Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Paul Bernardo and Carla Homolka ,who became known as ‘The Ken & Barbie Killers
On the 29th of june 1991 a discovery at lake gibson in ontario would horrify the nation
it would be a sickening chapter in a story that had begun two weeks earlier with the disapperanceof a fourteen year old school girl.
Leslie mahaffy was a typical teenag girl ,a beautiful gorl in every respect.went to school,came from a good family,had good values and was sweet and kind and generous.
A really great kid who had her whole life in in front of her.
on the 15th of june leslie had gone out with friends.
she was living at home ,with her mother and stepfather in Burlington
in a very nice midle class neighborhood and had been told that ” if you´re out with your friends and you miss your curfew ,you ‘ll be locke out of the house” A little bit of tough love going on.
leslie had a friend who had died ,the very popular friend at the school and so everybody was sort of mourning the death and she got home a little late.
The door was locked, she realized that she had forgotten her key , on all other occasions where she has forgotten her key,fortunately rare.
she would ring the dorrbell ,knock on the door , mom and dad would answer the door and she’d have to account for missing her curfew.
for reasons that are rather inexplicable, she shose not to do that .
shortly thereafter it became very clear that something was terrible wrong.
A search began for the missing schoolgirl ,but her disappearance baffled the detectives.
When leslie disappeared from her home in Burlington the news absolutely shocked,not just obviously those living in the neighborhood but canadians in general
fourtheen days later a canoeist on nearby lake gibson would discover the appalling answer to leslie’s where abouts.
But for one young couple the 29th of june would be a far different experience.
that very day paul bernado and carla homolka. were having a fairy tale wedding.
carla homolka had always thought of therself as a princess.she loved disney characters and she wanted to be a disney princess and she planned a wedding that certainly on its surface looked like something you could witness in disneayland
21 year old carla’s prince charming was paul bernado.five years her senior, but equally eager for afantasy wedding.
there was a rented coach the old -fashioned coach there was pheasant underglass.there was a ball gown of a wedding dress that had the puffy princess sleeves
it was like the barbie and ken couple , they were seemed like the ideal relationship
but the true story of paul bernardo and carla homolka was no fairy tale.
both harbored deep dark secrets that once revealed would send shockwaves through civilized society.
carlas childhood has always presented to the society as more than average ,average plus.she grew up in a small town ,she had a mother and father whos marriage stayed intact
dad made a living primarily going to flea markets and selling lamps
mom was some sort of and administrative assistant at the hospital in st. cathrines .
they had three daughters. they were well liked in the community the homolka family ,it was like they had a swimmingpool so it was a gathering place for everybody so she wasn’t like an only child or someone who didn’t have a family . she had a solid background.
she was the oldest girl. blond,blue eyed ,pretty vivacious spent a lot of time as a child playing barbie dolls.
but wasn’t at all shy or weak. she was naturally bright but not diligent when it came to her studies.
it’s just she was very typical of young girls from small towns.
but it appears pretty young carla may not have been all sweetness and light .
as carla grew up and became the rambunctious teenager, she went from being the very popular blonde , always had a date or at least a couple of guys who whished they had a date with her . to a darker phase.
at times carla’s behavior struck freinds as odd.
some of her friends called her bizarre because she was into the ouija stuff and a little bit of the occult and she seemed fascinated with death.
she wore black, she began to play in the area of the psychic- ness , the seances, the dark side. the almost magical side.
one of her friend said that her pet had died and carla was determined togo to the backyar and dig up this body , this body of this animal that they buried in the backyard .she just had to see it .and finally they did it . her friend didn’t want todo it but finally they did it , she just had this fascination with a dead pet.
carla would go on to work at a local vets.and it was whilst at a hotel attending a pet store conference in Toronto
that she met the man of her dreams .
when she met paul it was like lust at first sight .
taking coffee in the hotel lounge seventeen year old carla was approached by 23 year old trainee accountant paul bernardo
there would be an instant and ultimately fatal attraction .
it was a chance meeting but to a certain extent it was precisely what carla wanted.
she was part of a high school club ,that prized the idea of getting married to someone wealthy , someone slightly older and getting a big diamond engagement ring.
this was already her mindset .she could have had other guys, so she wasn’t desperate but ,she wanted him .
something in two of them just felt right it resonated.
she was only 17.she was rather young and bernardo provided something for her that she was lacking
he came across as a strong individual,in control and she became obsessed with him.
