by Sue Russell
They headed over to Jack’s Mini-Warehouses on Nova Road, where Lee rented a small unit under the name of Cammie Greene. She told the owners that she was a Marine on her way to Saudi Arabia and that’s why she needed to store her stuff. While she stayed up front and filled out the necessary form and paid the deposit, Ty and Donald took the key and drove on back to the empty unit. Ty unlocked it and began throwing everything in. Lee appeared just in time to help her finish up.
(The next day, Lee returned to Jack’s, complaining about the deposit they’d made her pay; she said she hadn’t been told about it in advance.)
Donald hadn’t the faintest idea that Lee, an almost-stranger, had rented the unit giving his address as her own. She must have stored it away in her mind from being at his house for a past sexual encounter.
What they put in the storage unit, Ty would recall, was a .45 handgun, a black tool box, a suitcase, a TV-radio, assorted clothing and knick-knacks, and a small briefcase. Ty knew of the bloody origins of at least some of those goods, but that didn’t stop her helping Lee lock them away.
Ty hadn’t left when Richard Mallory was murdered.
She hadn’t left through that long year of killing.
She had even come back to Lee after going home to Ohio for Thanksgiving.
Now, finally, almost a year to the day Mallory met his death, she was baling out. Even to her mind, that was a hell of a long time in which to have done nothing.
Spending time in the warm bosom of her family had certainly given her a sharp reminder that another kind of life was open to her. But ultimately her timing was such that her departure seemed more spurred by the cold fear of capture. To Ty, there was a finality about her separation from her girlfriend, while Lee seemed to view it differently, as if it were part of a plan to split up and lie low for a while, then to reunite. If she believed that (or at least part of her did), it would explain why she took it in her stride, at least at first.
At the Greyhound station, there were no tears. No harsh words. No dramas. Donald stayed in the car while Lee walked Ty in to get her ticket. Five, maybe ten, minutes later, Lee emerged looking upset and climbed back in the car. ‘Let’s go,’ she instructed her chauffeur.
There was still beer in the car and she grabbed one, tossing the familiar soothing liquid down her throat. Tears began to fall down her cheeks. She mumbled a little to herself. So, they’d split up, she muttered. So, she had to start a new life. Donald, sensing it best, didn’t join in but just let her be. Then it seemed to pass, and she started chatting about anything and everything. She didn’t mention Ty again.
As they drove towards Donald’s house in Daytona, Ty, who had a two-hour wait alone for her bus, put in a call to Sandy. She wanted to tell her about the fight she’d had with Lee. She was leaving, she told her friend, because she needed to find out where she was at. She’d had it. And she’d told Lee that if she tried to find her, she’d call the cops.
Lee, meanwhile, soothed herself in bed with Donald. Feeling another body against hers. Hoping to feel less alone, at least for one night. She didn’t charge him—after all, he’d been ferrying her around—but she asked him for money. He was broke, he told her, and even owed his landlord. (Funny, the way the landlord’s dog, General Blackjack, had taken such a great dislike to Lee.) When they surfaced the next morning, she asked Donald to drop her off downtown, which he did, letting her out on Ridgewood and waving goodbye.
She ambled off, her face shielded by her ever-present sunglasses and a blue baseball hat perched on her head. It bore the friendly message: ‘Go To Hell’.
Later, Donald realised that for his trouble she’d taken off with a green T-shirt and a pair of his sneakers. Later still, he missed a couple of pairs of blue jeans. He wouldn’t mind betting she took those, too.
Taking another look at the 4 July Siems car crash, Bruce Munster was given some confusing input into the ever-fluctuating descriptions of the mystery women. On 3 December Rhonda Bailey, the woman who saw the actual smash take place before Lee and Ty dumped the car further down the road, described the blonde as being shorter than the brunette. The brunette was bigger in all directions. Rhonda hadn’t come closer than within twenty feet of them and was sure she wouldn’t be able to recognise their faces if she was shown a photo line-up. It had been too long and she simply couldn’t remember.
Munster also learned from Rhonda that the car had not flipped over as speculated.
