…it was money and politics and egos…
Enter Inspector Bevan.
At the time of Kristin French’s disappearance in 1992,
Inspector Vince Bevan was a 20-year veteran of the police force in Niagara,
which only goes to prove that nepotism and ambition often have a way of
eclipsing talent: in spite of the fact he had comparatively little field
experience and was generally viewed among the rank and file as inept and
incompetent when it came to actual criminal investigation, because his father
had been a senior member of the Niagara Regional force and because he was
something of an unoriginal thinker who took orders well, Vince Bevan was promoted to
the position of Inspector; kids, be sure to tell your parents about Inspector Bevan the next time they say you need to study harder.
Enter Michael Code.
In Karla: Pact With the Devil, author
Stephen Williams writes: “Just before he
joined the Ministry of the Attorney General in 1992, (Michael) Code had
established himself as one of the finest criminal lawyers in the country. Although many of the lawyers at Code’s law
firm could be described as left-leaning, liberals, or social democrats, in
Michael Code’s case he was a card-carrying member of the New Democratic Party. In early 1992, he did the unthinkable for an
accomplished criminal defense lawyer and went over to the other side. One of
Michael Code’s first official acts was the approval of a million dollars to
facilitate the formation of Inspector Bevan’s nascent Green Ribbon Task Force.
Intermittently, between May, 1992, and February, 1993, when Paul Bernardo was
arrested, Inspector Bevan returned to the trough. Code approved numerous subsequent requests for millions upon
millions of dollars to support what had become the largest police task force in
Canadian law enforcement history.”
Okay, if you’re
keeping score at home, so far we have a blowhard nincompoop of an Inspector
officiating not only the largest criminal investigation and task force ever
assembled on Canadian soil, but also the most heavily tax-payer funded. And we
have a new, overly-ambitious Assistant Deputy Minister of the Attorney General;
having in effect deserted every
honorable inclination he ever had in service of political ambition, when Karla Homolka comes into his life in
1993, it’s fair to say Michael Code has something to prove.
Enter
FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood.
Roy Hazelwood is a
clean-cut, Bible-carrying Texan with 20 plus years experience in law
enforcement; when we meet Mr. Hazelwood he is working in the Behavioral
Sciences Unit at FBI headquarters in Quantico, VA, made famous in the Jonathan
Demme movie “Silence of the Lambs”.
Agent Hazelwood’s boss is his old friend and fellow profiler John
Douglas, at that time Unit Chief of the BSU, and Chief Douglas also has
recently been made famous by this film--the character of Clarice Starling’s
boss, Jack Crawford, is based on John Douglas. With the overwhelming success of
“Silence of the Lambs”, profiling is suddenly very hot; from the early 1990’s on, profiling is
becoming a billion dollar industry, and suddenly all the former comrades at the
ol’ BSU are now in competition for a chunk of that billion-dollar change.
Douglas, unwittingly
perhaps, set the standard, and now Robert Ressler, Gregg McCrary, and
Roy Hazelwood are scrambling to become equally well-known for their profiling
contributions. Ressler distinguished himself through his work studying John Wayne Gacy, Ed
Kemper, and Jeffrey Dahmer, and Gregg McCrary is working directly under then
Unit-Chief Douglas when he is consulted about the Scarborough Rapist, and
later, specifically about Paul Bernardo; he is also, at this time, being
groomed to take over the Unit Chief of the BSU position, since John Douglas is
retiring soon. And small wonder, as Douglas can probably afford to retire, what with the numerous requests for well-paid speaking engagements
and lectures he’s receiving. Now the once
laidback, easy-going Roy Hazelwood has something to prove, but not to
worry, he’s been a busy bee studying a new criminal character he dubs the
“Sexual Sadist”, of whom he makes the boast that “they (his sexual sadists) have
killed a lot more people than your big names, like Gacy or Dahmer”.
