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"Ken & Barbie of Serial Killers" Paul Bernardo & Karla Homolka

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka were considered the “Ken and Barbie” couple by their friends and family.  Karla was a beautiful, young blonde.  Paul was a handsome, blonde and blue-eyed accountant.  Born Karla Leanne Teale on May 4, 1970 in Port Credit Ontario Canada, her love for Paul would soon take a terrible turn.

Karla was born to Karel and Dorothy Homolka, the first born of three daughters. When she was still very young, her family moved to St. Catharines, Ontario where she attended Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School. Then in high school while on a trip to Toronto for a work convention in October of 1987, she met Paul Bernardo.  She was seventeen, he was twenty-three.  Although she was accepted at both York University and the University of Toronto, Karla opted to work as a veterinary assistant at the Martindale Animal Clinic instead of attending college. 

Paul Kenneth Bernardo, (also known as Paul Teale) was born on August 27, 1964 in Scarborough, Ontario to Kenneth and Marilyn Bernardo.  He studied at Sir Wilfrid Laurier High School and attended the University of Toronto Scarborough.  He was eventually employed at Price Waterhouse and Amway.  According to Criminal Minds: The Science and Psychology of Profiling by David Owen,

  Paul had grown up in the working class Toronto District of Scarborough.  There, he built up a record in small-time thefts and fencing of stolen goods.  In the late 1980’s, there had been a serious of violent rapes in the area.  The Scarborough Rapist, as deemed by the media, would turn out to be Paul Bernardo.

After getting engaged, Paul and Karla rented a house in the suburb of Port Dalhousie.  Very soon, Paul began to call Karla his sex slave and abusing her terribly.  She would deny him nothing.  He was obsessed with Karla not having been a virgin when they met.  Under Paul’s constant verbal and physical abuse, Karla, in fact, became more than a slave.  

In November 1990, Paul was interviewed by police detectives because of tips that he fit the Scarborough Rapist composite. He voluntarily submitted hair, saliva and blood samples for testing. Unfortunately, it would take 26 months to get the results.

Paul convinced Karla that he deserved a virgin.  So, on December 23, 1990, after stealing Halcion (an anesthetic) from the clinic where she worked, Karla and Paul gave an alcoholic drink laced with Halcion to her 15-year-old sister Tammy.  While she was unconscious, they proceeded to rape her. Unfortunately, Tammy choked on her own vomit and died.  The death was ruled an accident. 

On June 15, 1991, Paul Bernardo met Leslie Mahaffy, standing in the door of her home. After speaking for some time, they went back to Bernardo's car for a cigarette.  It was then that he forced Leslie into the car and kidnapped her. While at home, Paul and Karla repeatedly sexually assaulted Leslie while holding her hostage, recording every assault. Unfortunately, they would kill Leslie, dismembering her body with a circular saw in the basement of their home. After washing the body parts, they immersed them in concrete.  A few days later, while canoeing on a lake at the edge of the city of St. Catharines, a couple found chunks of cement in shallow water that contained parts of Leslie’s body. On the very day that the girl's body was found, Paul and Karla were getting married in an expensive ceremony that included riding together in a horse-drawn carriage at Niagara-on-the-Lake.

In April of 1992, Paul and Karla drove into a church parking lot where Karla stepped out of the car with a map pretending to be lost.  She ran into fifteen year old Kristen French and asked for help.  It was then that Paul attacked the girl from behind, using a knife to force her into the back seat of the car, leaving behind a piece of the map, one of Kristen’s shoes and some of her hair at the crime scene. They took Kristen home and sexually assaulted and tortured her for several days before killing her.  After dumping the body in a ditch in Burlington, Ontario, they attended Easter Sunday dinner at Karla’s parents.  The body of Kristen French was found on April 30.

In 1993, Paul beat Karla so severely that she had to be hospitalized with black eyes and hemorrhage in the left eye caused by strikes to the back of her head that drove her brain forward in her skull.  She also suffered with a puncture wound from a screwdriver on her right thigh, a contusion to the forehead, bruises down the side of her neck and along her arms, and bruises and swelling to 75% of her legs from the mid-thigh down. Karla decided it was time to leave Paul.  He was arrested January, 1993 and charged with assault with a weapon.

In February, 1993, 26 months after the samples had been submitted; police found out that Paul’s DNA matched that of the Scarborough Rapist and immediately began keeping him under 24-hour surveillance. Also in February, 1993 Karla was interviewed by Metro Sexual Assault Squad police. She was hostile and uncooperative.  She did emphasize how badly Paul had abused her. Later that night, in a confession to her aunt and uncle, Karla admitted that Paul was the Scarborough Rapist.  She also confessed her role in the rapes and murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Karla hired an attorney and authorized him to seek full immunity on her behalf for her cooperation. Paul was then arrested at his home for the Scarborough rapes and the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.

On May 5, Karla’s attorney was informed that the government would offer his client a 12-year sentence plea bargain.  The attorney accepted the offer on her behalf.  On May 14, the plea agreement between Karla and the Crown was sealed and she began giving her statements to police investigators. After videotapes of the crimes had been found, the public became outraged and thought that Karla was willing participant in the crimes.  It is also widely believed that Karla and Paul had other victims.

To the dismay of the public, Karla was released in July, 2005 and is living in an unknown location under an assumed name.

Paul Bernardo is serving a life sentence.  Because he is considered a ‘dangerous offender,’ he will likely never be released.  He has been in solitary confinement since his incarceration to protect him from other inmates.

What makes someone like Paul Bernardo tick?  How could a young, attractive girl’s life become so tangled with someone like Paul?

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