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.’
ASSISTANT WARDEN IN CHARGE OF EXECUTIONS NEIL HODGES TO THE AUTHOR, HUNTSVILLE PRISON, TEXAS, 1995
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 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.’
&
nbsp; 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.
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