Ex-Homolka lawyer stands by 'deal with devil'

CTV.ca News Staff

It's been a dozen years, but the lawyer who once defended Karla Homolka says the case continues to creep in and out of his mind.

"It still haunts me," George Walker said in an exclusive in-depth interview with CTV News.

Battered and bruised, Homolka turned up at Walker's office in February, 1993, desperate for a lawyer.

Walker didn't typically handle domestic disputes, but decided to take the case at his wife's urging. As he explains, they had met her before.

"It was a strange set of circumstances," he told CTV. "As you know, she was a veterinary assistant and we took our dogs to the same vet that she worked at."

But the circumstances were to become a whole lot stranger, as Homolka admitted her part in the murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy and even her own sister Tammy -- all during that first meeting with Walker.

All of it, she told the lawyer, was recorded on videotape.

Walker relayed what he had learned to Crown attorney Murray Segal. Shortly after, Crown prosecutors signed a controversial plea agreement that saw Homolka sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison.

In exchange, Homolka testified against her then-husband Paul Bernado.

In 1996, an inquiry determined the plea bargain was necessary to cracking the case against Bernardo.

Reflecting on those events, Walker says he still agrees with the six psychiatrists who all came to the same conclusion about his former client -- that she was a "compliant victim to a sexual sadist."

And with that in mind, Walker says he's got no regrets.

"What we thought was a fair deal then, we would still think is a fair deal today."

The Ontario government, however, is no longer so sure. Rather than see Homolka go completely free at the end of her sentence, it wants to closely monitor her.

Just because he defended Homolka, Walker says it doesn't mean he liked doing it. Arranging such deals is part of the job, he said.

"But you don't always have to like your client."

After arranging the plea deal, again at his wife's urging, Walker dropped his notorious client.

With files from CTV News reporter Lisa LaFlamme