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Prison Guards Stage Protest Outside Prison As Homolka Gets Ready for Release

Posted on: Monday, 4 July 2005, 09:00 CDT

STE-ANNE-DES-PLAINES, Que. (CP) - About 30 prison guards held an early-morning protest outside Karla Homolka's penitentiary on Monday, disrupting traffic in and out of the sprawling building.

The guards, who have been without a contract since 2002, couldn't have picked a better day for some publicity, with the convicted killer to be released during Monday business hours. After several days of dwindling media interest, reporters and television crews arrived in force hoping to witness Homolka's release after her 12 years in prison for manslaughter in the sex slayings of two Ontario schoolgirls.

About 60 reporters congregated outside the Ste-Anne-des-Plaines penitentiary, while six satellite trucks and numerous cars made the area look like a huge parking lot.

Few vehicles left the penitentiary during the night, in marked contrast to nights past.

An ambulance's frantic exit from the prison before midnight Monday had reporters staking out the scene believing Homolka may have been released.

But a Correctional Service Canada spokeswoman confirmed Homolka wasn't the patient being rushed out of the prison north of Montreal.

Homolka was jailed in 1993 for her role in the deaths of Ontario schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, as well as the drug-rape death in 1990 of her 15-year-old sister Tammy.

The Canadian public's palpable hatred for Homolka reached a boiling point in 1993, when she agreed to plead guilty to two counts of manslaughter and serve just 12 years in exchange for her testimony against ex-husband Paul Bernardo, who was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder.

In sentencing Homolka, the court also took into consideration her role in the death of Tammy Homolka, who died on Christmas Eve after Homolka held a drug-soaked cloth over her face so Bernardo could rape her.

Homolka portrayed herself to authorities as a victim and a timorous, abused wife forced by the monster she'd married to aid and abet his abhorrent sex-slave schemes, including the kidnapping, rape and torture of French and Mahaffy.

But ghastly videotapes documenting the couple's crimes, which were shown to jurors at Bernardo's 1995 trial, depicted Homolka more as an accomplice than a victim, prompting angry critics to accuse Crown authorities of making a "deal with the devil."

Source: Canadian Press

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