The Ken and Barbie Killers | Karla Homolka & Paul Bernardo

Leslie Erin Mahaffy was born on July 5th, 1976, to an oceanographer father and a teacher mother; her father’s career took him away from home for weeks at a time, leaving Leslie with her younger brother and their mother. The two children were incredibly close, never going a day without some form of communication.

As she got older, Leslie frequently spent time away from home, but she always kept in contact with her younger brother during her prolonged absences.

Shortly before Leslie vanished, a group of her friends died in a car accident and on June 14th, 1991, Leslie attended a wake for one of the four. Following the wake at the funeral home, a large group of teens met up in the woods for an informal memorial where they could reminisce and drink.

By 2 am, Leslie and a group of her friends walked home together, stopping at Leslie’s place. When she found the side door locked, Leslie promised her friends that she’d be fine and that the front door was open for her. It was not open, and Leslie was now alone in the early of the morning without a place to stay.

Not wanting to wake her mother, Leslie walked to a nearby Marcs Milk for a pay phone, calling her friend for permission to sleep over for the night. She declined, but the two continued a lengthy conversation over the next thirty minutes. Leslie told her friend that she would just go home and wake her mother.

On her way back home, Leslie ran into Bernardo, who claimed he was going to break into the house next door. Leslie was unbothered, taking a cigarette that was offered to her; the only issue was the cigarettes were in the back of his car. Once Leslie was close enough to the car, Bernardo wrapped his sweatshirt around Leslie’s head before shoving her into the vehicle, driving her to his and Homolka’s home.

Homolka claimed that Bernardo threatened Leslie with a knife to get her compliance, but both agreed that Homolka wasn’t at the scene of the kidnapping.

Bernardo later claimed that he was on Keller Court to steal license plates and that Leslie was just there.

When Leslie failed to appear at the other funerals, the friend she called in the early hours called the Mahaffy home to check in. Leslie’s mother, Debbie, started searching for Leslie but found no trace of her young daughter, so she contacted the police.

On June 18th, Debbie filled out the paperwork to claim Leslie as a runaway and have her arrested as a runaway. But, two weeks later, on Leslie’s birthday, her family knew she was unable to contact them.

Back when Bernardo made it back to the bungalow with Leslie, he seemed to brag to Homolka that they had a victim. Just as they did with Tammy, Bernardo and Homolka taped themselves torturing and sexually abusing Leslie while they blasted pop music. At one point in the video, Bernardo could be heard saying. “You’re doing a good job, Leslie, a damned good job.”

During the attack, Leslie’s blindfold began slipping. Likely knowing that her life would be substantially more at risk should she see her attackers’ faces, Leslie informed them that it was starting to slip from over her eyes.

On June 15th, Bernardo claimed that Homolka fed Leslie a lethal dose of Halcion, while Homolka claimed that Bernardo strangled her. Either way, both accounts place Leslie’s murder as taking place on June 15th, and they moved her body into the basement to hide her before they were able to dispose of her.

The following day, Homolka’s family had a Father’s Day dinner at the couple’s home. Homolka made a special effort to keep her mother from wandering downstairs and finding Leslie’s dead body. After they left, Bernardo and Homolka made plans on how to dispose of Leslie’s body — eventually, deciding on dismembering Leslie’s body and encasing the pieces in concrete.

On June 17th, Bernardo purchased a dozen bags of cement, keeping the receipts which were damning at his trial. Back at the bungalow, Bernardo used his grandfather’s circular saw to dismember Leslie’s body before placing her inside wet concrete. This was one of the few times that Homolka and Bernardo’s accounts of the events matched, as they both said Homolka had no part in this process as she was at work.

Over the next few days, Bernardo and Homolka made trips to Lake Gibson, 11 miles south of their home in Port Dalhousie. The block containing Leslie’s torso weighed around 90 kg and bobbed up to the surface once Bernardo and Homolka had left, eventually floating until it lay near the shore.

On June 29th, Homolka and Bernardo’s wedding day, Michael Doucette and his son Michael Jr were fishing when they found the weighty cement block. The police were contacted, and they dragged the lake for the rest of the pieces of cement. Leslie used her braces and dental records to confirm her identity.

