by Sue Russell
An airline check soon confirmed that Ty had indeed travelled on dates that put her well out of the vicinity when Antonio was murdered. She was, however, far from out from under suspicion. She might conceivably have travelled to Ohio on the 17th, slipped back down to Florida, back up to Ohio, then still have flown back on the 25th. Plus, there was still the not insignificant matter of her being seen fleeing Peter Siems’s car.
By 4 January 1991, the strategy for a two-pronged attack was in place. Up in Ohio, there’d be a renewed effort to find Tyria. Meanwhile the home team (with Captain Steve Binegar at the helm) concentrated on scouring the Daytona Beach area for Ty and for Aileen ‘Lee’ Wuornos, a.k.a. Cammie, a.k.a. Susan, a.k.a. Lori. The FDLE would supply mobile phones, pagers and expense money for the joint task force and surveillance would begin the next day.
While Wuornos could be picked up on the outstanding 1986 arrest warrant, it was agreed she should only be taken into custody as an absolute last resort.
First, it was thought to be premature to actually pick her up without first finding Tyria Moore. But there was also some legitimate worry about the wisdom of executing that warrant. Prosecutor Ric Ridgway, of the Marion County State Attorney’s Office, explained it. At that moment in history, neither the Florida Supreme Court nor the United States Supreme Court had ruled on whether you could go into jail and question someone who is behind bars on one charge, about another unrelated case. Subsequently, the ruling came down that you could do just that, but back then it looked like a potential headache definitely best avoided.
Ridgway and his colleagues were concerned that when she made her first court appearance on the old charge, the moment she was assigned a court-appointed lawyer, they might find that they’d blown any chance of ever speaking to her about the homicides. Things were complicated enough, legally speaking. Had the Florida Supreme Court or the US Supreme Court ruled differently on two cases, any previous confession might have been lost anyway.
All things considered, the prudent course of action was to locate Wuornos, watch and wait.
In an ideal world, the suspects would lead law enforcement to their current residence, which could then be searched and might be a treasure trove of incriminating evidence linking them to the victims. By all accounts, the two women moved around with tool boxes. There could be much more. They just had to find it before the women realised they were being watched and got rid of it.
On 7 January, Major Henry flew to Ohio to spearhead the Ohio-Michigan effort. Stealthily, a web was slipped into place that would hopefully trap Tyria. A pen register was requested to allow law enforcement to tap the telephone at the Moore residence, and a mail cover was started to monitor the family’s mail. The Moores’ phone records were also subpoenaed. All part of the effort to find Tyria before she became aware that she was the object of a womanhunt. The legal formalities, however, would take around a week, and Major Henry had another chore to tackle meanwhile in the northern part of the state—checking out the real Susan Blahovec. The woman behind Lee’s alias also happened to be an Ohio resident. As with Lee’s other aliases, there’d been some hesitation about approaching their rightful owners. Because Wuornos seemed to use her a.k.a.’s with confidence, it was possible she was using them with permission. Were that the case, one false move could have tipped her off that they were on to her.
Local law enforcement in Berea, Ohio, already had the unwitting genuine Susan Blahovec under surveillance when Dan Henry arrived. The plan was to approach her on the old Florida traffic citations and see what she knew about them. They moved in, stopping her outside her home. Dan Henry posed as another Ohio man, blending in with the locals. Blahovec was immediately cooperative. She was only too aware that someone had been using her driver’s licence and committing traffic offences in her name. In fact, she could document all her past efforts to prove that she had been in Ohio at the time of the offences and to try to get them off her record.
But how might someone have got a Florida licence in her name? It turned out that she’d lived at the Seahorse Campground down in the Keys area prior to 1985 with her common-law husband whom she’d later left when he got involved with drugs. She’d never met Lee Wuornos or Ty Moore, but clearly that was the link. When they’d stayed at the Seahorse later, her ex, out of animosity, blithely gave Lee Susan’s birth certificate and duplicate Ohio driver’s licence. From the Ohio licence, Lee had been able to get a Florida licence which was later suspended because of the unpaid tickets.
