She Devils Around the World

by Sylvia Perrini

  Aileen’s Art Work

  In February of 1993, Aileen pleaded guilty to the murder of Walter Jeno Antonio. Aileen told the court at the sentencing hearing that she wished to waive her right to present mitigating evidence and her right to be present. She said that she already had five death sentences and didn’t want to waste tax payer’s money. Aileen also made the observation that male serial killers normally only received about two death sentences and the number she was receiving was due to a media and political circus. She said she no longer cared and simply wished to return to her cell on death row.

  When the sentencing date arrived, Aileen was brought to the court. The defense lawyers presented a letter from Dr. Harry Krop, a psychiatrist, stating that Aileen was incompetent and delusional. The court then ordered Aileen for another evaluation by psychiatrists Dr. Joel Epstein and Dr. Donald DeBeato. They declared that Aileen suffered from a personality disorder but was competent. The court decided Aileen was mentally competent enough to proceed.

  At the sentencing, Aileen complained profanely and vehemently about mistreatment. The court threatened to bind and gag her unless she remained silent; she was, however, permitted to address the court. In her statement, Aileen again asserted she had acted purely in self-defense. The court rejected Aileen’s claim of self-defense, and she received her sixth death sentence.

  Aileen’s lawyers continued to fight through appeals for her life. In 1996, the US Supreme Court denied her appeal. In 1989, the US Supreme Court ruled that it was not unconstitutional to execute the mentally impaired.

  In 2000, Aileen’s new public defender attorney, Joseph Hobson, and an investigator, Kari Anderson, who both believed that Aileen had been let down completely by the entire legal system launched a new appeal for a new trial. They based the appeal on Stephen Glazer’s incompetence as a lawyer in a death penalty case. Moreover, the fact that, as was filmed in Nick Broomfield’s excellent documentary, “The Selling of a Serial Killer,” Stephen Glazer would smoke as many as seven marijuana joints before giving Aileen legal advice. Joseph Hobson also accused Stephen Glazer of financially profiting from the media for arranging interviews with Aileen.

  In support of his appeals, Joseph Hobson entered a seventy-four page deposition Stephen Glazer had given the previous year.

  In the deposition, Stephen Glazer admits smoking marijuana, both recently and in 1992, and admitted he was filmed smoking marijuana and had told Nick Broomfield’s that the journey from his office to Aileen Wuornos' South Florida prison was a "seven-joint ride."

  Stephen Glazer further admitted that he told Aileen Wuornos that all she had to do if she wished to appeal was point out that he, Glazer, had a conflict of interest while representing her as he negotiated cash payments for media interviews while Aileen’s' case was major news.

  During, this trial, many of Aileen’s childhood friends and acquaintances from Troy were called to give evidence about her childhood in an attempt to have her removed from death row; Evidence and mitigating circumstances that should rightly have happened in her first trial, along with the evidence of Richard Mallory’s violent, sexual history. Some of the men, who had hung around with Aileen in “the pits” as boys, testified albeit uncomfortably, how they had used her for sex and had been cruel to her; others testified how her grandfather had savagely beat her with a black belt. Aileen, in an extraordinary move that effectively sabotaged her own defense, attempted to get their evidence banned.

  Their testimony was ignored and, unbelievably, Steven Glazer was found to be competent as a lawyer. Judge Cobb said, in his summing up, that Aileen Wuornos' happiness with her odd choice for a defense attorney in Stephen Glazer was of no concern to the court.

  In 2001, at the age of forty-five, Aileen was still languishing in a Florida death row cell when she requested the Florida Supreme Court for permission to fire her lawyers and drop all future appeals. Aileen had simply had enough, feeling that her life on death row was worse than death itself and wanted to die.

  Aileen wrote to the Florida Supreme Court, “I killed those men and robbed them cold as ice and would gladly do it again. I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again."

  In a Court hearing in Daytona Beach in April of 2001 to decide if she should be allowed to take this step, Aileen testified while crying and grabbing tissue after tissue.

