Parole hearing next month for serial killer Paul Bernardo postponed, board says

The Parole Board of Canada tells CHCH News that a parole hearing scheduled for next month for convicted killer and serial rapist Paul Bernardo has been postponed.

His parole hearing was expected to take place on Oct. 20. The board did not say why the hearing has been delayed.

“It was a brief telephone call advising me that they were postponing the parole board hearing for Paul Bernardo from Oct. 20 to a date in January,” said Tim Danson, the lawyer who represents the families of Bernardo’s victims.

A spokesperson for the board says only offenders can request that a hearing be postponed. They say there are several reasons a hearing may be delayed, including when a procedural safeguard cannot be met before the review, an offender wants to complete an assessment, treatment or program before the review, or the offender’s assistant is unavailable for the scheduled hearing.

But Danson tells CHCH News that the answer he was given when he asked them during the phone call wasn’t the same.

“All they would tell me or could tell me at that point in time was that there were some materials or documents that they felt that they needed to review and as a result, they were going to postpone the hearing,” Danson said.

He said that prior to Friday’s development, he’s had lively discussions with the parole board over assurances that the board had all of the expert testimony and other evidence that was presented to the trial judge when Bernardo was deemed a dangerous offender.

WATCH MORE: Victims’ families push for longer intervals between Paul Bernardo parole hearings

“The expert evidence in particular and to make sure that the parole board had that evidence and that they were reviewing it carefully and that if they were ever to consider parole, that they would have to have expert evidence of the same quality before they would even consider parole eligibility from the dangerous offender designation,” Danson said.

More details about Bernardo’s next hearing date are expected to be provided in late December 2026 or early January 2027.

Bernardo, who is designated a dangerous offender, is serving an indeterminate life sentence for the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 15-year-old Kristen French and 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy in the early 1990s in St. Catharines.

He was also convicted of manslaughter in the death of his then-wife Karla Homolka’s 15-year-old sister Tammy, who was drugged and sexually assaulted by the couple in 1990.

Bernardo has admitted to sexually assaulting at least 14 other women as well.

Now at the age of 62, Bernardo has been behind bars for over 30 years and has attended parole hearings four times in eight years.

He was expected to attend his latest parole hearing from La Macaza Institution in Quebec. Bernardo was transferred to the medium-security facility from a maximum-security Ontario prison in 2023, a decision that caused public outcry.

Danson recently told CHCH News that he is pushing for longer intervals between Bernardo’s parole hearings.

READ MORE: Serial killer ‘Paul Bernardo should rot in a maximum-security prison’: Doug Ford