Invisible darkness : the strange case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

by Williams, Stephen, 1949-

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” she said.

  “Well, I’m trying to pick a house over there,” Paul said. She said, “Cool.”

  Paul could not believe his good fortune. Maybe he should take her back to St. Catharines and give Karla a special present, too.

  The girl said she had been locked out of the house. Paul suggested that she just knock real loud on the door or throw something at the window and wake them up. But she said that her mother was going to be real angry and just yell and scream at her. Paul said that she really should rmg the doorbell, but she said she just could not do that.

  “I don’t know where to stay,” she said. “Have you got a cigarette?” And that was when Paul made up his mind—he had a place where she could stay.

  “I have some in my car,” he said. Going back to the car, the girl was carefree, twirling around, doing pirouettes, circling the friendly stranger, just as if they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

  The girl lived on a quiet cul-de-sac called Keller Court. Paul’s car was parked around the corner. When they got back to the car, Paul gave her the cigarette she wanted. He asked her what her name was.

  “Leslie Mahafly,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  “Oh,” he said, “that doesn’t really matter …” Bending over, he got his knife from under the seat.

  “Okay, Leslie,” he said, showing her the knife, “close the door.”

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  She did. Then he threw her his red turtleneck sweater from the backseat.

  “Put this over your head. You’re coming home with me,” he told her. Paul started the car and drove off. “And don’t try to figure out where we’re going, just keep that turdeneck on your head or else.”

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  i^ike a rapist, Paul crept into the bedroom and placed his large hand over her mouth. He shook her awake. A heavy sleeper, it took her a few minutes to come around. She blinked, looking at him incomprehensibly. He whispered, “Be quiet, there’s somebody in the house,” and took his hand off her mouth.

  That got Karla’s attention. She sat bolt upright, suddenly awake. By the clock radio it was three o’clock in the morning. “Look,” he said. “Just stay up here and don’t come down for a

  while and be quiet. I brought someone home.” He left the room and Karla heard him go back downstairs. She could tell. Paul was ver>’ excited.

  Karla was curious. What in God’s name was he up to now? With Paul, there was never a dull moment; she had not been bored once since they met. She got up and snuck down to the point m the stairs where she could just see into the living room.

  There was a girl, kneeUng on the edge of the oriental-style rug in the living room in front of the fireplace. She had Paul’s red turtleneck wrapped around her head, so she couldn’t see anythmg. Paul told her to unbutton her blouse. Then he stood back and turned on his video camera. The bhndfold, if it could be called that, made finding the buttons on her blouse awkward. When the girl had finished, the silky blouse fell loose at her sides above her khaki shorts and parted to reveal a white bra. That gave Paul another idea and he stopped the camera.

  “Tell me your name,” he said, sounding more like a security-guard in a shopping mall coercing information from a lost child than the sex-crazed rapist and abductor he was.

  “Leslie Mahaffv,” responded the frightened child, whose bra had now been pulled above her breasts.

  Karla knew that Leslie Mahaffv^ was Paul’s way of reciprocating for Jane. But Jane was one thing; LesHe was quite another. Karla wondered where he had found LesHe. If Leshe was taciturn and compliant, like the January Girl, there should be no problem. Paul had watched the movie they’d made in January a dozen times. This was the summer and Karla had told him that she wanted him to do it again, meaning snatch another girl like the January Girl and rape her. When he asked, “When?” Karla had replied, “This summer …” Now here they were.

  But if this girl was not as easy to handle as the January Girl, then what? Karla was a control freak and a pragmatic woman. And she knew^ her man. She knew that Paul was getting very excited, and that he was going to have his way with this httle girl named Leshe Mahafi' for some time before he decided whether or not to involve her. Karla went back to bed and promptly fell asleep.

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  Her mother’s good blouse was still undone when Paul propelled Leslie down the hall to the main floor washroom, instructing her where to turn while the camera wobbled.

