Instead of running as far away from Bernardo as she could, Karla actually became excited by these games and told Paul she hoped that he would marry her.
In the autumn of 1988, about a year after they had met, Homolka said that Bernardo struck her for the first time. He told her he wanted her to wear a dog collar, and when she laughed, he slapped her. The next time they had anal sex, Karla was tugging on a dog leash while Bernardo tenderly whispered, “You’re my little mutt.” That was shortly followed by Bernardo’s demand for “analingus” and that Karla now also add “ass-licker” to her vocabulary of scripted words.
In one of Homolka’s cards to Bernardo (which she wrote and mailed almost every day), she wrote—around her first anniversary:
Thanks for the best year of my life. You enriched my life beyond belief…I want to suck Snuffles and get him so hard that he can’t take it anymore. And then I want to ease your pulsating penis into my tight little cunt. Your little girl wants to be abused. She needs her Big Bad Businessman to dominate her the best he can.
Love, Kar
In 1989, Karla Homolka graduated from high school. She wanted to become a policewoman and was planning to enter the Faculty of Criminology at the University of Toronto. Bernardo told her that he did not want “his wife” working in a job as dangerous as a policewoman’s. Thus instead of school, Homolka went to work as an assistant in a veterinarian’s office in St. Catharines. She had thought first of going to Toronto, but by then, Bernardo was smuggling cigarettes almost full-time, and told her that he wanted to live in the St. Catharines area, conveniently in the middle between the U.S. border and Toronto.
During Karla’s graduation party, Bernardo displayed another side of himself. He drunkenly accused some of her fellow male students of flirting with Karla and got into a fight with several of them. Although they were members of the school football team and were quite athletic, Bernardo showed no fear in fighting them. Despite being outnumbered by big football players and receiving a few blows that bloodied his nose, Bernardo continued to throw punches and seemed to enjoy the confrontation. Unlike many serial killers, Bernardo was not afraid or physically meek in the presence of other males.
Bernardo wanted to produce a rap record and recorded an album he titled Deadly Innocence in his home studio. During his trial, the judge refused to allow the lyrics of the songs to be entered into evidence. In the eyes of the law, the poetry or lyrics that one writes do not necessarily reflect the actual state of mind of the artist. Perhaps…but here is what Bernardo wrote anyway:
You think I’m innocent?
But behind this I’m packing a lot of deadliness
So come at, come at me
I got a fucking nice face
I look like a pretty boy
Why don’t you come at me, man?
Take your best shot
See what happens to you, pal
You’re outta here, man
You come at me with your beer belly
And you think you’re really tough
I come back, looking like I’m 13 years old
I’ll kick your ass
I’ll kill your parents
I’ll shoot your girlfriend
And fuck your wife
That’s me, Deadly Innocence.
Bernardo was as completely aware of the angelic image he projected as he was of the violent rage that seethed inside.
Karla’s parents and her younger sister, Tammy, were enthralled with the baby-faced Paul Bernardo. Her mother referred to him as her “weekend son,” while 15-year-old Tammy was in love with her sister’s boyfriend. In the winter of 1990, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka became engaged to be married. They began to slowly plan a wedding for June of 1991.
The Christmas Present
Bernardo, in the meantime, became obsessed with Tammy. He would enter her room at night while she was sleeping and masturbate on her pillow. He began to demand that Karla dress in Tammy’s clothes and developed a new script for her. (“Scripting” is a typical trait of a sexually sadistic offender.) Now Karla had to say, “I’m your 15-year-old virgin. I love you. You’re the king.” While Karla would perform oral sex on Bernardo, he’d stare at a photograph of Tammy. He would insist that he and Karla have sex in Tammy’s bedroom while she was out. None of this seemed to offend Karla and she went along with the game.
Sometime in 1990, Bernardo bought a video camcorder. He said they would need it for the wedding. Bernardo began to obsessively record everything on videotape.
One day, Bernardo and Tammy drove over to the U.S. to buy some liquor without Karla. On the way back, they stopped and necked. Karla somehow became aware of this and lashed out angrily at Bernardo: “She’s a virgin. She wouldn’t know what to do with Snuffles.”
