Just a heads up before we begin. This episode contains references to sexual violence and abuse. Listen with care. Previously on Very Scary People the Ken and Barbie killers. The picture perfect couple Paul Bernardo and Carla Homoka said I do at their lavish wedding on the shores of Lake Ontario, Canada. That same day, on the neighboring Lake Gibson, the dismembered body of a missing teenage girl named Leslie McAfee was discovered encased in concrete. And in another district of East Toronto called Scarborough, a serial rapist was on the loose, and his victim survived, but never saw his face. The manhunt for the Scarborough Rapists lasted three years, but they kept coming up short despite vigilant police efforts, until he slipped up and a victim got a good look at him. This was a major break in the case. From her description, the police were able to draw up a composite sketch. It's May 28, 1990, and the Toronto Metro PD's phone lines are ringing off the hook.

It was six years after the first woman was raped in the Scarborough area that the police finally had their big break.

The composite sketch of the Scarborough Rapist lands on the front page of the Toronto Sun that morning with the headline, have you seen this man? He's described as having a medium muscular build with no facial hair. In the sketch, his eyes are light blue and his hair is blonde and parted to the left side. He was last seen wearing a baby blue jacket, tan pleated shorts, and running shoes. No socks. Calls are coming in left and right from people claiming to know the identity of the man who turned their town upside down. But there is one name that keeps coming up.

Police received hundreds of tips. Several people had called to say it was Paul Bernardo.

The multiple tips pointing toward Paul Bernardo just couldn't be ignored. So on November 20, 1990, metropolitan Toronto Police bring him in for questioning. Paul is cooperative, and he doesn't ask for legal representation.

He was very open. He was very at ease. He wasn't nervous. He did not lawyer up.

He even acknowledges the similarities in the sketch.

He said, yeah, it sure looks like me, but it's not me, but it.

Sure as heck looks like me. He tells the police officers that the sketch and him both have a baby face. After they show him the sketch, police start looking for an alibi. Paul tells police he couldn't exactly remember what he was doing at the time of the attack, but assumed he was likely hanging out with his girlfriend Carla.

And then they asked him for the DNA stuff, and he gave it to him willingly.

Samples of his hair are taken, but also his blood. Paul is one of the few men brought in for questioning, asked to provide a blood sample. The interview lasts approximately 30 minutes, and the lead into Paul was never followed.

He just didn't seem like the kind of suspect that would do this.

The thing is, by the time Paul is brought in, the investigation into the Scarborough Rapist is winding down. That's because the attack stopped once the rapist's final victim got a good look at his face. Law enforcement shifts their focus on the list of suspects.

They had like a thousand. His name went right to the bottom. And the DNA sample that they took of him, unfortunately, it wasn't evaluated because he was so low down on the priority list.

Little did they know at the time their instinct to take Paul's blood wouldn't be in vain.

If you just saw Paul Bernardo in the late 80s or met Paul Bernardo, you would just think he was a fairly handsome young man, blonde hair, blue eyes, looked pretty average. Not someone who would be stalking women, attacking women, brutally assaulting them. You would never have thought that if you just saw him.

This wouldn't be Paul's last brush with the law from ID. This is very scary, people. The Ken and Barbie killers. I'm your host, Donnie Wahlberg. You might remember me from our first season, the Amityville Murders. And now in this season, we're traveling to Canada, a place known for its cold beer and warm welcomes to trace the twisted path of Paul Bernardo and Carla Hamolka, a couple from Toronto that appeared loving and wholesome. The truth is, they were anything but. We'll explore how the boy and the girl next door became the killers known as Ken and Barbie. This is episode two. Call 911. Carla Hamolka was the kind of girl who grew up dreaming of her wedding day. After all, she grew up in the 80s, raised by hopelessly romantic John Hughes movies and power ballads like Take My Breath Away. She was a teenager, totally tuned into a culture that was all about the pursuit of love. Kathy Kenzora says it's even how Carla and her friends would spend their time together.

They had what they called the Diamond Club, which was talking about the diamond rings they hoped to get for their engagements. And she was pretty focused on getting a boyfriend and getting married.

Carla imagined her left hand shining in the sun with a huge two carat ring on her finger, a ring fit for royalty. Mary Garafalo recalls. She had a couple other hopes for her dream guy, too.

