The Enigma of a Violent Woman

A Critical Examination of the Case of Karla Homolka

Jennifer Kilty, Sylvie Frigon, Jennifer M. Kilty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780367596750
• eBook ISBN: 9781317033967
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

Karla Homolka has proven to be a figure of enduring interest to the public and media for the last 20 years. However, despite the widespread Canadian and international public commentary and media frenzy that has encircled this case, Homolka herself remains an enigma to most who write about her.

In contrast to much of the contemporary discussion on this case, this book offers a comprehensive and detailed examination of the legal, public and media understandings and explanations of Homolka's criminality. Drawing from multiple fields of study and varied bodies of critical literature, the book uses Homolka as an object lesson to interrogate some of the narratives and conceptualizations of 'violent women', the problematic normative constructions of womanhood and 'acceptable femininity', leniency in sentencing, taboo and disgust, and questions of remorse.

The authors address broad questions about how women convicted of violence are typically constructed across four sites: the courts; the academy; the mainstream media; and public discourse. This unique text is extremely important for feminist criminology and socio-legal studies, offering the first comprehensive academic effort to engage in dialogue about this important and fascinating case.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315616124-1

For more than 20 years Canadians have been fascinated with and often disgusted by the enigma that is Karla Homolka. Her infamy stems from her participation in the abduction, sexual assault, and murder of three young women, including the accidental death of her younger sister Tammy. There are many different accounts of the tragic story of Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, including those that are detailed in the criminal court transcripts, press archives, true crime novels, academic texts, a comic book (Killer Karla) a Hollywood major motion picture (Karla), and dramatic and infotainment television shows featuring episodes based on case details that were “ripped from the headlines.” To varying degrees, all of these representations search for meaning in what can only be understood as meaningless violence through attempts to explain Homolka's and Bernardo's actions. Ultimately, these popular characterizations monsterize, psychologize, and infantilize Homolka (Morrissey 2003) and our inability to reach a plausible explanation for her participation in these acts of sexualized violence culminates in her construction as “morally vacuous” (McGillivray 1998) and what we identify as a lingering enigma. She is a shadow that we cannot pin down. It is important to note, however, that the gaze in all of these texts, narratives, and visual representations is unidirectional, primarily focused on Karla Homolka and her torrid but volatile relationship with Paul Bernardo, while Bernardo is rarely at the centre of the gaze. As but another violent man, Bernardo is less fascinating, less atypical; this is partly due to the fact that he received a life sentence and was declared a dangerous offender, which the media interpreted as a more just sentence than Homolka's plea agreement. While Homolka remains central to our analyses, in this book we attempt to turn our analytic gaze outward and back onto the media, the courts, and the public in order to examine the intense cultural fascination with this case and with her. In this way, we somewhat decentre Homolka from our gaze. Rather than trying to explain the inexplicability of her participation in a series of horrific sexual assaults and homicides, we instead situate Homolka as an object lesson in order to examine the prolonged and intense social interest with her role in this crime drama.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with this case, we begin by providing an overview of the main facts and details before engaging in a brief discussion of agency, which is a central concern to those authors, both scholarly and journalist, who have written about Homolka and her involvement in this case. To better contextualize the analyses found in the proceeding chapters, we then consider the importance of the visual (via a discussion of the videotape evidence) in fixing the public's gaze concretely on Homolka.

The Facts of the Case

Those around her described Karla Homolka as “a regular kid” (Appleby 1993, A1) who displayed “nothing outstanding” (Brazao 1993, B2) before the details of her crimes came to light. She met Paul Bernardo while attending a veterinary conference in Scarborough, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, in October 1987. Homolka was only 17 at the time; she lived with her parents and two sisters in St Catharines, Ontario, while attending high school and working part-time at a pet store. Bernardo was 23 and working as a book-keeper having just graduated with a degree in accounting from the University of Toronto. Unbeknownst to Homolka, Bernardo had already perpetrated a series of sexual assaults and attempted sexual assaults in Scarborough that led to his dubbing as “The Scarborough Rapist.” Between 1987–90 Bernardo raped or sexually assaulted upwards of 18 women and lingering speculation remains about whether there are other victims (Campbell 1996). The police first became aware of Bernardo as a potential suspect in these rape cases as early as June 1990 when they received two calls identifying him as the suspect in the widely publicized composite drawing generated from victim descriptions, including one call from the wife of Bernardo's close friend. Bernardo was interviewed by police in November 1990 and voluntarily gave samples for forensic testing, although because the authorities did not prioritize him as a suspect given his social characteristics (that is, educated, white, middle class) and confident congenial presentation of self, it took 26 months – during which time he and Homolka committed their crimes – before the Toronto police were informed that Bernardo's DNA matched that of the Scarborough Rapist and for him to be placed under 24-hour surveillance (Williams 2004).

