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Canada Braces For Homolka Release!
FOCUS: KARLA HOMOLKA
Bracing for Homolka's release
St. Catharines, Ont., must revisit the grisly deaths of two girls as one of their killers is set to be freed
By TOM BUCKHAM
News Staff Reporter
6/28/2005
Derek Gee/Buffalo News
"We've never been allowed to get over it."
Tim Rigby, mayor of St. Catherines, Ont.
ST. CATHARINES, Ont. - On a sunny afternoon in the neighborhood known as Old Port Dalhousie, a man trimming his back yard at Bayview Drive and Christie Street looks up warily as a reporter and photographer approach.
"Is it about Karla Homolka?" he asks, waving off the unwanted visitors. "I have nothing to say. I've had enough of her."
At a nearby home, mention of Homolka provokes a similar reaction.
"The story has been done, and done over - too much stuff," Carlyn O'Connor complains. "I'm sick of it. Sick of her." For St. Catharines, the story of how Homolka helped then-husband, Paul Bernardo, rape and murder two teenage girls in their home at Bayview and Christie in the early 1990s - and videotaped the gruesome acts - is the stain that will not wash out. It is an episode the community desperately wants to forget but cannot, for reasons beyond its control.
With Homolka due to be released from a Quebec prison in the coming days, after serving 12 years for manslaughter, Canada's crime of the last century is back in international headlines. And that is causing still more anguish for the quintessentially Canadian - that is, civilized - Garden City.
"It has always been an extremely painful story for people in this community. Now it's back again," lamented Andrea Kriluck, managing editor of the daily Standard. "In some ways, there has been no passage of time."
"You want to get past things like this," Mayor Tim Rigby said. "The problem is, we've never been allowed to get over it."
Among "most reviled"
The outrageousness of the killings almost guaranteed that.
Start with the victims, so young and full of promise.
Leslie Mahaffy, 14, of Burlington, vanished in June 1991. Her dismembered body, encased in concrete, was found two weeks later in a lake near Thorold.
Kristen French, 15, was abducted as she walked home from school in St. Catharines on Good Friday in 1992. Her body turned up two weeks later in a ditch 30 miles away.
Then consider the attractive, blond "Ken and Barbie" killers. Homolka was a veterinary assistant who could have been anyone's "girl next door," Bernardo a tall, handsome accountant from Toronto. They married in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1991 on the same day Leslie's corpse surfaced in Lake Gibson.
But it is what happened in court after the couple was arrested that remains stuck in the minds and craws of Canadians. Homolka pleaded guilty in 1993 to manslaughter in the deaths of Kristen and Leslie, in exchange for her testimony against Bernardo.
But during the plea hearing in St. Catharines, which took place under a court-ordered publication ban, it was disclosed that Homolka also had played a role in the death of her younger sister, Tammy, who was raped by Bernardo while unconscious, then choked on her vomit after Homolka drugged her in the Homolka family home in December 1990.
The plea deal was made before officials knew of videotapes that showed Homolka was an active participant in the rapes of the three girls, as well as the rape of an unidentified fourth woman who survived.
The tapes helped send Bernardo to prison for life but were discovered too late to be used against Homolka, who was sentenced to 12 years on two manslaughter charges. Resentment against Homolka, labeled one of Canada's "most reviled convicts," has been further fueled the last decade by news reports about her lack of remorse, about psychiatrists' judgment that she is likely to offend again and about trysts behind bars with inmates.
"Sense of injustice"
As the time frame for her release approaches - anytime from Thursday through next Tuesday - Canadians feel "a great sense of injustice," Tim Danson, a Toronto lawyer who represents the French and Mahaffy families, told CNN. In St. Catharines, old anger boils beneath the surface, along with a sense of dread.
How will the Standard treat Homolka's release?
The newspaper did not send a reporter to Quebec's Joliette Prison to cover Homolka's parole hearings or the announcement that she will be freed soon. Nor will the Standard be on hand when she walks.
"It is an exceptionally difficult story for people in this community," Kriluck said. "There is great sensitivity toward the French and Mahaffy families.
"So it is a fine balance for us. Is (Homolka) a significant story? Absolutely. Still, our telling will take into account the sensitivity of the community and will focus on victims."
