PART THREE ‘AND MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR CORPSE.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
PARTING COMPANY
‘When she went looking for someone to kill out there on those roads, it was her daddy she was really seeking to hurt.’
‘When she went looking for someone to kill out there on those roads, it was her daddy she was really seeking to hurt.’
Following Captain Steve Binegar’s appeal for information through the newspapers, calls began to pour in and, by mid-December 1990, detectives had a number of firm leads involving the two women suspects.
A man in Homosassa Springs, where Lee asked David Spears to drop her off, said that two women who fitted the composites had rented a recreational vehicle (RV) mobile home from him about a year earlier. After searching through his records, he came up with the names of ‘Tyria Moore’ and ‘Lee’.
A witness in Tampa said two women had worked at her motel south of Ocala, close to where Troy Burress was murdered. Their names, she said, were Tyria Moore and Susan Blahovec, and they let it be known they had bought an RV in Homosassa Springs. The informant remembered that the blonde Blahovec was the dominant of the duo, and she believed she was a truck-stop prostitute. She also told the police that both were lesbians.
The information from these two callers rang immediate alarm bells with the task force. David Spears, Homosassa Springs, RV trailer, two women. Troy Burress, Ocala, RV trailer, the same two women. The investigation was starting to pay off as previously tenuous links started coming together.
Meanwhile, the composite sketches published by the media of the red-lipped blonde with the stringy hair and her dark-haired, moon-faced companion in the baseball cap had been haunting Tyria for weeks. On Friday, 23 November, the day after Thanksgiving, Tyria returned to Florida where the two women met at the airport. Lee was accompanied by a friend called Donald Willingham who had given her a lift. Don had met Lee in a bar the previous year. They had played pool, shared a few drinks and gone their separate ways.
The plane arrived just after noon. Lee presented Tyria with Walter Gino Antonio’s engagement ring as a token of her love, and Don gave the women a ride back to the Fairview Motel where Lee asked him if he could come back a few days later to help them move their belongings. They were being evicted again. Lee pleaded with Tyria not to leave and, as another display of her love, the serial killer threw her nine-shot .22 into the brackish water of Rose Bay.
Upon his return on 3 December, Don asked the two women where they were going with their boxes and suitcase. ‘I guess we’ll have to put it in storage,’ said Lee, before explaining that her girlfriend was going back up north and they were splitting up.
Don took the women to the Greyhound bus station in Daytona where Tyria handed back the ring and they tearfully parted company. From there, he drove Lee to Jack’s Mini-Warehouse on Nova Road, where she deposited several cardboard boxes. The owners, Jack and Alice Colbert, rented the bin to Lee who was using the alias Cammie Greene. The cupboard, in building 43, hall number 1, bin G, was paid up until February.
From Jack’s Mini-Warehouse, they drove to Don’s house and had sex in bed.
‘In going to bed with her, did she charge you money?’ Willingham was asked during his deposition.
‘No. She didn’t charge me any money. I had been hauling her around. As a friend, really,’ he said.
Lee wheedled her way back into Rose McNeill’s affections and back into the Fairview Motel, asking to be moved into another room because number 8 held too many painful memories. Her possessions had now dwindled to a tan suitcase and the single key which opened the storage locker at Jack’s Mini-Warehouse.
At 12.05pm on Friday, 7 December, Lee, still using the alias Cammie Marsh Greene, once again visited the OK pawn shop in Daytona Beach. Her ticket, number 7529, shows that she received a paltry $20 for Walter’s engagement ring.
Now aged 34, but looking considerably older, Lee was mentally and physically almost washed up. Pining for her lost lover, she spent days on end brooding in her room. Out of money and not tricking, she had to leave. She took to the streets, sleeping where she could. If she found a john, and business was good, she would have the money to get a motel room for the night. However, business was not always good and life for Lee Wuornos had reached rock bottom.
The breakthrough for the investigators came from Port Orange near Daytona. Local police had picked up the trail of the two women and were able to provide a detailed account of the couple’s movements from late September to mid-December.
They had stayed, primarily, at the Fairview Motel in Harbor Oaks near Ormond-by-the-Sea where Lee registered as Cammie Marsh Greene. They spent a short time in a small apartment behind the Belgrade restaurant near the Fairview, but returned later to the motel. Then Wuornos, aka Blahovec, aka Greene, returned alone and stayed until 10 December. A national police computer check gave driver’s-licence and criminal-record information on Tyria Moore, Susan Blahovec and Cammie Marsh Greene. Tyria Moore had no record worth considering, breaking-and-entering charges against her in 1983 having been dropped. Blahovec had one trespassing arrest, while Greene had no record at all. Additionally, the photograph on Blahovec’s licence did not match the one for Greene.
The Greene ID was the one that finally paid off. Volusia officers checked pawn shops in the area and found that Cammie Marsh Greene had pawned the 35mm Minolta Freedom camera and a Micronta Road Patrol Radar Detector (both items owned by Richard Mallory). Few people even own a Radio Shack Radar Detector, so this combination sparked the detectives’ interest. In Ormond Beach, Lee had pawned a set of tools that matched the description of those taken from David Spears’s truck, although the police failed to recover these.
The thumbprint on pawn ticket number 3325 proved to be the key. Jenny Ahearn of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System found nothing on her initial computer search, but not one to be put off, she visited Volusia County with colleagues where they began a hand search of fingerprint records.
Within an hour, the team struck gold. The print showed up on a weapons charge and outstanding warrant against a Lori K. Grody. Her fingerprints matched a bloody palm print found in Peter Siems’s Sunbird. All of this information was sent to the National Crime Information Center, and responses came from Michigan, Colorado and Florida confirming that Lori K. Grody, Susan Blahovec and Cammie Marsh Greene were all aliases for one person: Aileen Carol Wuornos.
By now, Tyria was keeping her head down and was back living with her parents in Ohio. Lee was living rough when, on Wednesday, 19 December, she met a paunchy ex-marine named Dixie Mills at Wet Willie’s Bar on US 1. Both were drunk, and they shared a common reason to get plastered: Lee was grieving over her loss of Tyria, while Dixie was shattered because his wife had left him after just a few months of marriage.
Mills would later recall that Lee was a very intelligent woman. ‘We talked about a lot of things – from art to parapsychology to ancient history. I couldn’t believe I’d met another human being that had such awesome comprehension and knowledge.’ He found Lee to be a ‘wild, savage party animal’ with an insatiable desire for sex and alcohol. ‘There’s only two people I’ve ever met who have met the devil and shaken his hand,’ boasted Mills. ‘The one is me and the other is her.’
The two hellraisers stayed together until Christmas Eve, when Mills left Lee to return to his wife. On parting, he gave her $50.
Almost a year later, Mills recounted an entirely different story to the Globe newspaper.
‘It all started so innocently. But it turned into a nightmare. If I’d known what I was getting myself into, I would have run for my life. But I didn’t have a clue. On that first day, I was trying to drown my sorrows in beer at Wet Willie’s in Daytona Beach, and I saw this woman doing exactly the same thing down at the other end of the bar… that night, her troubles made her all the more appealing. We were both pretty down and out, and we desperately needed each other. Suddenly, she turned, looked deep into my eyes and said, “Dick, you and I are one – aren’t we.”’
Several days later, he said that Lee made him an offer. ‘Dick, I’ll be your wife if you pay me $500 a month.’
Mills went on to claim that he was ‘stunned’, and no way would he ever do such a thing. And, according to him, she revealed many of her secret fantasies, one of which entailed her being hooded while she was tied to a tree in a forest. Then ‘a guy would come up to her and rape her, and then shoot her in the head’. She told him that the killing would make her climax.
Apparently, and this is Mills’s side of the story, he took her to two family parties – one at Christmas and the other at his daughter’s house in Ohio. ‘On both occasions, she got blind drunk and insulted everybody. After that I offered her $500 if she stayed out of my life.’
Lee dismissed all of this to me, saying, ‘Yeah, I remember the guy. I stayed with him and he paid me for sex. He gave me $50 plus a few beers. I never went to no parties with him because he left me to get with his wife over Christmas. He was crying like a kid over his wife. Never met his daughter either. What man is going to introduce a hooker like me to his daughter when he is trying to get back with his wife? It is all bull.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE ARREST
Posing as leather-clad bikers, two under-cover detectives, Mike Joyner and Dick Martin, finally spotted Lee Wuornos at 9.19pm on Tuesday, 8 January 1991 and kept her under surveillance. A police report describes the events that led to her arrest.
A surveillance team was dispatched to the Daytona Beach area in search of Aileen Wuornos and Tyria Moore. On 01/08/91 a team of Officers inside the ‘Port Orange Pub’ on Ridgewood Avenue, Daytona, spotted Wuornos at that location. Undercover Officer Mick Joyner observed her with a tan suitcase which she carried from one location to another. Conversations with her and the observations of the undercover team were that she has mood swings from friendly and congenial to aggressive and abusive and is known to consume both Busch and Budweiser can beer and smoke Marlborough cigarettes. She told Mike Joyner that everything she had was in the suitcase and showed a key to him which she said was her life. (This was the key to her lock-up at the storage warehouse.) She then walked to the Last Resort Bar (where she had been sleeping rough on a yellow vinyl car seat outside of the premises). She spent the night in the bar with this suitcase. She hadn’t any place to stay and told Joyner that she had broken up with her girlfriend, Ty, and missed her. The surveillance continued until the evening hours of 01/09/91 at the Last Resort Bar. Intelligence revealed a large party was to occur at the bar that evening. Because of this, a decision was made that surveillance would be almost impossible.
So, the serial killer was drinking at the Port Orange Pub on Ridgewood Avenue in Harbor Oaks, about half a mile north of her favourite bar, The Last Resort, one of the many biker bars that line US 1. But the official police report does not indicate that their carefully planned operation to catch Aileen Wuornos almost went disastrously wrong.
While she was in the Port Orange Pub, two uniformed Port Orange police officers – to the dismay of the undercover cops – walked into the bar and took Lee outside. Joyner and Martin frantically telephoned their command post at the Pirate’s Cove Motel where authorities from six jurisdictions had gathered to bring the investigation to a head. They concluded that this development was not a leak but simply a case of alert police officers doing their jobs. Bob Kelly of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office called the Port Orange police station and told them not to arrest Lee under any circumstances. The word was relayed to the officers, who suddenly had a more pressing engagement to attend to, and Lee was allowed to return to the bar.
The action now shifted back to the two undercover detectives who struck up a conversation with Lee and bought her a few beers. She left the bar at around 10pm carrying a leather suitcase and declining the offer of a lift. Once again, the cautious arrest was almost ruined when two Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) officers pulled up behind Lee, following her with their lights off as she walked down Ridgewood Avenue. Police at the command post radioed the FDLE officers to back off, allowing Lee to proceed to The Last Resort.
Joyner and Martin met her at The Last Resort, drinking and chatting until midnight when she left. But she did not go far: Lee Wuornos spent her last night of freedom sleeping on an old yellow vinyl car seat under the tin-roof overhang of the bar.
Surveillance was planned to continue throughout the following day, but, when the police learned that a large number of bikers were expected for a party at the bar that evening, they decided further surveillance would be impossible. By simply donning a crash helmet, Lee could quite easily disappear among the hundreds of motorcyclists milling around at the party, and vanish for good. The decision was made to go ahead with the arrest.
Joyner and Martin asked her if she would like to use their motel room to clean up before the party. At first she was reluctant, but then she changed her mind and left the bar with them.
Outside, on the steps leading to the bar, Larry Horzepa of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office approached Lee and told her that she was being arrested on an outstanding warrant for Lori Grody, one of her many aliases. This related to the illegal possession of a firearm and no mention was made of the murders. The arrest was kept low key and no announcement was made to the media that a suspected serial killer had been arrested. Their caution was well advised, for as yet the police had no murder weapon – and no Tyria Moore.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN AILEEN WUORNOS’S CONFESSION – IN HER OWN WORDS
Tyria Moore was located on Thursday, 10 January by Major Dan Henry of Marion County Sheriff’s Department. She had fled her parents’ home and was living with her sister in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Once he had cleared any jurisdictional matters with the local police, Major Henry did something quite remarkable for a senior officer investigating a serial murder case. He booked into a local motel with one of his prime suspects, Tyria, and then he summoned Jerry Thompson of Citrus County and Bruce Munster of Marion County who flew to Scranton to interview her. In her possession were, among other things, a briefcase and clock radio identified as the property of Charles Humphreys, and other items the property of Curtis ‘Corky’ Reid.
In that motel room Tyria was informed of her rights but not charged with any offence or granted immunity. There was no plea-bargain deal either. Munster says he made sure she knew what perjury was, swore her in and sat back as she gave her statement. Within a short while she agreed to testify against Lee at trial, and she was involved with Munster, Henry and Binegar to sell her story for a television movie. Our three cops, having access to the entire investigation papers, would act as consultants.
