Karla Homolka: Difference between revisions

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Karla Homolka

Karla Leanne Homolka, also known as Karla Leanne Teale, born May 4, 1970 in Port Credit, Ontario, Canada, is a Canadian woman who attracted worldwide media attention when she was convicted of helping her husband rape and murder teenage girls, including her own sister. For her admission of her crimes she was given a plea bargain whereby she escaped the maximum penalty for her crimes. She plead guilty to manslaughter and served 12 years in prison for her role in abetting her husband, serial killer, kidnapper, and rapist Paul Bernardo.

Homolka attended Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in St. Catharines, Ontario, where she had moved when she was only a few years old. After high school she started working in a veterinary clinic and in October of 1987, she met Paul Bernardo at a Toronto pet industry convention.

Murders

On October 17 1987, Homolka, then 17, met Bernardo, who was 23, at a hotel restaurant. Their relationship soon became sexual. They would maintain a relationship until 1994, when Homolka divorced Bernardo and began testifying against him. It was later determined that Bernardo had already raped several girls in Scarborough, a Toronto suburb, by the time of their meeting.

In the Spring of 1990, Homolka would later say that Bernardo began calling her his sex slave and abusing her severely. Homolka claims that she would never deny him anything; she was his property and was well trained.

On November 1990, Bernardo was interviewed by two police detectives, based on tips that Bernardo fits the Scarborough Rapist composite. Bernardo voluntarily submitted hair, saliva and blood samples for forensic testing. Bernardo assured Homolka that he wasn't the Scarborough Rapist. It took twenty-six months for the police to test the samples.

On December 23 1990, Homolka stole the animal anesthetic Halothane from the veterinary clinic where she worked. Together she and Bernardo administered it to her fifteen-year-old sister Tammy Homolka along with a mixture of alcohol and halcion. They raped Tammy in the basement of the Homolka family home while she was unconscious. The official cause of death was attributed to the girl having choked to death on her own vomit. Her death was ruled an accident.

After Homolka and Bernardo were engaged, they rented a house in the quiet suburb of Port Dalhousie. On June 15, 1991 Bernardo—while stealing license plates to aid in his cigarette smuggling scheme—met Leslie Mahaffy, who was standing at the door of her home because she had been locked out. 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 home. There, Homolka and Bernardo held the girl hostage for several days, sexually assaulting her repeatedly. They recorded the assaults on videotape, including one scene where Homolka pretties herself for the camera before raping the girl. Eventually, they killed Mahaffy. Bernardo then cut up her body with a circular saw in a makeshift plastic tent in the basement of the Homolka/Bernardo home. Karla washed the body parts and prepared them for immersion in concrete. On June 29, a couple canoeing on a lake at the edge of the city of St. Catharines found parts of Mahaffy's body in shallow water, encased in cement. On the same day that the girl's body was found, Karla Homolka was married in a lavish ceremony, resplendent in an all-white wedding dress and riding with her husband in a horse-drawn carriage at Niagara-on-the-Lake.

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Karla Homolka & Paul Bernardo on their wedding day

On April 16, 1992, the couple drove into a church parking lot. Homolka stepped out of the car with a map pretending to be lost and asking for help from 15-year-old Kristen French. Bernardo approached her from behind and used a knife to force French into the back seat of the car. A piece of the map, one of French's shoes and some of her hair were all later found at the crime scene. They brought French to their home where for several days they sexually assaulted, abused, and tortured her. They killed French just before going to Easter Sunday dinner at Homolka's parents' home. On April 30, her body was found in a ditch in the city of Burlington, Ontario.

Aftermath

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Karla Homolka, 1993 (Source: AP/Photofile)

Homolka left her husband in 1993 after he beat her so badly that she was hospitalized. The attending ER physician called her injuries "the worst case of wife assault I have seen." Homolka had been left with two black eyes and a hemorrhage in the left eye from strikes to the back of her head which drove the brain forward into her skull. She suffered a contusion to the forehead, bruises down the side of her neck and along her arms, bruises and swelling to 75% of her legs from the mid-thigh down and a puncture wound from a screwdriver on her right thigh above the knee. Bernardo was arrested on January 6, 1993 and charged with assault with a weapon.

On February 1, 1993, twenty-six months after the samples had been submitted, police found out that Paul's DNA matched that of the Scarborough Rapist. They immediately began keeping him under 24-hour surveillance.