  “Oh, my God,” she said when she realized they were in a bathroom and he wanted her on the toilet. She could hear the camera. Her father had one. Every year at Christmas they made a family video and sent it to her Nana in Florida.

  “Be good for me, okay,” Paul told her, as he focused on her thighs and pubic hair while she urinated. After congratulating Leslie on a beautiful job, he directed her to the toilet paper on a white roller at her left and filmed her wipmg herself before she pulled up her white panties and shorts.

  Naked, Leslie was propped on her left elbow at the end of the double bed in the room Paul and Karla called the guest bedroom on the main floor, her legs spread so that her left foot touched the carpet, while her right perched on the edge of the bed against the tousled white bedding. One red arm of the turtleneck blindfold fell between her breasts. The soft light of morning filtered through the closed Venetian blinds behind her, but she could not see a thing.

  In that room, Paul had intercourse with Leshe. Not on the bed, since the old wooden-framed double that had once been Karla’s was a squeaky, unreliable affair. The spindled footboard sometimes pushed away from the frame. Then the whole thing would collapse.

  He moved Leshe to the gray-carpeted floor, using the bed comforter and the patchwork quilt he had brought from his childhood bedroom to cushion them. He wanted to have her face on tape, so while she lay there, naked with her head facing the bedroom door, he videotaped the right side of her face without the blindfold. Starting with a close-up of her vagina, the camera’s eye roamed up her tanned body, past the white marks left by the bikini she had worn while catching the early summer sun; past the small mole below her left breast.

  “Keep your eyes shut,” he told her. And she did.

  Karla woke up and found the house quiet. She tiptoed to the vantage point she had taken earlier that morning and scanned the main floor. There was no sign of anyone. She noticed two things: their good champagne flutes were out on the dining-room table and the door to the guest bedroom was shut. Karla was suddenly very angry.

  “That asshole,” she thought to herself “Imagine, using my champagne glasses on some bitch he has just picked off the street.” The champagne glasses, as Paul and Karla called them, really got to her. Now she was mad and did not much care what he was doing or with whom. She was coming downstairs, taking the dog out for a walk, getting herself something to eat and getting on with the day. She did not care what he was doing to her—what was her name … Leslie—Karla was just going to go about her business. She would be quiet, but she was resolved. She pulled on her halter top and Spandex pants. She took Buddy out for a long walk.

  Whenever Karla had nothing else to do, she read. So after the dog was walked and Karla had eaten, she decided to take the dog up to the bedroom and read her new book. She got Buddy’s food and water dishes and took him with her. She had been looking forward to this book. It was getting a lot of bad pubUcity. She had clipped a review. They had bought it at WaldenBooks across the border in April. It was called American Psycho.

  By noon, Leslie’s mother was frantic. She had called all of Leslie’s friends. Martin McSweeney said that he walked her home. They had found all the doors and windows locked, and it was late so he had to go home. He had left Leslie standing beside Mrs. Mahaffy’s house. He just figured she would ring the doorbell and go in. That is what Amanda Carpino told her, as well. Leshe had asked if she could stay at Amanda’s house, but


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  Amanda had said no. As far as Amanda knew, after they had talked for about a half hour, Leslie was going to go home and knock.

  The police were blase. This had happened too many times before with the Mahaffy kid, the one they had picked up drunk and stoned in April at the Crestwood Motel. Her mother had reported her missing a number of times before. On an earlier occurrence, the girl had been gone for two weeks and turned up all right. The police were concerned, but they really thought it was a bit premature to take Leslie’s disappearance to heart.

  Paul had already given Leslie her instructions. She was to take off all her clothes, so that he could take a good look at her body in the hght of day. He positioned her near the closed guestroom door in front of Karla’s old dresser, which was stacked with peach and green towels that had not been put away. He reminded himself to give Karla a smack for slacking off.

