Bernardo says he deserves transfer out of max security

Sex slayer and serial rapist Paul Bernardo believes he deserves to live in the more comfortable and less restrictive confines of a medium-security prison. After 18 lonely years in the mind-numbing isolation of a super-secure segregation unit inside maximum-security Kingston Penitentiary, Bernardo has asked for a transfer to a lower-security prison, sources tell me. Soon, he will have to be moved to a new home because Kingston Pen is slated to close. Bernardo covets a spot at medium-security Bath Institution, a complex of cottage-style dormitories on a sprawling 640-acre lakefront property  just west of Kingston, according to my sources. Bernardo wants to stay in Ontario to remain close to family. He does not want to be shipped to a penitentiary in another province. Bernardo has been visited in prison by his mother, according to sources.

A prison identification photo of serial killer and rapist Paul Bernardo taken at Kingston Penitentiary

Bath, adjacent to maximum-security Millhaven Pen, opened in 1972 as a minimum-security facility without any fences or armed guards. It was converted to medium security in 1994 and, in the first six months of its new incarnation, it saw seven escapes. Although it may seem highly unlikely that a criminal as notorious as Bernardo would be considered for a transfer to lower security, the idea isn’t out of the question and there may no longer be any legal impediment to the transfer. Sources tell me that Corrections officials recently moved Bernardo to a different segregation unit within Kingston Pen, an attempt to appease him after years of agitation over the conditions in which he’s confined. Bernardo has been locked in a small cell, about five feet wide by 10 feet long, 23 hours a day. He can watch television and read and he can leave the cell, alone, if he chooses, for an hour of exercise daily. If Bernardo is assessed as a lower-security inmate, there would be no barrier to his transfer. As a matter of policy, Corrections Canada places convicted killers in maximum-security prisons for the first two years of their sentences, but, after that, if they qualify, they can be moved to lower security. Many killers graduate to lower security prisons, including minimum-security complexes that do not have armed guards, fences or walls.

Bernardo was moved out of the lower H segregation cellblock where he has been housed since he arrived at Kingston Pen in November 1995 to lower A, another segregation unit, sources tell me. (Contrary to other media reports, Bernardo was not transferred to a prison in Quebec, my sources say.) Although lower A is also a cellblock where inmates are isolated from the general population, there’s more movement and the opportunity for more freedom. Bernardo has been locked in a cell under the law that governs administrative segregation. It is segregation for the purpose of protecting Bernardo. When Bernardo arrived at Kingston in ‘95, a confidential internal database maintained by Corrections Canada noted that his placement was because he was considered a “high risk sex offender.”  But administrative segregation is not punitive and Corrections bosses are mindful of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the law governing the operations of prisons. It requires that a convict “is to be released from administrative segregation at the earliest appropriate time.” It’s unclear at this point how Bernardo is classified. All prisoners are continually re-evaluated for the risk they pose to attempt to escape, the risk they would pose to the public if they escaped and the level of supervision and control they require in prison. These are factors considered when Corrections decides whether to classify a convict as maximum, medium, or minimum security. Every convict also is rated for “institutional adjustment,” a fairly subjective assessment of how he has adapted to prison life and how he is coping with his sentence. I’m told that senior staff at Kingston Pen are keeping very careful tabs on Bernardo since his transfer to the new segregation unit, for any signs that he faces a threat or that his presence on the unit is disruptive. Because of Bernardo’s odious crimes, there’s still public bloodlust for him, but no senior Corrections Canada official wants to see Bernardo injured or killed during his or her watch. That would prompt a major investigation, since the law requires Corrections to carry out the sentence of the courts – life in prison for Bernardo – and not to permit that to be supplanted by a convict-imposed death sentence.

Bernardo, in his cell at Kingston Pen

Bernardo, who is now 48, could fit right in, demographically speaking, at Bath Institution, which has a reputation as a home for geriatric killers. More than half the prison’s inmates are aged 50 or older. Notorious double cop killer James Hutchison (now deceased) completed some of his life sentence at Bath. Peter Demeter, a wealthy Toronto developer who contracted the brutal murder of his wife (a judge said Demeter “oozes evil”), has lived a long stretch at Bath. Double killer Gregory Krick (one of his victims was his nephew), spent several years at Bath.

Perhaps remarkably, Bernardo will be eligible in just 19 months to seek two forms of conditional release from prison: day parole (which typically involves release to a halfway house) and unescorted temporary absences – passes that permit an inmate to leave prison for short stretches (72 hours, for instance) without supervision. Bernardo is eligible to apply for these forms of release on February 17, 2015, three years before he is is eligible to seek full parole. Bernardo has these opportunities because every criminal sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years is eligible to seek day parole and UTAs after serving 22 years. Bernardo is serving two concurrent life-25 sentences for the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. He also was declared a dangerous offender, meaning he can be kept locked up forever, if he continues to be considered a danger to society. The Parole Board will consider his dangerous offender designation in any release decisions. Chances are good that Bernardo will never be granted any form of conditional release. Statistically speaking, most dangerous offenders die behind bars. But none of this changes the fact that he will be eligible to seek release and the Parole Board will be required to conduct a hearing, if Bernardo demands one.

