SPEAKER_00 0:44

Welcome to the Femme Fatal, a true crime podcast with an astrology twist. I'm your host, Stacy Dotson. Each week I'll be joined by a guest host because this femme fatal prefers not to work alone. Hi, everybody, welcome back to the Femme Fatal. And today I'm joined by Amy. You remember her from the Darley Roudier episode? Today we're going to talk about Carla Hamolka. Amy, you picked her. What was the inspiration behind that, besides her just being terrible?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

I chose this one. I'll never forget it. I used to watch the autopsy series with Dr. Michael Baden. And in 2002, this was one of the episodes. And I just remember feeling like this was so disturbing watching it. Like I'll never forget the details of this case.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

It's very disturbing. So get ready, folks. You want to dive on in?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

So Carla Liana Homolka was born on May 4th, 1970, in Port Credit, Ontario, Canada, to Dorothy and Carl Homoko. She was raised in St. Catharines with her two younger sisters, Lori and Tammy. Outwardly, Carla seemed happy, had lots of friends, and loved animals. She even had a job volunteering in a veterinary office. Behind the scenes, though, things were not so happy. Carla's father was an alcoholic and he would beat her and her sisters. Something that I feel was even more disturbing was later on there was a psychoval gun on her, and she admitted to throwing a friend's hamster out of the window and later digging it up because she wanted to know what something dead looked like. That's pretty freaking creepy. That's creepy. I didn't know about the dad. I didn't know there was a history of abuse there. I mean, it makes sense for all these people who are messed up, but it really does, yes. So you can't quite tell Carla's story without some of Paul's as well. So Paul Kenneth Bernardo, so she ended up marrying, he was born on August 27, 1964, in Scarborough, Ontario, the youngest of Kenneth Walter Bernardo and Marilyn Elizabeth Bernardo's children. His home life didn't really seem to be that much better than Carla's. His father would sexually abuse Paul's older sister Deborah in front of family members. His mother suffered from depression, often withdrawing from the family and retreating to the basement. Despite this dysfunction, Paul presented as happy and well adjusted. He was even a member of Scouts Canada, just basically Canna's version of Boy Scouts. Gradually, though, things changed, and Paul developed pyromaniac inclinations and dark sexual fantasies. During an argument with his parents in 1981, Paul's mother, Marilyn, revealed that Kenneth was not Paul's biological father, and that he was a result of an extramarital affair. Paul was repulsed by this, and he would call his mother names like a whore and a slut, and his mother would return the insults, calling him a bastard from hell. Great relationship. Yes, and so much respect for women. Yes, yes. Bernardo went off to college at Sir Willifrid Laurie Collegiate Institute. I probably pronounced part of that wrong. And then the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He was pretty successful with the ladies, but enjoyed humiliating his girlfriends in public. He also would engage in aggressive sex with them. These relationships would get more unstable and more violent. And he threatened that he'd kill them if they told anyone about what he did. He later told authorities, after this, you know, he's locked up or whatever, that he had this fantasy of having a virgin camp where he would breed virgin girls that he could rape. I mean, his background, you know, goes way deeper than Carla. Like he is obviously one effed up guy for sure. They're both pretty effed up, but yeah, there's a lot of psychaval stuff that comes up when you talk about these two. So Carla met Paul Bernardo when she was 17, and Paul was a 23-year-old college graduate trained in accounting and working as an assistant at a veterinary office. It's like a big age difference. At like 17 and 23 is kind of it's a little sketch. It's a little sketch. It's not like terrible, but it's kind of like Paul's obviously into the young girls, right? She was uh swept off her feet and talked about Paul all the time. Super in love, thought he was the best thing. The thing is, from the beginning of their relationship, Carla noticed Paul took a particular liking to her sister, her youngest sister, Tammy. He'd pay special attention to her and would even have Carla pretend to be Tammy during sex. Yes, so it's the late 80s, just a bit before Carla and Paul got together, there was a rapist terrorizing Scarborough, Toronto. There were around 24 rapes or attempted rapes that took place over a five-year span. The targets of these crimes, which was coined the Scarborough rapist, were teenage girls and young women. The attacks mostly happened outside, with one incident having been a break-in. The attacks came with beatings, verbal abuse, and threats to keep the victims from going to the police. In November of 1988, a task force was formed and committed to catching this perpetrator. No significant leads came till May of 1990 after a victim came forward and provided a description of her attacker. A computer composition was created and had widespread circulation, even getting put in the newspaper. The police department received 16,000 tips. Three people said the drawing looked like Paul Bernardo. Paul was questioned twice while living with his parents, but the police ended up believing he had not been involved. As standard practice, they did take samples of his blood, saliva, and hair for DNA testing to compare to a sample found on one of the victim's clothing. Thank God they at least did that. DNA testing, though, it was in its infancy at this time. And there was only one qualified scientist and one qualified technician, and they had questioned dozens of men in this rape case, and the samples were among 50,000 that had been collected at the time through investigations of numerous other cases. So it's the rape case plus it's other things going on. So there's a lot of DNA to go through. Let's jump to the evening of December 24th, 1990. Paul and Carla were being celebrated at her family's home as they had just recently got engaged. Paul was now 26 and Carla 20. Paul had bought a new video camera, and there is a recording of this on the autopsy show I watched. They had a lot of different recordings, actually. And this one is Paul and Carla, and Carla's parents, and Carla's youngest sister Tammy, who's only 15, but she was allowed to drink, so they're all drinking, goofing around, making faces, just, you know, having a good time. They look like a normal family celebrating the engagement along with the holiday season. Carla's parents went to bed early and let Tammy stay up and continue drinking with Carla and Paul. Around 2 a.m., Carla called a friend and told her that Tammy had died. She said they were drinking and she heard Tammy making a choking kind of noise. I saw vomit coming from her mouth. I sat her up and pulled her tongue out so she wouldn't swallow it. I pumped twice on her chest, but there was no response. Tammy was brought to Hamilton General Hospital where she was pronounced dead. There was this huge red burn type mark on the side of Tammy's face and some smaller spots around her mouth. That is definitely out there on the internet, unfortunately. Yeah, I've seen some of it.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Ugh.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah. The autopsy was performed, and it was a ruled that Tammy's death was an accident due to asphyxiation. She had choked on her own vomit. The medical examiner believed the red mark on her face was from stomach acid. So there was no investigation into her death.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Terrible.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah, I feel like it's a little shady, and I'm like, hmm.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

