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By Russell Watson
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THE HOTTEST NEWSPAPER IN CANADA last week was Tuesday's edition of The Washington Post, which isn't even published there. The Post carried a meticulously detailed story on one of the most horrific murder cases in Canadian history--a series of sex-and-torture killings allegedly committed by a handsome young middle-class couple. The appalling facts of the case have been suppressed by an Ontario judge, who sent the wife to prison for manslaughter, banning publication of most of the facts so her husband can get a fair trial. That trial won't be held until next year, or possibly later, and meantime the "Barbie and Ken" murder case, as some people call it, has been driven underground. Details filter into everyday gossip from computer bulletin boards and databases and from foreign news media that are beyond the judge's reach. So far, however, Canadian news organizations have maintained a nearly perfect blackout, despite the misgivings of some--and the fact that the accused husband wants the story told.
The Canadian public is allowed to know that Karla Homolka, a veterinarian's assistant who is now 23 years old, was sentenced to 12 years in prison last July in the abduction and murder of two teenage girls. One of them was found, hacked to pieces, on the day of Homolka's lavish 1991 wedding to Paul Bernardo, an accountant who is now 29. Bernardo, who changed his name to Teale last January, not long before his arrest, also has been charged in a series of rapes dating back to 1982.
What Canadians are not supposed to know is that Homolka pleaded guilty. She will be eligible for parole in only four years, which suggests that she has agreed to testify against her husband, from whom she separated after he reportedly beat her up. Justice Francis Kovacs prohibited publication of most of the sickening evidence revealed at Hornolka's trial, but details of the case have been pieced together by the Post's Anne Swardson, by other foreign journalists and by the American television show "A Current Affair." According to these accounts, one of the victims, 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy, was sexually assaulted for perhaps two days before she was strangled. The other victim, Kristen French, 15, was kept alive for 13 days before she died; according to the Post, it was revealed at Homolka's trial that Kristen had been shown a videotape of Leslie's suffering. Another account said that, to keep them from escaping, both girls were hobbled by their abductors, who used veterinary surgical instruments to sever tendons in their legs.
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Accounts of the trial said that, even before they were married, Karla was helping to find girls for Paul to have sex with. Her own 14-year-old sister Tammy "was to be Paul's Christmas present," the Post said. As the newspaper described it, Tammy was knocked unconscious with an animal tranquilizer on Dec. 23, 1990, during a party at her parents' home in Saint Catherines, Ontario. According to this account, Paul and Karla each had sex with her unconscious body, videotaping the acts. Then Tammy began to vomit, eventually choking to death. A local coroner ruled the death accidental, but after Homolka's trial the girl's body was exhumed for further investigation.
At Karla's trial, the prosecutor read a long statement of facts that had been agreed to by the defense. Foreign journalists were excluded from the courtroom; Canadian reporters were allowed to hear the evidence but were prohibited from publishing most of it until after Teale's trial. The ban applies only in Canada (copies of NEWSWEEK distributed there do not contain this story).
The facts to which Homolka admitted "left seasoned law-enforcement officers and journalists in tears," the Post reported. Justice Kovacs said that his publication ban was intended to "balance he freedom of the press and the right of Paul Teale to fair trial." Many Canadians find the restriction reasonable, and some relatives of the victims say they are grateful for it. "We keep going through this again and again," Debbie Mahaffy, Leslie's mother, said last week. "How many times do we have to relive our daughter's death?"
There are serious grounds on which to criticize the judge's ban, including the public's right to know about court proceedings in a timely manner. The blackout prevents Canadians from forming an opinion on the appropriateness of Homolka's sentence. Teale's attorneys think the ban also hurts their case. "We feel that [Karla] has been portrayed as the victim of her husband," says Timothy Breen, a member of the defense team. "Publicity of her trial would cure that misconception." In any event, the Teale-Homolka case is simply too lurid to be kept secret for long. People are naturally curious, and in Canada, 80 percent of the population lives within 200 miles of the porous U. S. border. News travels more quickly and easily than any other commodity. In the age of the global village, no democratic society can wall itself off entirely, even from a story that most people wish they had never heard about.
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