On Sept. 1, 1995, 25 years seemed far, far away.That was the day Paul Bernardo was convicted on two charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, forcible confinement, aggravated sexual assault and committing an indignity to a dead body. The sexual sadist had strangled and defiled teenagers Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. From the witness stand, Bernardo admitted to all of the crimes except the murders, insisting the abducted teens died when they were left alone with ex-wife Karla Homolka.Of all the horrors exposed in that lengthy trial — jurors watched videos the abominable couple had made of the repeated sexual assaults — what was seared into the memory of this reporter were the howls of anguish from Leslie’s mom, Debbie Mahaffy. While the French family left the courtroom whenever the videos were played, Mrs. Mahaffy chose to remain. To bear witness, to stand by her daughter and, I suspected, to punish herself. Leslie had encountered Bernardo in a neighbour’s backyard the night she disappeared, locked out of her house by parents who were exercising a bit of tough love, trying to teach their wayward daughter a lesson about respecting curfews.From a pew in the back of the courtroom, Mrs. Mahaffy laid her head in a friend’s lap, moaning and wailing at the sound of her daughter’s torture, the sound of her daughter’s voice, pleading for her life, begging to see her kid brother just one more time.I don’t know how Mrs. Mahaffy could stand it.Bernardo was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for a quarter-century, retroactive to the day of his arrest, Feb. 17, 1993. Subsequently he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of Karla’s younger sister, Tammy Homolka — the 15-year-old had choked on her own vomit while drugged and unconscious, sexually assaulted by the couple — and confessed to raping 14 young women. He was designated, on consent, a dangerous offender, which carries an ...
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