Keywords Crime

For all the intellectual fascination with the Homolka enigma, the gut reaction to the Bernardo tapes was overwhelming revulsion. Early last week, Justice Patrick LeSage, who is presiding over the trial, ruled that only the accused, the jury and court officials could see tapes that depict the physical and sexual assaults on 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy and 15-year-old Kristen French, the two girls Bernardo is accused of kidnapping and murdering. But he allowed the public and media to hear the audio portions of the tapes. The ruling also applied to tapes showing the attacks on Tammy and on an unnamed fourth young victim - known as Jane Doe - who survived her ordeal and is expected to testify later in the trial, possibly with her identity concealed.

LeSage's ruling allowing the public to hear the tapes angered members of the French and Mahaffy families, who have sat in the courtroom almost daily. They quickly applied to the Supreme Court of Canada for permission to appeal LeSage's decision, but were turned down. They also showed their displeasure by walking out of court, along with several supporters, on the afternoon when Crown lawyers played the 6½-minute tape depicting the rape of Tammy Homolka. And they stayed out of the courtroom for almost an entire day when the Crown presented two long, sexually explicit segments involving only Bernardo and Homolka, who is now serving concurrent 12-year prison sentences after being convicted in July, 1993, of manslaughter in the deaths of Mahaffy and French.

Those tapes were shown on two large TV screens to the public, because none of the teenage victims appear in them. They contained lurid dialogue during scenes in which Homolka mechanically performs oral sex on Bernardo, who appears bored and passive. In the second, taped in the dead girl's bedroom, they perform sexual acts on Tammy's water bed, amid her teddy bears and rag dolls. Bernardo holds up the girl's Grade 9 school photo in front of the stationary camera, and says: "There's my little virgin. There's Tammy Lynn Homolka."

The tapes, shown on June 1 and lasting nearly 44 minutes, were played twice in their entirety to allow the jury to absorb both the images and the dialogue. They had a deadening effect on almost everyone in the room. Bernardo's lawyers, John Rosen and Tony Bryant, worked on newspaper crossword puzzles rather than watch. Initially, many spectators stared at the floor or shook their heads in disbelief. By the end of the afternoon, the public galleries were nearly empty. "I can't understand how people can be that way," spectator Cindy Dempster, a 22-year-old community college student, said outside. "It's sadistic, psychotic, gross."

The following morning, the Crown played a series of even more chilling tapes that depicted the June 15, 1991, confinement and rape of Leslie Mahaffy - whose dismembered body was later found encased in concrete in a nearby lake. While only the jury and court officials saw the images, Bernardo's voice was perfectly audible in the public gallery at several points. And among those listening was the victim's mother, Debbie Mahaffy, who made a startling entrance, accompanied by two victims'-rights advocates, while the Crown was playing a 25½-minute tape. As music by pop performer David Bowie and reggae legend Bob Marley plays in the background, Bernardo and Homolka perform numerous sex acts with the teenager, whose speech sounds slurred and uncertain. At one point, Bernardo says: "You're doing a good job, Leslie, a damned good job." Then, he adds: "The next two hours are going to determine what I do to you. Right now, you're scoring perfect." As she listened, Mahaffy's mother sat absolutely rigid, her right fist clenched and pressed against her chest, and her face locked in utter agony. When she stood up to leave, she staggered and almost fell.

Later, on another segment of tape, the assault escalates. Mahaffy cries out in pain and begs Bernardo to stop; in the Crown description of the scene, he is sodomizing her while her hands are bound with twine. Mahaffy says that her blindfold seems to be slipping. That was a terrifying prospect, Crown attorney Ray Houlahan said in his opening statement, because Mahaffy felt that if Bernardo believed she could identify him, he would kill her.

As Houlahan portrays it, Mahaffy was not the only one frightened of Bernardo. He is trying to show the jury that Homolka participated unwillingly in her ex-husband's crimes because she was petrified of his physical and mental abuse. Prior to the showing of the tapes, he called Homolka's mother, Dorothy, and her sister, Lori, both of whom testified about the relationship between Karla and Bernardo. They said that they had observed an escalating pattern of abuse, culminating in a terrible beating in early January, 1993, that ended the relationship. A photograph taken after that incident - entered into evidence and later published by The Toronto Sun despite the fact that it was not officially released to the media - shows Karla with eyes so blackened that, as her mother put it, she resembled a "raccoon."

But the family's testimony left several holes in the story. In effective cross-examinations by Rosen, mother and daughter conceded that Bernardo's abuse of Karla occurred only in the last six months of the relationship, after the murders of Mahaffy and French. Until then, they acknowledged, Homolka and Bernardo appeared to be a happy, loving couple. They also agreed with Rosen that, shortly after the French murder, something happened between Homolka and Bernardo that destroyed their marriage. But they said they had no idea what it was. That is only one of the enduring questions in this case, questions Homolka will undoubtedly be called upon to address when she testifies as the prosecution's star witness - presumably in late June or early July. Perhaps then the larger riddle of Karla Homolka - cunning or coerced? - will finally be answered.

Maclean's June 12, 1995

Author D'ARCY JENISH