Bernardo charged into the opening that Karla had inadvertently made: “Maybe I should have sex with Tam and teach her the proper way. Wouldn’t it be great if Tam got to feel Snuffles inside of her? Wouldn’t it be great if I took her virginity?”
Homolka refused to entertain the idea, and as with Bernardo’s demands for anal sex, her refusal strained their relationship. Homolka became afraid that the June wedding might not take place despite the $4,500 engagement ring Bernardo had given her.
Finally, Homolka gave up in December of 1990—she agreed to give Tammy’s virginity to Bernardo as a “Christmas present” as compensation for not being a virgin herself. From the veterinarian clinic where she worked, Karla stole some halothane, an etherlike substance used to sedate animals. Telling a pharmacist she was ordering sedatives for the animal clinic, she also ordered some Halcion, a powerful triazolam sedative.
On Christmas Eve of 1990, Bernardo and his video camera showed up at the Homolka’s house to spend the holidays. Years later, television audiences would be horrified by the home videos of 15-year-old Tammy drinking down eggnog spiked with Halcion while Bernardo and Karla hovered over her. She had less than a few hours left to live.
At the end of the evening, the parents retired to bed and told Tammy she should turn in as well. Little Tammy protested: Karla and Paul had invited her to stay up with them and watch a movie on the VCR and spend some time together. The Homolkas went to bed while Bernardo slid a cassette into the VCR. The movie was Lisa, about a young woman who falls in love with a man she does not know is a serial killer. By the time the movie finished, Tammy had passed out from all the Halcion she had consumed.
Karla quickly ran to her room and got the halothane. She poured it onto a cloth and held it around Tammy’s face to make sure she was more deeply sedated. Bernardo meanwhile unbuttoned Tammy’s blouse and fondled her breasts. Karla stripped naked while Bernardo pulled off Tammy’s track pants and underwear. He then switched on the video camera. This part of the videotape was never broadcast on television, but it was shown to the jury in the courtroom five years later at Bernardo’s trial for murder. The tapes presented in court reveal what took place as recorded by Bernardo’s video camera:
(Video recording starts.)
HOMOLKA: Put on a condom.
(Bernardo vaginally penetrates Tammy Homolka.)
HOMOLKA: Paul, hurry up.
BERNARDO: Shut up!
HOMOLKA: Please, hurry up, before someone comes down.
BERNARDO: Shut up. Keep her down.
(Homolka pours more halothane onto the cloth pressed against Tammy’s face. Bernardo again enters Tammy. Homolka urges Bernardo to put on a condom.)
HOMOLKA: Put something on.
BERNARDO: Shut up, Karla.
HOMOLKA: Put something on. Do it.
BERNARDO: You’re getting all worked up.
HOMOLKA: Fucking do it. Just do it.
(Bernardo penetrates Tammy anally. He continues for about a minute.)
BERNARDO: Do you love me?
HOMOLKA: Yes.
BERNARDO: Will you blow me?
HOMOLKA: Yes.
BERNARDO: Suck on her breasts.
HOMOLKA: I can’t.
BERNARDO: Su
ck on her breasts. Suck. Suck. Suck.
(Homolka sucks Tammy’s breasts.)
HOMOLKA: Hurry up, please.
BERNARDO: Lick her cunt.
(Bernardo pushes Homolka’s head between Tammy’s legs.)
BERNARDO: Lick. You’re not doing it.
HOMOLKA: I am so.
BERNARDO: Do it. Lick her cunt. Lick it. Lick it up clean. Now put your finger inside.
HOMOLKA: I don’t want to.
BERNARDO: Do it now. Quick, right now. Put three fingers right inside.
HOMOLKA: No.
BERNARDO: Put it inside. Inside! Inside!
(Homolka inserts her finger into Tammy’s vagina. When she withdraws her finger it is smeared with menstrual blood.)
BERNARDO: Okay, taste it. Taste it. Inside…inside.
HOMOLKA: I did, I…did!
BERNARDO: Now do it again, deeper. Inside. Deeper. Right inside. Okay, taste good? Taste good?