As it turns out, a few
of Hazelwood’s sexual sadists had female partners whom he also “studies”, and while the Toronto Metro Police are getting positive DNA samples back on
Paul Bernardo in connection with a number of rapes he’s suspected of committing—and
while Toronto Metro is embroiled in an on-again, off-again pissing contest with
Niagara Regional and Inspector Bevan over who gets the golden Paul Bernardo
“collar”—enter Ron Mackay, criminal profiler for the RCMP and coincidentally,
former devoted pupil of mentor Roy Hazelwood. Tired ? Then let’s press on.
As of mid-to-late
December 1992, things are heating up in the Bernardo household: Paul Bernardo has just womped
his wife Karla in the noggin with a flashlight and after the release of the famous
“raccoon-eyes” photo taken of Homolka at the hospital, not too many miles away,
Ron Mackay is perusing a first-run draft of a survey written by
his profiling guru Roy Hazelwood, when suddenly he finds himself called upon to
help explain the curious dynamic which seems to have turned big, mean Paul
Bernardo and his pretty little wifelet Karla Homolka into a
rape-and-murder-team. You can almost
see the light-bulb popping on in Ron Mackay’s head: as a pupil
doesn’t serve a mentor well by remaining a pupil, from Canada Ron Mackay telephones
his old profiling instructor Roy Hazelwood in TN, briefly—and proudly I
imagine—giving him the rundown on what will come to be known as the case of the Ken and
Barbie Killers.
Of this, Hazelwood will later
state that perhaps now he can quit the BSU, go on the college lecture circuit,
and “make some real money”.
Which he does, and for 90 bucks a pop, former FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood will be happy to sign you
up for a weekend seminar full of glossy graphics and complicated charts; naturally, you will also receive an autographed copy of his book, The Evil That Men Do, which includes his stunning insights into the mind of Karla Homolka--doesn't that sound like fun?
So—Ron Mackay tells
Papa Hazelwood all, or as much as he knows, about Paul and Karla; you can almost see the light
bulb popping on for Roy Hazelwood…that John Douglas thinks he knows so much…you
understand, of course, Ron Mackay has never met Karla Homolka. Or Paul
Bernardo. He’s not even talking with Roy Hazelwood in person, they’re
on the telephone, for gosh sakes. Well it all sounds hunky-dory to Hazelwood, who then calls Dr. Stephen J. Hucker,
one of the leading forensic psychiatrists in Canada, and a specialist in sex
offender research and treatment, just to talk about compliant
victims and sexual sadists and whatnot, like we all do—more on Dr. Stephen
Hucker in a moment. Now having heard the Ol’ Man say “Yup”, (or whatever they say
in Texas) Ron Mackay
contacts Inspector Bevan and informs him of a then little-known unpublished
draft of a survey called “Compliant Victims of the Sexual
Sadist”—catchy title, hunh ?
It’s good enough for
the Inspector, whatever it is, because while all this has been going on,
flashlight-womping and profiling-by-telephone and all, Bevan has been going
through the coffers of the tax-payer funded Green Ribbon Task Force with
nothing to show for it. Enter Karla
Homolka. And Ron Mackay and Roy Hazelwood, and even our old friend Michael
Code, and just in time too, as Bevan comes that close to losing the on-again,
off-again pissing contest with Toronto Metro for the golden Bernardo collar by
prematurely arresting Paul Bernardo. Arresting the citizenry without proper
evidentiary back-up is a law enforcement no-no; it’s especially
distressing to men like Michael Code when men like Inspector Bevan come just that
close to sending an investigation and potential prosecution which has by now
cost the taxpayers almost 11 million dollars straight into the crapper by
prematurely “popping” a man like Paul Bernardo, essentially because a blonde,
leggy member of the media called the Inspector “chicken”.
Enter
the Management Committee.
