfriend after he’d left the area and she’d taken a plane to spend a weekend with him. Karla slept with this youth at the first opportunity, just as she did with Paul. When free of her parental home she was desperate to forge an early intimacy with any goodlooking man.

  Paul told Karla that her loss of virginity was a fault, something that she could literally rectify by offering him her virgin rectum. She did so, though she found it painful. Later she would lick his anus whilst masturbating him and would repeat the words that most aroused him. ‘I’m your little cocksucker. I’m your little slut. I’m your little cunt.’