But there was far more to the ambitous young accountants than met the eye. and together carla an bernardo would become a deadly combination.
In june 1991 while police searched for missing14 year old school girl lesli mahaffy. bernardo and carla were enjoying a lavish picture-perfect wedding.
the seeminly dream couple had met fourt years earlier in the toronto district of scarborough, the year they met the city would be rocked by an unprecedented series of violent rapes.
the sexual assaults were the most brutal that former detective john munro had seen in his career at that tme and he served for 31 years on the toronto police service.
The mystery attacker would become known as the scarborough rapist there
people were scared stiff for a very long time.
The terror would begin in 1987, it was in the late spring and two sexual assaults very close to one another.
Both victims were attacked on their own property
He attacked the women from behind and they never relly got a look at him at all
He treatened the victims that he would do harm to them if they made any noise.
He scared them like they were literally afraid for they lives if they screamed ,He waould kill them
So although they ‘re attacked on their own property with family inside, they weren’t able to call for help .
The two assaults that spring were just the beginning ower the next three years. the scarborough rapist would strike again and again .
Targeting lone women and teenager and paralyzing the community
several women were taking buses home at late at night and if our were a car following it , it was easy to spot if there were a lone women on the bus.
police flooded the area and created a dedicated task force but the elusive rapist continued to strike.
they couldn’t figure out where he was going to attacked next.
Everybody was on guard and yet the rapes continued.
May to December 1987 six attacks.
when the shift was off ,some of the police officers were still cruising the area trying to find this guy and they just couldn’t get him.
April and may 1988, thre attacks. as he continued ,he escalated in his violence and some of the violence towards his victims was unspeakable
October to december 1988 , four attacks . he would do awful things like gather up stones and sticks and insert them into the women who had just beeen raped.
June -89 to may 1990 ,five more attacks.
He took some of their belonings whitch left them feeling more unsafe than they were in first place.
the picture has nothing to do with this article
In couple of cases the women were just getting the courage to get up ,he would re- emerge, throw them to the ground and attack them all over again .
The damage that it did to those victims was unreal . law enforcement knew it was only a matter of time before the unthinkable happened.
When the FBI profilers actually were called in they did say if you dont get this guy you can see from the way he’s escalating, he will turn to murder so there’s no doubt that he was the fact that he wasn’t getting arrested made him bolder .
All the while the scarborough rapist was terrorizing the city
Carla was being wooed and captivated by her new beau, paul bernardo.
a seemingly impressive and charming young man with good prospects. he finished high school and went to university and eventually found his way into the chartered accountants program and worked for a accounting firm.
you look at him and you think that this guy is a professional very very confendent outgoing fellow
who was wery self- assured, didn’t have any kind of doubys about his own ability .
paul bernardo was everything carla had ever dreamed of both as a child and as a teenager. He was older, tall , blonde he was handsome, she called him her prince. and he had a car and he had a job.
but carlas mr perfect was not all he seemed.
Paul bernardo was born in 1964, a scarborough native. he was troubled , it seems from the very beginning
He seemed to be sexually inappropriate in a lot of ways .his parents were sleeping in separate rooms and it was just very unsettled life that he had at home
Despite the family turmoil ,on the surface the young bernardo seemed welll adjusted, joing the boys’s scouts and later becoming a summer camp counsellor
He was fairly athletic he was a lifeguard when he was yonger, he also took karate lessons .and he could get any girl he wanted and he wasn’t shy on ego at all.
when bernardo was 16 years old his mother dropped a bombshell , the man he believed to be his biological father was not.
paul bernardo had been the result of an extra- material affair.
When bernardo found out that he was a result of an extramarital relationship he became angry at his mother .
she had referred to him as a bastard child it wasn’t a great family relationship
he didn’t identified with his stepfather very much , he really hated him.
But there was one unhealthy interest the young paul bernardo had in common with his stepfather.
he was caught several times as a ” peeing tom” trying to peer into the neighbor’s windows.
parent’s often forbid their children from playing with him.
