by Sue Russell
Somehow, Lori couldn’t help feeling instantly depressed when she heard Aileen’s voice, and couldn’t wait for the conversations—if you could call them that—to end. She always felt a strong sense of impending disaster. A feeling (something akin to that experienced by the family members of hardline drug addicts) that her sister’s life was bound to end in tragedy and it was only a matter of time. She often envisaged her being hit by a car or killed by some crazy person.
‘It sounds terrible to say it and well, she isn’t … but I knew in my mind she would end up dead eventually. You can’t hitchhike on the streets for ever and not have something happen… . I was just waiting for that day to come, and it would be over with, and I wouldn’t have to worry about her any more.’
Prowling the highways, looking for rides, Aileen didn’t passively wait for men to stop, but targeted specific vehicles, flagging down likely drivers. She invariably singled out older men, believing she’d be safer riding with them. There was less likelihood they’d be heavy druggies or flying high on crack, which in turn meant less likelihood of aggression or problems. A little pot or alcohol she could handle, but she didn’t want men who were out of control.
She liked her customers. She liked having sex with them. Perhaps she was gay. Perhaps not.
She didn’t sexually proposition every man who stopped for her. At least, not right off. Her opening gambit was often to pass herself off as a woman in trouble and therefore, of course, in need of money. She varied her tales of woe from ‘My babies are sick at home’ to ‘My rent is due’ or ‘My car’s broke down’.
Whether portraying herself as a pressure-cleaner operator or a professional call girl (as she liked to call it), she always laid claim to a host of regular, satisfied customers, many of whom, she said, were police officers, detectives, FBI men, attorneys. Making her point, she flashed her wallet full of business cards (not lingering long enough to allow careful scrutiny) to anyone interested enough to look.
In 1985, she stopped a man called Dennis just south of Ocala on I-75, telling him her name was Lori Grody. They quickly dispensed with the polite preliminaries and drove off to his business trailer for sex. When she took off her clothes, he noted a puncture wound in her stomach area. Looked like a gunshot or stab wound, but he didn’t know which. After the sex, ‘Lori’ asked for a ride down to New Port Richey. Dennis obliged. Only after she’d got out, did he notice he’d been robbed for his trouble. She’d stolen the .38-calibre Welby revolver that he kept in his car.
Aileen’s grandiose behaviour had begun to take full flight and, not entirely coincidentally, her criminal record kept building. In 1985 she was stopped in Florida’s Pasco County in a stolen car without a valid licence. In January of 1986, she was at it again with one of her more ludicrous episodes. Finding herself confronting a driver’s licence check point, she tried to evade it by hastily turning around the brown Chevy Blazer she was driving and speeding off in the opposite direction. She was spotted and stopped anyway, and asked to produce a licence. She’d left it in a store—could she go get it? No. And please get out of the car, she was told, politely but firmly. As the officers ran the Blazer’s plates and learned that the woman who called herself Lori Grody was in a stolen vehicle, she repeatedly asked to be allowed to leave.
She seemed unduly anxious to get back to the car. Suspicions aroused, one officer strolled over to the Blazer and did a search, quickly uncovering a pistol and a box of .38 specials in the console.
Just as the second officer moved to arrest her, Aileen suddenly made a run for it, employing a desperate measure that might have been comical were it not for the poor innocent driver involved. Racing across the highway, she hurtled towards another car whose driver had innocently stopped at the check point. Reaching the astounded man’s car she literally lunged through his open passenger window, screaming for him to get out. Before the motorist had any idea what had hit him, one of the officers in hot pursuit finally caught up with her, pulled her back out by her legs, and triumphantly slapped on the handcuffs.
For Aileen, it was typically short-sighted, impulsive behaviour. As a solution to a problem, it was doomed to failure.
She was arrested again in June. (A busy month in which she was also ticketed for driving at 72 m.p.h. while carrying the licence of one Susan Lynn Blahovec.) She was riding with a man called Wayne Manning, heavily engrossed in an argument over whether or not he’d stolen her money, when a park ranger stopped their 1982 Dodge pick-up truck near Bulow Creek State Park. The ranger was acting on what turned out to be an unfounded report of a robbery in progress. Routinely checking out the pick-up, however, he learned it had been listed by Manning’s grandfather as stolen.
