Warning: This story contains details that may be distressing to some readers.
From the outside, Paul Bernardo and his wife Karla Homolka appeared the perfect couple — good-looking, well educated and well-employed. They were living the dream.
Later that month, she contacted legal aid and a divorce lawyer. The police, however, were interested in her husband.The Scarborough Rapist Bernardo first abused a woman in 1984. She was 19 years old. From there, Bernardo moved to sexually sadistic murders — the so-called Schoolgirl Murders — the killings of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.Videotapes found in the Bernardo-Homolka home revealed Mahaffy had been held hostage for about 24 hours, during which time she was drugged and repeatedly tortured and sodomized.Homolka said Bernardo strangled the girl with an electrical cord but failed to kill her and did it again. Bernardo claimed he was out of the room when she died.
They videotaped themselves torturing the 15-year-old and subjecting her to sexual humiliation and degradation while forcing her to drink large amounts of alcohol.French's naked body was found in a Burlington side road ditch 11 days later. Homolka told investigators Bernardo had abused her, and that she had been an unwilling accomplice to the murders. Consequently, she struck a deal with prosecutors for a reduced prison sentence of 12 years in exchange for a guilty plea to a manslaughter charge.
The death was believed to have been an accident — Tammy had choked on her vomit. After Karla's confession, Tammy's body was exhumed. In his book Dark Paths Cold Trails, Doug Clark describes the sexual sadist as one who gets "their kicks by inflicting physical and psychological pain, savouring the anguish of their victims and their absolute control over them, extending to their power of life and death in the end.