Karla Homolka Teale's 'pact with the devil'

Essay here. Excerpt:

'As we saw in the aftermath of the Moors Murders, it’s not unknown for gender co-operation between malefactors to break down when they’re threatened with a police enquiry, with the massive sanctions of the law brought to bear. Often an enthusiastic partnership is refuted by the female partner at the last. She hastens to turn Queen’s evidence or People’s evidence and lay the lion’s share of the blame at the feet of her ‘dominant’ colleague. Is it the basically law-abiding nature of women that causes this late change of mind, or is it fear of being faced with the consequence of former actions? Is it rectitude or timidity?

As we’ve hinted elsewhere, women are not naturally enthusiastic about having to face their own misdeeds. That aspect of reality is not for them. One of the reasons a female malefactor seeks a male partner is to shield herself once everything collapses. But sometimes when the chips are really down, your protector can do nothing, and it’s better to dissociate yourself from him altogether. Your chance of survival is stronger if you let him sink, or even if you reach out a toe and give him a little push under. He’s going under anyway, so what’s the harm in your help?
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Embracing their newfound equality, women must also accept the revolution in feeling their new status implies. They should embrace its implications for what in future might constitute a viable legal defence. It is no longer viable for women to say they committed ferocious crimes because of a sad childhood or because they were depressed or because they were in fear that they might spoil their hairdo — had a headache, or a poor body image. The same rational judgements which test male crime must also apply to the female.

Homolka’s (link added) tale has implications too for equality of sentencing. It is no longer tolerable for female defendants to duck justice even after a court has found them guilty. Marie Noe sentenced to counselling after committing eight murders. It may not have been the most productive course to hold Myra Hindley in gaol for nigh on forty years till she smoked herself into oblivion; but where women are treated humanely, tolerantly, and with an eye to their rehabilitation — then men must be also.

Where women engage in sexual murder, they should be tried for it. And where the evidence finds them guilty, they should expect to feel the awful weight of the law just as heavy on them as it’s fallen on men since before the dawn of legality. That’s what equality means.'