HOMOLKA: Fucking disgusting!
(The video recording stops.)
Homolka later testified that at this point Bernardo struck her and told her to be more cooperative before the camera. Bernardo then switched the camera back on and had Karla hold it while he again had vaginal and anal sex with Tammy. He had not climaxed when the video recorded him suddenly stopping and withdrawing. Homolka put the camera down and switched it off.
She testified that Bernardo said that something seemed wrong—it appeared like Tammy wasn’t breathing.
Tammy was dead. She had vomited and choked to death during the rape. The emergency crews had arrived at the house at about 2:00 a.m. that night, but there was nothing they could do. A police officer, who responded to the call, remembers seeing a strange, huge, burnlike red mark around Tammy’s mouth and nose. In the autopsy photograph it is cherry-red bright. He noted that Tammy had been moved from the living room to a bedroom. Bernardo said they had moved Tammy because the light was better in the bedroom—they could see better there. The police officer checked the lights in both rooms and saw that they were equally bright, but then thought that people under stress can react in all manner of inexplicable ways. He asked about the red marks on Tammy’s face, and Bernardo replied that they probably were caused by the rug when they dragged Tammy to the other room. They would have had to drag her facedown, the police officer thought—which was odd. But the officer’s duties were to merely file the response report and not to investigate the accident. Moreover, he was a rookie who had just come on the job. He kept his suspicions to himself and left it to the senior detectives and coroner to investigate.
After interviewing the Homolkas and being told that Bernardo was a fine, upstanding young accountant, who was scheduled to marry Karla in June and who was loved by the family like a son, the police developed no strong suspicion of him.
Forensic pathology is as much an interpretive art as it is a science. The extent to which a pathologist will explore a death in an autopsy depends upon the external circumstances presented to him by the police. Had Tammy’s body been found abandoned by a roadside, perhaps the autopsy would have been more extensive, but Tammy’s body was found by her concerned, loving sister and future brother-in-law. Tests were made for illicit drugs, but the recreational kind—not for animal sedatives. The burns around her mouth, the pathologist concluded, were the result of acidity in her vomit. Her rectum and vagina were inspected, but showed no indications of rape. Bernardo had not had time to ejaculate. Again, even if no seminal fluids were found, Tammy’s vagina and anus should have been dilated enough to signal the pathologists that something was wrong, had they been looking for such signals. But they were not. The official autopsy result was death by aspiration of vomit.
During Bernardo’s trial five years later, Homolka was cross-examined about her role in the death of her little sister:
“The first time he mentioned having sex with your sister I would have thought you’d spring out of bed and say, ‘There’s no way I’m going to let you touch my baby sister.’ Wouldn’t that be the right reaction?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t do that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You thought, ‘Knock her out and have some sex with her. What’s the harm’?”
“I didn’t know her safety would be in danger. I was afraid he would do it regardless. I was afraid he would just grab her off the street and rape her. This was the best way. I had no choice…I thought it would happen once and it would be over.”
Homolka claimed that because of Tammy, Bernardo had something to hold over her head. She claimed that because she feared Bernardo would expose her role in Tammy’s death to her parents, she became his unwilling slave.
Homolka said that after the death of her sister, she was numb. Obviously not numb enough to complain that her parents spent too much money on Tammy’s funeral. Homolka wrote to a friend a few months after Tammy’s death:
My wedding plans are great, except for my parents being such assholes. They pulled out half of the money from the wedding saying they couldn’t afford it. Bullshit!!! Now Paul and I have to pay for seven or eight thousand dollars of the wedding. We’ve been compromising like crazy; a cash bar, no flowers on the table, etc. Finally Paul and I said fuck it! No paying for the bar. Cocktails. Everything!!!
Fucking parents. They are being so stupid. Only thinking of themselves. My father doesn’t even want us to have a wedding. He thinks we should just go to the hall. Screw that! If he wants to sit at home and be miserable, he’s welcome to it. He hasn’t worked, except for one day, since Tammy died. He’s wallowing in his own misery, and fucking me.
