In February 1999, three tourists visiting Yosemite Park vanished. A month later, their car was found in a remote area, containing the burned bodies of the woman and that of the family's 16-year-old Argentinan exchange student. The body of the woman's 15-year-old daughter was found days later.

Case information courtesy of http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/000221/3627797.html

Adrian Lacey sent me an email, giving some details of the Bernardo/Holmolka killings.

"I thought I would give some additional information on the Bernardo / Holmolka killings which this episode was based on. The best part of the episode was by far the allocution (sp?) at the end of the episode. In the real case, a similar deal was struck with the woman, and she had received 10 years in prison for her part in 2 murders and 2 years for the death of her sister. IN the Canadian media this is commonly refered to as " The deal with the Devil." With the judge in the episode throwing out the deal was really satisfying (for us Canadians, anyway.) Other similarities include the existence of photographs or videos ( the videos of the actual rapes have now been destroyed - as an aside, the families of the victims had to copyright the videos as "acting" to prevent these videos from being seen or heard if they were ever leaked. Only about 200 people have actually seen the videos, including jury, judges, lawyers. When they were played in court, the videos were not shown to the gallery, to the jury only.) Paul Bernardo was never in the videos, only Karla. She (reportedly) appeared to be enjoying herself while raping the two girls. Mr. Bernardo did also beat the crap out of Karla on several occasions; there are several photographs of her with massive black eyes and bruises."

Thanks, Adrian!