Original subtitles

Hundreds waited for hours, even slept on the street overnight, all to witness

the moment when Carla Homolka would face Paul Bernardo.

Charged with some of the most heinous crimes ever in the country.

Carla Homolka was expected to outline gruesome details of the murders in what

has become Canada's trial of the century.

Canadian media thought they were sitting on the blockbuster like Simpson, O .J.

Simpson.

The network set up broadcast locations in a parking lot across the street. It

was in every newspaper.

It was a circus. It was an absolute circus.

Is this part of the tour?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, what do you tell them as you go by?

Well, we tell them about the case.

It was extraordinary.

It was like finally seeing behind the curtain in a story.

Dubbed the Ken and Barbie killers because of their extreme good looks.

But we had a barest idea of how much more dramatic it was going to become.

I received a jury summon.

I was very excited about this. I mean, I was a stay -at -home mom. I never got

out much.

I've always been this crime drama junkie. I love law and order. I love

shows.

It just always fascinated me. And you just knew that this was going to be

the biggest thing ever in Canada.

The Crown opens its case against Paul Bernardo. Bernardo was arrested in the

deaths of schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffey. He faces two counts of

first -degree murder and charges of kidnapping, illegal confinement, and

committing an indignity to a human body. Bernardo will face charges in relation

to the manslaughter of Tammy Homolka and the sexual assaults on 13 women in the

Toronto suburb of Scarborough at a separate trial in the future.

Now that the publication ban has been lifted, the media can report on the

The media went crazy because they'd been prevented from reporting on the case

because of the publication ban.

We're joined outside the courthouse by lawyer Alan Young. What should we expect

day one? He's going to point the finger at his wife, and his wife's going to

point the finger at himself.

And, of course, the public has a right to be there.

They wanted to know everything.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's have you.

I'm sorry, the courtroom is full.

Crown Prosecutor Ray Houlihan outlined his case against Bernardo to the jury.

Detail after sordid detail.

Most of the Crown's case is based on what Carla Homolka says happened.

A tale of horror of how two young girls, Leslie Mahaffey and Kristen French,

were kidnapped, raped and sexually tortured.

Their nightmare ending when they were strangled with an electrical cord.

The biggest problem the Crown faced at the Bernardo trial was that there's no

killings that actually take place on the tape. It's up to you which version of

reality.

You want to believe, whether it's Paul's version that Carla killed them or her

version that he killed them.

And the jury's going to have to decide who is less credible, who is more

credible.

Some people refer to me as Mr. Murderer.

I've represented at least 300 people charged with murder.

A native of Toronto, 50 -year -old Rosen has been practicing law for a quarter

of a century. He's no stranger to gruesome evidence and high -profile

One thing's for sure, the weeks ahead will be very interesting for John Rosen.

So, given the tapes, there was no way we could defend the

abduction.

and lawful confinement, or sex assaults.

I focused strictly on who caused the death of each of these girls.

The defense that we were running, we were not going to plead to first -degree

murder in any way.

That wasn't going to happen.

Who were the alternative suspects?

In this case, it was only one.

We knew she was a killer from the administration of the halothane that she

given to her sister.

Hi, guys.

Paul always thought

he could get away with things, whereas she was a lot more practical.

and knew that things had to be cleaned up afterward.

So the defense rested on the theory that basically

she was the dog handler, and she knew that

those women couldn't be allowed to live afterwards.

I thought she should be sitting in the box beside him.

being tried beside him. That's what should have happened with her.

She should have been sitting right beside him.

By this time, I was working for John Rosen, and it made my resolve to

ensure that he had everything that he could

possibly have.

I did not want to have any stone left unturned.

At the center of the case, six videotapes depicting rape and torture of

schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffey.

There had never been video evidence of a crime of this magnitude

before.

So far, it's only professionals involved in the case who've actually seen the

tapes. Now the outside world is set to learn what's on those tapes.

And this has huge implications for victims and their families with

respect to their personal privacy.

Family lawyer Tim Danson not only wants to bar the public from seeing the

videos, but from even hearing witnesses describe or quote from the tapes.

