Karla Homolka, or Karla Teale as she prefers, is a cold blooded killer, kidnapper and sexual torturer. She is undoubtedly a psychopath and/or a sociopath. If that isn’t enough, in committing her barbaric acts she didn’t distinguish between total strangers and her own younger sister. and let’s face it; even Jeffery Dahmer didn’t eat members of his family.
None of this, however, means that Karla Homolka is stupid. It’s one thing to be manipulative; it’s quite another to manipulate the very people who are saying that she is manipulative. In her ability to get her own way, she hasn’t changed from the "battered" young woman who ended up with a 12-year-sentence for amongst other crimes, taking the lives of three young girls.
Karla of course is scared to death of being harmed or worse. Her total lack of concern for human life never applied to her. This became apparent when she left Paul Bernardo who beat her after killing her sister, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristin French. By striking Karla, Paul had apparently gone too far.
Some chuckles arose after Karla, who had lawyers trying to prevent the media from reporting anything about her, speedily left jail and headed straight to a television station where she gave an interview.
It was a brilliant move on her part. Homolka intends to avoid detection by changing her appearance. But the general public did not know what she looked like; they only knew what she looked like 12 years ago as a much younger 23-year-old. Everyone knows this and any woman who bore any resemblance to the way the schoolgirl killer might look now would have been checked out. But by letting everyone know what she now looks like, the woman who appeared on their TV screens will be sought out. Karla can change that appearance and walk down the streets of Montreal virtually undetected.
Having her lawyers launch court cases, especially the frivolous applications to have the media barred from reporting anything about her, that coincide with her release from prison was nothing more than a diversionary tactic. What better way than to distract the designated Karla-watchers in the media from trying to find her than by having them hang around the court house to watch the legal proceedings? Neither of these two moves will guarantee that Homolka will receive the anonymity that she so desperately seeks, but they undoubtedly improve the chances of remaining under the media’s and under the public’s radar screens.
Karla Homolka also knew what she was doing when she decided to learn French and become bilingual so that she could easily function in the province of Quebec. Homolka’s reason for refusing to speak to the English language media was that the English press had been "unfair" to her. No doubt, to her they were just as unfair to her as was her 12-year-sentence imposed upon her for her crimes (she wanted total immunity for testifying against Bernardo). But the reality was that the coverage of her crimes and their aftermath received a lot less attention in Quebec, especially in the French language media, than they did in the rest of Canada. The mindset of many Quebeckers is such that although these crimes were committed in a neighbouring province, they might as well have well taken place in Mozambique.
Homolka must also surely be aware that Quebec and Quebeckers are softer on crime than the rest of the country is. While the common law provinces complained that the old Young Offenders act was much too lenient, Quebec complained that it was too harsh. although there are other factors involved, one of the reasons that the federal Liberals are soft on crime is that they don’t want to risk offending Quebec voters.
Like the punch line of an old joke goes, Karla Homolka may be crazy but she’s not stupid.