She wrote in her yearbook that she.

Was looking for a rich man. This was her only goal in life, that she was going to marry a rich guy.

She had a handful of boyfriends and kissed some frogs before finally finding her prince. Amy Schlossberg remembers just how excited Carla was about finding Paul.

When Carla met Paul Bernardo, she thought her fairy tale was finally coming true.

He was everything she had dreamt up in her Diamond Club days, and she was over the moon.

She has always wanted know live a life where she was with a husband who made her feel happy, good looking, had money. She really thought this was the start of the life she always wanted.

Kathy Kenzor recalls the night they met in the fall of 1987.

Paul Bernardo and Carla Hamolka met in a hotel lobby in Scarborough. I believe she was 17, he was 23.

Carla was at the Howard Johnson Hotel.

On business, and she was in Scarborough for a pet food convention, of all things, because she worked at a pet store as a teenager, and he and some friends had showed up at the lobby of the hotel late at night to hit the 24 Hours restaurant.

That's when the two first locked eyes.

And she came down with one of her friends. I think they were even in their pajamas, just hanging out, being teenagers in the lobby. And the two girls and two guys connected, talked, hit it off, ended up back in Carla's room.

John Rosen says, from there, they were all over each other.

It's lust at first sight. They come and sit with the girls and they talk, and next thing you know is they've all adjourned to the girls'room, and they set up pillows on the floor to separate the two areas so that there would be some privacy, and they have sex.

Apparently, this was pretty typical behavior of Paul, but Amy says that night something was different.

It was known that Paul Bernardo, he had one night stands quite often, so it was to everyone's surprise where he asked Carla for her information, and he did follow up with her.

It was a special gesture for Carla, too. From that night on, she just knew Paul was the one.

Carla has said that she fell head over heels in love. It was love at first sight when she met Paul Bernardo, and it wasn't.

Long after meeting in Scarborough that the two made things official. John Rosen says, Paul was doing a lot of commuting in those early days.

From that point on, he's dating her and he's driving in to St. Catherine's to see her.

They were in that exciting time when you first start dating, the honeymoon phase, those early days when that special person is the first thing you think about when you wake up, you want to spend every second together. And when you're not, you're up all night talking on the phone. Young, beautiful, and in full on puppy love. They were having the time of their lives and documenting all of it on their home video camera. Focus in on Carla. Isn't she beautiful?

Come here.

In that home video clip, Carla is seated at her dining room table in a white baggy crew neck T shirt, flipping through a magazine. Her smile is wide, but she shyly turned her head away from the camera. She was blushing. Here's Amy again.

They were both very attractive by society standards. Fun loving did what young couples do. They seemed very much in love.

And after nearly two years. On Christmas Eve of 1989, paul proposed with the diamond ring. Like Carla had always wanted.

The two got engaged at Niagara Falls.

At one of North America's natural wonders. With cool mist in the air and all the colors of autumn surrounding them, the two committed to forever together as the Cascading Falls poured into the Atlantic.

They were just starting their lives together, and things were looking like they were going well for the couple.

In their first three years together, paul got real close with Carla's family, her parents, Carla and Dorothy, and with Carla's two younger sisters, Tammy and Lori. All three of them were spitting images of one another golden blonde hair, bronze complexions, and wide smiles. Kathy says they were close knit and enjoyed a lot of quality time.

They did a lot of things together. They spent a lot of holidays together, and just quality family time hanging out.

John mentioned their home was a classic middle class, suburban, single story house on a quiet street. There was a single tree on their grassy front lawn and a swimming pool in the backyard.

On the main fort, there's three bedrooms. Her sister has one bedroom. Her middle sister has another one. Her parents have a third bedroom.

And if you went downstairs to the lower level, into the basement, you'd find Carla's room. This is where she and Paul spent countless nights watching movies together. The hamolka's approval of Paul meant everything to Carla, and by 1990, Paul was a welcome fixture in their home.

He's staying there all the time.

John told us that's when Paul's days of the two hour drive to St.

Catherine's were over, he eventually decides to leave accounting and move in with her family in St. Catherine's.

