Serial Killer stories

Ken and Barbie killers

!! Possible trigger warnings: mentions of r@pe - Dr1gs - Sadism - Gore

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka looked like normal newlyweds, but the Ken and Babie Killers murdered three people and raped at least 14 in late 1980s and early '90s Ontario.

At first glance, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka certainly didn't seem like a pair of serial killers. They may have looked like a normal young couple from the outside, but the "Ken and Barbie Killers" were anything but.

Before Paul Bernardo was put behind bars for multiple murders, tortures, and rapes, he was a salesman by trade that lured his female victims using pickups and pitches he learned on his day job. He studied how to entice women like he studied how to do well in business.

He read the novel American Psycho "like his bible," and when he met and married Karla Homolka, his sadistic streak only increased as she encouraged his behavior. The Ken and Barbie Killers were born.

In the end, the Ken and Barbie Killers were found to be responsible for at least 13 rapes and three murders in and around Toronto between 1986 and 1992. This is the chilling story of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.

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Paul Bernardo Goes From Having A Happy Childhood To Becoming The Scarborough Rapist

Paul Bernardo was born on August 27, 1964, in Ontario, Canada to Kenneth and Marilyn Bernardo. The Bernardos were a "financially well-off," stable middle-class family. But as with everything else in the story of Paul Bernardo, this deceptively normal exterior masked a dark truth.

In 1975, Kenneth Bernardo was charged with child molestation and there were rumors he had even molested his own daughter. Paul Bernardo did not seem to be unduly affected by this dark turn in his childhood. Observers recall him as being "always happy...a young boy who smiled a lot."

It wasn't until he was 16 when his mother revealed to him that he was actually the result of an extramarital affair that Bernardo's outward behavior began to noticeably change.

He began to refer to his own mother as a "slob" and a "whore." When he went off to study at the University of Toronto, he became adept at picking women up at bars only to later humiliate and beat them.

Paul Bernardo was good-looking and charming, an unfortunate combination that he used to manipulate women and take them off their guard. Before long, he would give in to a far darker impulse.

Starting in May of 1987, the suburb of Scarborough in Ontario was plagued by a series of horrific crimes.

In the early hours of the morning of May 4, 1987, a young woman getting off the bus was grabbed and brutally raped near her parents' home. Over the next week alone, there would be two more similar assaults.

The women were all between the ages of 15 and 21 and the attacks all included beatings, intense verbal abuse, and dire threats to discourage victims from going to the police, led authorities to conclude that they had all been perpetrated by the same man, whom the newspapers quickly dubbed the "Scarborough Rapist."

During his nearly five-year rampage as the Scarborough rapist, Paul Bernardo raped or attempted to rape at least 19 young women — and this is only the official count. The victims were all young women often grabbed around bus stops, although at least one 15-year-old was attacked in her own bedroom.

A couple of Bernardo's victims managed to fight him off and Bernardo was actually questioned by the police twice, but he was never named as an official suspect. It wasn't until May of 1990 that one of Bernardo's victims was able to give police an accurate description of her attacker and by then, the Scarborough Rapist had become even more unhinged.