Karla helped clear the meal trays, and “boy, we waste tons of food in here,” she observed. Karla sometimes ate the lunch that arrived at 11:00 a.m., and then settled into an afternoon of studying, letter writing or watching TV. Dinner came at 4:00 P.M. and the nurse brought her medication an hour later. Her most strenuous exercise was carrying the garbage down four flights of stairs. “I’m locked up twenty-two and a half hours a day. Unbelievable.”
Not that Karla endured social isolation. She reluctantly saw
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seventy-year-old Dr. Brown in his second-floor office, every Tuesday and Thursday, for about an hour. She was constandy in contact with Sergeant Bob GilHes, who, since his assignment as the blond princess’s chief server in her correctional tower, had inescapably become an honorary Homolka.
However, when George Walker visited her, in spite of her avowed disrespect and suspicion of Dr. Brown, Karla told him that her therapy sessions were sufficient, especially since the doctor, who was semiretired, sometimes went away for weeks at a time.
Although George cautioned her about opening up to any inmates, he gave her the go-ahead to enter into discussions with the prison psychologist, Jan Heney. Ms. Heney spelled Karla’s name Carla, and she, too, had never had a higher-profile “cH-ent.” By definition, almost all of the women with whom Heney had professional contact had been abused as children or had been in abusive relationships. Abuse and its consequences were Jan Heney’s specialty.
For the next few months, Karla and Jan would explore “guided imagery and relaxation techniques,” and discuss Karla’s fear of the future and all the reasons why “self-care can be difficult.” An inmate stabbing had upset Karla. The lockdown that always ensued when there had been violence in the general population barely touched Karla, but certain realities about prison were slowly making themselves apparent.
Late in September, she expressed her fear in a letter to Kristy Maan, who just could not bring herself to completely sever her relationship with Karla: “This place is truly evil… . People want me dead in this prison and the one who does it will be a hero. … I HATE IT HERE.”
But now she had Jan Heney, she duly reported to all her correspondents. Ms. Heney observed that Karla “is dealing better with ambivalent feelings,” after an hour and half session in which they discussed “getting in touch with abusive aspects of the relationship—feeling powerless.” The relationship they were discussing, at such length and depth, was her erstwhile marriage to Paul Bernardo.
Karla was learning a lot, from the psychologist and from her
schoolvvork. In her next letter to Dr. Arndt, she wrote: “Women’s studies is particularly helpful. It was taught from a feminist perspective … it was quite empowering.” She was even ready to lament the “death” of her relationship with Paul.
“I almost would rather have him die, because then I’d be able to grieve properly. And visit his grave and say goodbye,” she WTOte to Kathy Ford. Obviously, there was light at the end of Karla’s dark tunnel—in her October datebook she marked in the cancellation of Paul Bernardo’s preliminary hearing on the Scarborough rapes in capital letters.
But then Karla had a dream.
6 October, 1993
Dear George,
I’m having a major problem. I’ve remembered something else that I have to tell Bob GiUies. Paul raped Jane, a friend of mine. I don’t remember much of it. I can picture It happening in our living room. She was drunk and had passed out. The next thing I remember is her faUing off of the bed upstairs. I’ve been racking my brain for days now, trying to piece the whole thing together but I just can’t. I can’t even go to my doctors for help because they’ll just report it, what I’m really afraid of is that I was more involved than I can remember. Bob and Ivan show^ed me a still photograph taken from that videotape and I couldn’t identity it. What if it was with Jane? Why didn’t I remember all of this when they first questioned me? I have to tell them but what if they nail me for this too? Can you do something to make sure they don’t?
I can’t talk to you on the phone at all because the conversations are recorded and listened to. They never read mail to and from lawyers—they can’t—so this is the only safe way for me to talk to you. Please write back soon with some advice. And also, remember that I want
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to tell them. I feel guilty and have to get it off my conscience. Thanks, George. 1 feel like I’m going crazy.”