We do not draw a distinction between the visual

and the word, and that both have equal impact.

If a tape of a sexual assault is played, the victim is re

-victimized. It perpetuates that abuse every time it's viewed.

No parent should ever have to sit through that.

For the families, it's become a bitter battle that pits their right to privacy

against media organizations demanding the public has a right to know.

Media lawyers argue if videotaped evidence is suppressed, people will

whether justice has been done.

The jury needed to hear these things.

The jury needed to see those things.

But the media wanted to have these tapes disclosed.

For public consumption.

If the media had known what was on them, my gosh, they would never have been

able to release them to the general public anyway.

Justice LaSalle decided that the tapes would be played in the courtroom and

the jury would see the tapes.

But the public in the courtroom would not see the tapes being played, and they

would hear the audio, but they would not see the video whenever a victim

was on the screen.

I understood that there would be video evidence, but there was... There was

no way to foresee what was on those tapes.

I had absolutely no idea what I was in for.

Today, the video tapes are finally played in court.

They turned around the monitors so you couldn't see.

It may have been better to let the tapes be watched because what I discovered

was when you just hear these disembodied voices, and they're very horrible

voices, your imagination runs rampant.

I remember Mrs.

Mahaffey was determined that she was going to come and sit.

And she wanted to be there. She wanted to hear.

And I remember going to the Crown and a number of the police officers.

I think I went to everybody and I said, please get her out of here. Do whatever

you have to do. Lock the door.

Don't let her come in. Don't let this be the last thing that she hears.

I wanted her to remember her daughter with a good memory.

Just as a mother.

But she stayed.

She stayed in.

And she listened.

And it was really heartbreaking.

You could hear the intimacy of the setting. You could hear the rustling of

seats.

And then you just have this kind of, you know, rising

wail of pain.

And these pleas, these pleas to stop it.

It was extraordinarily difficult to sit through that.

Lassie Mahaffey's mother, Debbie, had to be physically supported by friends

leaving the court.

Her face contorted in pain, drained after listening to her daughter plead

her life.

It finally became unbearable, and her knees actually buckled as she was trying

to flee the courtroom that day.

And Mrs. Mahaffey has got her face buried in her hands.

In the beginning of the body, she was all up and down her back.

And it's like you want to...

Try.

It's just... It hit me so hard that I walked out of the courtroom.

I wandered down the streets. I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I

didn't remember where my car was. I wound up just sitting on the grass in

middle of the traffic circle, actually.

You know, just utterly oblivious to my surroundings.

We all stared into the abyss.

It was the most horrific experience because watching

those videos, you were watching

young girls being

raped and tortured, but you couldn't do anything

about it.

And it was...

It was very overwhelming because you felt like you wanted to

save them, but you couldn't, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Because of the publication ban,

The trial was the first time the public got to understand Carla's role in these

horrible crimes and what her true character was.

There is so much evidence on the tape that Carla was

very much a part of what was taking place.

It becomes obvious that Carla was a partner in those crimes.

She knew right from wrong.

Good and evil.

She could have got out. She could have got out so many times.

I can't forgive and forget. And how can the Mojaves, how can the Frenches, how

can any of them forgive and forget?

Forgive?

There is no forgiveness.

Once I found out the truth about Tammy, when you're asked to drug your sister as

a gift leading to her death, it was just wrong.

It's a family member.

That is irreprehensible. It's disgusting.

And it's...

To me, it's unforgivable.

I'm like, you're not human to me anymore.

On the stand today, Dorothy Homolka. Her youngest daughter, Tammy, died at the

hands of her eldest daughter, Carla, who was due to give evidence later in the

trial.

And when Dorothy Himalka took the stand, I remember thinking, how does a mother

reconcile one daughter killing another?

Perhaps the family believed, you know, it was all his doing as a result of what

he instructed her to do or whatever. And so

that's how they got through it.

That's my assumption.

I remember being fascinated by Carla's mother coming onto the witness stand at

the trial, hoping that I would get some insight into what made her what she was.

Was she just a battered woman, or was there something in her childhood that

created this kind of moral vacuity in her?

