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Jean-Paul Gerbet is shown in this undated photo. Gerbet, Karla Homolka's jailhouse boyfriend, took the time to tidy up the house after strangling his ex-girlfriend. He then put Cathy Carretta's body in the trunk of a car, all his movements so seamless that her father didn't immediately notice anything at the home he shared with his daughter. Homolka's boyfriend
a predator, father says
By LuANN LaSALLE / The Canadian Press
MONTREAL - Karla Homolka's jailhouse boyfriend took the time to tidy up the house after strangling his ex-girlfriend.
Jean-Paul Gerbet then put Cathy Carretta's body in the trunk of a car, all his movements so seamless that her father didn't immediately notice anything out of place at the home he shared with his daughter.
If Christian Carretta had seen through Gerbet from the beginning, "he would have been back in France a long time ago."
Gerbet killed his 23-year-old daughter on Feb. 10, 1998, and was sentenced the following year to 10 years in prison.
Manipulative and narcissistic, he was careful to behave normally in public, Carretta said in an interview.
"He's got a split personality," he said of Gerbet. "He hid his game very well. He always tries to act well around people, men. He is a very good manipulator."
He also described Gerbet as "someone who depended on his parents" for his livelihood.
"It was only later I learned what he was really about," he said, adding he has since found out Gerbet had at least one violent relationship in his native France.
Gerbet, 39, met Homolka in the library of a minimum-security institution in Montreal in 2001. Carretta claims the pair has talked about settling down and marrying in France in the letters they've exchanged.
"It was like love at first sight," said a member of the Carretta family, who asked not to be named, of the relationship between Gerbet and Homolka. "What is she ready to do for him?"
Carretta said he fears Homolka will try to pursue the relationship with Gerbet through a third party despite a Quebec judge's orders last month that she must not consort with convicted criminals when she's freed from jail sometime between June 30 and July 4.
She faces a number of other restrictions, including checking in with police once a month and giving them four days' notice if she plans to leave Quebec.
Carretta said Gerbet, who had made a copy of the key to the family's home after his daughter ended the relationship, had his wits about him after he killed his daughter.
He describes a scene eerily similar to that in the Bernardo-Homolka home after they killed 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy in June of 1991. The girl's body lay in their root cellar as they entertained Homolka's family for a Father's Day dinner.
"He cleaned up the house," Carretta said of Gerbet's actions the day he killed his daughter. "I came home two or three hours after the murder and I saw absolutely nothing. I ate my lunch. He had put her body in the trunk of a car."
Gerbet had also taken his daughter's wallet to pay for gas and buy a bottle of vodka and then drove 150 kilometres, Carretta recalled.
"It wasn't a crime of passion, it wasn't someone who lost his head. He's a predator."
Gerbet is expected to be deported once he serves his sentence. The Carretta family says he could soon be out on parole.
Dan Kingsbury, a spokesman for Passport Canada, said privacy laws prevent him from commenting on individual passport applications and whether Homolka would be eligible for one.