On 4 December, Munster drove over to Church Street in Orange Springs to interview Harmon Jeters. A further search of the area turned up Siems’s licence plate, but there was still no sign of his body. On the 11th, Munster talked to Jim Bailey, Rhonda’s husband. Jim’s recollections varied yet again. He described the blonde as good-looking. Not fat, not thin, small-waisted, 5 feet 7 inches, 5 feet 8 inches. The brunette, he remembered as being on the heavy-set side, probably 5 feet 5 inches, 5 feet 6 inches, with a long, big face.
Rose McNeill, who had thought she’d seen the last of Lee, watched her sometime tenant reappear in the office on Wednesday 5 December, alone, upset, carrying a suitcase and asking for a room. She refused room 8 because she and Ty had stayed in it twice: it just held too many memories.
Rose allotted her room 7, just a thin wall and a few feet removed from all those memories. Her very first night back, Lee drew a complaint from the guest in the next room. Why had Rose given him such a noisy room? Rose asked him if he’d seen anyone coming or going. He said there was a tall man who must have left the next morning. Unfortunately, Rose didn’t see him.
Lee finally checked out of the Fairview for the last time on Monday 10 December, owing $21.75 on her bill and leaving a gold-coloured ring for collateral. It wasn’t valuable, but had sentimental value, she said, promising she’d be back to pick it up and to pay her debt. It was a pretty ring with a square red stone set amidst a cluster of white imitation diamonds. The effect was somewhat spoiled, however, by the rubber band Lee kept twisted around it.
On 11 December, Bruce Munster received a message to call Mrs Florence Carskaddon in response to her seeing something on TV about the search for two women. She told him about her son who’d been missing since June. His car had been found on I-75 in Marion County that same month and impounded, and there’d been no sign of him since. His body could be identified, she told Munster, by a wire in his jaw from an accident. Another light bulb went on.
Munster knew in an instant: it had to be Tom Muck’s guy. Tom Muck had told him that the anonymous victim from Pasco County who they felt sure was tied to the case was a rodeo worker and that they’d found wire in his jaw. It was another big breakthrough.
Munster immediately informed Muck who in turn contacted Mrs Carskaddon and drove to the Ocala Highway Patrol post to pick up a copy of the impound report on Carskaddon’s 1975 Cadillac. On 12 December, through a ridge detail taken from a fingertip on the decomposed body, a concrete i.d. was made. Finally, Mrs Carskaddon at least had the peace of mind of knowing what had happened to her son.
Lee checked into the Sea View Motel on US 1 down in Micco the night Mrs Carskaddon got the news. The next morning, through Tom Burton, a man she’d met in Bojos Bar in Melbourne, ‘Lee Greene’ met up with Tom’s sister, Virginia Rocco. Lee had spun Tom a story about how her car had blown up in Miami and she’d had to leave it there, and how her husband had just died. She’d even had to pawn her gun to buy food, she told him. Playing on his sympathy, she went on to say she would have to sleep under a bridge because she had nowhere else to go. Caught up by this tale of woe that her brother relayed to her, Virginia, a good-hearted woman who happened to have a fishing cabin, had agreed to meet Lee and Tom in the bar.
Lee showed Virginia a heavy-link man’s-style gold chain, and asked if she’d like to buy it for twenty bucks so that she could get something to drink? Virginia declined. She asked to see some i.d. and Lee produced a warehouse receipt for a place in Daytona where she was storing all her belongings.
After knowing her for just twen
ty minutes, Virginia agreed to let Lee stay at her cabin in Micco, just south of Cocoa Beach. In that short space of time Lee had also managed to cram in stories of her brother’s death, a broken love affair, of being burnt in a fire as a kid, of having a baby at fourteen. She then regaled them with the story of the time she was in Colorado and had no place to stay so a man had loaned her a cabin. Her first night there, she told Virginia, a bear came smashing through a downstairs window and she shot it and killed it.
‘Weren’t you afraid?’ Virginia asked.
‘No. I’m a hell of a good shot,’ Lee replied.
Virginia, who was rather tearful and preoccupied (she’d just come from visiting her father, who was terminally ill in hospital), didn’t pay much attention to all this.
In return for Virginia’s generosity with her cabin, Lee offered her a pawn ticket for a gun she said had belonged to her husband. She had no more use for it and she was getting rid of his stuff. Once again, Virginia refused her offer.
