Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  Leslie immediately complied with her abductor’s demands and was driven to the pretty home that Paul shared with Karla. He went upstairs, woke his fiancee and told her of his new trophy, Karla’s main comment was ‘Did anybody see you?’ She would later admit that she soon went back to sleep. Again and again Karla’s behaviour would show that her conscience was completely missing. She lacked the ability to empathise, a classic psychopathic trait.

  Later Karla joined Paul in the room where he was keeping the terrified teen. The constantly-blindfolded Leslie, who had by now been raped by Paul multiple times, was glad at first to hear a female voice and asked Karla to help her. But Karla merely held the camcorder whilst the teenager was sodomised.

  Karla also helped Lesley into position so that the kidnapped teenager could give Paul analingus. A few minutes after that, with Paul still directing, Karla performed oral sex on the naked child. She would later say that the younger girl was acting on automatic pilot, clearly trying to distance her mind from the ordeal.

  Leslie repeatedly asked to go home, saying that she missed her baby brother. She swore that she hadn’t seen what they looked like and said she couldn’t remember anything about the car that had brought her to their home.

  As she couldn’t identify Karla and had only seen Paul for a few moments, they could, in theory, have let her go - but at this moment (Karla would later say) Paul confessed to her that he was the man known as the Scarborough Rapist. This rapist had been responsible for vaginally and anally raping numerous women. One woman had seen Paul’s face and as a result a police artist had produced a good likeness which was reproduced in all the local papers. Some people who knew Paul - and had heard him talk misogynistically on many occasions - had then anonymously phoned the police suggesting it was him. Paul had been taken in for questioning and had given body samples. He knew the net was closing in.

  By sheer chance it would take police two years to test all of the samples they’d taken from potential suspects, so Paul was to remain free for that period. But ultimately if the same DNA was found in semen in Leslie’s body it would point to him.

  Paul wanted to keep Leslie as a teenage sex slave for as long as possible as he was enjoying himself. But Karla’s parents were due at their house for dinner forty-eight-hours after the kidnapping so Karla wanted the girl out of the way before then.

  Left alone with Karla whilst Paul was out buying them all a takeaway, Leslie pleaded for her life, saying that the two of them could escape together. She added that she’d tell the police that only Paul was responsible, that he’d forced Karla to participate.

  As a supposed mercy act, Karla gave Leslie two sedatives and handed her a teddy bear to hold. When the teenager was suitably drugged, Paul allegedly returned and entered the room holding an electric cord. Leslie’s actual murder wasn’t recorded on the camcorder so the details aren’t fully known and are still a source of discord. What is certain is that Lesley died that day at either Paul or Karla’s hand.

  Karla would say that Paul strangled the girl, that she revived and that he re-strangled her, but the body would show few signs of pressure on the neck to confirm this. Paul would claim that he came back from buying the takeaway to find that Karla had murdered Leslie, claiming that the girl had tried to run away. Bruising found in the deep tissue would suggest that someone of approximately Karla’s size could have knelt on the girl’s back, pushing her head into a cushion to suffocate her.

  The corpse would remain in the basement whilst everyone enjoyed a home cooked meal at Paul and Karla’s house. The young couple chatted happily to Karla’s parents and gave no sign that anything was amiss.

  Dismemberment

  Two days after Leslie’s death Karla and Paul dismembered the teenager’s body. She would deny taking part in this - but she had attended animal autopsies and knew how to cut up a cadaver. Karla had written to a friend saying how ‘neat’ it was to amputate puppies tails without anaesthetic and she later cut up their pet iguana after Paul killed it, barbecued it and ate it with him and her friends.

  One or both of the couple cut up Leslie’s corpse with an electric saw, then put each section into a box which Paul filled with concrete. The hair was sticking out of the concrete block containing the head so he painted it black to make it look less conspicuous. Finding he had some unused concrete left over, he took it back to the store and got a refund then realised that the concrete - and its bloody cargo - might be traced back to him.

