Paul Bernardo

Paul Kenneth Bernardo (born August 27, 1964), also known as Paul Jason Teale, is a Canadian serial rapist and murderer dubbed the Scarborough Rapist and Schoolgirl Killer. He initially committed a series of rapes in Scarborough, Ontario, a district of Toronto, between 1986 and 1990, before meeting Karla Homolka, with whom he committed rape leading to the death of her sister Tammy, followed by two murders in 1991 and 1992.

After his capture and conviction, Bernardo was sentenced to life imprisonment and was declared a dangerous offender, thus making it unlikely that he will ever be released from prison. Following his conviction, Bernardo confessed to ten more rapes committed a year before the spree officially ascribed to the Scarborough Rapist. Homolka was given a lighter sentence in exchange for testifying against Bernardo as part of a controversial plea bargain; she was released from prison in 2005. Bernardo has been denied parole three times. Bernardo's father often sexually abused his own daughter, Paul's older sister, Debra, in front of other family members, and would eventually be charged with crimes involving voyeurism and pedophilia. Beneath the charming façade, however, he gradually developed pyromaniac inclinations and dark sexual fantasies, one of which involved creating a "virgin farm" where he would breed virgin girls to rape.

Bernardo attended Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute and, in 1982, the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), where another notorious Canadian murderer, Russell Williams, was coincidentally two academic years behind him. Bernardo delighted in humiliating his dates in public and engaging in aggressive anal intercourse in bed. These relationships became increasingly violent and unstable, and he threatened to kill his partners if they disclosed his abuse. and 1990, Bernardo committed increasingly vicious serial rapes in and around Scarborough. He attacked most of his victims after stalking them as they got off buses late in the evening. Known incidents are:

May 4, 1987: Rape of a 21-year-old Scarborough woman in front of her parents' house after Bernardo followed her home.
May 14, 1987: Rape of a 19-year-old woman in the backyard of her parents' house.
July 17, 1987: Attempted rape of a young woman. Although he beat the victim, Bernardo abandoned the attack when she fought back.
December 16, 1987: Rape of a 15-year-old girl. The next day, the Toronto Police Service (TPS) issued a warning to women in Scarborough travelling alone at night, especially those riding buses.
May 25, 1988: Bernardo was nearly caught by a uniformed police officer staking out a bus shelter. Although the officer noticed him hiding under a tree and pursued him on foot, Bernardo escaped.

Six months before their 1991 wedding, Karla stole the anesthetic agent halothane from the animal clinic. On December 23, 1990, Bernardo and Karla administered sleeping pills to 15-year-old Tammy in a rum-and-eggnog cocktail. When Tammy lost consciousness, the couple undressed her and Karla applied a halothane-soaked cloth to her sister's nose and mouth. Karla wanted to "give Tammy's virginity to Bernardo for Christmas"; according to her, Bernardo was disappointed that he was not Karla's first sex partner. With Tammy's parents sleeping upstairs, the couple videotaped themselves raping Tammy in the basement. Tammy began to choke on vomit; they tried to revive her and called 9-1-1 after hiding evidence, dressing Tammy and moving her into her bedroom. A few hours later, Tammy was pronounced dead at St. Catharines General Hospital without regaining consciousness.

Despite being observed vacuuming and washing laundry in the middle of the night, During Tammy's funeral, witnesses saw Bernardo caressing her body in its open casket. Inside the casket, Bernardo and Karla surreptitiously placed a copy of their wedding invitation, which showed a photo of the couple grinning, along with a note. These items were discovered when Tammy's body was exhumed three years later, and were then removed at the request of Karla's family.

In 2001, the magazine Elm Street published an article which implied that forensic evidence proved that Tammy's death was not an accident and that her sister had deliberately administered an overdose of halothane. The publication described Karla as a "malignant narcissist" who was so incensed by her fiancé's attraction to her sister that she removed Tammy from his affections permanently.

Schoolgirl murders

Leslie Mahaffy

Early in the morning on June 15, 1991, while detouring through Burlington to steal licence plates, Bernardo came across 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy, who had been locked out of her house for missing curfew. According to his later account, Bernardo left his car and approached Mahaffy, saying that he was planning to break into a neighbour's house. Unfazed, she asked if he had any cigarettes. At this point he led her to his car, blindfolded her, forced her into the car, drove her to Port Dalhousie, and then informed Karla that they had a victim.