With Bernardo finally behind
bars and womped upside the head with a slew of charges for some rather nasty
non-bailable offenses, Michael Code went about forming what was called the
“Management Committee”; that 3-member panel, plus Michael Code, made the
decision to separate the prosecution of the Scarborough rapes, which was
Toronto Metro’s purview and for which there was better evidence, from the
prosecution of the Mahaffy/French murders which was Inspector Bevan’s
territory, and which had essentially no evidence on which to detain Paul
Bernardo on murder or any other charges. But he did have Karla Homolka, the
Inspector did, and “Compliant Victims of the Sexual Sadist” was the whitewash
he used to spiff her up a bit before sheepishly delivering her to Michael Code
and the Management Committee.
Now, I could tell you
about Dr. Stephen Hucker and his contributions to this rich tapestry, and, I
believe I will. If you've made it
this far, you’d want to know this anyway.
Enter Dr. Stephen
Hucker.
Dr. Stephen Hucker is a forensic
psychiatrist who works primarily with those incarcerated in the Canadian prison
system. He is best known and well respected for his work in the field of sex
offender treatment and research. On
September 16th and October 3rd, 1994, Dr. Hucker interviewed Karla Homolka for a
total of ten hours. In 1995, Dr. Hucker took the
stand and said that Paul Bernardo suffered from multiple sexual and personality
disorders, most notably, sexual sadism. "Sexual sadism", said Dr. Hucker, "is a particularly onerous diagnoses. It is at the extreme
end. I would suggest it is extremely difficult to treat. I would think, in the
present state of knowledge, his conditions are irremediable." Dr. Hucker also
testified as to Karla Homolka’s compliant victim status, and it is in large
part because Dr. Hucker gave the compliant victim/sexual sadist theory his
blessing in 1995 that both Bernardo and Homolka are where they are today.
Which makes it all the more interesting that by 2006, still working in the Canadian prison system and
specifically at Kingston Prison where Paul Bernardo is housed--Dr. Stephen Hucker has changed his
mind.
In
a paper written by Dr. Hucker and Dr. William Marshall in 2006, “Issues in the
Diagnosis of Sexual Sadism”, Dr. Hucker states:
“Failure by clinicians to
identify a true sadist might result in the offender's release from custody when
he is in fact a real threat to the community. On the other hand, diagnosing a
sexual offender as a sadist when he is not might result in continued or
extended incarceration thereby jeopardizing the offender's rights. It is clear
from these considerations that the diagnosis of sexual sadist (or the finding
that an offender is not a sadist) has serious implications for both the proper
protection of the community and for the rights of identified offenders.”
Hmm.
Wait, there’s more.
“As
a result of our concerns about these matters, we took the first step of
reviewing the extent literature. Unfortunately this review raised more concerns
than it solved. We found that while most authors indicated they used the
criteria specified by either the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM), or the World Health
Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD), to
diagnose their subjects, in fact the criteria they actually specified did not
comply with either of these systems. Each researcher chose an idiosyncratic
list of criteria which typically included some features from both DSM and ICD,
but also included other features not mentioned in either of these texts.”
Hmm?
Oh, I see…wait…no, I don’t see, I’m actually very confused, please go on, Dr.
Hucker:
“As
a result of the confusion we noted in our literature review regarding the
criteria used to diagnose sexual sadists, we decided that further research was
required. Our first step was to determine how effectively the diagnosis was
applied in federal prisons in Canada. We examined the records in three prisons
of all sexual offenders for whom a psychiatric appraisal was made over the
period 1989-1998. From these records we identified evaluations of 59 sexual
offenders with 41 being diagnosed as sexual sadists while the remaining 18 were
given other diagnoses. It is important to note that the clinicians, whose
diagnoses we examined in this study, were all respected and experienced
forensic psychiatrists. We then compared those diagnosed as sadists with those
who were identified as nonsadists, on the features we derived from our
literature review.
We
found that it was the nonsadists who displayed the so-called sadistic
features."
Uh…okey-dokey...so what are ya saying there, Doc ?
