MONTREAL – Child killer Karla Homolka was released from prison Monday after serving 12 years for the rapes and murders of three teenage girls, including her younger sister.
Tim Danson and Correctional Service Canada spokeswoman Michele Pilon-Santilli both confirmed the release, but Homolka was nowhere to be seen by the media lining the road outside the prison.
Earlier Monday, her lawyers made a last-ditch attempt to ban the media from reporting on her whereabouts after her release, citing vigilante death threats against Canada’s most notorious female inmate.
One of her attorneys, Christian Lachance, said Homolka, a 35-year-old former veterinarian assistant from a bedroom community in southern Ontario, was in a “state of terror” about her release from the Ste-Anne-des-Plaines maximum-security prison outside Montreal.
Her father has said his daughter, who has become fluent in French while in the Quebec prison, had hoped to settle in Montreal.
“She is paralyzed with fear, completely panicked,” Lachance told the Montreal Gazette. `When I saw her she was in a state of terror, almost in a trance. She cannot conceive of what her life will be like outside.”
Lachance argues that since Homolka’s safety cannot be assured by police, the media must be prevented from reporting on her whereabouts to protect her from numerous threats against her life, mostly by Internet bloggers.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Paul-Marcel Bellavance last week rejected a similar plea, saying it violated press freedoms. Lachance has asked the court to reconsider before his client’s release.
Homolka became the symbol of evil in Canada in 1993, when she was convicted of manslaughter and given 12 years for her role in the rapes and murders of Ontario teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.
The prison term also included time for the 1990 death of her 15-year-old sister, Tammy Homolka, who died Christmas Eve after Homolka held a drug-soaked cloth over her mouth while both she and her husband raped her.
In return for her relatively light sentence, Homolka testified against ex-husband Paul Bernardo, a Toronto bookkeeper serving a life term in an Ontario prison for two counts of first-degree murder.
Homolka told the court and psychiatrists that she was a battered wife who took part in the rapes and murders to protect herself and family from threats by Bernardo.
Months after prosecutors made the deal, however, Bernardo’s attorneys handed over homemade videotapes by the couple that indicated Homolka was a willing participant. When news of the tapes become public, Canadians were outraged that she would be released in 12 years.
As her release loomed, Ontario prosecutors went back to court and last month successfully obtained firm restrictions on her movement and activities once released. Homolka also intends to appeal those restrictions, calling them a violation of her plea deal.