‘Some day I’ll pay you back,’ Lee said gratefully.
‘I don’t want anything. All I want you to do is find a job and get yourself straightened out,’ Virginia told her.
When Virginia next went to the cabin, on 19 December, Lee had already moved on. She’d left behind on the coffee table a handwritten note saying ‘thankyou Virginia’, a woman’s purse and some men’s clothing. That was the good news. The bad was that Lee had apparently taken a small gold charm of hers, a sterling silver ring and bracelet, and an ivory necklace. She had also taken her i.d., birth certificate and passport, but Virginia didn’t miss those at the time. Indeed, she didn’t find out about their disappearance for more than a year.
On 13 December, Kathy Beasman called in with lead no. 297, stating that Tyria Moore and Susan Blahovec used to work in her motel. The following day Sergeant Brian Jarvis took an anonymous call from a woman who claimed the two were violent, man-hating lesbians and were capable of hurting people. Before signing off, the nameless caller sealed her credibility: she supplied Jarvis with Ty Moore’s mother’s phone number in Ohio and said they’d bought an RV and moved to the Ocean Village RV park in Ormond Beach. Bruce Munster checked out the phone number and found it belonged to Jack Moore, Ty’s father. He also checked out the RV park, where he was told of Blahovec’s extremely violent past history and dislike of men. No one phoned the Moores at that stage. Ty was believed to be in Florida and they didn’t want to tip anyone off.
On 14 December, Edward Michael McMann phoned in a tip. A woman he believed to be Lee had darted in front of his car. He’d have hit her if he hadn’t slammed on his brakes. It was a Friday afternoon, between the third week in September and the third week in October, as he was driving home to Ocala, and he’d picked her up on Route 98 at 471, not far from Zephyrhills.
She asked to be dropped outside the populated part of town. She claimed not to know the area, but also claimed to have lived in Florida her whole life. Once he let her out, he watched her head off to find another ride. McMann remembered her carrying a purse and shopping bag and saying she was fussy about the men she chose and claiming she didn’t fool with truck drivers. She tried to proposition him, saying she had no money and a couple of kids at home. She thought him decidedly odd when he turned her down, but he handed her a couple of bucks anyway. She wanted beer, but her luck was out. Edward didn’t drink. He, too, saw the wallet with its array of business cards.
Over at the Casa Del Mar, Ty’s ex-colleagues were poring over the sketches in the newspapers. Everyone chuckled when someone piped up, ‘Look! There’s Ty and Lee!’ The sketches did seem to bear a strange resemblance to a couple they knew. No. Surely not. It couldn’t be.
Paul Gribben, the aspiring writer Lee talked to back in 1987, was moved to call the police when he saw the sketches.
‘I have a pretty good idea who they are,’ he said. ‘Their names are Lee and Ty, and I’d like to talk to somebody about it. I’d like to supply you with information.’
He was referred to a detective whom he was instructed to call during business hours, which proved impossible because of Paul’s schedule as a tour bus driver. Still intent on passing on what he knew, he attempted to call other law enforcement agencies, including the FDLE, but to his immense frustration, he couldn’t seem to get past the lower echelons and his calls went unreturned. Typical, he thought, annoyed. Screw them! Too much bureaucratic bullshit. Besides, it wasn’t his job.
Unbeknownst to him, Larry Horzepa did try, unsuccessfully, to reach him.
That one aborted tip aside, ultimately a whopping 900-plus leads would pour in, many in response to a broadcast on the popular TV show, America’s Most Wanted. The net was closing in.
The names of other pairs of women also cropped up more than once, but Ty and Lee were irrevocably being propelled to the fore as suspects.
On Thursday 20 December, Brian Jarvis handed Bruce Munster lead sheet no. 361. It bore the names Lee and Ty and had been marked ‘Good Lead!’, indicating it was the fourth time these names had cropped up. The tip came from a Port Orange detective who’d been told that the two women, supposedly lesbians and legally married, had been at Cathie’s Toadl Pub in Port Orange and lived at the Fairview Motel.