“The
results from this study revealed that the diagnosis of sexual sadism was not
being applied in the Canadian prison service in a way that matched any of the
criteria identified in the literature. When we examined each diagnostician's
application of the criteria, it was evident that there was not only
disagreement across diagnosticians in the criteria they considered relevant,
there was no evident consistency within diagnosticians in the criteria they
used."
Okay. So none of you guys agree on anything and I
take it “idiosyncratic” means some of you are just making stuff up as you go
along. And what was that thing you were
saying about…
“…diagnosing
a sexual offender as a sadist when he is not might result in continued or
extended incarceration thereby jeopardizing the offender's rights."
Yeah,
that’s it.
In case you were wondering, Paul Bernardo was
indeed, one of the subjects included in this study.
But
prior to that, Dr. Stephen J. Hucker, who provided the expert testimony which
closed the deal that Michael Code and the Management Committee initiated
because Roy Hazelwood and Ron Mackay assured them Karla Homolka was the
compliant victim of sexual sadist Paul Bernardo which thereby allowed everyone
to breathe a sigh of relief that Inspector Bevan’s bungling hadn’t brought the
whole thing crashing to the ground—that Dr. Stephen J. Hucker, who spent
ten hours at the Kingston Prison for Women interviewing Karla Homolka prior to
Bernardo’s trial, and who now appears to be recanting everything he said in 1995—
Prior
to Bernardo’s inclusion in the study from which would come the “Issues in the
Diagnosis of Sexual Sadism” paper, the paper written by the man whose opinions
helped ensure Bernardo’s conviction and Homolka’s eventual release, until then,
that Dr. Stephen J. Hucker—had never met Paul Bernardo before in his
life.
***
Many people still believe that "if only" Paul Bernardo and Karla
Homolka's infamous sex tapes had been found when the police searched
their home, the much decried plea bargain with Homolka, "the deal with
the devil" as it's called, would not have been necessary.
Enter Justice Galligan.
Faced with protests and
petitions, the Ontario government ordered an inquiry in late 1995; retired
Ontario judge Patrick Galligan, whose official ruling deemed the plea bargain
both necessary and proper, embraces the "if only" theory in his
inquiry into the Homolka deal.
"We all know that had the videotapes been
available to the authorities on May 14, 1993, the Crown would never have made
this resolution agreement with Karla Homolka", says Galligan.
But that wasn't the case, according to the people
who hammered out the deal.
Michael Code said so at the time.
In May 1995, Code
wrote a memo in which he says the videos would have made little difference to
the outcome. Homolka co-operated with police, telling them about the existence
of the videos and describing their contents. Had they been found earlier, wrote
Code, "instead of 12 years, the sentence might have been 14 or 15
years."
Author Stephen Williams says it is in the government's interest
to perpetrate the myth of the videotapes.
"It confuses the public and takes the onus off
the ministry of the attorney-general for making the deal with Homolka" he
says. "But it is absolute and utter bull."
"There
was another overwhelming concern as Justice Galligan duly records in his
report. Huge weight was given to the idea that the murders had to be dealt with
before the Scarborough rapes. Although I have no idea exactly why, it was an
opinion that Michael Code firmly held and holds to this day.”
”Even though the authorities had all the videotape evidence, eight months in
advance of the beginning of Paul Bernardo's trial--and therefore no longer
needed Karla's testimony to convict him--Karla's "credibility" as a
witness was paramount, something that Code also steadfastly maintains."
Clear as mud, right ? Probably, it will only become muddier until it becomes clear, but evil prevails when good men do nothing, so let's have a crack at it.
Okay, first: the
charges against Paul Bernardo were “preferred”, which if I understand correctly,
would be the American equivalent of sending someone to trial without a grand
jury indictment, something more akin to the way our country shuttled detainees
into Gitmo. Then there's the matter of Code's insistence the murder charges had
to be dealt with first, and although they don't need her by this time, Michael Code
maintains Karla's testimony is not merely important to the Crown's case but
"paramount."
