Ken and Barbie transcripts from court GRAPHIC

The Bernardo-Homolka crimes – apart from their impact on the victims and their families – had a wide-ranging impact long after the trials concluded. The videotapes showing the rape and murder of their victims were ordered destroyed by an Ontario court. Bernardo's lawyer Ken Murray, who initially retrieved the tapes from their hiding place in the Bernardo home, was charged in 1997 with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice for failing to turn the tapes over to police. Murray was acquitted of those charges in 2000.

In 1996, a government inquiry into the investigation of Bernardo found that police had made numerous mistakes, that rivalries among police agencies had further harmed the investigation, and that some of Bernardo's crimes might have been prevented if his DNA sample had been processed and matched more quickly.

Karla Homolka served her full 12-year sentence and was released from prison in 2005 under a series of judge-imposed conditions, including restrictions on her movement and a ban on any contact with anyone under the age of 16. Those conditions were overturned by another judge only months later, prompting criticism from the Mahaffy and French families. Homolka settled in Montréal, where she gave birth to a son in 2007.

Homolka then lived on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe under the name Leanne Bordelais – along with her new husband, Thierry (brother of her prison lawyer Sylvie Bordelais), and her then three children. In 2012, after being discovered in Guadeloupe by a Canadian journalist, Homolka returned to Québec.