Bernardo fan sentenced for breaching court order to stay away from children

A Stoney Creek woman who used to send love letters to serial killer Paul Bernardo was sentenced to just over seven months for breaching a court order to stay away from children.

Lori Kooger, 52, has 30 days left on her sentence because of time she already spent in jail awaiting trial.

She was arrested in September after an anonymous caller told police she was working at a midway “slide ride” at the Binbrook Fair.

She pleaded guilty on Dec. 20 to breaching the order — made after she was convicted in 2011 of two counts of sexual interference with a 12-year-old boy.

The conviction came after Kooger had been charged with sexual offences against young boys, convicted and sentenced to three years.

She was also ordered for 10 years, not to have contact with children under 16 — an order that was still in place when Kooger found work in September at the Binbrook Fair through a temp agency.

“The courts must send a clear message to individuals who are under ... orders (to stay away from children), that if that order is breached, there will be serious consequences,” said Justice Bernd Zabel in sentencing Kooger two weeks ago.

In addition to jail time, Zabel gave Kooger another three years probation and ordered her not to work in a job where children under 16 are present.

Court heard earlier that Kooger had previously told a probation officer that she had already worked at the same fair back in 2014.

The officer testified she told Kooger that it was a breach of the order — and while the officer did not report it, she did lay breach of probation charges against Kooger for failing to comply and failing to attend counselling.

Court heard Kooger eventually completed counselling with a therapist who concluded she was “at low risk on the sex offending continuum,” but did not say she was cured.

Kooger gained notoriety in the late 1990s when now convicted serial killer and rapist Bernardo was on trial for torturing and murdering teenaged girls.

Kooger, then Lori Brown, sent Bernardo jailhouse love letters, waved at him during his trial, and once told reporters she dreamed of marrying him.

Court heard she now has a boyfriend in a Saskatchewan prison serving time for murder.

Her probation officer agreed with prosecutor Jill McKenzie that Kooger “seems to be attracted to criminals or to the very young boy who was the victim in the sexual interference” — and that she knew she was bound by an order to stay away from children when she took the job at the fair last September.