Should unrepentant murderesses ever be forgiven – Betty Broderick, Karla Homolka and Myra Hindley?

SAN FRANCISCO - Jan. 13, 2014 - PRLog -- In 2010, after spending 20 years in prison for the sensational murders of her


ex-husband and his new wife – and two top-rated appearances on the ‘Oprah Winfrey Show’ – Betty Broderick was not only refused parole but was told that she could not reapply for another 15 years – until 2025. The reason: that she showed no credible remorse for what she had done.

Five years after Betty Broderick’s murders, Karla Homolka and her husband, Paul Bernardo, were arrested in Canada for a series of gruesome rapes, extended tortures and murders of teenage girls. They were the Moors Murderers of Canada, and yet Karla Homolka was offered a highly controversial plea bargain for turning state witness against her husband, and spent only 12 years in prison. Since her release, Karla Homolka has changed her name to Emily Bordelais and earned her living teaching small children and selling baby products.

Both Betty and Karla pleaded that they were abused wives and claimed that they did what they did in a state of stress and duress. Yet Betty, as further evidenced in an analysis of her recent hand writing by a top graphology expert, lives with some significant psychological issues, and much in the ‘Ken & Barbie Murders’ case suggests that it was Karla who was the primary actor in the rapes, torturing and killings of young girls.

Betty languishes in the California Institute for Women (CIW), Chino, California, on the surface a reformed woman, helping teach her fellow inmates English, and still protesting her innocence in everything except the uncontested fact that she pulled the trigger of the gun that shot Daniel Broderick III and Linda Broderick dead. Karla Homolka also decided to become a teacher and now has three children of her own.

In Karla’s case, as Canada’s Myra Hindley, she is stalked by a group of Canadian journalists who never want the world to forget what she has been capable of, to the point that she recently had to close her baby products business. And, as Britons will recall, in her time the British public was horrified by rumors that Myra Hindley had secretly been released from prison under a new identity before her death.

Two much-acclaimed books have recently been re-published for bookshops covering the crimes of these two women. ‘Until the Twelfth of Never’ by Bella Stumbo (ISBNs: 0-9911621-5-3 / 978-0-9911621-5-4) is regarded as one of the best True Crime books ever written, and certainly the definitive account of the Betty Broderick murders, picking up an Edgar Award along the way. Stephen Williams’ ‘Invisible Darkness’ (ISBNs: 0-9892854-7-2 / 978-0-9892854-7-6), chronicling the ‘Ken & Barbie Murders’ has also been described as one of the best True Crime books ever written, and Stephen Williams himself has received a somewhat less likely award – a Human Rights award for the fact that after he decried the Canadian Government’s decision to offer a plea bargain to Karla Homolka and criticized the Canadian police for an investigation of monumental incompetence, he was persecuted for ten years by the Canadian Government which hit him with 114 trumped-up charges to demand his silence.

Should unrepentant murderesses ever be forgiven? These books raise an even bigger question – should they ever be released from prison in the first place?