RedHanded

by Suruthi Bala

The police saw Karla as their ace in the hole. She was the perfect witness—a young, pretty woman—and herself a victim of the killer’s abuse. Karla also promised the detectives even more evidence against Paul. She told them that if they searched the couple’s house they would find dozens of hidden videotapes detailing all the rapes and murders. Karla also said that these tapes would show that she had just been an innocent bystander—a passive and battered woman forced to take part by her abusive husband and too terrified to stop him.

  The Tapes

  On February 17, 1993, Paul Bernardo was arrested at his home for the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French and for the crimes of the Scarborough Rapist. With Bernardo in cuffs, a 71-day search of his house began. But police didn’t find the stacks of incriminating videotapes that Karla Homolka had promised. They only found one that showed Karla performing oral sex on an unidentified girl. Karla stuck to her story that Paul had forced her to do it. It would be years before that girl would be proven to be her own sister, Tammy Homolka.

  And so a deal was struck. Karla was allowed to plead guilty to just two counts of manslaughter on the condition that she testify against her estranged husband in court. Karla’s trial kicked off on June 28, 1993, and two weeks later on July 6 she was convicted and sentenced to serve two concurrent 12-year prison sentences. Unbeknownst to police and prosecutors, their initial search of Bernardo’s home had missed several videotapes that would have shown the true extent of Karla Homolka’s involvement.

  Worse still, these tapes were recovered by Bernardo’s lawyer on May 6, 1993—before Karla’s trial. This lawyer, however, decided to keep them to himself, planning to surprise Karla on the stand. These tapes—which showed in stomach-churningly graphic detail the torture of Tammy Homolka, Leslie Mahaffy, Jane Doe, and Kristen French—were not turned over to police until September 22, 1994!

  Watching them, it was clear to police and prosecutors that Karla was no innocent bystander. In some of the videos she can even be seen and heard directing the shots. It was a stark and disturbing realization for investigators, but it had come far too late. Karla had already been tried, and due to double jeopardy laws, she was never charged with any of the crimes caught on tape. This earned her plea deal the title “deal with the devil.”

  Had these tapes been discovered before Karla’s trial, her testimony wouldn’t have been needed, and it’s almost certain that she would have been sentenced to more than 12 years. Karla could easily have been shown to be lying and misleading police during the investigation. For example, she lied about things like Jane Doe and Paul having been close, when in fact Jane Doe was her friend, and it was very provable that Paul didn’t know her.

  This lie may not seem like a big deal, but there were many inconsistencies in Karla’s stories. When she took the stand at Paul’s trial, any holes that the defense poked in her story, Karla would just say that the abuse had been so bad it had destroyed her memory. But there were no consequences for Karla’s lying; the prosecutors had made their bed thanks to the deal they’d cut and now they just wanted to remain fully focused on nailing Paul.

  By the time Paul Bernardo’s trial kicked off on May 1, 1995, all the videotapes had of course been found so there was no point in him denying the rapes and torture. But Paul did deny that he had killed Leslie or Kristen—he put that squarely on Karla. When Karla was cross-examined by the defense, they posed the theory that she hadn’t been forced to do anything, and that she had in fact loved every second of the couple’s torture sessions. The defense even pointed to evidence that suggested that Kristen and Leslie hadn’t been killed by strangulation, but that Leslie had been smothered to death and Kristen had died of a head trauma. Both acts, the defense argued, were carried out by Karla. Throughout this questioning Karla stayed calm, and simply kept saying either that she couldn’t remember or that it was all Paul.

  The jury deliberated for just one day before finding Paul Bernardo guilty on all counts and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Karla Homolka was released in 2005, at which point she quickly moved to Quebec to start over again. She got remarried, had three children, and has seemingly led a normal life. Karla has even been able to volunteer at an elementary school in Montreal(!), because she was never placed on a sex offender registry. To this day, Karla Homolka has never been charged with a single sex crime despite there being video proof of her involvement in the rape and murder of at least four girls.

  Personality

  We’ve talked a lot about our thoughts on Karla and Paul’s motivations in this chapter, but let’s now discuss what personality or mental disorders might have been at play. This is really important in helping us to understand Karla’s culpability and agency in this entire situation.

  From the start, police almost immediately assumed that Karla was a “compliant victim,” despite there being signs indicating the opposite. Now, we’re not ignoring the fact that she was a victim of Paul—he did abuse her—but as we detail in the sidebar to the right, there are big differences between Karla and the typical compliant victim. Most of the compliant victim women studied were poorly educated, socially isolated, and lacking in any kind of confidence, and they had also all invariably suffered physical or sexual abuse from a young age.

  These factors just do not fit Karla’s background, and it wasn’t until all the other horrendous tapes showing her excitedly and enthusiastically engaging in the rapes and torture were discovered did police realize just how involved she’d been.

  COMPLIANT VICTIMS OF SEXUAL SADISTS

  During their investigation into the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) met with the FBI to discuss potential criminal profiles of their killer. During this process, the RCMP were presented with the 1993 paper “Compliant Victims of the Sexual Sadist,” written by Robert Hazelwood, a former FBI special agent, and Janet Warren, a professor of clinical psychiatric medicine.