Bernardo and Karla videotaped themselves torturing and sexually abusing Mahaffy while they listened to pop music. At one point on the tape, Bernardo told her, "You're doing a good job, Leslie, a damned good job," adding: "The next two hours are going to determine what I do to you. Right now, you're scoring perfect." Mahaffy's orthodontic appliance was instrumental in identifying her.

Several days before Karla's release from prison in July 2005, Bernardo was interviewed by police and his lawyer, Tony Bryant. According to Bryant, Bernardo stated that he had always intended to free the girls he and Karla had kidnapped. However, when Mahaffy's blindfold fell off, Karla was concerned that Mahaffy would identify Bernardo and report the couple to the police. Bernardo claimed that Karla had planned to murder Mahaffy by injecting an air bubble into her bloodstream, triggering an air embolism.

Kristen French

During the after-school hours of April 16, 1992, Bernardo and Karla drove through St. Catharines to look for more potential victims. Although students were still going home, the streets were generally empty. As they passed Holy Cross Secondary School, the couple spotted 15-year-old Kristen French walking alone. After they pulled into the parking lot of nearby Grace Lutheran Church, Karla exited the car carrying a map, pretending to need assistance. When French looked at the map, Bernardo attacked her from behind and forced her into the front seat of the car at knifepoint. From the back seat, Karla subdued French by pulling her hair.

After French failed to arrive home, her parents became convinced that she met with foul play and notified police. Within twenty-four hours the Niagara Regional Police Service (NRP) assembled a search team, scoured the area around French's after-school route and found several witnesses who had seen the abduction from different locations. French's shoe, recovered from the parking lot, underscored the seriousness of the abduction.

French's nude body was found on April 30, 1992, in a ditch in Burlington, about forty-five minutes from St. Catharines and a short distance from the cemetery where Mahaffy is buried. She had been washed and her hair cut off. Although it was thought that the hair was removed and kept as a trophy, Karla testified that it was cut to impede identification.

Additional victims

In addition to the three confirmed murders ascribed to Bernardo and Karla, suspicions remain about other possible victims or intended victims:

Derek Finkle's 1997 book No Claim to Mercy presented evidence tying Bernardo to the presumed murder of 22-year-old Elizabeth Bain, who disappeared on June 19, 1990. Bain told her mother that she was going to "check the tennis schedule" at UTSC; three days later, her car was found with a large bloodstain on the backseat. Bernardo matched the description of a man in the area where Bain was last seen, and later confessed to at least eight attacks in and around the same location. Bain's boyfriend, Robert Baltovich, was convicted of second-degree murder in her death on March 31, 1992. During his trial and subsequent imprisonment, Baltovich and his lawyers repeatedly alleged that Bernardo was the perpetrator. The Court of Appeal for Ontario set aside Baltovich's conviction on December 2, 2004, and at his retrial on April 22, 2008, the Crown told the court that no evidence would be called against Baltovich and asked the jury to acquit him. When questioned 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."
Shortly after Tammy's funeral, Karla's parents left town and her sister Lori visited grandparents in Mississauga, leaving the Homolka residence empty. According to author Stephen Williams, during the weekend of January 12, 1991, Bernardo abducted a girl, took her to the house, and raped her while Karla watched. He then dropped her off on a deserted road near Lake Gibson. Bernardo and Karla called her "January girl."
On July 28, 1991, Bernardo stalked 21-year-old Sydney Kershen after he saw her while driving home from work. On August 9, he resumed stalking her. This time, Kershen took evasive action, stopping at her boyfriend's house just prior to his arrival. After spotting Bernardo, the boyfriend gave chase, came across Bernardo's gold Nissan and took note of the licence plate. The couple reported the incident to the NRP, which established that the car belonged to Bernardo. An NRP officer visited his house and saw the car parked in the driveway, but did not pursue the matter, nor submit an official police report. The coroner saw no evidence of foul play, despite the difficulties of determining such factors in a body that had been in the water for six months. The coroner's ruling that her death was by drowning – probably as a result of drinking beer and taking LSD – was controversial in light of the circumstances of the Mahaffy and French murders.

