by Sue Russell
‘That woman took everything from me,’ Lee complained. ‘I wish I could kill her.’ After they split up, Lee said, she knew she wouldn’t get anything so she went back to the house to destroy everything.
Cammie thought Lee just liked to come off as tough, but she certainly had a temper. Once she commented on a big bruise on Ty’s leg. Lee had hit her, Ty said, but she’d hit her back. Husky Ty could give as good as she got and by sheer weight alone could have doubtless overpowered Lee. Cammie wasn’t too concerned about her that way. Besides, by August, the girls had moved out to be on their own and the Greenes rarely saw them.
They drifted from one motel to another until by fall, Tyria finally landed a job. She was hired as a maid at the Pierre Motel in Zephyrhills. She and Lee had just ridden up on her moped, one backpack between them, hoping to find work and needing a place to stay. They checked in for two nights, but when Kathy Beasman, the Pierre’s owner, insisted the blonde fill out the guest register, she thought it odd the way her new guest seemed to be casting around, confused, for a name to use. Eventually, she signed in Cher-style. Lee was the only name Kathy ever knew for her.
Kathy needed help but could only afford to hire one person. Within a couple of days, she liked Ty enough to hire her, throwing in a free room as part of the pay deal. With her work history and gentler demeanour, Ty was the natural choice. The Pierre’s clientele was primarily retired folk. Regulars. It was almost like a family community. They came each year and stayed for the season, which lasted anything from three to six months. Tyria’s warm personality made her very popular with the guests. She was a good worker. Very pleasant, minded her own business. And Lee gave the guests a wide berth. The arrangement worked well.
It was clear to Kathy that Lee was the boss, yet she sensed a lost quality in her. Lee kept following her around, intently saying: ‘I’m looking for a good Christian person. It’s very important to me to find a good Christian person.’
Kathy, who believed she fitted the bill, listened understandingly to Lee’s tales of being verbally abused and hit by both her mother and father. And, oh, she missed her brother, Keith, so much! Kathy’s strong sense that Lee had not been loved was compounded by her revelation that she’d been on the streets prostituting to survive since she was eleven. She’d had a baby, too, but said, ‘I don’t ever want to meet him or have him find out who I am.’ How sad, Kathy thought.
She told Kathy that she’d been partners in a pressure-cleaning business with her ex-lover, Toni, until they had a major falling out, but she still owned part of the business. Finally satisfied that Kathy wouldn’t condemn her for it, she admitted she was a hooker. She hated it, and only did it out of necessity when they ran out of cash. She had to keep them fed and get them shelter. Ty hated her hooking, too. Kathy never knew Lee actually to go look for any regular employment, but at least she kept her prostitution well away from the motel. She never hitched nearby and never brought any guys back.
‘When I was married to Lewis Fell, I sang in a nightclub,’ Lee wistfully told Kathy, and hearing her sing, Kathy was surprisingly impressed. A gorgeous voice, she thought. But if she’d sung once, why didn’t she do it again? Surely, it had to be better than prostitution?
‘There’ll be a book written about me one day,’ Lee told her confidently. Kathy thought that unlikely, but why burst her bubble?
At night, Ty sometimes sat and wrote long, chatty letters to her stepmother, Mary Ann Moore, and to her family in Ohio. Seeing her girlfriend engrossed in that intimate ritual made feelings of jealousy and discomfort erupt in Lee. It bothered her greatly that Ty had someone else in the world besides her to whom she felt close. Someone that cared enough about her to want to know where she was at any given moment. It hurt her that Ty had a family she cared for and that she didn’t. It would have suited Lee to see Ty cut off from her family altogether. She’d have felt more secure if they were both in the same lonely boat. She wished she was Ty’s whole world, just as Ty was hers. She hated the way she felt inside if she ever thought about life without her. After Mom and Keith, she just couldn’t stand to lose somebody else. She knew she couldn’t ever let that happen.
Ty and Lee settled into a routine at the Pierre. Kathy gave them permission to shoot the BB gun out back and they duly practised every day. Kathy thought it rather funny, the way Lee pulled her gun out of her pocket like a parody of a western gunslinger. Pull, aim, fire. Pull, aim, fire. She seemed bent on perfecting her quickdraw technique.