And just a lot of incompetence that we'll get to later. Neglect, maybe, is the right word, not necessarily incompetence, but neglect, I think, is the right word.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah. So at the funeral, friends noticed disturbing behavior from Paul saying that he was calling Tammy his angel, twirling her hair, just wouldn't leave her alone. And there's actually video, not of him specifically, but they do have video of this funeral, like of her viewing, which I thought was kind of odd as well. Two months later, Paul and Carla moved into their own place on February 1st, 1990, in Port de Lucie, Ontario. That summer on June 29th, they married in Niagara on the lake. Their wedding was beautiful, with Carla dressed in a stunning white gown and Paul in his white tie and tails. As they're saying their I does, a nearby fisherman on Lake Gibson, south of St. Catharines, discovered several concrete blocks that had human arms, legs, feet, and a head inside. The following day, a man found a human torso floating in the water. Remains were identified as Leslie Mahaffey, 14 of Burlington, Ontario. Her parents had reported her missing on June 15th. As the investigation starts, Carla and Paul are on their honeymoon in Hawaii. Police were searching for clues, but were unaware of evidence that would connect Leslie's murder to that of the Scarborough rapist. So they were able to tie it to the rapist? They were, but not immediately. They didn't put two and two together. Year later, in April 1992, Niagara Regional Police sought the help of the FBI here in the United States, and profilers painted a picture of this murderer as a sexual predator who would kill again. Lo and behold, on April 30th, 1992, another female body was found in a ditch on the side of a rural road in Burlington. The girl's face was battered and her hair had been shaved off of her head. The tip of her left pinky finger was missing, which helped to immediately identify her as Kristen French, 15 of St. Catharines. The injury to her finger was actually old, and that's why it was faster to ID her, yeah. Yeah, to ID her. Kristen was reported missing on April 16th. Her shoe was found in the parking lot of Grace Lutheran Church, which she passed every day on her way to school. A witness came forward and said that on the 16th, they saw two people who were trying to force a young female into a car. The vehicle was described as a cream-colored, Chevy Camaro. Police searched the area and found a lock of brown hair and a torn Scarborough map. This lead on the Camaro went nowhere. Turns out that's not the kind of car that Paul actually had at the time.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Right. He had like a Nissan or something. I mean, it was cream colored, I think, but yeah. It's like some kind of Nissan. We don't all know our cars, so.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