The pair quickly formed an intimate relationship and Homolka was described as being “‘wildly’ in love with her Toronto beau” (Brazao 1993, B2); the two became engaged on 24 December 1989. Official medical and psychiatric reports presented during Homolka's sentencing hearing and throughout Bernardo's criminal trial documented that the power dynamics that structured the couple's relationship were unequal and marred by intimate partner violence. The couple's 6-year age difference contributed to their unequal power relations and to Bernardo's control of Homolka, and, over time, he increasingly exerted violent physical, sexual, and emotional abuse against her and sought to control her every action. The FBI would later suggest that Homolka was a compliant victim of Bernardo, who they characterized as a sexual sadist (Galligan 1996).

Over the course of their relationship, Bernardo also became obsessed with Karla's younger sister, Tammy. His desires extended well beyond mere interest; he spied on Tammy, masturbated in her room while she slept and asked Karla to assist him in sexually assaulting her. Homolka and Bernardo first attempted to sexually assault Tammy in July 1990 after feeding her spaghetti laced with Valium; however, Tammy began to regain consciousness during the assault and the couple aborted their plans. On 23 December 1990 following a family Christmas party at the Homolka family home, the couple drugged Tammy with the anaesthetic halothane that Karla had stolen from the veterinary clinic where she worked. Bernardo and Homolka filmed their sexual assault against Tammy until they realized she had aspirated and choked on her own vomit. Despite a large and very visible chemical burn on Tammy's cheek and the suspicious actions of both Karla and Paul, which included cleaning the basement and laundering the sheets on which Tammy had lain during the sexual assault while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Tammy's death was ruled accidental.¹ Shortly after Tammy Homolka's death, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka rented a large cape cod style bungalow home in Port Dalhousie, an upscale suburb of St Catharines that rests on the shores of Lake Ontario.

In June 1991, Homolka brought home 15-year-old “Jane Doe” after spending the day with her; Homolka met Doe at the local pet store where she worked in 1989 and the two became friends. The couple gave Doe an alcoholic drink laced with the sedative Halcion, which Homolka stole from her employer at the veterinary clinic; after Doe lost consciousness they sexually assaulted her, again filming the attack. The next morning, Jane Doe awoke feeling nauseated and thought that she was suffering from a hangover; she had no memory of the sexual assault. Two months later, and in the same fashion, the couple perpetrated a second sexual assault against Doe.

Shortly after the first attack on Jane Doe, Bernardo kidnapped Leslie Mahaffy from her backyard on 15 June 1991. The couple kept Mahaffy alive for just over 24 hours, during which time they repeatedly sexually assaulted her, again recording the events with their home video camera. On 16 June Paul Bernardo strangled Leslie Mahaffy to death with a black electrical cord. The couple stored Mahaffy's body in the root cellar of their home in order to host the Homolka family for a father's day dinner on the evening of 16 June 1991. The following day, Paul Bernardo dismembered Mahaffy's body and encased her body parts in a series of concrete blocks. When Homolka returned home from work that day, she assisted Bernardo in disposing the concrete blocks and the tools he used to dismember Mahaffy's body in nearby Lake Gibson. In a strange twist of fate, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka were married on the day that Mahaffy's body was discovered. While Bernardo abducted Mahaffy on his own, Homolka assisted him in kidnapping Kristen French from a church parking lot on 16 April 1992. The couple posed as tourists asking for directions in order to get French to approach their car. As with Mahaffy, the couple took the girl back to their home and proceeded to sexually assault her while filming the events. Bernardo strangled Kristen French to death with the same black electrical cord he used to kill Leslie Mahaffy after holding her captive for 3 days so that the couple could attend Easter dinner with Homolka's family.

Following the discovery of Kristen French's body less than a kilometre from Leslie Mahaffy's gravesite, the Niagara and Halton Regional Police Forces created the Green Ribbon Task Force (GRTF) in a collaborative effort to find the killer. Despite the joint cooperation of these two regional police forces, “the communication between GRT[F] and the Metro [Toronto] Service [who were investigating Bernardo for his potential involvement in the Scarborough rapes], about Bernardo was inadequate. There was no case management information system to ensure the effective communication of suspect information” (Campbell 1996, 161). In addition to the lack of open communication and information sharing, the information management systems that were available at the time were inadequate in terms of managing the volume of public response and investigatory information uncovered, meaning there was no way of assembling the information pertaining to a potential suspect. In his formal review of the Bernardo Investigation, Justice Archie Campbell (1996, 161) concluded that “Metro and the GRT[F] might as well have been working in different countries so far as Bernardo was concerned, and Bernardo slipped through the net.”

