This is for anyone that may have missed this article, from our weird and wacky world...
Karla Homolka helped take three children's lives.
Now she may have created one.
Details are sketchy, but it appears the freed schoolgirl killer may have secretly had a baby.
Rampant rumours, tips and a string of circumstances suggest that Homolka is now married and, in the past few days, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy in a Montreal hospital.
If all of this is true, it appears that the fantasy she held for all of her 12 years in prison is now complete. Now, at age 36, Homolka will have a new hubby and a new baby to go with the puppy she picked up within weeks of her July 2005 prison release. The happy family has been created within 11/2 years of her release. But that should come as no surprise. She has planned it all along.
In a 1998 prison evaluation, Homolka mapped out her criteria for the man who would succeed her first husband, infamous serial killer, sadist and rapist Paul Bernardo. "She wishes to meet a man who believes in the moral values of marriage, who is educated, loyal, who wants children," wrote Dr. Jeanne Rouleau. A man, Homolka told Rouleau, "who loves his mother, who shows a respectful attitude towards women, who does not have a history of family abuse, no criminal background and, finally, who is loved by her family, who loves pets, and, if possible, who is attractive." Critics say that if Homolka has a baby, it, too, is a victim. There is no clear indication who the father may be.
HEAD-OVER-HEELS
There are suggestions, however, that he is not the imprisoned killer whom Homolka fell head-over-heels with while she was in prison. At one point, Homolka professed her love for the killer and talked about marrying him and moving to France upon his release.
The baby's health, weight and name are also shrouded in mystery. And it is not apparent if Quebec children's aid authorities have any interest in the newlyweds and their offspring. Homolka's plan to blend almost unnoticed into Quebec society has clearly bore fruit. She speaks almost fluent French, carefully hides her identity and goes under the name of Leanne Teale, taking her middle name from birth and the last name she adopted with Bernardo -- a name he took from a fictional serial killer in the movie Criminal Law.
If Homolka was in fact wed in Montreal, the marriage was a lot more low-key and discreet than the lavish ceremony she shared with Bernardo. On June 29, 1991, Homolka and Bernardo sipped champagne from crystal glasses as they were driven through the historic streets of Niagara-on-the-Lake in a horse-drawn carriage. Their wedding guests later dined on pheasant. And then the couple jetted off on a Hawaiian honeymoon. As we know now, however, the bride and groom's secrets were a lot darker than what happened in bed on their wedding night. A year and a half before the wedding, Homolka's youngest sister, Tammy, 15, died in her parents' home when she choked on her own vomit as Bernardo and Homolka drugged her unconscious and jointly raped her.
DISMEMBERED BODY
On the day the pair were married, concrete blocks which contained the dismembered body parts of missing 14-year-old Burlington schoolgirl Leslie Mahaffy, were pulled out of Gibson Lake, near St. Catharines. Leslie, it would later turn out, was the sick couple's second victim.
Homolka would later reveal that it was on their wedding night that Bernardo confessed he was the infamous Scarborough Rapist, a sexual predator who terrorized Toronto's east end in the 1980s and boasted up to 40 victims. In April 1992, the pair snatched Kristen French, 15, as she walked home from school in St. Catharines. For days, the twisted couple kept Kristen as a sex slave, and then -- like Leslie -- she was killed. Two other teenage girls -- friends of Tammy -- were dragged into the couple's dark web. One of the teens stopped breathing as the couple videotaped their rape of her after they drugged her unconscious. But Homolka swapped a guilty plea to two counts of manslaughter in the Leslie and Kristen deaths and her testimony against Bernardo in exchange for 12 years in prison. Homolka claims to have been a battered woman. She asserts that Bernardo strangled Leslie and Kristen. Bernardo maintained that Homolka killed the girls.
It is has been conceded by Ontario prosecutors that Homolka would likely have been convicted of first-degree murder had Bernardo's secret videotapes been found in a meticulous search of the couple's Port Dalhousie home in 1993.
Homolka's love of children is well established. Prison evaluations -- in addition to her own letters to friends and a lesbian lover -- reveal that she loved her childhood, surrounded herself with childish items and icons and, in many ways, remains a child. Her prison cell walls were adorned with cartoon character posters. Letter paper was festooned with sticky stamps of hearts, snowmen, teddy bears, and dogs and cats. She even had Mickey Mouse bedsheets.
And now, apparently, she bears the responsibility of being a mom.
According to what Homolka told police, the only time that she and Bernardo ever discussed children was when Bernardo told her that if she ever had daughters, he would turn them into his sex slaves. If she ever became pregnant with a boy, she related, he would have her abort the fetus. Homolka's apparent motherhood is even more outrageous, considering that a Quebec judge initially ordered her to stay away from children after her July 2005 release from Joliette prison. That condition, however, and several more, were overturned upon appeal last summer.
FREE TO GO
Homolka is now free to go and do what she wants. "I am looking so forward to getting out of here and rebuilding my life," she wrote to friends in 1993. "I can't wait to see what the future holds for me -- a new job, a new husband (a loving one this time!) children..."
In a 2001 psychiatric evaluation, Homolka said she had "changed in big ways" in prison.
"She appreciated that intimate relationships might be risky for her," but that "whatever relationships I get into, I know I'll never re-offend again." Since her prison release, Homolka has relied upon her parents, Karel and Dorothy Homolka, the Elizabeth Fry Society of Montreal, and her lawyer Sylvie Bordelais, for support. As first revealed in a Toronto Sun exclusive, Homolka initially worked at a RONA store after her release. But since then, her whereabouts have been cloaked in secrecy.
TIMELINE FOR KARLA HOMOLKA
From taker of lives, to the giver of life:
- October 1987 -- Karla Homolka, 17, meets Paul Bernardo, 23, at a pet convention.
- Dec. 23, 1990 -- Homolka drugs her youngest sister Tammy, 15, to facilitate her rape by Bernardo. Tammy chokes on vomit and dies.
- June 29, 1991 -- Homolka and Bernardo are married on the same day 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy's body parts are found.
- April 16, 1992 -- Kristen French, 15, is kidnapped by Homolka and Bernardo and held for four days before she is murdered.
- February 1993 -- Police swoop down on Bernardo after he beats Homolka with a flashlight and she retains a lawyer.
- July 1993 -- Plea bargain gives Homolka 12 years in prison in exchange for testimony against Bernardo.
- Sept. 1, 1995 -- Bernardo convicted of first-degree murder in Leslie's and Kristen's slayings. Given life with no parole for 25 years.
- Spring 2001 -- National Parole Board orders Homolka detained for full sentence as a high risk to reoffend.
- July 2005 -- Homolka released from prison after 12 years with strict conditions.
- Nov. 30, 2005 -- Quebec Superior Court throws out conditions. Homolka free.
