Canadian female sex killer freed after 12 years

CANADA’S most notorious female killer, who raped and killed three teenage girls, including her sister, is going to live in Quebec now following her release from prison.

Karla Homolka, 35, was secretly spirited from prison on Monday after serving 12 years for the rapes, torture and murders.

Homolka received the relatively light sentence in return for her testimony against her ex-husband Paul Bernardo. Homolka told the court and psychiatrists she was a battered wife who took part in the rapes and murders to protect herself and her family.

Months after prosecutors made the deal, however, Bernardo's attorneys handed over homemade videotapes by the couple that indicated Homolka was a willing participant.

"I don't want to be hunted down," Homolka told RDI, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's French language news network, after her release.

"I don't want people to think I am dangerous and I'm going to do something to their children."

Speaking in slightly accented French, Homolka said in the interview she's "unable to forgive myself."

Homolka said she decided to give the interview after consulting with her lawyer. She plans on living in Quebec and acknowledged those in the French speaking province know less about the horrific details of her case. "It's certain that the mood in Quebec is not like the mood in Ontario. I have a support network here," Homolka said.

Her lawyers and father have said for months that she intended to resettle in Montreal, having learned French during her 12 years in a Quebec prison.

Michele Pilon-Santilli, a spokeswoman for the correctional service, confirmed the release of Homolka who has changed her name to Karla Teale. Homolka became the symbol of evil in Canada in 1993 when she was convicted of manslaughter for her role in the kidnappings, rapes, sexual torture and murders of Ontario teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.

She was also convicted in the 1990 death of her 15-year-old sister, Tammy, who died choking on her own vomit on Christmas Eve after Homolka held a drug-soaked cloth over her mouth while both she and her husband raped her.

"What I did was terrible and I was in a situation where I was unable to see clearly, where I was unable to ask for help, where I was completely overwhelmed in my life and I regret it enormously because now I know I had the power to stop all that," she said.

She said she didn't leave Bernardo because she was afraid of being abandoned.

Tim Danson, the lawyer representing the French and Mahaffy families, said his clients were stunned that Homolka was free.

In return for her sentence, Homolka testified against Bernardo, a Toronto bookkeeper serving a life term for murder. One of the videos released months later indicated Homolka had offered up Tammy as a Christmas gift to Bernardo in 1990; it showed Homolka performing oral sex on her unconscious sister after slipping sleeping pills in her alcohol.

In the following two years, the couple kidnapped and videotaped the rapes and beatings of 15-year-old Kristen, then 14-year-old Leslie. By the time the videotapes were revealed, Homolka's plea bargain had been sealed.