Paul Bernado’s transfer to medium security prison denied, but idea sparks outrage

I'm pretty sure no one wants to see serial killer Paul Bernardo moved to a comfy medium-security prison after Kingston Penitentiary closes later this year. Except of course Bernardo himself and whatever twisted fanboys and girls he's collected in roughly two decades inside.

And since the no-transfer camp includes Canada's minister of public safety, Steven Blaney, you can be pretty sure Bernardo won't get his wish to have his security status downgraded so he can move to nearby Bath Institution when the last prisoners are transferred out of the 178-year-old Kingston Pen.

“While I do not control the security classification of individual prisoners, I have received assurances that there are no plans to move this inmate to a medium security institution,” Blaney said in a statement Thursday, reported by Global News.

The Toronto Sun's Joe Warmington raised the possibility in a story Thursday that Bernardo might get a transfer to "the medium-security comforts of condo-style prison housing" at Bath. Kingston, which opened in 1835, is set to lose its last prisoner in two months.

The prospect was first reported last week on crime writer Rob Tripp's CanCrime blog, which said Bernardo wanted to stay in the Kingston area to be closer to family.

"Bernardo covets a spot at medium-security Bath Institution, a complex of cottage-style dormitories on a sprawling 640-acre lakefront property just west of Kingston, according to my sources," Tripp wrote.

[ Related: Richard Wills disgusts Paul Bernardo and Russell Williams, forcing transfer from Kingston Pen ]

Bernardo, who with his wife Karla Homolka, abducted, raped, tortured and murdered teenagers Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French in St. Catharines, Ont., in 1991 and 1992. Homolka's younger sister, Tammy, died the previous year during a sexual assault after Karla had drugged her. The couple videotaped everything.

Bernardo was convicted of first-degree murder, which carries an automatic life sentence with no chance to apply for parole for at least 25 years. Bernardo, who is also thought to have been the notorious "Scarborough Rapist," will certainly die in prison.

(Homolka, who reached a plea bargain with prosecutors to testify against her husband, served 12 years for manslaughter. The true picture of her deep involvement in the murders didn't come to light until after Bernardo's trial. She now lives abroad under another name.)

Bernardo has been living in a special segregation unit — most of the time in solitary confinement — at Kingston because of assaults and death threats from other inmates. He's shared his home with other notorious killers Russell Williams, the former air force colonel who led a double life as a rapist-murderer, and Michael Rafferty, convicted of raping and killing eight-year-old Tori Stafford.

When Kingston finally closes, Bernardo could be transferred to another maximum-security facility in Quebec, the Sun reported.

Sources in Corrections Canada told Warmington that Bernardo had applied to have his designation changed to allow a move to Bath, which features a $22-million independent-living area with its own kitchen and living room.

[ Related: Kingston Penitentiary’s planned closure brings spotlight on almost two centuries of history ]

“Whether he gets his request or not is not yet known,” a corrections source told the Sun. “But he has applied and he is entitled to apply.”

A source added that other prisoners have had their designations changed.

"Our mandate is rehabilitation," the source told the Sun.

While Blaney appears to have ruled out the security downgrade, the very idea outrages Kristen French's father, Doug French, who nonetheless said he's not surprised.

"That son of a bitch gets away with everything," he told the Sun. “Too bad they don’t put him out in the yard with the rest of the boys."

Monsters like Bernardo will continue to torment their victims' families, and the rest of us, until they die. Clifford Olson, who murdered 11 children in the early 1980s, applied for early parole consideration, manipulated the media and taunted his victims' families for decades before he died in 2011.

Bernardo's apparent desire to improve his living arrangements might be self-interested but it sends another ripple of pain through the national psyche.