"It's going to be extremely difficult for the families," said Rigby, who has been mayor for eight years and served on a civic committee that in 1995 demolished the beige rented house on Christie at Bayview where Leslie and Kristen were slain. Rigby said "a lot of positive things have happened" in St. Catharines since the infamous murder case. The community of 130,000 on Lake Ontario, 30 miles northwest of Buffalo, is sharing in the prosperity that casino gaming and the proliferation of wineries and golf courses has brought to the Niagara Peninsula. But the city seems fated to be forever tied to the Homolka-Bernardo case.
Infamy may fade away
One who thinks the story may finally go away is Stephen Williams, who wrote two books about the case. Other notorious female killers managed to reinvent themselves after paying their debt to society, Williams said. Winnie Ruth Judd, convicted for the 1931 mutilation deaths of her roommates, escaped hanging by purportedly faking insanity and died wealthy in California at 92, Williams pointed out. And Juliet Hulme, who went to prison for helping her friend Pauline Parker bludgeon her mother to death in New Zealand, grew up to become Anne Perry, the Scottish crime novelist.
"The past is telling me that Miss Homolka will eventually drop from sight and prosper," Williams said - even though, after interviewing her at length for his 2003 book "Karla: A Pact With the Devil," he regards her as "a pretty serious monster."
Homolka, 35, laid the groundwork for a new life by earning a psychology degree and a spotless jailhouse record, Williams noted.
"She's not the brightest lamp on the street - but still bright," he said. "And she is very adaptable, which portends very well for her disappearence and ultimate prosperity."
Homolka is unlikely to return to St. Catharines, where she is emphatically persona non grata.
"There is a very clear sentiment in the community that she is unwelcome," Kriluck said. "Some people support her, but the majority do not want her to return."
Ontario officials made it difficult for Homolka to return to the province anonymously by persuading a Quebec court to impose strict restrictions on her movements. "No matter where she goes, our justice system will be watching her," said Michael Bryant, Ontario's attorney general. Homolka has indicated she may settle in Montreal, whose mostly French-speaking population is less attuned to her horrific crimes.
"Her biggest fear," Williams said, "is the chaos of independence that she faces in the outside world."
e-mail: tbuckham@buffnews.com
This is one sick bitch! She was just as guity as her husband and she deserves to be raped in prison with a broom handle for the rest of her life!
Bracing for Homolka's release
St. Catharines, Ont., must revisit the grisly deaths of two girls as one of their killers is set to be freed
By TOM BUCKHAM
News Staff Reporter
6/28/2005
Derek Gee/Buffalo News
"We've never been allowed to get over it."
Tim Rigby, mayor of St. Catherines, Ont.
ST. CATHARINES, Ont. - On a sunny afternoon in the neighborhood known as Old Port Dalhousie, a man trimming his back yard at Bayview Drive and Christie Street looks up warily as a reporter and photographer approach.
"Is it about Karla Homolka?" he asks, waving off the unwanted visitors. "I have nothing to say. I've had enough of her."
At a nearby home, mention of Homolka provokes a similar reaction.
"The story has been done, and done over - too much stuff," Carlyn O'Connor complains. "I'm sick of it. Sick of her." For St. Catharines, the story of how Homolka helped then-husband, Paul Bernardo, rape and murder two teenage girls in their home at Bayview and Christie in the early 1990s - and videotaped the gruesome acts - is the stain that will not wash out. It is an episode the community desperately wants to forget but cannot, for reasons beyond its control.
With Homolka due to be released from a Quebec prison in the coming days, after serving 12 years for manslaughter, Canada's crime of the last century is back in international headlines. And that is causing still more anguish for the quintessentially Canadian - that is, civilized - Garden City.
"It has always been an extremely painful story for people in this community. Now it's back again," lamented Andrea Kriluck, managing editor of the daily Standard. "In some ways, there has been no passage of time."
"You want to get past things like this," Mayor Tim Rigby said. "The problem is, we've never been allowed to get over it."
Among "most reviled"
The outrageousness of the killings almost guaranteed that.
Start with the victims, so young and full of promise.
Leslie Mahaffy, 14, of Burlington, vanished in June 1991. Her dismembered body, encased in concrete, was found two weeks later in a lake near Thorold.
Kristen French, 15, was abducted as she walked home from school in St. Catharines on Good Friday in 1992. Her body turned up two weeks later in a ditch 30 miles away.