A tip came in, though, putting Paul Bernardo back on the radar of the police. They interviewed him again and again dismissed him as a suspect. Leslie Mahaffey's body ended up being exhumed, and the Emmy discovered bruises on her back that were similar to blunt force injuries found on Kristen French. This is where they finally put two and two together. And a task force was created on July 21st, and police released a reenactment video of Kristen's abduction, which generated thousands of tips, but they led nowhere again. How far apart were the two murders? Kristen is April 16th. Leslie was June of 1990. So almost a year. Yeah. On July 1993, Carla was admitted to St. Catharines General Hospital, and she claimed Paul had beaten her with a flashlight. There are pictures of this again, and she really does look pretty fucked up. Paul was arrested for assault with a weapon, but was released on bond, as they always are. And Carla never went back to the home, though. A month later, finally, finally, finally, Paul Bernardo's DNA was matched with the Scarborough rapist. Wow, yay. Yay! Police put him under surveillance and tapped his phone. Of course, where did the police go? They go to Carla. What's up with your husband? Let's talk. Let's see. And at first, she did not want to cooperate, was not interested. Um, after consulting with a lawyer, she decided that she would cooperate. But if she was gonna cooperate, she wanted immunity. Which to me, why are you asking for immunity? Like, did you do something to require it? Like, mmm, red flag. The attorney general ended up denying immunity, but was willing to agree to a reduced sentence. They questioned Carla for four days. She said Paul kidnapped Leslie from her front yard and that she and Paul had lured Kristen into their car under the guise of being tourists and needing directions. Carla explained that both of the girls were used as sex slaves before Paul strangled them to death. Kristen was made to watch a television broadcast showing her father's emotional plea for her to be returned home safely. So sad. Carla said Paul bragged about having raped 30 women. Carla acted as if she was a battered woman this whole time that Paul forced her to participate in these crimes and that she was afraid of him. Bullshit. Gone bullshit on that one for sure. Finally, he is arrested officially on February 17th for both Leslie Mahaffey and Kristen French's murders, along with the Scarborough rapes. Now, when police searched the house, they found a list written down of the Scarborough rapes, books that were described as being deviant in nature, a hunting knife, handcuffs, and a video of Carla and Paul engaged in sexual activity with two unknown females. Now, the video, sorry, Carla, but you were into it. A willing participant, enjoying herself, not battered, not afraid of Paul, lies. On May 9th, 1993, Paul's attorney went to the couple's home and retrieved six eight millimeter tapes that had been hidden in a ceiling light fixture. And the police had not found these, and they searched for 71 days, did not find this. What was shown on them was horrific and the most damning and explosive evidence. The video showed in graphic detail the truth of what happened to Carla's sister, Tammy. So here's the real story of what happened to Tammy. Carla said that on December 24th, she agreed to give Tammy to Paul as his Christmas present. So horrible. Sick bitch. She had stolen halathane as well as sleeping pills from the vet's office where she worked. After her parents went to bed, she put the sleeping pills in Tammy's drink. And once Tammy fell asleep, her and Paul took turns raping Tammy while holding a halathane-soaked cloth to her face. They filmed the whole thing. That red mark on Tammy's face we talked about earlier, that was not from vomit. It was from the halophane burning her face. Other videos also confirm Carla had participated in both Kristen French and Leslie Mahappy's torture and rapes. On a separate video named Fireside Chat, found at the Homolka residence, was of Carla and Paul talking in the basement, where Carla tells Paul she enjoyed him raping Tammy.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Didn't she also perform something on her own sister?

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yes. Well, yeah. She raped her sister. So she obviously performed oral sex on her sister. Yeah. So it's absolutely disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Back to what you said. Like the police searched that house for 71 days and didn't find this. And then the attorney, Ken Murray, was his name. The only reason he knew where it was is Paul told him, right? Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Because he's not just walking in there, like, oh, right to this, open up. Oh, I found some tapes. Yeah. I just found some tapes up here in this light. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how that happened. That's crazy. So next on that video, they're in Tammy's bedroom where she says she'll leave a rose at her sister's grave, and then they have sex on Tammy's bed. Gross, more gross. So gross. So bad. I know. I know. I just I can't. On February 26th, 1993, the defense and the crown, which is, you know, that's what they call it in Canada, and they were those curly cue wig things. I laughed at that. I had to look that up. Yeah, they were under British rule for a long time. They negotiated a 10-year sense for Carla's testimony against Paul and the full disclosure of all of the crimes. On July 6, 1993, Carla Hamolka was convicted after pleading guilty to manslaughter in Leslie and Kristen's murders. She ended up getting 12 years. She got two added on for the murder of her sister. Two. Two years for that. And not only that, they were to run concurrent. So it's all just done at once. It's not even like 12 and then another 12. I just don't think people wanted to believe that a woman or a young woman or whatever was capable of doing this.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Also, the defense attorney, again, going back to Ken Murray, he took the tapes. You know, Paul told him where they were. He took the tapes and he held on to them for 17 months. So when Carla made that deal, the crown didn't know about these tapes. And, you know, had they known about these tapes, and of course, Carla's not bringing them up. She's like, thank goodness they didn't find these tapes because she knew they existed. And so she wasn't going to share that information. So the incompetence of it is just mind-blowing. I agree. The attorney held on to them for 17 months.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Is that that's not even legal? How can that not be a crime in and of itself? Yeah. Like, or how are you not charged?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

I did this digging and he he stated the reason that he did this was strategic. He intended to propose striking a new plea bargain for Bernardo, planning to tell the crown, we have something here to show you that Carla's testimony is not credible and will help you get out of this deal that you made. So he positioned that the tapes were a defense asset and that proof that Carla was actually the real killer, but the crown did eventually charge him with obstruction of justice, but then he was acquitted later. So anyway.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

That's just yeah, I don't see how that's a defense move or how it shows that Carla was the one behind it. Like, I don't think so. I believe she was with him and helping him, but I don't think she was like, she's not the original person. He was the Scarborough rapist. So obviously he was doing this well before he even met her. And obviously she was like into it. Yes. Sick. So yeah, after the concurrence, I was gonna say the authorities were not aware of the tapes at the time. They originally offered her the pleat bargain and you know they said we're obliged to their agreement. And I was like, No, you're not. I don't, no, you should not be obliged to that.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

That's a lie. It is. She lied to you. You shouldn't be obliged. I don't think that would fly in the States. I don't think so either. I hope not.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

