Invisible Darkness: The Strange Case Of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

by Stephen Williams

1998

Status

Checked out

Publication

Bantam Books 1998-01-01 (1998), Edition: Reprint, 532 pages

Description

Perfect for fans of Making a Murderer and The People v. O. J. Simpson, Invisible Darkness is the story of one of the more bizarre cases in recent memory--killings so sensational that they prompted the Canadian government, in the interests of justice, to silence its national press and to lock foreign journalists out of the courts. To all appearances, Paul and Karla Bernardo had a fairytale marriage: beautiful working-class girl weds bright upper-middle-class guy and they buy a fashionable dream house in the suburbs. But, bored with his straight, prestigious accounting job, Paul soon went freelance as an international smuggler. He also revealed his boredom with conventional sex--enough so that, one Christmas Eve, he persuaded his wife to drug her own sister and engage in a menage a trois, during which the sister died (a bungling coroner ruled her death accidental). The couple then upped the ante, kidnapping and imprisoning several high school girls for sexual marathons, which they videotaped before savagely murdering their captives. When the girls' bodies were found, the police were stymied (although Paul had been accused of rape and given a DNA test that vanished for two years and only recently was linked to some fifty sexual-assault cases) until Karla tried to have her husband arrested for wife beating. During questioning, she confessed to the crimes and is now serving two concurrent twelve-year sentences for manslaughter in exchange for testifying against her husband, who was jailed for life.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Kurtisdarby
Very, very, very thorough book about this criminal couple. Great details about everyone's private lives: the killers themselves and the victims. Even the random girls Bernardo attacks are given short narratives that draw you in. Very good read but miserable at the same time.
LibraryThing member allthesedarnbooks
I hate not finishing a book that I've started but I had to give up on this one. The writing wasn't bad but I just could NOT deal with the contents. I like true crime; it's one of my favorite genres. I like to scare myself and I also like to try and understand what makes people act so inhumanly. I
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knew, going in, about the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homulka murders/rapes; I knew I was going to be reading about heinous crimes. I don't have a problem with some graphic details, but this book took it to a whole new sickening level. Williams writes about the rape/murders of children with the amount of play-by-play sexual detail one would find in an erotic novel or pornographic magazine. I couldn't continue. Definitely not my cup of tea.
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Original publication date

1996

Physical description

532 p.; 6.8 inches

ISBN

055356854X / 9780553568547

Barcode

1601183
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