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

by Williams, Stephen, 1949-

  love you,’ and walk on the beach. You have to be able to put it in an image-type scenario, where you walk on the beach and through the sand, hand in hand. So I’ve done the research into other people’s songs and pulled out their best images and I spend a lot of time doing that. Plus, it’s a lot of rhyming and stuff like that, so I spend a lot of time putting words that rhyme together, you know, so I can sit here and say, instead of saying ‘rap,’ say, rhymes with, say, ‘back,’ or something like that, you can sit there and have a whole page of what rhymes. 1 have a rhyme book, too, to back that up. The rhyme book is not as detailed as what I …” Beaulieu interrupted him.

  “Do you have anythmg recorded or is it all up here?” Beauheu pointed to his head. Irwin and Beaulieu looked at each other and stifled a grin.

  “It’s basically all up here in my head. You know, I’ve done some speaking over another person’s song, you know? I worked hard on it.”

  “You worked hard on it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you going to take Norma with you when you go on tour?”

  “Oh, yeah, but we don’t talk to Norma anymore. We don’t talk to Norma. I haven’t talked to anybody since my wife left

  As the evening wore on and the detectives were getting nowhere, they started to become more specific about the murders. Beaulieu asked Bernardo what he used to mix the cement.

  “What cement?”

  “For Leslie.”

  Bernardo cleared his throat. “No comment. I didn’t mix any cement for Leslie, so no comment.”

  “Another one of your failures. Goes back to all these things in life you screwed up but good, because it crumbled and fell apart and up came her body. And that’s how we found her. Think a man like you would be a little bit brighter, if you read the instructions.”

  “If I was to niix cement, I would read the instructions.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And follow them?”

  “I read instructions when I cook spaghetti or rice.”

  It was almost midnight and no one was any the wiser. Detective Irwin and Sergeant Beaulieu had almost exhausted their resources and the collective resources of their observers and consultants. They had one last trick up their sleeve.

  “Do you beheve what you’re here for?” Detective Irwin asked. “Do you actually know what’s going on?”

  Bernardo laughed. “Yeah.”

  “Tomorrow they’re going to do a press conference, 10:00

  A.M.”

  “There you go,” Bernardo said perfunctorily.

  “What do you think they should say about you?”

  Snickering, Bernardo said, “Well, I don’t know.”

  “You want to see what they said tonight on the news about you?” When Waller had knocked on the door again just a few minutes earlier, he told them that he had obtained a videotape copy of the evening news and the shrinks thought it might be an interesting experiment to show it to Bernardo.

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” Bernardo said, but the look on his face said differently. Irwin just stared at him. “It doesn’t matter to me,” Bernardo repeated.

  “I’ve got a TV right outside to show you,” Detective Irv^in nodded toward the door.

  “Doesn’t matter to me,” Bernardo said again.

  “Did you want to see it?”

  “No,” Paul finally admitted. “Why would I want to see something like that?”

  “I do. I want to see it,” Sergeant Beauheu said.

  “Because then you’ll know that we’re not bullshitting,” Irwin declared.

  “Well, I mean, if you weren’t bullshitting, I wouldn’t be here.” Beaulieu and Irwin stood up.

  Waller opened the door. “Let’s turn it on,” Irwin said.

  “Thanks, Bob.” Irvvin said to Bob Waller. Irwin and Beaulieu got up and stood in the doorway. Irwin motioned to Bernardo to come over to the doorway. He reluctantly got up and shuffled over. They had finally given him a drink of water and ordered some pizza. Bernardo had a cold piece of pizza in his hand. “Do you want to see this, Paul?”

  “No …” and the television screen flickered to life. While Bernardo’s eyes were riveted on the screen, all other eyes were on him.

  Over a series of fast cuts, showing Bernardo being led from the house and pictures of Leslie Mahafiy and Kristen French and the recovery sites at Lake Gibson and Sideroad One, a voice came up: “Overwhelmed with relief … A twenty-eight-year old man is in custody, charged with the abduction and murder of Kristen French and Leshe Mahatfy. And as our crime specialist. Sue Sgambati, reports, the accused is also suspected in a series of sexual assaults in the Toronto area.” Cut to Sue Sgambati, the heavily mascaraed blonde Inspector Bevan said had forced his hand.