I don't know. I would hope not. Yeah. On May 18th, 1995, Paul Bernardo's trial began and lasted for four months. Carla was in the witness box for 17 days. In the end, Paul Bernardo was convicted for all of his crimes, two counts each of first-degree murder, kidnapping, forcible confinement, and aggravated sexual assault, and one count of indignity to a body. After six hours of deliberation on September 1st, 1995, Paul was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and was declared a dangerous offender. So, meaning, like, you're not, you're not getting out of here.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

And he shouldn't. And she shouldn't have. No, she should still be in there as well. Five years later in 2000, Paul tried to appeal his convictions. Both the Ontario Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Canada denied those appeals in 2000. Bernardo's defense claimed Paul had admitted to 10 additional sexual assaults. Since 2013, Bernardo has been incarcerated at the Millhaven Maximum Security Prison in Bath, Ontario. While Carla is in prison, her and her sister Lori kept in close touch. Lori encouraged Carla to alter her appearance after she was released so she could come back and live with the family. She wrote to her, People are so stupid, Carr. Even if they bumped into you, they'd never know it was you, especially since you're supposed to be spending all your time in jail. They would never know. Just like if you came back to St. Kath. That would be the last place people would expect you to be. Especially when I tell everyone you'll never ever come back here. See, that's my plan. People wouldn't know if it was you if they even had a conversation with you. People really are dumb. It's so easy to con people.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

And that's her sister. And I mean, she killed your other sister. Your other sister. Yes, she kills your other sister.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

What are we doing, people? I don't get it. No, I don't, again, I don't get like anything in this whole thing. Carla was released in 2005 after serving her full pathetic 12-year sentence. That's nothing. It's nothing for everything. I mean, she wasn't involved in just her sister. She was involved in all three. And to say manslaughter, la na, nope, nope. Initially, she had many restrictions placed on her, like where she could live, and that she was not able to have contact with anyone under the age of 16. However, those conditions would be overturned by a different judge just months after her release. This decision obviously received criticism from Kristen French and Leslie Mahavi's families. Carla moved to Montreal and she gave birth to a son in 2007. This woman should not have children at all. No, she had three, right? She has three. Yes. So after that, she moved to the Caribbean island of Guadalupe under the name Leanne Bordelai with her husband, Terry Bordelai, who get this, was her attorney's brother. Can you imagine marrying someone who raped their own sister?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Like, what is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? I actually didn't know. I thought she was still in Canada. So she left completely and was allowed to. Okay. Yes, she was left completely, but she did.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

She had two more children while she was there and then moved back to Canada in 2012. Oh, so she's still back in Canada. Okay. Yes, she is in back in Canada. A Canadian journalist spotted her on the island, and I guess she skedaddled back now, not super recently, but more recently in 2017. She made headlines when it was discovered she was a volunteer for her children's elementary school in Montreal. Again, public is like, what are we doing here? And it led the, I guess there was like a, it must be a religious school because it said the school and the church. They decided to have stricter guidelines for who can volunteer, which would include those with a criminal background. Duh. Though the school claimed the activity she volunteered in did not need a background check, which again, I'm just calling bullshit because I had kids in school before 2017 and I always had to have a background check done. Like there was no just like walking into the school and doing something and nobody knowing who you are. No. Okay. This was really weird. So have you ever watched the documentary Don't F with Cats?

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Yes, I have it in my notes, but we can jump ahead and talk about it if you want to. Like I have it in the pop culture section.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Okay, so you know, perpetrator who's Luca Rocco Magnata. During the trial in 2014, he had sent a package carrying body parts to False Creek Elementary. And the return address was Lori Hamulka's. Now she goes as Logan Valentini. Okay, I didn't know that part. That was in the documentary. It wasn't in the documentary. This was just like a side note. No, they didn't put this in there at all. And I hadn't even hear about this until, you know, doing research. I was like, what? Of course, she denied sending the package or knowing him at all.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

He also claimed that they were having an affair, that it was ruining his life. Yeah. So in 2019, they released it called Don't Fuck With Cats, Hunting an Internet Killer. And it's a three-episode docuseries about Luca McNotta, a Canadian man who murdered June Lin in 2012. And McNotta craved notoriety with desperation that was almost clinical. He created at least 20 websites about himself. Oh my God. He planted rumors about his own life in online forums. And one of the rumors was that he had been romantically involved with Carla Homoka. And he gave interviews claiming that the association was destroying his life. And investigators cluded that after he was caught that he'd invented that and then they'd likely never even met. But he used her name, right, because it carried weight in Canada. He was in Montreal at that time. So yeah. And she's credited in the documentary in IMDB as self.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Oh, hell, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Yeah, as self Canadian serial killer. Oh, good. I'm glad they put that on on there. Yeah, they labeled her. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

I didn't realize that about him that he like created all those websites and stuff. Like he was also a sick bitch.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Oh, yeah. And it's a really, really good docuseries. I recommend to everybody to watch it. It's just, it's a little tough with the cat stuff. And, you know, of course, obviously the people stuff too, but they almost show the cat snuff films and it's just Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Please don't. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. I mean, I feel like those people are amazing for what they did because they were starting with scratch, like trying to figure out stuff from like the desk. Like, where would look, where does that look like it was made in? You know, like there's wild stuff.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