Dorothy Hamalta did not really agree that there had been any evidence,

none that she had seen, that her daughter was being abused or terrorized

Bernardo. She described how Carla had had a glow the whole time that she had

known him.

The evidence of her being battered at any other time was not there. For

she would actually have her own bank account. She was independently employed.

And she would also go away on her own for holidays with girlfriends to Florida

and elsewhere and party.

And just that alone is very atypical to anybody who's a battered woman, who's

under the complete control of a...

violent, intimidating male partner.

So there were a lot of things like that that simply didn't make sense.

One of the cardinal things about battered woman syndrome is that they

against the husband, the batterer, not

against her own sister and innocent young strangers.

It was just this feeling that it was an insult.

Two battered women.

The trial showed who she was.

I think of all the things that took place during the trial, one of the most

shocking to witness and one of the most damning of Carla was

what was known as the fireside chat hate.

And in it, Carla pretends to be Tammy.

Just weeks after they have killed Tammy in the basement of her parents' house.

She dresses up in her clothing. She does her

hair like Tammy did.

And she essentially tries to become Tammy to satisfy Paul.

Paul has sex with her, and Carla is talking in Tammy's voice and

cooing to him and saying, You were so wonderful. You took the virginity

of those girls. I was so proud of you.

So any credibility Carla might have had was shot when that tape was playing.

All eyes are now on accused killer Paul Bernardo in a downtown courtroom as he's

taken the witness stand in his own defense.

Paul Bernardo takes the stand, and here's this baby -faced guy struggling

come up with a story that could possibly exonerate him.

Despite the fact that he presented himself in a very amiable, controlled

and was articulate, my only feeling was a feeling that I

wanted to punch him in the face.

The focus was on the homicide.

So when I called him as a witness, the first thing I asked him was, did you

Leslie Mahaffey?

He said, no, I didn't.

I said, who actually killed her? He said, Carla did.

I said, did you kill Kristen French?

He said, no, I didn't.

I said, who killed her?

He said, Carla did.

Did you want to kill these girls?

He said, no. We had Leslie blindfolded, and I wanted to let her go, and Carla

said no.

And what about Kristen? No, I was going to do the same thing with her. She had

no idea where she was, but Carla wanted her dead.

That took about 15 minutes.

And I said, thank you, and I sat down.

I said, you're a witness.

Basically, his story is, I'm a serial rapist, I'm a sexual

sadist, I am who I am, but I'm not a murderer.

Paul's account was that after he got back with food and movies he'd rented,

Kristen was dead.

Carla said to him that Kristen had wanted to have the

restraint around her neck loosened.

so that she could breathe more easily.

And when Carla did so, Kristen tried to bolt and escape, and that she had in

fact strangled herself with the electrical cord, and that Carla

had to use a rubber mallet to try and subdue her during this whole process.

She was dead.

That was what Paul said Carla told him.

No headlines tonight from the Bernardo trial. Everyone had the day off. But

things will heat up again on Monday when the most anticipated witness takes the

stand.

The entire trial of Paul Bernardo has been building up to this day.

Better than doing this in the winter.

One of the most senior criminal lawyers cross -examining, you know, the star

witness in the most sensational Canadian trial.

It was the hot ticket, believe me.

The accused and an accuser, face -to -face in courtroom 6 -1.

When Carla Homolka came into the courtroom,

She had kind of transformed herself into a sort of blank space.

She dressed in very pale colors, and it was like she was kind of erasing herself

in order to present the least threatening and the most victimized

persona that she could come up with.

She turned herself into a beige curtain, and it was fascinating to see that,

given what we'd seen of her on videotapes and what we knew she was

I walked in front of the jury up to the witness box, and I showed her

the picture of Tammy. I said, who's this?

And you could see that she was shocked, and she said, that's my sister Tammy.

I said, you're right, that's Tammy alive, isn't it?

She said, yes.

Then I pulled out the next picture, which is Tammy lying in her coffin.

And I said, and this is what you and him over there did.

Isn't that right?

And she put her head down. She said, yes.

Then I pulled out the next picture, and I said, and who's this?