Bernardo later claimed that he had intended to release Leslie, but when her blindfold fell, Homolka panicked. He claimed Homolka planned to murder Leslie by injecting an air bubble into her bloodstream, triggering an air embolism.

The Murder of Kristen French

On April 16th, 1992, Kristen French had just recently set off from home after she finished school, following the same 15-minute path she always took home, rushing straight home after school every day to take care of her dog. When she failed to return home in the expected window of time to care for her dog, her parents were convinced she had been met with foul play and called the police. Within twenty-four hours, the Niagara Regional Police Service had assembled a team and began searching her after-school route.

During searches closest to the school, the police recovered Kristen’s shoe in the parking lot. They also found several eyewitnesses who had watched the abduction happen from multiple different angles. This confirmed the French parent’s worst fears: Kristen was taken while walking home.

The day Kristen went missing, Bernardo and Homolka had driven through St. Catharines, hunting for another victim. Aside from the students walking home from local schools, the streets were relatively empty. As the couple passed the Holy Cross Secondary School, they spotted 15-year-old Kristen. They pulled over along her path, stopping in the parking lot of a nearby Grace Lutheran Church.

Homolka approached Kristen while holding out a map. She asked the teenager for help, and while Kristen was looking over the map, Bernardo attacked her from behind. At knifepoint, Kristen was forced into the passenger seat of the car while Homolka got into the back, restraining her by pulling her hair.

Over the Easter weekend, three days in total, Bernardo and Homolka videotaped themselves torturing, raping and sodomising Kristen. They forced her to drink copious amounts of alcohol. Kristen would fight against her abductors constantly, often being heard on the tape saying, “Some things are worth dying for.” and “I don’t know how your wife can stand to be around you.”

At trial, prosecutors said Bernardo always intended to murder Kristen because she never wore a blindfold throughout her torture.

On April 19th, 1992, Bernardo and Homolka murdered Kristen before leaving the house to go to an Easter dinner at Homolkas’ parents’ home. At her trial, Homolka testified that Bernardo strangled Kristen for seven minutes while she watched, but Bernardo claimed that Homolka beat Kristen with a rubber mallet because she had tried escaping. He then said they fitted a noose around Kristen’s neck and strangled her with it.

Both agree that immediately following the murder, Homolka went and fixed her hair.

On April 30th, 1992, Kristen’s body was found in a ditch along №1 Sideroad in North Burlington, around 45 minutes from where she was abducted in St. Catharines. Her hair had been hacked away, and she had been washed. It was thought her hair was removed as a trophy, but Homolka testified that it was cut to impede identification.

The Capture of Bernardo and Homolka

Homolka and Bernardo were both questioned multiple times by the police in connection to the Scarborough Rapist investigation, Tammy Homolka’s death and Bernardo’s stalking of other women.

On May 12th, 1992, Bernardo was briefly interviewed by officers who decided that he was an unlikely suspect despite his admission to previously being questioned in connection to the Scarborough Rapist cases. But another friend of Bernardo’s reported him as a possible suspect in the murders by the end of the month.

On the 27th of December, for unknown reasons, Bernardo and Homolka got into a physical altercation in which Bernardo beat Homolka with a flashlight, leaving multiple bruises. Homolka returned to work on the 4th of January, claiming the marks and injuries were from a car accident; her co-workers were sceptical and called Homolka’s parents.

They collected her the following day, removing her and her things from the bungalow she shared with Bernardo. They had missed something, however, as Homolka rushed back inside and began frantically searching for something she didn’t find. At the St. Catharines General Hospital, Homolka gave her statement, filing charges against Bernardo for domestic violence. Homolka moved back in with her parents after her stay at the hospital.

For it, he was arrested and then released. Shortly after the release, Bernardo’s friend had to step in and prevent him from committing suicide following the discovery of a note left by Bernardo.

In December 1992, the DNA Bernardo voluntarily gave to the police two years prior was finally tested by the Centre of Forensic Sciences.

After twenty-six months, Toronto police were informed that the Scarborough Rapist was Paul Bernardo, and they placed him under 24-hour surveillance.