Lee and Ty rarely ate anything nutritious, all they did was drink beer. Lots of it. Indeed, Lee bloated up so badly, she was convinced she had some kind of tumour. She took herself off for a rare trip to a doctor, but he assured her that it was nothing more sinister than beer bloat. She’d better cut down on her drinking.
When money ran out, Kathy sometimes helped them with a small loan, but they always honoured it, even paid her back double, handing over a ten here, a twenty there. So Kathy didn’t even worry when at one point the loan rose to $200. She trusted them. Sure enough, they paid her back in full. But trouble was brewing. Kathy asked them to leave in the spring of ’87. It wasn’t just their excessive drinking. They had been flaunting their gay relationship—kissing and holding hands out by the pool. It had offended and upset some of her elderly guests. Kathy was sorry, there was nothing she could do.
By then, Ty had sold her moped, so they left what had been a semblance of security on foot. For a month or so, they motel-hopped, resuming their earlier nomadic existence. Sometimes, they took their backpack and slept out in the orange groves or camped in the woods, or by the railroad tracks. The weather was reasonably kind, but by April 1987, they’d had enough of roughing it.
Ty and Lee reappeared at Cammie and Dinky Greene’s door. Could they stay? Ty told them how they’d been sleeping outdoors but had picked out a spot where they could see a bread truck make its 3 a.m. delivery drop at a supermarket. That way, Ty could run over and pick off a couple of loaves before the store opened.
To Cammie, that was stealing, plain and simple. It put her in mind of the time she and Dinky were looking for a camper top for their truck, and Ty and Lee took her to see one they’d spotted.
‘Come on, Ty, help me pick this up and we’ll put it on her truck,’ Lee had said, bending down to lift a corner to assess how heavy it was.
‘What are you doing?’ Cammie had interrupted anxiously. ‘Let me go up there and ask the guy what size it is and see what he wants for it.’
‘Oh, we don’t have to do that. We’ll just throw it on the truck and take off!’ Lee replied.
‘No! We ain’t gonna do that!’ Cammie shot back.
‘Hey! What are you all doing?’ Suddenly a man was walking towards them.
‘Is this your camper top?’ Cammie called. ‘Why don’t you come down here, and let’s talk about it?’
Ultimately the size was wrong, but there was no doubt in Cammie’s mind that they’d have stolen it in a hot minute. Cammie thought, not for the first time, that Lee was definitely not a good influence on Ty. Now, here they were, back again. Cammie and Dinky didn’t mind Ty moving back in, but they categorically did not want Lee. Not wanting to say that, they just acted hesitant. Lee was going to be gone a lot on the road and she just hated the idea of leaving Ty alone in a motel, she said, appealing to their soft hearts. She’d pay the Greenes if they would please look after Ty for her. Ty was always welcome. She could stay without paying, they said. To their utter dismay, when Ty moved back in, Lee simply wormed her way back in with her. This time round, Lee Wuornos and Dinky Greene clashed badly. Even with Cammie and Tyria playing peacemakers, they simply couldn’t get along. The Greenes reluctantly went along with it for Ty’s sake. They certainly didn’t do it for the rent money. For all their talk, Lee and Ty only ever handed over small amounts, $20 here and $30 there.
‘Every family needs a Tyria,’ Cammie used to say. Ty was so great with the kids. When Lee was gone, she fitted back in as one of the family, going to the
boys’ baseball games, popping to the grocery store, getting all fired up at a wrestling match with Cammie and Dinky, watching football games on TV, playing catch with the kids. She did everything they did.
Ty bought a motorcycle for $50 and she and Dinky played around with it every night until finally they got it running. Then they rode it hard in the woods until they drove it right into the ground.
Cammie once took Ty and Lee to the beach with the kids. She couldn’t believe it. They all lay there on the sand, relaxing. Lee and Ty were both watching the girls walk by—then they got furious at one another for ogling.
At home, Lee kept to her man-hating line. When Dinky’s friends came over she stormed through the house, loudly asking Ty: ‘When are those guys leaving?’ But Cammie could never quite get out of her mind the feeling that the man-hating business was an act she put on. Somehow it just didn’t seem genuine.