Susan had learned of the licence problem when she went to renew her Ohio licence and was told about the Florida tickets. Dan Henry showed her the signature on the Florida traffic citations which she was able to show was not her own. Very rapidly, the real Susan Blahovec had neatly removed herself from under the cloud of suspicion.
34
Aileen Carol Wuornos, suspected serial killer, was finally spotted and placed under surveillance at 9.19 p.m. on Tuesday 8 January 1991. She was in the Port Orange Pub on Ridgewood Avenue in Harbor Oaks, about half a mile north of the Last Resort. On her tail were a couple of undercover officers who’d been handpicked for the task. Mike Joyner, a sergeant in the Citrus County SO Special Investigations Unit, worked undercover constantly, primarily narcotics operations. He’d ridden with biker gangs and was adept at infiltrating their environs.
Joyner already had a low-level awareness of the case that was shaping up. He’d first heard about the David Spears homicide when Mr Spears’s body had turned up in Citrus County’s jurisdiction, although at that stage Joyner’s only personal involvement was taking part in a search through the woods.
On Saturday 5 January, Joyner, Jerry Thompson, and investigator Imperial of Citrus County had attended a joint meeting at the command post the task force had set up at the Pirate’s Cove motel in Volusia, a move made because the Daytona area seemed to be the suspects’ favoured terrain. That day, a game plan was put in place. They’d worked out a shift system for a moving surveillance operation that would get officers out covering the streets. The FDLE had supplied portable phones. There would be absolutely no radio communication so that the news media could not monitor the operation and ruin everything.
Investigators Imperial and Buscher had worked a Sunday shift together and had visited ‘Our Place’, a bar on Ridgewood in South Daytona. The bartender recognised a picture of Lee/Susan Blahovec and said she’d been in the previous day with another woman. They’d had a couple of beers, then left. They were getting close. Imperial stayed for a couple of hours in case they returned, but no such luck.
Joyner, it had been decided, would work with Martin, another undercover man. Having familiarised themselves with photographs of the two women, Joyner and Martin (a.k.a. Drums and Bucket), attired in their biker gear, would team up on the night shift, drifting into area bars, spending a few minutes in each—just long enough to see if the suspects were there—before moving on to the next.
On the Tuesday afternoon, Larry Horzepa and Special Agent Chouinard spent five hours checking the US 1 strip, but it wasn’t their lucky day. Joyner and Martin were about to strike paydirt. Martin was driving their silver Chevy pick-up when, close to 9 p.m., they turned into the parking lot of the Port Orange Pub. Joyner, a lean fellow with long dark hair and a full beard, told his partner to stay put. He’d get out and take a walk around.
It wasn’t hard to recognise Lee, not once he saw her face to face. As soon as he set foot inside, he knew he had her, standing alone and shooting pool.
Whenever she set down the pool cue, Joyner noted, she went right back to a tan suitcase that was clearly hers. Puffing steadily on Marlboros, she swigged her beer. Just as they were beginning to build a nice little rapport, Joyner (who’d of course introduced himself as ‘Drums’) watched in dismay as out of the blue a couple of uniformed officers came in and yanked her from the pub.
The very secretive nature of such an undercover operation almost guarantees that even with the best of efforts and intentions, wires sometimes cross, je
opardising a delicate operation. That, Joyner realised, was precisely what seemed to be happening before his very eyes.
Officer Proctor, it turned out, had been acting on an anonymous tip that one of the two suspected female serial killers was having a drink in the pub. The tipster said that they’d seen the same female about six weeks earlier with a girlfriend and overheard talk of guns, Colorado, and being able to ‘take a man out’. Proctor had hurried over there and met up with Detective Belz who went in and confirmed that the female matching the description was indeed in the bar. Officers Proctor and Stiltner moved in, asking her to step outside.
Would she think they were on to her, Joyner worried? He had her in his sight as she stood across the parking lot with them, but could only guess. He certainly couldn’t hear what was being said.
