Woo hoo witchy woman, see how high she flies
Woo hoo witchy woman, she got the moon in her eye
Well I know you want a lover,
Let me tell you brother, she’s been sleeping
In the Devil’s bed.
And there’s some rumors going round
Someone’s underground.
She can rock you in the nighttime
’til your skin turns red
Woo hoo witchy woman
See how high she flies
Woo hoo witchy woman
She got the moon in her eye

One sexy woman. One witchy woman. One murderess woman.

Karla Leanne Emilie Homolka Bernardo Teale. A one-woman enigma with at least three different women, or personalities, hiding out inside her unfathomable Mensa mind.

Each cunning persona has one thing in common - the strange ability to cast entrancing spells over the men she meets. And many, many women, too.

First, there was husband Paul Bernardo. Then victim Kristen French. Then victim Leslie Mahaffy. Then victim and little sister Tammy Homolka. Then Karla's lesbian prison lovers. Then new boyfriend and convicted murder Jean-Paul Gerbet, still behind bars. And most recently, ex-boss Richer Lapointe, a chubby Rona hardware store proprietor.

How many more are there we still don't know about? Cops, prison guards, lawyers, reporters...

Today, I'm introducing you to one of my personal favorite spellbinders, Rosie DiManno, columnist extraordinaire for The Toronto Star. Rosie's had Karla's number since Day One. In fact, a while back, Rosie threatened to never write another word about the little "bitch who got away with murder."

But Rosie's a journalist. And a trooper. And Karla's news.

To every story she writes, Rosie brings a veteran reporter's well-honed gut instincts, and her incisive, insightful woman's intuition. And today's piece on Karla's ability to "cast her icky spell" over men is absolutely brilliant.

I don't think it was reported at the time because this happened outside the courtroom. But I raise it now specifically to demonstrate how this couple contaminated so many people who came into their orbit, however peripherally, enticing them to do bad things, to dip a toe into the septic tank of their existence — a phenomenon that continues still, judging by last week's bizarre events and the outing of Homolka by a creepy employer with some peculiar ideas of public service.

Justice Patrick LeSage had permitted the public to watch, in open court, a video that depicted Bernardo and Homolka having sex, the latter dressed in a schoolgirl outfit and impersonating her deceased younger sister Tammy. Such play-acting was necessary for Bernardo, who was sexually dysfunctional, to become aroused.

The copulation went on at interminable length, Homolka performing every act imaginable to bring her husband to climax, without success. Those of us who were in the courtroom were variously embarrassed, fascinated and ultimately bored. It never crossed my mind that anyone would be titillated by what was, admittedly, no more than a homemade pornographic movie.

But at the afternoon break, a member of the public ducked into the men's washroom, where he was overheard masturbating, presumably replaying those squishy images in his head.

It was one of the seamiest episodes of that long, hot summer at 361 University Ave.

Whatever the revulsion engendered by their crimes, there were clearly some who were simultaneously appalled and enthralled by this sexually corrosive pair. They had about them — and, I would submit, Homolka more influentially than Bernardo — a sticky, effluent allure that piqued the baser instincts in others.

Even those teenage girls who ventured willingly into the couple's Port Dalhousie home, and were purportedly disgusted by Bernardo's initial overtures, returned of their own volition, putting themselves in tragic proximity to sexual ambush, spellbound to some extent by Homolka's ability to render the icky ever so slightly tantalizing.

She spun a libidinous web. She teased out feelings that might otherwise be suppressed, whether out of common sense or shame. And she continues to send out signals that are picked up by a kind of carnal radar, a dog-whistle heard by those predisposed to sexual misadventure.

This is why it's so likely that a liberated Homolka will continue to become involved with men (and women) who can provide the yin to her noxious yang. The girl can't help it. Even when not overtly intending to do so, she attracts the likes of Richer Lapointe, the Montreal-area hardware store proprietor who posed as an angel of mercy and then cashiered Homolka to the Toronto Sun, a term that fits even if no money ever exchanged hands.

I've never understood Homolka's powers of seduction because she strikes me as a person bereft of passion and sensuality. Her carnality was always a tool, unleashed to get the things she wanted, whether a marriage certificate from Bernardo or the protection of a tough lesbian lover in prison or the assistance of a benefactor in circumventing her prison release conditions.

This was the cunning and vamping Homolka who was captured in one of the photographs Lapointe gave to the Sun, published last week as part of an 11-page spread that has actually managed to evoke sympathy for the schoolgirl killer.

There she was, legs splayed on a picnic blanket, an empty bottle of wine or champagne discarded nearby. This was part of the series of snapshots for which Homolka posed, and not among those taken surreptitiously by reporter Alan Cairns, whose enviable scoop it was.

Now, what kind of a boss — ostensibly at that point still a benign champion, trying to give Homolka a break on her release from prison — takes his new employee on a picnic that looks more like a romantic date? Well, we have to read between the lines — although one would think there was nothing left unsaid after those 11 pages of coverage and Lapointe's subsequent media interviews.

It makes the skin crawl, imagining what motivated Lapointe to elbow his way inside Homolka's legal fortress — whether he sought the reflected glare of her notoriety or was genuinely acting the good Samaritan or simply had the pheromone smell of her in his flabby nostrils.

I recall, around the time of Homolka's Section 810 hearing — wherein she failed to convince a judge that a slew of release conditions were both unnecessary and unfair — her lawyer, Sylvie Bordelais, claiming that there were many people in Quebec who had expressed moral support for the felon, who were prepared to give her a second chance (not that the public had any say in the matter) and, as well, who might help with resettlement and employment.

If so, Bordelais ill-served her client by accepting a job offer from a man with such palpable pathologies of his own — including a criminal record — although the lawyer says she was aware of Lapointe's history.

This beggars belief, just as much as Lapointe's contention that he turned from benefactor to Judas only after concluding that Homolka was unrepentant, undeserving, a continuing danger to society and scheming to make him complicit in breaking some of her release conditions.

Or maybe — difficult as this is to imagine — she simply wouldn't shag him.

There is no question that Homolka was betrayed. But I will not be suckered into feelings of sympathy for a killer who never showed a shred of pity for her victims. This would only reinforce the felon's insistent view of herself as a victim.

It may be true that Homolka was exploited by an individual with a distasteful agenda. It may be true that the Sun went way over the top with its gotcha! reportage. It may be true that those Montreal radio DJs who punked Homolka and Bordelais with a hoax interview are goofs — not journalists — who should be horsewhipped for making hilarity out of a woman who killed three teenage girls.