Initially, Tyria told the police that she had ‘sort of known’ about the Mallory murder since Lee had arrived home with Richard Mallory’s Cadillac. Lee had openly confessed that she had killed a man that day, but Tyria had advised Lee not to say anything else. ‘I told her I don’t want to hear about it,’ she told the detectives. ‘And then, any time she would come home after that and say certain things, telling me about where she got something, I’d say I don’t want to hear it.’ Tyria had her suspicions, she admitted, but wanted to know as little as possible about Lee’s business. The more she knew, she reasoned, the more compelled she would feel to report Lee to the authorities. She did not want to do that. ‘I was just scared,’ she said, bursting into tears. ‘She always said she’d never hurt me, but then you can’t believe her, so I don’t know what she would have done.’
The next day, Tyria accompanied Munster and Thompson on their return to Florida to assist in the investigation. A confession from Lee would make the case virtually airtight, and Munster and Thompson explained their plan to Tyria on the flight. Putting her under 24-hour surveillance, they would register her into a Daytona motel and have her make contact with Lee in jail, explaining that she had received money from her mother and had returned to collect the rest of her things. Their conversations would be taped. She was to tell Lee that the authorities had been questioning her family and that she thought the Florida murders would be mistakenly pinned on her. Munster and Thompson hoped that, out of loyalty to Tyria, Lee would confess. Lee was aware, though, that the phone she was using was being monitored, and made efforts to speak of the crimes in code words, and to construct alibis.
The calls continued for three days. Tyria became even more insistent that the police were after her, and it became clear that Lee knew what was expected of her. She even voiced suspicion that Tyria was not alone, that someone was taping their conversations. But, as time passed, she became less careful about what she said. She would not let Tyria go down with her. ‘Just go ahead and let them know what you need to know… what they want to know or anything,’ she said, ‘and I will cover for you, because you are innocent. I’m not going to let you go to jail. Listen, if I have to confess, I will.’
Over the three days, there were 11 conversations, some of which follow in abridged form:
Operator: We have a call to Room 160 from Lee.
Moore: Uh, yes, go ahead.
Wuornos: Hey, Ty?
Moore: Yeah.
Wuornos: What are you doing?
Moore: Nothing. What the hell are you doing?
Wuornos: Nothing. I’m sitting here in jail.
Moore: Yeah, that’s what I heard.
Wuornos: How… what are you doing down here?
Moore: I came down to see what the hell is happening.
Wuornos: Everything’s copacetic. I’m in here for a… a… vi… uh… con… carrying a concealed weapon back in ’86… and a traffic ticket.
Moore: Really?
Wuornos: Uh huh.
Moore: Because there’s been officials up at my parents’ house asking some questions.
Wuornos: Uh oh.
Moore: And I’m getting sacred.
Wuornos: Hmmm. Well, you know, I don’t think there should be anything to worry about.
Moore: Well, I’m pretty damn worried.
Wuornos: I’m not going to let you get in trouble.
Moore: That’s good.
Wuornos: But I tell you what. I would die for you.
Moore: Would you?
Wuornos: Yes, I would. That’s the truth. I’ll gladly die for you. And I’ll just wait and see you on the other side. But you didn’t do anything. Are you really by yourself?
Moore: Yes, I am.
Wuornos: Aw, I’m so proud you work in a factory… What do you make?
Moore: Buckets.
Wuornos: Is it… is it boring?
Moore: Time goes by pretty fast. Four dollars fifty-five.
Wuornos: Oh, that’s cool. Good. I’m so happy for you. When I get this cleared out, I can’t wait to get out of here and get me another job and everything.
Moore: I know.
Wuornos: It is really mistaken identity. I’m telling you it is. I know it is. And I know it’s one of those girls or somebody at work must have said, Hey, those look like… that looks like Lee and Ty and everything else, you know. God, Ty, I miss you so much… we couldn’t pay the rent no more and everything. We had to go… that you had… it would… it was best for you to go back up and get… because I knew, I told you if you go up you’d find a job in a heartbeat… and I was thinking about going getting up there but I said, Shit, it’s snowing and stuff and there’s no sense in me going up there in the snow and everything when I didn’t really have any real good, you know, help or anything like that.
Moore: They’re coming after me. I know they are.
Wuornos: No, they’re not. How do you know that?
Moore: They’ve got to. Why are they asking so many questions then?
Wuornos: Honey, listen… do what you got to do, OK?
Moore: I’m going to have to because I’m not going to jail for something that you did. This isn’t fair. My family is a nervous wreck up there. My mom has been calling me all the time. She doesn’t know what the hell is going on.
Wuornos: I… listen, you didn’t do anything and I’m… I will definitely let them know that, OK?
Moore: You evidently don’t love me any more. You don’t trust me or anything. I mean, you’re going to let me get in trouble for something I didn’t do.
Wuornos: Tyria, I said, I’m not. Listen. Quit crying and listen.
Moore: I can’t help it. I’m scared shitless.
Wuornos: I love you. I really do. I love you a lot.
Moore: I don’t know whether I should keep on living or if I should…
Wuornos: I’m not going to let you go to jail. Listen, if I have to confess, I will.
Moore: Lee, why in hell did you do this?
Wuornos: I don’t know. Listen, did you come down here to talk to some detectives?
Moore: No. I came down here by myself. Just why in the hell did you do it?
Wuornos: Ty, listen to me. I don’t know what to say, but all I can say is self-defence… Don’t worry. They’ll find out it was a solo person, and I’ll just tell them that, OK?
Moore: OK.
Wuornos: And you’ll be scot-free. You didn’t do anything. All you did was work, eat and sleep. You never were around.
Moore: But, Lee, I knew for a year about the first one, at least. I mean, that’s a hell of a long time.
Wuornos: I don’t know. I think that you didn’t know. I think I pretty much left you out of that.
Moore: No, you didn’t. You came right out and told me about that one, and then I saw it on the news.
Wuornos: Ty, what do you want to do? Go to prison? Tell them everything. Although… it… I told you everything just before you left. You were thinking about turning me in.
Moore: When you did it the first time, I should have said something and…
Wuornos: Well, you were confused and scared, Ty.
Moore: I know I was.
Wuornos: You’re not the one and I’m not going to let you go down on something you didn’t do. I love you too much to do that. I love you more than… I love you right next to God… You know what? I’m going to tell you something.
Moore: What?
Wuornos: When I die, my spirit’s going to follow you and I’m going to keep you out of trouble and shit and, if you get in an accident, I’ll save your life and everything else. I’ll be watching you. I probably won’t live long, but I don’t care. Hey, by the way, I’m going to go down in history.
Moore: What a way to go down in history.
Wuornos: No, I’m just saying… if I ever write a book, I’m going to have… give you the money. I don’t know. I just… let me tell you why I did it, all right?
Moore: Mmm.
Wuornos: Because I’m so… fucking in love with you, that I was so worried about us not having an apartment and shit, I was scared that we were going to lose our place, believing that we wouldn’t be together. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth… I just hope you find somebody that loves you as much as I do. I don’t want you to live alone all the rest of your life. You’re a good person.
Moore: After you, I may live by myself for the rest of my life.
Wuornos: Ty, I don’t want them messing with you. You go first and then I’ll tell them. OK? I’d rather have you with your parents. Alrighty? I just wish… I never went… met Toni. Because Toni turned me into a lesbian… then I fucked up because I… see, when I have somebody I love them all the way and I love them with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind. And I’ll do anything. I go nuts.
Moore: You turned me against everybody. I won’t trust a person for the rest of my life.
Wuornos: I love you very much.
Moore: I know that.
Wuornos: Will you get over me?
Moore: Yeah… I don’t think it’ll be any problem at all.
Wuornos: OK. I’m sorry. I know this hurts. It is hurting you a lot. It hurts me because I don’t have a family and I’m thinking about you. And you got a family. I know. I wish I had you so I could hold you and hug you and kiss you and tell you how much I’m sorry. Here is a kiss… OK, I’m going to eventually confess. What time do you check out? There’s a tap on the phone.
Moore: Eleven… really?
Wuornos: Yep.
Moore: I didn’t even hear it.
Wuornos: I heard a little tick.
Moore: Well, I’m getting ready to leave so, if you want to go ahead and get it over with, go for it.
‘I was sure it was being taped,’ Lee said later. ‘The way she was talking. I felt it. The way she was able to come back to Florida so quickly. She was staying in a motel for $50 a night. Where’d she get $50 a night? But she kept crying, “They’re going to destroy me. I might as well kill myself. I need you to talk to the cops so they’ll leave me alone.” So I went and told the police that she had nothing to do with the crimes. But I also told them 37 times that it was in self-defence.’
Lee did have one friend at the Volusia County Branch Jail. Marjorie Bertolani was a jail officer who befriended Lee; in her depositions, she recalled the conversations she had with her.
‘What did she inform you?’
‘I told my corporal, you know, that Ms Wuornos wanted to speak to me. She looked really upset. So Corporal Cresta let me inside the block. When I got to the sally port she had gone to the telephone. She signalled for me to come in. I went over to a couple of other girls that were by a table. Ms Wuornos was on the telephone. She was very upset…
‘I was going to go ahead and leave again and Ms Wuornos got off the phone and signalled for me to come over to the table. And I sat down with her at the day-room table. She was sobbing. She was very, very upset. She asked me if I… she said she had done something terrible, and she wanted to get something off her chest. She asked me if I was a Christian. I told her, yes, I was.
‘She proceeded to tell me that she had done some bad things. And she was one of the people that was wanted on these murders. And I just kind of… I really didn’t know much about the case. I knew she was our mystery guest, you know. We just treat them like anybody else.
‘She told me she had this lover named Tessie. She had nothing to do with the murders. And they had gotten drunk one night, and she had said something to this girl, and that she wanted to confess. And I asked her if she had an attorney. She said, “No.” I said, “Well, I suggest you get yourself one.” I told her, “You know, anything that you said to me I have to tell to my supervisors.”
‘She said, “Well, I wanted to get it off my chest,” and she would speak to anybody, investigators, police, anybody. She said she wanted to go to heaven. She was afraid she wouldn’t go to heaven. That’s why she was telling me. That’s why she wanted to confess to someone.’
‘What shift were you working that day?’
‘Eight to four shift.’
‘This occurred at what time?’
‘This was about ten o’clock.’
‘In the morning?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Had she, to your knowledge, up to that point been pulled from her cell and taken to any other area of the jail?’
‘You mean like to be questioned or something?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, not at all. Nobody bothered her at all.’
‘Was she, to your knowledge, taken later that day?’
‘Yes, she was.’
‘The block that she was in, they have a telephone inside that area?’
‘Yes, they do.’
‘And they can make collect calls out of there?’
‘Yes, sir. She was trying to get hold of this Tessie. I don’t believe she got hold of her that day. She was really upset. I don’t know who else she had called.’
‘You’re saying that she was visibly upset. Was she crying?’
‘Yes, she was sobbing.’
‘For longer than a brief moment?’
‘For the whole time I was at the table she was. She asked me what I would do. I said, “I’d ask for forgiveness, you know. I’d forgive myself.” Because she was really very, very upset. Of course, anybody that upset we really watch for suicidal tendencies.’
‘Her emotional state was enough to at least concern you?’
‘Yes, it was. She told me she had killed six, not ten.’
‘Where did the figure ten come from?’
‘I had no idea, sir. She said, “I killed six, I did not kill ten.”’
‘Did you at any point in time during that contact with her – you’re familiar with Miranda warnings…?’
‘Yes, sir. I just told her that she had the right to counsel before she even, you know… after she had said… I said, “Well, you should have an attorney. You should be telling this to an attorney.” She said she wanted to get it off her chest, and she would talk to anyone. She said, “I’ll talk to investigators, I’ll talk to detectives. I want to get it off my chest. I want to go to heaven.” She kept crying.’
‘Did she describe any conversations she may have had recently with this Tessie?’
‘Only that she loved her very much, and that she was a Christian and goes to church a lot, and had nothing to do with it, and really hated to see her go through this; and “she’d probably never talk to me again”. Her words.’
‘In talking about this situation, wanting to talk to someone, based on what she is telling you, why did she seem to want to get this off her chest?’
‘Because she said she was a Christian. She said she had really studied the Bible before. She wanted to go to heaven. She was afraid she was not going to heaven. She said they were going to give her the electric chair.’
‘Did she mention anything about wanting to protect this Tessie?’
‘No. She said she had nothing to do with it. She had told her about something in one of those episodes that she had had. She was drunk, in a drunken state, and she had confessed this. And Tessie really didn’t know anything about it.’
‘Did it seem important to her to want to make sure people knew that Tessie didn’t have anything to do with it?’
‘Not really. It was more like she wanted to go to heaven. She was more worried about that.’
Shortly after 10am on Wednesday, 16 January 1992, Lee met investigators Lawrence Horzepa of Volusia County and Bruce Munster of Marion County. Her interview was both video and audio recorded. Her love for Tyria was such that she had to clear her lover’s name; if she did confess, maybe she would go to heaven.