As he grew older bernardo’s sexual needs became increasingly sordid .
he began to humiliate and beat girldfriends and engage in sadistic sex.
most rejected him ,that is until he met Karla. karla’s family life was pretty normal. there wasn´t much to say about it but when she did meet paul, she pretty quickly got into some of the deviants -the sexual deviant.
she would write letters to him” do what you want to me , i´ll do anything and everything”
so she resonated to his deviance very fast ,suddenly she changed, there ws already something there in her that he saw and triggered that she was quite ready for somebody like him.
In 1990, after three years of terror for the city of toronto. police got a break in their search for the scarborough rapist
for each of his 17 known assaults, he’d been careful to make sure that his victims were unable to describe him.
but in may , the elusive rapist let his guard down. hw was brazen enough at that particular point to attack the female from the front.
this was the first glimpse that the police had which helped them create a composite drawing. to help police identify this particular individual .
After the composite picture was distributed
police received a tip-off that the image bore a striking resemblance to a 25-year old local accountant
Paul Bernardo .
detective john monroe called bernardo to the police station for questioning.
he came into office late in the afternoon, he was neat. clean. he wore a shirt and a tie. his hear was cut. he was very calm cool and collected.
he looked like the all-canadian boy.and detective john monroe talked to him about different things about any problems he’s had with women .
he said he never had any and he did have a girlfriend now. and he said ” i do, my girldfriend’s karla homolka .”
of course in november of 1990 the name karla homolka didn’t mean anything to the police or detective john monroe.
Because he had this sweet boy look . this cherubic look to him and charm gregariousness ,he was able as any good psychopath can to cover and charm people and make them believe that he’s innocent.
Bernardo was one of 700 persons of interest ,that the task force were looking into.
They’d already collected DNA samples from over a hundred suspects
detective john monroe asked bernado to provide samples of his hair and saliva and blood. and he gave them up right away. by doing this,
(this is detective john monroe own opinion) .
he was trying to deflect any suspicion on himself by being so cooperative.
testing of the samples would eventually proved bernardo was indeed the scarborough rapist . but tragically not soon enough.
at that time DNA was in it’s infant stages in terms of being a forensic investigative tool. so the police took the sample and it sat for two years on a shelf
by 1990 bernardo was spending lots of time with the homolka family. but allthough he was now engaged to his willing girlfriend carla.
Bernardo was not satisfied. paul had this thing for virgins and karla had boyfriends beforer paul and he liked women who’d never had sex ,that was virgins and he was kind of annoyed.
Tammy / karla’s sister.
for him, karla’s 15 year old sister would provide the answer.
karla and Tammy looked like twins.except for the age difference.
to Tammy he was like the big boyfriend,she started to looked up to him .sort of idolized him and with him, all his thoughts were sex.-to have sex with her .
paul bernado began pressuring karla into arranging for him to take the virginity of her baby sister.
and the most bizarre thing and still impossible to comprehend is that karla did that.
six months before their planned wedding
karla decided to gift her younger sister’s virginity to her boyfriend for christmas.
The problem was that karla was afraid that tammy would tell.
Karla stole anaesthic from the vet´s clinic, where she worked
The idea was to put tammy under, and then have a sexual assaulte and that way they could have their threesome.
On the 29th of december 1990 with Karla’s parents still in the house, they put their plan into action .
The family was all gathered and everybody went to bed except three of them.
they had tammy drinking, got her drunk and as she passed out , they basically raped her in every possible way.
The unconscious fifteen – year- old began to turn blue.
Tammy vomited and suffocated.
they turned her upside down, because karla knew that from when she worked in the veterinary ‘s office. but tammy acctually died.
They quckly thought of a cover story , they called the emergency, thought of a cover story and that was accpeted.
It was all passed off as an accidential death., which it wasn’t of couse.tammy was a gift that like to this day to even talk about it is paunful ,how could somebody set up her own sister? like how can somebody do that?
tammy’s unexpected death would not signal the end of paul and karla’s deviant games. It would merley be the beginning of a sickening new chapter…..
for christmas of 1990 karla had promised to gift her sister’s virginity to her fiance , paul bernardo . but as they drugged and raped 15 year old tammy ,she choked to death.
and while the homolka family grieved the loss of the young school girl
carla and paul continued preparations for their dream june wedding.