He joined Carla in the basement, where the two could have their own private fortress. Down there, the two could escape the world together and do whatever they wanted, listen to their music loudly, watch movies for hours, talk endlessly about their wedding plans, and dream up the life they couldn't wait to start with one another. So Paul became part of the family. And a year after their Christmas time engagement, everyone was looking forward to celebrating the holidays together. The homocas decided to throw a festive Christmas party, complete with seasonal favorites like eggnog and classic holiday tunes. There were presents scattered across the floor under a colorfully decorated tree. Winters get cold in the north, but inside their home, with the new addition to their family, things felt especially warm that year. This was their first holiday together. It was a big deal, so, you know, Paul took his camera out to film the special night captured just how lively and magical the night was until the festivities took a startling turn. The family were indulging in holiday treats and drinks, including Carla's younger sister, Tammy. John Rosen, longtime Canadian defense attorney, says how the night unfolded tammy has a.

Lot to drink, and it's not straight booze. It's mixed drinks and things.

There's a home video of Paul recording Tammy. Her hair was up in a ponytail. She's wearing a white shirt and jeans, and she's seated on the family couch. It's a leather chesterfield. She's holding a wine glass, sipping a yellow tinted drink on ice. Hi, Tammy. How you doing?

What are you thinking there?

Tammy doesn't look like she's doing okay. She looks sleepy, like she wasn't all there. Kathy saw another clip of the home video.

So there's video footage of that night because Paul Bernardo was videotaping everything. And she's like, oh, I'm seeing double, like that kind of thing. So you can tell she really is feeling pretty woozy.

Nobody thought too much of it. It all seemed in good fun and in the holiday spirit.

And she gets a little bit drunk, and the parents decide to go to bed. The sister decides she's going to retire for the night, go call her boyfriend, and the other three adjourn to the basement to watch movies.

Lori calls it a night. But while Carla, Paul, and Tammy are watching a movie, something unexpected happens.

Tammy passes out.

And she doesn't wake up.

So they called 911. The police and the ambulance came.

They did what they could to revive her.

When the paramedics arrived, they had to intubate her, took her to hospital.

But they were too late.

And unfortunately, Tammy died the next day in hospital.

Paul and Carla were in shock. They couldn't believe how fast everything had happened. Kathy says they were noticeably shaken up.

When the paramedics came to the house and the police came to the house, paul Bernardo was hysterical. He was apparently banging his head against the wall. And why is this happening? Carla was also crying.

She was visibly inconsolable.

Her parents were asking what was going know. She couldn't really put a sentence together because she was crying.

The homokas were trying to make sense of it all. How could Tammy be alive, having fun in one moment and dead the next? Officers at the scene tried to put the pieces together. Here's John again with the details from the night.

The officers who attended didn't see anything out of the ordinary except a young teenager who had had too much alcohol and fallen asleep.

They assessed the circumstances of Tammy's death.

Quickly, and it was treated as an accident.

But some officers thought there was something suspicious about Carla and Paul's initial reaction to Tammy's death. Kathy recalls that Paul's reaction was particularly strange.

The police wrote at the time, over the top, with a bit more dramatic than, I guess, the boyfriend of the sister of someone they wouldn't expect to act that way.

Tammy's death may have been ruled accidental, but as details emerged, there were some that begged more questions. Nick Pran was working as a reporter for the Toronto Star back then. His focus was to report on all things police related. And because of that. He had access to pictures of Tammy the day she was found dead.

What was suspicious was she had, like, burn marks all around her mouth. I know, I'm talking to one of the officers, and he said that just bothered him.

Something else was OD. Not long after their emotional reaction to the death of Tammy, carla and Paul bounced back with a life goes on attitude. They were still gung ho about moving ahead with their wedding plans underway, almost as if nothing happened. Amy says they weren't keeping it hidden from their friends and family either.

Carla had wrote to a friend that was basically complaining that some of the money that was being put aside for her wedding was no longer there because it was used for the funeral. And she was also almost upset that her father was still grieving.

And while most details of Tammy's funeral have been kept private, what was reported about Paul's behavior at the service is nothing short of strange.

I read somewhere that he sniff her hair or something. He was playing with her hair at the funeral. It's so creepy.

Something about the whole thing just didn't seem right.

These are huge red flags. That's not the behavior of a grieving family member.

