Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers (29 page)

The next week they drove up to a prostitute and Karla asked her to accompany them to a hotel. At first the working girl said no as she didn’t want to have sex with a couple, but they approached her several times. Eventually Karla persuaded the older woman, whom they secretly filmed, to go to bed with them.

The sex video shows Karla looking fulfilled and calm, a more pampered version of the blonde call girl. The girl says on tape that the pair of them clearly like rough sex. Paul loses his erection during the threesome and is clearly out of his depth when talking to a
streetwise
woman, but Karla looks confident and relaxed.

After the marriage it was Paul who increasingly went to pieces. He didn’t try to find another job after failing his accountancy exams, relying instead on his cigarette smuggling money. But it was becoming increasingly risky and at one stage he had to abandon the contraband that he’d paid for, a significant financial loss. Though he talked of becoming a bestselling rap artiste he merely played at this, recording his voice over another record and scribbling a few banal lyrics down.

He sat around drinking most days, watching videos and reading books like
American
Psycho
in which a man very like himself treats women with appalling savagery. Karla also enjoyed such books, borrowing several from the library every week and reading out sections to her co-workers at the veterinary clinic.

Throughout most of Karla’s relationship with Paul she made it clear to friends, family and camcorder alike that she was having a brilliant time. She told Paul that
he was her king, her big bad businessman, the only person that she had ever loved. She wrote him letters telling him how wonderful he was.

But she called a former friend one day, asked her out to lunch and admitted that Paul was verbally abusing her, criticising everything she did and calling her stupid. She admitted that he still didn’t want her to learn to drive or to go to university. When asked, she denied being physically abused.

Karla was also distraught during this conversation because the animal clinic she worked for had noticed drugs missing and was mounting an investigation so she feared she’d be under suspicion. She didn’t add that she’d stolen the drugs to knock out her sister Tammy and subsequent teenage girls.

How much violence there had been between the couple prior to the horrific beating that led to their breakup is open to dispute. The Homolkas saw Karla and Paul every week but didn’t see any signs of violence on their smiling daughter. And there isn’t bruising on show in the videotapes that she appears in. But John Douglas states in
The
Anatomy
Of
Motive
that some relatives and friends had seen evidence of abuse.

It’s true that Karla was treated in hospital for a cracked rib and a broken finger, and co-workers said that she was sometimes in such pain that she found it difficult to do her job. She also had a bad leg wound
that became infected, a wound she would later attribute to Paul.

It’s clear that Paul’s grandiose plans were crashing down around this time. Karla had lured two more teenage girls to the house and made it clear that she was happy for them to sleep with Paul, but both had spurned him. He was still out of work and apparently hated spending any time on his own.

Whatever had transpired before, one thing is certain. Just after Christmas 1992 they were having an argument when he grabbed a flashlight and battered it into her face, leaving her with the two blackest eyes imaginable. In photos taken several days after the assault she looks like a racoon. She called in sick for a few days then went into work with her face still brutally disfigured. She was also walking with difficulty as she’d been kicked in the legs.

A friend anonymously phoned Karla’s mother twice and said to come and get her daughter as she was being badly beaten. Dorothy did and was horrified at what she saw. Though Karla made light of her injuries and refused to implicate Paul, it was obvious that she’d been battered. Dorothy went home and told her husband and the pair of them went round to remove Karla from the house.

But Karla refused to leave - either because she still loved Paul or because she feared that he’d implicate her in the deaths, including that of her little sister. In the
end Karel Homolka physically dragged her from the house. They drove her to the hospital where she was treated for her injuries. The hospital then informed the police that she’d been abused.

The Homolkas now arranged for Karla to go and stay with relatives in another part of Canada where she’d be safe from Paul’s pleas for her to return or his unexpected violence. They visited her there frequently bringing her bottles of red wine. Karla would drink these throughout the day and sleep a lot, but she often refused to eat. To her aunt and uncle, she alternated between saying that she loved Paul and calling him names.

But as soon as her bruises began to heal she went out to a club with her aunt. She immediately saw a man she liked and made approaches to him. They danced and kissed - then Karla asked her aunt if she could bring the man home to her bed. Shocked, the aunt said no.

The next night Karla persuaded her aunt to go out with her again. Feeling sorry for the battered wife, the aunt did so. Again, Karla zeroed in on the man she liked and spent the evening kissing him. That night she went home with him, not returning to her aunt’s house till the next day. Most people need solitude after a break
up but Karla seemed to feel lost unless she was in an intense sexual relationship with a successful-looking man.