If a hearing is convened, it will afford Bernardo the opportunity to do something that he has steadfastly refused for nearly two decades – to admit his guilt in the murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. Parole board panels typically require an unconditional admission of guilt and acceptance of responsibility from criminals pleading for release. Panel members will often interrogate a criminal at length about his crime/s, particularly if there have been past denials or attempts to rationalize or minimize the conduct.

Bernardo has continued to shout to anyone who would listen that he is not guilty of those two heinous murders of which he was convicted in September 1995. Bernardo insists that his accomplice/victim, his wife Karla Homolka, was the true killer. She cut a deal with prosecutors that was later condemned, in which she agreed to testify against her husband in exchange for a 12-year prison sentence for her role in the deaths of Kristen and Leslie and her role in the death of her sister Tammy, who she drugged and offer to her husband as a sex toy. Tammy died while being raped by Bernardo and Homolka after choking on her own vomit. Homolka is now free and is not subject to any supervision. Her sentence expired in 2005. In 2012, journalist Paula Todd wrote a short e-book, detailing a meeting with Homolka in Guadeloupe, a small French island in the Caribbean (author Stephen Williams wrote that Todd’s e-book was “rife with errors.”)

From left, Tammy Homolka, Leslie Mahaffy, Kristen French

Bernardo appealed his conviction on the murder charges. The Court of Appeal for Ontario rejected his appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to entertain an appeal. The Court of Appeal for Ontario noted that Bernardo admitted only, with respect to Kristen and Leslie, “that he kidnapped these two teenage girls, and then confined them in his house while he brutally sexually assaulted and humiliated them.” He insisted that Homolka alone was the murderer and he was guilty only of manslaughter. Homolka testified at Bernardo’s trial that he strangled the victims with a cord. Bernardo also has admitted to stalking and raping women, before the murders. He is known to have attacked at least 14 women between 1987 and 1990 in Scarborough and perhaps many more in other areas. Since his imprisonment, Bernardo has admitted to additional sex attacks and he remains a suspect in other murders, including the unsolved slaying of Elizabeth Bain, a University of Toronto student who disappeared in 1990. Her boyfriend, Robert Baltovich was convicted of the murder but cleared after a second trial. Bain’s body has never been found and in an interview with police inside Kingston Pen in 2007, Bernardo denied that he killed Bain (transcript of the police interview). In another interview with police, in 2006, Bernardo repeated his claim that Homolka killed Leslie and Kristen and he insisted he was not psychopathic and he “cared about people,” although there is ample evidence that he is a sexual sadist, an offender who derives pleasure from inflicting pain.

In her testimony during Bernardo’s trial, Homolka denied that she played a bigger role in the abduction, rapes and murders.

“I have never minimized my role and I never will minimize my role,” Homolka said, in response to a question from John Rosen, Bernardo’s lawyer.

Not everyone believes her. In his book, Karla: A Pact with the Devil, Williams, writes that Homolka was “equally, if not more, responsible for the crimes she and her partner committed.” Williams notes:

No one died until Paul Bernardo moved in with Karla Homolka. She could have chosen not to do what she did to her sister. She did what she did with the full knowledge that her actions put her sister’s life at risk. She had many opportunities to save her sister, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.

The revelation that Bernardo has asked for a transfer to lower security and that he will soon qualify to seek parole will undoubtedly arouse demands for jungle justice. ‘Turn him loose in the general prison population,’ is a familiar refrain (one applied equally to others before, like Clifford Olson). There is a constituency – those to whom the Harper Conservatives have pandered – who believe everyone convicted of any crime more serious than shoplifting or bike theft should be executed or, at least, confined in a dungeon. Bernardo is a difficult case. Our civilized society stopped executing murderers 50 years ago, choosing instead to confine them, as punishment, for long stretches – although many killers are eventually paroled. Keeping these seemingly untreatable and iredeemable monsters alive behind bars leads necessarily to a discussion of what duty we owe these imprisoned wretches to provide reasonable conditions of confinement? There can be no argument that the Bernardo-like offenders should be subject to cruelty, beyond confinement, as a means to deter other would-be killers. Decades of study and statistics reveal no apparent correlation between harsh punishment and fewer killings. The rate of homicide in Canada has declined since the mid-1970s, when Canada abolished the death penalty.

The idea of putting a sexual predator in a prison less secure than Kingston Penitentiary is not without precedent. Saul Betesh, the principal figure in the 1997 rape, torture and murder of Emanuel Jaques in Toronto, long ago graduated to medium security. Sadistic sex killer James Giff is in minimum security. Child slayer John Carlos Terceira was in medium security, at last check. There are many others. Bernardo may have a good case for a transfer.

