In March of that year, Roy Hazelwood and BSU colleague Steve Mardigian were invited to Louisville to review the evidence, conduct a tutorial on s.e.xual sadism for the federal prosecutors, and offer both investigative and trial strategies.
They suggested some forty leads that authorities might pursue, especially emphasizing the importance of locating and interviewing Ignatow"s previous wife and any girlfriends. Hazelwood believed they would have been forced to submit to the same degradations Sh.o.r.e reported.
Another recommendation was to keep searching for those pictures, because Ignatow surely had them hidden somewhere. Never mind that the house he occupied at the time of the murder had been thoroughly searched, the second time by a team of eleven highly trained search specialists. Hazelwood was adamant.
"s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.ts and pedophiles," he told the lawmen, "have their own little ways of hiding things."
Among the more creative at it was Mike DeBardeleben, the Mall Pa.s.ser, who artfully secreted handguns in the walls of his house by hanging them from twine secured to boards in his attic.
In mid-October 1992, just five days before Ignatow"s perjury trial was to commence, Hazelwood"s admonition was borne out.
Ignatow by this time had sold his house, and the new owners of Ignatow"s prior residence were installing new hallway carpet. As workers took up the old carpet, they discovered beneath it a four-by-ten-inch covered heat duct. Inside, they found a Ziploc bag, taped to the side of the duct with gray duct tape. Within the Ziploc were a ring and diamond bracelet Mel Ignatow had given Brenda Shaefer, a lucky five-dollar gold piece from her father, plus three canisters of undeveloped 35mm film.
An FBI forensic photographer opined that exposed but undeveloped film stored four years in a furnace duct would be destroyed by the heat. Luckily for Ignatow"s prosecutors, he was wrong.
"The photos came out perfectly," says Hazelwood. "Plus the duct tape matched that found binding Brenda in her grave. That is why I t.i.tle this case "There Is a G.o.d." "
Confronted with the unequivocal evidence against him, Mel Ignatow pleaded guilty and received a ninety-seven-month federal sentence for perjury. He was released on Halloween, 1997, only to be reindicted, again for perjury, and for being a persistent felon by a state grand jury in Louisville.
Paul Bernardo"s "own little way of hiding things" was to secrete the six highly incriminating videoca.s.settes of his a.s.saults inside an upstairs bathroom light fixture at the Port Dalhousie residence.
The videos also implicated Karla, who by that time had plea-bargained with the Canadian authorities and already had begun to serve her twelve years, waiting to testify against Bernardo.
With that testimony no longer so vital-the videos were explicit and d.a.m.ning-Karla"s plea bargain and relatively mild sentence came under withering public criticism. Even Crown attorney Ray Houlahan, who"d questioned h.o.m.olka as his own witness during the Bernardo prosecution, publicly denounced her in his August 1995 closing arguments. Had the videos been found before h.o.m.olka"s confession, Houlahan told a Toronto jury, Karla would have been charged with murder, as well.
"She implicated herself in first-degree murder as surely as her accomplice," said Houlahan, who described h.o.m.olka as "definitely, definitely not a victim."
On one level, the deal was entirely defensible. "The bottom line was that when she came forward they didn"t have any evidence against Bernardo," says prosecution psychiatrist Steve Hucker.
"You might look back at it and say, "Oh s.h.i.t! Why did we do that?" But they really didn"t have anything else to go on at that time."
Retired judge Patrick T. Galligan would conclude as much in his official and exhaustive Report to the Attorney General of Ontario on Certain Matters Relating to Karla h.o.m.olka, released in March 1996.
Attached as an appendix to the report is "Compliant Victims of the s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t," published in April 1993.
"I was very sceptical," wrote Galligan in the report, "about her statements that she was subjected to violence and threats to the point where she was in such fear of him that she would do his bidding, no matter how monstrous, yet she still loved him and would not rid herself of him."
Reading the Hazelwood-Warren-Dietz paper, however, "caused me to have an open mind on this issue, because it doc.u.ments similar phenomena occurring to other women than Karla h.o.m.olka."
Galligan amplified the point in a telephone interview. "I still have made no conclusions about Karla h.o.m.olka," he said, "but that paper awakened me to a phenomenon of which I was totally unaware."
Crown psychiatrist Steve Hucker also tried to make sense of h.o.m.olka and what she"d done. Was Karla, as Bernardo"s attorney charged in court, every bit as culpable as her husband? Or was there some other dynamic at work, some way of explaining Karla"s deadliness as a consequence of Paul"s?