Meanwhile the police were finalising their tests to determine who the Scarborough Rapist was - with the answer Paul Barnardo. When they realised this they questioned Karla about him and she wrongly assumed they knew about her part in Leslie and Kristen’s deaths. She was cold and unhelpful throughout the police visit, but broke down in tears after they’d left. She cried and cried and her aunt asked her what had happened. At this stage Karla admitted that she and Paul had kept the teenagers captive and that she’d helped dispose of their corpses after their death.

Her aunt asked why she hadn’t gone to her parents when Paul first assaulted her, and she said that they might have blamed her for having been beaten. Presumably the truth is that the first assault was the one where he gave her the black eyes. Prior to that she’d enjoyed having sex slaves as much as he did, and she had no reason to want to go back to her parent’s tension filled home.

Luckily for Karla, she had looked after the dalmatian of a top lawyer when she was a vet’s assistant. She now
contacted him for legal representation and he agreed to help, assuming she had a history of being a battered wife. Karla was downplaying her part in the murders and he didn’t realise she had actively taken part in the sexual assaults on Leslie and Kristen and had carried their bodies to the river and a dump respectively.

Karla now booked herself into a psychiatric unit and took every sedative available and asked for more. Again, she talked to people on the phone every day, something which doesn’t fit the pattern of the withdrawn abused woman. She wandered around in tiny baby doll nighties, wrote letters to friends about how misunderstood she was and started to read books on victimhood and repressed memory. Her parents visited, and it was then that she handed them a note which admitted her part in her sister Tammy’s death.

It’s a well known fact that whoever squeals first gets the lightest sentence. Karla’s legal reps presented her as a victim who had been forced to participate in Kristen’s abduction by Paul Barnardo. She accepted a plea bargain of twelve years if she testified against her husband in court.

Some time after this the tapes were discovered - and they showed Karla instructing the girls how to sexually
satisfy Paul and herself. They also showed her performing oral sex on them and making them perform it on her. She did not look at all victim-like in any of the films, saying to Paul ‘I got some good mouth shots there’ when directing the fellatio part of the videos. And when Kristen was licking Karla, Karla instructed ‘A little deeper, please.’ She would also show a complete lack of empathy with the terrified girl, telling Paul that Kristen was getting off on it.

Kristen, clearly trying to form a bond with her captors, at one stage says that Karla is experienced in ‘this’, meaning lesbian activities. Karla denies it, but it was, of course, true. Paul thought only of his pleasure in bed so it was easier for Karla to find sexual satisfaction with other women - and as she was a psychopath she didn’t care if the other women consented or not.

The judge ordered that Canadians couldn’t legally read of Karla’s crimes until Paul had also been tried. This sent many Canadians into a frenzy. Thousands crossed the American border to buy American newspapers covering the story. Others found information on the internet.

The Homolkas now told friends and co-workers that they didn’t know where they’d find the money to buy
Karla’s temporary freedom, but her father eventually put up their house as bail. Her friends were equally loyal. But as the facts leaked out the Canadian public were understandably incensed and she was spat upon in the street. She would write to a friend that the public were wrong to hate her, that she was as much Paul’s victim as anyone else.

The police and certain psychiatrists had initially assumed that Karla was a compliant victim - and had thus unwittingly given her a defense. By the time she went to court Karla had become a lay expert on post traumatic stress disorder and was presenting herself as Paul’s helpless pawn.

During the trial she showed little emotion, only dabbing theatrically at her eyes with a handkerchief when the mothers of the dead girls made statements. She smiled when she heard about the local news ban. So many indignities had been carried out on the young victims that it took almost half an hour to read the charges out.

The trial was attended by Mr and Mrs Homolka. Witnesses report that Karel wore a look of resigned despair and Dorothy tried to maintain a detached expression. Karla’s remaining sister, Lori, continued to support her but often wept.

When asked why she’d brought one teenager to the house and drugged her, she said she hoped that if she got another girl involved with Paul he would leave her,
Karla, alone. She proved again and again that she cared nothing for anyone else.

The videos of herself and Paul with the victims weren’t shown, but the court did see videos of Karla having enthusiastic sex with two other women. It was clear that she wasn’t just doing whatever Paul desired. She had also written to a friend, saying ‘take as much as you can while you can.’

At first Karla was softly spoken and in full victim mode, but this facade soon slipped and at times she became cold and angry. Like most of the Team Killer females in this book, she attempted to blame the deaths entirely on the man.

On the 6th July 1993 Karla was charged with manslaughter, and given twelve years on each charge to run concurrently. She was given two extra years for her part in Tammy’s death.

She was sent to Canada’s Kingston Prison For Women and soon segregated with other ‘at risk’ prisoners. There she still earns a few dollars daily doing prison work. She told a friend that prison wasn’t so bad, that it gave her a chance to catch up on reading books and that she also had access to the internet.

