Paul Bernardo

• 1. Introduction

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  Paul Kenneth Bernardo, who also used the name Paul Jason Teale, was born in Scarborough, Ontario, on the 27th of August 1964. Canadian newspapers would come to call him the Scarborough Rapist and the Schoolgirl Killer. On the 20th of November 1990, he sat in an interview room for thirty-five minutes while detectives questioned him about a string of rapes. They asked why he thought he was being looked at, and he admitted that he resembled the police composite sketch. Then he walked out free. It would be more than two years before a laboratory result tied him to those crimes, and in that time three girls died. This documentary asks how a man whom police had interviewed more than once stayed at large. It asks what the people around him saw and what they missed. It asks why a plea bargain meant to convict him became one of the most criticized deals in Canadian memory. And it asks where he is today.

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• 2. A Troubled Childhood

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  Kenneth Walter Bernardo and Marilyn Elizabeth Bernardo, born Eastman, had three children, and Paul was the youngest. Their home in Scarborough was far from what it seemed. Kenneth abused his daughter Debra in front of other family members and was eventually charged with crimes involving voyeurism and pedophilia. Marilyn, living with depression and agoraphobia, pulled away from the family and finally moved into the basement.

  Outside the house, Paul presented himself as a happy, well-adjusted boy, and he was an active member of Scouts Canada. Underneath, he was developing an attraction to fire and violent sexual fantasies. One of them was a scheme he called a "virgin farm," where girls would be held and raped.

  In 1981, after a fight between his parents, the sixteen-year-old learned from his mother that Kenneth was not his biological father. He was the result of an affair. Repulsed, he began calling her a "slut" and a "whore." She answered by calling him a "bastard from hell." Later, his first girlfriend grew tired of his domineering behaviour and left him for one of his friends. Bernardo burned every one of her belongings that he could reach.

  Bernardo attended Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute, and in 1982 he enrolled at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Another notorious Canadian murderer, Russell Williams, was two academic years behind him there, by pure coincidence. With college friends, Bernardo practised pickup techniques on women in bars and had fair success. His relationships turned violent and unstable, and he threatened to kill partners who told anyone. In 1986, two women obtained restraining orders against him after obscene phone calls.

  Then, in October 1987, Karla Homolka came to Scarborough for a pet convention and met him. The attraction was immediate, and she encouraged his sadistic behaviour. By that point, the attacks that police would later link to him had already been under way for months.

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• 3. The Scarborough Rapist

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  On the 4th of May 1987, a 21-year-old woman was followed home to her parents' house in Scarborough and raped in front of it. Ten days later, a 19-year-old was attacked in the backyard of her family home. A pattern was forming. Bernardo stalked young women as they stepped off buses late in the evening and followed them to their doors.

  Not every attack succeeded. On the 29th of September 1987, he broke into a house and entered the bedroom of a 15-year-old, threatening her with a knife. He fled when the girl's mother walked in and screamed. On the 4th of October 1988, another intended victim fought him off, but he stabbed her twice, leaving wounds that needed twelve stitches. On the 20th of June 1989, a young woman's screams brought neighbours running, and he escaped with scratches on his face.

  The police response grew with the attacks. After a rape on the 16th of December 1987, the Toronto Police Service warned women in Scarborough against travelling alone at night, especially on buses. A week later, after another assault, the attacker began to be known as the Scarborough Rapist. On the 25th of May 1988, a uniformed officer staking out a bus shelter noticed a man hiding under a tree and chased him on foot. Bernardo got away. After a rape on the 16th of November 1988, a dedicated task force was organized the very next day.

  On the 26th of May 1990, a 19-year-old woman was raped, and she remembered her attacker so vividly that police were able to produce a computerized composite sketch. They released it two days later across Toronto and the surrounding areas.

  Tips followed that summer. In June, a bank employee pointed investigators toward Bernardo. Another came from Tina Smirnis, whose husband was one of three Smirnis brothers among Bernardo's closest friends. She told detectives that he had been called in during the 1987 rape investigation but never interviewed. He often discussed his sex life with her and said he liked rough sex. Detectives spoke to him in July. Between May and September 1990, police sent more than 130 suspects' samples for DNA testing. Reportedly, the detectives found Bernardo more credible than Smirnis.

  Barely a month after his interview in November, one of Karla's own family would be dead.

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• 4. Tammy Homolka

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  By 1990, Bernardo had lost his job as an accountant and was smuggling cigarettes across the Canada-United States border. He spent long stretches with the family of his fiancée, Karla, who liked his company and knew nothing about his crimes. He became fixated on Karla's 14-year-old sister, Tammy. Karla helped by breaking the windows of Tammy's room so he could get inside. According to Bernardo's later testimony, she also laced a meal with crushed valium stolen from the animal clinic where she worked, so that Tammy would lose consciousness and could be assaulted.

