When you watch people on the internet claiming that humanity is all about kindness, presume they’re trying to sell you something. Humans are simply social animals with animal instincts that kick in when they are alone. A suave, sophisticated CEO in a black suit might be thinking about genocide. Paul Bernardo of Canada was one such monster.
Loss of meaning in Paul’s life
Paul Bernardo was born on August 27, 1964, in the Scarborough district of the Ontario, Canada. Bernardo was a model child growing up. He was polite, well-mannered, a good sense of style and, to top it all up a diligent student. But, just as every shining thing has its dark secrets, so did his life. Probably his mother assumed that she had trained him to be obedient enough to accept her every talking point.
Unaware of a child’s physical violent subconscious, she informed him of being “the product” of an extramarital affair. This changed everything. Bernardo’s world came crashing down. The foundation, on which he felt his immediate surroundings were built, did not exist. Up until this point, Bernardo was trying to become a good citizen, but soon lost meaning of life. In the words of Freidriche Nietzsche, His God was dead. He had lost his life’s meaning and guiding ideology.
Used his charming skills to woo girls
Soon after, he began to insult his mother publicly and privately, calling her whore and a slut. She called him a bastard in response. Nihilism had begun to dominate his brain, and with few skills picked up during his college and job days, he had become a perfect blend of publicly decent and privately psychopath. Paul Bernardo managed this through working for Amyway, an American multi-level marketing (MLM) company. He learned the sales tricks through studying the world of famous motivational get-rich-and-famous experts.
Bernardo applied these ‘tricks of trade’ on girls and started picking them from bars and pubs. Soon, his serotonin level increased in response to female interaction, and he became increasingly aggressive toward women. He wanted to build a “virgin farm”, where he would bring virgin girls and rape them. To fulfil this ambition, he started to look beyond his stable relationship and began to cheat on his partners.
Psychopathy kicking in
The natural end to any aggression is death, and the ladies who entered Bernardo’s life were no exception. Though, it is still unclear who Paul’s first victim was, he confessed to committing 10 sexual assaults, beginning in March 1986. This paedophile used simple techniques to earmark his victims. All of his victims used to get off from buses in the evening. For few days, he surveyed their after bus walking journey and earmarked his spot for rape.
Officially, in the first half of 1987, he tried to rape four young victims, the youngest of who was 15 years old. When he failed to rape, the 15-year old girl, due to her mother’s intervention, Bernardo took a break. He decided to focus on his “Good samaritan” persona and started to look for more dates. It was necessitated by his girlfriends’ objection to his sadism.
The role of his Girlfriend
While he was conquering his “monster mountain”, his fiancees began to suspect something was wrong with him and discouraged his mental build up. Karla Homolka, a girl he met in October 1987, answered Bernando’s difficulty of finding a partner as sadistic as him. Karla was struck by a mental illness called hybristophilia. It is a type of sexual interest in which women are attracted to those who commit crime. It is mainly a rich woman’s disease. In India, this illness can be traced down to Assbah Arzoomand Khan, a government officer who married Bitta Karate. Karate had confessed on TV that he killed Kashmiri Pandits.
Coming back to Paul, Karla quickly became his spirit animal. Karla was only 17 when they met, and girls her age are more likely to give in to the person having “dark triad” element of psychology. Bernando was a narcissistic, a Machiavellian and a psychopath. He showed these characteristics to Karla by deciding how she should dress, style, eat and believe. Karla concluded that Paul’s sexual behaviour was a part of “self-improvement list”. Later it turned out that Karla was the one who read Paul the 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel, American Psycho.
Series of assaults and suspicion lens
Assisted by the home support, Paul Bernardo began his serial rapes in December 1987, with rape of another 15-year old girl. However, it took a few more rapes for the police to wake up and form a task force in order to apprehend the “Scarborough Rapist”. Their only solution was to warn women not to take the bus at night. However, nothing worked and Paul went on commit more rapes of minor girls.
It took nearly two years for Police to gather some evidence in order to catch the “Scarborough Rapist”. It could happen only because a victim sat through excruciating emotional pain to give the description of her attacker. The cops created a computer sketch and circulated in newspapers. They received 16,000 responses out of which only three people claimed that Bernardo was the one whom police is looking for.
Super confident Paul Bernardo fooled the Police
Soon, police got hold of Bernardo and to the utter dismay of everyone; he convinced them that he was more credible than the one who had tipped them off. He pulled it off by confirming that he looked like the person in the sketch. Moreover, he volunteered to give his hair, blood and saliva for DNA evidence. He was well aware of Canada’s weak forensic infrastructure and that his sample would take years to reach the forensic lab.
Karla “gifting” her sister to Paul Bernardo
Meanwhile, Karla was totally smitten by him. Probably, she just wanted him to be happy, which is why she had no problem in giving her little sister, to Paul. In July 1990, she made her (sister) unconscious to ensure that Paul gets what he wants. But she woke up just as Paul was about to rape her.
5 months later, Karla handed over her unconscious sister to Paul and referring to it as “gifting her sister’s virginity to Paul for Christmas”. While attempting to keep her awake they did not realise that she had lost her breath. Later, Paul and Karla recorded themselves recreating the scenes surrounding her sister’s death, with Karla dressed as her sister.
THE VICTIMS
7 months later, Karla poached another 15-year – Jane Doe, for her husband. The next day, Jane had no idea that she was raped in an intoxicating state by the evil couple. A week later, a 14-year old girl, was tortured and sexually abused. They videotaped the sexual assault where both Karla and Paul Bernardo were seen listening to Bob Marley and David Bowie, while committing the crime. Leslie died on the spot; Paul dismembered her body and disposed every part to a far-away lake.
In August, they again contacted Jane and sexualy assaulted her by the most brutal of means. Somehow, a couple saved her life by resuscitating her. Meanwhile, they also called the Police in order to showcase that Jane was not their victim. They appeared to have paused after this deed and spent their cooling off period hunting for more victims.
The couple’s hammering of the brave girl
On 16 April 1992, they abducted another fifteen-year-old girl. This time, many people witnessed them abducting. Kristen, unlike the other victims, was not blindfolded. She was shown the video tapes of ‘the 14-year-old’, as a training procedure. To make her lose sense, she was forced to drink alcohol.
But, she was a bit more spirited and rubbed Bernardo’s psychological suffering by calling him a bastard (which Paul’s mother too called him). Paul beat her to death, and the couple then went out for a happy meal with Karla’s family.
Reality striking Karla and Paul’s conviction
Bernardo was so good at planning and execution that he could only be caught by chance, which is exactly what, happened in his case. Karla’s promotion of Paul finally rubbed on her. On 27th December 1992, Paul thrashed Karla leaving her with bruises on her limbs, a broken rib, and two black eyes. On the advice of her family and coworker, Karla charged Paul of domestic violence. As a part of the investigation, Bernardo provided his DNA samples.
Bernardo’s DNA was found to match with that of “Scarborough Rapist,” which was getting tested after two years. Paul was now a publicly hated figure, and it’s no surprise that his wife began to distance herself from him. She told authorities that she was Paul’s victim and was forced to participate in his crimes.
Also Read: Businessman Yusuf Ali Biography and Career
Karla turned in on Paul
Her statements, however, obviously did not corroborate with the evidence at Police’s disposal. To save herself Karla chalked out a new deal with the Police. She testified against Bernardo and in return was handed a relatively lower 12 years of jail term. Paul was sentenced to life-in-prison with no possibility of parole for the next 25 years. But that didn’t stop him from trying. In 2006, he gave an interview in prison, claiming that he had reformed and therefore, deserve parole.
Paul was afterwards subjected to a Psychopathy checklist test. He scored 35 out of 40, which meant that he is a classic case of clinical psychopathy. He was extremely confident of himself, as evidenced by one of his YouTube videos, where you will find the detectives are present to determine whether or not he murdered a woman named Elizabeth Bain, but their guards are down as Paul is seen guilt-tripping them for not believing him because he did “something” years ago.
Transformative shift in personality
After analysing his interrogation tape, Jordan Paterson, a famous clinical Psychologist and father figure for ultra-depressive patients in the Western world observed, “He’s leaning back…so he’s comfortable, whereas the policeman is leaning forward…If you didn’t know what this clip was about, you’d think that Bernardo was running the meeting, and he’s constantly contemptuous, casting things off, looking around. He sees himself as above, well, everything I would say, but certainly other people”
Bernardo will not be normal for the rest of his life. But he was normal in his childhood. His future was built on morality, which is why he was loved by people before becoming a monster. Author Nick Pron describes his childhood as, “He was always happy. A young boy who smiled a lot. And he was so cute; with his dimpled good looks and sweet smile, that many of the mothers just wanted to pinch him on the cheek whenever they saw him. He was the perfect child they all wanted; polite, well mannered, doing well in school, so sweet in his Boy Scout uniform”
But it was his mother’s one mistake that triggered his violent instincts, and the rest is history. In hindsight, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that she was fortunate not to be killed by Paul.
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