That day there was a massive meeting embracing all the task force investigators including FDLE agents and the four hundred or so leads received thus far were sorted and prioritised. Arrangements were made to have driver’s licence photographs and background checks flown in from the FDLE in Tallahassee on Susan Lynn Blahovec, Cammie Marsh Greene and Tyria Moore. (The name Wuornos was still notably absent.) Fingerprints were found on file in Tallahassee for both Blahovec and Tyria Moore.
The following day, 21 December, Munster telephoned Rose McNeill of the Fairview Motel to quiz her about her guests. He listened intently as her account unravelled of their three stays there. It was the second time period that particularly grabbed him, especially when he learned from Mrs McNeill that somewhere between 17 and 19 November, Lee had put down what was for her an unusually large sum of cash. She could have put the cash down right after Walter Gino Antonio’s murder, on the 18th.
Munster’s attention, however, leapt to full alert when Rose said that while Tyria was away up north, Lee had pulled up with a maroon car with no tag and tucked it behind the motel. As the facts clicked together in his mind—she might have just put Walter Gino Antonio’s car and one of the suspects at the Fairview together—he rose from the chair behind his desk. For a moment, he felt unable to speak. It was perfect. Just perfect.
Rose McNeill had just handed him a key.
With impeccable timing, Larry Horzepa and Bob Kelley from Volusia County happened to stop by just then to catch up on what they’d missed at the big Thursday meeting. Talking it over, they decided to run all the suspects’ names—Tyria Moore, Susan Blahovec and Cammie Marsh Greene—through Volusia’s computerised pawn shop records. Fortunately, an ordinance in Volusia meant anyone selling to pawn shops had to record their transaction by filling out a form and giving a thumbprint. It would turn out to be a useful little formality in this case as in a legion others.
Immediately, the system turned up a couple of hits on Cammie Marsh Greene. On 6 December 1989, just days after Richard Mallory’s murder, she’d pawned a 35mm Minolta Freedom camera and a Micronta Road Patrol Radar Detector bought at Radio Shack (both of the type owned by Richard Mallory), at the OK Pawn Shop in Daytona Beach. Cammie got $30 for the trade, showed her driver’s licence and duly left the obligatory thumbprint. Few people even own a Radio Shack radar detector, let alone coupled with a Minolta 35mm camera like the one that Jackie Davis, Mallory’s ex-girlfriend, had said was also missing.
‘That really piqued our interest,’ remembered Larry Horzepa, a master of understatement. ‘Putting those two together, we said, “OK, this has got to be the person we are looking for.”’
With the all-important ‘Cammie’ thumbprint in hand, the FDLE was called in. Cammie had also pawned a box of tools in June
of 1990 of the kind stolen from Spears. (Those, however, could not be traced.)
Looking back, the task force would designate 21 December a very good day indeed in the Wuornos investigation.
Early that evening, Jerry Thompson drove to Marion County SO and he and investigators from Pasco, Dixie and Marion then headed over towards Daytona Beach to be on the spot for a meeting Saturday morning at Volusia County SD.
At 10.10 a.m. on 22 December, the officers all met up with Bob Kelley there. By 10.30, Jenny Aherne from the FDLE lab in Orlando had good news. After she and a technician had sifted a thousand cards by hand, she’d made an i.d. on ‘Cammie Greene’s’ pawn shop thumbprint to Lori Kristine Grody who’d been arrested in Volusia County for carrying a concealed firearm. It smelled right.
This wasn’t the Lori Grody who sat with her family in Mancelona, Michigan, thinking pensively from time to time of her wayward sister. But the Lori Grody who had been arrested in Volusia County back in June of ’86 for a driving licence charge while in a stolen vehicle and also while carrying a loaded .22 under the car seat along with twelve rounds of ammunition in a bag.
Checking Grody out, they learned that she had outstanding warrants for failure to appear in both Volusia and Pasco Counties. The FDLE folk were meanwhile burrowing deeper, and behind Lori Grody they found one Aileen Carol Wuornos and her prints from a past arrest.
In running her criminal history, up popped several more aliases, including Aileen Carol Wuornos, Aileen Carol Wuornot, Aileen Wuornot. Photo comparisons showed Lori Grody and Susan Blahovec to be one and the same person (Wuornos), whereas the photo on the Cammie Greene driver’s licence was of someone else (the real Cammie Greene).