Then consider the attractive, blond "Ken and Barbie" killers. Homolka was a veterinary assistant who could have been anyone's "girl next door," Bernardo a tall, handsome accountant from Toronto. They married in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1991 on the same day Leslie's corpse surfaced in Lake Gibson.
But it is what happened in court after the couple was arrested that remains stuck in the minds and craws of Canadians. Homolka pleaded guilty in 1993 to manslaughter in the deaths of Kristen and Leslie, in exchange for her testimony against Bernardo.
But during the plea hearing in St. Catharines, which took place under a court-ordered publication ban, it was disclosed that Homolka also had played a role in the death of her younger sister, Tammy, who was raped by Bernardo while unconscious, then choked on her vomit after Homolka drugged her in the Homolka family home in December 1990.
The plea deal was made before officials knew of videotapes that showed Homolka was an active participant in the rapes of the three girls, as well as the rape of an unidentified fourth woman who survived.
The tapes helped send Bernardo to prison for life but were discovered too late to be used against Homolka, who was sentenced to 12 years on two manslaughter charges. Resentment against Homolka, labeled one of Canada's "most reviled convicts," has been further fueled the last decade by news reports about her lack of remorse, about psychiatrists' judgment that she is likely to offend again and about trysts behind bars with inmates.
"Sense of injustice"
As the time frame for her release approaches - anytime from Thursday through next Tuesday - Canadians feel "a great sense of injustice," Tim Danson, a Toronto lawyer who represents the French and Mahaffy families, told CNN. In St. Catharines, old anger boils beneath the surface, along with a sense of dread.
How will the Standard treat Homolka's release?
The newspaper did not send a reporter to Quebec's Joliette Prison to cover Homolka's parole hearings or the announcement that she will be freed soon. Nor will the Standard be on hand when she walks.
"It is an exceptionally difficult story for people in this community," Kriluck said. "There is great sensitivity toward the French and Mahaffy families.
"So it is a fine balance for us. Is (Homolka) a significant story? Absolutely. Still, our telling will take into account the sensitivity of the community and will focus on victims."
"It's going to be extremely difficult for the families," said Rigby, who has been mayor for eight years and served on a civic committee that in 1995 demolished the beige rented house on Christie at Bayview where Leslie and Kristen were slain. Rigby said "a lot of positive things have happened" in St. Catharines since the infamous murder case. The community of 130,000 on Lake Ontario, 30 miles northwest of Buffalo, is sharing in the prosperity that casino gaming and the proliferation of wineries and golf courses has brought to the Niagara Peninsula. But the city seems fated to be forever tied to the Homolka-Bernardo case.
Infamy may fade away
One who thinks the story may finally go away is Stephen Williams, who wrote two books about the case. Other notorious female killers managed to reinvent themselves after paying their debt to society, Williams said. Winnie Ruth Judd, convicted for the 1931 mutilation deaths of her roommates, escaped hanging by purportedly faking insanity and died wealthy in California at 92, Williams pointed out. And Juliet Hulme, who went to prison for helping her friend Pauline Parker bludgeon her mother to death in New Zealand, grew up to become Anne Perry, the Scottish crime novelist.
"The past is telling me that Miss Homolka will eventually drop from sight and prosper," Williams said - even though, after interviewing her at length for his 2003 book "Karla: A Pact With the Devil," he regards her as "a pretty serious monster."
Homolka, 35, laid the groundwork for a new life by earning a psychology degree and a spotless jailhouse record, Williams noted.
"She's not the brightest lamp on the street - but still bright," he said. "And she is very adaptable, which portends very well for her disappearence and ultimate prosperity."
Homolka is unlikely to return to St. Catharines, where she is emphatically persona non grata.
"There is a very clear sentiment in the community that she is unwelcome," Kriluck said. "Some people support her, but the majority do not want her to return."
Ontario officials made it difficult for Homolka to return to the province anonymously by persuading a Quebec court to impose strict restrictions on her movements. "No matter where she goes, our justice system will be watching her," said Michael Bryant, Ontario's attorney general. Homolka has indicated she may settle in Montreal, whose mostly French-speaking population is less attuned to her horrific crimes.
"Her biggest fear," Williams said, "is the chaos of independence that she faces in the outside world."
e-mail: tbuckham@buffnews.com
This is one sick bitch! She was just as guity as her husband and she deserves to be raped in prison with a broom handle for the rest of her life!
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