Lee was appointed two Volusia County assistant public defenders, Raymond Cass and Donald Jacobsen, but it was in the presence of assistant public defender Michael O’Neill that she confessed to the murders of Richard Mallory, David Spears, Charles Carskaddon, Peter Siems, Troy Burress, Walter Gino Antonio and Charles Humphreys. For the moment, however, she would go it alone.
The two detectives knew they were on a knife edge with this first interview. Even though Tyria was in a position to have been an accessory after the fact, she would not now face prosecution. However, the officers, from past experience, knew that the best-laid plans often fail. If Lee changed her mind in a pique, going public that Tyria was equally as responsible as she was, there would be a national uproar. But they had an ace up their sleeve. Unbeknown to Lee, they knew how desperately she loved Tyria Moore. She would die for her.
Nevertheless, the cops had to be on their best behaviour. They plied her with coffee and cigarettes, and gave her a warm jacket to wear in the chilly office. With such attention, linked to her need to protect her former lover, the only true love in her otherwise loveless life, and seemingly a desire to find favour with the Lord – a sentiment which she later spat upon – Lee’s confession poured from her like a torrent.
Bruce Munster began the interrogation. Here are excerpts from the pertinent areas:
Munster: What I’m going to do is I’m going to preface the tape so that there isn’t any doubt about anything that’s going on. I’ll be straight up front with you if you’ll be straight up front with me, OK?
Wuornos: I would like to know if I wanted to… if I wanted to be straight up with one thing right here and now?
Munster: Sure.
Wuornos: The reason I’m confessing is there’s not another girl. There is no other girl. The girlfriend of mine is just a friend. She is working all the time and she… she worked at the Casa del Mar. She was always working. She was not involved with any of this… and the person that was murdered. She didn’t know it was… until after the car was wrecked. See, she didn’t know anything. She’s really, really a good person, an honest person, a working person and she doesn’t do anything wrong. She doesn’t do drugs and all that stuff. She’s a real decent person that works a lot. She was my… my… roommate.
Horzepa: OK, so then what you’re telling us is you’re voluntarily coming forward to talk to us now.
Wuornos: Yeah. To let you know that I’m the one that did the killings.
Horzepa: OK. Munster: OK. Now, let me read you your rights, OK? You have the right to remain silent. The constitution requires that I so inform you of this right and you do not talk to me if you do not wish to do so. You do not have to answer any of my questions. Do you understand that?
Wuornos: Yes.
Munster: If you want an attorney to be present at this time or any time hereafter you are entitled to such counsel. If you cannot afford to pay for counsel, we will furnish you with counsel if you so desire. Do you understand that?
Wuornos: What does counsel mean?
Munster: An attorney.
At this point Lee started to cry.
Wuornos: Well, what’s an attorney going to do? I… I know what I did. I’m confessing what I did and go ahead and put the electric chair to me… I should never have done it. See, most of the times I was drunk as hell and I was a professional hooker and these guys would take my offer. I’d give them a little shit sometimes, you know, and so when they started getting rough with me, I went… I just opened up and fired at them. Then I thought to myself, Why are you giving me such hell for when I just… I’m just trying to make my money… and you’re giving me a hassle.
At this point, the interview stopped while Lee regained her composure.
Wuornos: I don’t understand why I would have… what would an attorney do? Help me from keeping… getting the death penalty?
Munster: I don’t know that.
Wuornos: I don’t know. I don’t know that either.
Munster: It’s your decision, Lee, I can’t make it for you.
Wuornos: If I did get the death penalty, do they stick you in a little room all the time? Munster: I don’t know. I don’t know.
Wuornos: I’m a good person inside, but when I get drunk, I don’t know what happens when somebody messes with me. When somebody hassles me, I mean, I’m like, don’t fuck with me.
Munster: Yeah.
Wuornos: I mean anybody would be like that. And… in other words, really deep inside I was going to… when I was a little girl I always wanted to be a nun. And when I got older, I wanted to be a missionary, and I really got into… then I had some back problems. Then I fell in love with somebody and I had bad… when I love somebody, I love them all the way. But what I did, I don’t understand why I did it. I just don’t. I just know that they… they kind of gave me a hassle. When somebody gave me a hassle, I decided to whip out my gun and give it to them. Of course I didn’t really want to kill them in my heart, but I knew I had to. Because I knew, if I left some witness, then they’d find out who I was and then I’d get caught. I have to tell. I have to tell the truth.
When gently pressed further, Aileen started to open up while Munster and Horzepa wisely kept quiet. As any first-rate interrogator knows, they would have to listen to claptrap before they got to the most important issues at hand. Allow the suspect to waffle on and on before getting to the nub of the matter – a straight confession to multiple homicide.
Wuornos: And I just… I wanted to tell it… All I… I want to confess. I don’t want my girlfriend in trouble. She doesn’t deserve to go to prison or anything because she doesn’t know… she knows stuff of what I said in drunken spews, but she was not there. She did not know nothing and she did not… you know, she didn’t… she couldn’t believe me, I mean, if she… if she wanted to believe me, I’m sure she couldn’t hardly believe me, is what I’m saying. And she loved me. And I loved her. And she was like, I can’t believe me, is what I’m saying. And she loved me. And I loved her. And she was like, I can’t believe you would do something like this. So… I just want her to be very, very… I am doing this because I don’t want… I love her very much and she’s so sweet and so kind and so innocent. She’s just a real sweet girl. You know, I don’t want her to get into trouble. Because she didn’t do anything. See, I was… she was at work. Casa del Mar. While I was going out and hooking. I would hitchhike. A guy would pick me up and I’d ask if they were interested in helping me out because I’m trying to make rent money, you know. And they’d say how much and I’d say 30 for head, 35 straight, 40 for half and half, 100 an hour. And they, you know, then they’d say, well, I’ll take this or whatever and then, now… I’m telling you, I’ve dealt with a hundred thousand guys. But these guys are the only guys who gave me a problem and they started giving me a problem just… this year… the year that went by. So, I at the time, I was staying with some guy and I noticed he had some guns and I ripped off his .22, a nine-shot deal. And I carried that around while I was thumbing around – I couldn’t believe the cops never searched me. I got… I got a message for the cops. You see a hitchhiker? Search them. They would never search me. And, uh, uh, anyway, so when I’d get a hassle, if the person would give me my money and I… I wouldn’t do nothing to them. But if the person gave me my money and then started hassling me, that’s when I started taking retaliation. But I was… she was at work while I’d be in Ocala or Homosassa or… or, shoot, sometimes Fort Myers. I’d leave for sometimes a couple of days. It didn’t happen too often. But I would and I’d come back with a wad of money. She knew I was tricking, but she thought I was doing it decently, honestly. And I’d say I made a lot of money because I was… been gone for a while. She didn’t know I killed somebody. See what I’m saying? And then when she found out that I did, she left. She took off and went back home. I told her to go home. You’ve got something to do. Just go and leave. Get out of my life. Because I don’t want you involved. She didn’t do anything. Yeah, she said, yeah, and she started hating me. I don’t blame her. She said, it’s easy to hate you. It’s easy to get over you. And I lost someone very dear in my life that I cared about. And I loved her with all my heart. I just wish I never would have done this shit. I wish I never would have got that gun. I wish to God I was never a hooker. And I just wish I never would have done what I did. I still have to say to myself, I still say that it was in self-defence. Because most of them either were going to start to beat me up or were going to screw me in the ass… and I’d… as I’d get away from them I’d run to the front of the car or jump over the seat or whatever, grab my gun and just start shooting. Which they would be out of the car. Most of them would be nude because they took their clothes off, see. And then they didn’t, you know, didn’t think about running back to the car or anything. I would start shooting out… from out of the car, shoot at them. Did they find any prints on the car that was, uh, the wrecked one?
Munster: Yes.
Wuornos: Did they find that Tyria’s prints and my prints were on it?
Munster: Yes.
Wuornos: OK. So that’s why I’m confessing because, see, she didn’t know it was a car by a victim. She just thought I had… somebody loaned it to me. And we just went around and driving around all the time and drinking and driving. And then I told her I was too drunk and I asked her if she wanted to drive and then she had a… she said OK, so she… we’re driving down the road and she was going a little too fast and I told her to slow down and she couldn’t control the curve and that’s when we wrecked. Then I went through the fence, got in the back of the car after it was wrecked, went through the fence, drove it down the road while it was still smashed to hell. I had blood all over my shoulder and shit and then I told her, I said, ‘Listen, I’m going to tell you something.’ She said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘We can’t let the cops know anything right now. This is a cop car. I killed somebody, Ty.’ She said, ‘What!’ I said, ‘I killed somebody.’
The officers nodded their heads in sympathetic agreement. Smiling warmly, Munster lit Lee another cigarette and passed it into Lee’s trembling fingers. Lee took a long draw on the cigarette and sighed.
Wuornos: Even if she knew – which Ty did – most of the times I would tell her shit off the wall when I’m drunk. I think when I’m drunk, I get crazy. And if I told her something I told her like… OK, because remember the guy with the red car… carpet? [Charles Mallory]. That was found under the red carpet on 90… uh, US 1? That was me. OK, I told her, I said, I came home and I said, ‘I was riding my bicycle and I stopped in the woods and dropped it off and I found a guy under a carpet.’ And I told her that. She said, ‘What!’ And I said I found a guy underneath a carpet. Then later on, when I was really drunk, and it’s like truth serum or something, I told her I killed him. But I don’t know if she could believe it or not. But she was pretty much like, ‘No, you’re kidding.’ And I was, ‘Yeah, I did.’ But then I don’t… can’t say that I really said that I really meant it because I don’t remember because I’d be drunk but I’d be telling her stuff and she didn’t… wouldn’t want to believe it, see. Uh… so, what I’m saying is that, even though I might have said something to her, she didn’t really know the truth. She’s very innocent. Really. She’s not… look at Casa del Mar. Tyria Moore’s her name, she worked there all the damn time, all the time this stuff was happening and when I… the last person who got hurt, she was up in Ohio. She is innocent. It was me. I can tell you… blow by blow, as much as I can, everything. I’m being as honest as I can. And she’s… I told her if anybody comes to talk to you, just be as honest as you can be. Tell them that I told you or anything, because you are very innocent of this stuff and I don’t want you to get in trouble for it because you didn’t do anything. I may have told you stuff when I was drunk and everything else, but you didn’t know if you believed me or not because… And she said, ‘But I… I remember you taking a car and we were moving our stuff.’ I said, ‘I know, but remember when I told you I was borrowing it? She said, ‘No, I don’t remember that.’ I said, But… I… and… but… I don’t know. It’s all I can say is I know that she did… she… she’s innocent. That’s what I am saying. She’s not partake… she did not partake in any of this. And… if… only thing that she would partake in anything, it would be knowing… it would be my lips saying to her something and she didn’t know if she could believe me or not, is what I’m saying. See, she was… she was very innocent.
Munster: And I hope you won’t lie to me. OK?
Wuornos: Oh, I’m telling you the truth all the way.
Munster: So we can… we can sit here… we can sit here and wait till your attorney comes. We don’t need to talk about the case or anything till you all come to some decision.
Wuornos: I don’t care. I mean… I’m… like I been saying, I don’t… I don’t mind talking… I want this all… I’m telling you from the bottom of my heart, I’m telling you the truth about everything. I mean I can’t be any truthfuller. I’m telling you, with… God by my side, I’m telling you the truth. So, don’t worry. I’m telling you the truth, honest. I just got… I mean… this isn’t a joke… I didn’t mean to giggle there. I’m… I’m being very honest. That’s all I can say. I… the only reason I’m doing this is because… number one, I’m guilty, number two, my girlfriend is not. She doesn’t… didn’t know anything. She was never around at the time that I… hurt these people. She was at work. She’d work, eat, sleep, come home and that was it. She’s a very good person. She doesn’t do drugs. She might drink a little beer now and then, but that’s it. And she’s a real sweet person and she doesn’t deserve to get harmed in this because she didn’t do anything. And that’s another reason I’m confessing. Because they were looking for two women and I want to straighten it out that she was with me with the car, but she didn’t know the car belonged to somebody that was murdered… until after the wreck. And I told her, I said, ‘Man, Ty, I’ve got to tell you something.’ You know, in my mind. So I said, ‘Ty,’ you know, I said, ‘get in the bushes, man,’ you know, because I knew some cars were coming, and so she got in the bushes and she… she said, ‘What the… what the fuck is the deal?’ I said, ‘I got to tell you something,’ and I said, ‘I killed somebody.’ She said, ‘What!’ I said, ‘I killed somebody, man. This car is somebody I killed.’ ‘You idiot! What are you, crazy? Why did you do that?’ and all that stuff. So, anyway, I told her we got to get out of here because I don’t want you to get into trouble, you know, you… you… know you didn’t do anything and, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, you know, and all this stuff. So I told her to hide in the bushes every time a car went by. So, finally we started walking down the road and then those paramedics were trying… came by the road with a fire truck I think. And then we told them that we were hitchhiking… two guys… I lied… I did all the talking. I said to two guys who picked us up and we got in a wreck and they… no, wait… no I didn’t… I said two guys picked us up and they dropped us off and we’re on our way to Daytona and they told us this is where, you know, you can get to Daytona… and this… but, it was the wrong road and all that stuff. And, uh, so then I told them, you know, we got to get going.