Searching the truck, the Volusia County deputies who arrived on the scene found a loaded .22 revolver in a brown paper bag, tucked under the passenger seat. Aileen (using the name Lori Grody) denied owning the gun. She claimed she didn’t know it was there. ‘My eyes popped out of my head, though, ’cause I couldn’t believe it. This guy mighta killed me or something, you know!’ Only problem: she trapped herself by denying that ‘the .22’ was hers: no one had said anything about a .22. She then launched into various alternative scenarios, veering from saying she and Manning were off on a shooting expedition, to saying she’d seen the gun only because Manning showed it to her. ‘I said why should I be charged with a concealed weapon when it’s not even my damned gun?’
When twelve rounds of .22-calibre ammo were subsequently found in her overnight bag, she still stuck to her colander-like story. Never quick to take responsibility, she then changed her stance: Manning had planted the ammunition on her. Manning’s more plausible story was that they’d got into an argument after Aileen accused him of stealing $200 from her and that she’d then pulled the gun on him.
That day, as Lori Kristine Grody, Aileen was arrested on an outstanding warrant from Pasco County for carrying a concealed firearm. There was another concealed firearm warrant for her in Volusia. Manning was also arrested.
And the brown bulldog who’d sat patiently in the back of the pick-up throughout this fiasco was collected by the Humane Society.
15
‘There’s someone in bed with Tyria!’ Cammie and Dinky Greene’s two young sons blurted out, rushing into their parents’ bedroom. It was an otherwise normal Saturday morning in June 1986. The boys, shocked, had beaten a hasty retreat after sticking their heads around the bedroom door as was their ritual to wake their buddy, Ty.
In the two years the Greenes had known her, Ty had never brought anyone home. Cammie and Dinky were taken aback, but pleased. Perhaps she’d finally met someone nice?
‘It’s a girl in there with her,’ was the boys’ postscript.
Cammie and Dinky exchanged glances. Cammie had realised pretty swiftly that her short, squat and stocky red-headed friend was attracted to women, not men. At first sight, from a distance, Cammie had even thought she was a guy. Ty, with a small heart tattooed on her left upper arm, and her uniform of shorts, T-shirt and one of those ball caps with a beer logo, didn’t advertise her sexual preference at first, but had soon opened up to non-judgemental Cammie. If they saw some pretty girls on TV, Ty would say how cute one was, and they’d all laugh. She’d been gay as long as she could remember. But her parents didn’t know, and she didn’t want them to know, either. She’d been stabbed at the age of thirteen for messing with another girl’s girlfriend and she’d even managed to keep that from them.
Tyria Jolene Moore’s real mom died when she was just two. Tyria (pronounced Ty-ra) was raised in Ohio by her father, Jack Moore, and his next wife Mary Ann, to whom Ty was close. She had just one photograph by which to remember her real mother. She lost all her other mementoes after once putting her possessions in storage. When she couldn’t pay the rental fee to retrieve them, the owner confiscated everything, family albums and all, and they were lost for ever.
Tyria and Cammie’s family first became neighbours on Halifax Drive in Holly Hill near Daytona Beach
, early in 1984. Ty’s front door faced Cammie’s back door and inevitably the two women bumped into each other the very day the Greenes moved in. One of Cammie’s small sons was stung by a bee and Ty rallied around, trying to soothe the sting with mud. They felt a connection: they were both born in August 1962. Ty was fun, easygoing, and had a sunny disposition. She was never in a bad mood. Ever. And for a long time she was Cammie Greene’s only true friend.
After Ty was evicted from her apartment, the Greenes took her under their wing as an extended-family member and, depending upon her fluctuating circumstances, she lived with them from time to time. When they moved into a spacious house on Highridge in Holly Hill, Ty went too, while she waited for a room to become vacant at the motel where she was working. She’d made herself popular (and somewhat indispensable) to her employers because of her knack with maintenance jobs. Ty was quite the Ms Fix-It. The Greenes often stopped by to swim in the motel pool. When Ty had to give up her room there, she simply moved in with Cammie and Dinky. Their door was always open.