On February 9, 1993, Karla was interviewed by Metro Sexual Assault Squad police. She emphasized the abuse she suffered by Bernardo. The police reported that Karla was hostile and uncooperative when being questioned about certain things including the murder of Kristen French. Later that night Karla confessed to her aunt and uncle that Paul was the Scarborough Rapist and that she and he were involved in the rapes and murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Karla met with lawyer George Walker and authorized him to seek full immunity on her behalf for her cooperation. Paul Bernardo was arrested at his home by Metro Sexual Assault Squad and Green Ribbon Task Force detectives for the Scarborough rapes and the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. On May 5, 1993, Walker was informed that the government was offering Karla a 12-year sentence plea bargain that Karla had one week to accept. If she didn't, the government would be charging her with two counts of first degree murder, one count of second degree murder and other crimes. Walker accepted the offer on behalf of his client and Homolka later agreed to accept it. On, May 14, the plea agreement between Homolka and the Crown was finalized. Later that evening Karla began giving her induced statements to police investigators.

On September 12, 1994, John Rosen took over the defense of Bernardo from Ken Murray, who had left over disputes on how to handle the case. Murray had planned on using the tapes to surprise Karla during the preliminary hearing. After the preliminary hearing was cancelled, Bernardo wanted to destroy the tapes and change his defense strategy to asserting that Karla was the real killer and that he had never met the victims. On September 22, John Rosen handed over the original copies of the videotapes to police.

One particularly controversial aspect of Homolka's plea deal was the Crown's belief that she was a "compliant victim," the justification of which came largely from an FBI document titled Compliant Victims of the Sexual Sadist [1]. Another was that the provincial political party in power at the time, and exerting influence on the plea bargain process, was the Ontario New Democratic Party. The ideology of feminism pervaded this party and its female Attorney-General Marion Boyd. A different provincial party may not have been so ideologically predisposed to accept Karla as a victim. Some federal politicians attempted to reopen the plea agreement, and throw more light on Ms. Boyd's personal involvement, during Bill S-3, a proposed bill on plea bargaining.[2]

After the videotapes had been found, rumors spread that Homolka was an active participant of the crimes. The public grew incensed as the full extent of Homolka's role in the case was finally exposed and the plea agreement now seemed unnecessary. However, as was provided in the plea bargain, Homolka had already disclosed sufficient information to the police and the crown found no ground to break the agreement and re-open the case.

Other possible victims

It is widely believed that Bernardo and Homolka had other victims; a newspaper clipping found in Bernardo's home while the police executed search warrants described a violent rape that occurred in Hawaii during the couple's honeymoon there. Law enforcement officials on both sides of the border have stated their belief that Bernardo was responsible for this rape, but due to extradition issues, this rape was never prosecuted. The fact that they had cut out this article, that the rape itself followed Bernardo's modus operandi and that it occurred when the Bernardos were vacationing in Hawaii have all led police and those who follow the story to speculate that it may be related.

While Robert Baltovich was convicted for the 1990 abduction and murder of 22-year-old Scarborough resident Elizabeth Bain, his attorneys now contend that Bernardo was in fact responsible for her death. Canadian television continues to cover this story extensively. Witnesses testified about seeing Bain with a blond man in the days before she vanished. There are numerous other links between Bernardo and Bain, but a Canadian publication ban stands in the way of much of the information getting into the public domain. Regardless, on December 2, 2004, the Ontario Court of Appeal set aside Baltovich's conviction and ordered a new trial based on some of this evidence. In 1998, author Derek Finkle published the book No Claim to Mercy, which presented evidence tying Bernardo to Bain's murder.

Publication ban

One of the more controversial aspects of the Homolka/Bernardo case was the media publication ban. Although it was originally said that the ban on publication of details of the case was to protect Bernardo's right to a fair trial, the Crown would later reveal, in a memo from the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General [3], that it was really to protect the families. Many of the myths published on the Internet were more extreme than the actual details of the case, some of them stolen from other serial killers and attributed to Karla and Paul. Many of these reports can still be found, while the facts—protected by the publication ban—are much more difficult to find.

At the time, many "Electronic ban breakers" [4] published much that was forbidden, and much that was simply false, leading to substantial misinformation and the origin of many misconceptions about the case. Most of the ban breaking occurred on the alt.fan.karla-homolka [5] Usenet newsgroup.