I know. So for people who haven't watched it yet, these internet investigator sleuths, they go out there and they just they're responsible for this guy getting caught. And they started this just because it was the kittens. But it ended up being like so much more. I told my husband, I was like, why don't the police do some of the things they're doing? He's like, they just don't have time, you know? Then they need to hire these people on the side. I know they should. They should hire them, like rewards. You know what I mean? Like that we do rewards anyway. So why not? Sorry. So go back to where you were when you brought it up. But I got excited because I wanted to talk about that too.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

I saw that video too. Like, you see the cameras, like she's coming out of the school and she's walking off fast and opening her car door and you know, looking all angry, and they're like, Carla, Carla, and she's just, you know, not paying attention. And I do remember when that happened, I was like, seriously, this bitch. Oh my god. Okay. I know.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

It's crazy that she is still there. I mean, if she's allowed to leave, you know, it's like, why is she still there? And I mean, I get loving your home, but I mean, that's your life.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

To walk around in that town like you did nothing.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

And what are you gonna tell your kids when they get older? It's sick. Like, I'm sorry, I killed my own sister, you know, and I'm sexually assaulted my own sister. But you're right. I mean, she should not have been allowed to have kids. And she had three.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Three of them. Yeah. I would, God, if I was one of her kids, and you know, eventually obviously they'd know that I'd be like, disassociate with my family, change my name. Hope to God I don't become a serial killer. Cause it's just it's so perverted. It's so like repulsing, and just again, your own sister. That's what grabbed me when I watched that autopsy episode on it. Like, I couldn't get past that part.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

She offered her up as a gift.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Yeah, like a gift. Like, I know you've been wanting Tammy, so here, you can have her. In 2001, actually, L Magazine published an article about Carla, and they had this theory describing her as a malignant narcissist who was so incensed by her fiance's attraction to her sister that she took the steps to remove Tammy from his affections permanently.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

So, wow. Well, crazy. Well, I'm gonna jump in if that's okay on the pop culture and so there is a lot to cover here. I'm pretty sure I made all this too long, but here I go. The pop culture and astrology. Okay, so we'll start with the 2006 film, just simply titled Carla. And I ended up watching it last week. I always tell people where they can watch it. I watched it on 2B. So it stars Laura Prepon as Carla. You know her probably from that 70s show in Orange is the New Black, and then Misha Collins as Paul Bernardo. And if you know Misha Collins probably from Supernatural, watching him play Bernardo was just unsettling. He commits to it in a way that was hard to sit with. The performances aren't the problem with this film. It's uh Flora Propan's portrayal of Carla is not necessarily her acting, it's the writing. The film frames Hamolko primarily as a victim, a battered woman, a young woman trapped by fear and abuse, who is coerced into participation in events that she never would have chosen on her own. And the narrative sympathy is constructed carefully and consistently. And if you come to that movie not knowing the story, then you might leave thinking, you know, Carla was a woman who had had terrible things done to her and made some desperate choices to survive. But if you go to IMDB, Canadian audiences did not receive it that way. And the IMDB comments are great on the film. They're worth reading. So there's reviews from Canadian viewers, people who lived through the publication ban, which there was. Canada banned all press from covering it until actually the trial started. I guess trying to make sure they could get a fair jury for them or something like that. I'm so tired of hearing that. Because it's proof. We have proof. We have tapes that they made.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

This one is like 100% proof. No questions.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Like, you know, just guilty. So in the reviews from the Canadians that are commenting, they call it watered down and insults to victims or said a consensus is the audience is clear. This film made a choice about who Carla was, and that choice doesn't hold up against what actually happened. So now moving on to the Ken and Barbie Killers, The Lost Murder Tapes. And I want to say that came out in 2021. And you said you watched this one too, right? Yeah. It's disturbingly good. I watched it on Max. It seems like a more of a true account of what happened. And this is crazy. So when they get to the trial, right? You know, it's docudrama, right? They're dramatizing it. But the judge would not allow, like they had rulings on the tapes, or like, what are we gonna do? Are we even gonna play them? They're so horrible, right? And the judge ruled that only the jury could physically see the tapes, but that the audio could play in the courtroom. So if you were in the courtroom and you're reporting, you got to hear it, but you didn't get to see it. Only the jurors got to see it. One of the people interviewed said it was probably worse because your imagination was just out of control. But one of the things they do is they show a still image of the tapes, and he had labeled them different things. They were just out in the open in his house. So the tapes were basically hidden in plain sight by him labeling them with ordinary titles. And one of them right there on the screen reads Red Hot Chili. And so my brain immediately went to the red hot chili peppers, right? Yeah. And because every victim in this case was underage, like 14 and 15, I think were the victims. And the moment I saw that label, I thought about Anthony Keatis, the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yeah. A band I used to love. I saw them a lot of times in concert in the 90s. But when they come on the radio now, I changed the channel because I read his autobiography, Keetis' autobiography called Scar Tissue. And I have not been able to listen to them since. Yeah. In the book, Keitas describes a meeting. He meets a girl at one of the shows. She traveled with the band after that. And one night after show in Baton Rouge, she told him something. And I'm going to use his own words, quote, straight from the book. He writes, After we got off stage, she came up to me and said, I have something to tell you. My father's the chief of police, and the entire state of Louisiana is looking for me because I've gone missing. Oh, and besides that, I'm only 14. Really? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

