"Karly Curls"
lostc...@gmail.com
by Jim Henshaw
the-legion-of-decency.blogspot.com
Karly Curls
Everybody has a sore spot. An old sports injury that flares at an
inopportune moment; the bad back that tightens without warning; a
something or someone that pops up from time to time to remind you life
can be incredibly unfair and unjust.
For me the wound that just won't heal is Karla Homolka.
Karly Curls. Schoolgirl Killer. Serial Rape Enabler. Paul Bernardo's
"Better" Half. She came into my life uninvited and thanks to a Justice
system that refuses to admit it made a mistake and allows ever greater
injustices to be perpetrated, she just won't go away.
For those who don't know the story, there are a ton of books on the
subject and endless web sources. In brief, Karla and her husband Paul,
the perfect suburban couple, were responsible for the deaths of three
teenage girls, Leslie Mahaffey, Kristen French and Karla's kid sister
Tammy. They also drugged and sexually abused other women. Many believe
they were responsible for other deaths. They videotaped their crimes.
When the police finally arrested Paul, Karla offered to testify
against him in return for lesser sentences, claiming to be a battered
wife and unwilling participant in what had gone on. Shortly after the
deal was done, the incriminating videotapes were discovered. But,
according to authorities, nothing could be done to undo what became
known in the Canadian press as "the deal with the devil". Karla served
12 years for Manslaughter and is now a free woman, living under a new
identity in Quebec.
She popped into the news this week with rumors that she has had a
child.
I'm not a believer in Capital Punishment. But I do believe that
someone who kills should not be given the opportunity to do it again.
Part of the process I used in writing and producing "Top Cops" was
spending time on the job with cops. That included being present at a
number of homicide scenes. Some were mundane, some appalling. My first
was a decapitation, my last made Hannibal Lechter seem like a Vegan.
But all of them had the same emotional impact. Being in the presence
of someone who has died violently hits you with an enormity you're
never quite prepared for. The whole scene roils with the both the
echoes of the savage, uncontrolled emotions that caused it as well as
the unfathomable dimensions of what's been taken away.
Trust me - it's not at all like "CSI: Miami".
Oh, sure, there are cops who go for the gallows humor or play the
tough guy role. Everybody grieves differently and everybody deals with
horror in their own way. And no matter how much we all intellectually
know we could perpetrate such crimes, there's no description for being
in the presence of the act.
Paul Bernardo went to trial in Toronto in 1995 and a US network I had
done a show for asked me to attend. They were considering an MOW and
wanted me to write it. I knew a little about the case but not much
more than the average person. You needed passes to get into the
courtroom and the network arranged one for me and one for a reporter
from their NY affiliate, who was arriving to do a story.
The Reporter was standard issue, attractive, energetic and excited at
breaking a story the American media had not paid much attention to.
Paul would be her OJ.
The trial had been going on for a couple of weeks, but we were there
for the appearance of the star witness, Karla Homolka; one of my
duties being to short list the actresses with network obligations who
could play her.
The courtroom was packed and I had to explain the differences from a
US courtroom for the Reporter. The robes. The dock. And a video system
that had been installed to both serve justice and protect the public
and the victims. Video monitors were placed where they could be seen
by the Judge, the Jurors, the Accused and the Witnesses. But they
could not be seen by the public. However, the audio portion was made
available in open court.
We took our places. The Judge and the Lawyers took theirs. Bernardo
was brought in by his Jailers. He struck me as the kind of guy you saw
all over Bay Street (our version of Wall Street). Well dressed. Well
groomed. With the same pointless demeanor and detachment from life you
see in a lot of people in the financial trade.
If you saw Christian Bale in "American Psycho" you've seen Paul
Bernardo.
Karla arrived from a different holding pen and the spectators all
craned and buzzed in reaction. I didn't think she looked as attractive
as she had in the newspaper photos. She was calm, conservatively
dressed and well spoken; initially taking pains not to make eye
contact with her ex, the Accused. When she finally did, it reminded me
of the way one of my ex's had looked at me in divorce court. Detached
but familiar, knowing this was the last time we'd ever be in the same
room together.
The Crown Prosecutor led Karla through her testimony, sticking to the
script written in their deal. Battered wife. Terrified and unable to
stop the monster she was married to. Wanting so much to save "those
poor girls" and her sister. But she was just so damn small and
helpless and trapped.
Karla wasn't a very good actress - and by this time she'd had time to
practice. Having sat through many police interrogations where both the
interviewing officer and the eyes on the other side of the one-way
glass are watching for any hint of a lie; I couldn't fathom how
anybody had bought what she was selling. But they had. It was a good
story and now they were all stickin' to it!
When Paul's Lawyer had the opportunity to cross-examine, he tore her
tales apart. Within an hour I was convinced that while Paul was a
nasty piece of work, Karla was beyond any evil I have ever
encountered.
And this wasn't due to some brilliant lawyer building "reasonable
doubt" in the Jury. It came from the words and actions of Karla
herself. All around me the faces and the reactions were the same.
Nobody believed a word she was saying. Not one word.
And then they played the tapes. Over and over and over. Minutely re-
examining the hours before the murders in heart-breaking detail.
I won't describe what I heard. Not that I can't. I won't. Nobody else
needs the images in their head that were put into mine that afternoon.
What became obvious to every person in that courtroom was that despite
the truly unspeakable things Paul Bernardo had done, it was Karly
Curls who did the killing.
By the end of the day, the Reporter was devastated. She may not have
been much of a journalist, but she knew what she'd witnessed could not
be repeated. And I knew this was one script I would not write.
The Reporter flew home, but I went back. Not because I'm some kind of
masochist, but because I had to understand. Not understand what had
happened in that quaint suburban house of murders on the shores of
Lake Ontario, that was painfully clear; but why the Canadian Justice
system was so avidly pursuing such a massive miscarriage of Justice.
Don't get me wrong. Paul Bernardo deserves to spend every second of
the rest of his life in prison. But he should have had company.
A couple of years later, the production company I was working for was
asked to bid on a screenplay based on the case called "Invisible
Darkness". It was well written and got to some of the "truth" but not
in a way that would have made anyone question the "deal with the
devil". About a year ago, a fairly trashy US film called "Karla" came
and went in about a week. It too followed the official version.
I'm not one of those who thinks certain stories shouldn't be told.
I've sat with the families of murder victims I've portrayed. I've seen
the pain that reliving their loss causes and wouldn't want to be a
party to creating more of it. But all of those cases ended in Justice.
Those families had the closure that Justice provides and were able to
look at the dramatic portrayal of their loved ones as making a
difference, either in preventing a similar crime or raising awareness
of a problem.
The victims in the Bernardo/Homolka case did not receive Justice and
that's why the feelings about it run so high whenever the story
reappears. But something bigger keeps Justice from happening and I
still don't know why.
We all understand that Governments lie and sometimes Justice is
perverted to serve a "greater good" or to protect someone or something
larger than the rest of us can understand. And often I wonder what
that something or someone was here. Who did Karla get to or who needed
to keep her free? What person in power did she touch at some level or
who needed to protect her? Even my best conspiracy theory generator
can't come up with one that makes sense.
So now Karla may have spawned and the powers that be insist she's
rehabilitated, has served her debt to society and/or has the right to
build a new life. Maybe that's true. Maybe I should just forget it and
move on.
But those tapes of children being tortured keep playing in my head and
the images I get tonight are of a woman in a garret nursery in old
Montreal, cooing over a cradle -- just like the last scene in
"Rosemary's Baby".
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