Ken and Barbie killers: Victim's body surfaced on their wedding day
In the last post,we told about the Canadian serial killer couple - Paul Bernardo and Karla Homoka - designed to rape Carla's sister Tammy, which eventually led to Tammy's accidental death. Readers who haven't read the previous article can click to read.
Because of the beautiful appearance of Paul and Karla, the American media once named this case the "ken and barbie killers" , but under the beautiful appearance of the couple, the crimes they committed were so evil...
1. fatal coincidence
In February 1991, two months after Tammy's death, Paul and Karla rented a two-story single-family house with a basement in St. Catharines and moved in together.
Before Tammy's death, Paul had resigned from PricewaterhouseCoopers and did not plan to take the accountant qualification again. At the time, he was making a living by smuggling cigarettes from the United States (Canada was heavily taxed at the time, and the price of a pack of cigarettes was much higher than in the United States).
Paul drives to the United States almost every week, and he can earn about $1,000 per smuggling, which is almost Karla's salary for a month, but Paul squanders all this money.
In order to avoid being targeted by customs, Paul stole a lot of car license plates. In the early morning of June 15, 1991, he kidnapped the second victim of the case, Leslie Mahaffy, when he was stealing a license plate in the city of St. Catharines.
At the time of the crime, Leslie was only 14 years old and in ninth grade at a local high school. Her father is an oceanographer working for Natural Resources Canada and her mother is a teacher. Leslie also has a younger brother, and the two are close.
Adolescent Leslie was rebellious and had a strained relationship with his family. After entering the ninth grade, she repeatedly skipped school, drank, smoked, returned late at night, ran away from home several times, and stole from the store.
But two weeks before the incident, she was working hard to change herself, so that she could go to class on time, go home, stop smoking and drinking, and get back on track.
About a week before he was kidnapped by Paul, a friend of Leslie's died. On the evening of June 14, she went to the church to attend a vigil. Before leaving, Leslie and her mother had a dispute over the curfew time.
According to Leslie's mother, Leslie should be home by 11:30 pm, but Leslie thinks today is a special situation.So later, when Leslie left the funeral center, instead of going home right away, she went to the party. The party was started by a friend of the deceased and was an informal, teenage mourning gathering.
(second statement: her mother agreed that she would be home late, but she needed to call her family to tell her where she was, but Leslie forgot.)
Leslie arrived home around 2:00 a.m. on June 15 to find all the doors and windows locked.
Some sources say that this is her punishment for being late,But there is another information that Leslie's house had changed the lock before, and her mother just hadn't given her a new key..
In any case, Leslie didn't want to wake her mother to fight with her.
Without a wallet, Leslie decided to go to a nearby plaza and use a coin-operated phone to call a friend to see if she could stay overnight,But no one can keep her overnight
Moments later, Leslie met Paul, who was waiting for an opportunity to steal the license plate.
When Leslie asked Paul what he was doing, Paul told her that he was watching which houses in the neighborhood were easy to steal (this kind of "self-defeating" behavior is somewhat easier to let down).
Leslie then answered Paul's question ("what are you doing here"), telling him that she was locked out of her house.
"You can knock on the door, or throw a stone at the window, and it's sure to wake them up," Paul said. But Leslie didn't want to. She explained to Paul that if her mother woke up, her mother would be mad at her.
You'd better ring the bell, Paul persuaded her again, which may have further put Leslie down on his guard. She told Paul she couldn't do it, then asked Paul for a cigarette.
"I have smoke in my car," the demon whispered, "but my car is parked nearby."
When Leslie got into the car looking for a cigarette, Paul threatened her with a knife and asked Leslie to put a turtleneck over her head. He then drove Leslie and kidnapped her back. the house he rented with Karla.
Around 3 a.m. on June 15, Paul woke Karla, who was sleeping in the master bedroom on the second floor.
"Shh—don't make a sound." His voice was soft, but there was an uncontrollable excitement. "I brought someone home. You stay upstairs and I'll call you later. You go back to sleep."
We all know that Paul kidnapped Leslie, but did Karla know that at the time?
According to [Invisible Darkness], Karla should have understood that Paul meant that he kidnapped a victim and brought him home.
According to the book [Lethal Marriage], although Karla didn't know Paul had kidnapped a victim at this time, she should have been aware of what happened.
But Karla didn't do anything, she went back to sleep.
Downstairs, Paul had taken out the camera, and under his orders, Leslie took off his clothes.