Karla
Karla’s sessions with Jan Heney continued to go very well. Now that Karla had a recovered memory, she and Heney were away to the races. They embarked on endless discussions about “how numbing is used to avoid feelings.” Heney explained in some detail “how this coping strategy developed” m Karla. That gave Karla something to think about.
Karla was learning lots of new things, and she could hardly wait to explain it all to Sergeant GiUies. Karla was the highest-profile prisoner in Canada, in a prison unit that seldom held more than a hundred women. Given her relationship with the Crown, she had more nascent power than any other prisoner in the country.
In the past year, there had been so many people—police persons, prosecutors, psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers such as George Walker—people whom she would otherwise never have met; smart, intelligent people, paying more attention to Karla than had ever been given her in the sum total of her days on earth. Karla absorbed every ounce of it, hke an arid desert.
Karla was so eager and self-assured that she tried to call Inspector Bevan directly in mid-October. She became furious because neither the Niagara Regional Police nor the Green Ribbon Task Force would accept her collect calls. Undaunted, Karla wrote another letter to Kristy advising her to save all her letters for posterity. She concluded, saying, “I won’t be mad if you want to say something about what a nice person I am.”
When Sergeant Gillies finally called her on October 19, he discovered that Karla had been calling Inspector Bevan because she wanted to know about what effect a broadcast by the U.S. tabloid TV show “A Current Affair” would have on her position and on Paul’s forthcoming trial. The segment contained banned details from her trial and that greatly concerned Karla. She had also heard that the British were reading about her and looking at her wedding pictures in the Sunday Mirror. Gillies
assured her that such things were irrelevant and inconsequential. Jan Heney talked about learning to accept things that cannot be changed.
Karla asked Sergeant Gillies for a copy of the Sunday Mirror article. A copy of the article was circulating among the prison guards. Someone had an acquaintance in England who had happily faxed a copy. Kristy Maan was keeping her abreast of the coverage.
“Now everyone’s got me all curious,” Karla wrote to Kristy. “And that’s PATHETIC about putting our pictures beside Barbie and Ken’s.”
Karla’s mother had friends who had watched the TV expose, but, from what Karla heard, it was “mostly a bunch of total crap.” The “Current Affair” reporter, Mary Garofalo, had been born and raised in Toronto. She was surprised to discover that the victims’ families were more than willing to talk to her. In fact, when Garofalo got to the Mahaffy’s house she could not seem to get out. They actually shot six or seven hours of tape.
But it was the fact that Van Smirnis, Paul Bernardo’s best friend and erstwhile best man, was willing to talk about things he knew nothing about—for money, and that some unnamed person was willing to share banned details with Ms. Garofalo, that brought the show together. Some details were incorrect, but Garofalo had the gist, which was all that reality-based television required.
Karla’s uncle sold “A Current Affair” extensive videotape of Paul and Karla’s wedding. Between Mr. Homolka, Mrs. Mahaffy and Van Smirnis, Mary had more footage than she could use.
Wise beyond her years, Karla was unfazed by the media, but she begged Kristy not to talk to them. Although her “deal” specifically denied Karla any right to
“give an account, directly or indirectly to the press, media, or for the purpose of any book, movie or like endeavor,” five months later Karla told Kristy she was having second thoughts.
“About writing a book … beHeve me, I thought about it.
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I really don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” she told Kristy. “Part of me wants my side of the story to be told, but another part of me feels that the world knows enough about me.”
What concerned Karla were the “deep, dark secrets” of abuse that would surface during Paul’s trial. “Enough has been said about Kristen and Leslie,” she observed. “Anyway, if I do ever decide to ‘tell my story’ it will definitely be done in a book written by me… . And it will be only a story about the abuse I endured.”
In closing, she asked for the name of a book Kristy had mentioned in her previous letter about England’s infamous Moors Murders and advised Kristy that she was reading a chapter of the Bible every night, starting with the Book of Matthew. Somewhere between the divine and the subhuman, perhaps she could find her literary inspiration. That same day, Karla and her therapist spent another hour discussing the impact of abuse, and they looked at “strategies inherent in surviving abuse.”