That's Leslie.

Right.

And here's a picture of her body parts, and that was blocked, but you and him

did.

Yeah.

And who's this?

Oh, it's Kristen French.

I said, right, the little girl you abducted off the street and that winds

dead. That's you and him causing this. Isn't that right?

And the truth is that not only did you cause it, you're the one who killed

isn't it?

No, I didn't. Okay.

Well, we'll see.

No one took a note for the next half hour.

You could have heard a pin drop in the whole courtroom.

Nobody moved.

And she was worse than the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

And John didn't really let up for the next better part of two weeks.

The media and the public sat riveted as John Rosen savaged her story of being a

battered wife.

There was electricity in the air. I think Carla Homolka was caught off

by the vigorous and aggressive nature of Mr. Rosen's cross -examination.

We were all like thinking he was like a folk hero because he was like, you know,

putting up the fisticuffs to Carla.

And, you know, and he really, you know, he dragged her through the mud and she

kind of burst out of this practiced cell of kind of the one still passive victim

and just started getting haughty and kind of dismissive with him.

After initially shocking her and putting her off her stride, she was

able to collect herself and come back strong.

But then I realized that that was fatal to her because it showed she was no

victim.

Nobody's going to push her around.

She's in charge.

And the stronger she got,

the more the jury hated her.

I was quite happy that she was fighting back.

You're not this wilting flower, and you're not this battered woman.

You're probably the mastermind behind all of this. You're the one with the

brains. You're the one that's manipulative.

After Carla Homolka testified, I just sat outside my house all night thinking

how could any human being, let alone a fellow woman,

do this to young children?

The trial ended.

We were sent for deliberation.

The jury hated both of them.

And unfortunately, they only had him in front of them on trial.

It has been a waiting game here at the courthouse, and the deliberation period

could last longer than some expected.

And so the jury continued to deliberate overnight.

We'd given them something to think about.

They're either already in the building or about to arrive and continue their

deliberation.

So a verdict could come down at any time after 9 o 'clock and we'll be standing

by live to bring you a live report when it happens.

Public hanging.

Screwing him up.

Should get rid of him. Kill him. Kill him.

Everybody had a stake in Canada in the justice because everybody knew so many

the details of the story.

The following day, the verdict was read.

Randy, you're in position.

All nine?

Okay.

Hello? Hello? Can anybody hear me?

All nine counts guilty.

He has been found guilty on all counts, including first -degree murder. First

-degree murder. Guilty on all nine.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you, this is certainly emotional time.

Please give them space. Please give them space.

Excuse me. Can you please give them space or else this won't happen?

This

is

our statement.

The intensity of the overwhelming pain and strong emotion have once again swept

us and rendering it impossible for us to adequately talk about the death of

Leslie and what this moment really means to us.

We, Deb, Ryan, and myself have been through hell during the past four years

and know there are many more months and years ahead of us.

Only the trial is over.

Leslie is still not coming home.

Thank you.

It's been over three years since our daughter was taken from us.

a difficult and painful time.

Finally, today, with a guilty verdict for first -degree murder, there is some

sort of closure.

Well, it can't return our daughter to us. We have the satisfaction of seeing

this perpetrated punishment.

Our final words for our daughter with the trial over.

Christy, you can't be hurt anymore.

We love you.

You know, I think of Doug French looking up at the sky and telling,

telling Kristen French that nobody could hurt her

anymore for everyone who was there.

It becomes a part of your DNA.

It doesn't go away.

And it just, it's part of, it's part of who we are.

It has helped probably define all of us in some way.

Paul was found guilty on all charges.

Two first -degree murders for Leslie and Kristen.

Mr. Bernardo is bearing the brunt of the crown.

Still attempting to portray Carla Hamaka as the poor victim.

I'm sure this jury would have preferred to have both of them sitting in the box

together so that they could judge both of them and then come to a decision at

the same time about both rather than having it been made by bureaucrats ahead

time.

It's hard to go through a trial like that and not have it somehow impact on

And I said, it's over, and I'm done.

And that was it, and I walked away.

