Murder
After 24 hours of rape and abuse by both of the killers, Mahaffy was murdered sometime Saturday night. According to Homolka, Bernardo strangled Leslie Mahaffy with an electrical cord a second time when the first attempt left her unconscious for a few minutes. Homolka, a veterinary technician, had access to sedative drugs which were used to subdue Mahaffy, the same technique the pair used in the rape of Homolka's sister six months before; the drugs used to murder and rape the 15 year old child.
Bernardo stated that he was out of the room, preparing the car to transport Mahaffy to a location where she would be released, when the heavily-drugged Mahaffy died. He has claimed he did not even know she was dead until, after putting gas in the car and taking a shower, he tried to pick her up to carry her away. He said he and Homolka panicked, and that he tried to give Mahaffy artificial respiration. Both killers agree that they gave her a teddy bear to hold during breaks between assaults.
Sunday, June 16, 1991 was Father's Day. Bernardo and Homolka moved Mahaffy's body from an upstairs bedroom to the basement. They then entertained the Homolka family—without Homolka's sister, Tammy, whom they had killed December 24, 1990—on the main floor of the house, with Homolka making a special effort to keep her mother from going downstairs. When the family left, Bernardo and Homolka used his grandfather's circular saw to dismember Mahaffy's body into pieces small enough to lift when covered with cement. Later, in a confession to her aunt before revealing details to the police, Homolka claimed that Bernardo did this while she was at work on Monday. Bernardo's version asserts that she did not help him rinse and bag the body parts.
Mahaffy's body was found dismembered and encased in cement on June 29, 1991 in Lake Gibson near St. Catharines, Ontario. The concrete block containing the torso weighed over 200 pounds. Her braces and dental records confirmed her identity.
Investigators immediately believed she had been raped and tortured. This was confirmed when videotapes were discovered in the home of Bernardo and Homolka. The tapes show that she was held hostage for approximately 24 hours and repeatedly assaulted and sodomized. After Bernardo's final bid for an appeal before the Supreme Court was rejected, the tapes were all destroyed by the Ontario government.
Read more about this topic: Leslie Mahaffy
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