While psychologist Jan Heney was finding that her sessions with Karla were resulting in “good spirits” and “assertive” behavior,” Dr. Brown, the senior psychiatric consultant on Karla’s case, was running into a concrete blond wall.
“I absolutely HATE the psychiatrist here now,” Karla told Kathy Ford, noting that she now had a helpful therapist and only had to see the shrink every other week.
“He told me the last time I saw him that I would never heal until I told him all the details of what happened. Asshole. He is so mean and cruel. So now I don’t really tell him anything.”
With Jan, after all, she was able to deflect the past and consider “healing as a process” and ponder the “ways to self-esteem.” The delusion must have been a comfort. As she told Kathy: “I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me—a new job, a new husband (… a loving one this time!) children …”
When Karla lived in her ddy Htde house in Port Dalhousie with Paul, there had always been time to decorate the front porch with fake spiderwebs and a toothsome jack-o’-lantern at Halloween. In jail, she found All Saints’ Eve “kind of boring.”
Karla had talked to her family and watched her beloved cartoon character Bart Simpson star in a “Scare-athon” television special. Being in segregation meant she could not attend the Halloween dance in the prison gymnasium. A considerate guard had brought up some pop and chips, and the girls in seg had their own Httle Halloween party.
Two days later, on November 2, George Walker gave Sergeant Gillies a copy of Karla’s letter about the troublesome memory of the mysterious forgotten victim. Naturally, the police were concerned, so they called to find out how Karla was really doing.
By this time, Karla and her psychologist had moved on to tackle the dynamics of abuse that lead “to immobilization and increased powerlessness of the victim.”
When the sergeant and the inspector arrived to interview Karla two days later, Karla had dutifrilly noted in her datebook “Bob ^’ Vince visiting/hair highlighted.”
Inspired, Karla had prepared ten pages of detailed, graphic reminiscences about exactly how Paul had abused her. Her tales of infamy kept getting better and more elaborate, far beyond complaints such as “he spit in my food,” which she had benignly noted for Dr. Arndt. And since her well-being was an issue, Karla told Inspector Bevan and Sergeant Gillies that she had lost weight by eating only fruit and vegetables.
The small talk continued the following day. Karla wondered whether or not Paul would be charged in connection with her sister’s death. After all, it had been more than three months since they had exhumed Tammy Lyn’s body.
She was told the scientists at the forensic center were still working on the samples. That setded, Karla moved on to a more pressing issue—she needed a visitor’s pass for Buddy; she wanted her dog to visit. Vince and Bob said they would see what they could do.
The next morninc;, an oblij^ing Karla offered that she was
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helping another inmate with her schoolwork. She wanted to know about the arrangements being made to accommodate her when she had to go to court and testify. Haute couture being what it was in prison, her hair would only remain highlighted for so long. There was also the matter of what she was going to wear.
To further encourage their growing camaraderie, she shared another small insight into her estranged husband. There had been a big fib in the “A Current Affair” television broadcast, Karla said. The guy they interviewed who claimed to have given Paul a haircut and a blow job—they might have traded underwear, but not the blow job. Paul would never let a guy blow him.
Inspector Bevan was way ahead of Karla. Bernardo’s willingness to be fellated by a guy was considered by the Green Ribbon Task Force to be of crucial importance. He assigned a constable to rundown the talkative con, a homosexual pimp named Glenn High, who had indeed appeared on “A Current Affair”—disguised with a paste-on mustache and a baseball cap. He had claimed that, among other things, he had had a sexual encounter with Paul.
High, aged twenty-three, had been charged with abduction, sexual assault causing bodily harm, intercourse with a minor and forcible confinement. He had taken the fees paid by “A Current Affair” and run, leaving his lauryer, Loftus Cuddy, with the task of contacting broadcasters, newspaper reporters and book authors with “exclusive” story rights from $5,000 to the $500. One information-challenged newspaper reporter finally broke down and paid. The closest the crack investigators from the Green Ribbon Task Force could get to him was Glenn High’s former cellmate. Randy Vandenburg, who was much easier to find since he was still in custody.