I was like, I think I gotta read this.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

He says, I wasn't incredibly scared because in my somewhat deluded mind, I knew that if she had told the chief of police she was in love with me, he wasn't gonna have me taken out to a field and shot. But I did want to get her the hell back home right away. So we had sex one more time. No, no, yep, yep. So we had sex one more time, and she gave me an interesting compliment that I never forgot. She said, When you make love to me, it's like you're a professional. I told her that she should give herself a little time and she'd realize that it was because she didn't have much to compare it to. And I put her on a bus and sent her back to New Orleans. Holy shit. Yeah. He was 23, she was 14. She told him her age, he had sex with her again. And what he chose in his mind to preserve and publish in his memoir was the detail that she gave him a compliment on sex.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

And like, how would she even know? Like, that's number one. It's like, where is that assessment coming from?

SPEAKER_00 36:28

How is he comfortable? Even if he was completely bamboozled and she looked like she was 20. You know what I mean? Yeah. Take that shit to your grave.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

You know what I mean? Exactly. I don't think I'd be sharing that.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Don't put it in your book. Right. Yeah. And just casually says, so I had sex with her one more time. So there he admits that he is a pedophile, basically.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Right. And I'm surprised, like, well, I guess she wanted to. It's like nothing's gonna ever come of it. But I was surprised I haven't heard of that, like in the new, you know, on the internet or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

I mean, he's got a propensity for dating way younger girls. I think, like, what is he in his late 50s now? And I think he's dating someone in their 20s. But I mean, that's an adult, and it's gross. It's still cringe, but you know, they're an adult. This was a child.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Yes. I mean, so many of them date like what, Leonardo DiCaprio, too, with like nobody over 25 or something. I feel like it's really gross. I don't get it, but me neither.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

But yeah, so when I saw that red hot chili, I was like, oh my God, that's where my mind went right away. So back to the documentary, Ken and Barbie Killer's The Lost Murder Tapes. Definitely the one to watch. And like you said, you've watched it too. And especially episode three, which is built entirely around the moment Bernardo's own lawyers find the hidden tapes, and the realization too late that the prosecutors had already handed Hamulka a manslaughter conviction without knowing what was on them. The documentary includes POVs from journalists, legal professionals, and jurors that were involved in the case. And they all say the same thing. Carla's battered woman image was shattered when they heard and saw, some of them saw the tape where she was pretending to be Tammy in order to please Paul.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Sick.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Yeah, sick. All of them wanted her up there next to him on the stand. And afterwards, after they were doing some interviews, several of them talked about being depressed after the trial. One quit crime reporting, one contemplated suicide, and one lost all ability for intimacy for over six months. Her and her husband had to work through things, you know, because she was just like, no, I don't want anyone to touch me ever.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

I feel so bad for these jurors who had to sit there and watch this. Like that is so disgusting and perverse.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Yeah, I think Leslie's mom, I can't remember now in the documentary, she wanted to be in the courtroom and hear the tape. And everybody was like, please don't let her do that. And they said she literally buckled after she tried to leave the courtroom. She just stood up and just buckled.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

As much as I'm like the I need to know everything person, that's one thing I feel like I'd be like, nope, you don't want to have the memory of your child like that. Like, no.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Yeah, one of the reporters was like begging them, like, make her leave because let her remember her daughter's beautiful words, not the words she's gonna be saying on this tape and this, you know, what she's gonna be doing. The prosecution's own legal analysis concluded the footage showed Hamulka's willing participation and directly undercut any claim that she had been unwilling participate. But the deal had been made, the tape surfaced afterwards. By the time Murray turned the tapes over, Carla had already made her deal, pleading guilty to manslaughter and agreeing to testify against Bernardo. She claimed her ex-husband forced her to participate in the crimes. The deal was sealed entirely on her word without prosecutors ever seeing the tapes. So Murray stated the reason was strategic. He intended to propose striking a new plea bargain for Bernardo, planning to tell the crown we have something that will let you go out of your unconscionable deal. His position was that the tapes were defense asset, proof that Carla was the real killer. And he was eventually charged with obstruction of justice, but was acquitted. And the judge gave him the benefit of the doubt that he may have intended to use him at trial, but it's evidence. And in the documentary, they show him walking out of the courtroom and he's like kind of just nonchalant, like, I'm fine, like I'm leaving. I'm done. My job's done, you know? He wanted shock value and stuff for his own benefit. But another thing they touch on in the documentary is that the tapes uncovered a previously unknown surviving victim, given the pseudonym Jane Doe. It was before Tammy Hamoko's death. Jane was 15 when she became friends with Carla and Paul just before their 1991 wedding. Over 18 months, her friendship with the couple included sex with Bernardo and being drugged and sexually assaulted by them both. When the Jane Doe assault became known, the Crown made one of the most controversial moves in the entire case, granting Hamulka a new immunity deal, absolving her from any responsibility for that assault as well. Shut up. I know. You think that, okay, we screwed up because we didn't know what we didn't know, but that's a whole new person. You don't have immunity from this person. Use this person. And in the documentary, after Carla got out of prison, there's coverage saying, Jane Doe saying, no one ever approached me and gave me an opportunity to say if I did want to press charges. So it's just crazy.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

This is just crazy how badly they screwed this up. Yes, this whole thing was not handled right at all. And I just like, why?