Take a minute to imagine losing a loved one, a sibling. That's someone you've spent more time with and know better than anyone else in the world. Wouldn't you be devastated? In the wake of Tammy's death, carla and Paul insisted on carrying out their dream wedding, and it was causing a rift. Remember, these two wanted a celebration for the ages with no expense spared a horse drawn carriage, catering decorations, tuxedos, and, of course, a shows stopping wedding gown. Kathy recalls that the pressure was on and it was a stressful time for the Hamolkas.

There was a lot of tension in the Hamolka house after Tammy died, and at a certain point, I believe her parents had said to her, like, can we tone this down a little bit? The wedding is going to cost a fortune. And we just had to pay a lot of money for Tammy's funeral, which, know, an unexpected, expensive cost.

Carla refused to tone it down and grew even more impatient with her parents'attitude.

And she was really, really miffed about it, that the family, know, not willing to carry on with these elaborate wedding plans, so much so that her and Paul actually moved out before the wedding.

Their sudden move was part Carla and Paul's decision and part request of her parents.

The homokas said, we need some private time. We want to grieve without Paul in the house, he needs to leave.

Paul and Carla found a place to rent in a neighboring community called Port Deluze.

Port Deluzei is a little town that is very quaint, and it's one of the many little beautiful towns right by Lake Ontario. And the house that they rented was a cute little pink clapboard house that looked like it should be in a postcard. It was so cute.

The house sat on a quiet street called Bayview Drive. It was paneled on the outside. To get to the front door, you'd have to walk up five steps. It had a covered entranceway. The front yard wasn't too much to write home about. But for a new couple's first home, the little house was perfect. Just like the house, port delusi is small, too. Its population lands at about 5000, but it boasts epic lakefront views from their cute little pink house. They carried on with their wedding plans without the distraction of the family drama. But they still expected the family to foot the bill. Here's Nick again, he said.

Well, he told the Molkas to take out another mortgage on your house to pay for our wedding.

Paul and Carla were set on getting their way. Megan remembers that, strangely, despite Tammy's death and disagreements, the wedding was a go.

They went ahead and they had it. The Homoka family participated, and Carla had her perfect wedding day. This beautiful, lavish wedding that Carla had wanted so badly almost didn't happen because of this tragedy that the Homoka family had suffered six months earlier with the death of Tammy.

So the young, relentless couple got their way and pulled off the wedding of their dreams. But some of their guests could sense that there was something boiling beneath the picture perfect surface.

You could tell that she had issues, but her friends at the time just didn't quite see it. Although they knew something was wrong, but they just couldn't put their finger on what exactly it was.

While friends may have raised their eyebrows, carla and Paul liked to keep up appearances. Megan Sachs is a Criminology professor, she told us it was easy to see how important it was to the couple to come off as perfect.

That was certainly one of their things, both physical material and in every way.

The two put a lot of effort into their outward facing personas.

They liked the way they looked to the outside world. It was important, I guess, for them to maintain a dual life.

Were their wedding guests onto something?

In reality, they were not the people that anyone thought that they actually were. Everyone was wrong.

Next up on very scary people, the Ken and Barbie killers. Not long after, the Hamokas suffer a personal loss. The day Carla and Paul got married, their town is shaken by an unprecedented tragedy of its own. A body of a young woman is discovered.

14 year old Leslie Mahaffey went missing on June 15. Two weeks later, her dismembered body parts were found encased in concrete in Lake Gibson.

The town of Burlington is in shock. How could this smiling girl, whose picture we'd all seen in the paper, have come to this fade? Then, to make matters worse, not even a year after finding Leslie, another local girl goes missing. We had the abduction of a 16 year old girl named Kristen French, who had been abducted while walking home from school. It sends the quiet town of St. Catherine's into a panic.

It went from an area where you.

Didn'T have much worry to where you started keeping your children and your family closer.

You were worried that you were going to lose somebody.

Very scary people. The Ken and Barbie Killers is hosted by me, Donnie Wahlberg. It's a production of ID in collaboration with Neon Hum Media and is based on an original series created by CNN executive producer Nancy Duffy at CNN. Our Senior Producer is Sabina Ryman. Our producer is Allison O'Brien, and our associate producer is Michael Reyes from ID. Our executive producer is Jessica Lauther from Neon Hum Media. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Cooper Mall is our producer, and our associate producer is Zoe Culkin. Our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is our production manager. Our fact checker is Catherine newham. Josh Hahn is our mix engineer. Theme and original music composed by Asha Ivanovich. Close.