They feigned a lot of remorse,both paul and carla wept, paul especially about tammy’s death.but within a very short period of time karla was pressuring her parents to go ahead with the wedding.
and she wrote to a friend how angry she was ,that her parents were taking so long, monts to get over tammy’s death because she wanted all of the attention back on her for her wedding.
Bernardo and karla´s lavish wedding day went ahead as planned on the 29th of june 1991
but unbeknown to onlookers as the happy couple smiled and posed for photographers, they were hiding another dark secret
they held the answer to the riddle of the missing teenager leslie mahaffy
14 year old leslie had mysteriously disappeared from outside her home. two weeks ealrier, on nearby lake gibson a canoeist was about to discover her whereabouts
what he found would stun the nation.
it wasn’t just a question of shock,it was a question of horror
The water lever was dropping down.in gibson lake.a fisherman found one and then a passerby found another one.
encased in cement leslie’s mahaffy’s dismembered body parts .
some of the concrete wasn’t solidified.it wasn’t hardened and it came apart and one of the body parts drifted to the surface and then they just dredged the lake .leslie’s remains were found sawn up and encased in eight concrete blocks.
the people of ontario now realize they had a maniac in their midst .
police are now dealing with someone who is demented in the extreme psychopath.a serial killer.
because the scarborough rapes had been going on it just seeme like some new horror, that thecrime was escalating in this small quiet perfect little town.
The St. Catharines house that Paul Barnardo and Karla Homolka lived in, April 30, 1993. The house is surrounded by police tape. (The Canadian Press Images/Jeff Chevrier)
Leslie’s fate had been sealed two weeks earlier before their wedding carla and paul had moved into a rented house in saint cathrine’s
st.chatrine is just a small kind of ontario community which is accepted as being a very safe community but obviously it wasn’t .
Forensic Investigators wait outside the St. Catharine’s house rented by Paul Bernardo in February 1993. (Photo Credit: Ken Faught / Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Paul bernardoss twisted urges for young girls had not abated. he talked to karla about it´d be nice to bring somebody, home .he wanted to be able to have somebody ,he wanted to have them as a slave in the house.and it would be leslie’ mahaffy who paid the price for bernardo’s sick fantasies.
On the night of the 15th of june the schoolgirl returned home late wihtout her door key
unbeknownst to her ,paul bernardo was on the prowl, he was seeme like a normal person.like all psychopaths, they have a charm to them and they’re remakably successful in their manipulation. and he started up a conversation with her and that resulted in her abduction and taken to the home in in st. chatrines.
karla was sleeping at the time and she got up and he said “here’s this women i found”
karla becam enraged apparently not because there was a young women that he planned to rape in the house but because paul had shared their wedding glasses , the crystal flutes you drink champagne out of it and was sharing them with leslie mahaffy.
over the next 36 hours paul bernardo assaulted his victim repeatedly constantly instructing her to say specific degrading phrases
bernardo engaged in scripting of his victims. he told his vitims what to say .” tell me how great i am”” tell me i’m the king” and so on.
he is sexually aroused by degrading and humiliating in his victims in a very ectrerm way.
apparently he had a difficult time, even with the rapes.
keeping an erection and the scripting helped because it was about humiliating these girls.saying things like “your boyfriend is not as good as i am.”.and much vulgar things . he wanted to degrade them as much as he possibly could and also elevate himself . make them say : what an amazing person he was.
Leslie’s young life was taken. he strangled her and then took the body in the basement.
and carla’s parents came over for a sunday dinner and there’s the body in the bassement
carla is going up and down into this cellar area getting food with the body lying right there.
The next day bernardo set up a plastic tent in the basement and plugged in a power saw. he hacked up the body and he bought lots of bagsof concrete from one of the local stores
and encased each body part in concrete and driving over a little bridge and just threw them in the lake.
despite public horror and a high -profile police investigation
bernardo and homolka didn’t stop
After leslie was held , tortured ,killed and then decapitated, they went looking for another young victim.
and this time. the husband and wife would go hunting together.
kristen french was a remakable ,beautiful young girl ,comes from a great family. was involved i school sports had trermendous sense humor. she had her whole life in front of her .
On 16 th of april 1992 bernardo and klara would commit most brazen crime yet. kristen is waking back from school in the afternoon broad daylight.
she was walking home down a very quiet residential street, she was in front of a church.
