Lethal Marriage

One of Canada’s finest crime reporters tells the whole story of the infamous Bernardo-Homolka case. NOW UPDATED WITH A NEW CHAPTER The sensational trials of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka for abduction, rape, manslaughter and murder caused widespread controversy that continues to this day. The public was particularly outraged by the so-called “sweetheart deal” — the twelve-year sentence Homolka received as part of an agreement with government lawyers. Journalist Nick Pron gives us a comprehensive account of previously banned information about Bernardo and Homolka; about Homolka’s role in the death of her sister Tammy; of slip-shod police work and lack of communication that allowed Bernardo and Homolka the opportunity to murder schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy; of the host of disturbing facts that were ruled inadmissable at the trial. A new chapter details the most recent, shocking facts of Homolka’s life in prison, including her alleged “special treatment,” such as private access to the prison’s beauty salon and gym, and rumoured liaisons in Kingston’s Prison for Women. Also detailed are her startling plans for the future. As Karla Homolka’s release date nears, many will reflect on her place in history, and on the Canadian legal system.

What the press couldn't reveal—the full story of the monstrous sex slayings that shocked a nation . . . WARNING: This book contains graphic descriptions of violence. Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo might look like the ideal couple, but they were a nation's most despicable killers. Karla began their depraved sex and murder spree by stealing drugs to knock out her little sister. While Paul raped and sodomized the unconscious girl, Karla dutifully caught it all on videotape. Unbelievably, the worst was yet to come. In a brazen daylight kidnapping, Karla lured schoolgirl Kristen French to their car and helped Paul force the struggling, screaming teenager inside. Then, just as she had with fourteen-year-old Leslie Mahaffy, Karla videotaped Paul's repeated beatings and rape of his sex slave, violated the terrified girl herself, then simply watched as Paul choked the life out of his victim. The entire nation was horrified by these crimes in what became the costliest and, by far, most controversial manhunt and most sensational trial in Canada's history. Now the full shocking story—considered too grisly for newspaper and television coverage at the time—can finally be told. . . .

Karla and Paul seemed like the picture-perfect newlyweds, but were really a pair of vicious killers who abducted, sexually tortured and murdered innocent schoolgirls, videotaping their evil acts in suburban Niagara Falls. Billed as the crime of the century in Canada, this case has received a great deal of media coverage on both sides of the border. Includes eight pages of photos.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Princess was the most beautiful girl in the class. She was always drawing houses. Renya was fascinated by her intensity as she busied herself on her houses, never taking her eyes off her drawings. One day, Renya complimented her on her work, and the Princess accepted it. But she never asked Renya what she was doing that weekend. #2 Karla was a very different girl from Renya, who preferred to spend her time playing with cars rather than playing with dolls. But they became friends anyway. #3 Karla and Renya’s friendship continued to grow, though Karla’s parents were always very careful when they dropped her off at the Hills’ house. Karla had a secret she wanted to share with her friend: she loved to swear. #4 The two girls were always scheming to get each other to do what they wanted. One day, they decided to throw a hamster out the window. Renya was against it, but Homolka was excited about her plan. She threw the hamster out the window, and it fell to the ground.

The long-awaited new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides. "There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel." —Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers Madeleine Hanna was the dutiful English major who didn't get the memo. While everyone else in the early 1980s was reading Derrida, she was happily absorbed with Jane Austen and George Eliot: purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. Madeleine was the girl who dressed a little too nicely for the taste of her more bohemian friends, the perfect girlfriend whose college love life, despite her good looks, hadn't lived up to expectations. But now, in the spring of her senior year, Madeleine has enrolled in a semiotics course "to see what all the fuss is about," and, for reasons that have nothing to do with school, life and literature will never be the same. Not after she falls in love with Leonard Morten - charismatic loner, college Darwinist and lost Oregon boy - who is possessed of seemingly inexhaustible energy and introduces her to the ecstasies of immediate experience. And certainly not after Mitchell Grammaticus - devotee of Patti Smith and Thomas Merton - resurfaces in her life, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. The triangle in this amazing and delicious novel about a generation beginning to grow up is age old, and completely fresh and surprising. With devastating wit, irony and an abiding understanding and love for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides resuscitates the original energies of the novel while creating a story so contemporary that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

A Murder Plot. . . Single mother Lee Ann Armanini worked as a bartender in a strip joint in Long Island's South Shore when she got pregnant by Paul Riedel, owner of a health club in Amityville, Long Island. In 1998, Paul did the right thing and married her. The marriage was not a happy one, and Lee Ann left Riedel in 2000. She moved to Florida and took up with a mob-connected hood named Ralph "Rocco" Salierno. Together, they plotted Riedel's murder in order to get his money and ownership of the health club... A Case Of Mistaken Identity. . . But Salierno murdered the wrong man--Alexander Algeri, Riedel's lifelong friend and business partner who bore an uncanny resemblance to Riedel and even drove the same kind of vehicle, a Ford Explorer. A Stunning Trial. . . In a notorious trial that was filled with sensational revelations about drug abuse, illicit sex, and wrong way murder, Lee Ann Riedel and Rocco Salierno were convicted of first-degree murder. Salierno was sentenced to life in prison without parole; Lee Ann Riedel was sentenced to 25-years-to-life. Includes 16 Pages of Shocking Photos. Robert Mladinich is the author of From the Mouth of the Monster: The Joel Rifkin Story. He is a retired New York Police Department second grade detective who has investigated numerous homicides and was named NYPD Cop of the Year in 1985 for his work as a patrol officer in the South Bronx.

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.

Marc and Debra seemed to have it all—a lovely home in the Prairie town of Medicine Hat, fulfilling careers, a supportive marriage, and two beautiful children: eight-year-old Jacob and twelve-year-old JR. After years of struggle to reach this point, they finally felt their future held promise. But on April 23, 2006, their bodies were discovered in their basement, covered in savage stab wounds. Upstairs, Jacob lay dead on his bed, his toys spattered with blood. Investigators worried for JR’s safety, but unknown to them, the pretty honour roll student had been developing a disturbing alter ego online. Runaway Devil professed a fondness for a darker world of death metal music, the goth subculture, and a love for Jeremy Steinke, a twenty-three-year-old high-school dropout who lived in a rundown trailer park. Soon, shocking evidence in JR’s school locker—printed here for the first time—led police to believe the girl was a suspect in her family’s murders. The case horrified parents everywhere. Journalists Robert Remington and Sherri Zickefoose have been covering it from the beginning, and in Runaway Devil, they reveal what really happened: the unlikely young love, the teenage rebellion, a troubling world of adolescent drifters, and a small community torn apart by an unthinkable crime. A modern cautionary tale, Runaway Devil is also a chilling portrait of an approval-seeking man smitten with a manipulative young girl—who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.