Talking with Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  Lee’s companion was located on 10 January, living with her sister in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Jerry Thompson of Citrus County and Bruce Munster of Marion County flew to Scranton to interview her. She was informed of her rights but not charged with any offence. Munster made sure she knew what perjury was, swore her in, and sat back as she gave her statement.

  Tyria said she had known about the murders since Lee had arrived home with Richard Mallory’s Cadillac. Lee had openly confessed that she had killed a man that day, but Moore had advised her 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. ‘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 Moore accompanied Munster and Thompson on their return to Florida to assist in the investigation. A confession would make the case against Wuornos virtually airtight, and Munster and Thompson explained their plan to her on the flight. They would register her in 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 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.

  Still under the impression that she was only in jail for the Lori Grody weapons violation, the first call came from Lee on 14 January. When Tyria voiced her suspicions, Lee reassured her. ‘I’m only here for that concealed weapons charge in ’86 and a traffic ticket,’ she said, ‘and tell you what, man, I read the newspaper, and I wasn’t one of those little suspects.’ She was aware, though, that the jailhouse phone she was using was being monitored, and made efforts to speak of the crimes in code words and to construct alibis. ‘I think somebody at work … where you worked at … said something that it looked like us,’ she said. ‘And it isn’t us, see? It’s a case of mistaken identity.’

  The calls continued for three days. Tyria Moore 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 Moore 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 Moore 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.’ And, on the morning of 16 January, she did just that.

  During her confession to Larry Horzepa and Bruce Munster, Lee returned again and again to two themes. First, she wanted to make it clear that Tyria Moore was not involved in any of the murders. Secondly, 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. Several times, Michael O’Neill, an attorney from the Volusia County Public Defender’s Office, advised her to stop talking, finally asking in exasperation, ‘Do you realise these guys are cops?’ Wuornos 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.’

  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 Moore and Wuornos 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 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 perpetrate 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 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 ten and twenty agonising minutes to die. Tyria Moore testified that Wuornos 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’, that 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 Wuornos, 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 being 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. Wuornos appeared on the tape and 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 Wuornos 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 27 January. They returned their verdict 91 minutes later. Pamela Mills, a schoolteacher, had b
een 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 Wuornos 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 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 offences … 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 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’. In a rambling statement to the court, she said, ‘I wanted to confess to you that David 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 Attorney Ric Ridgeway, and hissing, ‘I hope your wife and children get raped in the ass!’

  On 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 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, since then, the State Supreme Court of Florida has affirmed all six of her death sentences.

  Today, Lee is in her second round of appeals, a process that will eventually wend its way to the United States Supreme Court. These many appeals advance haltingly, as Florida’s efforts to streamline its appellate process create new delays. She will probably be put to death in around 2005.

  * * *

  Aileen Carol Wuornos has shared Death Row with several faces familiar to students of crime in the USA. Judias ‘Judy’ Buenonano, aged 48, and popularly known as ‘The Black Widow’, had been on Death Row since 1985. Convicted of poisoning her husband, drowning her quadraplegic son by pushing him out of 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 1993 and her sentence has since been commuted to life.

  Andrea Hicks Jackson was sentenced to death for shooting a police officer in 1983, and has also had her sentence reversed. Like Hunt, she no longer lives on ‘The Row’.

  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 writing, Aileen Wuornos is 46 years-old, but looks a decade older. The condemned woman, wearing an orange T-shirt and blue trousers, is 5ft 4in in height and weighs 133lb. The characteristic strawberry-blonde hair, described by witnesses, frames her face but her eyes are constantly bloodshot. Always looking washed-out, her once attractive looks have been replaced with a face that life has not treated kindly. She has a scar between the eyes and burn scars on her forehead. Her body is 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 is confined measures 8ft by10ft. It is painted a dull-looking pink, and the ceiling is quite high, maybe 15ft, which makes the room seem larger and more airy than it really is. She has a black-and-white television, placed above the stainless steel toilet, on a varnished brown shelf. The furniture consists of a grey metal footlocker that doubles as a desk, but no table and only a single chair. There is also a dirty, lime-green cupboard at the foot of a metal bed, which contains her clothes and personal possessions. Everything has to be locked away at bed inspection time, between 9.00am and 11.00am. The only view she has of the outside world is a parking lot and a high fence, festooned with glittering razor wire. There are no bars at her cell window but a metal door with a small hatch separates her from the rest of the cell block. It costs the State of Florida $72.39 a day to keep Lee Wuornos incarcerated.

  Describing her routine, she said, ‘The food ain’t all bad. We’re served three meals a day. At 5.00am, 10.30 to 11.00am, an’ 4.00pm to 4.30. 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 cellmates. 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.’

  She spends the long, solitary hours reading books on spiritual growth and writing lengthy letters to her mother. Lee’s lifestyle is spartan and monotonous – and the days and years roll 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 knows that when her death comes, it will be a painful experience.

  Yet, knowing this, Lee appears 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’ name.’

  On the highways and byways of Florida there are always crossroads, off and on-ramps, where two lives can meet, with destructive results. One comes to an end, and the other takes a permanent detour. Lee Wuornos haunted those places like a deadly spider sitting at the centre of its web. To all intents and purposes, she was a non-threatening woman hitching a ride. As she explained, ‘What I’m sayin’ … you want the truth. I want to tell it as it was. I’m telling you that I was always going somewhere, and most times I hitched a ride. There are thousands of guys and women out there who’ll say they gave me a ride, and we got on just fine, ya know. They gave me no hassle. I’m a good person inside, but when I get drunk, I just don’t know. It’s just … when I’m drunk it’s don’t mess the fuck with me. Ya know. That’s the truth. I’ve got nothing to lose. That’s the truth.’
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  When asked who had initiated the subject of sex during the rides, Lee claimed, ‘I was always short of money, so I guess sometimes I brought up sex. Mallory wanted to fuck straight off. He was a mean motherfucker with a dirty mouth. He got drunk and it was a physical situation, so I popped him and watched the man die. Spears was made out to be a nice, decent guy. That’s shit. He wanted a quick fuck. He bought a few beers and wanted a free fuck … an’ you wanna know about the third one [Carskaddon]. How do think he got undressed? Wise up. He wanted sex … got undressed. Ask yourself, what’s that all about if he didn’t want a cheap fuck? Cos the cops didn’t say about the others … never found the johnnies. Yeah, OK, man. Look, you gotta understand that guys don’t get nude with some broad if they don’t want sex. The last one … I can’t remember his name [Walter Antonio] was … Jesus Christ … he was fucking engaged. He bought a six-pack. The dirty motherfucker. And, I do have one thing, though … their families must know that no matter how they loved the people that I killed, they were bad ‘cause they were going to hurt me. I suppose you think I really suck, right?’

  Most killers are able to describe their crimes, and Lee Wuornos is more adept than some, telling and retelling her story with added layers of gloss to suit her own ends. But one aspect of her story remains constant. She says that each of her victims wanted sex, and either raped her against her will, or intended to. For that very reason, she shot them dead, eliminating them with no more compassion than swatting a fly.

  ‘You’ve gotta understand … I ain’t so bad. I’ve been with hundreds and hundreds of men. I just ain’t killed them all. I would make money but they wouldn’t abuse me or nothin’. I’d just make my money out in the boonies, stick it in my wallet and go. Never hurt them, right? Then you get a few dirty old men who go radical on me. So you see what I’m sayin’ … I kinda had to do what I had to do. What am I supposed to do? It was all their fault, and that’s the God’s honest truth.’