Paul Bernardo | The Ken & Barbie Killers

**chris** · #1 ● 07-09-2008, 01:04 AM

Paul Bernardo
Kingston Penitentiary
555 King St. West
Kingston, ON, Canada
K7L 4V7

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**chris** · #2 ● 07-09-2008, 01:04 AM

Paul Bernardo and his accomplice/wife, Karla Homolka claimed 3 lives and were Canada's most reviled criminals. They looked like a Barbie and Ken pair to others.

After the two met in Scarborough in 1987, where Bernardo was already the unknown perpetrator of a series of rapes being investigated in part by the FBI, they began a relationship of sexual perversion marked by escalating fantsies involving Homolka's fifteen-year-old sister Tammy. Those fantasies were tragically realised on December 23, 1990 when the two drugged the girl unconscious while alone with her in the Homolka families St. Catherine's home. During the subsequent rape by Bernardo, taped by Homolka when she herself wasn't sexually assaulting her own sister, Tammy choked on her own vomit and died. The murder was ruled accidental when an autopsy revealed nothing suspicious.

Undeterred by the close call, Bernardo brought home two abducted girls before his eventual capture. The first was fourteen-year-old Leslie Mahaffy, kidnapped during a late-night chance encounter with Bernardo during June of 1991. She was raped and beaten for over 24 hours before being strangled with an electrical cord, dismembered, and encased in blocks of cement. Her remains were dumped in a nearby lake where they were discovered on June 29 because the cement had broken apart under the water and revealed the grim contents. That very same day, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka were married.

Next was Kristen French, 15, nabbed after school by the killer couple on April 16, 1992. The two took turns sexually molesting and raping the innocent girl at their home while, of course, capturing the assault on tape. French was subjected painful humiliations repeatedly before she was finally strangled by Bernardo and is trusty cord more than two days after her abduction. Her body was discarded and discovered in an illegal trash dump near Burlington.

It was a DNA test by the investigators of the Scarborough rape spree that finally brought Bernardo to justice. The lab work had unfortunately been caught in a backlog since well before their suspects first killing. Homolka, who had just recently left her twisted husband, was sought out by investigators looking into Mahaffy and French's slayings and she soon cut a deal which would eventually sentence her to twelve years in prison. Bernardo's tapes had not yet been located, forcing authorities to cut the lenient deal with Homolka in return for her testimony. Bernardo was arrested and put on trial, the tapes were later discovered, and were nearly unbeatable evidence against the serial killer. He earned a life sentence for the murders of Tammy Homolka, Mahaffy, and French. The trial will forever be remembered due to the graphic content of the murder tapes, which were deemed so awful that the gallery was only allowed to listen while the prosecution, defense, judge, and jury watched.

Homolka has since become the focal point of the two due to public outcry concerning her generous plea deal, which would have never been necessary if Bernardo's lawyer had turned the damning video evidence over immediately after discovering the tapes hidden (police had not been able to locate them previously) behind a light fixure in a drop ceiling in Bernardo and Homolka's home. It was eventually decided that she could be deemed a dangerous sex offender and would not be eligible for parole of any sort, forcing her to serve out her twelve-year sentence no matter what the circumstances.