Ty had moved out to Florida from Ohio in 1983 (the year the Greenes’ son Jason was born) using the money she received from a car accident settlement. She met a woman called Marcia and lived with her and her two children in a house that no longer exists, on a boat dock along the Halifax River. The two broke up after a fight amidst great animosity. Indeed, after Ty slipped back to Marcia’s to collect her belongings, the police picked her up for breaking and entering. It was the only criminal blot on her otherwise pristine record.
When Cammie and Dinky met Ty, she was still raw from the recent split with her girlfriend, in fact they sometimes ran into Marcia and she’d often holler and cuss at Ty. Sometimes, they’d get into a full-scale fight.
When Cammie met her, Ty was a regular churchgoer, attending two or three services a week at the local Baptist church and socialising with other churchgoers. She repeatedly asked Cammie to go with her, but Cammie declined. Ty often took the boys though, and even babysat for the preacher’s kids. After work, Ty often had her head stuck in a Bible. She found no conflict between her belief in the Good Book and her lesbianism. The only things she vehemently opposed were all references implying that women should obey men. No way.
Ty met Aileen Wuornos (who’d adopted the name Lee, a truncated version of Aileen) in the Zodiac bar, a gay hangout in Daytona that has since closed. For Lee, it was love at first sight when she saw Ty drinking at the bar. Aileen/Lee did not know it but Ty, with her strawberry-blonde hair and freckles, had colouring that was uncannily similar to Leo Pittman’s.
All Cammie knew was that the two women stayed in Ty’s room for three straight days and nights. Ty emerged only to fetch food.
‘I met somebody last night!’ she whispered to Cammie when they ran into each other in the kitchen. ‘I’ll introduce you to her over the weekend.’
The lovers went shopping for sex toys, including a long white rubber dildo that Cammie stumbled across one day and that Dinky would periodically produce when the women were gone to give his friends a good laugh, saying, ‘See what these girls play with?’
Certainly, when Ty and Lee were in the Greenes’ household, sex played a part in their relationship. Ty confided in Cammie and even had a joke about it. She hobbled around awkwardly, complaining that she hurt. Lee, who apparently took on the male role, was just too much for her, she said.
Lee kept a low profile through that entire first weekend until the Monday morning. She came out and showed her face after Dinky (whose real name is Monnin) had left for work. Even as a little girl, Ty had thought girls were cuter than guys. She liked men as friends, she just had no desire to be in a relationship with them. Lee, on the other hand, hated men. Or so she said. Cammie thought she was pretty, if a little chunky, and a somewhat unlikely companion for the homely and hefty Tyria. Cammie was torn. She was happy for Ty that she’d found a girlfriend, but she couldn’t shake a bad feeling she had about Lee. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it just wouldn’t go away.
Lee had said that she was in the pressure-cleaning business and she went off hitchhiking for days at a time, supposedly to Zephyrhills or Ocala or wherever. Sometimes Cammie dropped her off near I-95 which is where she’d start hitchhiking.
‘Aren’t you scared?’ asked Cammie.
‘No. Not as long as middle-aged guys pick me up,’ Lee replied. She told Cammie she never rode with young guys or with ‘coloureds’.
Often, she left on a Monday or Tuesday and was back before Friday, then she and Ty spent the weekend at the house. She always returned with hundreds of dollars in cash which she and Ty promptly blew in bars, only occasionally chipping in on a household bill.
Lee never washed dishes or did any chores around the house, but the pattern of her relationship with Ty was emerging. Cammie noticed she was pretty good at bossing Tyria around. Lee shaved her legs and insisted Ty also shave hers. It was something that Ty, whose legs were often as hairy as Dinky’s, hated doing but she did as Lee said. Lee didn’t like her woman working and soon Ty gave up her low-paid motel job and lay in bed all morning, sleeping.
Ty, who’d also given up churchgoing since she met Lee, wasn’t afraid of work, but she enjoyed taking it easy while Lee brought home the bacon. Lee definitely liked having her woman there, waiting. When she was gone, affable Ty helped Cammie around the house, folding clothes, doing dishes. But Lee did not like it one little bit if Ty was off helping Cammie with something when she came home.
Neither Ty nor Lee ever made a pass at Cammie, a petite, slender, fair-haired woman with a strikingly pretty, heart-shaped face. Yet Cammie knew Lee was somehow threatened by her relationship with Ty, even though it was only friendship. Indeed, Ty confirmed her suspicion, telling her: ‘Lee is really jealous over me and you!’
