Bernardo denied in parole bid

Serial rapist and killer Paul Bernardo pleaded unsuccessfully for a second chance on Wednesday, arguing low self-esteem drove him to commit the sexually twisted crimes he now rues and that he no longer poses any threat to the public.

Bernardo made his pitch for parole before a twomember panel, which also heard impassioned pleas from the parents of two of his murder victims that he be kept behind bars.

“I’m a very flawed person. I know I’m not perfect,” Bernardo told the Parole Board of Canada panel. “What I did was so dreadful. I hurt a lot of people. I cry all the time.”

At the same time, the now 54-year-old Bernardo was adamant he has never been violent since his arrest, and would never reoffend if released.

“I’m so nice to everybody,” he said. “Everybody is scared but there is no reason to be scared.”

The panel did not buy his arguments. They took about 30 minutes to turn Bernardo down for both day and full parole.

Dubbed the “Scarborough Rapist,” Bernardo could make another bid for release in two years. He has already spent 25 years of his life sentence in prison — most in solitary.

Bernardo was convicted in 1995 of first-degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault among other offences. His crimes over several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of which he videotaped, had sparked widespread terror and revulsion.

Among his brutal acts, Bernardo and his then-wife Karla Homolka kidnapped, tortured and killed Leslie Mahaffy, 14, of Burlington, Ont., in June 1991 at their home in Port Dalhousie, Ont., before dismembering her body, encasing her remains in cement and dumping them in a nearby lake.