Here’s the Globe and Mail story, published in 2008, that detailed Bernardo’s interview with police at Kingston Pen on April 16, 2006:

By Kirk Makin

Justice Reporter

In his first interview since being imprisoned for life in 1995, serial killer Paul Bernardo told police that sexual “performance anxiety” was the driving force that led him to leave a trail of dead girls and sexual violence across Southern Ontario.

“That’s what I had back then, so I used sex as a vice,” Mr. Bernardo said in the April 16, 2006, police interview. “Now, I work out. I wake up every day knowing I’m not psychopathic. I care about people. I cried during 9/11. I cried during Columbine.”

In an interview transcript filed in the Ontario Court of Appeal, Mr. Bernardo told two Toronto police investigators that he had spent endless hours trying to come to grips with deep-seated insecurities – involving his “baby chest,” his having been a nerdy schoolboy, and his penchant for forcing rape victims to disparage their boyfriends’ sexual prowess.

“It’s all power and control, because you’re so insecure in yourself,” he said. “I was the type of guy who would freeze at baseball plays. I don’t want to swing because I know I’m gonna miss. I remember the first time I went waiting at Mother’s Pizza, I was so scared to walk up to the table.”

A transcript of the two-hour interview was filed in connection with an application by London, Ont., man Anthony Hanemaayer, who is asking to be exonerated in a sex attack that Mr. Bernardo recently confessed to having perpetrated.

Mr. Bernardo, known as the Scarborough rapist, was convicted of killing schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, and also of almost 20 sexual assaults.

The interview took place at Kingston Penitentiary, where he is in a maximum-security, solitary-confinement unit and prohibited from having contact with the news media.

“I’m the worst piece of crap on the planet, yet I get up every day,” Mr. Bernardo told Detective Brad Hoover and Detective-Constable Darlene Coulis. “I work out. I don’t sit there crying in my cell. And you know, I don’t feel threatened because someone called me an idiot, you know, where I have to attack. … Everyone treats me that way. I have no friends. I have nobody. But I handle it.”

Clearly intent on convincing the officers that he was rehabilitated, Mr. Bernardo said that he had not used drugs or alcohol in prison. Nor, he said, had he attempted to take up offers of sexual services he had had from women since arriving in prison.

“I get letters,” he said. “I get lots of letters. No, thanks. It’s egocentric for someone to come in. I’m not a sex predator … I don’t engage in deviancy at all. I’ve overcome all this stuff. I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t have relations; don’t want one.”

Correctional Services Canada officials said yesterday that privacy rules prevent them from revealing whether Mr. Bernardo can have conjugal visits. However, he implied to the investigators that the choice was his. At one point, he said that “bringing a woman to orgasm is what gives me pleasure – which is the case now.

“Am I going to bring somebody here, you know, to this horrible situation? Bring her in as Paul Bernardo’s girlfriend and subject her to that just so I can have my sex or relationship? I’m not gonna to do it – not until I’m out of prison.”

Mr. Bernardo also denied harbouring antipathy toward women: “I loved women and obviously loved sex because of the vice at the time. But there was never any hatred against women. They were my best friends, uh, mostly.”

Speaking in a rambling, stream-of-consciousness manner, he insisted he would be a solid prospect for parole when he becomes eligible in 2010 for a 15-year review under the Criminal Code’s so-called faint-hope clause.

He said his newfound insight into his character flaws could have saved him from being plunged into “a horrible, horrible existence.

“Every day, it’s ‘Bernardo – schoolgirl killer,’ ” he said. “It’s horrible to be pounded with that all the time. I got it yesterday, today, all the time. And it’s people that I could bully because I’m bigger physically and a better fighter. But I don’t engage in that. I walk away, disgraced and humiliated, but I can handle it.

“I’m losing the battles to win the war,” he told the police officers. “The war is not a war against you guys and a war against the Attorney-General, so that I can go and rape again. The war is the war of life – my mistakes in life.”

Mr. Bernardo also appeared to acknowledge for the first time since his murder trial that he was present when Kristen and Leslie were killed, although he continued to assert that his wife at the time, Karla Homolka, actually strangled them.

At another point in the interview, he insisted that police and psychiatrists were wrong to believe that his crimes had progressed steadily from minor, less violent attacks to sadistic murders.

A gruesome attack was sometimes followed by a less violent one, he said. “If you look back at some of the first ones – in ‘88, the girl got her arm broken. A lot afterwards didn’t. … You have ups and down – depending on the more they fought, the more I fought.”

He also disputed police assertions that he had hung on to his rape victims’ personal items and identification cards as trophies.

Mr. Bernardo said he “took stuff from the victims as kind of a deterrence thing. Okay, like, ‘I know where you live, so don’t say anything.’

“It does a disservice, because if you really want to profile me correctly, it’s not good to say that. … It misrepresents who I was, and what I done those things for.”