After consulting informally by telephone with Hazelwood, and spending twelve hours with h.o.m.olka, Hucker made up his mind.
"Basically, I saw her in the same light that I believed Roy would," he says. "There were some anomalies, but I don"t dispute the general dynamic. That was there.
"All we were willing to say was that she was more likely to be the accomplice than the initiator. Of course, Bernardo"s attorney was trying to show the exact opposite. That she was just as nasty a specimen, and just as capable of killing as he."
Hucker"s still not entirely certain he understands Karla h.o.m.olka.
"I think she probably fit Hazelwood"s idea," he says. "But no one has ever said she was a complete victim in this case. I think everyone has lingering doubts about Karla. Was this just a clever young woman, more clever than all of us? That"s part of the enduring enigma."
There are two widely published images of Karla h.o.m.olka. One captures her as a luminous bride on her wedding day in June 1991. Sitting next to her smiling husband, Karla seems beatifically content in the photo.
The second picture was taken at St. Catharines General Hospital soon after she"d finally fled Bernardo in early January 1993.
According to records, Karla arrived in the emergency room with most of her body covered with bruises. Her battered legs were too painful for her to move them. There were huge contusions on her head, which the attending physician noted was soft to the touch. Doctors also found a puncture wound on her right thigh, which h.o.m.olka said Bernardo had inflicted with a screwdriver.
In the color picture taken that day, h.o.m.olka is clad in a hospital gown. She appears exhausted and disheveled. Circling her downcast eyes are huge black circles, known as "racc.o.o.n eyes," which are diagnostic of severe blows to the back of the head.
What occurs is a so-called contra coup. The victim"s brain is slammed forward by the trauma-in this case a series of smashes from Bernardo"s flashlight. As the organ collides violently with the front of the skull it produces racc.o.o.nlike circles of dark hemorrhages beneath the tissue surrounding the eyes.
Both images were fresh in Roy Hazelwood"s mind as he and Ron Mackay pulled up in front of Kingston"s aging stone-and-brick Prison for Women that August Tuesday in 1996. The rain was coming down more steadily now, and a knot of prison employees stood huddled near the front gate, taking a last few drags on their cigarettes before heading inside for work.
After showering that morning, Roy had carefully dressed in a conservative suit, white shirt, quiet tie, and expertly polished shoes, his standard uniform for prison interviews.
While lockups hardly are formal environments, Hazelwood always takes care with his wardrobe on interview trips. "The reason for the suit and tie is simple," he says. "People have an expectation of what an FBI agent should look like. Also-and this is very important-it differentiates you. They are the prisoner, and you are not."
That morning, Hazelwood and Ron Mackay would find h.o.m.olka had blurred that distinction. Inmates at the Prison for Women are responsible for their own wardrobes, and wear what they please. For her interview with the investigators, Karla a.s.serted her individuality in an eye-pleasing sundress.
Neither Hazelwood nor Mackay had thought to bring an umbrella. So Roy hoisted his briefcase over his head and ran from the car to the gate, with Mackay chugging along beside him.
Inside the facility, Mackay was relieved of his side arm. He and Hazelwood then were escorted down narrow, high-walled corridors to a small, gray-painted interview room, where Karla soon materialized.
Although Steve Hucker and others had commented to Roy on Karla"s exquisite softness, when she entered the interview room in her sundress, he remembers being forcefully struck by how feminine she really was, a trait he"d encountered with other subjects in his compliant victim study.
"I mean, fifties feminine," he says. "They project an aura of helplessness, and it"s a weapon in their a.r.s.enal. A very effective weapon. You can be thrown off stride by it. You can forget what the person did, what they partic.i.p.ated in."
Roy explained to h.o.m.olka his project and the seven-section, seventy-four-page, 448-question protocol that he"d brought with him. It was the same thick volume Debra Davis remembered from her long conversation with Hazelwood. Both he and Inspector Mackay would have questions, Roy said.
"I told her that we"d be asking some very, very personal questions. I conduct these interviews very clinically. There"s no emotion. No sympathy given. I maintain the same tone of voice no matter what they say to me."
Then the dialogue began.
PROTOCOL QUESTION A-7: Was she s.e.xually abused as a child?
No.
A-28: What was her s.e.xual experience prior to meeting Bernardo?
One encounter.
A-35:Had she been arrested prior to meeting him?
No.
C-17: Did Bernardo want her to dress in a particular way?
