Homolka is the eldest of three daughters (the others being Lori (b. 1971), and Tammy (1975–1990)). Her parents are Karel and Dorothy Homolka of St. Catharines, Ontario. Homolka attended Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School and began working part time in a pet shop at a nearby mall. In October, 1987, she attended a convention in Toronto where she met her husband-to-be, Paul Bernardo. After Karla received her high school diploma in 1988 she was hired as a veterinary assistant by Thorold Veterinary Clinic, from which she was terminated after being hired for a similar job at the Martindale Animal Clinic.
[edit]Homolka meets Bernardo
On 17 October 1987, Homolka, then 17, met 23-year-old Bernardo at a Scarborough restaurant. Bernardo proposed to Homolka on 24 December.
[edit]Victims
Main article: Paul_Bernardo#Schoolgirl_Killer_murders
[edit]Tammy Homolka
During the summer of 1990, Bernardo became obsessed with Karla's sister. Bernardo had told Karla that if she really loved him she would let him deflower her sister. Homolka agreed, seeing "an opportunity to minimize risk, take control, and keep it all in the family".[5]In July, "according to Bernardo's testimony, he and Karla served her younger sister, Tammy, a spaghetti dinner spiked with valiumstolen from Karla's workplace. Bernardo raped Tammy for about a minute before she started to wake up".[6]
Six months before their wedding in 1991, Homolka stole the anesthetic agent halothane from the Martindale Veterinarian Clinic where she worked. On 23 December 1990, "after a Homolka family Christmas party, Bernardo and Karla Homolka drugged Tammy Homolka with the animal tranquilizers. Bernardo and Karla Homolka raped Tammy while she was unconscious. Tammy later choked on her own vomit and died. Bernardo told police he tried to revive her, but failed, and her death was ruled an accident.[6] Before calling 911 they hid the evidence, redressed Tammy, who had a chemical burn on her face, and moved her into her basement bedroom. A few hours later Tammy was pronounced dead at St. Catharines General Hospital without having regained consciousness.
[edit]Leslie Mahaffy
On 15 June 1991, two weeks before his wedding, Bernardo — while stealing license plates to aid in a cigarette smuggling scheme he had devised — met Leslie Mahaffy, who was standing at the door of her Burlington home. Leslie had told her parents she would be home by 11 p.m., after attending the wake of her friend who had died in a car crash — she arrived home at 2 a.m. The two spoke for some time and went back to Bernardo's car for a cigarette, at which point he forced her into the car and drove her to his house, 53 kilometres away. There, Homolka and Bernardo held Leslie Mahaffy hostage for 24 hours, repeatedly sexually assaulting her. They recorded the assaults on videotape, including one scene in which Homolka pretties herself for the camera before raping the girl. Eventually, they killed her.
Homolka claimed later that Bernardo had strangled the heavily drugged Mahaffy with an electrical cord. Bernardo said that she died while he was out of the room, that Homolka had killed her with an overdose of Halcion. They put her body into the basement until they could decide how to get rid of it.
The following day Homolka's parents and Lori visited for Father's Day dinner. After they left, the pair cut up Leslie Mahaffy's body and disposed of it in cement blocks. Bernardo dismembered the body with a circular saw in a makeshift plastic tent in the basement. The body parts then were encased in cement and dumped in Lake Gibson.
On June 29, a couple canoeing on the lake at the edge of St. Catharines found the badly prepared cement blocks, one of which had split open to reveal its contents. At about the same time, Homolka and Bernardo were married in a lavish ceremony, riding together in a horse-drawn carriage at Niagara-on-the-Lake.
[edit]Kristen French
On 16 April 1992, Homolka and Bernardo drove into a St. Catharines church parking lot, having spotted Kristen French. Homolka stepped out of the car with a map, pretending to be lost, and asking for directions from French. Bernardo then forced her into the car at knife point. There were several witnesses, who did not realize what they were seeing.
Homolka and Bernardo took French to Port Dalhousie, where for three days they sexually assaulted, abused, and tortured her. Because the pair were to spend Easter dinner with her parents, Kristen French's murder had to take place before they left, each gave an account blaming the other. Bernardo claimed that Homolka had beaten Kristen French with a mallet as she tried to escape, and she was strangled on a noose tied around her neck secured to a hope chest. Homolka immediately left to blow dry her hair.
From the outset, Kristen French's disappearance was treated as a criminal matter. Unlike Leslie Mahaffy, she did not have disagreements at home and had a dog that required scheduled walks and feeding; when she did not arrive on time her parents immediately contacted police. The witnesses recalled what they thought was a Camaro – Bernardo's car was a gold Nissan 240SX.
[edit]Aftermath
Homolka and Bernardo had been questioned by police several times — in connection with the Scarborough Rapist investigation, Tammy Lyn Homolka's death, Bernardo's stalking of Sydney Kershen and the Patrich sisters (covered in the Paul Bernardo article) — before the death of Kristen French. The officer filed a report and, on 12 May 1992, an NRP sergeant and constable interviewed Bernardo briefly. The officers decided that he was an unlikely suspect, although Bernardo admitted having been questioned in connection with the Scarborough rapes.
Three days later, the Green Ribbon Task Force was created to investigate the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Meanwhile the couple applied to have their names changed legally from Bernardo and Homolka to Teale, which Bernardo had taken from the villain of the 1988 movie Criminal Law — a serial killer. At the end of May, John Motile, an acquaintance of Smirnis and Bernardo, also reported Bernardo as a possible murder suspect.