  Six months before the 1991 wedding, Karla took the anesthetic halothane from the same clinic. On the 23rd of December 1990, the couple gave 15-year-old Tammy sleeping pills in a rum-and-eggnog drink. Once she was unconscious, Karla held a halothane-soaked cloth over her sister's nose and mouth. The couple filmed themselves assaulting Tammy in the basement while her parents slept upstairs. Karla said she wanted to give her sister's virginity to Bernardo as a Christmas present.

  Tammy began to choke on her own vomit. The couple tried to revive her, then hid the evidence, dressed her, and moved her to her bedroom before calling 9-1-1. A few hours later, she was pronounced dead at St. Catharines General Hospital without ever regaining consciousness.

  Several details might have raised doubts. Someone saw the couple vacuuming and washing laundry in the middle of the night, and Tammy had a chemical burn on her face. Even so, the municipal coroner and Karla's family accepted the couple's account. The death was ruled accidental, caused by choking on vomit after drinking alcohol.

  Soon afterward, Bernardo and Karla left the Homolka home for a rented bungalow in Port Dalhousie. They filmed themselves again, with Karla wearing Tammy's clothing and pretending to be her. Into Tammy's casket the couple slipped a copy of their wedding invitation, which showed a photo of them grinning, along with a note. When Tammy's body was exhumed three years later, those items were found. They were removed at the request of Karla's family.

  In 2001, the magazine Elm Street published an article suggesting that forensic evidence showed Tammy's death was no accident. It described Karla as a "malignant narcissist" who had deliberately given her sister an overdose of halothane. Less than six months after Tammy died, a teenager in Burlington would meet the same couple.

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• 5. The Schoolgirls

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  Early on the 15th of June 1991, Bernardo was driving through Burlington to steal licence plates when he came across 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy. She had missed her curfew and was locked out of her house. By his later account, he told her he planned to break into a neighbour's home, and she calmly asked whether he had a cigarette. He forced her into his car, blindfolded her, and drove to Port Dalhousie, where he told Karla they had a victim.

  The couple recorded their abuse of Leslie on videotape, and segments were later played at Bernardo's trial. When her blindfold began to slip, it meant she might identify them if she lived. Accounts of her death conflict. Bernardo claimed that Karla fed her a lethal dose of Halcion. Karla claimed that Bernardo strangled her.

  The couple kept the body in their basement the day before Karla's family came for a dinner party. They then encased the remains in cement. Bernardo bought a dozen bags at a hardware store and kept the receipts, which later became evidence. The couple drove out several times to dump the blocks in Lake Gibson, 18 km south of Port Dalhousie. One block weighed about 90 kg and was too heavy for them to sink. It lay near the shore, where it was found on the 29th of June 1991, the day Bernardo and Karla were married. An orthodontic appliance helped identify the girl.

  In July 2005, days before Karla's release from prison, Bernardo spoke to police and his lawyer, Tony Bryant. According to Bryant, he said he had always meant to free the girls. He claimed that Karla, fearing identification, planned to kill Mahaffy by injecting an air bubble into her bloodstream.

  The second victim was taken in the after-school hours of the 16th of April 1992. Driving through St. Catharines, the couple spotted 15-year-old Kristen French walking alone near Holy Cross Secondary School. In the parking lot of Grace Lutheran Church, Karla stepped out holding a map and pretending to need directions. When Kristen looked at it, Bernardo attacked from behind and forced her into the car at knifepoint.

  When she did not come home, her parents went to police. Within twenty-four hours, the Niagara Regional Police Service had assembled a search team and found several witnesses to the abduction. A shoe recovered from the parking lot showed how serious the case was.

  Over the Easter weekend, the couple filmed themselves abusing Kristen. Crown prosecutor Ray Houlahan told the trial that Bernardo always meant to kill her, because she was never blindfolded and could identify her captors. The next day they killed her and then went to Easter dinner at Karla's family home. Karla testified that Bernardo strangled Kristen for seven minutes while she watched. Bernardo said that Karla beat her with a rubber mallet after she tried to escape.

  Her body was found on the 30th of April 1992, in a ditch in Burlington, not far from the cemetery where Mahaffy is buried. It had been washed, and the hair was cut off. Investigators thought the hair was a trophy, but Karla testified that it was cut to hinder identification.