She cooperated with the cops to the extent that she produced a driver’s licence in the name of Cammie Marsh Greene, but they had noticed she didn’t match the photograph and seemed confused about her birthdate. She told them she was ‘starting to get mad’, and refused to show another piece of i.d. She wanted to go back into the bar. When asked for her address, she said she was between apartments. Joyner watched from afar, as she stood with her hands on her hips, her body language clearly showing her growing aggravation. Since she seemed to be getting so agitated, the officers let her go, then radioed in her licence information.
Little did they realise the frantic behind-the-scenes activity they had stirred up in an effort to stop their innocent efficiency from aborting the operation. Before going outside, Joyner quickly tipped off ‘Bucket’ to contact Jerry Thompson outside. He was running the show that day since Bruce Munster was back in Marion County doing more background work. Thompson swung into immediate action and was able to pluck the right phone number from memory and within seconds was patched through to Port Orange dispatch. Understood, the dispatcher said. Luckily, the officers were on the radio that very moment.
Only when they were told via radio to back off, did they learn that Lee was already under the eagle eye of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office. In fact, there were twenty, maybe even twenty-five, people on the surveillance at that point, many of them street soldiers from Marion and Citrus Counties and the FDLE, all in unmarked cars, except for the FDLE agents posted in a surveillance van across the street.
Lee later told the undercovers she was being hassled because she looked like a serial killer they were looking for and she had nowhere to stay, but there had been no mention of murders. The souls of discretion, the officers had merely thanked her politely and let her go. They left the scene with no visible harm done.
Free once more, an angry Lee had gone back into the bar cussing and shouting, then promptly threw her pool stick down on the table and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She’d had a close call and she must have been shaken.
When she came out, her mood began to pick up again. She drank more beer, lots of it. Cans of Busch and Budweiser.
Sensing an available ear, Lee moaned to ‘Drums’ about her break-up with her girlfriend Ty. She was real depressed about losing her lover. At first, she thought the world had come to an end, but she was strong, she’d get over it. Joyner encouraged that line of thinking. He also went out to his truck and armed himself. His partner was already armed.
What were Drums and Bucket doing in town, Lee wanted to know? Noncommittal and very cool, Joyner said they were just taking care of some business.
Everything she owned was in her little suitcase, she said. It was all she had left. She also showed him a small, silver, Eagle padlock key on a brass ring on her belt which she described as ‘my life’. Then, just as suddenly, the chatting stopped and they would be back to playing pool or, with Lee pumping quarters steadily into the juke box, dancing together. She was definitely rowdy, but not overtly drunk. At times, she was downright affectionate, coming up and hugging him.
Then, quick as a flash, her mood could snap. At one point she accidentally bumped into Joyner and in an instant, she’d pulled back her pool stick as if ready to hit him with it. Jollying her out of it, he asked what she was doing. ‘Gosh, damn, girl. I’m the one shooting pool!’ he quipped. Then she was all right again.
Joyner, an old hand with almost a decade of undercover work under his belt, was adept at consuming the minimum of alcohol while giving the impression that he was knocking it back as fast as his companion. Ordering his beer in a can or brown bottle, he made restroom trips to tip out their contents and fill them up with water. That way he could keep up with her beer for beer. It was all nice and sociable, and she was none the wiser. Joyner was buying. He bought her a pack of Marlboros, too, plus maybe four or five beers over a three-hour period. And he saw her scars. The one on her arm from the car wreck, and the one in her stomach from being shot.
Martin made periodic calls from the cellular phone in their pick-up, reporting to command post. And Dixie County’s Jimmy Pinner called Bruce Munster at home to say, ‘We’ve got her under surveillance.’ Munster immediately headed back over to Volusia.
When she was ready to leave the bar an hour later, she pushed Drums and Bucket for a ride. The edict had already come down that the undercovers weren’t to get in a vehicle with her. To Joyner, that also meant not letting her get in his pick-up with him. Having made a firm mental note of how frighteningly quickly she could veer from affable to downright aggressive, he declined. They had a previous engagement, he said, but they’d probably catch up with her later.