SPEAKER_00 41:54

After all of that, too, they ended up, there was like a petition with over 300,000 signatures, like, have an independent review of this case, right? So they got the review granted. Justice Michael Moldover reviewed the case and said it was clear both Bernardo and Homoco were participants in the murder. He stated that if the incriminating videotapes had been found before Homoco's plea bargain, she too would have been found guilty of first-degree murder, despite that finding. The deal was upheld, the reasoning being that unraveling it would compromise the integrity of future plea agreements and the prosecution's ability to use cooperating witnesses going forward. So she gets out of it again because they're worried about future. And I'm like, there's not many more worse things that could possibly happen than this. Right?

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Like, can you not get this shit together? I know. It's crazy. It's like they just were like, no, you're fine, walk away. You know, it's cool. No, we didn't say anything.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

So there's also some books. I'm gonna probably eventually read some of these books that I reference in these podcasts, but I'm gonna just talk really quick about some books that I didn't get a chance to read. But if anyone listening wants to do this, so Deadly Innocence by Scott Burnside and Alan Carnes was the first comprehensive account written while the trial was still unfolding. And there was Nick Pron's Lethal Marriage focused on police failures and the years Bernardo as the Scarborough rapist while investigators failed to connect the dots. And there's Stephen Williams' invisible darkness, according to reviews, the definitive book. Williams assessed over 70 hours of videotape police interviews with Tomulka, defense records, and psychiatric notes. The Winnipeg Free Press reviewed it with a if any reader still believes she was a victim of post traumatic stress, abused into submission by Bernardo, this book will put that idea to rest. And Williams was subsequently prosecuted by Canadian. Canadian authorities for years for breaching publication bans. He received a suspended sentence and a grant from Human Rights Watch for writers working under repressive regimes. And so that detail alone tells you something about how aggressively the institutions involved wanted this story contained. Yeah. Yeah. That one sounds like the most in-depth one. Right. She gets 12 years and he gets in trouble for writing what actually happened. So, okay, now for astrology. This is gonna be interesting. I pulled up Carla Hamolko's birthday to run her chart, May 4th, 1970. And I just sat there for a minute. My birthday is May 1st, 1970, three days apart, same year. And I thought, could I could I have done what she did? I sat with that question. And then I remembered something from John Ronson's book, The Psychopath Test. And if you've never read that, it's a really good read.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

I've heard of that one.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Yeah, there's a principle in psychology that goes like this. If you're wondering or worried, you might be a psychopath. You're almost certainly not one. Psychopaths don't wonder or worry. So I was like, okay, I wondered I was crazy. And I'm not. You're not. You're good. Okay. Three days apart, same year. We share almost the entire outer planetary architecture, same generational signatures, same sun sign, same Venus and Mars. So what in astrology separates two people born three days apart into completely different lives, right? And so the answer comes down to two things: the moon and what Pluto is doing. We're going to talk about the moon. My moon is in Pisces and Carla's is in Aries. And that difference is pretty big. The Pisces moon is one of the most empathetic positions in the zodiac. People with the Pisces moon feel things that aren't even theirs to feel. No emotional skin. The shadow side, though, is we tend to struggle with addiction, but we'll get back to Carla. We don't need to talk about the Pisces moon people.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

But we we just needed a little bit of that to understand the difference.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