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• 6. Shadows Around the Case

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  Elizabeth Bain, aged 22, told her mother on the 19th of June 1990 that she was going to "check the tennis schedule" at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She vanished. Three days later, her car turned up with a large bloodstain on the back seat. Derek Finkle's 1997 book, No Claim to Mercy, presented evidence tying Bernardo to her presumed murder. He matched the description of a man seen near where she was last seen, and he later confessed to at least eight attacks in and around that area.

  Bain's boyfriend, Robert Baltovich, was convicted of second-degree murder on the 31st of March 1992, and he and his lawyers repeatedly blamed Bernardo. The Court of Appeal for Ontario set the conviction aside on the 2nd of December 2004. At the retrial on the 22nd of April 2008, the Crown said it would call no evidence and asked the jury to acquit. Asked about Bain in 2007, Bernardo said: "The answer to that is no. But the 800 pound gorilla in the room is that it is a life-to-25 sentence."

  Other incidents remain unresolved or unprosecuted. Author Stephen Williams wrote that on the weekend of the 12th of January 1991, Bernardo abducted a girl, raped her at the empty Homolka house with Karla watching, and left her on a deserted road near Lake Gibson. The couple called her the "January girl." On the 6th of April 1991, a 14-year-old training as a coxswain for a rowing team was dragged into shrubbery near the club and sexually assaulted. A blonde woman had waved at her from a car, which distracted her.

  On the 7th of June 1991, Karla invited a 15-year-old she had befriended at a pet store into the couple's home. The girl, known as "Jane Doe" in the trials, was drugged and assaulted, and it was filmed. She was invited back in August and drugged again. This time Karla called 9-1-1 when the girl stopped breathing, but the ambulance was recalled after the couple resuscitated her.

  On the 28th of July 1991, Bernardo stalked 21-year-old Sydney Kershen after seeing her while driving home from work. He resumed on the 9th of August, and this time she stopped at her boyfriend's house. The boyfriend chased the car and noted the plate of a gold Nissan. Police found it belonged to Bernardo, and an officer even saw it in his driveway. He did not pursue the matter or file an official report.

  A newspaper clipping found in Bernardo's house described a rape in Hawaii during the couple's honeymoon in summer 1991. Officials in Canada and the United States believe he was responsible, but extradition issues prevented a prosecution.

  On the 30th of November 1991, Terri Anderson, a grade nine student at Lakeport Secondary School, vanished less than 2 km from the parking lot where Kristen French would later be abducted. In April 1992, the police said they had no evidence linking her to Bernardo. Her body was later found in the water at Port Dalhousie. The coroner saw no sign of foul play and thought she had drowned, probably after drinking beer and taking LSD. Given the Mahaffy and French murders, that ruling stayed controversial.

  On the 29th of March 1992, Bernardo stalked and videotaped sisters Shanna and Kerry Patrich from his car. They recorded his plate number incorrectly, and Shanna reported it on the 31st of March. On the 18th of April, while French was still captive, Kerry spotted him again and gave police a better description of the car and plate. The police mishandled that information.

  In 2006, Bernardo confessed to at least ten more sexual assaults dating back to March 1986. One was the 1987 attack on a 15-year-old, for which Anthony Hanemaayer, then 19, had been wrongly accused in 1989. Hanemaayer pleaded guilty to avoid a sentence of six to ten years and served sixteen months. On the 25th of June 2008, the Court of Appeal for Ontario overturned his conviction and cleared his name.

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• 7. Arrest and Bargain

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  On the 12th of May 1992, a Niagara Regional Police sergeant and constable briefly interviewed Bernardo and judged him an unlikely suspect, even though he said he had been questioned about the Scarborough Rapist. Three days later, the Green Ribbon Task Force was convened to investigate the Mahaffy and French murders. By then, Bernardo and Karla had applied to legally change their surnames to Teale, a name Bernardo took from the serial killer antagonist in the 1988 film Criminal Law. At the end of May, John Motile, an acquaintance of Smirnis and Bernardo, named Bernardo as a possible suspect.

  In December 1992, the Centre of Forensic Sciences finally began testing the DNA samples Bernardo had given two years before. On the 27th of December, he beat Karla about the face with a flashlight. She told her workplace she had been in a car accident when she went back to work on the 4th of January 1993, but skeptical co-workers called her parents. They removed her from Bernardo's house the next day, though Karla slipped back inside to search frantically for something. At St. Catharines General Hospital, she told police she was a battered spouse and filed charges. Bernardo was arrested and released on his own recognizance. Karla moved in with an aunt and uncle in Brampton.