Not only was this a suspected serial killer whose modus operandi was killing men she drove around with, but as a sergeant, he that day happened to have around $2,000 in investigation expense money stuffed in his pocket. He’d already accidentally pulled it out at one point, within her sight. He didn’t particularly fancy feeling a gun rammed in his ribs that night. And he wasn’t sure she didn’t have one.
Staggering off, still tightly clutching her suitcase, she walked half a mile south down Ridgewood to the Last Resort Bar, her old haunt. Drums and Bucket pulled away in the opposite direction. Their shift was over and they handed over surveillance to another team.
Cannonball, the Last Resort’s ultra-burly bartender, didn’t pass judgement on Lee or any other street girls. Seemed to him, no one would wake up one morning and simply decide to be a hooker. Most of them were doing what they did because of what had been done to them by their fathers or uncles or someone. No, he wouldn’t say anything bad about Lee. He remembered Ty, the lover who’d left, as looking like a little bulldog with a big, round face. She’d always liked playing the claw machines and fishing for soft toys and animals which it spat out as rewards. When she and Lee got into some heavy-duty drinking together, Ty seemed to be able to keep a lid on Lee. Sure, she got brassy and bold, but she never gave him any problems. But then, who’d want to tangle with him?
That night, since she had nowhere else to stay, Lee slept under the stars of what was indeed for her the last resort, curling up on an old, tan car seat on the porch. Silently the surveillance team watched over her while she snatched a few hours’ shuteye. Had she but known it, she might have enjoyed the fact that she had more undivided attention focused on her than at any other time in her life.
When morning came, completely unaware of her minders, she sleepily stretched and staggered back into the bar. It was Wednesday 9 January. Scraping her stringy hair up into a ponytail, she freshened up and changed into blue shorts and a flowery blue shirt. By noon, she was back at the pool table, comforting herself with its familiarity.
Up north, Dan Henry was moving on from Ohio to Michigan to look in on the investigation that was under way there into the women behind the aliases Lori Grody and Sandra Kretsch.
Back in Florida, things were about to hot up. By early afternoon, the weather had turned chilly. Lee had changed into jeans and a beige windbreaker jacket; vital information that was duly circulated among her watchers. The jacket was the Members Only kind.
It was close to 3 p.m. when
Drums and Bucket casually dropped back into the Last Resort, feigning surprise at finding Lee there, drinking. This time, Bucket was wired for sound with a body transmitter, and the surveillance team outside was able to listen in directly. She told the guys where she’d spent the night, even took Drums outside to show him the car seat. The tan suitcase, they noted, was still close by her side.
Outside, surveillance teams came and went, following departing Last Resort patrons to their next destinations and checking out their vehicles, tracing back owner names and addresses. They were covering all the bases.
Lee said she’d been on the road and had spent $600 in the last two weeks and was broke. She said her friend had stolen all her belongings and left her with nothing. She also regaled the undercovers with a tale of how she’d been in Mexico and when someone made her angry by touching her motorcycle, she’d pulled a .22 out of her boot and opened fire. She didn’t know if she’d hit them or not.
Joyner, who gave her money for the juke box, noticed she seemed obsessed with playing one song—‘Digging Up Bones’ by Randy Travis—over and over again. It was an ode to lost love, but the irony of the title wasn’t lost on the undercovers. Periodically, Lee moved over to the pay phone on the wall and went through the motions of making a call. Somehow, Joyner got the distinct feeling that it was all a charade and that she wasn’t talking to anybody.
Drums and Bucket had also got chatting to Cannonball, the bartender. They listened with concern to his announcement that there was a big party planned for that night. A pig roast, the works. That meant crowds, and crowds meant trouble.
Joyner decided a preemptive strike was in order: he offered to give Lee the money for a room in the motel down the street. Hadn’t she been saying she was tired and wanted a bath? He wanted her where they could keep an eye on her. Not unnaturally, Lee, who was unused to favours of any kind, greeted the offer with great suspicion. Was he putting her on? She was still sceptical when he came back and handed her a room key after saying he’d go and register her. (Meanwhile, he’d tipped off two FDLE agents outside about the party and the motel plan.)