Karla Homolka - Serial Killers, Timeline and Personal Life

She was born Karla Leanne Homolka, on May 4, 1970, in Port Credit, Ontario, Canada, to Karel Homolka and Dorothy Seger. Her father was a Czechoslovakian immigrant. He worked as a traveling salesman. He often got drunk and fought with her mother, while Karla and her two younger siblings comforted each other. Karla was asthmatic and had to be hospitalized frequently.

During her formative years, she enjoyed drawing and expressed her love for animals. She took up a part-time job at a pet shop when she was in her teens. She was a bright student and was liked by most of her teachers. However, she was known to be bossy with her peers. Although she claimed to love animals, she once threw a friend’s pet hamster out of the window, resulting in its death.

She started reading ‘Hardy Boys’ and ‘Nancy Drew’ mysteries at the age of 12 and became obsessed with crime. As she grew up, she became harsher in her ways and enjoyed scaring her friends. She became interested in the occult and often called spirits with her friends.

During her high-school days, she was known to be a non-conformist regarding fashion and gave the impression that she did not care what others thought of her. She was bold and did not hesitate to mingle with the opposite sex. She dated a boy named Doug and admitted to experimenting with drugs and having sex with him. She often fantasized about weird situations related to death and had once attempted to cut herself with a knife.

She met Paul Bernardo at a convention in Toronto when she was 17 years old. They had sex the first time they met and discovered that they shared sadomasochist desires.

While Karla was dating Bernardo, he got obsessed with her younger sister, Tammy. Karla assisted him to spike her sister’s spaghetti with Valium. Bernando then raped Tammy in her sleep. This was in mid-1990. In December 1990, the duo drugged Tammy again, this time with the animal tranquilizer halothane, and raped her. Tammy choked on her own vomit and died. The incident, however, was termed an accidental death.

In another incident, in June 1991, Bernardo and Karla videotaped themselves as they sexually abused and tortured a 14-year-old girl named Leslie Mahaffy. Fearing they would be identified, Karla fed their victim a lethal dose of Halcion. They then dismembered the body and encased each part in cement before dumping them in Lake Gibson.

In April 1992, Karla and her husband abducted a 15-year-old school girl named Kristen French while she was returning home. They then videotaped themselves while they forced the girl to consume alcohol and submit to them. They raped and sodomized their victim before strangulating her. Kristen’s nude body was found in a ditch, with the hair from her head cut off.

Besides murdering three young women, the husband-and-wife pair had abducted and raped another young girl, a woman (unnamed) known as “Jane Doe,” who managed to survive. Karla finally had differences with Bernardo that resulted in her becoming a victim of his brutal ways.

Karla and Bernardo were arrested for the murders of their victims, in 1993. A lengthy trial followed and lasted for two years. While Bernardo was convicted for the murders of two teenagers and was sentenced to life in prison, Karla got away with a sentence of 12 years. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter but claimed that she was an unwilling accomplice who was herself a victim.

Although she got away lightly, the video tapes that surfaced later told a different story. The tapes proved that she was very much an active participant in the crimes. They showed her taking pleasure in sexually abusing her victims. The lethal drugs used in the murders were procured from her workplace, with a lot of forethought.

She got married to Paul Bernado in June 1991 and divorced in February 1994. They were involved in multiple crimes against young teenage girls since they began dating. Karla encouraged Bernardo and was always on the lookout for new victims.

They ultimately fell out with each other at the time of their trial. She accused him of physically abusing her and coercing her to be his accomplice.

Before her conviction and during her prison sentence, she was evaluated by a number of psychiatrists. Although she could present herself as a sane person, there was a lot of evidence that proved she had a disturbed childhood and had nursed unsatisfied obsessions since a young age, which could have impacted her character and driven her to enjoy the sadistic crimes that she had committed. Her actions resembled those of a psychopath and not those of an abused woman. According to a psychiatrist, she was a typical case of hybristophilia, a condition that arouses an individual sexually when his/her partner performs violent sexual acts.

She went through a number of psychiatric treatments in prison. At the time of her release, she was not considered a threat to society. However, certain legal restrictions were imposed. She applied for a pardon in 2010, which could not be granted due to stringent laws.

After her release from prison in 2005, she settled in Quebec. There, she married her lawyer’s brother, Thierry Bordelais, in 2007. They had two sons and one daughter. She relocated to Guadeloupe and legally changed her name to “Leanne Teale.” There were rumors that she had volunteered to work in her children’s school, which sent alarm bells ringing.

She has an IQ of 132, which indicates superior intelligence.

There was a publication ban on the case during the preliminary investigation, in order to ensure a fair trial.

Karla’s deal with the prosecution that reduced her sentence was dubbed by the Canadian press as the “Deal with the Devil.”

While she served her sentence, she had a sexual affair with another female inmate who was then serving a sentence for armed robbery. She also had sex with a few male inmates.

While in prison, she took up a correspondence course in sociology and ultimately completed a degree in psychology from ‘Queen’s University.’