Questioning Karla Homolka: A Serial-Killer Tagged Sexual Sadism Victim
“My name is Karla. I am seventeen years old. I am your little cocksucker. I am your little cunt. I am your little slut.”
Paul Bernardo, a sexual sadist, directed her wife, Karla, to repeat while she wore a dog collar, and both went intimate with each other.
Dating back to 1993, the case of this couple, regarded as Ken and Barbie Killers, depicted the extent to which a sexual sadist can go when the police forget their duty. The examples of Sexual Sadism are rich, and as Roy Hazelwood, a former FBI profiler and author, suggests, no sexual sadist or pedophile should ever be trusted. There are hints that you can notice, but only if you keep your mind open to process them. These monsters do not belong to any race or identity and are epic conversationalists. Criminal Profilers still argue that Karla Homolka played the opposite of this. Here is a peek inside her story and what she spoke to Roy about Paul Bernardo, her husband.
The Story.
Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, now addressed as the Ken and Barbie Killers, captivate with their persona that does not intrude on you with their criminal instincts.
Paul was known to carry a charming facade to conduct sexual acts of violence on about 13 victims that he later admitted. A textbook sexual sadist, according to Roy, of these thirteen, the first was spotted five months before he met Karla.
At about 1:00 AM, on May 4, 1987, the so-called Scarborough Rapist, Paul, followed a 21-year-old woman from her bus stop to her front lawn, thrashed her on the ground, raped her both vaginally and anally, and pummeled her face, and arms and breasts.
Nine days later, he repeated the act on a 19-year-old at the same bus stop, beat her with fists, and dragged her into her backyard. Following this, Paul threatened her with her life using a knife if she made a sound.
However, the acts stopped between the time she met Karla, an intensely feminine, bright, and outward 17-year-old.
Karla was visiting with her girlfriend and sensed menace in Paul, who was with a friend too, and aroused by this, the two made out within moments of meeting each other. John Money, a Johns Hopkins University sex researcher, describes such behavior as hybristophilia in his book Love Maps.
According to him, a hybristophile is sexually aroused by the knowledge her partner has committed a violent act, such as rape or murder, or bank robbery. Additionally, this behavior is not Compliant but instead Collusive, meaning a partner who is a hybristophile does not follow instructions and instead fits themselves in the person’s counterpart.
Coming back, Karla and Paul started seeing each other every weekend and shared long conversations on the phone, reaching the bill to $200 one time.
Amid this, the Scarborough Rapist did not repeat his actions for a long time until December 16, 1987, at about 8:30 PM, he attacked his third victim, a 15-year-old, while she was walking home from the bus stop.
The case review said,
“He ran his knife along the victim’s back, then grabbed her by the hair and pounded her head against the ground. He forced her to perform fellatio, then to lick his genital part and say that she loved it. He made her wish his genital organ a Merry Christmas. The assault lasted an hour…. Medical examination disclosed a torn hymen, two tears in her anus, plus a number of abrasions on other parts of her body.”
Throughout the coming years, Paul continued his heinous crimes and intensified his love letters to cruelty to Karla. As the acts intensified, a police investigation concluded with a composite sketch of the assaulter. In late May 1990, a female acquaintance tipped the Metro police that Paul met closely with the sketch.
The police then interviewed Paul and collected samples of his saliva, blood, and hair for DNA fingerprinting. However, the Toronto Center of Forensic Sciences confirmed this not before February 1993, three years in between when Paul married Karla, and both participated in sexually assaulting, strangling (with an electrical cord), and killing and mutilating Leslie Mahaff, a fourteen-year-old on June 15, 1991, and repeated it with Kristen French (leaving mutilation), a fifteen-year-old on April 16, 1992.
Paul and Karla extended their acts by sedating Tammy, Karla’s teen sister, and raped her as Tammy slept and Karla observed.
Finally, scared of her own life and after going through the cruelty herself, Karla broke away from Paul in January 1993 and shared the story with the officials.
According to the records, Karla arrived in the emergency room with a body covered with bruises. She was not able to walk with her battered legs, there were contusions on her head which according to the physician, were soft to touch. Doctors even found a puncture in her right thigh, which Karla said Bernardo had caused with a screwdriver.
Paul Bernardo was found guilty with a sentence lasting a life term, and as no clear conclusions were made about Karla, and parties argued about her being a killer or a victim, she faced 12 years in jail.
Questioning Karla Homolka.
Conducting interviews for a clinical studies, Roy Hazelwood and Ron Mackay pulled up in front of Kingston’s aging stone-and-brick Prison for Women on the Tuesday of August 1996. With the rain pouring that day, Roy and Ron, though dressed formally well, forgot to carry an umbrella. As they came across Karla, they saw her exquisite feminity, that he described, “I mean, fifties feminine,” in a summer dress she chose for the interview.
Here are 17 of the 448 questions asked and answered,
“Was she sexually abused as a child?
No.
What was her sexual experience prior to meeting Bernardo?
One encounter.
Had she been arrested prior to meeting him?
No.
Did Bernardo want her to dress in a particular way?
Yes, as a schoolgirl. Sometimes in her sister Tammy’s clothes.
Prior to sex, would he routinely ingest drugs or alcohol?
Yes.
Did Bernardo masturbate?
Yes. Sometimes in the night he would tell Karla to go out into their yard and do a striptease for him. He stroked himself as he watched her.
Did he have specific terms he used to describe body parts or sexual acts?
Yes, Bernardo called his penis ‘Snuffles’.
Did he whip her?
Yes.
Did he engage in sexual bondage?
Yes.
Did he use foreign objects during sex?
Yes. A bottle.
Did he window-peep as an adult?
Yes.
Did he ever ask her to have sex with an animal?
Yes, his dog. But she refused, telling Bernardo she’d rather be killed.
Did he ever ask/force her to ingest urine or feces?
Yes. Feces.
What was his attitude toward his mother?
He hated her.
Did he ever imprison Karla?
Yes, she was made to spend a winter night in the same unheated root cellar where Bernardo had secreted the dead Leslie Mahaffy before dismembering the girl.
Did he have an illegal occupation?
Yes. Cigarette smuggling.
Was he frequently depressed?
Yes.”
Opinions.
The story has numerous insights that Roy Hazelwood shares in his book The Evil That Men Do. However, one quick reference that I would make about Karla is how she accepted being a victim in her brain, and instead of acting out, she waited until the cruelty gave her a visit. A woman who could help Paul in mutilating a fourteen-year-old and killing a fifteen-year-old again was capable of being a scapula long before she felt endangered.
As Roy mentioned in his book, referring to Karla’s beauty,
“They project an aura of helplessness, and it’s a weapon in their arsenal. A very effective weapon. You can be thrown off stride by it. You can forget what the person did, what they participated in.”