The NRP subsequently reopened its investigation of Tammy's death. Two days later Karla met with Niagara Falls attorney George Walker, who sought legal immunity from the Crown in exchange for Karla's cooperation in the case against Bernardo. She was also placed under 24-hour surveillance.

During a call from jail, Bernardo told his lawyer, Ken Murray, that the videotapes were hidden in a ceiling light fixture in the upstairs bathroom. Murray found the tapes and hid them from investigators. After Murray resigned as Bernardo's lawyer, his new attorney, John Rosen, turned the tapes over to police. On May 5, Walker was informed that the government was offering Karla a plea bargain of twelve years' imprisonment which she had one week to accept. If she declined, the government would charge her with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder and other crimes. Walker accepted the offer, and Karla later agreed to it. On May 14, Karla's plea bargain was finalized, and she began giving statements to investigators. Karla told police that Bernardo boasted that he had raped as many as thirty women, twice as many as the police had suspected.

Publication ban

Citing the need to protect Bernardo's right to a fair trial, a publication ban was imposed on Karla's preliminary inquiry. The Crown had applied for the ban, which was imposed on July 5 by Francis Kovacs of the Ontario Court of Justice. Through her lawyers, Karla supported the ban; Bernardo's lawyers argued that he would be prejudged by the ban, since Karla had been portrayed as his victim. Four media outlets and one author also opposed the ban. Some lawyers argued that rumours could damage the future trial process more than the publication of evidence. In February 1994, Karla divorced Bernardo.

Public access to the Internet effectively nullified the court's order, as did proximity to the U.S.-Canada border. American journalists, not subject to the publication ban, published details of Karla's testimony, which in turn were distributed by "electronic ban-breakers." Newspapers in Buffalo, Detroit, Washington, D.C., New York City and the United Kingdom, as well as radio and television stations close to the border, also divulged the details. Canadians brought copies of The Buffalo News across the border, prompting orders to the NRP to arrest all those with more than one copy at the border; extra copies were confiscated. Copies of other newspapers, including The New York Times, were turned back at the border or not accepted by distributors in Ontario.

Trial, conviction, and incarceration

Bernardo was tried for the murders of French and Mahaffy in 1995, and his trial included detailed testimony from Karla and videotapes of the rapes and torture. Bernardo testified that the deaths were accidental, later claiming that Karla was the actual killer. On September 1, 1995, Paul Bernardo was convicted of a number of offences, including the two first-degree murders and two aggravated sexual assaults, and sentenced to life in prison without parole for at least twenty-five years. He was designated a dangerous offender, making him unlikely to ever be released.

Although Bernardo was kept in the segregation unit at Kingston Penitentiary for his own safety, he was still attacked and harassed; he was punched in the face by another inmate when he returned from a shower in 1996. In June 1999, five convicts tried to storm his segregation range and a riot squad used gas to disperse them.

On February 21, 2006, the Toronto Star reported that Bernardo had admitted sexually assaulting at least ten other women in attacks not previously attributed to him. Most were in 1986, a year before the spree officially attributed to the Scarborough Rapist. Authorities suspected Bernardo in other crimes, including a string of rapes in Amherst, New York, and the drowning of Terri Anderson in St. Catharines, but he has never acknowledged his involvement. Bernardo's lawyer, Anthony G. Bryant, reportedly forwarded the information to legal authorities in November 2005.

In 2006, Bernardo gave a prison interview in which he claimed that he had reformed and would make a good parole candidate. He became eligible to petition a jury for early parole in 2008 under the faint hope clause (since he committed multiple murders before the 1997 criminal-code amendment) but did not do so. In 2015, Bernardo applied for day parole in Toronto. According to the victims' lawyer, Tim Danson, it is unlikely that Bernardo will ever be released in any capacity due to his dangerous offender status. In September 2013, Bernardo was transferred to Millhaven Institution in Bath, where he was reportedly segregated from other inmates.

In November 2015, Bernardo self-published A MAD World Order, a violent, fictional, 631-page e-book on Amazon. By November 15, the book was reportedly an Amazon bestseller, but was removed from the website due to public outcry. In October 2018, Bernardo had been set to go to trial for possession of a "shank" weapon while incarcerated. However, the prosecution dropped the charges when they determined that there was no reasonable probability of conviction.

