Bernardo asks to talk to police about Bain case
Last Updated: Thursday, June 7, 2007 | 7:08 PM ET
CBC News
Convicted killer Paul Bernardo met with police and Crown attorneys on Thursday to discuss the 1990 disappearance and presumed killing of Elizabeth Bain, CBC News has learned.
Bernardo's lawyer told CBC News his client asked to speak to Toronto police about the case. In the past, he's denied having anything to do with Bain's murder.
Robert Baltovich leaves the Don Jail in Toronto on Dec. 2, 2004, after Ontario's Appeal Court set aside his second-degree murder conviction and ordered a new trial.
(J.P. Moczulski/Canadian Press)
"Mr. Bernardo has denied ever knowingly running into her," said Tony Bryant. "He doesn't know Elizabeth Bain. He can't recall ever seeing her at any time and he denied any involvement in her disappearance and her death."
Questions have continued to surround the case since Bain's boyfriend, Robert Baltovich, was convicted of second-degree murder in connection with her death.
Baltovich served eight years in prison but was released on bail in 2000 amid questions about the investigation that led first to his trial and then to his conviction.
He has since been granted a new trial, which is expected to get underway this fall.
Officials have not commented on what Bernardo said to them on Thursday. Baltovich has also yet to comment on the latest development in the case.
Bernardo sent to jail for life
Bernardo was sentenced in 1995 to life in prison for the killings of school girls Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.
He also admitted to sexually assaulting at least 14 women in southern Ontario, attacks the media had dubbed as the work of the Scarborough Rapist.
Police believe that Elizabeth Bain vanished sometime in the early evening of June 19, 1990. Three days later, her car was found outside an auto body shop just a kilometre from her home.
The Toronto police homicide squad took over the investigation after a large blood stain was found in the car. Baltovich was placed under surveillance.
Despite Baltovich's subsequent trial and conviction, Bernardo has also been cited as a possible suspect in the case.
Bain's name not on list
As recently as February 2006, Bernardo's lawyer, Tony Bryant, said that Bain's name was not included on a new list of confessions Bernardo made in the fall of 2005.
In the list, the notorious killer confessed to at least 10 more sexual assaults. Bryant turned the information over to police.
In September 2004, Baltovich's lawyers argued before the Ontario Court of Appeal that "fresh evidence" had emerged that would clear Baltovich — and that the evidence points to Bernardo.
A legal submission by Baltovich's defence team revealed some of the new evidence in the case. It was unsealed for the first time on Sept. 20, 2004, and described evidence that Bernardo had been acquainted with Bain and was seen at her university campus the day she disappeared.
'Likely perpetrator'
"The evidence was not available at the time of the trial, nor could its relevance possibly have been known," the submission stated. It added that the Scarborough Rapist "is not only a plausible suspect, but the likely perpetrator of Elizabeth Bain's murder."
The defence at Baltovich's original trial in 1992 raised the idea of the Scarborough Rapist as a possible suspect in Bain's disappearance, but prosecutors discounted the theory.
They argued that the then unidentified sexual predator had neither abducted nor murdered his victims.
Bernardo has spent the last 15 years in solitary confinement — longer than any other Canadian prisoner. He was also declared a dangerous offender, meaning he can be kept in prison indefinitely.
Bernardo's wife, Karla Homolka, spent 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the abduction and killings of French and Mahaffy.
She was released in July 2005 after serving her full sentence.
As part of her controversial plea bargain, Homolka testified against her former husband.
She also told police that Bernardo had claimed to have sexually assaulted as many as 30 women.
