Starting in May of 1987, the suburb of Scarborough in Ontario was plagued by a series of horrific crimes. Appearance Of Paul Bernardo As The Scarborough Rapist Toronto Star Archives/Toronto Star via Getty Images Metro police composite sketch of the boy-next-door-type suspect in eight rapes committed in Scarborough over the past three years.
Before long, he would give in to a far darker impulse. Paul Bernardo was good-looking and charming, an unfortunate combination that he used to manipulate women and take them off their guard. He began to refer to his own mother as a “slob” and a “whore.” When he went off to study at the University of Toronto, he became adept at picking women up at bars only to later humiliate and beat them. It wasn’t until he was 16 when his mother revealed to him that he was actually the result of an extramarital affair that Bernardo’s outward behavior began to noticeably change. Observers recall him as being “always happy…a young boy who smiled a lot.” Paul Bernardo did not seem to be unduly affected by this dark turn in his childhood. In 1975, Kenneth Bernardo was charged with child molestation and there were rumors he had even molested his own daughter. But as with everything else in the story of Paul Bernardo, this deceptively normal exterior masked a dark truth. The Bernardos were a “financially well-off,” stable middle-class family. 27, 1964, in Ontario Canada to Kenneth and Marilyn Bernardo.
The couple even became known as the “Ken and Barbie killers.” In the end, Paul Bernardo was found to responsible for at least 13 rapes and perhaps four killings. He read the classic horror novel American Psycho “like his bible,” and when he met and married Karla Homolka, his sadistic streak only increased as she encouraged his behavior.
He studied how to entice women like he studied how to do well in business. Paul Bernard and his wife Karla Homolka were a seemingly unlikely pair of Canadian killers.īefore Bernardo was put behind bars for multiple murders, tortures, and rapes, he was a salesman by trade that lured his female victims using pickups and pitches he learned on his day job. Postmedia The “Ken And Barbie Killers”, Paul Bernardo and his wife Karla Homolka on their wedding day.