"You don't get beat up as long as you're obedient, understand?" Paul said to Leslie.
This may have been one of the most outrageous lies he has ever told.
Paul then gave Lesley champagne mixed with sleeping pills (which didn't put her to sleep, but made her groggy) and videotaped him raping her.
1. Canadian mentally ill
Karla woke up around 8am. As she went downstairs to walk the dog, Carla noticed two champagne glasses on the kitchen counter. The cups were her and Paul's wedding gifts (they were getting married in two weeks), and they were so expensive that Karla wouldn't normally use them.
According to Karla, when she saw the two champagne glasses, she was furious.
Beside the champagne glasses, when Karla came downstairs, she also noticed that the door to the first-floor guest bedroom was closed. At the time, 14-year-old Leslie was lying behind the door of the guest room. How did Karla feel about it? She didn't mention it in the interview.
While walking the dog, Karla ate something, and when she got back, she decided to read something to pass the time. Karla had just borrowed a new novel from the library a few weeks ago — "American Psycho" — and she decided to read it.
Later on June 15, when Paul woke up, he raped Leslie twice and moved Leslie from the guest bedroom on the first floor to the master bedroom on the second floor.
After a short rest in the master bedroom, Paul told Leslie that there was another person who would "have sex" with her. Leslie started sobbing and Paul paused deliberately for a few minutes before telling her that the other person was a woman (mental torture). This is Karla.
After the incident, Karla claimed that she would be involved in raping Leslie because Paul forced her and she just obeyed his orders.
We will discuss later whether Karla committed the crime voluntarily, and the following is simply a description of what Karla did, without discussing motives.
On June 15, Paul and Karla took turns sexually assaulting Leslie twice. In the process, Paul raped, sodomized, and beat Leslie for being uncooperative; Karla molested Leslie, and Leslie was forced to give her oral sex.
In addition to this, the couple took turns filming each other raping Leslie.
Later on June 15, when Paul assaulted Leslie for the fourth time, she cried out in agony, begged Paul over and over to let him go, told Paul she would not call the police, and told Paul she still wanted to see her family.
Karla was in charge of recording the scene at the time, and her hands remained steady throughout.
Around midnight on June 15, Karla gave Leslie two sleeping pills. According to Karla, when Leslie fell asleep, Paul strangled her with a wire.
But Paul never admitted that he killed Leslie himself. Paul said he wanted to let Leslie go, but when he got out of the shower he found Leslie dead.
In any case, Paul and Karla hid Leslie's body in the basement.
When Karla's family came to her and Paul's house for dinner on Sunday, June 16, Leslie's body lay on the floor beneath their feet.
On Monday, Paul used a chainsaw to dismember Leslie in the basement alone and pour cement, which he and Karla later drove into Gibson Lake.
On the day of Paul and Karla's wedding (June 29), the water level in Lake Gibson (a dam is attached to Gibson Lake) dropped and the concrete block containing Leslie's body emerged.
Because of the poor pouring method, the cement block cracked in the middle, revealing Leslie's body. A father and son fishing at the lake found the blocks and called the police.
When police found Leslie's body, it was highly decomposed, leaving no valid clues. Police identified the victim through dental records.
In order to find the murderer, the police investigated the cement used by the murderer and the paint on the cement (such as what brand of cement is this, and who bought it) but did not get any effective clues.
They also smashed a block of cement, filtered the fibers and found some hair. But in an age when DNA technology was still in its infancy, the discovery wasn't particularly useful.
In addition, an expert who studied the body told police that the killer used a chainsaw to dismember the body (Paul left a slash on a bone). From this, the police deduced that the murderer should live in a house with a basement. But it is clear that this condition is still too broad for the police to identify the murderer.
3.26 times "I love you"
Ten months after Leslie's murder, on April 16, 1992, Paul and Karla kidnapped Kristen .
This is the last working day before the Easter holiday. In the morning, Karla was working in the pet shop, and in the afternoon she just took a shift and could leave early.
After the incident, according to Karla's colleague, Karla had repeatedly checked the work schedule with another colleague from the beginning of April to ensure that she could leave at noon on April 16.
On the afternoon of April 16, Paul and Karla started driving around Holy Cross High School and another high school in a circle looking for potential victims. After a few laps, they found Kristen alone. At the time, Kristen was only five minutes away from home.
According to Paul and Karla's plan, the two will park nearby, and then Karla will ask for directions to attract the victim's attention. Then, Karla would pretend not to understand, then get out of the car with the map, spread the map on the roof, and ask the other party to come over and "help" to point to the map to explain.
The location of the map is specially designed. After getting out of the car, Karla will not close the co-pilot's door, she will spread the map on the back of the car roof, so that when the other party approaches to explain, she will naturally stand near the co-pilot.
Then Paul would get out of the car with a knife, go around the front of the car, use the knife to coerce him, and stuff her into the car. Meanwhile, Karla will put away the map, quickly get into the back of the car, and grab the victim from the inside as Paul shoves the victim into the passenger seat from the outside.
Some friends may ask, when the victim approached Karla, wouldn't she just close the co-pilot's door?
But I don’t know if you still remember that in the first chapter, witnesses recalled that at that time, the vehicle driven by Paul and Karla was parked sideways in the church parking lot. So when the victim is close to the Karla, it should be the situation in the picture below, which means that she does not need to close the door.
In order to reduce the vigilance of the victim, on the day of the crime, Karla deliberately combed her ponytail, which made her, who was only 21 years old, look younger. In addition, in order to facilitate hands-on, Paul's car was not parked on the side of the road, but at a place a little away from the side of the road, but not too far.
On the afternoon of April 16, when Kristen was passing by the church, a young girl stopped her, and then she got out of a car parked not far away. Petite, well-mannered, amazingly beautiful, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail, she politely asked Kristen for nearby directions.
It was Karla who asked for directions. She looked like a normal, lost girl. How could Kristen think of what kind of evil plan was hidden under the innocent appearance of the other party. Without any hesitation, she crossed the road and walked towards the trap. When Kristen approaches the car, everything goes according to Paul and Karla's plan. But Kristen was not frightened, but began to fight hard.During the struggle, Kristen tore off a corner of the map, Paul's knife cut off a strand of her brown hair, and one of her leather shoes fell on the scene. After the incident, police found a fingerprint on a corner of the map, which was later confirmed to be Karla's. After Kristen
was tucked into the car, Paul quickly folded the passenger seat while Karla pulled her hair to keep her from looking up (so no one could see Kristen from the passenger window outside the car) . Paul and Karla lived close to the church, and they arrived home in less than 10 minutes.
When they got home, Karla started preparing dinner in the kitchen, while Paul sexually assaulted Kristen on the second floor.
In the meantime, Paul would beat Kristen if she didn't do as he asked.
When dinner was ready, the three ate in the dining room (Kristen just fiddled with the food with a fork).
Kristen talks to Paul and Karla about her boyfriend, her dog, her family. Kristen may have hoped to evoke the humanity of Paul and Carla, to make them realize that she is a human being, which unfortunately didn't work out. After dinner, Paul played music in the master bedroom on the second floor, and the sexual assault started again. This time, Karla was also in the room, in charge of the video (she also briefly molested Kristen).
"Okay" Karla held up the VCR and gave the order.
"I'm 15 years old and I love blowjobs," Kristen said helplessly.
"Smile," Kara said.
"Well, that's great." Looking at Kristen's half-wry smile, Kara continued.
Paul then sodomized and beat Kristen. Then he turned Kristen's face toward the camera.
"Smile," Karla said, standing behind the camera, her hands still as steady as before.
"Tell me you love me," Paul ordered her.
"I love you."
"Smile and say this."
"I love you."
Over the next few minutes, Kristen was forced to repeat "I love you" to Paul 26 times. When she pauses, Paul beats her hard.
On the night of April 16, Paul put some sleeping pills in Kristen's drink and then blocked the master bedroom door with a wardrobe. That night, Paul, Kara and Kristen spent the night in the master bedroom.
4.
"Some things are worth dying for"
On Friday, April 17, Paul sexually assaulted Kristen again, while Karla watched the entire episode (Karla also briefly molested Kristen).
At dinner that day, Kristen watched his father speak on TV.
At the time, it had been almost 24 hours since Kristen's family called the police. This is an "intercession" speech directed at the gangster, begging him to let Kristen go.
Then, Kristen's father looked at the camera and said slowly: "Kristen, if you can see it, I want you to know that you are in our hearts and we have done everything we can. …”
"Dad!" Kristen cried, "I want to see my dad!"
"We love you Kristen, you've been in our hearts and in our prayers, and we'll be taking you home soon if..."
Paul turned off the TV.
"Someone saw what you did, you can't run away!" Kristen cried to Paul.
Paul was unmoved.
That night, Paul and Karla sexually assaulted Kristen again.