Yes, as a schoolgirl. Sometimes in her sister Tammy"s clothes.
h.o.m.olka sat up straight in a hard-backed chair throughout the interview, Hazelwood recalls. "She was very, very proper, and very forthright."
D-3: Prior to s.e.x, would he routinely ingest drugs or alcohol?
Yes.
D-5: Did Bernardo m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e?
Yes. Sometimes in the night he would tell Karla to go out into their yard and do a striptease for him. He stroked himself as he watched her.
D-11: Did he have specific terms he used to describe body parts or s.e.xual acts?
Yes, Bernardo called his p.e.n.i.s "Snuffles."
D-16: Did he whip her?
Yes.
D-17: Did he engage in s.e.xual bondage?
Yes.
D-18: Did he use foreign objects during s.e.x?
Yes. A bottle.
D-28: Did he window-peep as an adult?
Yes.
Because Karla"s answers were so complete, the interview ran overtime, lasting until 7:30 that night, and continuing the next day. Although Roy told Karla they could stop for a rest whenever she wished, their only break was for lunch.
D-43: Did he ever ask her to have s.e.x with an animal?
Yes, his dog. But she refused, telling Bernardo she"d rather be killed.
D-54: Did he ever ask/force her to ingest urine or feces?
Yes. Feces.
Although h.o.m.olka, like Debra and Mich.e.l.le and the other interview subjects, was free to refuse any question she wished, she answered every one. In fact, all of the twenty women answered every question Hazelwood put to them.
E-13: What was his att.i.tude toward his mother?
He hated her.
E-73: Did he ever imprison Karla?
Yes, she was made to spend a winter night in the same unheated root cellar where Bernardo had secreted the dead Leslie Mahaffy before dismembering the girl.
F-59: Did he have an illegal occupation?
Yes. Cigarette smuggling.
F-73: Was he frequently depressed?
Yes.
By the time the interview ground to an exhausted end the next day at noon, Hazelwood and Inspector Mackay were emotionally spent, which was usual for these encounters.
Karla presented Roy with her personal file of every psychological evaluation she"d ever been put through, plus copies of the famous racc.o.o.n-eyes photos. It was all very businesslike.
"She said she was very grateful for the opportunity to partic.i.p.ate in the research," Hazelwood recalls, "because it helped her so much to know that other women had been through this.
"Then we thanked her, and talked a little bit about her situation. I said that right now the prison might not be so bad a place to be.
"She agreed."
22.
You Be the a.n.a.lyst At noon on Friday, September 5, 1986, Roy and a group of fellow agents were at lunch in the Academy cafeteria when Alan "Smoky" Burgess, chief of investigative support at the BSU, walked up to their table.
"What are you guys doing?" the boss asked.
"Being experienced FBI agents, and knowing it was a Friday, we asked him why he wanted to know," Hazelwood recalls.
The boss did not mince words. Burgess told the group that a young typist employed in the Bureau"s San Antonio office had been raped and murdered in her apartment the previous night by an unknown intruder. FBI director William Webster wanted profilers flown to San Antonio to join in the search for Donna Lynn Vetter"s killer.
The agents balked, arguing to Burgess that proper profiling required an autopsy, crime-scene photos, and other forensic evidence for them to review. This kill was too fresh for the BSU.
"You didn"t understand me," Burgess explained calmly. "I said the director said you will fly down there."
Within hours, Roy and fellow agent Jim Wright were aboard a helicopter bound from Quantico for Andrews Air Force Base near Washington. There they transferred to Judge Webster"s Learjet and flew directly to San Antonio. They arrived at Donna Lynn Vetter"s apartment by 5:00 p.m. Texas time.
Their instructions were to complete the UNSUB"s profile overnight for presentation at 9:00 a.m. Sat.u.r.day. One hundred or so investigators a.s.signed to hunt for the killer would be gathered to benefit from their insights.
Roy knew this meeting could turn out to be the law enforcement equivalent of a Monday night audience at the end of the pier. A profiler can say little of value about an UNSUB unless he leaves behavioral evidence to be read and interpreted, and so far he and Wright had no idea what they"d find inside Donna Vetter"s apartment.
The worst case would be a blank slate, something like a convenience-store robbery-murder, where the criminal leaves behind nothing but an empty cash drawer, a dead clerk, and perhaps a fuzzy black-and-white image on the store"s security video.
"There"s no interaction there," Roy explains. "No s.e.xual a.s.sault. It is simply a cold, calculated, intentional murder."