It sounds awful on paper, but I know you really see what I’m saying. Tammy always said she wanted a Porsche on her sixteenth birthday. Now my dad keeps saying, “I should have bought it” Bull! If he really felt like that he’d be paying for my wedding because I could die tomorrow, or next year. He’s such a liar.
And for the real reason we moved out. My parents told Paul and I that they wanted him to stay at the house until the wedding. Then they said they wanted him to go after Tammy died because they needed their privacy. First they took away half the wedding money, and then they kicked us out. They knew how much we needed to be together, but they didn’t care. What assholes!!!
About three weeks after the funeral, Karla’s parents went away for a week to recuperate after Tammy’s death while Karla’s other sister went to stay with friends. Karla and Paul were alone in the house. Bernardo spent a lot of time masturbating to the videotape they had made of Tammy’s rape. He and Karla went into Tammy’s room, which had remained untouched since her death. Bernardo set the video camera up on a tripod facing Tammy’s bed. While Homolka put on Tammy’s clothes, Bernardo warned her, “Remember, don’t say anything stupid that will ruin the tape.” He was still mad at Karla for saying she was not enjoying performing oral sex on her sister the night she died. Paul told her, “It’s my only tape of Tammy and you fucked it up.”
(Video recording starts.)
(Bernardo is lying naked on Tammy’s bed. Homolka is with him, with her hair brushed forward over her face. Bernardo is holding a picture of Tammy. Homolka is performing fellatio on him.)
BERNARDO: Here’s my little virgin Tammy. Fucked by me. I broke the hymen.
HOMOLKA: Tammy was a virgin.
(Bernardo turns over onto his hands and knees while Homolka performs analingus while rubbing his penis at the same time.)
HOMOLKA: I love licking your ass. I love sucking your cock. I love you. I love to be fucking you so much.
(Bernardo rolls over on his back and adjusts Homolka’s hair so it covers her face. She is fellating him.)
HOMOLKA: I love you so much.
BERNARDO: I love you too, Tammy.
HOMOLKA: I want your cock in me. I’ll give you the best orgasm of all. Together we’re perfect. I want to lose my virginity to you.
BERNARDO: You didn’t know I was filming you, Tammy, when you were in your room, undressing. But I
was watching you through the window.
HOMOLKA: Can you ever stop thinking of me? Can you ever stop coming in my face? Take my virginity, Paul. Take it.
BERNARDOO: I will, Tammy. I love you, Tammy.
(Bernardo positions Homolka on her hands and knees and enters her anally. He is still holding Tammy’s photograph in his hand.)
HOMOLKA: Oh, I’m losing my virginity. I love you, Paul. I love you so much.
(Bernardo repositions the video camera at the side of the bed. He motions to Homolka to enter the frame while he looks directly into the camera.)
BERNARDO: Hi, Tam.
HOMOLKA: Hi, Paul.
BERNARDO: Gonna make me happy?
HOMOLKA: I love sucking you.
BERNARDO: You’re better than Karla, that’s for sure.
HOMOLKA: I love you. Will you fuck me, Paul?
(While Homolka performs oral sex, Bernardo holds the picture of Tammy.)
HOMOLKA: I’m a virgin.
BERNARDO: Oh, Tammy. Oh, I love you. Yes. Yes. Yes, my little virgin. Yes.
HOMOLKA: I love you, Paul. I’m your virgin.
(Homolka performs fellatio on Bernardo for twenty minutes until he climaxes.)
(Video recording stops.)
The next night Bernardo went out driving. Before leaving, he told Homolka that if he came back with a girl, she was to hide or pretend to be his sister. He returned with a young woman about 16 years old and the two had sex while Homolka hid behind the drapes.
The next night, Bernardo made another tape. This one was made by a roaring fireplace in the same room where Tammy had died. Bernardo was stretched out on his back with a glass of wine in his hand as Homolka performed fellatio. In between, she would stop and talk:
(Video recording starts.)
HOMOLKA: I loved it when you fucked my little sister. I loved it when you fucked Tammy. I loved it when you took her virginity. You’re the king. I love licking your ass, Paul. I’ll bet Tammy would have loved to lick your ass. I loved it when you put Snuffles up her ass.
Female Serial Killers Page 39