In previous sexual assaults, Kristen repeatedly resisted Paul and was beaten repeatedly. But after watching Dad's speech, on the evening of April 17 (Friday), Kristen was very cooperative.
She "played" with Karla at Paul's request, pretending that they were two good friends, and choosing each other's favorite perfumes and cosmetics. Later, when Paul sexually assaulted her, Kristen has been reluctant to cooperate and avoid being beaten.
If there's any explanation for Kristen's transformation, I think she's probably gathering energy for tomorrow's escape.
In the process of being kidnapped and sexually assaulted, Kristen never gave up to survive. She gave Paul a pseudonym at first when he pressed for his name. Later, she kept trying to chat with Paul and Karla, evoking their humanity.
On the afternoon of April 17, before Kristen watched her father speak on TV, Paul asked her what she wanted for dinner. Kristen took the opportunity to send him to McDonald's, which was about an hour's round-trip drive, and then begged Karla to let her go, but Karla refused.
On the afternoon of April 18, when the three woke up, Paul asked Kristen what he wanted to eat. This time, Kristen sent Paul to a fried chicken shop that was about an hour's round-trip drive.
What happened when Paul left? According to Paul, Karla beat and strangled Kristen with a glue stick during his trip to buy fried chicken.
In court, Karla said Kristen was strangled by Paul the next day (April 19). When Paul left, Kristen begged her to let her go. After she refused, the two chatted about Kristen's family and boyfriend like two friends.
I think both men only told part of the truth in order to twist events in their favor. More likely: After Paul left, Kristen begged Karla to let her go again, but when she refused, she tried to escape, and Carla beat her and guarded her until Paul came back.
(Because of space, we will expand the analysis of this plot in the next article.)
The tapes show that when Paul returned, he was furious and urinated on Kristen. When it was over, Kristen took a shower and Paul ordered her to give him oral sex, but Kristen refused.
Enraged, Paul began hitting Kristen hard on the head, pulling her by the hair and dragging her into the next room, according to the book [Deadly Marriage]."Paul then stuffed a tape into the VCR, which was the video of him sexually assaulting Leslie.
"You know who she is, don't you? Huh? If you don't do what I say, what happens to her will happen to you!"
("Deadly Marriage" does not mention the source of this information, which may be Karla's testimony, or Paul's VCR accidentally recorded this scene, because Kristen's words were recorded later).
Paul thought he frightened Kristen, but after three days of sexual assault, beating, and mental torture, she still had the courage to hide in the heart of the 15-year-old brown-haired girl.
"Some things are worth dying for," Kristen told Paul.
In a fit of rage, Paul started beating Kristen hard, punching her incessantly on the side of the head. Then kicked Kristen hard until she finally couldn't take it anymore and begged for mercy.
Paul then sexually assaulted Kristen again and kept forcing her to say self-shaming words, telling him that he was the most powerful man in the world, that he was the king, that he was her master, that she loved him, she hated Elio T (Kristen's boyfriend), all the girls from Holy Cross High School lined up to have sex with him (those words Paul likes to have his victims repeat every time he rapes).
Afterwards, according to Karla's account, Paul strangled Kristen with a wire.
On Sunday, April 19, Paul and Carla carefully cleaned Kristen's body, making sure they didn't leave any DNA behind. Next, Karla shaved Kristen's hair (to make it difficult to identify).
On the afternoon of the day Kristen died (or the next day, according to Paul), Karla and Paul went to Karla's house for dinner, where they stayed until 9 and watched TV with Karla's parents. The two then threw Kristen's body into a ditch in Pro City
Kristen's body was found by two passers-by on April 30.
A forensic examination revealed that Kristen had fractured ribs, massive severe bruises all over her body, and a subdural hematoma (which could have been fatal without prompt medical attention).
Because the bruises on Kristen's body are highly similar to Leslie's (this is Paul's beating marks when he raped them), the police believe that the two cases should be committed by the same person.
I haven't found an autopsy report that mentions whether Kristen's cause of death was asphyxiation, or whether she had a stranglehold on her neck. But since both Paul and Carla mentioned that it was the other who strangled Kristen, I think the cause of Kristen's death is indeed likely to be suffocation.
5. deal with the devil
On February 9, 1993, after being questioned by the police, Karla immediately found herself a lawyer, George Walker. He then negotiated a plea deal with the prosecution on Karla's behalf.
Police arrested Paul on February 17, 1993, and nine days later, prosecutors reached a tentative agreement with Karla.