  “The man in custody is twenty-eight-year-old Paul Bernardo,” announced Sgambati. “He was arrested late in the afternoon at the St. Catharines home he rented with a female companion.”

  She went on to give the particulars of the arrests. Then the scene cut to an old man who looked to be in his late seventies. “This man lives next door to the suspect,” said Sgambati.

  “I always thought there was something shady there,” said old Erme England. “Which, as I said to my daughter, I don’t know what the … how the guy pays his rent, a thousand dollars, twelve hundred dollars a month, and he never leaves the house.”

  Sue Sgambati gave an abbreviated history of the murders and then the camera cut to footage of Doug French sitting in his living room, making the appeal for his daughter’s life that Paul and Karla had watched at the Homolkas that Easter Sunday when they went over for dinner: “Kristen, if you are to hear this …” said Mr. French, looking directly into the camera,

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  his anguish abundantly apparent. “… We’d hke you to know that we’re thinking of you and everything that can be done is being done, and we’ll get you back.”

  Sgambati concluded by saying, “This investigation has been a roller-coaster ride for the police and it is not over yet. They are still searching for a second suspect. In addition to the murder charges, Bernardo faces sLxteen counts of sexual assault in Toronto. Sue Sgambati, Global News. Toronto.”

  “Realit>%” Detective Irwin solemnly pronounced. Bernardo had been dramatically affected by seeing himself on television. After eight hours. Inspector Mackay and Dr. Collins were suddenly hyperalert. It had been a stroke of genius to videotape and replay that news broadcast. Seeing himself on television seemed to somehow vahdate the reaUty of his predicament and Bernardo was visibly affected. Irwin started to move in for the kill.

  “Very^ real,” Irwin repeated. It was difficult for Detective Irwin to contain himself The past eight hours had been fantasy, a prelude. In spite of himself he repeated it again, “Very real.”

  “Yeah,” came the faint reply. Bernardo was close to tears. Now, for the coup de grace.

  “So, your dear old grandmother … I hope she didn’t see the ten o’clock news.” They had already discussed how close he felt to his grandparents, and how his Granny Eastman was still alive and always watched the evening news.

  “Nothing I can do if the new^s put out stuff on me,” Bernardo replied, sniveling, petulant, feeling sorry for himself

  “No, no. You’re right.” Irwin said.

  “We didn’t do it. They did it …” Beaulieu added solicitously. Bernardo was choking back tears and could barely speak.

  “All the same …”

  “This is your chance, Paul—let’s go,” Irwin’s entire effort was about to be vindicated. He had him.

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s deal with it now. It’s time. Paul. You can’t go on. You can’t sit back there and remove yourself,” Irwin explained, forgetting why Bernardo was affected, doing that which they had been advised against, trying to appeal to his better nature, his conscience.

  “WeU . . -” Bernardo blinked a couple of times, rubbed his eyes and sniffed.

  “
You can’t. You have to sit …” Watching him closely, Irwin realized he was startmg to regroup.

  “Oh,” Bernardo said, as if he were seeing Beaulieu and Irwin again for the first time.

  “And look at everything. In fact, now more than ever.”

  “No,” Bernardo said emphatically. “No comment, and now I want to see a lawyer, and I think I should have a right to do that. …”

  But Beaulieu just would not give up. “Did you see that poor man on television,” he asked, referring to Doug French? “Doesn’t that appeal to some sense of decency and honesty inside you? Doesn’t it?”

  “Well, I have no comment,” Bernardo said resolutely.

  “Paul. What are you gonna do?” Irwin said quietly. “Are you going to spend your life avoiding everything? You gonna run from everything? Eh? Are you gonna run? There’s nowhere more to run.”

  “Well, that’s what you’re saying,” Bernardo exclaimed.

  “That’s right.” Irwin felt like a surgeon with a dying patient.

  “No comment.”

  “It’s time, Paul …”

  “It’s time to say ‘no comment.’ “

  “It’s time?” Irwin was stunned. The guy was like a possum-playing boxer.

  “No, no comment.”

  “WTio’s the second person?” Irwin asked, changed tack.

  “No comment.”

  “Eh? Yeah, we know who it is. We’ve already talked about it. We know. What do you think’s gonna happen to you?”

  “Don’t know, pal. Don’t know what you’re going to be putting me through, so …”

  “I’m not your pal,” Irwin said indignantly. Now Bernardo had his goat.

  “Well, I just see myself on the news like that. Whew! Sorry, but that’s, ah, you know, you just sit there and you look at that, it’s hke, agh, agh, you know? It’s unbehevable but …” Bernardo explained. There had been no response to his request for a lawyer. Bernardo well knew they had run out of time a long time earher and now they were just dancing the night away.

  “It’s unbehevable that a person can do that?” Beaulieu asked.

  “No, it’s unbehevable that I’m portrayed as that. But …” Bernardo felt compelled to try and clarify his meaning.

  “Where’s your decency, man? Where’s your honest'?” It was very difficult for the average man to accept that another seemingly normal man was capable of such horrendous acts of consummate evil, without any sense of remorse or guilt.

  Knowmg he had Beauheu’s goat, Bernardo decided to flog it a bit. “Well. I’ve been telling you honestv^ and whatever … Obviously it’s going to go to trial. Well, let’s do that because …”

  “There’s no alternative, we’re definitely gonna do that,” Beaulieu pronounced.

  “You know, I’m not going to sit here and admit to something I didn’t do, just because you guys arrested me and threw me on the newscast and stuff.”

  “Are you subhuman?” Beaulieu demanded. He was a decent man, with three young daughters. “What runs in your veins?” he asked.

  For more than eight hours, Bernardo had sighed, sniffed, coughed, snickered, whined, picked lint, crossed and uncrossed his legs. Once more he sighed. “No more comment. No more comment.”

  “And you’re doing exactly what we expected, just what the FBI profile told us,” Irwin said, sanguinely.

  “Whatever,” Bernardo shrugged and went back to the lint on his pants.

  “And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “We appreciate it. Because what’U happen is the jury will see It and the parole board, down the road, will see this guy who now suddenly claims to have remorse. But there is none now. And so you’ll put the act on down there. They won’t beUeve you … you’ll end up further and fiirther in deep, dark dungeons. That’s where your hfe is gonna be, Paul.”

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  “Oh.” Now Detective Irwin was doing some more of it— talking for the sake of hearing himself talk.

  “Somewhere down the road, when you go before the parole board, they’ll look back over everything and they’ll say there was no remorse. You’re just Hke an animal trapped in a corner. Backed in a corner aren’t you? Dead, tight in a corner. There’s no way out. We told you we’re not happy with Karla… .” Irwin declared.

  “No?” Now that Irwin mentioned it, Bernardo did not think they had told him that.

  “Karla has something to do with this,” Irwin declared, stating the obvious.

  “Whatever,” Bernardo said.

  “She’s the best rat we’ve ever had. It just happened to happen because your DNA matched in Scarborough and matched another profile from out here. Karla got found at the right time.”

  Bernardo stifled a big yawn and then sighed again. Looking at Beaulieu, he asked, “What was your name again?”

  “Beaulieu.” Then the sergeant spelled it. “B-E-A-U-L-I-E-U.”

  “French-Canadian, isn’t it?” Bernardo asked, with what appeared to be genuine curiosity.

  “What about it?” Beauheu asked belligerently.

  Ignoring Beaulieu, Bernardo looked at Irwin and said, “What was your name again?”

  Paul Bernardo’s departure that night around 12:45 a.m. was the last contact he and Detective Steve Irwin would have. Irwin’s bird had refused the wrist once and for all and was gone. Driven to the East Detention Center in Scarborough by two Toronto cops, Bernardo arrived around 1:30 a.m. By the time he got to court the next morning, the lawyer with whom Patrick Johnnie had put in him touch stood beside him. They waived the reading of the charges. Paul was remanded in custody. His appearance lasted approximately sixty seconds. This particular lawyer was destined not to last much longer than the appearance. He

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  would soon be replaced by a lawyer from Aurora, Ontario, named Ken Murray.