From a political point of view, perhaps to satisfy the public, it looks as
though they need Paul Bernardo tried and
convicted and in the pokey ASAP; given
the crimes, that's understandable, to a degree. But if that's so, then Karla's
testimony being "paramount" makes no sense, as it resulted in Paul Bernardo’s trial lasting far longer than it would've otherwise; remember, time is money, and thanks to Inspector Bevan's bungling, too much
money’s been wasted already—by Michael Code.
So if they don't need Karla Homolka in order to convict Paul Bernardo, and they've moved heaven and
earth and spent untold millions to bring Bernardo to trial, exactly what does Homolka bring to the table that
they wouldn't have without her ?
Enter Marc Lepine.
For 45 minutes on December 6, 1989 an enraged gunman roamed
the corridors of Montreal's École Polytechnique; for reasons which may never be fully understood, Marc
Lepine, aged 25, separated the men from the women and before opening fire on the
classroom of female engineering students he screamed, "I hate
feminists." Lepine killed 14 women before turning the gun on himself; almost immediately, the Montreal Massacre became a galvanizing
moment in which mourning turned into outrage about all violence against women.
Think of it as Canada’s 9/11, and you begin to get an
idea of just how far-reaching, and how far-removed, the effects of such an event
might have been and might still be.
Journalist Christie Blatchford, who covered the Bernardo
trial, writes, “It is interesting to remember that Homolka's kissy-face deal
came under an Ontario attorney-general, Marion Boyd of the New Democratic
government, of whom it is probably fair
to say she was on a self-appointed mission to educate the world about battered
women, and that it was implemented and fine-tuned by a group of boys, the
lawyers of the Crown law office.”
The New Democrats, the ruling party at the time and the
party Michael Code hitched the star of his legal ambitions to, was a
feminist-controlled one. Feminism is more literally a political matter in
Canada than it is in the United States, which means more tax dollars are
funding the causes and programs it supports.
Naturally, one of those causes would be domestic violence programs, for
which Karla Homolka looked like the poster-girl, for a little while, anyway. At the
time there was quite a strong contingent of women who Michael Code would have
answered to politically and officially, who insisted on the image of Homolka as a victim. And Michael Code, and by extension the Management
Committee, certainly knew on which side their bread was buttered.
Karla Homolka is a woman. That’s what she brings to the
table. And everyone else involved wanted to protect their phoney-baloney jobs; that's what they bring. I wish it were more mysterious than that,
but it isn’t.
Most people believe there was only one Deal with
the Devil; that may be technically
correct in terms of Homolka's plea bargain in May 1993 but, in truth,
there were two.
A second pivotal decision by Michael Code and the Management Committee on May 18, 1995,
essentially gave Homolka the blanket immunity she sought from the outset, and this decision was made not so coincidentally on the eve of Bernardo's trial, with Homolka slated to be star witness
for the prosecution.
Professor Alan Young of Osgoode Hall wrote in his
1996 legal opinion that the Crown acted "imprudently to strike a deal
because the Green Ribbon Task Force
arrested Bernardo and charged him for the murders before they had a
solid case. The deal struck was an act of desperation fuelled by the press
release of the police indicating that they had caught the murderer.”
That would be our old friend Inpector Bevan, there, issuing that press release. And it would be deal-with-the-devil architect Michael Code who rode in to his rescue, with child-killer Karla Homolka, in tow.
…it was money and politics and egos…
At the time of Karla Homolka's release from prison in
2005, Dalton
McGuinty's Liberal Party was in power; Michael Code returned to private practice as defense
counsel, but now spends his days molding young minds in the ways of Canadian
jurisprudence.
In 2007, University of Toronto law professor Michael Code said, of the practice of plea-bargaining, “"It is the hidden underbelly of the justice system,
and it does need to be talked about and dragged into the open."
He also says, it was and still is his belief that it wasn't in the public interest to
prosecute Karla Homolka.
These days, Professor Code teaches ethics at the
University of Toronto Law School.
Insert your own punchline here.