Having been convicted of first -degree murder, Paul Bernardo is now charged

the manslaughter of 15 -year -old Tammy Homolka and a string of sexual assaults

in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, dating back to 1986.

There was another hearing after Bernardo had been convicted.

The Scarborough rape and the death of Tammy were dealt with by way of

Bernardo designated as a dangerous offender, which would have an effect on

whether he would ever get out of prison.

a dangerous offender, it's likely Bernardo will never taste freedom again.

Whereas his accomplice in the crimes, Carla Hamalka, could be free in two

time.

How do you feel now at the end of everything?

Are you happy about the verdict?

Are you happy about the verdict? Yes, we are.

Are you happy about the verdict? Yes, we are. Do you feel that your daughter was

vindicated in the jury's decision?

Yes, she was.

Anger at the deal that saw Carla Homolka sentenced to only 12 years in jail for

her part in the crime. Homolka got a 12 -year sentence in exchange for her

testimony. Five years for the manslaughter of Leslie Mahaffey, five

the manslaughter of Christian French, and two years for her part in the death

her sister Tammy. She could apply for parole in two years.

I've been talking with Michael Code, former Ontario government official, who

responsible for approving the deal with Carla Homolka.

There's absolutely no question that in a perfect world, you would like to have

both Paul Bernardo and Carla Homolka in the box together facing murder charges.

We had to compromise because we didn't have a case against Bernardo.

We weren't happy.

with the plea bargain i don't think anybody including the police and crown

happy with it i still think that it was the only thing that could have been done

at that point had they had possession of the tapes then there would have been no

plea bargain

Someone who's engaged in that type of activity should probably never see the

light of day or see it when they're too old to be a danger to the community.

People really, really felt incredibly outraged with the Crown for making this

deal with her.

It was a really grave, grave insult to the whole society and the whole system

and what we believe in as justice in this country.

She's just as guilty as him. And look it, if that happened in the states, ma

'am, he would have been on death's roll and she would be the same.

What the public is probably owed is some sort of accounting from people in the

attorney general's office, the architect for this deal.

Judges will never be served with these girls.

But what the public must demand now is some accountability.

Let's go.

Keep her in jail.

Their outrage is shared by thousands, more than 300 ,000.

That's how many signatures organizers say they have.

The public must demand some rules for immunity deals in the future. It was a

travesty of justice to give Carla Hamalka 12 years.

Because what you need to know...

There was a lot of different things Carla was aware of had happened to other

victims, which she conveniently said she had amnesia and didn't remember.

So there were a couple of other girls that came into what John Rosen called

Venus flytrap of their home.

When the Crown finally viewed the videotape, It realized another victim

assaulted, a teenager known as Jane Doe.

There were other victims on the tape.

There was Jane Doe, a 15 -year -old schoolgirl who was lured to the house by

Carla on two occasions where she was drugged and assaulted.

The offenses committed against Jane Doe were caught on the six critical tapes.

Homolka said at her trial she forgot to mention it, but that memory loss didn't

hurt her deal any.

Jane Doe never got justice or vindication for what she went through

Homolka.

Charges were never laid against Carla.

I mean, it's so unthinkable now.

I felt I couldn't sit quiet anymore.

So I wrote to the attorney general, and I said, you know 12

years for Carla Homolka is inadequate.

You know that. And I was pleading with them, please investigate this.

She was not truthful and forthright, which is a prerequisite in the deal.

And that gives you the entitlement to tell the Court of Appeal, rip up the

judge's 12 -year sentence and resentence her based on all the crimes.

Lo and behold, a couple weeks later, an announcement is made that they'll

appoint a judge, Justice Gallagher, to look at the plea deal and some other

things related to Jane Doe to see if mistakes were made.

It's been almost three years since Carla Homolka's sentence was handed down. Was

the deal she struck fair?

Today, the answer from Judge Galligan wasn't the one many members of the

were looking for.

I, frankly, would have done it exactly the way the Crowns did it in this case.

I respect the view of those who say it could have been and should have been

in a different way, but I just happen to disagree with them.

