Andrew Mitrovica reacts to the discovery of Karla Homolka in Guadeloupe in this opinion piece for The Ottawa Citizen.

The psychopath is back.

The villainous Karla Homolka recently returned to the headlines involuntarily. A journalist felt compelled to track down Homolka in the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where she now lives with her three children and husband.

Apparently, this is the stuff that constitutes breathtaking news if you read some accounts of reporter Paula Todd’s odyssey to find and briefly speak to Homolka, Paul Bernardo’s enthusiastic partner in a sickening trail of abduction, rape and murder.

Indeed, in 2007 a French-language television network revealed that Homolka, her infant son and husband had left Montreal for an island in the Greater West Indies. At the time, the father of one of Homolka’s victims, Kristen French, reportedly bade Homolka “good riddance” on learning of her departure from Canada. Nevertheless, writers with faint memories have been reaching for clichés to express their horror that the unrepentant murderer is now living a sedate life as a mother and wife. Homolka has been described as a “monster” and “depraved” — as if these characterizations are revelations to anyone even remotely familiar with Homolka’s well-known and sordid story.

Why anyone would think that Homolka’s disinclination to exhibit any remorse or regret for her vile conduct is somehow newsworthy is beyond me.

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist defines psychopaths as: “People who … prey ruthlessly on others using deceit, violence or other methods that allow them to get what they want. The symptoms of psychopathy include: lack of a conscience or guilt, lack of empathy, egocentricity, pathological lying, repeated violations of social norms, disregard for the law, shallow emotions, and a history of victimizing others.” A more apt definition of Homolka would be near impossible to find.

So did we really need to have Todd go on a journalistic expedition to Guadeloupe to confirm that Homolka is a psychopath who still isn’t going to say sorry?

The same scribes have lauded Todd’s skill and enterprise in pursuing a tip that ultimately led her to Homolka’s door and the writing of a slim, 47-page book, titled, Finding Karla. Fair enough. But the discovery is hardly akin to Miss Marple’s detective work. (For those who might suggest that I’m disparaging Todd’s sleuthing out of professional envy, I can assure you that I had absolutely no interest in searching for her quarry. More on this later.)

In any event, in an interview with The Canadian Press (CP), Todd seems to have anticipated that prickly questions might be raised about why resurrecting Homolka from oblivion several years after she left prison would warrant anyone’s attention or interest.

I believe the relevance of Todd’s much ballyhooed find is also called into question since Homolka made it plain in a July 2005 interview with Radio-Canada two hours after her release from prison that she wanted to start a family and live a life of obscurity, and other media reported in 2007 that she did just that.

In her CP interview, Todd reached for a variety of vacuous and predictable rationalizations to explain why she found Homolka and wrote a tiny book about their encounter. Taken together, her defence is: an untold number of Canadians thirsty for news about Homolka made me do it.

First, Todd proffers the following: “The thing about Karla Homolka, and the reason she persists in Canadians’ minds is that she fooled everybody.”

She certainly doesn’t “persist” in my mind. Todd must be clairvoyant because I’m not aware of any empirical evidence to show that — unprompted by stories like oh, let’s say, finding Homolka living on an island — the accomplice to rape and murder “persists” in the minds of millions of other Canadians.

Then Todd suggests that finding Homolka was in the public interest. Her explanation on this score is, to put it charitably, flimsy.

“The reason I went is because I think it was in the public interest for people to know what had happened to what is widely considered a huge police bungle,” she told CP.

Todd’s rationale, as quoted, is nonsensical on its face. And anyone with even a passing understanding of the demonic arc of the Bernardo/Homolka partnership knows the police screwed up. Author Stephen Williams wrote a fine book called Invisible Darkness, which laid bare the police’s shocking incompetence, that ultimately led to the Crown having to negotiate with Homolka — the so-called “deal with the devil” — to give evidence against her ex-husband.

Why Todd had to track down Homolka to reiterate that fact strikes me as more than a little disingenuous.

I suppose Todd and I have differing views of what constitutes the public interest and how journalists can be servants of it.

I had to wrestle with this ethical quandary a long time ago when Williams came to CTV — where I was working at the time — offering to collaborate on a documentary based on his, at that point, still unpublished book.

I spent several weeks with Williams poring over his research. In the end, I wrote a lengthy memo to my news bosses arguing that showing some never-before-seen interrogation video would have little, if any, news value beyond satisfying the voyeuristic appetites of some viewers.

To my surprise, the executives agreed. Undeterred, Williams went off to the CBC’s fifth estate, which subsequently produced a documentary. Like Todd, the CBC had to offer viewers a rationale for devoting a lot of face time on national television to a child killer. And like Todd, their public explanation was wanting.

The CBC promoted their 1997 “special” documentary as necessary viewing because the still incarcerated Homolka might be paroled before serving out her 12-year sentence. What a crock.

When I heard that absurdity, I knew I had made the right decision. Todd is a talented and experienced journalist, but I believe she made the wrong decision for the wrong reasons to pursue Homolka’s whereabouts. I have long agreed with Kristen French’s father: good riddance to her.

Andrew Mitrovica is a former Globe and Mail investigative reporter and former associate producer and producer at the fifth estate and W5 respectively.

For the original report go to http://www.ottawacitizen.com/didn+need+find+more+about+Karla/6863570/story.html#ixzz1zF2u7AwZ

Drawing by Constance at http://konstance.deviantart.com/art/Karla-Homolka-20328045