The agreement stipulated that Karla would honestly and unreservedly tell the police about all the crimes that Paul had committed with her and appear in court to charge Paul in exchange for a lighter sentence, while the prosecution would charge her with two counts of manslaughter. Facing only 18 years in prison (later reduced to 10 years).
In addition to this, Karla has obtained partial immunity, she can explain all the crimes she and Paul committed, but the prosecution will only prosecute her in the Leslie and Kristen cases to obtain her true testimony .
After obtaining a provisional plea agreement, Karla was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and was evaluated by a psychiatrist, who determined that Karla exhibited "domestic violence partner syndrome".
(These diagnoses were later widely criticized and, when challenged, were influenced by the prosecution).
At the time of the plea deal with Karla, prosecutors didn't know anything about Karla's sister, Tammy, and in May, when Karla confessed to prosecutors, they simply added an extra two years to Karla's sentence.
On May 14, 1993, Karla formally signed a plea deal with the prosecution. On June 28, 1993, the prosecution charged Carla with two counts of manslaughter, and Carla was only sentenced to 12 years in prison.
On the other hand, after the arrest of Paul, the police launched a 71-day search of Paul and Karla's home.
During the search process, although the police obtained some useful physical evidence, such as the bloodstains of Leslie and Kristen, they were never able to find the most crucial evidence for this case - six 8mm video tapes.
This is a video tape recording the process of sexually assaulting three victims by Paul and Karla, and it is also the strongest and most direct evidence to convict Paul.
On May 5, 1993, when police withdrew from the search, Paul's first lawyer, on Paul's instructions, found the videotape behind the bathroom ceiling.
Because Paul's first lawyer was inexperienced, he didn't give the tapes to the court at first, but planned to use them when Paul's case went to trial to undermine Karla's credibility as a witness for the prosecution.
But as the tapes remained in his hands longer and longer, Paul's first lawyer found that he seemed to have stabbed the big basket and that his behavior - hiding evidence - seemed to be breaking the law.
The tapes remained in the lawyer's hands for a full 17 months. Until September 12, 1994, at the direction of the Law Society, Paul's first lawyer resigned and handed the tape to the court. At this point, the most important evidence about the case finally surfaced. But by this time, Karla's trial was over, and she had already served more than a year behind bars.
Afterwards, prosecutors said that if they had obtained the tapes earlier, they would not have needed Karla's testimony and would not have entered into a plea deal with Karla. Because the videotape shows that in the process of committing the crime, Karla seems to be quite active, not like being forced to participate in the crime.
Although there is information that because Carla completed her plea deal with the prosecution as required, the prosecution could not revoke her plea deal with her, but the Canadian documentary "Deal with the Devil" put forward a different view.
According to the documentary, an important condition of Karla's plea deal with the prosecution was that Karla did not directly cause the death of any of the victims.
But in Tammy's case, it cannot be ruled out that Tammy died of an overdose of anesthetic, and Carla was the one responsible for blocking her mouth and nose with a towel dipped in anesthetic. But the prosecution did not terminate the plea agreement with her.
In addition, according to the documentary, the police found a 2-minute-long video tape after the prosecution and Karla formally signed a plea agreement. The tape shows Karla sexually assaulting a comatose woman and appears to be aggressive.
Police at the time suspected it was Kristen, but Karla claimed she couldn't remember who it was and thought it might be Tammy.
Karla was eventually released from prison on July 4, 2005. While serving her sentence, she also took a distance course at Queen's University to study psychology with the support of her current husband, who is also her lawyer's brother. After being released from prison, Karla and her husband had a son, and the two moved to the Caribbean to settle.
In 2017, parents at an elementary school in Montreal accidentally discovered that Karla was volunteering at the school. It was only then that everyone discovered that Karla had returned to Canada with her husband. Karla was last seen in 2020, in Quebec, Canada.
On the other hand, in February 1995, two years after arresting Paul, the prosecution finally charged him, and Karla, as a witness for the prosecution, charged Paul.
Seven months later, the judge found Paul guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, and unlawful confinement. Paul was sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years. In November of the same year, the court classified him as a dangerous offender and recommended a lifetime non-parole period.
Paul applied for parole in 2015, 2018 and 2021, all of which were denied.
After the crime, Karla portrayed herself as an innocent victim, claiming she was forced to take part in the crime under Paul's mental manipulation and domestic violence.
Is Karla really as innocent as she says she is? What could be her motive for the crime? Beyond that, what might have been Paul's motive for the crime?