On February 9th, 1993, the Metro Toronto Sexual Assault Squad investigators interviewed Homolka; she told them about the abuse she faced at his hands, brushing off their suspicions about Bernardo. After returning home that night, Homolkka told her aunt and uncle that she knew Bernardo was the Scarborough Rapist and that she and Bernardo were involved with the murders of Leslie and Kristen. She even told them that the rapes and murders were videotaped.

Following her confession, the case of Tammy Homolka’s death was reopened, and investigations began.

On February 13th, Bernardo was arrested on several charges, and the police obtained a search warrant for his property.

The warrant only allowed the officers to search the home but not remove anything from it; the damage had to be kept to a minimum, and should they find the tapes, they were to be reviewed within the house. The search of Bernardo and Homolka’s bungalow lasted a total of 71 days, including updated warrants, but the only tape they discovered was of Homolka sexually assaulting “Jane Doe.”

During a call from jail, Bernardo revealed to his lawyer that the rape videos were hidden in a ceiling light fixture in the upstairs bedroom. This lawyer found those tapes, and rather than turning them into the police; he hid them from investigators. The lawyer, Ken Murray, was acquitted of obstruction of justice for these actions.

Following Murrary’s resignation from his role as Bernardo’s attorney, his new attorney, John Rosen, found the tapes and turned them over to the police.

On May 5th, Homolka was offered a plea bargain of twelve years imprisonment, a plea which was finalised nine days later, and Homolka began almost immediately giving statements to the police. She told them that Bernardo had raped as many as thirty women, which were twice as many as the police suspected. It’s said that this plea bargain wouldn’t have gone through had the police have been given the tapes by Murray when he had first discovered them.

The following sections shouldn’t exist, but the following are the lives of Homolka and Bernardo after their arrests.

Homolka’s Life After The Murders

On July 6th, 1993, Homolka was sentenced to 12 years for two counts of manslaughter as a part of her plea bargain. She was charged with the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.

The following February, Homolka divorced Bernardo.

• She was released on July 4th 2005, with the following conditions:
• She was to tell police her home address, work address and with whom she lives — she must inform the police as soon as any of these changes.
• Should she change her name, she has to tell the police.
• If she plans to be away from her home for more than 48 hours, she has to give 72 hours’ notice.
• She cannot contact Bernardo, the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French or, the woman known as Jane Doe, or any violent criminals.
• She is forbidden to be with people under the age of 16
• She is forbidden from consuming drugs other than prescription medicine.
• She is required to continue therapy and counselling.
• She was required to provide police with a DNA sample.

Should she violate any of the above, Homolka could serve a maximum of 2 years imprisonment.

In 2006, Homolka tried to change her name to Emily Chiara Tremblay, but her request was denied.

In 2007, the first of Homolka’s three children was born; while at the hospital, several nurses refused to care for Homolka. She fled Canada for the Antilles to attempt to give her 1-year-old a “normal life” without his mother’s murderous actions causing him harm.

In April 2016, Homolka lived with her children in Châteauguay, Quebec. Parents at schools Homolka’s children attended expressed great concern over Homolka’s presence, their concerns growing despite reassurances from the school and the school board.

In January 2020, she was known to live in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield without her husband or her three children.

While I personally believe it’s ridiculous that Homolka was able to continue living a life outside of prison when she played a role in ending three lives for her and her husband’s sick pleasure, her three children are entirely innocent in the matter. I hope that they can live their lives without being dragged down by their mother’s murderous history.

Bernardo’s Life After The Murders

On February 21st, 2006, Bernardo confessed to sexually assaulting at least ten women in attacks that were not previously attributed to him; most of them were in 1986 during the Scarborough Rapist’s spree.

Authorities also suspect Bernardo in other crimes, including a string of rapes in Amherst, New York, and the drowning of Terri Anderson in St. Catharines. He has never acknowledged his possible involvement in either.

Bernardo became eligible for parole in February 2018 but was denied parole. He once again tried for parole in 2021 but was denied after an hour of discussions. Bernardo’s next parole hearing is scheduled for February 2024.

That is all for this case; thank you so much for reading!