Public anger 'right,' Homolka told lover
Outcry over plea bargain is justified, ex-girlfriend reports her as saying in jail
Friday, June 24, 2005 Updated at 5:22 AM EDT
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Montreal — Karla Homolka knows she got away with a good deal when she struck a bargain with Ontario prosecutors 12 years ago that will see her set free from jail as early as next week, Ms. Homolka's former lover says.
Lynda Veronneau, who maintained a three-year lesbian relationship with Ms. Homolka when the two were held at the Joliette Institution in Quebec, portrayed her ex-girlfriend as a cunning woman who knows the so-called "deal with the devil" benefited her.
"She knows. She was smart," Ms. Veronneau told CTV News.
Ms. Veronneau said the public is right to be angry about the pact, in which Ms. Homolka, depicted as a battered woman, obtained a light sentence in exchange for testifying against ex-husband Paul Bernardo. It later emerged she was less a victim than a willing participant in the brutal sex slayings of two Ontario schoolgirls.
"She knows that the public hates her because she got 12 years for what she did. And she said, 'They are right.' "
Ms. Veronneau described her former partner as "very, very intelligent."
"Everything she wants, she gets."
Ms. Veronneau and Ms. Homolka shared living quarters at Joliette and had an intimate liaison that began soon after Ms. Homolka was transferred to Joliette in 1997 from the Kingston Prison for Women. Ms. Veronneau says the pair discussed living together after they left jail, but Ms. Homolka told a psychiatrist that she was ashamed about the romance and hid it from her parents.
Psychiatrist Louis Morissette, who evaluated Ms. Homolka in May this year, said such homosexual relationships are not uncommon in prison.
Ms. Veronneau says she had been in love with Ms. Homolka, and was stunned when she learned her former lover began a relationship with inmate Jean-Paul Gerbet, a convicted killer. The pair met at the Ste-Anne-des-Plaines penitentiary while Ms. Homolka was incarcerated there in 2002.
"She could have taken up with a plumber, a taxi driver, anything," Ms. Veronneau said in the interview with CTV's Montreal affiliate, CFCF. "But another killer? I don't know."
Ms. Veronneau said she didn't believe Ms. Homolka was truly remorseful for her role in the sex slayings of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, and continued to paint herself as a victim.
"When she talked to me about the crimes, I always felt the whole time that she was the victim," Ms. Veronneau said.
"Karla is very good in saying she's the victim."
Ms. Homolka's mother and sister visited her regularly in jail, and the family appears to have accepted that the death of 15-year-old Tammy Homolka was accidental.
The teen died after being drugged and raped by Ms. Homolka and Mr. Bernardo.
Ms. Homolka was not charged in the death as part of her deal with Ontario Crown prosecutors.
"I never understood that, but for them, it was an accident," Ms. Veronneau said.
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