She’s gone on to take a correspondence degree
course in women’s studies and psychology, continues to read about victimology and presents herself as the battered wife. Incredibly, she suggested to friends that, when freed, she might like to counsel abused women. She’s apparently forgotten she abused women herself.

Karla obtained a divorce from Paul (who is serving a life sentence of at least twenty-five years) in 1994. One of their victims tried to sue them and Karla seemed amazed, writing to a friend that ‘Paul and I are broke.’ She still seems unaware of the enormity of her crimes, telling everyone that she intends to make herself into a better person than she was before she met him. Most of this betterment seems to involve styling her hair, playing badminton in the gym and doing her nails.

So what kind of person lives inside Karla Homolka’s head? Burnside and Cairns, who wrote a book about the case,
Deadly
Innocence,
state that ‘Karla had a pitiful, pathetic needy obsession with Paul. Its genus seemed to lie more within her own troubled psyche than solely in Paul’s charm or magnetism.’ This is true of the females from most killing teams - the man sees some weakness in them and exploits it. But the fact that he manipulates her doesn’t rob her of responsibility for her actions - she still makes the decision to help him kill.

Stephen William’s book on the case,
Invisible
Darkness,
suggests that Karla might have been a hybristophilic, someone who is only turned on by a partner who is a rapist or similar criminal. It’s certainly clear that Karla was one of the dominant five percent of women - and she wanted an even more dominant male partner. Given that she had no empathy with other young women, the thought of Paul raping them might well have been exciting to her. This is partly borne out by the tape that Paul made after Karla left him, in which he says that he tried to be larger than life because that is what she wanted him to be.

The third book on the case,
Lethal
Marriage
by Nick Pron, states, rightly, that Karla wanted her pretty house and garden so badly that she wasn’t prepared to let anything get in the way. Nick Pron quotes what she said in court about how she felt after she left Paul. It perfectly sums up her selfish state of mind. ‘I forgot about Tammy. I forgot about Leslie. I forgot about Kristen. I forgot about everything and went out and had a great time.’

Psychological tests presented by Karla Homolka’s defense said that she was captivated by Paul at a young age, that she was desperate to be in a romantic relationship with a dominant male. They would add that Paul offered her a much wanted lifestyle (she believed he would become a millionaire) and that she feared abandonment.

For Paul Barnardo’s trial both the crown and defence hired various psychiatrists to examine Karla, expecting them all to come up with the abused and brainwashed woman explanation, but Patricia Pearson (in the landmark text
When
She
Was
Bad
) explains they didn’t. Instead, the reports used terms like a ‘degree of callousness and insensitivity of major proportions’ and ‘an immature, moody, shallow, rigid, hostile individual, preoccupied with themes of violence and victimisation.’ Karla was angry at her parents for creating a tense household, had been angry at Tammy, her love rival, and was now vengeful towards Paul.

She simply doesn’t fit the Battered Wife Syndrome profile. (I have worked with battered women who, as shellshocked survivors, were a million miles removed from the dancing, flirting Karla.) Yes, Paul Barnardo hit her badly at least once, but she wasn’t originally in the isolated position most battered wives find themselves in. Karla was living with her family when she met him and she continued to visit them throughout the relationship.

Battered wives who go on to inflict violence on others have invariably had abused childhoods, but we simply don’t know enough about Karla Homolka’s childhood to infer this. She may have been
someone’s
victim, however, as she hinted to friends at school that something bad had happened to her and she talked of suicide.

The most likely explanation is that Karla was a shallow psychopathic woman from an unhappy home who had been brought up to see marriage as the most important goal. How things
looked
were more important to her than how things actually
were
so whilst she had a large engagement ring on her finger and Paul calling her his Princess she was happy. He was the only person she’d ever loved, and to keep this crumbling facade of love she was willing to let innocent girls die.

She also had a high libido and enjoyed having the girls perform sex acts on her - and she had a dramatic side so enjoyed videotaping the experiences to replay afterwards.

It’s hard to build up a full picture of her thought processes during the rapes and killings. Her family said that she never looked depressed when with Paul - so presumably most of her letters to friends about being happy were genuine. Her parents saw her at least once a week and didn’t notice any bruises. They approved of her marriage to Paul.

One police investigator would tell her ‘You’re innocent, you’re the victim,’ clearly finding it hard to believe that this well spoken attractive woman would willingly take part in such atrocities. And a prison psychiatrist would suggest she should quickly be let out. To an extent, the legal system would help bolster this false picture of Karla’s innocence, for the tapes of Lesley and
Kristen’s abuse were not played at Karla’s trial but were played at Paul’s.

Karla continued to have an emotionless viewpoint of the deaths, telling friends she might write a book on the subject in which she herself was profiled as the victim. And Dorothy told colleagues that Karla would be very rich when she got out of prison because she could write a book about the crimes.