Horzepa: The only way that we can begin to talk to you again about the cases is if you wish to voluntarily come to us and say, Look, I no longer want an attorney. I want to go ahead and talk about these things. But since you have invoked your right to the attorney…
Wuornos: Yeah, because maybe an attorney can help me because I know…
Horzepa: And we can’t talk to you.
Wuornos: Yeah, because I know that it wasn’t… I, in my heart, I know I self-defended myself so maybe I need an attorney.
Horzepa: OK.
Munster: Did you contact one, Larry?
Horzepa: Yes.
Munster: One going to come down?
Horzepa: Yes.
Wuornos: Yeah, I know… I know that I have to defend myself because if I didn’t, he probably would have hurt me, killed me, raped me or whatever. Beause I’m telling you, I’m serious. I have gone through at least 250,000 guys in my life at least. And never hurt any of them. Matter of fact, I became very good friends with them, you know, and they really liked me. And they always wanted to see me again and stuff, but I always gave them the wrong phone number because I didn’t really want to be always having calls or I didn’t have a phone anyway. So I’d give them the wrong number and stuff so… but, I mean it, I… what I’m trying to say is I never would have hurt anybody unless I had to, and I had to at the time. So yeah, I guess I need an attorney… you know I really suck.
Munster and Horzepa were, they thought, on to a winning streak. They had manoeuvred themselves into the position of being the principal detectives when other officers were far better qualified to take the lead roles. This rankled with their colleagues who accused them of being ‘office seats’ and not good front-line investigators.
During her confession to Larry Horzepa and Bruce Munster, Lee returned again and again to two themes: she wanted to make it clear that Tyria Moore was not involved in any of the murders, and she was emphatic in her assertion that nothing was her fault, neither the murders nor the circumstances that had shaped her life as a criminal. She claimed that all the killings were acts of self-defence. Each victim had either assaulted, threatened or raped her. Her story seemed to evolve and take on a life of its own as she related it. When she thought she had said something that might be incriminating, she would back up and retell that part, revising the details to suit her own ends. Lee claimed to have been raped several times over the years and decided it was not going to happen again. In future, when a customer became aggressive, she killed out of fear.
Wuornos: I’m very, very… I have to admit I’m scared about all this. I mean, I am very scared. I wouldn’t have confessed if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t want my girlfriend involved. I mean, I don’t know, because I’ve thought about it many times, but I don’t want her involved. Because she’s not involved. I mean, you can ask her questions and stuff but she didn’t know anything, she wasn’t around and I’m telling you, I love her very much to the max, is what I’m trying to say. I love her deep down inside very much. She’s a Chr– well, she’s not a Christian but she goes to… she used to go to a church and she just worked, ate and slept and watched videos at home, or watched TV, Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy or whatever, and movies. She never did anything else. Have… pop open a few beers because she’s not in… she’s not guilty. And I’m willing to take the punishment because I’d rather confess that I did it so she won’t have to… I… in other words, she doesn’t deserve any punishment. She didn’t do anything. I don’t know how to express myself on this. I don’t want you to think I’m doing it because I love her and am trying to protect her or something, because I’m not. I’m doing it because I love her and she’s not guilty. She didn’t do anything. I’m being very wide open and honest. It’s a very frightening thing for me to do… but I told her I’m a bum. I don’t… she was crying her eyes out. My family’s getting all messed up. She… I didn’t do anything. ‘You got me involved in all this jazz because of the car that you got wrecked.’ Um… ‘You need to go and tell them that you did it and get me straightened out on this.’ And I said, ‘Yes, Ty, OK, I will.’ And that’s why I’m doing this. Because I don’t need her family or her getting messed up for something that I did. Hmmm. I know I’m going to miss her for the rest of my life. She’s a real good person. So sweet and kind.
With Lee’s attorney on his way to the jail, she could not resist another long, rambling dialogue which was intended to portray Tyria Moore as a saint:
Wuornos: Oh, you guys, really… you can out me under hypnosis, you can take a lie-detector test, do whatever you can to make me show you that Ty does not know… did not do anything. Honestly. I am being so honest, I can’t be any honester than I am. She… she’s just a good girl that met… got messed up with a creep like me. I met her at Zodiac a long time ago. Three years of good friendship and being just… loving each other and I screwed up the last year. I asked her, I said, ‘If I never done this would you have stayed with me?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ And so… I said, ‘I guess you can… you can hate me now.’ She said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘It’s not hard to do.’ I said, ‘Do you love me a little bit?’ She said, ‘I guess I do feel a little bit for you because, you know, I guess after three years you can still have a little love for me.’ I said, ‘But, yeah, I guess, go ahead and hate me because it’ll be easier for me to get over you and you get over me.’ But I don’t have anybody, no family or nothing. She was my only friend in the whole world and that’s why I loved her so much. But I loved because of her honesty. She never stole. My goodness, I got to tell you something. She was working at a Laundromat, and she found $125 in quarters in the back of the washer. She could have kept the money, but, no, she gives it to the people, gives it them back. And we were hard up for rent then. We needed rent money real bad. So I went out and made some money real quick. Then, I… when she was working as a manager at this Laundromat, I said, ‘Ty, let me see 50 cents,’ because there’s quarters in the Laundromat, right? ‘Ty, let me see 50 cents. I’m going go get a soda.’ We lived three blocks from the place. She said, ‘Hell, no.’ She said, ‘Go home and get the money. I’m not going to let you use any of this money.’ Would you believe that they fired her, saying that she had taken some $600? But there was another guy who was working there and he died of cancer. And then there was another girl that was some kind of biker chick from Canada that would take over… uh… little… you know, for an hour or two… and I think they’re the ones that stole the money. And she got fired for that and she did not take it, because, Honey, I… I mean, I mean… I’m thinking of her… and when I talk to her… I’d be with her all the time and we needed rent money, I had to go out and hustle for it. There’s no way she took it. You see what I’m saying? She’s a very honest person. I guess because we are lesbians, they’d always mess with us. She got fired at the Casa del Mar because we are lesbians. I know that’s what the reason is. He’s from Iran and, yeah, he didn’t like the idea that he wouldn’t… he couldn’t get a piece of ass from her. Kept trying to get a piece of ass from all the girls at work. Yeah. He’s the boss, you know. And so finally he said, ‘Well, I knew it was coming to fire you.’ And, she wouldn’t give, you know, she’s not going to… she’s real sweet and innocent. She ain’t going to. God, she’s in love with me, you know what I’m saying? We didn’t even have sex hardly. We had sex, I’d say, the first year, maybe three times and the next years, we didn’t even have sex together. We were just friends. Just good friends. Hugging, kissing, but we were good friends. You know. So… that’s why I’m saying… that’s why I’m confessing because she’s… shit, she wouldn’t deserve anything because she didn’t do anything, you know. I don’t want her in trouble… for something that I honestly did. I know right now it’s easy for me to confess. I know right now it’s easy for me to say everything honestly now, when I get back to the cell I’ll probably cry my eyes out. I’ll go through a lot of hell, through court and everything else. I’ll take a major toll in this. I understand. So, I know it’s very frightening for me to confess. Because I know I’m probably looking at death, I’m possibly looking at life imprisonment. I don’t know what I’m looking at, but I know one thing, I just want to get right with God again and give this… I’ll put my trust with the Lord and with the people here so everybody knows. I am so sorry… I mean I… I realise I don’t have a family so I don’t, sorry…
Lee paused. Tears were now streaming down her face.
Wuornos: I mean I… I realise I don’t have a family so I don’t understand. But when I… after I’m… seeing Ty’s family and everything… I have never met the family but noticing how Ty was on the phone and stuff, I realise now how badly I used to hurt some families. And the re– now… I… these… these men were older men… another thing after they were dead that didn’t bother me because I thought, Well, they’re older. They probably don’t have anybody hardly anyway so it didn’t worry me too much. But I didn’t kill them for that reason. I killed them because they tried to do something to me. But I think that, Well, they’re old, their father and mother’s probably deceased and so why worry about it and stuff, I don’t know. Creaky spots in my head, I guess. [More sobs] I wish to God… I wish I hadn’t done it. Not that I’m feeling sorry for myself for what I’m going to play, I’m saying I wish I never had the gun, I wish I never, ever hooked and I wish I never would have met those guys. Because I wouldn’t have had to do what I did if I hadn’t been hooking, see. It’s because of hustling, and the guy’s going to physically harm me, that I have to harm him back. You see what I’m saying? Yeah. Beause if I wasn’t hustling, if I wasn’t hooking around, I would have never had a physical problem and I wouldn’t have never had to hurt anybody. And I do have to say one thing, their families must realise that no matter how much they loved the people that died, no matter how much they love them, they were bad people because they were going to hurt me. So they have to realise the fact, that this person, no matter how much they loved them or how good they felt they were, this person was either going to physically beat me up, rape me or kill me. And I don’t know which one. And I just turned around and did my fair play before I would get hurt, see? So, I would love to say to the families. I mean, that guy’s going to… You stupid bitch. You killed my husband or whatever, you know. Or my brother or something. And I’d just have to say to them, ‘Listen, what are they going to do to me…’ I would be probably turning around if I survived it, and say, ‘You stupid bastards. You almost killed me, you almost raped me, you almost beat the shit out of me.’ So, you know, that’s how I have to look at it. I have to look at it like that, too. So I can’t really say that they were sweet… You know, I know that these guys… one guy had a weapon with him. He had a .45 and I… it was dark and he didn’t know where he put it… this is the weapon that I sold. And, uh, I don’t know where he put it. But I didn’t know he had a weapon, see, I had no idea he had a weapon, but when he started shitting on me that’s when I grabbed my gun and I started shooting. And when I was done shooting him, and I went through the car, and there was the .45 sitting on top of the hood. I think he was going to take the gun and blow my brains out. So that’s… another case. And that’s… I honestly have to say, if you’re hooking don’t do it. I mean, I could help people out so bad because I think I had… I have six chan— I had six times I almost got killed. And I killed the person, see. And I’m being very honest. Now, to recollect all this stuff is going to be hard. Because a lot of times I was drunk… and after I’d done it, you know, I’d go and get drunk so, wow, to remember everything is going be a little bit difficult. I don’t even know their names. I can’t even remember their names.
After a break for coffee and cigarettes, Lee was introduced to Michael O’Neill, the attorney from the Volusia County Public Defender’s Office. Now the police could continue in earnest. On numerous occasions O’Neill advised her to stop talking, finally asking in exasperation, ‘Do you realise these guys are cops?’ Lee answered, ‘I know. And they want to hang me. And that’s cool, because maybe, man, I deserve it. I just want to get this over with.’
Horzepa: How many men have you actually shot and murdered? Shot and killed?
Wuornos: Six. All I can remember.
Horzepa: Six… six men that you remember?
Munster: You forgot about the one [inaudible]. That makes seven.
Wuornos: No, because I only did six.
Horzepa: OK.
Munster: Well, we’ll go over those six first.
Wuornos: Right. I think there’s only six.
Horzepa: OK.
Wuornos: I know… I think it’s six.
Horzepa: OK, well… we’ll go ahead now.
Wuornos: OK, yeah, because… because if you showed me all the pictures of the guys, I can tell you, and if you show me a picture of a guy that… you know, if there’s a seventh guy, I can tell you if I did or not because… I’m being very honest with you, as much as possible. I mean I am telling you the absolute, honest to God, so help me Lord, strike me with lightning in my heart right now, if I’m not telling you the truth.
Lee then went on to ramble for two minutes about how innocent Tyria was and what a sweet young innocent she had been while Lee had been out killing men. Then she was stopped short and asked when she aimed her shots.
Wuornos: I think I probably… it was… I always shot somebody, if I could, you know, as fast as I could, it would always hit right around this area. [She indicated to the centre of her chest.] Up here, right over… I always aimed to the mid-section so I know I shot them… usually it would be we both got naked and I was going to do an honest deed but I had a big fight. They… they were either going to physically fight me… either try to rape me or something or they were going to try to… you know, so they wouldn’t have to pay their… I don’t know what they were going to do. They just… started getting radical on me and I had to… do what I had to do.
Bruce Munster and Lawrence Horzepa had heard all of this soul-washing before from Lee. Now, with her lawyer present, they wanted to get down to business. The time for delicate niceties was over.
Munster: OK, the guy with the .45 that you told me about before [Charles Carskaddon]. Now is he before this or after this, do you remember?
Wuornos: I think he was before. He was the second guy.
Munster: Oh, the guy with the Cadillac was the second guy?
Wuornos: No, the guy with the .45, I shot more than… over nine times. Because I was pissed when I found the .45 on top of the car. I reloaded the gun and I shot him some more. And we were way out in the boonies there and that’s where he started getting physical. He said, ‘You fucking bitch,’ and I said, ‘You fucking bastard, you were going to blow my brains out,’ and I kept shooting him in the back seat of the car. Then I drove over to 52 and dumped the body.
