The Ken and the Barbie Killer

THE KEN AND BARBIE KILLERS, PAUL BERNARDO AND KARLA HOMOLKA, CRIME HISTORY CANADA, When an elegant man from Canada and a met an equally impressive, albeit younger teen girl in 1987, no one, including their closest friends, could have indicated they would one day be known worldwide as the “Ken and Barbie Killers.”

Paul Bernardo was an intelligent and famous 23-year-old from the Scarborough region of Toronto and seemed to be on the path to success. After graduating from the Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute, he attended the University of Toronto Scarborough while working as an Amway consultant. 

Yet behind his blonde locks, deep dimples, and alluring personality, Bernardo was tinkering in dark fantasies of rape and torture. He started to satisfy these vicious desires by humiliating women in public and hitting his dates, but when his appetites weren’t satiated, he started roaming at night, searching for girls walking alone. He would eventually rape at least 13 women, yet his hunger for dark perversion was never alleviated. Scarborough detectives started looking for someone who became known as the Scarborough Rapist, and although Paul was an almost similar match to the sketch police made from victims’ accounts of the assaults, he wasn’t arrested when initially questioned. He cleverly chatted his way out of an interrogation, even freely giving a DNA sample to police. 

Meanwhile, Karla Homolka was a 17-year-old living in Châteauguay. As the eldest of her parent’s three children, Karla set a good instance for her younger sisters by working part-time at an animal hospital, volunteering, and sustaining good grades. She came from a normal background that comprised pool parties, dances, and other particular suburban activities.

Everything in Homolka’s life altered when she spotted Bernardo at a restaurant in Scarborough. The two instantly hit it off. Friends said that the chemistry between Karla and Paul was so brutal that they couldn’t keep their hands off of each other, frequently making others in the room anxious with their hostile public displays of affection.

It wasn’t long before Bernardo started sharing his crooked fantasies with Homolka, and, to his surprise, not only did she allow him to satisfy his sick enthusiasms, but she wholeheartedly motivated them. 

As the relationship advanced, Bernardo started teasing Homolka about being “used goods,” since he wasn’t her first relationship. Desperate that she would lose him to someone more innocent, she asked him something he couldn’t refuse: her own little sister’ as a Christmas present. Bernardo readily accepted Homolka’s “gift.” 

In December 1990, the couple summarized plans to get Tammy Homolka so drunk that she wouldn’t understand what was happening to her. When night time arrived, Tammy was certainly drinking but remained coherent. Knowing that she wouldn’t assent to sleep with Bernardo, the couple slid Valium into the young girl drink. Ultimately, Tammy wanted to lie down after complaining of dizziness, but when she failed to pass out, Bernardo and Homolka put Halothane – a chemical that Homolka stole from her job at the animal hospital – over her mouth and nose until she passed out. Once she was unconscious, Bernardo started filming Tammy and urged that Homolka harming her younger sister. Bernardo then started to rape Tammy himself, but after a minute or so, the girl woke up. 

Tammy started violently throwing up and suffocating. As she coughed for breath, the couple called 911 in an alarm; they hurried to cover their tracks, hiding evidence, dressing Tammy and putting the girl back in her bed before paramedics and police came. But it was too late for the girl – Tammy perished after choking on her vomit. No foul play was suspected. 

Bernardo appeared to take Tammy’s casualty to heart, frequently playing a video of her for friends while crying. But at Bernardo’s assertion, Homolka later dressed up in her sister’s clothes, 

Reeling from the fact that he got away with killing, Bernardo’s dark imaginations increased. Feeling the need for more provocation, he kidnapped Leslie Mahaffy in June 1991, just days before he wedded Homolka. He compelled the petrified, blindfolded young girl into his residence, where Homolka waited.

Homolka watched while Bernardo raped the girl for hours on end before she was suffocated to death, though who did the murder remains a mystery. Bernardo contends that Homolka murdered Mahaffy out of jealousy, while Homolka said Bernardo clasped the girl’s throat so tight that she eventually expired from lack of air. They finally chopped the girl into pieces and buried her in cement. Mahaffy’s stays were discovered a few weeks later in Ontario’s Lake Gibson, burdened by concrete blocks. Bernardo acknowledged that detectives didn’t suspect him, at least on the surface, which increased his confidence and convinced him he was unbeatable. 