The judge said, well, we just can't renege on a deal that we've made or we

lose all future credibility with anyone we need to be a cooperating witness.

So they had to hold firm to it.

Really? our dignity and nobility would be affected.

That's what you're worried about? What about the concept of justice?

You swear a goddamn oath to uphold justice and the Constitution and all

and you're worried about these ramifications for other people and the

institution of plea bargaining?

I don't know. It was disappointing.

Judge Galligan said the hardest part of his inquiry was the controversial Jane

Doe portion of the deal.

In reviewing the Gallagher report, which is what I have in front of me right

now, he goes on and he says this, the views of Jane Doe and her family were

obtained through their solicitors.

Jane Doe was ambivalent about whether charges should be laid.

And then we find out 10 years later that that's not necessarily the case.

This is an article published in the Toronto Sun from May of 2005.

And this directly contradicts what was said in the Galligan report.

It's talking about Jane Doe and how she never agreed with

prosecutors to waive the charges against Homolka.

Jane Doe talks about how she was never consulted, she was never spoken to.

The fact that they ignored it in a case of this notoriety and high profile is a

little puzzling to me. And the fact that Justice Galligan, who reviewed the plea

bargain, says, well, she was part of the process, she knew and she was

agreeable, is an extraordinary statement.

And yet 10 years later, one of the most significant victims is basically saying,

hey, I was left in the cold.

I found out about what they're going to do. I had no input.

Jane Doe talks about how she thinks it's disgusting that Carla, who

was able to get a psychology degree from Queens University while serving time,

now has a better education than she has.

And she had to pay for it as the taxpayer.

Of course, it's buried on page five.

The entire system.

Legal, media, and societal has entirely let Jane Doe down.

If Jane Doe felt that she wasn't treated properly in the system and that her

rights as a victim were not respected, she can sue the government. Personally,

would love to see Jane Doe do something. Her case.

And her situation, which is well known to all Canadians, could be a catalyst

improving the state of victims' rights in this country. So if she's interested,

there are options.

Jane Doe remained kind of a mystery figure in all of it, that there was some

other woman who to this day must be...

coping with an incredible level of trauma, none of that gets attached to

Homolka. It's as if that element of her criminality in this case just didn't

even compute.

It's extraordinary.

Carla Homolka.

She's about to get out from behind bars and walk free amongst us.

after 12 short years.

It was quick, and she left unnoticed, apparently inside one of two red

After 12 years in prison, Carla Homolka is out.

Yet as disturbing as some Canadians may find it, Homolka, now 36, has served her

time and has the same rights as all Canadians.

Lawyer Tim Danson called to tell the families of her victims, Kristen French

Leslie Mahaffey.

When I communicated to them that Karl Homolka was free, there was really this

dead silence, and you could just feel the pain and the anguish.

Homolka is arguably the only convicted serial killer who

has been returned to freedom to enjoy her life unimpeded.

This is something that certainly our generation is never going to forget in

country, that after the things she did, she's out there.

There was just this real sense of outrage in the Canadian population that

continues to sort of simmer and burst forth. There's no precedent for that

modern criminological history, of a person committing that level of

and crime not still being behind bars.

There's simply no precedent for it. I don't think she should have been

at all. She should stay in jail.

I just hope that she is watched.

What's interesting is that in the plea bargain that was made with Carla

she was never charged with sex crimes.

And so she emerges from prison.

without any kind of status as a sex offender, which means she can't be

registered as a sex offender, and she can just kind of float off like a bit of

dandelion fluff.

No, I don't feel safe, not that we don't know, have any control of where she is.

The whole thing is just so wrong.

You know, Tammy was such a bright star.

Kristen and Leslie, they had beautiful, bright futures to live up to.

They both should rot in hell. I mean, they...

What she elected to do was to settle down in Quebec.

She had become fluent in French, so she was living in a heavily French part of

Canada, where she was less known than any other part of Canada.

She had three children with the brother of her defense lawyer

in Quebec.

Carla Homolka tried to hide from the cameras after taking her three children

into the school but there is no evading her past.

The media discovered that her children were in a neighborhood school.

She was able to change her name and she did.