Munster: Was he still naked?
Wuornos: He was naked. I always stripped first. Mallory never stripped. He was just going to physically fight me and get whatever he wanted. I don’t know without his pants off, but it was his trip.
Lee went on to explain how Mallory picked her up.
Wuornos: All right… he asked me if I wanted to smoke a joint and I said, ‘Well, I don’t really smoke pot.’ He said, ‘You don’t mind if I smoke some?’ I said, ‘I don’t care what you do. Do whatever you feel like doing… it doesn’t bother me.’ So, he’s smoking pot and we’re going down the road and he says, ‘Do you want a drink?’ and he has, I don’t know what it was, it was tonic and some jazz. I don’t know what kind of liquor it was. So I said, ‘Sure, that sounds good to me.’ So, we’re drinking and we’re getting past Orlando and we’re getting pretty drunk now. And we’re continually going down the road and I… we’re getting drunk royal. Then I asked him if he wanted to help me make some money because I need some money for rent and everything. He was interested at the time. So we go out and we stop at this place on US 1, but we spend the whole night drinking and… you know, having fun for a little while.
Horzepa: What’s ‘having fun’?
Wuornos: Like… just talking. He’s smoking pot and I’m drinking and we’re talking. Then he said, ‘OK, do you want to make your money now?’ Around probably five in the morning maybe. And I said, ‘OK.’ You know, so he’s pretty drunk and I’m pretty drunk.
Horzepa: Now, describe this area where you’re at.
Wuornos: We’re past I-95, maybe a half mile up the road. There was a little spot that went into the woods.
Horzepa: And, you’re off… which road?
Wuornos: US 1.
Horzepa: US 1. OK. Describe to me the spot in the woods, if you can. Was it small, large? Do you remember anything about it?
Wuornos: Well, it was dark. We couldn’t hardly see to get in.
Horzepa: How d’you find it?
Wuornos: We kind of drove looking for this road to go in and we drove back around and we saw a road go in.
Horzepa: OK, so you were looking for a cut-off in the woods.
Wuornos: Right.
Horzepa: A spot in the woods that was…
Wuornos: Right.
Horzepa: Already a trail?
Wuornos: Right.
Horzepa: OK.
Wuornos: So we go into the woods… so he gives me the money and I start to disrobe. Now the guy’s getting really… kind of starting… now he’s going to start getting, you know, kissing on me and stuff and… anyway, he hasn’t disrobed himself at all.
Horzepa: Do you know what he was wearing?
Wuornos: I think he was wearing jeans and some shirt.
Horzepa: Do you remember if it was long or short sleeves?
Wuornos: No, I don’t remember at all.
Horzepa: OK.
Wuornos: OK, so, anyway, we’re in the front seat. He’s hugging and kissing on me and all this shit so then he starts, you know, pushing me down. And I said, ‘Wait a minute,’ you know, get cool. ‘You don’t have to get rough, you know. This is… let’s have fun. This is for fun, you know.’ And he’s telling me, ‘Well, baby, you know I’ve been waiting for this all night long,’ and stuff like that.
Horzepa: Now where are you when this is occurring?
Wuornos: In the front seat of the car.
Horzepa: All right, and you’re sitting where?
Wuornos: On the passenger side.
Horzepa: And, he is sitting… where?
Wuornos: In the driver’s seat, going against me.
Horzepa: OK. He’s behind the wheel of the car?
Wuornos: But he’s coming toward me.
Horzepa: OK.
Wuornos: The doors are open. OK. So then he’s getting really heavy, you know, on me, you know, and stuff, and I’m going like, now he’s getting to where he just wants to just, you know. Unzipped his pants, not take his pants off or anything, just start having sex and stuff. And I said, ‘Well, why don’t you just disrobe or something,’ you know? ‘I mean, why do you have to have your clothes still on?’ Then he started getting violent with me. So we’re fighting a little bit and I had my purse right on the passenger floor.
Horzepa: What kid of purse did you have?
Wuornos: A… a brown purse.
Horzepa: Is that the same purse that you…
Wuornos: Oh, no, wait. I didn’t have my brown purse. No, it’s not the one I had. I had a blue bag and it had a zip on the side. OK, and it was unzipped because I… I wanted to make sure if anything happened I… I could use my gun. Things are starting to happen where he was going to… I was thinking he was going to roll me, take my money back, beat me up, or whatever the heck he was going to do. So I jumped out of the car with my bag and I grabbed the gun and I said, ‘Get out of the car.’ And he said, ‘What… what’s going on?’ and I said, ‘You son of a bitch, I knew you were going to rape me.’ And he said, ‘No I wasn’t, no I wasn’t.’ And I said, ‘Oh, yes you were. You know you were going to try to rape me, man.’ So, anyway, I told him to step away from the car. Oh, no, no, no, I didn’t. All this and another thing, OK, I know what happ— OK, I took… I got… I jumped out of the car, yeah, he was starting to physically do stuff to me… aw, this is a different story. God. See it’s so long ago.
Horzepa: It’s all right. Take your time.
Wuornos: Yeah. OK, I jumped out of the car. I pulled my gun out when he started to physically do shit with me.
Horzepa: Now, what type of gun did you have?
Wuornos: Nine… .22 nine-shot, you know.
Horzepa: Twenty-two long rifle?
Wuornos: No, it’s a gun, like about this big…
Horzepa: OK. Why did you keep that gun with you?
Wuornos: I was keeping it for protection.
Horzepa: Where did you get the gun from?
Wuornos: I stole it from a guy at a house.
Horzepa: How long before?
Wuornos: Oh, God, I don’t know. I think it was…
Horzepa: Months? Years?
Wuornos: I don’t know, man, it might have been about, a couple of months ago… I might have got the gun just then. I don’t… I can’t remember. Like… like two days before or something.
Horzepa: OK. That’s no problem.
Wuornos: Because, I can’t remember. It’s such a long time. I did a lot of stuff in the time, you know.
Horzepa: OK, so you’re back there. You jump out of the car…
Wuornos: I jumped out of the car because he was physically starting to abuse me. And I remember now. He didn’t even give me any money. This was another guy. This guy, he said, ‘Well, I’ll give…’ No, I said, ‘Well, I always take my money first,’ and he said he wanted to see how the merchandise fit.
Horzepa: This is what Mr Mallory told you?
Wuornos: Yes.
Horzepa: OK.
Wuornos: So I said, ‘Well, since I’ve been talking to you all night long, I think you seem like a pretty nice guy, you know, so OK, let’s… let’s go have fun. So I started to lay down and he was going to, you know, unzip his pants. And I said, ‘Why don’t you take your clothes off?’ My God, you know, I said, ‘Well, it hurt to do that.’ Then he got pissed, calling me… He said, ‘Fuck you, baby, I’m going to screw you right here and now…’ Something like that.
Horzepa: Now where are you?
Wuornos: I’m in the woods with this guy and the doors are open.
Horzepa: OK.
Wuornos: I remember that. And I said, ‘No, no, you’re not going to just fuck me. You got to pay me.’ And he said, ‘Oh, bullshit.’ And that’s when he got pissed. Now, I’m coming back to recollection. OK, so that’s when we started fighting and everything else and I jumped out. He grabbed my bag and I grabbed my bag and the arm busted and, when I got the bag again and I pulled it out of his hand, that’s when I grabbed the pistol out. And when I grabbed the pistol out, I just shot him in the front seat.
Referring to Richard Mallory later in the questioning, Lee changed the earlier version of her account and claimed: ‘See, one guy, he was trying to screw me in the ass and stuff… he was going to try to a… anal screw. You know, anal screw or whatever you call it. So I started fighting with him and I got to my bag and I shot him. And then when I shot him the first time, he just backed away. And, I thought… I thought to myself, Well, hell, should I, you know, try to help this guy or should I just kill him. So, I didn’t know what to do, so I figured, Well, if I help the guy and he lives, he’s going to tell on me and I’m going to get it for attempted murder, all this jazz. And I thought, Well, the best thing to do is just keep shooting him. Then I get to the point that I thought, Well, I shot him. The stupid bastard would have killed me so I kept shooting. You know. In other words, I shot him and then I said to myself, Damn, you know, if I didn’t… sh— shoot him, he would have shot me because he would have beat the shit out of me, maybe. I would have been unconscious. He would have found my gun going through my stuff, and shot me. Because he probably would have gone to get it for trying to rape me, see? So I shot him and then I thought to myself, Well, Hell, I might as well just keep shooting him. Because I got to kill the guy because he’s going to… he’s going to… you know, go, and tell somebody if he lives, whatever. Then I thought to myself, Well, this dirty bastard deserves to die anyway because of what he was trying to do to me. So, those three things went in my mind for every guy that I shot…’
Munster: Did you watch TV?
Wuornos: I watched TV all my life.
Munster: Did you watch to see if the police…
Wuornos: I watched TV all the time, but after the crimes, yes I did.
Munster: To see what the police were doing?
Wuornos: To see if they had found the bodies.
Horzepa: OK. From all the shootings that you have told us about, for the most part, you’ve always gotten the drop on these guys. You’ve been able to get your gun and point it at them.
Wuornos: Uh huh.
Horzepa: Right?
Wuornos: Right.
Horzepa: OK. At that particular time, you were in control. Why didn’t you just run? Why didn’t you…
Wuornos: Because I was always basically totally nude with my shoes off and everything and I wasn’t going to run through the woods and briars and the…
Horzepa: No, but still, like I say, you’re in control. You got that gun. You could go ahead and get dressed while you had, you know, them do whatever you basically wanted. Why did you go ahead and… shoot these people?
Wuornos: Because they physically fought with me and I was… well, I guess I was afraid, because they were physically fighting with me and I… what am I supposed to do, you know, hold the gun there until I get dressed and now I am going to walk out of here? When the guy, you know, might… you know, run me over with his truck or might come back when I’m walking through the woods or something… uh, have a gun on him too or something. I didn’t know if they had a gun or not.
Horzepa: So was it… was it your intent, during each of these times, to kill this person so they couldn’t come back at you later?
Wuornos: Because I didn’t know if they had a gun or anything. I… once I got my gun, I was like, ‘Hey, man, I’ve got to shoot you because I think you’re going to kill me,’ see?
Horzepa: What about the ones who didn’t have a gun, like Mr Mallory?
Wuornos: I didn’t know they had… didn’t have a gun.
Horzepa: OK. So you were taking no chances.
Wuornos: Right. I did not know… what… had… they… what was in their vehicle. See?
Horzepa: OK.
Wuornos: I didn’t know if they had it under the seat, close by them. I didn’t know if they were in arm’s reach of another weapon or what. See?
Horzepa: What made you take property… a lot of property or a little property from some and not from others? Was there anything there that…
Wuornos: I guess it was.
Horzepa: Motivated you to…
Wuornos: I guess it was after, it was pure hatred. Yeah, I think afterward, it was like, You bastard, you would have hurt me and, uh, I’ll take the stuff and get my money’s worth because some of them didn’t even hardly have any money. They were going to… they were… some of them didn’t have any money. Like that guy, uh, the drug-dealer guy… he had 20 bucks and he was… he wasn’t going to give me any more money. The one with the .45 on the hood [Carskaddon].
Horzepa: Mmm. Mmm. So you just started living off the items that they had? Is that what you were doing?
Wuornos: No, I think I took them just for the fact that, you bastards, you were going to hurt me, you were going to rape me, or whatever you were going to do. Well, I’ll just, you know, keep these little items so I don’t have to buy them or something. I don’t know. I just…
Horzepa: It was like a final revenge?
Wuornos: Yeah. OK. That would… that would do. Mmm… mmm.
Munster: Lee, after you shot one time, I mean you could have left. You could have taken their stuff and [inaudible].
Wuornos: I didn’t want to do that because I was afraid that, if I shot them one time and they survived, my… my face and all that, description of me, would be all over the place and the only way I could make money was to hustle. And I knew these guys would probably… would, you know, rat on me if they survived and all this stuff… and I would… I was hoping that I… after what I had to do, that I wouldn’t have gotten caught for it because I figured that these guys deserved it. Because those guys were going to either rape, kill… I don’t know what they were going to do to me. See what I’m saying?
Horzepa: So you continued to kill these men to cover up when you… when you shot these men. Mallory was the first. Is that correct?
Munster: OK. You continued… you had to go ahead and kill these men so that they couldn’t testify against you and have it all backtracked? From body to body then?
Wuornos: Oh, no, I didn’t even think of that either. I… I shot them because it was like to me, a self-defending thing because I felt that if I didn’t shoot them and I didn’t kill them, first of all, if they survived, my ass would be getting in trouble for attempted murder, so I’m up shit’s creek on that one anyway, and… and… and if I didn’t and if… and if I didn’t kill them, you know, of course, I mean I had to kill them… or it’s retaliation, too. It’s like, you bastards. You were going to… you were going to hurt me.
Horzepa: So now I’m going to hurt you.
Wuornos: Yeah. Mmm… mmm.
Munster: Yeah, all… all of these guys that you shot, they seem to be older guys. Over the age of 40. What is that?