  "I am a serial killer. I would kill again," and, "If I have to spend life in prison, I will kill. I will kill again." She wanted, she said, no more "legal jabberwocky."

  A defense lawyer argued that Aileen was in no state for the court to honor her request. Aileen responded by saying, “I am so sick of hearing this 'she's crazy' stuff. I've been evaluated so many times. I'm competent, sane, and I'm trying to tell the truth. I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again. Let’s cut to the chase and get on with an execution. I have hate crawling through my system. Taxpayers' money has been squandered, and the families have suffered enough."

  The Florida Supreme Court, after a psychiatric evaluation, agreed to allow her to fire her lawyers and drop all appeals.

  Execution

  Billy Nolas, a lawyer who helped defend Aileen in 1992 in her first trial, described Aileen as "the most disturbed individual I have represented." He said, “She suffered from borderline personality disorder caused by sexual abuse and neglect as a child. As she has gotten older and older, she has gotten worse and worse." Billy Nolas believed Aileen was too mentally ill to comprehend what dropping her appeals and seeking death would mean.

  Meanwhile, Aileen was mentally disintegrating even more. Always paranoid, she now believed the prison employees were conspiring to torture her and force her to suicide.

  In July of 2002, Aileen appeared dressed in dark green prison overalls, handcuffed and shackled in Broward Circuit Court complaining of abuse by prison guards at the Broward Correctional Institution in Pembroke Pines. She had written a 25-page report detailing her abuse. Her serious allegations included staff members threatening to rape her and some guards putting dirt, spit, and urine in her food.

  Aileen also complained of having handcuffs put on so tightly they bruised her wrists, having her cell door kicked by guards, strip searches, low water pressure so she was unable to shower, mildew on her mattress, cat calling, and general, pure hatred directed towards her.

  Aileen with her lawyer Raag Singhal

  The Fort Lauderdale lawyer, Raag Singhal, appointed to represent Aileen in her abuse complaint told the court, "What she is saying is, `I'm a volunteer. I want to be executed. If you can't execute me today than ensure that I am treated fairly until I am put to death.'"

  Raag Singhal said he was worried Aileen was volunteering for death just to escape the mistreatment.

  Outside the court Raag Singhal, when asked by reporters if he thought Aileen was competent, suggested that Aileen’s competency might arise again if the judge rejected her claims of prison abuse.

  "If the allegations don't have any truth to them, Aileen's clearly delusional," he said. "She believes what she's written."

  He later wrote a letter to the Florida Supreme Court expressing "grave doubts" about Aileen’s mental condition. A member of a Florida Support Group, Dianne Abshire, which gives emotional support to death row inmates in Florida, said Aileen was clearly insane.

  The then Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, issued a stay of execution and ordered another psychiatric evaluation of Aileen. He then lifted it after three psychiatrists concluded after interviewing Aileen for fifteen minutes that she was mentally competent enough to be executed.

  In the final count down to Aileen’s execution, the biker bar the Last Resort, where Aileen spent her last night of freedom, had tourists, news crews, and filmmakers visit from around the world. The bar sold black T-shirts with a photo of Aileen and the words, "On a Killing Day." The bar had also adopted a new logo, “Cold Beer and Killer Women."

  Aileen, just days before her execution, gave her final media interview to British producer Nic
k Broomfield, to whom she appeared fond. In the interview, she claimed that her mind was being tortured, and her head crushed by "sonic pressure weapons", as well as other abuses that she said would progressively get worse each time she complained. She also said, “You sabotaged my ass! Society, and the cops, and the system! A raped woman got executed and was used for books and movies and shit!" Her final words in the on-camera interview were "Thanks a lot, society, for railroading my ass."

  When Aileen thought the cameras were switched off, she told Nick Broomfield that the murders were, in fact, self-defense, but she could no longer tolerate being on death row.

  Later outside the prison, Nick Broomfield said, "My conclusion from the interview is we are executing someone who is mad. Here is someone who has totally lost her mind. She trusts nobody and is stark raving mad. She is multiple people. Every time I met her, she was a different person."