This time the married couple would operate in tandem.
karla was out the car with a map, pretending she was” lost”
that was the trap.
and kristen who’s very carful sees this young women seemingly need help so she went over to help her .
as kristen leaned over the map karla grabbed her and paul came from around grabbed her pushed her into the car bend to the back seat and
they zoomed off to that same deathhouse.
They kept her for three days approximatelly and videotaped it.
the brutality of it was gruesome. in fact that they videotaped the sadistic conducts is actuall quite common that’s what sexual sadists do and they do it because they want to manufacture their own pornography where he’s really the star actor .
During her ordeal ,kristen saw an opportunity to escape her tormentor.
paul went out for food during the three days of captivity .
kristen said she wanted food from the farthest outlet in st cathrine so she knew paul would be gone for a half hour so basically karla was alone with kristen french for like a half hour and kristen was pleading with her and carla wouldn’t let her .
after three days of degreading and brutal sexual assault . bernardo strangled kristen.,together he and karla bathed and scrubbed the body, cut off all her hair and dumped her beside a country lane.
by the time christen’s naked shorn was discovered in a ditch in burlington .
everybody was on high alert.but all was no longer well for the once happily married couple.
after the murder of kristen, paul and karlas relatinship would beging to break down
He started going downhill he started living in his delusional world.
and he started getting abusive with karla and beat her up and she basically left him.
the assault would spell the beginning of the end of the killers.
it wasn’t until karla went screaming to police about the fact that she’d been beaten up by paul bernardo that the case began to crack .
while karla pressed charges against her husband for assault
the DNA sample that the scarborough rape task force had taken more than two years before finally surfaced
The long -awaited DNA.result came back from the scarborough rapes and bernardo was a match and so they went to karla and she said yeah he confessed to me about the scarborough rapes “
and bernardo was arrested after that .
when the officer went to speak with him he was no longer the quiet unnervous sort of ondividual
he just said ” im not telling you guys jack”
karla however did talk.she admitted involvement in bernado’s killings of leslie mahaffy and kirsten french and the death of her sister tammy but claimed that she’d been a battered wife and an unwilling accomplice
with little evidends against bernardo for the murders ,prosecutors felt hey needed a witness to convict him
The only way to put paul bernardo in prison was to believe karla ‘s story.
karla was offered a deal . testify against her husband and receive a total of just 12 years in prison.
but before the trial began a discovery was mad that would show that self- proclaimed battered wife in a whole new light. and horrofy an entire nation.
karla Homolka
1993 karla had admitted involvement in the killings of schoolgirls leslie mahaffy ,kristen french and her own sister tammy.
she claimed to be a battered wife
and the unwilling accomplice of her husband paul bernard.
but before the trial of bernardo began a discovery was made that showed karla in a whole new light.
Hidden in the bathroom ceiling of the couple´s saint cathrine’s home was a collection of shocking home video casettes.
the mini-cassette tapes actually had writing on them and carla´s hand.
things like , kristen ,leslie , paul and me.with hearts and flowers like little stickers.
What the police and detectives discovered is that , there was karla raping, torturing,this young girls right alongside her husband paul .
and she seemed to be enjoying it
Attorney for the victims families. tim danson would be required to view the grimm home movies.
He says: it was a pretty awful thing to be part of in the sense to see that level of pain and anguish and despiair.at unspeakable levels.
it is not something that any human being should ever endure . like kirten french and leslie mahaffy.its disturbing.
The collection also included footage of bernardo and karla raping karlas unconscious yunger sister.
as well as a sex tape recorded shortly after her sister’s death with karla mimicking tammy .
within three weeks carla is dress up in tammy’s clothing trying to entice paul without any remors at all.
he public would speculat that bernardo as the scarborough rapist had not killed befor he met karla.
and question if she had been the motivating force for murder.
what was certain however was that toghether bernardo and karla were a deadly duo.
but were they born killers?or had their upbringings made them monsters?
ultimately the deal karla made with the prosecution would stand. she would served just 12 years for her part in th the crimes.
while paul bernardo will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
one half of this deadly duo.now walks the streets free.
( karla )
tim danson :one thing thatr was clear when you look at these videotapes is that the level of evilness and the level of psychopathy with both these people,is so extrerme that there is no ounce of being human. this people were animals
The Bernardo house was destroyed in 1998.