Where Are the Ken and Barbie Killers Now? Inside the Married Serial Murderers' Crimes By Lynsey Eidell

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka went from young, beautiful newlyweds to two of Canada’s most notorious criminals.

Their facade as a picture-perfect couple was shattered just two years into their marriage, when, in 1993, Bernardo was linked to a series of rapes of young girls in his hometown of Scarborough, Ontario, per the CBC. The violent sex crimes, which were committed between 1986 and 1990, were just the tip of the iceberg, however. Soon after police arrested Bernardo for the Scarborough rapes, he and Homolka were also linked to the murders of three teenage girls between 1990 and 1992, according to CTV News. 

Bernardo and Homolka were accused of raping and murdering 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy, 15-year-old Kristen French and Homolka’s own 15-year-old sister, Tammy Homolka. The trio of murders, and their stereotypical good looks, earned the couple the nickname the “Ken and Barbie killers.”

Homolka struck a plea deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to manslaughter for her role in the murders in 1993. In exchange for the lesser charges, Homolka turned on her husband — testifying against Bernardo at his 1995 double murder trial. Bernardo was convicted of murdering Mahaffy and French and sentenced to life in prison, despite his claims that it was actually his wife who took the teenagers’ lives.

Though it has been more than three decades since their vicious crimes terrorized Canada, Bernardo and Homolka remain two of the country’s most infamous criminals.

Here’s a closer look at the “Ken and Barbie killers” history of violence — and where Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka are today.

Who are Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka?

The youngest of three children, Bernardo was born Aug. 27, 1964, and raised in Scarborough — a suburb of Toronto. He grew up in a troubled home, according to Canadian magazine The Walrus, with a father who molested his older sister and was physically and verbally abusive toward his mother, Marilyn. She was reportedly reclusive, living almost exclusively in their basement, per Nick Pron’s 2005 book Lethal Marriage.

Bernardo graduated from the University of Toronto Scarborough and was beginning his accounting career when he met Homolka in 1987. She was a 17-year-old high school student from St. Catharine’s, Ontario, who was visiting Scarborough for a pet convention when she crossed paths with 23-year-old Bernardo in a hotel bar.

Their connection was instant, and Bernardo began making the two-hour trip from Scarborough to St. Catharine’s every weekend to visit Homolka at her family home, where she lived with her parents and two younger sisters.

By Christmas Eve 1989, Homolka and Bernardo were engaged, according to the CBC. They wed in June 1991 and settled in Port Dalhousie, Ontario. However, by the time of their nuptials, both Homolka and Bernardo had already begun committing violent crimes against young girls.

What crimes were Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka accused of?

Beginning in 1986, Bernardo committed a chain of violent sex crimes against young women in his hometown of Scarborough. Most of his attacks followed a similar pattern, in which he would follow his victims from bus stops late at night, which led police to issue a warning to women in the area traveling alone, especially by bus, according to the podcast Serial Killers. Dubbed the Scarborough rapist, Bernardo brutally raped at least 14 women and girls — many of them teenagers — between 1987 and 1990, according to the CBC.

But once Bernardo and Homolka became engaged, his crimes escalated with her help. Their first victim was Homolka’s younger sister Tammy: In July 1990, the two served the 15-year-old a spaghetti dinner spiked with Valium stolen from Homolka’s job at an animal clinic. Bernardo then raped Tammy for about a minute until she began to wake up, the CBC reported.

Then, on Dec. 23, 1990, Homolka and Bernardo attacked Tammy a second time. This time, they served her a cocktail of rum and eggnog spiked with Halcyon, an animal tranquilizer also stolen by Homolka. When Tammy passed out, Bernardo began to rape her once again, while Homolka filmed the attack, per Serial Killers. The assault only stopped when Tammy began to choke on her own vomit. Bernardo and Homolka attempted to revive her, but were unsuccessful — and Tammy’s death was initially ruled accidental.

Homolka and Bernardo would go on to commit two more rapes and murders together. On June 14, 1991 — just two weeks before their wedding day — Bernardo kidnapped 14-year-old Mahaffy from outside of her home, where she was locked out after missing curfew, per Serial Killers.

Bernardo then took her to the home he shared with Homolka, where the two raped and tortured the teenager before murdering her. Bernardo then dismembered her body and encased it in concrete, which they tossed in nearby Lake Gibson. The concrete blocks containing Mahaffy’s body parts were discovered on June 29, which was also Bernardo and Homolka’s wedding day, according to McKinney Law.

On April 16, 1992, the “Ken and Barbie killers” struck once again. Together, Homolka and Bernardo kidnapped 15-year-old French and spent the next three days violently assaulting her at their home. They then murdered her, and her naked body was dumped 30 miles from her home. French was found on April 30, 1992, according to the CBC.

“You wonder, ‘What did she actually go through?’ ” French’s father, Doug, told PEOPLE in 1993. “That is the part that really disturbs us.”

How were Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka caught?

In November 1990, Bernardo was questioned by Toronto police in connection with the Scarborough rapes because of his resemblance to a composite sketch of the attacker. While police were unable to make an arrest at the time, they did collect hair, blood and saliva samples from Bernardo, the CBC reported.

Bernardo’s DNA samples were not tested until December 1992 — more than two years after they were first obtained, according to a judge’s 1996 report that also claimed the murders “could have been prevented” had his sample been tested earlier. Results from the DNA tests connected Bernardo to the Scarborough rapes, and he was arrested on Feb. 17, 1993.

