Karla Homolka Is 'Most Hated Woman In Canada' — What's Her Connection To 'Don't F*ck With Cats' Killer Luka Magnotta?
They called her and her accomplice the Barbie and Ken killers.
getty Netflix's documentary Don't F*ck With Cats tells the terrible tale of Luka Magnotta, a narcissistic serial killer who started out posting videos of him killing kittens online, and moved on to posting a video of him killing and dismembering a man online. It's a gory tale and throughout it Magnotta seeks attention.
At one point, he's mentioned in connection with loathed Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka, which begs the question: Who is Karla Homolka?
Homolka is a notorious Canadian serial killer who, along with her ex-husband Paul Bernardo, raped and murdered three young girls in the early 1990s. In the Netflix documentary, Magnotta becomes upset when rumors start circulating that he and Homolka were romantically involved. It's later believed that Magnotta started this rumor to bring more attention and notoriety to himself.
Homolka has a long and sordid history of her own. In Don't F*ck With Cats, she's described as "the most hated woman in Canada." Let's look at why she's received that moniker.
1. Who is Karla Homolka?
Homolka was born in Port Credit, Ontario in 1970. She met Paul Bernardo in October 1987. They were immediately sexually attracted to each other. They married in 1991.
Bernardo was interested in sadist sexual acts and considered the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho his Bible. Between 1987 and 1990 Bernardo committed a series of rapes in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. When he got together with Karla, his violence against women escalated.
2. The couple drugged, raped and killed Tammy Homolka — Karla's sister.
During the summer of 1990, Homolka claimed that Bernardo became attracted to her 15-year-old sister, Tammy Homolka. In July, Bernardo and Karla served Tammy a dinner spiked with Valium. When she passed out, Bernardo raped her.
Karla stole anesthetic halothane — a general anesthetic — from the veterinarian clinic she worked at, and she and her husband drugged Tammy with it after a Christmas party on December 23, 1990. Bernardo and Homolka raped Tammy while she was unconscious.
Later that night, Tammy choked on her own vomit and died. Bernardo and Homolka hid the evidence before calling 911. Her death was initially ruled an accident.
3. The body of one of their victims was found on the same day they got married.
On June 15, 1991, Bernardo discovered 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy locked out of her house after missing her curfew. He blindfolded her, forced her into his car, drove home and told Homolka they had a victim. Bernardo and Homolka videotaped themselves torturing and raping Mahaffy while they listened to David Bowie and Bob Marley.
The next day, Homolka forced Mahaffy to take a lethal dose of Halcion. The couple decided the best way to get rid of the evidence would be to dismember the teenager and encase each part of her in cement. They deposited her remains in Lake Gibson.
On June 29, 1991, Homolka and Bernardo married in a lavish ceremony. That same day, a 90-pound block of cement containing part of Mahaffy was discovered by a father and son who were fishing.
4. They tortured and raped their third victim over Easter weekend 1992.
On the afternoon of April 16, 1992, Homolka and Bernardo drove in search of potential victims. They spotted 15-year-old Kristen French walking home from school. They pulled into a nearby parking lot and got out of the car with a map. They asked French for directions.
When French looked at the map, Bernardo attacked her from behind and forced her into the front seat of their car. Homolka held French's hair from the backseat so that she could not escape. Homolka and Bernardo raped, sodomized and tortured French over that weekend.
They forced her to drink large quantities of alcohol. They videotaped it all. On Easter Sunday, the couple murdered French before going to Homolka's family's house for Easter dinner. French's naked body was found on April 30, 1992 in a ditch.
5. They were arrested and the court made a "deal with the devil."
Homolka and Bernardo were arrested on May 18, 1993. She was charged with two counts of manslaughter. He was charged with two counts each of kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, unlawful confinement and first-degree murder as well as one count of dismemberment.
Homolka claimed to be a battered spouse. She took a plea bargain of 12 years in prison in exchange for testifying against her husband. When the videotapes of their murders surfaced about a year and a half later and her role in the murders was confirmed, the public started calling the plea bargain a "deal with the devil."
6. She was released from prison in 2005.
Homolka was released from prison in 2005. She eventually settled in Montreal, married a man named Thierry Bordelais, and changed her name to Leanne Bordelais. She has three children with her second husband. Bordelais is the brother of her attorney.
7. How does she fit into Don't F*ck With Cats?
During Don't F*ck with Cats, it's revealed that Magnotta called a radio show to complain about rumors that he was involved with Homolka. Magnotta claimed the rumor was ruining his life on Toronto talk radio station AM 640.
“I have lost modeling jobs and have been receiving death threats,” he said. Then, during his trial in 2014, Homolka came up again. One of the packages of Jun Lin's body parts had a return address of Homolka's sister Logan (formerly Lori).
Amy Lamare is a writer covering entertainment, pop culture, beauty, fashion, fitness, technology, and the intersection of technology, business, and philanthropy. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook.