The Ken and Barbie Killers
Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo met in a Toronto hotel restaurant in 1987, looking so wholesome that friends nicknamed them Ken and Barbie. This documentary tracks how that image collapsed after their arrest for the rape and murder of teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, and for the death of Karla's own sister Tammy. Interviews and case footage lay out the videotapes the couple made of their assaults, tapes that became the case's most damning and most argued-over evidence once lawyers, police, and prosecutors discovered them years apart. The film spends real time on the plea bargain that let Homolka serve twelve years in exchange for testimony against Bernardo, a deal made before investigators knew the full extent of what the tapes showed, and on the public anger that followed once they did. Rather than dwelling on shock value, it traces the mechanics of a Canadian justice system caught off guard by two killers who did not fit any existing profile.