BATH, Ont.—He sobbed. He babbled. He pulled out all the psycho-jumbo buzzwords.The contrition of a psychopath, thus un-credible.Paul Bernardo convinced nobody.Twenty-five years behind bars. And counting.A bid for conditional release by the notorious schoolgirl sex killer, the Scarborough Rapist, ended here on Wednesday afternoon with a thumbs-down from the National Parole Board of Canada.Back where you belong, to continue serving a life sentence. Can’t reapply for parole until 2020. He’ll be 56 then.It took less than half an hour of deliberation before the two commissioners returned with their verdict.“Mr. Bernardo, the board denies you full and day parole,” intoned Suzanne Poirier, who’d led the questioning over a period of two hours.It was never in doubt, really. But strange happenings for convicted murderers in recent weeks held out just that filament of possibility.The maximum-security inmate — Bernardo spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement — saw his slim hopes for liberty, however restrictive, blunted against the anvil of harrowing victim impact statements: Donna French, mother of slain 15-year-old Kristen, dumped naked in a ditch; Debbie Mahaffy, mother of slain 14-year-old Leslie, dismembered, her body parts encased in cement and thrown into a lake; “Jennifer,” jumped from behind, dragged into the bushes and raped, one from among more than a dozen young women, some no more than girls, who were sexually assaulted by Bernardo before he became a killer. She spoke for herself.“After the assault, I really became a shell of a person. He should never be considered for any freedom for the rest of his life. I do not want to spend one more second worrying about him raping someone else.’’Lives and families shattered by Bernardo and his then-wife Karla Homolka.But Bernardo wants his life back. Except he can’t get there from here, designated as a dangerous offender — inde ...
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