In January 2005, author Stephen Williams was sentenced for violating the publication ban by including forbidden details in his two books on Bernardo and Homolka, making him only the second person sentenced for violating the publication ban—the first being one of the "Electronic ban breakers". Stephen Williams reached a plea agreement with the Canadian authorities in which he agreed that he would no longer use "any materials belonging to the Crown" as part of his writings. It is, as of this writing, unclear whether or not Stephen Williams will remain active in this case, but he was present at the June 2005 810.2 hearing for Karla Homolka, which would seem to indicate he will.

Prison

During her imprisonment Homolka received psychological evaluations from at least seven different psychologists who all agreed that she exhibited the symptoms of "severe clinical depression, battered spousal syndrome and post traumatic stress disorder," all of which she has been treated for while in prison.

The parole board that reviewed Homolka's case in 2001 referred to her as a psychopath, but these were not trained psychiatric professionals. None of the psychologists and psychiatrists who have examined her personally have diagnosed her as a psychopath although the term has been widely used. Those professionals that have used the term relied upon interview transcripts, case reports, video documentation, and newspaper articles as the basis of their diagnosis. Dr. Sharon Williams, an expert on incarcerated sex offenders and psychopaths, who evaluated her between 1996 and 1999, concluded that Karla Homolka was not a psychopath, and not likely to reoffend. In 2005, during Homolka's 810.2 release hearing, psychiatrist Louis Morrisette said the 35-year-old did not represent a threat to society and was not a psychopath.

Homolka participated in every treatment program recommended by prison authorities, until she was asked to participate in a program that had been designed for male sexual offenders. She refused, on the grounds that she was neither male nor a convicted sexual offender. She did however take courses such as "Improving Your Inner Self," "Anger Management," "Survivors of Abuse and Trauma," and many more. She also earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from Queen's University, and achieved very high grades.

At one point, a released inmate leaked photos which showed Homolka at a birthday party. Since Homolka was, at that time, being held in the medium-security Joliette Institution for Women, such birthday parties were common. When the photos were published, the resulting fuss led to Homolka's placement in solitary confinement. It is not clear that the pictures show Homolka's own birthday party portrayed in the pictures.

Homolka has expressed remorse for her crimes, most notably to her family in a letter to them regarding the death of her sister Tammy, and to the doctors treating her throughout the years. In letters to one of her previous psychiatrists, she described at length the continuing nightmares she had about the two murdered girls. Whether this remorse is genuine or feigned cannot be reliably determined.

On March 15, 1996 the "Galligan Report", also known as "Report to the Attorney General of Ontario on Certain Matters Relating to Karla Homolka," was delivered to Attorney General Charles Harnick. This report concluded that the plea bargain with Homolka was legitimate and "driven by sheer necessity."

On September 22, 2000, the Montreal Gazette published an article on Homolka's prison life which gave the impression that Homolka was in a lesbian relationship with convicted child-rapist Christina Sherry. The article was accompanied by a photo of Homolka and Sherry together, which reinforced this particular misconception. In fact, Homolka's lesbian relationship was with Lynda Verroneau, who had been convicted of participating in a bank robbery. The independently wealthy Lynda Verroneau later sold pictures and stories to the media claiming that Karla had pretended to be her lover in order to get lingerie and a computer.

In January 2003 the Toronto Sun published a series of pictures of Homolka in the Joliette Institution, where she was imprisoned. These pictures showed Homolka, apparently at ease, sunbathing, playing with a cat, and on a swingset, among others. At the time, these pictures caused an uproar among the Canadian public. On April 9, 2005 the paper published a story about a supposed "Internet Frenzy" about Karla Homolka.

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CNN covers Karla's history.

Homolka was released on July 4, 2005. On May 5, the Global Television Network reported that her father stated that she is planning to live in the Montreal district of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. Due to the ensuing clamour, Homolka declared that she would choose another district, still in Montreal. On May 29, CBC reported that she chose "Karla Leanne Teale" as her new official name—"Teale" being the name that Paul Bernardo had adopted in honor of the fictional serial killer "Martin Thiel" in the film Criminal Law.

Post-prison

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Karla Homolka appearing on Radio-Canada on July 4, 2005. The footage is the first of her since leaving prison.