  That night he and Karla drove to a stretch of water and threw the blocks over the bridge. They assumed that they’d sink forever. But within a few weeks the water at that particular point would become shallow and a fisherman would make a very grisly find…

  Till death us do part

  On 17th June 1991 Karla married Paul in an expensive and showy white wedding. As they celebrated, a concrete block containing the torso of Leslie Mahaffy was found by a fisherman. The police rushed to pull other blocks containing her head and butchered limbs from the lake. They knew that carrying the blocks would have required two people, but presumed the killers were both men.

  Karla looked beautiful on her wedding day and Paul looked composed and handsome. Her father, in contrast, was clearly still grief stricken over Tammy’s death and mentioned her during his speech. Paul’s mother caused a scene about the menu and Paul told her to fuck off.

  Some friends of Karla’s would later state that she had a bruised left arm at the ceremony - and that they’d seen other bruises on her back when she was fitted for her wedding dress. But Karla would shrug these off as injuries sustained at the vets whilst trying to control large dogs.

  The couple set off on their honeymoon, taking the inevitable camcorder with them. Karla would later state that she was beaten during this period - but videos show her dressed in a bikini without visible marks and on her return she told friends that the honeymoon had been brilliant. On the videotapes she looks happy and relaxed and not at all afraid of Paul, at one stage telling him she’s bored with being filmed. She appears in another video whilst he’s out of the room declaring her undying love for him.

  The third murder

  After their return, boredom soon set in. Karla would work and Paul would lie around the house thinking up rap lyrics that suggested he was superior to the rest of the planet. The couple bought themselves a Rottweiler puppy - but Karla really wanted a baby and told friends she’d get pregnant as soon as Paul earned more cash. Both of them seemed to see him as a top ten recording artiste but he didn’t even contact any record companies and would later admit that the songs were mainly in his head. The couple told neighbours that Paul was still an accountant, so many assumed he was freelance as he was so clearly homebased.

  Karla would smile at the neighbours as she walked Buddy, the loveable puppy. She was always beautifully dressed, with her hair immaculate. Paul wasn’t seen in the neighbourhood so often but when he was he’d be talking ostentatiously into his mobile phone.

  The couple’s sex life continued to go downhill, with Paul finding it harder and harder to maintain an erection and achieve orgasm. They consequently decided to kidnap another sex slave for them both to enjoy. For several weeks they drove around looking for a likely suspect. Then one rainswept afternoon - 16th April 1992 - they saw a schoolgirl walking home on her own.

  Karla called the girl over to the car. She was fifteen and her name was Kristen French. She had long hair and a wide smile, just like Leslie Mahaffy and like Karla. She was a bright and athletic teenager from a loving home.

  Kristen walked over to the vehicle and Karla used the pre-arranged ploy of asking for directions. Karla then stepped out of the car and spread a map across the roof. As the fifteen-year-old stepped closer to the vehicle. Paul rushed round and tried to bundle her inside. Karla helped.

  The girl fought valiantly - a woman driving past thought that she saw three people pretending to fight - but was no match for two strong adults. When she was in the front seat, Karla grabbed her hair from th
e backseat and held it firmly as Paul drove to their home.

  They dragged their victim into the house and Karla went around hiding all the phones so that Kristen couldn’t call anyone. The teenager was then raped and sodomised by Paul.

  Later Karla joined in the abuse which they, as usual, captured on video. Karla can be seen undressing Kristen and performing cunnilingus on her. She runs her hands over the girl as if inspecting her. When she says ‘You’re a pretty girl’ her voice is hoarse with desire - a desire that intensifies when Kristen is made to go down on her. She can also be heard telling the fifteen-year-old when to suck Paul, how to move her hand up and down his penis and so on.