Wuornos: Because all of the guys that I dealt with were that age. Every… every guy.
Munster: You were dead wood for the younger guys?
Wuornos: No. Every guy I dealt with on the road was anywhere from… let’s see… 37 and up.
Horzepa: Was that your decision? I mean, like the…
Wuornos: Yeah. Because I…
Horzepa: Younger guy in his twenties would stop…
Wuornos: Yeah, because, see, I don’t do drugs or anything and I wanted to deal with people who didn’t do drugs. I was looking for clean and decent people. But, like I say, it just happened that the last… this following year, that I kept meeting guys that were turning out to be ugly guys… to me. That they were… fighting.
For three hours, Lee talked and talked, then she talked some more, despite the continuing advice from her attorney who effectively spelled it out to his client that she was putting her head in a noose. Lee’s mitigation was that she had been the wronged person. A simple hooker trying to earn a fast buck, her victims had used her, treated her badly or tried to have sex without payment. Her only remorse appeared to be directed towards Tyria, the lover she had failed. She shed not a tear for the incalculable suffering she had caused to her victims and their next of kin. She wanted to ‘make it good with God’ before she died; this would soon change as the months passed inexorably by during which Aileen Wuornos would metamorphose into the true monster that she really was. But, for now, with attentive, seemingly understanding police officers hanging on her every word, Lee continued to spill the beans.
Larry Horzepa now turned his attention to the property Lee had stolen from her dead victims.
Horzepa: Is there any property that you would have collected from these victims that may be stashed somewhere? You might have put it in the woods or behind an abandoned house or anything like that?
Wuornos: No. Uh uh. I just flung them out the window as I’m driving or… or stopped and threw them and stuff like that. I couldn’t even tell you where because they were way out in the country somewhere where I didn’t even know sometimes where I was.
Horzepa: There’s something I forgot to ask you. There’s another guy that’s missing that we haven’t found. A guy that worked for the Kennedy Space Center. A guy that worked for the Kennedy Space Center and there was a white Oldsmobile and the car was parked in Orange County off of Semoran and 436. The guy had glasses on and this would have been right around the HRS guy’s car [Charles Humphreys].
Wuornos: Uh… Munster: It was a white car and he was driving from Titusville to Atlanta… it was a white two-door car…
Wuornos: No, I don’t recall anything like that.
Munster: Do you have a picture of him, Larry?
Wuornos: Yeah, yeah, if you got a picture of him…
Horzepa: What was the name on that?
Munster: Reid. Curtis Reid.
Wuornos: Curtis Reid. I don’t know that one. I don’t remember anybody like that. Munster: He worked at the Kennedy Space Center and he had a Space Center emblem on his windshield of his rear window and someone scraped it off. He had a lot of money. He just cashed his pay cheque. You might have had…
Wuornos: I never got anybody that had a lot of money.
Munster: He might have had a thousand dollars, something like that.
Wuornos: Oh, I never got anything like that. Uh uh.
Horzepa: No, I have a flyer of the emblem. I don’t have that one.
Wuornos: I don’t recall anything like that because I never… I never got a lot of money on it. The only money I got, the most was that one that I didn’t know was a missionary dude, was like $400 [Peter Siems].
Having settled this matter, Bruce Munster started asking about the various alibis Lee had used.
Munster: Who’s Susan Blahovec?
Wuornos: Oh, well, that’s another fake ID I had.
Munster: How’d you get that one?
Wuornos: Oh, Lord, let’s see, how did I get… oh, this guy in the Keys had a birth certificate and he told me to use it for… because I had a suspended driver’s licence and he told me I could use that ID. Oh… because… and I had… I think I had a… that forgery warrant was at that time, I think. I had that on me. And he told me I could use this ID, that it was his wife’s ID, that she had never… he hated his wife, big time. And that I could… she’s never been in trouble and that I could turn that birth certificate and licence, but you don’t get into trouble with it, you know, just use it for driving and stuff, so I did.
Munster: All right. I think that’s…
Wuornos: How in the world did you find out about Susan Blahovec now?
Munster: Oh…
Wuornos: And did I put my name on a motel as that or something?
Munster: No. You got some tickets with it.
Wuornos: Oh, OK, I remember that. All right.
Munster: I know about the time in 1974, you were arrested under the name of Sandra Beatrice Kretch.
Wuornos: Yeah.
Munster: Your neighbour.
Wuornos: Yeah. I was… I was young and she was 33 or something and the judge couldn’t… I spent ten days in jail for that one. She got away with having to go to jail on her damn ticket.
Munster: How far did you go in high school?
Wuornos: Tenth and a half grade.
Munster: Why’d you quit?
Wuornos: Because my mother died and my father wouldn’t let me stay at home and I was living out on the street. I just want… to know that I hope to God, that you guys do understand that Ty is not involved with this. She doesn’t know. She thought that I had these cars rented or… or borrowed them and all this jazz, and she wasn’t too… too aware of what I was doing. I mean, she didn’t know… exactly what was happening. I mean I… when I’d get drunk I’d say shit from the top of my head just to try to be a bad ass, because I was drunk. And… but she didn’t have anything to do with these murders. She didn’t have anything to do with anything. She just worked, ate, slept, stayed at home, went to volleyball practice and was just a good gal… I’ve dealt with a hundred thousand guys. But these guys are the only guys that gave me a problem and they started giving me a problem just this year… the year that went by. So I, at the same time I was staying with some guy and I noticed that he had some guns and I ripped off his .22, a nine-shot deal… So when I’d get hassle, if the person gave me my money and then started hassling me, that’s when I started taking retaliation… I just wish I never would have done this shit. And I just wish I never would have done what I did. I still have to say to myself, I still say that it was in self-defence… Really inside, right inside me, I’m a good person. But, when I get drunk, like I said, I’d be drinking with these guys and… and when they started messing with me, I wouldn’t tou— I would never hurt nobody. But, if they messed with me, then I would. I’d just… I have to say I was… I’d get just as violent as they would get on me… to try and protect myself.
Munster: I know what I wanted to ask you. You said that you put the gun and a flashlight, some handcuffs into the water.
Wuornos: Oh, yeah.
Munster: Over by the bridge around Fairview. Now you walked to the… on the bridge there… were you in the middle or towards one side or the other?
Wuornos: Oh, when you go over the bridge…
Munster: Uh, huh.
Wuornos:… there’s the other little bank there…
Munster: Uh, huh.
Wuornos:… and it’s right underneath the bridge there.
Munster: OK.
Horzepa: Is it actually in the water or did you hide it up underneath the bridge?
Wuornos: No, it’s… it’s in the water.
Munster: OK. You took the gun and threw it underneath there?
Wuornos: Yes.
Munster: Now did you throw the handcuffs someplace else?
Wuornos: No, I just dropped them along… they’re straight down… yeah.
Munster: All right.
Horzepa: Could you see them when they hit… hit the bottom of the…
Wuornos: No, but I know it’s waist deep… around there. Because some guy said he had cemented that part out there. And he had to get his net untangled from the crab trap and he told me it’s about anywhere from here to there, in the water.
Horzepa: Lee, would you be willing, if we needed you to, uh, go out with us to try to locate that .22 that you threw into the water… if you can show us the exact location where you had tossed it? Would you be willing to do that for us, Lee?
Wuornos: I am willing to do anything. I want to just let you know I’m the only one involved in this deal… stuff… shit.
Horzepa: Also, too, uh, later on, would you be willing to talk to other investigators…
Wuornos: Oh, no problem.
Horzepa: …if needed, from the other counties that have cases involved.
Wuornos: I want all this out in the open and I want them to know that there’s not two girls. Ty is as innocent as can be. There was only one person. It was me, because I’m a hooker and I got involved with these guys because they were phys— and it was a physical situ— because I’m telling you now, I’m serious, every day when I was hitchhiking, I would meet anywhere from five to eight guys a day and make… now, but some would say no, and some would say yes.
Munster: Mmm… mmm.
Wuornos: And I would make money. But they wouldn’t abuse me or nothing. I’d just do my thing and make my money, stick it in my wallet and go.
Munster: OK. That about wraps it up. All right, now, I’m going turn the tape off and it is 2.21 in the afternoon.
Wuornos: Can I ask you something?
Munster: You certainly can.
Wuornos: Do you mind if I keep these cigarettes because I don’t have any cigarettes at all?
Horzepa: You are quite welcome to them and I’m glad you didn’t ask to keep my jacket.
Wuornos: Oh, yeah, that was warm. Thank you.
Horzepa: Sure, no problem.
Wuornos: I’m very sorry…
After getting the most pressing, and somewhat self-serving, issues off her chest, a resilient Lee settled down to jail life, her mood alternating between abject depression and joviality. She had been allowed newspapers, and she avidly poured over the notoriety she was now receiving from the world’s media. Her emotions, which had originally centred around Tyria, started to take a back seat. Religion and turning to God was way back in the past. She was becoming a celebrity – a person of some import and, for the first time in her life, she felt she had at least achieved something of value. If she could beat the rap – and she was sure she could convince everyone that she had only killed in self-defence – she could make a mint and buy a decent attorney and her way to freedom.
The true nature of Lee’s psychopathic personality was about to be unleashed; not, this time, in a car with a vulnerable man at some lonely place, but in a more insidious way in the county jail, where she was observed by corrections officer Susan Hanson.
Two days after Lee’s interviews with police, Susan Hanson was on duty and assigned to keep an eye on Lee. Although this inmate was not supposed to be treated any differently to the other prisoners, a certain mystique had built up around the so-called ‘mystery guest’ – everyone was curious and everybody wanted a piece of the action that was focused on Lee Wuornos.
As cocky as one would like, Lee saw Officer Hanson peering through the glass panel of her cell, and said, ‘Listen to this. They say here [in the newspaper] “This woman is a killer who robs, not a robber who kills.” That’s… sure, I shot them, but it was self-defence.’
Later, in her deposition, Hanson recalled that Lee said that she had been raped many times, ‘and I just got sick of it… If I didn’t kill those guys, I would have been raped a total of 20 times maybe. Or killed. You never know. But I got them first… I figured that at least I was doing some good killing these guys. Because, if I didn’t kill them, they would have hurt someone else.’
Officer Hanson in took every word, but said very little in return. Her instructions were to listen and document as much as she could remember as soon as it was possible to get to her notepad. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you any of this,’ continued Lee, ‘but get this. I had these two guys say they were cops, or at least they flashed their badges at me. They picked me up and wanted sex but didn’t want to pay. Said if I didn’t they’d turn me in. One grabbed my hair and pushed me towards his penis. We really started fighting then so I killed them. Afterwards I looked at their badges and one was a reservist cop or something [Walter Gino Antonio was a Brevard County reserve deputy] and the other worked for like the HRS [Charles Humphreys was a supervisor for the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, referred to as the HRS.]
‘I had lots of guys, maybe ten to twelve a day,’ boasted Lee. ‘I could have killed all of them, but I didn’t want to. I’m really just a nice person. I’m describing a normal day to you here, but a killing day would be about the same. On a normal day we would just do it by the side of the road if they wanted oral sex, or behind a building or maybe just off the road in the woods if they wanted it all.
‘On a killing day those guys always wanted to go way, way back in the woods. Now I know why they did it: they’re going to hurt me… I figured if these guys lived, and I got fried for attempted murder, I thought, Fuck it, I might as well get fried for murder instead.’
In her deposition, Officer Hanson said, ‘She was laughing a lot when she talked to me. When she would talk about, specifically, how she shot the guy, the one guy with the .45, she just stood there. She was very… sometimes she would laugh, sometimes she was calm in explaining this. Other times she would just get very excited. She was never sad in any way. Never once did she say, “I’m upset about this.” She just said, “If I hadn’t killed him, he’d kill other people.”’
The jailhouse medic also witnessed Lee’s cheerful mood when he stopped by to give her some medication to calm her nerves. ‘I never really saw her down,’ he said. ‘She was always jovial and boasted of having done 250,000 men in the past nine years.’
‘We kind of looked at her a little strange for that,’ said Officer Hanson. ‘The doctor just kind of walked away after that, and she sat down and began reading the papers again.’
News that the police had secured a female serial killer’s confession soon leaked out to the public domain and an avalanche of book and movie deals poured in to detectives, to Lee and Tyria and to the victims’ relatives. Lee seemed to think she would make millions of dollars from her story, not yet realising that Florida had a law against criminals profiting in such a manner. She commanded headlines in the local and national media. She felt famous, and continued to talk about the crimes with anyone who would listen, including Volusia County Jail employees. With each retelling, she refined her story a little further, seeking to cast herself in a better light each time.
On Monday, 28 January 1991, Lee Wuornos was indicted for the murder of Richard Mallory. The indictment read:
In that Aileen Carol Wuornos, a/k/a Susan Lynn Blahovec, a/k/a/ Lori Kristine Grody, a/k/a/ Cammie Marsh Greene, on or about the first day of December, 1989, within Volusia County, did then and there unlawfully, from a premeditated design to effect the death of one Richard Mallory, a human being, while engaged in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetuate robbery, did kill and murder Richard Mallory by shooting him with a firearm, to wit: a handgun.