Lee was never rude to Cammie, although Cammie instinctively knew that there were times it was better to give her a wide berth. Dinky, who thought she was an obnoxious know-all, wasn’t so diplomatic and couldn’t resist baiting her.
‘You think you know everything!’ he’d say.
‘Oh yeah? I do know everything!’ Lee screamed back.
Much as Dinky liked Ty, he wasn’t keen on what they were doing under his roof and in front of his sons. They kissed just like boyfriend and girlfriend.
‘We told them we didn’t care what they did in the bedroom but not to be doing it in front of the kids,’ Cammie recalls. ‘And I think Lee just would do it because she knew it aggravated us.’
Dinky decided that they’d been on their best behaviour when they were angling to move in, but once they got their way about that, they just started doing as they pleased. Finally, he told them they would have to take their stuff and get out. Lee threw one of her fits. Dinky, unimpressed, just laughed. But they stayed put. Things came to an ugly head again the night Lee wanted to eat in the living room and Dinky told her she must eat at the dining table. She flew off the handle, leapt from her chair shouting, ‘I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!’
Dinky didn’t take the threat seriously, but Cammie was stunned, and scared. Judging by Ty’s reaction, Cammie had the distinct feeling that she also believed Lee could do it. Ty struggled to pick Lee up bodily and somehow managed to manoeuvre her into the bedroom where she eventually calmed her down. Once again, things settled down.
For Mother’s Day in May 1987, a whole family entourage including Cammie, Dinky, the kids, Dinky’s mother, brothers and sisters, set off on a truck ride up to North Carolina to visit Cammie’s mom for a week’s vacation. Sandra, Cammie’s three-year-old niece, was living with her at the time and Ty suggested that since the truck was so full, they leave Sandra with her and Lee. Cammie, trusting Ty completely, agreed. She did not trust Lee, but she knew Tyria would never let any harm come to Sandra. In fact, little Sandra had a fine time being ferried around in taxicabs since Ty and Lee didn’t have a car.
Up in the Carolinas, Cammie suddenly missed her driver’s licence. She had a habit of sticking it in her back pocket, then forgetting it was there when she threw her jeans in the wash. By the time Cammie called about it, concerned, Lee had already spotted it where it had fallen by Cammie’s dresser, and had pocketed it, deciding to keep it. They hadn’t seen it, Ty and Lee told Cammie, who couldn’t think what happened to it … then.
Months later, Cammie had a notice from the local library. A couple of books she’d checked out were overdue. Cammie had never heard of either title, yet the slip bore the number of her missing driver’s licence. Then she noticed they were survival books. How odd. Suddenly, she had the eeriest feeling Lee was behind it. But why?
Cammie held many lingering memories of Ty and Lee, but over the years found one especially hard to shake. She could still picture them coming home one day, bubbling over with excitement about a mysterious plan. It was going to make them all rich, Lee bragged.
‘How would you like to have enough money where you’d never have to work again? Where your kids would never have to work?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘I’d like my kids to know the value of a dollar,’ Cammie drily retorted.
‘But how would you like it if you had so much money you didn’t have to work?’
‘Sounds like a pretty good deal,’ Cammie conceded warily.
‘I’m gonna do something no woman has ever done before and everybody will respect me,’ Lee boasted.
What could she possibly do, Cammie wondered with mild disgust, that would make people respect her?
Lee didn’t offer Cammie any concrete explanation for quite how this triumph was supposed to take place, and something stopped her from probing further.
What Lee did say was that she and Tyria were going to be like Bonnie and Clyde.
That they’d be sitting back, raking in all the money.
That they’d be doing society a favour.
That everyone would look up to her.
And that one of these days they’d be writing a movie or a story about her.
Was Cammie sure she didn’t want to be a part of it?
‘Only if it’s legal,’ Cammie said suspiciously, immediately sure that it couldn’t be.
She knew Bonnie and Clyde were bandits who robbed banks and killed people. She didn’t know they wound up dead.
The subject was then dropped as suddenly as it had arisen. Then, a couple of months later, Lee and Ty asked Cammie strange questions. If she and Dinky saw them in court later on down the line, would they try to help them out? Would they testify for them? Would they show up in court?