  The DNA match to the Scarborough Rapist then reached the Toronto Police Service, who put Bernardo under 24-hour surveillance. On the 9th of February 1993, investigators interviewed Karla. She spoke only about her own abuse. That night, she told her aunt and uncle that Bernardo was the Scarborough Rapist, that the couple had raped and murdered Mahaffy and French, and that it was all recorded.

  Two days later, Karla met Niagara Falls lawyer George Walker, who sought immunity from the Crown in exchange for her cooperation. On the 14th of February, he told Crown Criminal Law Office director Murray Segal about the videotapes. Segal answered that full immunity was impossible given her role in the crimes. Detectives arrested Bernardo on the 17th of February on several charges and searched his house. Because the link to the murders was weak, the warrant was narrow, and police could not tear down walls. The search lasted seventy-one days and turned up only one tape, with a brief segment of Karla and "Jane Doe."

  In a call from jail, Bernardo told his lawyer, Ken Murray, that the tapes were hidden in a ceiling light fixture in the upstairs bathroom. Murray retrieved them and hid them from investigators. After he resigned, Bernardo's new lawyer, John Rosen, turned them over to police. Meanwhile, on the 5th of May, Walker learned that the government offered Karla twelve years in prison, and she had a week to accept. The alternative was two counts of first-degree murder, one of second-degree murder, and other charges. Walker accepted, and the bargain was finalized on the 14th of May. She began giving statements, including that Bernardo boasted of raping as many as thirty women, twice what police suspected.

  A publication ban on Karla's preliminary inquiry was imposed on the 5th of July by Francis Kovacs of the Ontario Court of Justice, citing Bernardo's right to a fair trial. The Crown had applied for it. Four media outlets and one author opposed it. The Internet and the nearby border defeated it, because American journalists were not bound by the order. Details of her testimony spread through electronic ban-breakers and newspapers in Buffalo, Detroit, Washington, D.C., New York City and the United Kingdom. Canadians carried copies of The Buffalo News across the border, and extra copies were confiscated. Gordon Domm, a retired police officer who distributed foreign reports, was convicted of two counts of contempt of court. In February 1994, Karla divorced Bernardo.

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• 8. Prison and Parole

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  On the 1st of September 1995, Paul Bernardo was convicted of a number of offences, including two first-degree murders and two aggravated sexual assaults. His trial that year featured testimony from Karla and videotapes of the crimes. He testified that the deaths were accidents and later blamed Karla as the true killer. He was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for at least twenty-five years and designated a dangerous offender, a label that makes release unlikely.

  Many Canadians were angry about Karla's deal. Ken Murray had withheld the videotapes showing her role for seventeen months, and prosecutors said they would never have offered the bargain had they seen them. Murray was later acquitted of obstruction of justice and faced a disciplinary hearing by the Law Society of Upper Canada. Karla was released in 2005.

  After the conviction, Ontario asked Archie Campbell to review how police handled the case. His 1996 report found that poor coordination, cooperation and communication among police and the justice system had let a serial predator fall "through the cracks." He urged an automated case-management system for homicides and sexual assaults. Known as PowerCase, it has been available to every municipal police service and the Ontario Provincial Police since 2002. Ontario is the only place in the world with such a network.

  Experts have also assessed Bernardo. He scored 35 out of 40 on the Psychopathy Checklist, where 30 meets the threshold for psychopathy. Karla scored 5. For his 2018 parole hearing, psychiatric reports said he met the criteria for sexual sadism, voyeurism and narcissistic personality disorder, and showed minimal insight into his offending.

  Prison has not been safe for him. In the segregation unit at Kingston Penitentiary, another inmate punched him in the face in 1996. In June 1999, five convicts tried to storm his segregation range, and a riot squad used gas to disperse them. In 2006, he gave a prison interview claiming to have reformed. He became eligible in 2008 to petition a jury for early parole under the faint hope clause but did not. In September 2013, he was moved to Millhaven Institution. In November 2015, he self-published a violent, fictional, 631-page e-book called A MAD World Order. It was reportedly an Amazon bestseller before public outcry led to its removal.

  Parole boards have rejected him repeatedly. On the 17th of October 2018, he was denied day and full parole. On the 22nd of June 2021, a single hour of deliberation was enough to turn him down again. In May 2023, he was moved to La Macaza Institution, a medium-security facility in Quebec, at his own request. The transfer sparked outrage, and on the 20th of July, Commissioner Anne Kelly said the review found it "sound" under Bill C-83. On the 26th of July 2023, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino was dropped from cabinet, with media linking his demotion to the controversy.

  At Bernardo's hearing on the 26th of November 2024, the parole board reversed an initial decision barring his victims' families from attending in person. He was denied parole for the third time.

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