‘She is?’ Cammie replied.
‘Cammie, I really respect you and I would never try anything with you.’
‘What about Lee? Don’t you respect her?’
‘No.’
Ty had a good heart. She enjoyed doing things for people, particularly when Lee was away, and once brought home some orange paint from her job, knowing it was Cammie’s favourite colour. For a surprise, she painted Cammie’s bathrooms, kitchen cabinets and even her refrigerator. Cammie certainly was surprised. It was a veritable orange onslaught.
‘She was so happy because she thought I’d be happy,’ she recalls. ‘I said, “Well, it’s nice, Tyria! It’s nice and bright!”’
Lee became a familiar sight, drifting around with a beer in her hand first thing in the morning. Tyria groaned and said she couldn’t handle it that early in the day. But they could plough through a case of beer in a day with no problem. Sometimes more. They ate separately and Ty cooked for them, fixing noodles or burgers or other simple fare. Lee always avoided sitting at the table and eating with Dinky.
Sometimes Cammie knocked on Ty and Lee’s bedroom door to see if Lee was going to work and wanted a ride. One morning, Lee called back that she wasn’t, then opened the door. Cammie saw a big, shiny black eye staring back at her. She must have been beaten up.
‘Shouldn’t you call anybody?’ asked Cammie, shocked.
‘No, it’s no big deal. I was raped,’ Lee replied dismissively. Later, Ty explained to Cammie that Lee had spent the night in a motel where somebody had tried to snatch her money. When she wouldn’t let them have it, they got in a fight and the guy then raped her. The story didn’t quite ring true to Cammie. Somehow, she just couldn’t imagine Lee being raped.
Already suspicious of her mystery house-guest, Cammie was waiting for an opportunity to look inside the vanity-sized, square, tan suitcase that Lee always took on the road with her. She might learn something about her if she could get a peek inside. When Lee was safely out of the house, Cammie grabbed her chance and went into their room and sifted through her belongings. The suitcase housed a sizable stock of condoms—not generally part of a gay woman’s paraphernalia—and a collection of men’s business cards. Lee nev
er wore jewellery but Cammie had noticed that she owned a couple of men’s rings and watches. She said they came from customers who couldn’t pay their cleaning bills. She told Cammie she had a storage place full of belongings, too. Would Cammie like to buy a ring for Dinky? Cammie declined. Dinky didn’t care for rings.
‘Don’t tell him that I wanted to sell you any,’ Lee instructed her. ‘Don’t tell him I have any rings or anything.’
‘Ty,’ Cammie said one day when they were alone, ‘I don’t think Lee has a pressure-cleaning business. I think she’s prostituting. ’
When Ty first met Lee, Lee had billed herself as a drugs dealer, but Ty had long since learned that her lover was a hooker. Put on the spot by Cammie, however, she played dumb. She told Cammie she shared her suspicions.
‘Aren’t you gonna say anything to her about it?’ Cammie asked.
Ty said she didn’t want to rock the boat.
‘Isn’t Lee scared of riding with strangers?’
‘No. She knows who to ride with. Older guys.’
Looking back, Cammie was sure Ty knew about Lee’s hooking all along, but Lee never did admit to it in Cammie’s presence.
Lee owned a CO2 cartridge BB gun. She said she needed it for protection in case anyone messed with her, and often she and Ty practised shooting at beer cans or the trees in the backyard. Cammie finished work at two in the afternoon, and she sometimes sat out there with them and practised too. Lee wasn’t any great shakes at hitting a target. Cammie was definitely a better shot than either Lee or Tyria. Cammie never knew Lee to have a real gun, but a BB gun with a CO2 cartridge was quite powerful. About as powerful as a .22.
Lee once showed Cammie a scar on her stomach, claiming she’d been shot while holding up a store. Cammie didn’t believe her. She didn’t even believe it was a bullet wound.
For some curious reason, Lee hated the idea of Dinky knowing anything about her. She didn’t like him, true, but it was more than that. Perhaps she thought he could see through her. She told Cammie, however, that she’d been abused as a child. She also spoke of an ex-husband who was the richest man in Georgia, and an ex-lover in Key Largo called Toni with whom she had lived in a big mansion.