  The study surveyed seven women serving serious prison time as a result of helping their spouses commit violent offenses. It described a compliant victim as “the romantic partner of a sexual sadist who, due to psychological conditioning, aided the sexual sadist in activities that were against their own interests, such as criminal acts or enduring pain.” It concluded that these women’s criminal activities had been resulted from the brutal treatment they had suffered at the hands of their partners.

  These women were also usually just spectators in the crimes rather than active participants. When their backgrounds were examined, it was found that all of these women had low self-esteem, dependent personality disorders, a poor education, extreme social isolation, and a long history of physical and sexual abuse.

  When this paper came out in 1993, the concept that a woman could be transformed into a dependent accomplice through abuse was fairly new, but it became very en vogue in law enforcement circles. So, when a trail of clues led the RCMP to Karla Homolka’s doorstep, the investigators were already primed to see her as a woman beaten into submission by Paul Bernardo, a domineering sexual sadist.

  You could argue that Karla just went along with the attacks because it was what Paul wanted, but it doesn’t mean that she didn’t enjoy it. She was still getting something out of it. All too often criminal analysis assumes that women lack any agency, but Karla was separated from Paul when she went to the police station to report him, wearing the watch of a girl they had tortured and murdered. That was a choice she made and a trophy she kept. That doesn’t sound like a passive, terrified accomplice, does it?

  After she was jailed, a mental health professional diagnosed Karla with post-traumatic stress disorder and battered woman syndrome. But there is still, in our opinion, a lot of room for doubt and there are plenty of experts who agree. Many say that right from the start Karla’s antisocial tendencies were totally ignored or at least minimized. As referenced in the book Homicide: A Forensic Psychology Casebook, psychiatry professor Dr. Graham Glancy believes that the most like
ly scenario is that Karla had histrionic personality disorder combined with a condition called hybristophilia—a theory that has been backed up by the reanalysis of Karla’s scores from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (the most popular clinical assessment tool used to help diagnose mental health disorders).

  Hybristophilia: Bad Boys for Life

  According to professor of forensic psychology Dr. Katherine Ramsland, hybristophilia is a “sexual disorder in which arousal is contingent on being with a partner who has committed an outrage, such as rape, torture, or murder.” It is a sexual disorder that can be separated into two categories: passive and active.

  Passive hybristophiliacs have no interest in actually participating in the object of their affection’s crimes. These are the ones who send family annihilator Chris Watts banana bread in prison because they think he’s cute and misunderstood. Even the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, found love with Doreen Lioy while he was in prison.

  Karla Homolka, on the other hand, is, in our opinion, most definitely the poster girl for active hybristophilia. For her, it seems that there was a thrill in knowing that she was with such a dangerous man and the tapes suggest she enjoyed actively participating in his crimes. We don’t think that Karla Homolka was tricked by Paul Bernardo—she was most definitely drawn to him for what a shitbag he was (even if “shitbag” may not feature in the official definition of hybristophilia).

  So, why are some women turned on by killers and dangerous men? There are many theories, including the idea that these women just get a rush from being close to someone who others are terrified of. It can give the woman a weird ego boost to know that her partner is dangerous, even a cold-blooded killer, but that he loves her. She can tell herself that it must be because she is special in some way. It can also be a weird sort of defense mechanism—if you’re already with the most dangerous man out there, who else could hurt you? As far as those women like Doreen Lioy are concerned, they may romanticize things and believe that they can change the murderous man they love so much. In some cases, they may even be convinced that he is actually innocent. Or, at the very least it’s a self-preservation tactic—after all, in prison he can’t abandon them, hurt them, or be unfaithful.

  Finally, studies like the 2018 paper “Do Psychopathic Birds of a Feather Flock Together?” show that women with extreme personalities tend to be drawn to men with extreme personalities. If Karla does have antisocial personality disorder or histrionic personality disorder, either condition would indicate her being highly prone to seeking stimulation. And when two extreme individuals come together, the attachment behavior and the way in which they connect is usually incredibly intense, dependent, and aggressive. It creates a union that, given the right conditions in each partner, could be like a nuclear bomb going off.

  So, let’s wrap this chapter up with our final thoughts on Karla and Paul. We think it’s safe to say that even if Paul had never met Karla—or someone like her—Paul would have still continued to rape women. He probably would have escalated, and it’s likely that eventually he would have killed. But with Karla—while she would likely have been a callous and intense person—we think it’s unlikely she would have ever been involved in such a series of crimes on her own.

  When it comes to deadly duos, whether the submissive partner is a passive or active participant in the crimes, there are very few who are totally innocent. And killer couples like Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo—just like normal romantic couples—each get something that they need from the other. Paul needed Karla’s total loyalty in order to validate himself, and Karla wanted Paul’s dominance, authority, and love. For this, she was willing to pay any price. Maybe being single isn’t so bad, regardless of what our mothers think.