In December 1992, the Centre of Forensic Sciences finally began testing DNA samples provided by Bernardo three years earlier.
On 27 December 1992, Bernardo severely beat Homolka with a flashlight on the limbs, head and face. Claiming that she had been in an automobile accident, the severely bruised Homolka returned to work on 4 January 1993. Her skeptical co-workers called Homolka's parents, who assumed they were 'rescuing' her the following day by physically removing her from the house. Homolka went back in, frantically searching for something. Her parents took her to St. Catharines General Hospital, where her injuries were documented and she gave a statement to NRP, claiming she had been a battered spouse, and filed charges against Bernardo. He was arrested but later released on his own recognizance. A friend who found Bernardo's suicide note intervened. Homolka moved in with relatives in Brampton.
[edit]The net closes
Twenty-six months after the sample had been submitted, Toronto police were informed that Bernardo's DNA matched that of the Scarborough Rapist and immediately placed him under 24-hour surveillance.
Metro Toronto Sexual Assault Squad investigators interviewed Homolka on 9 February 1993. Despite telling her their suspicions about Bernardo, Homolka concentrated on his abuse of her. Later that night she told her aunt and uncle her husband was the Scarborough Rapist, that they were involved in the rapes and murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, and that the rapes were recorded on video tape. NRP, meanwhile, re-opened the investigation into Tammy Homolka's death.
On 11 February 1993, Homolka met with Niagara Falls lawyer George Walker who sought full immunity from St Catharines's Crown Attorney Ray Houlahan in exchange for her cooperation. Homolka was placed under 24-hour surveillance.
The couple's name change was approved 13 February 1993. The next day George Walker met with Murray Segal, Director of the Crown Criminal Law Office. Walker told Segal of videotapes of the rapes and Segal advised Walker that, considering Homolka's involvement in the crimes, full immunity was not a possibility.
Metro Sexual Assault Squad and Green Ribbon Task Force detectives arrested Bernardo on numerous charges on 17 February 1993, and obtained search warrants. Because Bernardo's link to the murders was weak, however, the warrant contained limitations. No evidence that was not expected and documented in the warrant was permitted to be removed from the premises. All video tapes the police found had to be viewed in the house. Damage to the house had to be kept to a minimum; police could not tear down walls looking for the videotapes. The search of the house, including updated warrants, lasted 71 days and the only tape found by the police had a short segment depicting Homolka performing oral sex on "Jane Doe".
On 5 May 1993, Walker was informed that the government was offering Homolka a 12-year sentence plea bargain that she had one week to accept. If she declined, the government would charge her with two counts of first degree murder, one count of second degree murder and other crimes. Walker accepted the offer and Homolka later agreed to it. On 14 May 1993, the plea agreement between Homolka and the Crown was finalized, and she began giving her induced statements to police investigators.
[edit]The publication ban
Citing the need to protect Bernardo's right to a fair trial, a publication ban was imposed on Homolka's preliminary inquiry. The ban has always been presented as being necessary to preserve Bernardo's right to a fair trial.[7]
The Crown had applied for the ban imposed on 5 July 1993, by Mr. Justice Francis Kovacs of the Ontario Court (General Division). Homolka, through her lawyers, supported the ban, whereas Bernardo's lawyers argued that he would be prejudiced by the ban since Homolka previously had been portrayed as his victim. Four media outlets and one author also opposed the application. Some lawyers argued that rumours could be doing more damage to the future trial process than the publication of the actual evidence.[8]
The Internet, however, negated the ban. American journalists cited the First Amendment in editorials and published details of Homolka's testimony, which were widely distributed by many "electronic ban-breakers", primarily on the alt.fan.karla-homolka[9] Usenet newsgroup. Information and rumours spread across myriad electronic networks available to anyone with a computer and a modem in Canada. Moreover, many of the Internet rumours went beyond the known details of the case. Newsweek's 6 December 1993 edition, for example, "reprinted without permission" as the correspondent stated, reported: "Another account said that, to keep them from escaping, both girls were hobble[d] by their abductors, who used veterinary surgical instruments to sever tendons in their legs."[10][dubious ]
Newspapers in Buffalo, Detroit, Washington, New York and even Britain, together with border radio and television stations, reported details gleaned from sources at Homolka's trial. The syndicated series A Current Affair aired two programs on the crimes. Canadians bootlegged copies of The Buffalo Evening News across the border, prompting orders to NRP to arrest all those with more than one copy at the border. Extra copies were confiscated. Copies of other newspapers, including The New York Times, were either turned back at the border or were not accepted by distributors in Ontario.[8] Gordon Domm, a retired police officer who defied the publication ban by distributing details from the foreign media, was charged and convicted on two counts of contempt of court.[11]
[edit]Plea bargain controversy and videotapes
Jamie Cameron, Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall, noted that "at the time of the Homolka trial, three features of the case worried and concerned the public. Little was known about the respective roles Homolka and Bernardo played in their actions and the killing of their victims. By spring, 1993, it was clear that the Crown's case against Bernardo depended on Homolka's evidence. "In simple terms, to secure a conviction against him, her story had to be believed. Yet on no view of the facts then known could she be exculpated; by casting her as a victim of his predatory behaviour, her responsibility for the crimes that were committed could be diminished and her credibility as a witness preserved."[12]
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