On 27 December 1992, Paul Bernardo severely beat Karla Homolka with a large metal flashlight. She was hospitalized because of her injuries, which at the time she claimed were the result of an auto accident. Upon returning to work in January 1993, Homolka's co-workers alerted her family to her condition and her parents insisted she leave Bernardo. When she was collecting her belongings Homolka unsuccessfully searched for the videotapes of the sexual assaults, which she knew Bernardo moved between different secret caches around the house. Homolka left her husband and following her parents’ advice went to stay with her aunt and uncle in Brampton, Ontario, in order to create geographic distance between she and Bernardo. This coincided with the police learning of Bernardo's forensic match to the Scarborough rapes 1 month later.

On 11 February 1993 Homolka retained a lawyer and began the process of making a deal to share information about Bernardo with the police, including disclosure about the existence and content of the videotaped evidence, in exchange for a plea agreement and lesser sentence. The police arrested Bernardo in his home on 17 February 1993. Because the videotapes of the crimes were not recovered during the lengthy police search of the couple's home, the police and Crown had a weak forensic case against Bernardo and needed Homolka's testimony to ensure a conviction. While Crown counsel rejected awarding Homolka full immunity for her role in the crimes in exchange for her testimony against Bernardo, eventually they struck a plea agreement. Plea-bargaining is widely practiced in Canada and is a form of negotiation between a person charged with an offence and a crown prosecutor. It most often takes place before the trial, may take several forms and serves two purposes. First, it increases the certainty of the outcome via a guilty plea. Second, plea-bargaining also saves valuable court time, expense and the inconvenience of a criminal trial. Crown prosecutors felt they needed Karla Homolka to testify against Paul Bernardo in order to secure a conviction against him and agreed to exchange her testimony and cooperation with the police for a 12-year sentence. When this “deal” was made public it sparked media and public uproar. Although she had disclosed the existence of the videotapes of the sexual assaults, the police did not find them in their searches of the home; after the police search of the home ended, Bernardo instructed his then lawyer, Ken Murray, to secure them. Murray retrieved the videotapes, which were hidden in the bathroom ceiling behind the light fixture, and withheld them for 17 months during which time Homolka's plea bargain was finalized. When Murray finally turned the videotapes over to the police, many questioned the soundness of Homolka's “sweetheart deal” and the Ontario provincial government ordered a formal inquiry to investigate the validity of the plea agreement, which was conducted by the Honourable Justice P. Galligan (1996). While Galligan concluded that at the time it was made the plea agreement was necessary to ensure a conviction against Bernardo, had Ken Murray not withheld the videotapes there would have been no need to make the deal. Homolka disclosed the details of her involvement in the sexual assaults and homicides and gave testimony as a witness for the Crown at Paul Bernardo's trial in exchange for pleading guilty to the two murders. She received a reduced sentence controversially described as 5 years for each Mahaffy and French and 2 years for her sister Tammy Homolka, for a total of 12 years. Once the deal was formalized, a preliminary hearing was ordered at which time Homolka pled guilty.

In June 1993, Karla Homolka pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter for the deaths of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Her confession and the details of the case were presented at this time, but a strict publication ban was enacted to ensure that Bernardo would receive a fair trial. Subsequently, while unofficial news and rumours began to circulate about the case,² few of the details could legally be reported, which led to a furor among the press who felt that the 2-year wait until Bernardo's trial was too long for such revelations to remain secret. Homolka was sentenced to 12 years in prison and was transferred to the Kingston Prison for Women to begin serving her time. She would spend 2 years in prison before being called to testify at Bernardo's trial.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Dissecting the Gaze: The Contradictory Constructions of Karla Homolka as in Danger and Dangerous
• 3 Ideal Victims and Inconsistent Offenders: Notes on the Effects of Whiteness, Gender, Space, and Class on the Cultural Fixation on Karla Homolka
• 4 Breaking Boundaries: Notes on the Effects of Taboo and Disgust on the Cultural (Re)Presentations of Karla Homolka
• 5 Apologies and Iced Cappuccinos: Examining Media and Juridical Interpretations of Karla Homolka’s Remorse Performative
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix: Methodology
• References
• Index