  7

  BIGOTRY

  The Less-Dead, Lingerie, and Looking the Other Way

  THIS IS GOING TO BE A BIT OF A MYTH-BUSTING CHAPTER, so let’s kick off with a myth we see thrown around constantly—that serial killers want to get caught.

  Serial killers escalate with each kill, either stepping up the brutality of their methods or the risks of their hunt. But this isn’t because they want to get caught. Rather, it’s usually because they develop a feeling of invincibility and start to think that they can’t get caught. This is when they start making mistakes. As Ted Bundy put it, “You learn what you need to kill and take care of the details. It’s like changing a tire. The first time you’re careful. By the thirtieth time, you can’t remember where you left the lug wrench.”

  It’s usually when a serial killer starts to get sloppy that they get caught, because generally speaking, regardless of the police department leading the charge, serial killer investigations are some of the most complex cases to crack. Victims are usually unconnected, i.e., unknown to each other and the killer. On top of this, the killer may be transient and move around to commit their crimes, making them hard to nail down geographically.

  Even if police are struggling to track down a serial killer, you would at least hope that they know they have a multiple murderer on their hands. But there are instances of serial killers who, for years, completely slipped through the net—killers no one had even been looking for. And victims who went unnoticed, even as their bodies piled up.

  Who are these killers? Well, for starters, chances are their victims are the “less-dead.”

  The idea of the less-dead—typically people from racial minorities; members of the LGBTQ community; sex workers; the homeless; people with mental health challenges; people with learning disabilities; or people with substance abuse issues—is nothing new to most true crime enthusiasts. The sad fact is that individuals, society, and our institutions subconsciously rank the value of a person’s life based on a few key factors and there is a bias that some victims are more worthy than others. This empathy gap that exists for the less-dead can reveal itself in some pretty unsavory ways, from massively varying levels of media attention to the manner in which police investigate certain crimes. In this chapter, we’re going to take a look at how institutional and societal bigotry leads to the continued marginalization and discrimination of certain individuals and communities.

  Let’s put our stat hats on for a minute to take this all in. Recently, the Washington Post mapped out more than 52,000 murders spanning the last 10 years, covering 52 of the United States’ largest cities. Shockingly, they found that half of these homicides (26,000) saw no arrest being made by police, and that in 18,600 of those 26,000 murders—so in almost three-quarters of the cases—the victim had been Black.

  Digging deeper into the figures, the Washington Post also discovered that while police arrested someone in 63 percent of cases where the murder victim was white, arrests were only made 47 percent of the time when the victim was Black. Although Black victims make up the majority of homicides in most cities (Black Americans account for 68 percent of all homicide victims in the 52 largest cities in the US), they were the least likely of any racial group to have their killings result in an arrest. In almost every city the Washington Post examined, arrests were made in the killings of Black victims at lower rates than homicides involving white victims; the gap was largest in Boston, where in 2007, of the 435 homicides with Black victims, 254 remained unsolved, but of the 57 homicides with white victims only six were still unsolved.

  If that sounds bad, it’s only about to get a whole lot worse, because while recent events and the rise of the BLM movement have shone an unignorable light on the unacceptable policing of Black communities—particularly Black men—there is also an absolute epidemic of violence bubbling up against Black trans women in the US.

  According to the Human Rights Campaign, 110 trans women were killed in the US between 2014 and 2019, and 88 of these victims were Black and 11 were Latinx. That means a staggering 90 percent of all trans women killed during that period were Black or Latinx. When you pick apart more statistics, you’ll see that UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found that around 55 percent of all transgender adults are
white, and only 16 percent and 21 percent identify as Black and Latinx, respectively. It is undeniable that Black and Latinx trans women are being killed at a rate hugely disproportionate to their white counterparts.

  Then, just to rub salt in an already painful wound, only 42 percent of these murders of Black trans women resulted in an arrest. When you compare this to FBI stats that suggest around 61 percent of murders among the general population result in an arrest, it’s hard to pretend there isn’t an issue. Numbers, unlike police, don’t lie.

  There are obviously myriad reasons why these sad statistics are the case; racism and bigotry being two big gross things that jump to mind immediately. But these issues are dismissed by some as being hard to substantiate. However, let’s stick it to the deniers and consider what ProPublica found in 2018—that of the 85 transgender murders that occurred during that time, police referred to 74 of the victims by names and genders they no longer used. So in almost 90 percent of cases that year, police were running around asking questions about murder victims and getting their entire identities wrong. Is it any surprise then that arrests often are not made?

  But there are other factors (besides the police using the wrong names, genders, and descriptions of the victims) that may feed into why there are such a high percentage of unsolved, uninvestigated murders within these demographics. Black people and communities of color in the US, along with members of the LGBTQ+ community, may be less willing to engage with the police due to previous negative experiences with them, such as police brutality and harassment. If people are less keen to chat with the police, it will obviously make solving the crimes harder—but this isn’t us letting the police off the hook. It should be the police’s responsibility to repair damage done and trust destroyed between their institution and the public.