Killer seeks media ban

VIGILANTE death threats have so terrorised Canada’s most notorious female inmate that her lawyers have made a last-ditch attempt to ban the media from reporting on her whereabouts after her release from prison yesterday.

One of her attorneys, Christian Lachance, said Karla Homolka, was in a “state of terror” about her release from a maximum-security prison outside Montreal. The 35-year-old former veterinarian assistant from a bedroom community in southern Ontario has completed her 12-year sentence for the rapes and murders of three girls, including that of her little sister.

She was due to leave prison by sundown yesterday, according to Correctional Service Canada regulations.

Her father said his daughter, who has become fluent in French while in the Quebec prison, had hoped to settle in Montreal.

Lachance argues that since Homolka’s safety cannot be assured by police, the media must be prevented from reporting on her whereabouts to protect her from numerous death threats, mostly by Internet bloggers.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Paul-Marcel Bellavance last week rejected a similar plea, saying it violated press freedoms. Lachance has asked the court to reconsider before his client’s release.