  Aileen a couple of day’s before her execution.

  It is possible to watch the interview on YouTube and after watching it, virtually impossible to conclude that Aileen was sane. After viewing it, I wondered what one would have to do or say to be found insane!

  Dawn Botkins was the last person to visit Aileen before her execution. On leaving her, as the guard opened the door, she said she could not look back as she heard Aileen call to her, “I love you Dawn. See you on the other side.”

  Dawn Botkins

  Stephen Glazer, who virtually propelled Aileen to her execution when asked by reporters if he was attending the execution, said he had to be in court that day. He then sung, “Oh-ba-di, Oh-ba-da, Oh-ba-ba-di, life goes on,” and chortled with laughter. Then, as an afterthought, told the journalists they could quote him.

  Arlene Pralle, her adopted mother, didn’t even know her daughter’s execution date.

  For her execution, Aileen asked to be dressed in a black Harley Davidson T-shirt with wings on it, as she believed she had earned her wings, a pair of jeans, boots, and a military belt.

  On the day of the execution, she refused the BBQ dinner offered to her along with any religious counsel.

  Death Row Chamber

  Aileen was allowed to choose lethal injection over the electric chair and was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, Florida on October 9th, 2002. Thirty-two witnesses watched as an executioner injected deadly chemicals into her body. Her last words to the world were; "Yes, I would 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 mother ship and all, I'll be back, I'll be back."

  Aftermath

  Following her execution, Aileen’s body was cremated. Her ashes were taken by Dawn Botkins, her old school friend and closest friend in her final years and who had spent some of Aileen’s last hours with her on death row, to her native Michigan and spread her ashes beneath a Walnut tree that Dawn had planted in memory of Aileen. Thank God, for the likes of Dawn, who out of sheer humanity, reached out to Aileen in her years of isolation on Death Row.

  Aileen’s life was made into a film Monster (2003) which starred Charlize Thereon and Christina Ricci. The film grossed over $30 million in its first year.

  In researching Aileen’s life, I found it impossible not to feel sorry for her. She had been let down by her mother, her grandparents, social services, and virtually everyone she had ever come into contact with. I do not believe she was given a fair trial and that the legal system and society in general completely let her down. I believe that it is highly likely that Aileen, certainly in Richard Mallory’s case, killed in self-defense and that the United States government unjustly murdered an ill, vulnerable, innocent woman.

  Aileen was clearly a highly unbalanced character, yet even when she was imprisoned, people continued to abuse her by trying to profit from her disturbed life. To my mind, Aileen’s case demonstrates serious flaws in the criminal justice system, the inhumanity of the death penalty, and the lack of protection for vulnerable members of society.

  May Aileen, and the men she shot rest in peace.

  DANA SUE GRAY

  WHEN GREED TURNS TO MURDER

  Dana Sue Gray is an anomaly in the women serial killers I have previously written about.

  Female serial killers normally kill their partners, children, or people at a physical distance with poison or guns. Poison, history has shown, has been the favorite choice of the majority of most women serial killers.

  Dana is a rarity in her choice of victim and her hands-on method of using her hands, a cord or rope, and an object in which to bludgeon her victim. She would also use more force than was required to kill them. Some people have speculated that Dana liked the excitement and thrill of the physical struggle, much as she loved other thrill sports such as sky-diving and wind-surfing. The spending sprees that she indulged in after her murder jaunts, they have said, were her way of celebrating a successful killing.

  Two of Dana’s victims were women who she had a remote family history with and the other two were complete strangers.

  Dana Sue Armbrust was born on December 6th, 1957 in California to Russell and Beverly Armbrust. Russell was a hairstylist and Beverly, his fourth wife, a former beauty queen. Beverly was a vain, angry woman and a shopaholic who would often over-spend on her husband’s credit cards. Russell and Beverly divorced when Dana was two-years-old. He’d had enough when he caught his wife having a physical fight with an older woman who’d annoyed her. Dana saw remarkably little of him after that until she was fourteen-years-old.

