Paul's Girl

There live among us people who have, by their despicably horrible actions forfeited the right to live. But as a humane society Canada disciplines killers with society's displeasure by incarceration, not capital punishment, even if those who are charged with multiple murders well planned and deviously executed, throwing in torture for good measure, are tried by jury and sentenced by judge to life imprisonment.

Life imprisonment in Canada is no longer than 25 years. And the criminal murderer is free after serving a major portion of his/her sentence to go before a parole board and plead good prison behaviour, meriting early release. Unless the murderers represent a pair, a man and woman, married to one another, and one of them agreed to surrender all she knows about the man she charges is the real culprit, her husband, in exchange for lighter punishment.

CBC Fifth Estate - aired March 1, 2006 - Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka . Photo credit : CBC Fifth Estate

Even if this woman, as much a sexual sadist as her husband, aided him in drugging and raping her own younger sister. A young woman who died after being raped by her sister's husband, drowning in her own vomit.

The above describes two young people who recognized in one another a morbid attraction to sexual sadism, and who ventured out in their greater Toronto neighbourhood and beyond to abduct first one then another young teen-age school girl, each to be kept bound and hidden, repeatedly raped, the rapes videorecorded for future delectation. Preceding these vicious predations, rapes without abductions had been occurring, alarming the city.

Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo murdered Homolka’s sister Tammy Homolka as well as Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Credit: Handout

But it was the brutality meted out to these two young girls, 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy of Burlington, Ontario and Kristen French, 15, of St.Catharines, Ontario, and the dreadful manner of their deaths in 1991 and 1992 that horrified the country. Their murderers, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, were finally taken into custody, charged with serial murder, and found guilty of those crimes unspeakably inhuman in the nature of their disgusting brutality.

Crimes that simply seemed not to upset their psychic equilibrium one whit. Karla Homolka served 12 years in prison for her crimes, a shortened sentence given her to reflect her willingness to become a Crown witness. She ultimately married her prison lawyer's brother, moved with him to Guadeloupe, and gave birth to three children. Responsible for the reprehensible humiliation and death of two young girls, this monster lives on to enjoy a 'normal' life.

Her former husband, Paul Bernardo, is also on the cusp of marrying. He will doubtless remain incarcerated for the length of his sentence, and possibly if prison psychiatrists consider him an ongoing risk at that point, it's possible he might not be released when his prison time has expired, but doubtful. In the interim, should he indeed marry the 30 year old woman described by a newspaper which has written of the matter as university-educated; "brilliant but troubled", he will be permitted conjugal visits.

His wife-to-be, a 30-year-old living in London, Ontario, carried on a correspondence with this disgusting parody of a human being for three months. During that time she came to the conclusion that he is a kind, Christian man entirely innocent of the crimes which have been attributed to him, irrespective of the evidence and the horrified public opprobrium, let alone the sentence Canadian justice meted out to him.

This misguided, delusional young woman now wears an ankle tattoo reading "Paul's girl".