  This sexual assault was to continue for the next three days, with the violence intensifying. The teenager was punched in the back by Paul and had her hair pulled when she didn’t fulfil his every command. He was trying to live out his fantasies word for word and became enraged if she said some of the right words in the wrong order. Drugged and bound each night and assaulted each day, Kristen must have become increasingly ill.

  Karla is seen to perform enthusiastically in the sex sessions, and even complied when Paul told her to insert the neck of a wine bottle into Kristen’s anus. But she hesitates when Kristen winces and doesn’t want to push it in further. Paul then takes over the abuse.

  The three days passed in a bizarre mix of rape and lesbian assault, interspersed with watching ordinary videos and listening to Paul’s rap music. At one stage when Paul asked Kristen what she wanted to eat she named a takeaway outlet far away from the house. The intelligent teenager obviously knew that separating Paul from Karla was her only chance.

  Whilst he was out, she begged Karla to let her go. Karla said that she daren’t. What happened next differs according to who is telling the story. Paul would say that he returned with the takeaway to find Karla crying and saying that Kristen had tried to escape and that she’d had to hit her and mistakenly killed her. Paul had left Karla in charge, holding a rubber mallet, and Paul would say that Karla had used it to bludgeon the girl about the head and face. Whatever the true story, there were deep bruises below Kristen’s eyes when her body was found and her mouth and nose had filled with her own blood.

  Karla’s version would be that Paul strangled Kristen with a cord for a full seven minutes. As with Lesley’s murder, a forensic authority would later dispute this, saying there wasn’t enough damage to the throat to suggest ligature force.

  Whatever the modus operandi, Kristen was killed. Karla then showered and blow dried her hair in order to look nice for going to the Homolkas. Again, she sat through the family meal and no one noticed anything amiss. Her parents even mentioned how sad it was that Kristen was missing and commented on the massive search.

  Back home, Karla douched Kristen’s vagina and anus to make sure that she got rid of any semen samples. She also cut off the girl’s hair so that any carpet fibres caught in her locks wouldn’t be traced to them.

  Paul couldn’t bear to help dismember another corpse so they left her body intact, driving it to a lonely country road. Karla then helped Paul carry it to a dump. Because the means of disposal was so different to Leslie’s, police didn’t initially link the two deaths.

  Four months later the couple went to Disneyworld with their beloved camcorder. At one stage Paul trains the video on a tanned Karla and asks her what she likes to do. ‘Showing off, licking little girls, making my man happy,’ she replies.

  Hiring a prostitute

  The next week they drove up to a prostitute and Karla asked her to accompany them to a hotel. At first the working girl said no as she didn’t want to have sex with a couple, but they approached her several times. Eventually Karla persuaded the older woman, whom they secretly filmed, to go to bed with them.

  The sex video shows Karla looking fulfilled and calm, a more pampered version of the blonde call girl. The girl says on tape that the pair of them clearly like rough sex. Paul loses his erection during the threesome and is clearly out of his depth when talking to a streetwise woman, but Karla looks confident and relaxed.

  After the marriage it was Paul who increasingly went to pieces. He didn’t try to find another job after failing his accountancy exams, relying instead on his cigarette smuggling money. But it was becoming increasingly risky and at one stage he had to abandon the contraband that he’d paid for, a significant financial loss. Though he talked of becoming a bestselling rap artiste he merely played at this, recording his voice over another record and scribbling a few banal lyrics down.

  He sat around drinking most days, watching videos and reading books like American Psycho in which a man very like himself treats women with appalling savagery. Karla also enjoyed such books, borrowing several from the library every week and reading out sections to her co-workers at the veterinary clinic.

  Karla as victim

  Throughout most of Karla’s relationship with Paul she made it clear to friends, family and camcorder alike that she was having a brilliant time. She told Paul that he was her king, her big bad businessman, the only person that she had ever loved. She wrote him letters telling him how wonderful he was.

