UntanglingKarla's Web: Post-National Arguments, Cross-Border Crimes, and the Investigation of Canadian Culture

Abstract

The abduction, rape, and murder of two Southern Ontario teenagers in 1991 and 1992 occasioned what some have called the most publicized legal case in Canadian history. Charged with the killings of fourteen-year-old Leslie Mahaffy and fifteen-year-old Kristen French were an attractive husband and wife couple, in their twenties, living in St. Catharines, ten miles from Niagara Falls and the Canada-U.S. border. With their conventional good looks and seemingly upscale yuppie lifestyle, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka rapidly became the center of a complicated media and legal imbroglio. Because the police proved unable to gather sufficient evidence to prosecute the couple successfully, the Crown struck a deal with Homolka in return for her testimony against her husband. After a closed hearing, from which the press were either barred or forbidden to report the details at the time, Homolka received a twelve-year prison term in exchange for her agreement to act as the Crown's principal witness against Bernardo. One reason given for the publication blackout of the Homolka hearing was to guarantee Bernardo's right to a fair trial; even so, in a nonetheless electrifying trial, held in Toronto in the spring and summer of 1995, Bernardo was found guilty of the murders and sentenced to two concurrent life terms. While these details may not appear to differ significantly from similar serial murders and their prosecution, the uproar generated by the Mahaffy-French killings was distinguished by a number of complexities. With American television broadcasting lurid details of a number of recent sensational trials, and television programs like the Fox network's A Current Affair impatient for particulars of similar cases, the American press's coverage of the Homolka hearing entailed, besides the details of these sad and sordid cases, their discovery of what appeared to them a particularly repressive judicial system which did not hesitate to violate what Americans understand as their First Amendment rights in the name of a greater public good. In other words, they discovered that Canada is different. For its part, barred from Homolka's trial, the Canadian public was eager for information on the serial murders that had occurred in their own back yards, something of an anomaly for them, accustomed as they were to expect such murders to occur south of the border. Unable to turn to the Canadian press for coverage, reports of which were delayed under the publication ban, the public looked to any available information source, and to whatever rumors were freely circulating. The police's reluctance to provide information on the case simply fueled the fires of the rumor mill, which included unconfirmed reports of torture, cannibalism, and snuff films, all of which worked to undermine the provincial Attorney General's contention that the publication ban was meant to guarantee fairness for the accused. Instead, particularly in the face of Bernardo's own attorney's opposition to the ban, the public suspected the media censorship was a self-protective measure to conceal the Crown's plea bargain and collusion with Homolka. With the publication ban still in effect, the Canadian public, or those members who could access alternative information sources, relied on contraband copies of American and British newspapers, illegal satellite reception of American tabloid news programs, and the designated internet news group alt.fan.karla-homolka, for further information on the case. In December 1994, in a simultaneous convergence of the hunger for information and the season of good will's annual celebration of consumption, a new book appeared in shopping mall bookstores, courting Christmas shoppers. This first book on the case, rushed into print by Viking Canada, bore a purple and yellow cover prominently featuring Karla Homolka's brooding eyes, pouting lips, and enigmatic smile. It was sealed with a black and yellow band sporting a warning label, reading Special Blackout Edition, and offered to the public the lure of the forbidden fruit of evidence given at Homolka's manslaughter trial. …