Barbie and Ken

Paul Bernardo + Karla Homolka

+barbie and ken+

beginnings+

+Bernard's father, Kenneth, was a successful businessman until he was charged with child molestation in 1975; he later began abusing his own daughter. Bernardo's mother, Marilyn, sank into clinical depression over her husband's abuse and gained a great deal of weight. When Bernardo was a teenager, his mother told him that he was the product of her affair with a former lover, and that she and his father had covered it up by putting the family name on his birth certificate.

paths+

+Karla Homolka met Paul Bernardo in 1987 and began a torrid romance. She was 17, Paul, 23. To friends they seemed the perfect couple, although Paul was secretly raping women in Scarborough. Karla was a seemingly simple, middle-class girl who found herself attracted to a sexual sadist. She let him do whatever he desired and by some published reports, his demands became increasingly brutal. Nevertheless, she supposedly invited more.

+They became sexually obsessed with each other almost immediately. Unlike the other girls he knew, she encouraged his sadistic sexual behavior. "Karla, handcuffed, on her knees and begging for him, was scratching an itch. Paul asked her what she would think if he was a rapist. She would think it was cool. Their love deepened. He started raping women in earnest." (Stephen Williams)

+Karla was obsessed with Paul's happiness. Her greatest fear was that she would not be able to hold onto this wild and thrilling man who was to become her husband. When he would become bored or distracted, she would either do something to excite him or find another person for him to get excited about.

madness+

+Karla offered Paul her 15-year-old sister, Tammy, as a Christmas gift. She'd drugged the girl with a tranquilizer from the vet's office where she worked so Paul could rape her while she was presumably passed out from alcohol consumption. Instead, Tammy died, and it was ruled accidental. The two got away with it, and then took videos of themselves with Karla wearing Tammy's clothing and pretending to be her virginal sister.

+Kristen French, 15, nabbed after school by the killer couple on April 16, 1992. The two took turns sexually molesting and raping the innocent girl at their home while, of course, capturing the assault on tape. French was subjected painful humiliations repeatedly before she was finally strangled by Bernardo and is trusty cord more than two days after her abduction. Her body was discarded and discovered in an illegal trash dump near Burlington.

+Paul brought home two girls, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Both were held captive, terrorized, abused, raped, and finally killed. Paul took videotapes of most of these acts. It later turned out that Karla had lured Kristen French to the car to kidnap, because, as she later put it, Paul liked young girls and she wanted to keep him happy. She had also assisted in dismembering and getting rid of Mahaffy's body.

revelations+

+Bernardo is alleged to have committed multiple sexual assaults in and around Scarborough, Ontario. The perpetrator of these crimes was commonly known as the "Scarborough rapist". Bernardo wrote his lawyer a letter in which he confessed to at least 10 more sexual assaults.

+Paul also beat Karla at times, so she finally left in 1993. When the police began asking questions, Karla quickly made a deal. She offered details about what Paul had done to the two girls in exchange for two ten-year terms for manslaughter, to be served concurrently. Two more years were added after videotapes were uncovered and authorities realized her role in her sister's death.

+In return for a plea bargain (12 years in prison for manslaughter), Homolka testified against Bernardo in his murder trial. This plea bargain received much public criticism from Canadians.