Bernardo was also arrested in January 1993 on assault charges, after he allegedly attacked Homolka with a flashlight, hitting her so hard that her left eye became partially dislodged from its socket. After being released from the hospital, Homolka hired a lawyer and began working — in secret — with police and prosecutors to connect Bernardo to the murders of her sister, Mahaffy and French.

What happened at Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo’s trials?

Between February and May 1993, Homolka and her attorney negotiated a plea agreement with prosecutors. As part of the deal, she agreed to plead guilty to two counts of manslaughter and serve 12 years in prison for her role in the murders of Mahaffy and French — in exchange for her testimony against Bernardo, according to the Canadian justice department.

Bernardo’s trial began two years later, on May 18, 1995, the CBC reported. Homolka testified at length against her former husband, whom she divorced in February 1994. In addition to her testimony, the prosecution also had possession of Bernardo’s videotapes of his attacks — evidence that had been withheld by his former lawyer for more than a year, The New York Times reported.

On Sept. 1, 1995, after a four-month trial, Bernardo was found guilty of all nine charges against him, including two counts of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. However, the court also deemed him a dangerous offender, making it unlikely that he would ever be granted parole.

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Why was Karla Homolka’s plea deal controversial?

The plea bargain Homolka struck with prosecutors was considered controversial from the get-go, as many perceived it to be too lenient, according to The Globe and Mail. It faced even more backlash, though, once Bernardo’s former lawyer, Ken Murray, handed over videotapes of the crimes in September 1994 — 16 months after he originally uncovered them from Bernardo’s home, the CBC reported.

The tapes showed that Homolka played a much more active role in the assaults of Mahaffy and French than she originally portrayed to the police. At Bernardo’s trial, his defense attorney argued that Homolka was a willing participant and accomplice in the crimes. Bernardo also testified that it was Homolka who strangled Mahaffy and French, and that he had planned to release both victims, according to The Guardian. However, prosecutors portrayed Homolka as a battered wife who was beaten and blackmailed into aiding Bernardo, per the Associated Press.

Even after Bernardo was found guilty of murder, public outrage remained over Homolka’s “deal with the devil,” as it was referred to in the media. As a result, the attorney general of Ontario launched an inquiry into the circumstances of Homolka’s plea bargain, but found that both the agreement and sentence were “adequate,” according to the justice department.

“Distasteful as it always is to negotiate with an accomplice, the Crown had no alternative but to do so in this case,” the inquiry read. “It is … often the ‘lesser of two evils’ to deal with an accomplice rather than to be left in a situation where a violent and dangerous offender cannot be prosecuted.”

Where is Karla Homolka today?

After serving her 12-year sentence, Homolka was released from prison on July 5, 2005. Her release sparked protests from her victims’ families and the public, The Guardian reported.

Homolka gave an interview to a French-language radio station immediately upon her release from prison.

“What I did was terrible,” she said, per The Guardian. “I was in a situation where I couldn’t see clearly, and where I couldn’t get help. I was completely bowled over by [Bernardo]. I regret it enormously, because now I know I had the power to stop it.”

Homolka continued, “I don’t want people to think I am dangerous and I’m going to do something to their children. I think of what I have done and I don’t think I deserve to be happy because of it.”

Following her release from prison, Homolka married the brother of her trial attorney, a man named Thierry Bordelais, according to reports. The couple reportedly have three children together and spent time living in Guadeloupe before settling in Montreal, The Globe and Mail reported.

In 2017, Homolka made headlines once again when news outlets discovered she had volunteered at her children’s private elementary school in Montreal. She had reportedly chaperoned a field trip, brought a dog in for show-and-tell and visited a classroom to demonstrate knitting. At the time, a school spokesman said that Homolka was not a “regular volunteer, and can never be alone with any children, either in school or churches.”

“The school board was fully aware of who she is,” the spokesman added.

Where is Paul Bernardo today?

Bernardo is currently serving his life sentence for the murders of Mahaffy and French in La Macaza Institution, a medium-security prison in Quebec.

Bernardo served the first 20 years of his life sentence in Kingston Penitentiary, a maximum security prison in Kingston, Ontario. In 2006, he was transferred to Millhaven Penitentiary, a maximum security facility located in Bath, Ontario, according to the Toronto Sun.

The same year, Bernardo’s attorney, Tony Bryant, revealed that the convicted murderer had confessed to 10 additional sexual assaults in a letter, the CBC reported. According to Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General, Bernardo raped or sexually assaulted at least 18 women between 1987 and 1992 — but Homolka alleged to police that her ex-husband had claimed to have assaulted as many as 30 women.

In November 2023, Bernardo was moved from Millhaven to La Macaza Institution, a medium-security facility, the BBC reported. The decision faced backlash from many Canadians, particularly given Bernardo’s designation as a dangerous offender. A probe into the transfer was launched in March 2024, especially after members of parliament learned the correctional facility had a hockey rink, tennis court and weight room for its inmates, according to the CBC.

The “emergency meeting” of the public safety committee was to investigate why “sadistic murderers are being left to enjoy freedoms and luxuries of lower security prisons.” However, the Commissioner of Correctional Service of Canada, Anne Kelly, said the transfer was “sound.”

Bernardo has applied for parole three times, in October 2018, June 2021 and November 2024. All three times, he has been denied.