The way Vandenburg remembered it, he and High had been in their cell next to Bernardo. Bernardo had been upset over Karla’s light sentence and announced that his old lady was “one sick bitch.” Randy and Glenn beheved him. Vandenburg said
that High and Bernardo switched underwear and that the switch had something to do with Bernardo’s theory that the authorities were trying to get samples from his underwear for DNA analysis.
Vandenburg also said that High was a homosexual and that Vandenburg “stood 6”—watched out for them—while High gave Bernardo a blow job. Paul Bernardo was obviously more depraved than even Karla knew.
Karla and jan Heney went back to work, spending a full session workmg on the psychological mechanism that “triggers self-punishment.” Jan noted that “the cHent” was worried about the fliture.
A week later, Heney and Homolka talked about the psychologist’s consultations with other inmates. Heney suggested to Karla that she might benefit from group-therapy sessions. Karla liked that idea a lot. Of course, Ms. Heney pointed out, it was entirely up to Karla, and if she wanted to participate, Heney would have to get a release.
Heney’s suggestion that Karla might want to become involved with other women in the prison was an indication to the authorities that Ms. Heney simply did not “get it.” With that suggestion, she had sown the seeds of the end of her therapeutic relationship with Karla. Group therapy was not in Karla Homolka’s future.
When Dr. Brown saw Karla next, Karla was remarkably cheerflil and spontaneous. Dr. Brown noted: “Although she is feeling stressed about the upcoming trial, her nightmares have all but ceased and her adjustment to the prison environment meant she was not having nearly as much trouble sleeping.” His prescription was to reduce her Nozinan by half and send her right back to the psychologist’s ministrations.
When it came to her client’s well-being, Jan Heney’s devotion knew no bounds. It was as if she were caught in Karla’s thrall.
“It has come to my attention that there are some anticipated problems with Ms. Teale’s dog Buddy,” Heney wrote in a
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memo to the deputy warden, addressing the concern that when Karla’s family visited her for a few days in January the dog might not be permitted in. “It is my behef that it would be beneficial for Ms. Teale to visit with her dog. The psychological and therapeutic benefits of pets have been well documented,” she noted, adding her professional endorsement and offering to “facilitate this visit taking place.”
For this display of loyalty and concern, Karla rewarded Ms. Heney by entering into a discussion, for the first time, that touched briefly on Karla’s feelings about Tammy Lyn. Karla had never before broached that topic with anyone afl^iliated with the prison.
Ken Murray, Paul Bernardo’s beleaguered lawyer, continued to hammer away about disclosure—he repeatedly told the media that disclosure from the Crown was like pulling teeth—slow, tedious and painful. On November 22, 1993, Murray and his junior, Carolyn MacDonald, met with prosecutors and police officers at the Green Ribbon Task Force headquarters in Beamsville. They had come to review an odd assortment of exhibits. Among hundreds upon hundreds of exhibits, Murray and MacDonald wanted to see photographs of Norma Tellier and Karla’s high-school yearbook. They showed the most interest, however, in a black-and-white, hardcover diary Jane had relinquished and some handwritten notes Tammy Lyn Homolka and Norma Tellier had exchanged in late 1990.
The following day they came back for more, including a “tour” of an elaborate, Plexiglas scale model of the house, which the task force and prosecution had commissioned. With this large, modular, transparent, doll-like house and the extensive videotapes the police had made in the house, Bernardo’s judge and jury would see perpetual reality.
But the defense team was far more interested in more pictures of Norma Tellier and Jane and a bunch of “unknown” nudes, various newspaper clippings the police had found in the garage and a November, 1992, issue of True Love magazine con-
426 STEPHEN wiiiiams
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