  David Bowie’s song “Changes” played on the clock radio. The sound was tinny and cheap. Leslie was dressed, and now she was going to undress. She dropped her mother’s blouse with her left hand and proceeded to unzip her shorts, letting them fall to her ankles. Finding the clasp on the back of her bra was no problem, she let it fall to her feet as well and then sHpped off her white bikini briefs. Naked, except for the blindfold, Leslie crossed her hands self-consciously over her stomach. She had been in the dark for what seemed an eternity, and there was nowhere to hide.

  Her stomach was a little round for Paul’s taste. Then, again, she also.had to go to the bathroom. All the champagne, vodka and whatever else Paul gave her to drink had taken its toll. Nothing was private anymore, except the darkness. He videotaped her urinating, again. Leslie could hear the camera motor, but she did not speak as he went for a close-up.

  Leslie had been so good that Paul decided to reward her and himself by letting her have a shower. Paul knew that for Karla cleanliness was next to godliness. He left the glass shower door

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  open and filmed Leslie as the water streamed over her, soaking the bhndfold so much that she had to press it to her face.

  “Scrub your bum real well,” he instructed.

  “What,” Leshe asked, unbelievingly, through the haze of a horrendous hangover.

  “Scrub your bum really well.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  And she did.

  He had led her up a flight of stairs and into a room. Leslie’s hair was still damp from the shower. The wet blindfold had been replaced by a dry one, Paul’s old red-and-blue striped Polo turtleneck. It was wrapped around her head like a thick turban. She was wearing only her shorts and her bra, but the house was warm, even for June, and the champagne was warming too.

  The sound on the radio upstairs was better than the one downstairs. Paul tuned it to CFNY—after 10 p.m. they played very cool music. It happened to be Leslie’s favorite station. She sat cross-legged and tried to listen to the music, just the music. He videotaped her as she tried to sing along. It was a rap. The turban tilted her head sideways and she tried to move her lips, although they were pufly^ from his violent kisses and all that burning alcohol. In his close-up shot, Paul captured her tongue waving slightly, “la, la, la,” as if she were alone and faraway. On her chin there was the budding sign of a pimple.

  She was just sitting there, when she heard him ask her whether she would hke to have sex with two people.

  Karla, off to the side behind him, watched silently. She could see this scared little girl, who started to whimper and make weak protests, so she whispered to Paul; “Tell her the other person’s a woman.”

  Paul told her she was going to get a big kiss. He turned on the camera and watched as Karla moved in fi’ont of Leslie and bent over to give her a kiss, pushing on the younger girl’s lips twice, making it squishy and moist. Leslie did not move, but Karla knew full well that sharing this kind of kiss with another woman would excite Paul.

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  He pulled a straight-back, wooden dining-room chair they had inherited from some relative to a spot about six feet away from the comforter Karla had spread on the floor in front of the closed door. The height was just about right and he angled the camera to frame approximately where they would be positioned: Leslie on the left, Karla on the right. It was setting up a Paul Bernardo sandwich.

  Pink Floyd was on the radio—the long, rhythmically simple “Money.” Paul gave Leslie a kiss on her left cheek as he settled in, moving the champagne bottle to his side. He pulled up his white T-shirt a bit and Karla immediately headed for his scrotum while Paul trained Leslie on his less-than-erect penis.

  “I want you to lick up the shaft and then kiss at the top of my dick,” he told Leslie matter-of-factly, as if he were telling a child how to butter bread.

  “Where do I lick?” she asked.

  Karla was already there, licking up and down like a hungry kitten, when Leshe began following instructions.

  “I want you to kiss at the top,” he told them. “1 want you to do it about three or four times, okay?”

  Karla got into a rhythm and Leslie followed her lead, their lips almost touching. While the rest of Leslie’s body remained inert, Karla moved sensually from Paul’s penis to his testicles, sucking and licking, while he variously watched them or eyed the camera. Karla’s hair looked good, just enough mousse in her bangs to give them some life. He patted her head and ruflled his fmgers through the bangs approvingly.

  “Come over here, so you can Hck it all,” Paul told Leslie, leaning her on her left side while he kneeled with his buttocks in her face. “You can lick the hole. Okay. Find your way.”