His ridiculous sense of bravado led to the kidnapping of Kristen French in April 1992. While Bernardo brought Mahaffy into his home by his own doing, it was Homolka that attracted French into Bernardo’s car. Homolka asked the Catholic schoolgirl to come closer to give directions, and then Bernardo grabbed her from behind and compelled into the vehicle. A series of rapes and beatings came next, and as she had with her sister Tammy, Homolka contributed in assaulting French before the girl was brutally murdered.

Twelve days later, detectives discovered French’s corpse in a ditch in North Burlington, Ontario. This time, nonetheless, an acquaintance gave Bernardo’s name to detectives as an apparent murder suspect. He was interviewed in his home, but nothing came of it. 

The couple’s murdering rampage came to an end on January 5, 1993, when Homolka, hardly beaten by Bernardo, moved in with relatives. After admitting the crimes to her family, they turned to the police. When investigators questioned Homolka, she was hesitant to open up until they gave her a plea deal that would have her out of jail within 12 years. Bernardo was thereafter arrested, but during questioning, he contended that he never murdered anyone, though he did confess to many assaults. Interestingly enough, though Bernardo had a long history of perpetrating rape, he never murdered any of the women he assaulted in Scarborough. The first killing happened after he took up with Homolka when the pair murdered her sister. Bernardo was accused and convicted of several counts of rape (including the Scarborough assaults, for which DNA testing had finally implicated him) and two counts of killing. Homolka, on the other hand, was charged and sentenced of manslaughter in exchange for testifying against Bernardo. 

While some people agreed that Homolka deserved a lesser sentence, thinking she was frightened for her life and had been beaten into compliance by Bernardo, the irresistible majority of Canadians who followed the case were appalled that she got off so easy. Needless to say, when she was released from jail in 2005, the public exploded in protest.

The community’s anger didn’t escape Homolka. Quickly after the release, she hid away in Guadaloupe, an island in the Caribbean, with her new husband, Thierry Bordelais (who happens to be her former lawyer’s brother). After spending more than a decade there and having three kids, she resurfaced in 2014. 

Homolka’s been residing in the Quebec region under an assumed name, but in 2016, her cover was blown when a reporter with La Presse sighted her husband, and thereafter disclosed that Homolka and her new family had moved back to Châteauguay. Bordelais, clearly upset that he was confronted, said that anyone with problems relating his wife could simply move. 

“If they are anxious, all they have to do is move. We’re free, we’re in a free country. Has anything occurred over the past ten years? So why are they concerned? I don’t see why they are worried,” Bordelais said.

The difficulty, nonetheless, is much huger than Homolka simply being back in Canada. She altered herself into a doting soccer mom and started contributing in activities at Centennial Park Elementary School, where her kids are students. Regardless of how long it’s been since her crimes, that didn’t sit well with other parents. 

Although the local school committee sent letters to parents, convincing them that their children were safe, Homolka’s mere presence spurred anger that, sadly, will likely end up affecting her children. Montreal attorney Eric Sutton followed up by telling there is nothing that can be done to remove Homolka from a neighbourhood where she isn’t liked, as she’s done her time and is lawfully free. 

“Like it or not, she has the freedom to live her life like any other person, without being accountable to threats and harassment and being hounded to the point that she pursues refuge in her own home and is scared to leave,” Sutton said.

Meanwhile, Bernardo is battling for his freedom. Last year, he pertained for day parole but was shut down as soon as he requested it. He’s up for basic parole in three years, but Correctional Service Canada’s Tim Danson ensured the public that even if he has the freedom to apply for parole, it’s only a basic procedure. Having been deemed a “dangerous offender,” Bernardo will possibly never be released from jail.

 Is it fair that Homolka, who stood by Bernardo and contributed to their horrible crimes, is free to walk the streets? So, in the eyes of the law, although the remembrance of her crimes will likely never fade, no matter how many times she alters her name. a movie called Karla (2006) is based on the true events.