[5] Bernardo's father often sexually abused his older sister, Debra, in front of other family members, and would eventually be charged with crimes involving voyeurism and pedophilia.

[6] Bernardo attended Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute and, in 1982, the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), where another notorious Canadian murderer, Russell Williams, was coincidentally two academic years behind him.

According to Bernardo's testimony at trial, Karla laced spaghetti sauce with crushed valium she had stolen from her employer at an animal clinic.

[16] Despite being observed vacuuming and washing laundry in the middle of the night,[8] and despite a chemical burn on Tammy's face, the Regional Municipality of Niagara coroner and Karla's family accepted the couple's version of events.

Inside the casket, Bernardo and Karla placed a copy of their wedding invitation, which showed a photo of the couple grinning, along with a note.

[18] In 2001, the magazine Elm Street published an article in which it implied that forensic evidence proved that Tammy's death was not an accident and that her sister had deliberately administered an overdose of halothane.

After Bernardo cut apart the body using his grandfather's circular saw, the couple made a number of trips to dump the cement blocks in Lake Gibson, 18 kilometres (11 mi) south of Port Dalhousie.

[24] After they pulled into the parking lot of nearby Grace Lutheran Church, Homolka got out of the car carrying a map, pretending to need assistance.

Within twenty-four hours the Niagara Regional Police Service (NRP) assembled a team, searched French's after-school route and found several witnesses who had seen the abduction from different locations.

[26] French's nude body was found on April 30, 1992, in a ditch in Burlington, about forty-five minutes from St. Catharines and a short distance from the cemetery where Mahaffy is buried.

[8] On May 12, 1992, Bernardo was briefly interviewed by an NRP sergeant and constable, who decided that he was an unlikely suspect despite his admission that he had previously been questioned in connection to the Scarborough Rapist.

[8] In December 1992, the Centre of Forensic Sciences finally began testing DNA samples provided by Bernardo two years earlier.

[8] Her skeptical co-workers called her parents, and although they rescued her the following day by physically removing her from Bernardo's house, Homolka went back in to frantically search for something.

Homolka's parents took her to St. Catharines General Hospital, where she gave a statement to the NRP that she was a battered spouse and filed charges against Bernardo.

[8] Twenty-six months after Bernardo submitted a DNA sample, Toronto police were informed that it matched that of the Scarborough Rapist and immediately placed him under 24-hour surveillance.

Two days later Homolka met with Niagara Falls lawyer George Walker, who sought legal immunity from Crown prosecutor Houlahan in exchange for her cooperation.

The search of the house (including updated warrants) lasted 71 days, and the only tape found by police had a brief segment of Homolka performing oral sex on "Jane Doe".

[37] During a call from jail, Bernardo told his lawyer, Ken Murray, that the rape videos were hidden in a ceiling light fixture in the upstairs bathroom.

[42] Newspapers in Buffalo, Detroit, Washington, D.C., New York City and the United Kingdom, as well as radio and television stations close to the border, divulged the details.

[40] Gordon Domm, a retired police officer who defied the publication ban by distributing details from foreign media, was convicted of two counts of contempt of court.

On September 1, 1995, Bernardo was convicted of a number of offences, including the two first-degree murders and two aggravated sexual assaults, and sentenced to life in prison without parole for at least twenty-five years.

[46][47] Although Bernardo was kept in the segregation unit at Kingston Penitentiary for his own safety, he was attacked and harassed; he was punched in the face by another inmate when he returned from a shower in 1996.

Authorities suspected Bernardo in other crimes, including a string of rapes in Amherst, New York, and the drowning of Terri Anderson in St. Catharines,[49] but he has never acknowledged his involvement.

[51][52] He became eligible to petition a jury for early parole in 2008 under the faint hope clause (since he committed multiple murders before the 1997 criminal-code amendment) but did not do so.

[67] The day after LeBlanc was installed, The Globe and Mail wrote an article covering his opinion that the legislation was inconsequential,[68] while Pierre Poilievre, the Leader of the Opposition, said that this was an example of the soft-on-crime policies of the Trudeau government.

[71] His victims' families were initially barred from attending the hearing in person because of safety concerns, but that decision was reversed by the parole board.

[4] After Bernardo's 1995 conviction, the Ontario government appointed Archie Campbell to review the roles played by the police services during the investigation.

In his 1996 report, Campbell found that a lack of coordination, cooperation and communications by police and other elements of the judicial system contributed to a serial predator "falling through the cracks".

[35] One of Campbell's key recommendations was for an automated case-management system for Ontario's police services to use in investigations of homicides and sexual assaults.

The reports concluded that Bernardo "showed minimal insight into [his] offending, which is consistent with file information that suggests [he] has been keen over the years to come up with [his] own unsubstantiated reasons for [his] criminal behaviour.