The Journal told us a few days ago that Kaven Sirois Fournier, author of a triple homicide in Trois-Rivières in 2014, intends to marry the man who for years was his tutor at the Philippe-Pinel Psychiatric Institute in Montreal.
Is this a case of hybristophilia, sometimes referred to as “Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome”? It refers to people—particularly women—who are attracted to those who have committed femicide and/or serial rape. Often sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty, these felons receive letters from admirers in prison—dubbed “murder groupies”—that often contain more or less explicit sexual innuendos.
A serial killer subdues a Quebec woman
Another case involving a Quebecer is in the news. Charles Sobhraj, nicknamed “The Serpent”, the French serial killer who murdered around twenty hippies roaming Asia in the 1970s. He had persuaded the amorous and submissive Quebec medical secretary Marie-Andrée Leclerc to become his accomplice. When she and Sobhraj were found guilty of murder in India in 1980, she appealed the verdict. In July 1983, suffering from cancer, she was allowed to return to Quebec. She died in 1984 at the Hôtel-Dieu de Lévis, aged 38.
Sobhraj, who was imprisoned in Kathmandu for other murders, married Nihita Biswas, a Nepalese woman 44 years his junior, who had fallen in love with him. The 78-year-old has just been released for health reasons and repatriated to France.
And this is not a new phenomenon. Landru, the notorious French serial killer who murdered ten women between 1915 and 1919, received more than 4,000 letters from women in love, including 800 proposals of marriage. The Wikipedia article about him states: “Women are often convinced of the innocence of these criminals, despite all the evidence, or fantasize about the possibility of rescuing them.”
Accomplice in “Love” Murders
We also remember the case of Paul and Karla Homolka. She provided him “for love” with sex slaves to rape and kill. The couple murdered three teenage girls, including Karla’s sister, and raped about twenty women.
Bernardo was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 and was in solitary confinement most of the time, according to Global News. In 2021 he failed with a second parole application. The 58-year-old man who has been declared a dangerous criminal will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Despite outraged protests from the victims’ families and the public, Karla Homolka was released in 2005 after serving just 12 years in prison for her complicity in her lover’s heinous crimes. After her release, Karla Homolka settled in the Montreal area, where she married and had three children.