On June 3, 2005, after a two day hearing, Judge Jean R. Beaulieu ruled that Karla Homolka, upon her release on July 4, 2005 would still pose a risk to the public-at-large. As a result, using section 810.2 of the Criminal Code, certain restrictions were placed on Homolka as a condition of her release:

1. She was to tell police her home address, work address and whom she lives with.
2. She was required to notify police as soon as any of the above changes.
3. She was likewise required to notify police of any change to her name.
4. If she planned to be away from her home for more than 48 hours, she had to give 72 hours' notice.
5. She could not contact Paul Bernardo, the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French or that of the woman known as Jane Doe (see below), or any violent criminals.
6. She was forbidden from being with people under the age of 16 and from consuming drugs other than prescription medicine.
7. She was required to continue therapy and counselling.
8. She was required to provide police with a DNA sample.

There is a penalty of a maximum two-year prison term for violating such an order. While this reassured the public that Homolka would find it difficult to offend again, it was felt that it might be beneficial to her, because her high profile and public hostility might endanger her upon release [6].

On June 10, 2005, 71-year-old Liberal senator Michel Biron declared that the conditions placed on Homolka were "totalitarian," according to an interview with CTV Newsnet. Conservative deputy leader Peter MacKay called this "moral support" for Homolka "repugnant," and other members of government called for Biron's resignation.

Homolka filed a request in the Quebec Superior Court for a wide-ranging injunction aimed at preventing the press from reporting about her following her release.

While at Joliette Institution, Homolka received death threats and was transferred to Ste-Anne-des-Plaines prison north of Montreal.

On July 4, 2005, Homolka was released from Ste-Anne-des-Plaines prison. In a surprising and brilliant move, she granted her first interview to Radio-Canada television, speaking entirely in French [7]. She told interviewer Joyce Napier that she chose Radio Canada because she had found it to be less sensational than the English media. She said that she had likewise found Quebec to be more accepting of her than Ontario. She affirmed that she would be living within the province but refused to say where. She said she had paid her debt to society legally, but not emotionally or socially. She refused to speak about her alleged relationship with Gerbet. During the interview, her solicitor, Sylvie Bordelais, sat beside Homolka; however, she did not speak. Homolka's mother was also present but off-screen, and was acknowledged by Homolka. She also stated in the interview the first thing she wanted after being released from prison was an iced cappuccino from Tim Hortons. A company spokesperson did not think the comment would have any impact on sales.[8]

On July 5, Canadian media reported that Homolka had relocated to the Island of Montreal. On August 21, the newspaper Le Courrier du Sud reported that she had been sighted in the South Shore community of Longueuil, across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal [9].

The Société Elizabeth Fry du Québec offered its services to Homolka.

On November 30, 2005 Quebec Superior Court judge James Brunton lifted all restrictions imposed on Homolka, saying there was not enough evidence to justify them. On December 6, 2005 the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld Brunton's decision. The Quebec Justice Department decided not to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Bernardo's statements

Bernardo's lawyer was interviewed in July, 2005, and relayed some of Bernardo's thoughts on Holmoka's release. They are summarized in the article on Paul Bernardo.

Videotapes

After more than sixty days of searching the Bernardo home for the videotapes that Bernardo and Homolka recorded, police were only able to find a tape containing Bernardo, Homolka and an unnamed American prostitute, and a very short videotaped segment of Homolka apparently raping an unconscious girl who could not be identified from the segment. The unidentified girl would later be called "Jane Doe" after the discovery of the full tapes in which her identity was revealed to be that of a minor. Her true identity remains covered by the publication ban.

After the expiration of the search warrants, Bernardo provided his attorney, Ken Murray with detailed instructions on where to find the six videotapes that depicted the rapes of Tammy Lyn Homolka, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. The tapes were hidden in a pot-light in an upstairs bathroom. The owners of the house who rented it to Paul and Karla have since demolished the home and sold the property.

Murray, feeling that the tapes could help prove that Homolka was not as innocent as she and the Crown were insisting, held onto the tapes and did not turn them over to authorities. Murray felt that the tapes would help in mitigating the actions of his client. As time passed, he began to feel that he had made a mistake in not disclosing the videotapes. Murray resigned as Bernardo's lawyer and turned over the videotapes to John Rosen who would become Bernardo's new attorney.

The videotapes were shown to Homolka as she was giving testimony against Paul Bernardo, and she provided police with a play-by-play commentary on what was happening. Her reactions and her viewing of the videotapes were, themselves, videotaped.

In 1997 Ken Murray was charged with obstruction of justice and possession of child pornography for not turning over the videotapes immediately upon their discovery. He was acquitted in June 2000.

