Article content continued

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

What was striking in the exchange between Bordelais and La Presse was not merely its tone-deafness, however, but just how utterly normal it all seemed: Here was a guy, returning home to his wife and three kids, pissed off to find reporters waiting for him in his driveway. Eventually he would go inside, maybe get something to eat, talk to his kids about their days and go to sleep beside one of the most reviled serial killers in Canadian history. Just like he had done every day for the past seven years.

It’s not unusual to hear of violent criminals attracting the attention of “serial killer groupies,” as they are colloquially called, or what is classified by psychology texts as those with “hybristophilia,” a sexual attraction to people who have committed violent crimes. Hybristophilia tends to affect more women than men and, according to at least one school of thought, can be explained as a consequence of a woman’s evolutionary drive to seek out a partner who can physically protect her offspring. Female admirers have reached out to notorious serial killers such as Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez and, so too, have some male admirers, including one who recently propositioned Rohinie Bisesar, the 40-year-old woman accused in the stabbing death in Toronto’s underground PATH system last year.

Despite this particular psychological explanation, some “serial killer groupies” claim that their attraction to certain criminals is bred not because of his or her violent past, but despite it. In a documentary TV series produced and directed by Errol Morris, true crime writer Sondra London adopts that position in attempting to explain her attraction to the “Gainesville Ripper” Danny Rolling, with whom she had a relationship while he was behind bars. When pressed by the interviewer about why she’s attracted to serial killers, London shoots back, saying, flatly: “That’s a lame question.” But when asked “Why the attraction to Danny Rolling?” she responds: “That’s different” and goes on to describe Rolling’s many endearing qualities, as if she was talking about any normal guy who didn’t happen to tape his victims’ mouths shut, stab them until they bled to death and mutilate their corpses.