º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍø

It’s also a cautionary tale and refutation for those who believe everybody can be fixed, no matter how villainous, how recidivist and how sociopathic. If only, you know, there had been timely intervention in their formative years, proper guidance, mental health supports and a societal safety net to catch the bad seeds before they take permanent root.Ìý

Michelle K., when we first meet her in the pages of an Ontario Supreme Court decision from 2019, has already spent 26 of her 40 years in foster homes, youth detention, prison, psychiatric institutions, community residential facilities, and twice slapped with long-term supervision orders.Ìý

But let’s go back farther, to May 1993, when Michelle was 13, a ward of Children’s Aid, and set fire to her foster brother’s bedroom. Living in a group home. Kicked out for setting fire to another child’s bedroom. A year later, at another group home, she carved these words on the wall: “I luv Paul Teale.” That’s Paul Bernardo. Broke furniture, smashed lighting fixtures and barricaded the door before finally surrendering to police custody.Ìý

A psychologist assessed her as “a seriously emotionally disturbed child” with delinquent and cruelly aggressive behaviour who “exhibited no guilt for her misdeeds,” and lacked all empathy for others. “Narcissistic and egocentric in the extreme,” while “maintaining an air of sophistication,” with “an active fantasy life of a sexual and violent nature.” Yet another concluded: “Michelle is a paranoid schizophrenic girl and, in my opinion, there is no hope for ‘helping’ her.”Ìý

In 1995, she harassed the family of Leslie Mahaffy, Bernardo’s teenage murder victim, with threatening phone calls, leaving sadistic messages on the answering machine: “Hi, I just wondered if I could speak with Leslie, but I guess she’s not there right now, so I’ll call back later. In another call, pretending to be Leslie, who had been abducted from her own backyard. “Hi Mom, I might be coming home late tonight from some party, so don’t lock the door…” And “I’m afraid I’ll just have to go to your son’s school and, you know, get him a la Kristen French.”Ìý

In 1996, she escaped the Vanier Centre for Women by scaling a chain-link fence. In 1999, she called 911, threatening to kill Mahaffy’s mother, Debbie. That year, she set fire to her boyfriend’s apartment, claiming they’d made a suicide pact. Four years later, police found her living with a 61-year-old man in a crack house. By 2009, she was working for an escort service — aspiring to be in the porn industry — and residing with a man whom she struck with a glass pane and stabbed with scissors when he told her to leave.Ìý

A psychiatrist wrote that she suffered from severe conduct disorder beginning in early childhood and persisting through her adolescence.

“There is little evidence that her core personality has changed over the course of her life thus far.” She required treatment and supervision that would “likely extend far into the future, well beyond the 10-year maximum for a long-term supervision order.”Ìý

Arrests, remands, warrants, numerous statutory release violations and chased by the law from Ontario to Alberta and back.Ìý

While incarcerated, designated a long-term offender, she wrote letters to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Setting fire to herself, she was classified as a maximum security inmate. Her expressed written goals included defacing the Oklahoma City National Memorial and purchasing firearms to “shoot up” Columbine High School.Ìý

I’ll slide by the small beer stuff, such as drug offences, endlessly threatening to mutilate correctional guards and go on a killing spree. At a court appearance in 2003, uncontrollable behaviour led to her being pepper-sprayed and put in restraints.Ìý

She wrote more fan letters to Bernardo. In a letter to her adoptive mother, she described fantasies of sexual assault by Bernardo. In 2008, after being released from prison, she stabbed her boyfriend of three weeks twice in the arm. Back in custody, she boasted of having been involved in child rape and “sexual escapades” with Bernardo. By 2012, she’d begun referring to herself as a political prisoner and sending written complaints to the governments of Russia, Iran, Turkey, the U.K., the FBI, and the United Nations.Ìý

She compared her beauty to Angelina Jolie — “I have a problem that every man wants me — a beautiful body” — claimed a high IQ comparable to John Wayne Gacy, who’d murdered at least 33 boys and young men. She was infatuated and identified with notorious serial killers. She attempted to contact cannibal killer Luka Magnotta, who dismembered and ate parts of his victim, and “feels exhilarated by pain.” While insisting there was nothing psychiatrically wrong with her, on the psychopathy checklist, she scored in the 99.9th percentile.Ìý

She claimed to have a job offer from the now-defunct “Your Ward News,” the wildly antisemitic º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøpaper whose editor was convicted of wilfully promoting hatred.Ìý

Over the years, an army of shrinks diagnosed her as anti-social with significant and intractable personality disorders, sexual paraphilia, masochistic, sadistic, predatory, though not suffering from a major mental illness such as schizophrenia.Ìý

In 2011, she was designated a dangerous offender.Ìý

In 2016, on statutory release from prison and under long-term supervision with the Elizabeth Fry Society, she went to the U.S. consulate in º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøseeking asylum, pushed past security, lunged at a security officer who was trying to restrain her and slashed his neck, above his protective vest, with a box cutter.Ìý

Convicted of assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm and carrying a concealed weapon, she received an indeterminate sentence — no fixed end date, reserved for dangerous offenders.Ìý

In 2019, she appealed the sentence, representing herself with the assistance of a court amicus. In a written decision released Friday, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the sentencing judge was correct in imposing an indeterminate penitentiary sentence to protect the public against the risk of murder or serious personal injury.Ìý

Michelle K’s appeal was dismissed.Ìý