  While Leslie tried to “fmd her way,” the music changed. For Paul it could not have a better moment. REM was playing their superman song. “I am, I am superman, I can do anything. …” whined the refrain, while Karla positioned her head under his chest and began suckmg his nipples.

  “Come on, Uck me, Leslie. Ya, you’re in my good books,” Paul said as the child in the blindfold awkwardly pressed her face mto his anus and Karla moved forward to grapple with his

  penis, masturbating and sucking him in a continuous bob and thrust.

  “Make me feed good, Leshe,” he said in a singsong voice. “I’m judgmg you right now, okay? These next two hours are going to determine what I do to you. Okay, right now you are scoring perfect.”

  Paul reminded Leshe that there were things she was supposed to be saymg to him.

  “Oh, ya, okay,” she said although she was not m the time or place to really say anythmg, smce she was having trouble just breathing between his flesh and the bhndfold.

  When he finished, Paul smiled Hke a happy camper and moved up to cradle Leslie’s head, giving her a big smooch, while giving Karla the old thumbs-up. He poured Leshe a full glass of champagne which she drank right down. So he poured another.

  Her face was not even in the fi-ame when he asked her to say her full name. After a false start, she said it: “Leslie Erin Ma-hafi>’.”

  “When were you born?”

  “May 26, 1976,” came the meek reply.

  Karla wanted more, so she whispered a series of questions in Paul’s ear for him to ask. What was her favorite pastime?

  “I like spending time with my friends,” Leslie said, as he panned to her head, which was tilted far to the right.

  “You’re a good girl,” Paul told her, advising that if she needed to go to the washroom all she had to do was say the word.

  Karla wanted to get the next scene right. She spread the comforter and one of their electric blankets in front of the hope chest, along with her new king-size pillows. Leslie was lying with her legs spread, with Karla kneehng and kissing her vagina. Paul tried for a close-up of Karla’s face. Raising her head, she smiled and wagged her tongue, with that devilish glint in her eye.

  “Just to let you know, Leshe, that’s not me.” he said, as though Leslie would not know from the touch of Karla’s lips and the soft brush of l
ong hair on her thighs.

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  “Now she’s going to judge you on how good it is. Put the tongue right up the hole, okay,” he directed. Karla was splayed on her back, eyes closed like a happy sunbather while Leslie lay on her stomach with her blindfolded head between Karla’s legs.

  “Is she making you feel okay?” Paul asked Karla, and he saw her smile.

  Whatever Paul got, Karla wanted, too. She moved to a kneeling position, arching her buttocks while Paul told Leslie to “caress and make her feel good.”

  “Put your tongue right in her asshole, push it right in,” he said. Leslie touched Karla’s thigh, and did as she was told.

  The whole scene lasted a little more than twenty-five minutes.

  His knife was in its case just in front of the hope chest. The coiled electrical cord was at his side, part of it stretching underneath the beige electric blanket that Leslie was propped on. Her ankles and wrists were bound with the brown cord Karla kept in the kitchen closet with Buddy’s dog stuff. The blouse was pushed above her buttocks and her face pressed into the carpet, covered by her curls and turban.

  Karla was operating the camera and everything was going to be well framed. Paul spread his legs astride Leslie and entered her anus, turning to smile at Karla.

  “You won’t shit for me, so you get it up the ass, okay,” he told Leslie, bending both knees and grinding his groin into her.

  “Okay, I’ll try again,” she begged.

  But Paul Bernardo was not about to stop anything.

  “No way you’re going to shit after this, trust me,” he grunted, telling her he was “pushing everything deep inside.”

  Karla’s hand was steady. Even when Leslie screamed in pain for her help. No shaky handheld video camera effects, as the helpless teenager cried out in pain.

  When no help came from the woman, Leslie used her wits.

  “Just let me go, I won’t say anything about you,” she told Paul. “I’ll never tell. I’ll never double-cross you.” But it was as