Counts two and three charged her with armed robbery and possession of a firearm and, by late February, she had been charged with the murders of David Spears in Citrus County and Charles Humphreys and Troy Burress in Marion County.
Lee’s attorneys engineered a plea bargain whereby she would plead guilty to six charges and receive six consecutive life terms. One state’s attorney, however, thought she should receive the death penalty, so on Monday, 14 January 1992 she went to trial for the murder of Richard Mallory.
The evidence and testimony of witnesses were severely damaging. Dr Arthur Botting, the medical examiner who had carried out the autopsy on Mallory’s body, stated that he had taken between 10 and 20 agonising minutes to die. Tyria testified that Lee had not seemed overly upset, nervous or drunk when she told her about the Mallory killing. Twelve men went on to the witness stand to testify to their encounters with Lee along Florida’s highways and byways over the years.
Florida has a law known as the Williams Rule which allows evidence relating to other crimes to be admitted if it serves to show a pattern. Because of the Williams Rule, information regarding other killings alleged to have been committed by Lee was presented to the jury. Her claim of having killed in self-defence would have been a lot more believable had the jury only known of Mallory. Now, with the jury made aware of all the murders, self-defence seemed the least plausible explanation. After the excerpts from her videotaped confession were played, the self-defence claim simply looked ridiculous. Lee seemed not the least upset by the story she was telling. She made easy conversation with her interrogators and repeatedly told her attorney to be quiet. Her image on the screen allowed her to condemn herself out of her own mouth. ‘I took a life… I am willing to give up my life because I killed people… I deserve to die,’ she said.
Tricia Jenkins, one of Lee’s public defenders, did not want her client to testify and told her so. But Lee overrode this advice, insisting on telling her story. By now, her account of Mallory’s murder barely resembled the one she gave in her confession. Mallory had raped, sodomised and tortured her, she claimed.
On cross-examination, prosecutor John Tanner obliterated any shred of credibility she may have had. As he brought to light all her lies and inconsistencies, she became agitated and angry. Her attorneys repeatedly advised her not to answer questions, and she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 25 times. She was the defence’s only witness, and when she left the stand there was not much doubt about how her trial would end.
Judge Uriel ‘Bunky’ Blount Jr charged the jury on Monday, 27 January. They returned their verdict 91 minutes later. Pamela Mills, a schoolteacher, had been elected foreperson and she presented the verdict to the bailiff. He, in turn, handed it to the judge. The judge read it and passed it to the clerk who spoke the words that sealed Lee’s fate. ‘We, the jury, find Aileen Wuornos guilty of premeditated felony murder in the first degree,’ she told an expectant assembly in the courtroom. As the jury filed out, their duty done, Lee exploded with rage, shouting, ‘I’m innocent! I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scumbags of America!’
Her outburst was still fresh in the minds of jurors as the penalty phase of her trial began the next day. Expert witnesses for the defence testified that Lee was mentally ill, that she suffered from a borderline personality disorder and that her tumultuous upbringing had stunted and ruined her. Jenkins referred to her client as ‘a damaged, primitive child’ as she tearfully pleaded with the jury to spare Lee’s life. But the jurors neither forgot nor forgave the woman they had come to know during the trial. With a unanimous verdict, they recommended that Judge Blount sentence her to die in the electric chair. He confirmed the sentence on Friday, 31 January, first quoting his duty from a printed text:
Aileen Carol Wuornos, being brought before the court by her attorneys William Miller, Tricia Jenkins and Billy Nolas, having been tried and found guilty of count one, first-degree premeditated murder and first-degree felony murder of Richard Mallory, a capital felony, and count two, armed robbery with a firearm… hereby judged and found guilty of said offenses… and the court having given the defendant an opportunity to be heard and to offer matters in mitigation of sentence… It is the sentence of this court that you Aileen Carol Wuornos be delivered by the Sheriff of Volusia County to the proper officer of the Department of Corrections of the State of Florida and by him safely kept until by warrant of the Governor of the State of Florida, you, Aileen Wuornos, be electrocuted until you are dead.
And may God have mercy on your corpse.
A collective gasp arose from the courtroom, diminishing the solemnity of the occasion. The sense of shock was less to do with the judge’s sentiment than his choice of words. May God have mercy on your corpse? Did Judge Blount really say that? Corpse? Members of the media stopped with pencils poised in mid-air. He had got it wrong. Surely he should have said, ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’ Could they quote him? they whispered among themselves.
Aileen Wuornos did not stand trial again. On Tuesday, 31 March 1992, she pleaded no contest to the murders of Dick Humphreys, Troy Burress and David Spears, saying that she wanted to ‘get it right with God’. After a rambling statement to the court, she concluded, ‘I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I’ve told you. But these others did not. [They] only began to start to.’ She ended her monologue by turning to assistant state’s attorney Ric Ridgeway, and hissing, ‘I hope your wife and children get raped in the ass!’
On Friday, 15 May, Judge Thomas Sawaya handed her three more death sentences. She made an obscene gesture and muttered, ‘Motherfucker.’
For a time, there was speculation that Wuornos might receive a new trial for the murder of Richard Mallory. New evidence uncovered by the defence – not presented to the jury at her trial – showed that Mallory had spent ten years in prison for sexual violence, and attorneys felt that jurors would have seen the case differently had they been aware of this. No new trial was forthcoming, though, and the State Supreme Court of Florida affirmed all six of her death sentences.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE EXECUTION
THE FOOD AIN’T ALL BAD. WE’RE SERVED THREE MEALS A DAY. AT 5AM, 10.30 TO 11AM, AND 4 TO 4.30PM. THEY COOK IT IN HERE. WE GET PLATES AND SPOONS. NOTHING ELSE. I CAN TAKE A SHOWER EVERY OTHER DAY, AND WE’RE COUNTED AT LEAST ONCE AN HOUR. EVERYWHERE WE GO, WE WEAR CUFFS EXCEPT IN THE SHOWER AND EXERCISE YARD WHERE I CAN TALK TO MY CELL MATES. LATELY, I LIKE TO BE BY MYSELF. APART FROM THAT, I AM ALWAYS LOCKED UP IN MY ROOM. I CAN’T EVEN BE WITH ANOTHER INMATE IN THE COMMON ROOM.
‘People think this is all painless and stuff like that. It ain’t! Basically, they suffer a lot. They are sort of paralysed but they can hear. They drown in their own fluid and suffocate to death really. Yeah, we get problems. Sometimes the guy doesn’t want to get on to the table. But we have the largest guard in Texas here. He gets them on that table, no problem. They are strapped down in seconds. No problem. They go on that mean old table and get the goodnight juice whether they like it or not.’
THE FOOD AIN’T ALL BAD. WE’RE SERVED THREE MEALS A DAY. AT 5AM, 10.30 TO 11AM, AND 4 TO 4.30PM. THEY COOK IT IN HERE. WE GET PLATES AND SPOONS. NOTHING ELSE. I CAN TAKE A SHOWER EVERY OTHER DAY, AND WE’RE COUNTED AT LEAST ONCE AN HOUR. EVERYWHERE WE GO, WE WEAR CUFFS EXCEPT IN THE SHOWER AND EXERCISE YARD WHERE I CAN TALK TO MY CELL MATES. LATELY, I LIKE TO BE BY MYSELF. APART FROM THAT, I AM ALWAYS LOCKED UP IN MY ROOM. I CAN’T EVEN BE WITH ANOTHER INMATE IN THE COMMON ROOM.
‘People think this is all painless and stuff like that. It ain’t! Basically, they suffer a lot. They are sort of paralysed but they can hear. They drown in their own fluid and suffocate to death really. Yeah, we get problems. Sometimes the guy doesn’t want to get on to the table. But we have the largest guard in Texas here. He gets them on that table, no problem. They are strapped down in seconds. No problem. They go on that mean old table and get the goodnight juice whether they like it or not.’
Aileen Carol Wuornos shared Death Row with several faces familiar to readers of true crime. The first of which springs to my mind is Judias ‘Judy’ Buenoano. Aged 45, and popularly known as the Black Widow, she had been on Death Row since 1985. Convicted of poisoning her husband, drowning her quadriplegic son by pushing him off a canoe and planting a bomb in her boyfriend’s car, she had the distinction of being the first woman to die in Florida’s electric chair on 30 March 1998.
Deirdre Hunt was sent to Death Row in 1990, and her sentence has since been commuted to life.
Andrea Hicks Jackson, sentenced to death for shooting a police officer in 1983, has also had her sentence reversed.
Virginia Gail Larzelere, aged 49, has recently been given the death penalty for murdering her husband at Edgewater, near Daytona Beach, on 8 March 1991.
Ana M. Cardona, aged 40, was sentenced to death for aggravated child abuse and the first-degree murder of her three-year-old son in Miami on 2 November 1992.
At the time of her execution, Aileen Wuornos was 46 years old but looked a decade older. The condemned woman, wearing an orange T-shirt and blue trousers, was five feet four inches in height and weighed 133 lbs. The characteristic strawberry-blonde hair described by witnesses framed her face, but her eyes were constantly bloodshot. Always looking washed-out, her once-attractive looks had been replaced with a face that life had not treated kindly. She still had the scar between the eyes and burn scars on her forehead. Her body was marked with a long cut along her lower left arm and a crude appendectomy scar across the middle of her abdomen.
The cell in which Lee was confined measured eight feet by ten. It was painted a dull-looking pink, and the ceiling was quite high, maybe 15 feet, which made the room seem larger and more airy than it really was. She had a black-and-white television placed above the stainless-steel toilet on a varnished brown shelf. The furniture consisted of a grey metal footlocker that doubled as a desk, but no table and only a single chair. There was also a dirty, lime-green cupboard at the foot of a metal bed which contained her clothes and personal possessions. Everything had to be locked away at bed-inspection time which could be any time between 9 and 11am. The only view she had of the outside world was a parking lot and a high fence festooned with glittering razor wire. There were no bars in her cell, but a metal door with a small hatch separated her from the rest of the cellblock. It cost the state of Florida $72.39 a day to keep Lee in her place of incarceration.
She spent the long, solitary hours reading books on spiritual growth and writing lengthy letters to her now adopted mother Arlene Pralle. Lee’s lifestyle was spartan and monotonous, and the days and the years rolled indistinguishably and uneventfully past her locked cell door. In the knowledge that 11.3 years is the average length of stay on Death Row prior to execution, Lee knew that, when her death came, it would be a painful end to a painful life.
Up until the botched execution of ‘Tiny’ Davis, Florida administered executions primarily by electric chair and only later by lethal injection. For this reason she was sentenced to die in ‘Old Sparky’. This three-legged electric chair, constructed from oak by prison personnel, was installed at the Florida State Prison in Starke in 1999. The previous chair, dating back to 1923, was also made of oak after the Florida Legislature designated electrocution as the official mode of execution.
When that fateful day arrived, her head and body hair was to be shaved to provide better contact with the moistened copper electrodes attached to her body by the execution team. Sanitary towels would be forced into her vagina and rectum, and cotton wool pushed into her nostrils and ears to prevent the leakage of bodily fluids. In Florida, executioners are anonymous private citizens who are paid $150 per death. A four-second jolt of 2,000 volts is applied, followed by 1,000 volts for the next seven seconds and finally 200 volts for two minutes. Electrocution produces visibly destructive effects on the body, as the internal organs are burned. The prisoner usually leaps forward against the restraints when the switch is thrown. The body changes colour, swells and may even catch fire. The dying person may also lose control of the bladder and bowels, and vomit blood. Lee knew all this, but appeared unfazed. ‘Death does not scare me. God will be beside me taking me up with him when I leave this shell, I am sure of it. I have been forgiven and am certainly sound in Jesus’s name.’
But Lee would die by lethal injection.
Millions of us have been into hospital and recall the jab being given prior to an operation. This pre-med injection causes one to relax before another injection brings about unconsciousness around the count of ten. This is how the idea of sending a condemned inmate to perdition by a similar means came about. The drugs were certainly available, and they were cheap to use. And there was an extra bonus: the proposition of putting someone to death, in this clinical sort of way, necessitated clinical surroundings. Gone were the dread gallows, the ominous electric chair with all its wiring and leather helmet and death mask. Gone, too, was the evil-looking gas chamber with its sickly green walls, its rods, tubes and linkages.
There were benefits as well for the state authorities. The whole idea would appeal to the media and public alike, for execution could not possibly be made more merciful. A team of paramedics would attend to the inserting of a needle into the victim’s right or left arm, and a doctor would be, as with all executions, in attendance to pronounce death.
On Sunday, 29 September 2002, Lee was woken in her cell at Broward and told to shower and dress for the drive north to her place of execution. This would be the last day the hot Florida sun would strike her face, and it would be for only a few moments at that. Heavily shackled, she shuffled into daylight and was assisted into a Florida Department of Corrections truck. Ironically her route would take her north, along I-95 towards the Florida Turnpike, west to Wildwood, then up I-75 to Gainesville. Leaving tourist Florida, with its Miami Beach hotels and Disneyworld and orange trees, far behind, she now entered a poor, rural landscape.