And she would sometimes volunteer for school activities.

One might imagine how parents felt when they found out that The infamous Carla

Homolka was shepherding their children around on outings.

And before my daughter goes to play with the dog of Carla Homolka, and I didn't

know it's her, and, you know, we never know what can happen with this lady.

This will happen as long as Carla is alive. She will never have peace, and

most people feel that is exactly how it ought to be.

Still, there is fear in the community and outrage among Canadians unable to

forget about her heinous crimes.

She now has three children and she had them knowing that she is going to have

to explain to them her past and she is going to know that they are

reading books, the internet, a vast profusion.

of accounts which differ from her self -serving account.

What are they going to think of her?

How is she going to respond to her questions?

To me, that is a shocking, shocking notion that she is a mother of

perfectly innocent young children who have to grow up knowing what she did.

I think it's the great Canadian tragedy.

That is when Canada lost its innocence.

From just what I know, there are individuals whose marriages broke up,

who had severe mental health breakdown, became suicidal because

of the tapes.

After the tapes, I was diagnosed with post

-traumatic stress disorder, and I fell into a major depression.

It was overwhelming because of what I had been exposed to.

So it was a very long journey to attempt to

get well.

After watching those videotapes over and over, I

didn't want anyone to touch me.

Six months or more after the trial ended, my husband asked

in bed one night if he could just hold me.

And he did, and slowly, slowly.

Our relationship went back to normal.

Yeah, well, that was the end of that.

That's why I stopped doing crime reporting.

I was traumatized in the aftermath of that for several months, and then I just

backed completely away from that abyss.

I would never ever get involved in a case with child pornography again.

At night, when I was trying to go to sleep, I'd start to see and hear these

things.

It's not just the audio of their pain, their anguish, but it's also about

being said.

I just couldn't get them out of my head. They were there. I felt my

life was a...

and, you know, my life wasn't worth anything.

I just got increasingly depressed and suicidal, nearly killed myself, very

close, until I got worse and, you know, got into treatment and then

realized that the Bernardo tapes, that was the problem.

These traumas in no way surpass

the traumas of the victims and their families.

The family fought for years to get these tapes destroyed to protect the rights

and dignity of their loved ones and take control over their own narrative.

Good evening. Immense relief tonight and some closure for the families of

Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffey. Gruesome videotapes depicting the rape

torture of the schoolgirls have now been incinerated during an emotional

gathering. Tim Danson, lawyer for the French and Mahaffey families, says all

known copies of those tapes and a significant amount of other materials

destroyed yesterday in an undisclosed location.

In many ways, this case remains locked in time.

It's the first of its kind to use video in such a substantial way.

And it's also the first of its kind to make this landmark decision to

burn evidence.

It acknowledges the power of video evidence.

and is arguably way ahead of its time in thinking about the ways in which

images can abuse, violate, and re -victimize.

Every time those tapes were viewed, it's a violation of the girls involved.

And to know that that's not going to happen again means a lot.

There were tears.

I was sure Kristen was looking down and saying, thank God they're gone.

It's a nice feeling to know that Kristen can finally rest in peace.

Excavators ripped through the house.

where Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffey were held captive and brutally raped.

So a work crew of volunteers donated their time to bring down the most hated

house in St. Catharines.

It has become a symbol of all that happened, and I'm doing something to

eradicate the thing.

Mahaffey's mother, Debbie, cried as she watched the demolition, but found some

comfort in seeing the house pounded into dust.

When this house comes down, it comes down for all victims in my mind,

everywhere.

That's why I wouldn't mind throwing a brick and seeing if I couldn't hit that

top window.

I was obsessed.

Completely obsessed. I would collect everything.

Everything. Every pamphlet, book, you know, the Enquirer, all of it.

Scrapbook, everything.

My daughter said, Mom, I think it's a good time for you to really go through

this stuff.

And I looked at her and I, it was hard.

And I agreed with her and we stood outside and had a great big fire.

And we burnt everything.

Everything.

It was a good fire.

It was a good fire.

It was a good big fire.

And really, who wants to remember Carla and Paul?

Just remember the girls.