  But she called a former friend one day, asked her out to lunch and admitted that Paul was verbally abusing her, criticising everything she did and calling her stupid. She admitted that he still didn’t want her to learn to drive or to go to university. When asked, she denied being physically abused.

  Karla was also distraught during this conversation because the animal clinic she worked for had noticed drugs missing and was mounting an investigation so she feared she’d be under suspicion. She didn’t add that she’d stolen the drugs to knock out her sister Tammy and subsequent teenage girls.

  How much violence there had been between the couple prior to the horrific beating that led to their breakup is open to dispute. The Homolkas saw Karla and Paul every week but didn’t see any signs of violence on their smiling daughter. And there isn’t bruising on show in the videotapes that she appears in. But John Douglas states in The Anatomy Of Motive that some relatives and friends had seen evidence of abuse.

  It’s true that Karla was treated in hospital for a cracked rib and a broken finger, and co-workers said that she was sometimes in such pain that she found it difficult to do her job. She also had a bad leg wound that became infected, a wound she would later attribute to Paul.

  It’s clear that Paul’s grandiose plans were crashing down around this time. Karla had lured two more teenage girls to the house and made it clear that she was happy for them to sleep with Paul, but both had spurned him. He was still out of work and apparently hated spending any time on his own.

  Whatever had transpired before, one thing is certain. Just after Christmas 1992 they were having an argument when he grabbed a flashlight and battered it into her face, leaving her with the two blackest eyes imaginable. In photos taken several days after the assault she looks like a racoon. She called in sick for a few days then went into work with her face still brutally disfigured. She was also walking with difficulty as she’d been kicked in the legs.

  A friend anonymously phoned Karla’s mother twice and said to come and get her daughter as she was being badly beaten. Dorothy did and was horrified at what she saw. Though Karla made light of her injuries and refused to implicate Paul, it was obvious that she’d been battered. Dorothy went home and told her husband and the pair of them went round to remove Karla from the house.

  But Karla refused to leave - either because she still loved Paul or because she feared that he’d implicate her in the deaths, including that of her little sister. In the end Karel Homolka physically dragged her from the house. They drove her to the hospital where she was treated for her injuries. The hospital then informed the police that she’d been abused.

  A place of safety

  The Homolkas now arranged for Karla to go and stay with relatives in another part of Canada where she’d be safe from Paul’s pleas for her to return or his unexpected violence. They visited her there
frequently bringing her bottles of red wine. Karla would drink these throughout the day and sleep a lot, but she often refused to eat. To her aunt and uncle, she alternated between saying that she loved Paul and calling him names.

  But as soon as her bruises began to heal she went out to a club with her aunt. She immediately saw a man she liked and made approaches to him. They danced and kissed - then Karla asked her aunt if she could bring the man home to her bed. Shocked, the aunt said no.

  The next night Karla persuaded her aunt to go out with her again. Feeling sorry for the battered wife, the aunt did so. Again, Karla zeroed in on the man she liked and spent the evening kissing him. That night she went home with him, not returning to her aunt’s house till the next day. Most people need solitude after a break up but Karla seemed to feel lost unless she was in an intense sexual relationship with a successful-looking man.

  The evidence increases

  Meanwhile the police were finalising their tests to determine who the Scarborough Rapist was - with the answer Paul Barnardo. When they realised this they questioned Karla about him and she wrongly assumed they knew about her part in Leslie and Kristen’s deaths. She was cold and unhelpful throughout the police visit, but broke down in tears after they’d left. She cried and cried and her aunt asked her what had happened. At this stage Karla admitted that she and Paul had kept the teenagers captive and that she’d helped dispose of their corpses after their death.

  Her aunt asked why she hadn’t gone to her parents when Paul first assaulted her, and she said that they might have blamed her for having been beaten. Presumably the truth is that the first assault was the one where he gave her the black eyes. Prior to that she’d enjoyed having sex slaves as much as he did, and she had no reason to want to go back to her parent’s tension filled home.