  Coincidence prevailed. Two Bernardos were before the Scarborough court that day. February 18 was also Ken Bernardo’s sentencing date. Prosecutors looked at each other, stunned. The police looked at each other with amazement. The media went wild.

  Paul had known what was going down with his father—he had written that letter at the end of January—^but nobody else did. Before the judge remanded Ken Bernardo to another date, he sealed Ken Bernardo’s file. There was no public good to be served, in the judge’s estimation, by learning what infamy had brought the father before him that sad morning. In the judge’s opinion, Paul Bernardo’s charges were quite sufficient to satiate the prurient tastes of the unwashed hordes.

  Jim Hutton was still in a state of shock when he picked up the phone. Karla wanted to know his feelings. He felt betrayed, as if he had been used as a “comforter,” but he did not tell her that.

  Jim could not imagine that Karla would ever be mixed up in anything such as the Mahaffy and French killings; she was such a sweet girl. But he had no idea what to say to her. He mumbled.

  Karla was really concerned that Jim would hate her, but he said he did not hate her—that she was a victim too. Jim tried to offer her some comfort and support.

  Karla had really wanted to talk to Jim about the whole thing, but her lawyers told her not to. Karla said she wanted to keep their relationship going, but Jim just said that it was pretty obvious she had her hands full.

  Karla was so lonely, she told Jim. She wanted to see people, but it was hke she was already in prison, with all the media and everything. Jim tried to reassure her that her lawyers would look out for her and that he would talk to her soon. She sent Jim a Polaroid. In the Polaroid her breasts were exposed and there was that “devilish glint in her eye.” Jim wondered who had taken the picture.

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  Karla was upset. She showed up at George Walker’s office for her appointment at 2:30 p.m. on February 19. The media were onto her—the facts that she wanted immunity and was represented by George Walker had been published. Her parents were beside themselves. Her new boyfriend in Brampton d
id not want to talk to her.

  She and Walker talked about Bernardo’s arrest and his arraignment in Scarborough and how bizarre it had been, his father being in the same court at the same time.

  What was that all about? Walker wanted to know. Karla told him that Paul’s old man was a real nut case, but she really did not know all the details. It probably had to do with Paul’s sister, Debbie. The papers had said the charges were twenty years old.

  The fact that Paul’s old man was a deviant did nothmg to hurt their position.

  “This is only going to get worse,” Walker told Karla.

  Later in the day Murray Segal called and advised Walker that the search warrants had been executed. Now that the poHce were in the house, Segal might not have the authority to stay in communication. Walker was poised. Segal wanted the deal as badly as Walker did. For some reason, they seemed to want it even more after Bernardo’s arrest.

  Norma Tellier gave Karla a friendship ring and an anklet.

  “On Saturday, Cheryl Jenkins’s father brought home a Toronto paper. Paul and Karla’s wedding pictures were on the front page.

  Cheryl had just turned seventeen. She had been in a terrible car accident on her way to a rowing regatta in Georgia the previous year and she still was not right.

  The paper had been folded up when her father brought it in. When she opened it, she almost got sick to her stomach. There was the man who had raped her. It was his picture on the front page, beside his blushing bride, Karla Homolka. Cheryl knew

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  Karla Homolka. Tammy Lyn Homolka had actually been a friend of Cheryl’s. She had attended the memorial for Tamniy Lyn at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in early January, 1991, with Norma Tellier, three months before Paul Bernardo raped her.

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  ould you go shopping for me?” Dorothy Homolka pleaded. “I just can’t go out this soon after his arrest.”

  Lynn McCann had seen Dorothy Homolka discommoded before. Only the night before, for instance, just after they had learned that Paul had been arrested. The Homolkas had known his arrest was pending—they had been forewarned—but for people Hke them, unless they saw it on television it had not really happened.