Bernardo became eligible for parole in February 2018. On October 17 of that year, he was denied day and full parole by the Parole Board of Canada. His next parole hearing took place on June 22, 2021; it took only one hour of deliberation by the presiding judge for his application to be turned down.

In May 2023, after spending a decade at Millhaven Institution, Bernardo was transferred to La Macaza Institution, a medium-security facility in Quebec, where he will continue to serve his indeterminate sentence. In light of public outrage raised by the transfer, Correctional Service Canada announced in June that it was to review the decision. On July 20, Commissioner Anne Kelly explained in a thirty-minute press conference that the review board found the transfer to be "sound" in view of the passage of Bill C-83, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and another Act.

On July 26, 2023, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino was dropped from cabinet and replaced by Dominic LeBlanc during a cabinet shuffle, with the media attributing his demotion to the controversy around the Bernardo transfer. The day after LeBlanc was installed, The Globe and Mail wrote an article covering his opinion that the legislation was inconsequential, while Pierre Poilievre, the Leader of the Opposition, said that this was an example of "soft-on-crime" policies on the part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government.

Bernardo's next parole hearing was on November 26, 2024. His victims' families were initially barred from attending in person because of safety concerns, but that decision was reversed by the parole board. Bernardo was denied parole for a third time by the Parole Board of Canada.

Law-enforcement review <span class="anchor" id="Law Enforcement review"></span>

After Bernardo's 1995 conviction, the Ontario government appointed Archie Campbell to review the roles played by the police services during the investigation. In his 1996 report, Campbell found that a lack of coordination, cooperation and communications by police and other elements of the judicial system contributed to a serial predator "falling through the cracks."

Psychology

Bernardo scored 35 out of 40 on the Psychopathy Checklist, a psychological assessment tool used to assess the presence of psychopathy in individuals. Bernardo's score of 35 falls midway between the minimum score required to qualify a person for a diagnosis of psychopathy (i.e., 30) and the maximum possible score of 40. Karla, by contrast, scored 5 out of 40. At his October 17, 2018, parole meeting, evidence from expert psychiatric reports found that Bernardo had "deviant sexual interests and [he] met the diagnostic criteria of sexual sadism, voyeurism, and paraphilia not otherwise specified." The reports furthermore stated that he "met the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder and [met the requirement for] a diagnosis of psychopathy," meaning he was thereby "more likely to repeat violent sexual offending." The reports concluded that Bernardo "showed minimal insight into [his] offending, which is consistent with file information that suggests [he] has been keen over the years to come up with [his] own unsubstantiated reasons for [his] criminal behaviour."

In popular culture <span class="anchor" id="Media adaptations"></span>

Television and film

Episodes of Law & Order ("Fools for Love", season 10), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit ("Damaged", season 4 and "Pure", season 6), Close to Home ("Truly, Madly, Deeply", season 2) and The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2007's "Know Thine Enemy") were inspired by the case.
The second episode of The Mentalist concerned a respectable, murderous husband-and-wife team.
The Criminal Minds episode "Mr. and Mrs. Anderson" contains a serial-killer couple loosely based on Bernardo and Homolka, and the Bernardo case was mentioned by the Behavioral Analysis Unit team when they delivered their profile to the local police.
In the second episode of the Canadian crime drama Da Vinci's Inquest, a homicide detective remarks that the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) would have helped apprehend Bernardo sooner. The two-part season finale follows the investigation of a married serial killer couple whose modus operandi resembles that of Bernardo and Homolka.
Dark Heart, Iron Hand, an MSNBC documentary rebroadcast as "To Love and To Kill" on MSNBC Investigates, concerned the case.
In 2004, producers from Quantum Entertainment (a Los Angeles-based production company) announced the release of Karla, with the working title Deadly. Misha Collins portrayed Bernardo in the film alongside Laura Prepon, who starred as Karla Homolka.
Another documentary aired on the Discovery+ streaming service via the sub-channel Investigation Discovery entitled The Ken & Barbie Killers: The Lost Tapes. It premiered on December 12, 2021, and consisted of 4 episodes.

Music

The 1993 Rush song "Nobody's Hero" references the murder of a young girl in Port Dalhousie, drummer Neil Peart's hometown.