Nick Broomfield describes the journey. ‘Stretch after stretch of flat, unrewarding scraggly pine trees and truck farms passed her by. Tiny post offices, well-attended Baptist churches – a good deal of praying and singing, often stomping and hollering, in the name of the Lord goes on in this part of Texas. They turned north-east along US 24, 30 miles then the road opened out on to a broad plain. To the right is the Union Correctional Institution, and then the Florida State Prison itself, just a rifle shot away across the New River in Bradford County. Interspersed between the prison cattle standing motionless along the roadside were inmate work gangs out with their uniformed guards, who cradled shotguns and wore sunglasses that coruscated in the afternoon light. It was a banal vision of purgatory, the sullen, shuffling convicts toiling under a heavy sun that glinted hard at them from their keepers’ shielded eyes.’
What is now the Union Correctional Institution was formerly the original Florida State Prison, and what is now known as Florida State Prison Main Unit was constructed with the death chamber in 1961. Florida State Prison Main Unit’s title was transferred to the East Unit in 1973, and the old Florida State Prison became the Union Correctional Institution. Lee would spend two nights here before her appointment with death.
Lee was held in a special security cell. The three walls were painted a dirty cream; the barred front of her cage, with an additional mesh screen, looked on to the landing. Lit 24 hours a day, the cell had no table, just a stainless-steel toilet, a hand basin and a bunk covered with a light-green blanket and a grey pillow.
On Wednesday, 9 October 2002, as Lee sipped her last cup of coffee, she contemplated the end which she knew would be painful; what she didn’t know was that she was going to be injected with a combination of three drugs which would burn terribly.
Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections, told reporters, no doubt with tongue in cheek, that Lee was awake at 5.30am and was in a ‘good mood’ and ‘ready for the sentence to be carried out’. Ivey said that Wuornos offered no resistance and was cooperative when she was strapped to the execution gurney outside the death chamber, and then wheeled into the room so the assembled witnesses could watch her die. When the lethal drugs began to flow into her, it was a quiet death. Other than her final statement, and two coughs, she made no sounds, said Ivey, who witnessed the execution. ‘She just closed her eyes and her heart stopped beating.’
During her last days of life, Lee had requested no religious advisers, chaplain or a last meal, Ivey said. ‘Lee Wuornos refused an offer to eat a barbecued-chicken dinner that was fed to the rest of the prison population,’ Ivey reported.
An hour before the dread act, the witnesses started to arrive through the main prison gate to be escorted to the death chamber. They might have noticed the sheeting now draped over the steel gates hiding the hearse that was waiting to receive the body. After being given a shakedown to check for hidden weapons or concealed cameras, they were led to the viewing room, which is separated from the gurney by a window and closed curtains.
Around 30 minutes before Lee would take her last walk, she was given a pre-injection of 8cc 2% sodium pentothal. Waiting silently in an adjacent room was the cell-extraction team wearing protective clothing and armed with Mace gas to subdue her if she caused trouble.
Finally, Lee was invited to leave her cell. She agreed, and no guard touched her as she walked the few steps to the chamber door which was opening before her. Lee paused momentarily when she saw the gurney with its white padding and cover sheet. Two arm supports were pulled out and she saw the brown straps dangling loose with an officer by each one. There were tears in her eyes.
Lee was strapped down, and the paramedics inserted two 16-gauge needles and catheters into her right and left arms and connected them, via tubes, to the executioner’s equipment, which was hidden from view. The doctor also attached a cardiac monitor.
The curtains were drawn back and the warden asked her if she had any last words to say into the microphone above her head. She replied, ‘I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the Rock and I’ll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I’ll be back.’
Lee looked scared, as over the next ten seconds she was given an injection of sodium thiopentone (a rapidly acting anaesthetic). She felt a slight pressure and her arm started to ache. She felt light-headed. After a one-minute wait, this was followed by 15cc of normal saline to ease the passage of 50cc pancuronium bromide (a muscle relaxant to paralyse respiration and bring unconsciousness) over a ten-second time period.
Lee would have felt pressure in her chest, a suffocating feeling that caused her to gasp several times for air. She coughed twice as her lungs collapsed. She was dizzy and hyperventilating, her heart beating faster and faster as the whole sympathetic nervous system was activated. This is called stress syndrome, a common feature during the first stages of dying.
As the poison saturated her body, Lee entered the second stage of death. She was unable to breathe or move, but she could still see and hear. Paralysed, she was not able to swallow at this stage, which often gives rise to witnesses thinking that the inmate is already dead, when they are not. During this short period, the autonomic nervous system becomes dominated by the parasympathetic nervous system, or the sympathetic nervous system fails. Lee’s eyes dilated and the hairs on her skin became erect.
Then she was hit with another 15cc of saline and finally a massive dose of potassium chloride. In large doses, injected intravenously, this drug burns and hurts horribly because it is a salt and instantly throws off the chemical balance of the blood with which it comes into contact. It makes all the muscles lock up in extreme contraction. However, it would not reach all of Lee’s muscles: the moment it reached her heart, it would stop it dead.
There was a few minutes’ wait and, at 9.47am, Lee was pronounced dead. The curtains were opened for the witnesses to view the deceased.
The ashes of Aileen Wuornos were scattered at a secret location in Fostoria, Tuscola County, Michigan.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE MOVIE
I BELIEVE SHE [TYRIA] IS INVOLVED WITH MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF BOOKS AND MOVIES AND SHE DOESN’T WANT MY ACQUITTAL BECAUSE, IF I GET CONVICTED, SHE GETS THE MONEY AND SO DOES MR HORZEPA, MUNSTER AND A LOT OF YOU OTHER DETECTIVES AND POLICE OFFICERS THAT ARE INVOLVED IN THIS AND ALSO THAT SHE IS CONCERNED ABOUT HER FAMILY, SHE LOVES HER FAMILY… SHE’S ACTING LIKE SHE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING… I GOT 289 LIES IN HER DEPOSITION… WHY IS SHE LYING SO MUCH? SHE’S AFRAID TO TELL ANYTHING, SHE’S EVEN AFRAID TO SAY IT’S SELF-DEFENCE.
I BELIEVE SHE [TYRIA] IS INVOLVED WITH MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF BOOKS AND MOVIES AND SHE DOESN’T WANT MY ACQUITTAL BECAUSE, IF I GET CONVICTED, SHE GETS THE MONEY AND SO DOES MR HORZEPA, MUNSTER AND A LOT OF YOU OTHER DETECTIVES AND POLICE OFFICERS THAT ARE INVOLVED IN THIS AND ALSO THAT SHE IS CONCERNED ABOUT HER FAMILY, SHE LOVES HER FAMILY… SHE’S ACTING LIKE SHE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING… I GOT 289 LIES IN HER DEPOSITION… WHY IS SHE LYING SO MUCH? SHE’S AFRAID TO TELL ANYTHING, SHE’S EVEN AFRAID TO SAY IT’S SELF-DEFENCE.
I hold the documentary-maker Nick Broomfield in very high regard. He made his name with two critically acclaimed films, one on the suicide of rock singer Kurt Cobain, the other on the murders of rap stars Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Nick was drawn to the Wuornos story because of the level of ‘demonisation’ that was washing over her, and the headlong rush to wrap up the movie rights before she had been charged and before questions had been asked about how she could so casually turn into America’s first female serial killer.
In a three-page feature for the Sunday Express magazine, 28 March 2004, Nick wrote, ‘The police and lawyers were interested in money. The first phone call I made to her lawyer for an interview I was told, “Yes – for $25,000.” I was astonished.’
The idea of a movie about Lee Wuornos was first mooted by Jacqueline Giroux, a beautiful, blonde Hollywood starlet. Jackie had begun her production company, the aptly named Twisted Productions, in Studio City in 1985. Her CV at the time showed that she had produced a handful of movies, some of which she had penned herself, and she was particularly interested in women’s stories.
In due course, Jackie Giroux found herself in the position of being able to talk to Ray Cass, an attorney who was currently representing Lee. To his credit, Cass explained that he was ethically unable to help her; however, he did call Russell Armstrong who had represented Lee in 1981. Moving with some speed, Armstrong called Giroux who said that she wanted the rights to sell Lee’s story.
Armstrong agreed to this offer, later stating somewhat cynically that there was a German company interested in this production, but only if Lee got the death penalty. This, it appears, suited all three parties. So, ten days after Lee’s arrest, Armstrong visited her in jail clutching the contract – Giroux called it a ‘deal memo’ – which required the signatures of Lee, Giroux and himself. It was a pretty loose contract: it offered no dates, no percentages, only a string of loosely strung promises hinging on money from investors who still had not become evident. Then the word got around.
Shortly after the signatures were in place, Armstrong received a blistering letter from the Florida attorney general, Robert A. Butterworth, who put the cat amongst the pigeons:
This office has been advised that your client, Ms Aileen Wuornos, has been arrested and charged with at least two murders and that you represent her in these cases. It has come to our attention that Ms Wuornos apparently has entered into a contract or contracts with a filmmaking enterprise to tell her story.
Please be advised that in the event Ms Wuornos is convicted of these felonies or any additional felonies, it would be the intention of the State of Florida to file a lien against all royalties, commissions or any other thing of value payable to her or her assigns from any literary, cinematic or other account of her life story or the crime for which she may be convicted.
The State of Florida hereby gives notice that it is against public policy for someone to profit from her own crime and that this lien will be rigorously enforced pursuant to Section 944.512, Florida Statutes. You are further notified that any individual or corporation who holds monies or other items of value derived from any account of this story holds these assets in constructive trust for the State of Florida and will be held accountable to the State.
Cass and Giroux also received similar letters, while Armstrong went to the state’s attorney and explained that he was only acting in a civil, not criminal, capacity, adding, ‘I know nothing about the murders.’
Cass told reporters, ‘I had nothing to do with any sort of contract because we’re prohibited from doing anything like that. I tried to put as much distance between that and myself as I could.’ But none of this impressed circuit judge Gayle Graziano who blasted Cass from the bench in a subsequent hearing. ‘He should not have brought in another attorney. He should not have acted as broker for the attorney. There’s the appearance of impropriety in that appearance of brokering.’ With their wrists well and truly slapped, the attorneys and Jackie Giroux were stung. It seems nobody had spotted Section 944.512 of the Florida Statutes.
Arlene Pralle, the woman who was soon to become a bedrock friend and supporter of Lee, attempted to unravel the problems by writing to Judge Graziano and explaining that Jackie had spoken to her and reported that she had been approached by Armstrong who said he had a deal she might be interested in. She flew to Daytona Beach and stayed there for seven days while Russell Armstrong and Raymond Cass tried to get visitation rights. When that failed, Cass reported back to her that the best he could do was set up a telephone interview, which was something far short of what Jackie Giroux had anticipated.
On 14 February, Arlene Pralle and a friend went to see Russell Armstrong who denied knowing anything about a book or a motion-picture project; he suggested that, if they wanted to visit Lee in prison, they had better speak to Raymond Cass. After they had pestered Cass for three weeks, he returned Arlene’s call by saying that this responsibility fell to Armstrong.
Meanwhile, the police were beavering away in the background. While the legal bunfight was continuing between the attorneys and Judge Graziano, the police were now getting in on the act, with Robert Bradshaw, attorney for the sheriff’s office, being appointed to deal with enquiries from the media industry. While he acknowledged that he held no sway over the defence team, or Lee herself, he was able to advise on any police contacts, and possibly on Tyria, who was a state witness.
On Tuesday, 29 January, the day after Lee was indicted for the murder of Richard Mallory, Bradshaw summoned Bruce Munster and Steve Binegar to a conference. By pure coincidence, perhaps, the following day Tyria phoned the easily accessible Bradshaw, claiming that Munster had just told her to make contact and that the detective had suggested that, if she, himself and Binegar pooled their information, they might sign a package deal.
As the days passed, Russell Armstrong told Lee that she was not entitled to a dime for the rights to her story. She felt cheated and effectively told Raymond Cass to sling his hook. With mud flying at him from several directions, he was ‘delighted to leave’.
At a hearing on February 1991, Judge Gayle Graziano listened while Lee argued why she wanted to get rid of Cass. However, she failed to mention that, seconds before Armstrong gave her the bad news, she was gleefully boasting, ‘I’m going to be a millionaire. I’m gonna be more famous than Deirdre Hunt.’
Addressing the judge, hypocritically complaining that her civil rights were being violated, Lee ranted, ‘Cass was always talking about books and movies before and after I got indicted, it still kept ongoing and I don’t even want to have anything to do with his associate [Armstrong], because to me they’re a clan of people that are just interested in making money. They’re not interested in my case. Everybody in jail really respects me, likes me. These people do not care about my case.’
Lee demanded that she be given a female attorney and Tricia Jenkins, public defender in Marion County, who was already assisting Lee against the murder charges there and in Citrus County, was assigned to handle her case in Volusia County as well.
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