Cammie couldn’t imagine what on earth Lee was talking about but, once again, something stopped her from pressing for specifics. Not that it crossed Cammie’s mind that they were talking about anything really bad. She envisaged something dumb and innocuous. Trespassing somewhere exciting, perhaps. Even so, she was noncommittal.
‘I don’t know. It depends what it’s about,’ she hedged.
Frankly, most of what Lee said went in one ear and out the other, like so much hot air. Dinky was right, Lee was a big talker. She’d even spun some story once about being a special agent in another state! She was always boasting she was going to buy Tyria this and that. Saying Tyria would never have to work again. She was going to take care of her. Cammie took it all with a grain of salt. Years later, she’d wish she’d paid more attention and asked a truckload more questions.
To Dinky’s great relief, Ty and Lee left again that summer, but their shifty eventual departure was like a daylight version of a moonlight flit.
A couple of days before, Lee informed Cammie that she was due to be getting some money and would be giving her something towards the rent. Nothing had been forthcoming. Surprise, surprise. Dinky had told them to leave by then. Besides not contributing to the rent, they ate their food. Dinky and Cammie had their work cut out supporting their family, without supporting them too. They didn’t mind so much with Ty, but given the wad of money Lee always had, why on earth should they subsidise her?
Ultimately, however, the Greenes had no idea the two women were actually planning to leave.
At the time, Cammie worked in the school cafeteria across the street, and coincidentally, Dinky, a roofer, was working on the school roof that very morning. The task gave him a bird’s eye view of activities outside their home. Clambering down the ladder, he hurried inside the cafeteria to warn Cammie that it looked as if Ty and Lee were moving out. She’d better get over there, Dinky said. Make sure they weren’t taking anything they shouldn’t.
Cammie hurried in the door and just couldn’t believe her eyes. Her home looked as if it had been blitzed by a tornado. There were Ty and Lee, literally throwing stuff around, as they hastily loaded up some white car they’d pulled in the driveway. Something along the lines of an Oldsmobile Cutlass or a Monte Carlo, it was a car Cammie and Dinky had never seen before. In fact, there’d never been any kind of car in all the time they’d known t
he two women.
‘What are you doing?’ Cammie demanded nervously.
‘Movin’ out,’ Ty replied, sounding unusually hostile.
‘Tyria, we don’t have time to talk,’ Lee interjected. ‘Let’s get our stuff and get out.’
‘Whose car is that?’ Cammie wanted to know.
‘A friend of mine’s,’ said Lee. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
That, too, struck Cammie as strange. To the best of her knowledge, Lee didn’t have any friends.
Being packed was the stereo that Ty had fought over so bitterly with Marcia. Then Cammie also spotted some of her blankets and a sleeping bag, stacked up ready to be moved.
‘You’re not going to take the sleeping bag, are you?’ Cammie asked, her hand shaking with anger as she drew hard on her cigarette.
‘Well, Cammie, you gave that to me,’ Ty replied. Cammie was shocked. ‘No! I said you can use it while you are here. That doesn’t mean when you leave you take it with you!’
Watching them leave, Cammie was even more shocked by Tyria’s attitude. What had happened to her buddy? She seemed so cold. So angry and unpleasant. Nothing at all like the Ty she knew. Or thought she knew.
16
In the steaming haze of the summer of 1987, Lee and Ty’s nomadic existence found them drifting aimiessly around the highly transient Daytona Beach area. With its boardwalk, lackadaisical lifestyle and proliferation of bars, arcades and cheap motels, it was the perfect hangout spot. A week here. A week there. Lazy days rolling by. Nights dulled by alcohol.
Together, Lee and Ty raised a little hell. That was how people would remember them: together. An inseparable and sometimes rowdy duo. The short, heavy one. And the tall, blonde one. In fact, Lee hovers below 5 feet 6 inches, but her broad-shouldered frame and strong manner are deceiving. People repeatedly took her for 5 feet 7 or 5 feet 8, even 5 feet 10. So much for eyewitness accuracy. Ty, on the other hand, with her close-cropped hair tucked under a cap, and her cumbersome, lumbering gait, was often mistaken for a chunky guy.