In December, 2001, Canadian authorities determined that there was no possible future use of the videotapes. The six videotapes depicting the torture and rape of Bernardo and Homolka's victims were destroyed. The disposition of the tapes of Homolka watching and commenting on the tapes remains sealed.

Stephen Williams indicated in his book, Invisible Darkness, that the tapes may still be available in some "underground circles" at very high prices. Although this seems sensational, there may be some truth to it. Stephen Williams himself has sold some segments of video to Home Box Office for use in their program "Autopsy". Home Box Office did air very short segments of the rape of Tammy Lyn Homolka during their program "Autopsy 8". On May 4, 2003 Williams was arrested for numerous charges, including the publication of courtroom exhibits used in the trials.

Although these tapes have been described as snuff films, this description is not strictly accurate. The videotapes do not show any deaths; they show violent crimes and the infliction of injuries that ultimately caused one death but no moment of death was pictured.

Prosecutors had an opportunity to "break the deal" and charge Homolka with additional crimes for a period of 8 months between the finding of the tapes and the agreement not to charge her with additional crimes. The police were in possession of the tapes in September 1994, although the "deal" had been signed in 1993 (and they had been working under a verbal agreement of the deal long before that) they were still able to prosecute her for "Jane Doe", and for lies that they uncovered in her earlier testimony. An absolute deal-breaker was lying during her interviews with prosecutors. Stephen Williams published memos where the Crown discussed these lies amongst themselves, indicating that the Crown was fully aware that Karla had lied during her interviews with prosecutors.

Officials agreed not to prosecute her for the "Jane Doe" incidents, and they chose not to break the deal with Homolka on May 18, 1995. That decision was final.

Without Homolka's cooperation it is possible that the Crown could not have successfully prosecuted Paul Bernardo nor would they have obtained the tapes themselves.

Movie

In 2004 producers from Quantum Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based production company, announced the release of the movie Karla (with the working title Deadly), starring Laura Prepon as Homolka and Misha Collins as Bernardo. Since the announcement of the movie, Tim Danson—the solicitor for the families of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy—has demanded a preview and been rebuffed. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has called for a boycott on the film, according to numerous Canadian press reports. As of 2005, there is no Canadian distributor for the film. The film was to premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival on (August 26 to September 5 2005)Template:Inote but on August 4th, 2005, it was announced that Karla would not be shown at the film festival because of the level of controversy.

References

• Report to the Attorney General of Ontario on Certain Matters relating to Karla Homolka AKA The Galligan Report (PDF in a .zip file - 12 megs!)
• Timeline from Frances Farmers Revenge
• Translation of Homolka's interview, conducted by Joyce Napier of Radio Canada
• Bouchard, Katia. Montreal World Film Festival Press Release. (Montreal: July 25 2005)
• Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (December 2003). "The Case of Stephen Williams: Secret Publication Bans, Selective Prosecution and Prosecutorial Conflict of Interest."
• Ottawa Sun Cairns, Alan (May 22, 2005). "Karla's rapid descent into Darkness: How Homolka quickly fell under Bernardo's spell"
• CBC News (May 31, 2005). "Karla Homolka back in court"
• CBC News (Sep 21, 2004). "Baltovich lawyers link case to Bernardo"
• (Sep. 19, 2004). "Robert Baltovich Lawyers implicate Bernardo in Elizabeth Bain Killing"
• Flowers, Barri R. (October 15, 1996). The Sex Slave Murders : The Horrifying True Story of America's First Husband-and-Wife Serial Killers (New York: St Martin's, 1996) ISBN 0312959893.
• Gillis, Charlie (March. 21, 2005). "Karla Homolka, Girl Next Door". Maclean's, p. 35.
• Nanetta, Alexander (June 10, 2005). "Biron: Homolka treated in totalitarian style" National Post
• Szklarski, Cassandra (June 2, 2005). "Won't greet Karla, Homolka family says" Globeandmail.com
• Williams, Stephen (September 1996). Invisible Darkness: The Strange Case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka (New York: Bantam, 1996) ISBN 055356854X.
• Williams, Stephen (February 1, 2003). Karla: A Pact with The Devil (Toronto: Cantos International, 2003) ISBN 2895940002.

See also

• Paul Bernardo

External links

• EFF archives: Censorship - Homolka-Teale-Bernardo Case Media Ban & Wired Censorship
• www.karlathemovie.net A movie produced by Michael Sellars, due for release in 2006