  Dana was not a happy child. At school, she had few friends and would show on occasions an aggressive streak. Her schoolwork was poor, and she was repeatedly suspended for truancy.

  Dana was fourteen when her mother, after a long illness, died of breast cancer. She then went to live in affluent Newport with her father, stepmother Geri, Geri's ex-mother-in-law, Norma Davis, and her half-brother’s. She attended Newport Harbor High School.

  Geri, before she married Russell Armbrust in 1988, had been married to Bill Davis, Norma’s son who had died. However, Geri had continued to care for her elderly mother-in-law. Dana, living with her father, enjoyed a far more affluent lifestyle than she had with her mother. She also developed an interest in athletics. In 1976, she graduated from high school and started nursing school. Ever since she had seen the way the nurses had cared for her mother during her illness, she’d had a desire to become a nurse.

  Dana, at the age of eighteen, was small, just five-foot-two, with long blonde hair, fit, beautiful, and always immaculately groomed. She took up sky diving, which she became accomplished at and began living with her coach Rob, when her step-mother Geri kicked her out after Norma Davis found marijuana in her bedroom. She graduated in 1981 from nursing school and got a job working as a delivery and labor nurse at the Inland Valley Regional Medical Center. By this time, she had split up with Rob and was seeing Chris Dodson, one of her wind-surfing friends. Both Dana and Chris were intense wind-surfers and golfers and would frequently fly to Hawaii where they would take part in tournaments. They dated on and off for several years until Dana took up with a former high school friend and fellow sports devotee Bill Gray, who’d had a crush on Dana since high school. He was a budding business man and musician that owned a variety of businesses under the name of “Graymatter”. Dana and Bill married at a fashionable, up-market winery in Temecula, California in October of 1987, followed by a three-week honeymoon in Hawaii.

  Bill and Dana bought a house in Canyon Lake, a gated community that had 12-foot-high walls and 24-hour security on its three entrances. Her father also now lived here as did Norma Davis, who now had her own home in a condominium within the gated community. All the homeowners had a choice between the lake front and the golf course.

  Canyon Lake is built around a meandering 18-hole golf course complete with a Country Club Restaurant, bar, and an artificial lake carved from the desert of Riverside County, complete with fjords. All of the homeowners within Canyon Lake had rights and access to t
he lake for recreational use. There were swimming areas, fishing holes, and beaches. The community also had lighted tennis courts, riding stables, and many other amenities. Luxury cars sat outside the homes while most residents made their way around the community in their golf carts. It was a place for the wealthy to feel safe, pampered, and protected in the desert temperatures of Riverside County just seventy-five miles from the LA metropolis.

  Dana had inherited from her mother her shopaholic traits and enjoyment of lavish spending sprees and indulgence in drinking. Soon, Bill and Dana began to argue about money and Dana’s spending. Friends later said that her passion for money was "nuts ... not even normally greedy. Crazy”.

  Bill would pull his hair out in exasperation as he pleaded with his wife, to cut back on her spending. However, as another friend later said of her "You could not tell her what to do.... Dana is extremely hyperactive and opinionated”.

  When Dana inherited an unexpected legacy of $7,500 from an aunt instead of helping with the mounting debts, she took off on a trip to Europe, leaving Bill behind.

  Bill’s father helped the couple out with multiple loans. However, with ever-increasing credit card debts, the couple was forced to take out a second mortgage on the house in Canyon Lake. The quarrels over money between Bill and Dana increased in intensity. Dana began drinking and suffered a miscarriage, her fourth. In early 1993, Dana began an affair with a friend of theirs, Jim Wilkins. She moved out of the Canyon Lake house and moved into Jim’s house on Mission Trail in the area of Wildomar where he lived with Jason, his young son. Dana then filed for a divorce from Bill in June of 1993. In September of 1993, Dana and Bill decided to file for bankruptcy in an attempt to put off foreclosure on their home in Canyon Lake. Meanwhile, unknown to Bill, Dana had taken out a life-insurance policy on him. If Bill died, the amount of the insurance payoff would more than adequately pay off all of the debts.