Meet Kayla Bourque.
Originally from Yarmouth, N.S., she now lives in Calgary and posted this cute comment on her Facebook page Thursday morning: "My new diet is looking at pics of my ex until I lose my appetite."
Meet Kayla Bourque.
She lives in St. George, Utah, a city the same size as Prince George on the Arizona border. "Kaykay" attends Desert Hills High School. She likes country music and the TV cop drama Rookie Blue. Kayla also has the Twitter account @Kayla_Bourque.
Meet Kayla Bourque, the manager of the Krusty Krab restaurant in Church Point, La.
Meet Kayla Bourque, a high school student who lives in Jordan, N.Y., and used to work at the Krusty Krab but now works at Holilster. She's also on Twitter at @idkaylabri.
None of these Kayla Bourques are the Kayla Bourque who grew up in Prince George. Type that name into Google and this is what comes back: "Animal killer," "cat killer," "cat-killing sexual sadist," "vampire freaks" and "Vancouver's cutest psychopath."
And this isn't that other Kayla Bourque from Prince George, who is the same age and also now lives in Vancouver.
"She's a cat lover, she loves her family, she loves her friends," her grandmother Audrey told the Citizen in 2013. No doubt she still does.
Unfortunately, all of these Kayla Bourques, near and far, have been tarnished by that other Kayla Bourque, who has been back in custody since March for violating her bail conditions that required she stay off the Internet. The former Simon Fraser University student was convicted of killing her family cat and dog in 2009 when was 19. In 2012, she was sent to jail for a year for possession of a dangerous weapon, while charges of possessing child pornography were stayed. When she was released, a rare public warning was issued because of her high-risk of re-offending and she had a list of 46 conditions, one of them involved staying off the Internet.
This is not the first Kayla Bourque that Citizen readers met. A photograph of her was taken by The Citizen in 2003, working with her classmates at John McInnis Secondary to carve a totem pole. She looks no different than her classmates.
That's not how she is seen today.
Some of the comments on The Citizen website after this week's story include "...should be executed" and "Lock her up in prison and throw away the key."
It gets worse on Facebook:
"She never needs to see the outside again."
"Keep this scum behind bars."
"Sick bitch."
"Rot in hell bitch."
"I can take care of her."
Honestly not sure which is worse: a mentally-ill young woman torturing animals for sport or the online mob piling on an easy target for sport. Unclear how it improves this sad situation to call someone already behind bars misogynist names or to vaguely threaten to hurt them. Clearly these folks want to be seen by others speaking out in the harshest terms possible about what Bourque did so their comments can get the "thumbs up" on Facebook.
Bourque came to the attention of police after she told a fellow SFU student about her past crimes and her fantasies about killing a homeless person.
Did she tell the student because she was bragging or looking for an accomplice or because she knows she's dangerous and she was asking for help? Did she violate her conditions intentionally, knowing she'd be thrown back in jail? If she was truly evil, wouldn't she have stayed in the shadows?
Those questions force a consideration of Kayla Bourque as a person and potentially point to a young woman who has done the community a great service, protecting everyone from the violence fantasies plaguing her mind and the temptation to make those fantasies reality. If so, it's also a glimmer of hope from someone who doesn't want to be sick, doesn't want to hurt people or animals, but needs help so she doesn't.
Or maybe she is irreparably twisted and deviant, just like the TV shows and movies insist these kinds of villains are. Either way, the public anger and hate does no good except foster a false sense of superiority.
It also exposes the many other innocent Kayla Bourques to attacks from complete strangers that they don't deserve.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
