Stephen Williams on "Finding Karla"

Magazine cover featuring Stephen Williams

For those who are unaware of who Stephen Williams is, or why anyone should care what he thinks about Finding Karla, he authored two books on the crimes of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. His first book, Invisible Darkness, is considered to be the most accurate account of the husband and wife's rape and murder spree. In fact, it was argued (in court) that Williams' description of the crimes were so accurate that he was accused of having viewed the banned videotapes that Bernardo had made of the attacks on Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. 

Williams follow-up book was more about Karla Homolka herself than it was about the crimes that she admitted to. Homolka exchanged a series of letters with Williams during her incarceration, which became the foundation for Karla: A Pact with the Devil. In those letters, she discussed everything from her frustrations with the justice system to her daily beauty routine. 

If I were to name any one person as the foremost authority on this case, it would be Stephen Williams. This is what he had to say about Paula Todd's $3 e-book, Finding Karla:

FINDING KARLA: FRAUD, FICTION OR BOTH? (Link will open in a new window)

Karla Homolka: The Stephen Williams Letters

Journalist, author, and accused enemy of the state Stephen Williams struck up a fascinating conversation-by-mail with Karla Homolka while she was serving out her sentence for the kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of two Ontario teenagers. The series of letters was to be the backbone of a book deal he had entered into as a follow-up to his acclaimed best-seller, Invisible Darkness: The Horrifying Case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. 

"I was exuberant until I realized that in spite of the things I had discovered this new book for which I had just signed a contract could not be written unless Karla talked to me. And frankly I was the last person on earth that she would ever talk to.

As she said in her first startling letter to me: 'Well, they say ‘never say never’ and they’re right. Never in a million years did I think that I would ever write a letter to anyone from the media, let alone you who has treated me so harshly.'"

But Karla did write a letter to Stephen Williams; a multitude of them, in fact. Her flair for the dramatic, along with hefty doses of self-righteousness are evident in her missives to him. She does not mince words as she describes to him her perceptions of the complex and often highly political inner-workings of the Canadian correctional system, particularly as it relates to female offenders. In other letters, she describes (in nauseating detail) her life on the inside, which, by all accounts, bore no resemblance to the the image of incarceration most of us hold in our minds.

Here are the letters as they appeared in Williams' fascinating follow-up, Karla: A Pact with the Devil.