I needed to say this is why I'm not a, you know, sister murdering crazy person. So Aries Moon is fast, reactive. It doesn't sit with discomfort and moves through it, past it, over it. Aries moon can disconnect from other people's pain with the speed that reads as coldness. And it's not that feeling that isn't there. It's that Aries moon will not let you feeling slow it down. And in it acts, it decides, it moves on. So for Carla, that Aries moon, impulsive, self-directed, not wired for sustained empathy, already tells a significant story. But the moon doesn't operate in isolation. And this is where Pluto comes in. So Pluto is the planet of power, transformation, death, darkness, obsession, control, sexuality in its most primal form. And in Carlos Chart, Pluto sits in the eighth house, which is Pluto's natural home: sex, death, power dynamics, secrets. So for someone with displacement, those themes aren't background noise. They are woven into how that person experiences intimacy and desire. And her Aries moon forms a tight in conjunct to that eighth house, Pluto, a 150-degree angle of chronic imbalance, two energies that can never quite resolve. They don't cancel each other out, they feed each other. And the Aries moon acts fast and feels no need to examine why. The Pluto in the eighth keeps pulling the darkness back to the center. And Carl and I share the same generational Pluto in Virgo, but mine is not in the eighth house. And it doesn't have the in conjunct with my moon. So the Pluto is there, just isn't driving. It's driving in her chart. And I'll stop talking about myself because I feel like I let myself off the hook on that one. The birth time situation. We don't have Carla's exact time of birth, so we can't confirm her ascendant. It's the mass the world, how they see you. We already know how the world saw her. Like first blonde, pretty, you know, they call her Barbie, devoted girlfriend, victim, and later monster. So she didn't, you know, we don't need to know that. She showed us her side. We do have Paul's birth time, and it came from the court record. So Paul has a Virgo ascendant. And that's confirmed because we have the birth time. And it matters when it comes down to Carla's other placements. So Carla and I both have Venus conjunct Mars in Gemini. And what that means at its most basic level is the turn-on lives in the mind. And I can attest to that personally. For Venus, Mars in Gemini, attraction starts upstairs. How someone talks, how they think, whether they can keep up with you, surprise you, challenge you. Wit is seductive. Conversation is foreplay. And the most verbally alive person in the room is always the most compelling one, regardless of what they look like. But obviously he was super handsome, right? Yeah. Yeah. So now layer into her son and Taurus. Taurus is arguably the most loyal sign in the zodiac. Once a Taurus commits, they do not leave easily. They will absorb enormous amounts of pain and dysfunction before walking away from something they've decided to love. Losing a bond feels to a Taurus like losing the ground beneath their feet. And so here's what you have in Carla's chart: a mind erotically activated by intelligence, a Venus and Mars and Gemini, an almost immovable loyalty once that activation occurs, a sun and Taurus, and an Aries moon that compartmentalizes, moves fast, never lingers in the empathy, and might, you know, otherwise interrupt everything. So the Gemini lights the fire, the Taurus keeps her in the long relationship when anyone else would have left. The Aries moon means she never drowns the feeling of what she's doing. It's a specific and in this context, devastating combination. So I'm going to touch on Paw. Now, inner Paw, Virgo sun, Virgo ascendant, and Virgo is ruled by Mercury. And now Mercury is the planet of communication and intelligent language.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

I'm a Virgo.

SPEAKER_00 50:48

You're Virgo? And you're very articulate. Am I?

unknown 50:52

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

It's a great quality. He used it for bad, not very for bad purposes. Before he was arrested, the people that knew him described him as consistently charming, persuasive, someone who said the right thing at the right time and made you feel like the only person in the room. And his Venus and Mars are conjunct in Libra. And Venus rules Libra. It's at home there. Venus, Mars in Libra is smooth, gracious, knows exactly how to make someone feel desired and presents itself as the perfect partner in the placement of someone who can perform fairness and romance flawlessly. Now put that across the table with Carla's chart. His Mercury-ruled mind activated her Gemini desire. Her Tor Sun locked in, her Aries moon kept the empathy from surfacing long enough to matter. And she wasn't just attracted to him. Her chart was designed to respond to exactly what he was offering and then to stay. Gemini holds two contradictory realities and functions inside both the loving partner and the person doing the unthinkable. The twins, two faces, both real. And underneath it all, a Taurus sun holding the whole structure together because Taurus does not let go, even when it should, and in this case, especially when it should. So I went a little long on the astrology, but I had to throw my own in there.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Yeah, I thought that was good to throw you in there, the separation. And like I said, I always feel like these are so accurate, it's kind of crazy. I'm not like, you know, the most I believe in everything person, but they always do seem to match. It is kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

So one more thing there's a phenomenon in forensic psychology called hybridophilia. It's also known as the Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. It was coined by sexologist John Monet in 1989, and it refers to a sexual or romantic attraction to individuals who have committed crimes, particularly violent ones. And the documentation on how it manifests is consistent. The prison letters, the marriage proposals sent to people on death row, the women who fall in love with those men, and they've only seen them in courtroom and shackles, right? Paul Bernardo receives all of those things. He has said publicly that romantic correspondents still arrive regularly at the prison. He's a convicted serial killer, classified as a dangerous offender, and women are still writing to him.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

I'll never get that phenomena. I think that's just like, do you not have nothing better to do with your time? Do you not have any self-worth? Like, what is wrong with you?

SPEAKER_00 53:37

Well, that's what I'm saying. But I think Carla also had this hybridophilia. Obviously, you're right, not a diagnosis, not an excuse, but you know, she stayed and she participated and it turned her on.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

But like earlier, you know, like as the whole throwing the hamster out the window, like to me, it's kind of like that was in there. And Paul just like sparked it and it grew together. And, you know, because people will be like, oh, she would never have done this without him. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know if she was gonna go do that. If you're gonna harm animals, I feel like something's wrong with you. You just need that spark. You just need someone to create that spark.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

You've got it in you. You need you found your partner to bring it out. Exactly. Yeah. And on that note, we've been running along, but this was so interesting. Thank you for bringing this up because I learned a lot that not necessarily things I wanted to know in life, but well no, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

I learned a lot from you as well. I did not know a lot of the things that you also mentioned. So that was even more information.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

Yes. Well, as always, I'll put some links in the description to some of the stuff we talked about.

SPEAKER_01 54:48

Thanks, Amy. Have a good night. Thank you for having me. You too. Bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

The Femme Fatal, created and hosted by Stacy Dodson, produced by Mark Williams, music by Marcia Yingling, Chad Jake, and Greg Loicano.