by Sue Russell
Arriving at the Victoria Inn in Scranton, Dan Henry later wrote a report that summarised his first encounter with the suspect, Tyria Moore:
I found Tyria to be tired, apprehensive, but otherwise in good shape. After reassuring her that she was not under arrest, could make phone calls, and leave if she so desired, she seemed to relax. She indicated she wanted to stay and she felt she could trust me. I told her it was late and she looked very tired and all I wanted her to do was get some sleep. I asked her if she would speak to my investigators when they arrived in the morning and help us ‘clear up’ the problems in Florida. She said she would. I made sure she had whatever she needed and the Pennsylvania State Police were most accommodating. I felt that an interview at this time would not be in our best interest.
I checked into the room next to Tyria’s, gave her my phone number and asked her to call me when she woke up and wanted to go to breakfast. Writer retired, having begun the day in Michigan, driving to Ohio, and flying to Eastern Pennsylvania.
Tyria phoned me around 8.45 a.m. the next morning, Friday, January 11th, and said, ‘Major, this is Ty, do we still have a date? I’m hungry.’ I told her we sure did and I’d be there in about 20 minutes.
Dan Henry then placed reassuring phone calls to Twyla and to Mary Ann Moore to let her worried family know Ty was not under arrest and could leave if she chose to do so. Dan Henry was biding his time, waiting for Bruce Munster and Jerry Thompson to do the interview, and in the meanwhile he was being extremely solicitous. Ty’s family suggested sending a lawyer to the hotel room but thankfully Ty kept refusing. She thought it would only complicate things.
Bruce Munster and Jerry Thompson arrived just before noon, to conduct their interview in Ty’s room. Facing her in the flesh for the first time, Munster and Thompson were convinced Lee was the trigger woman, but they still considered Tyria a murder suspect, still felt that two people had been involved. What they did not know just then was that she had left Florida with the belongings of murdered men in her possession.
Tyria was read her Miranda rights in which she was advised that she had the right to stay silent, that anything she said could be used against her in court, and that she had a right to talk to a lawyer for advice before questioning and to have a lawyer with her during the questioning. If she could not afford a lawyer, one would be appointed for her. And if she chose to proceed without a lawyer, she could change her mind and request one at any time. Ty waived her right to a lawyer, then launched straight into a lengthy interview during which she told what she knew about the murders. She told how Lee had sat before her on the floor that evening in December ’89 and announced, with no spectacular show of emotion, that she had killed a man that day and had then covered his body with a piece of carpet. Tyria recounted how they’d used his two-door Cadillac, with its University of Florida Gator tag, to move from the Ocean Shores Motel in Ormond Beach to the converted garage apartment at 332½ Burleigh in Holly Hills.
Apparently cooperating fully, Ty told Bruce Munster of the maroon-coloured briefcase Lee had brought home, along with the combination numbers Lee had given her to open its lock. The six digits just so happened to coincide neatly with the first six digits of Dick Humphreys’ Social Security number. Ty also identified a photograph of Mr Humphreys’ blue car as being the kind Lee was driving in at the time of Dick’s murder. One in a long, fast-changing line of vehicles Lee acquired. Listening to Ty, Munster and Jerry Thompson soon had more than an inkling that Lee Wuornos might have acted alone. The transcripts of those interviews give the impression that Tyria Moore was questioned more as an innocent bystander than as a full-blown suspect, but Bruce Munster was well-known for his soft-pedal approach designed to gain the target’s confidence. He’d got a lot of confessions that way. The majority of interviewees try to minimise their involvement in the crime at hand and he had found that going along with them in that minimisation was an effective tool. That day, Munster and Thompson listened to what Ty claimed to be the truth, and although they had no way of verifying what she said right on the spot, they instinctively believed her.
After lunch, she agreed she’d go with them to Florida the next morning, so they then stopped by at Twyla’s home to pick up clothes for the trip and the belongings of the murdered men that Ty had in her possession. While Munster talked to Twyla downstairs, Thompson went upstairs with Ty and gathered them up. There was the briefcase and notation of serial numbers, some clocks, a word processor, assorted clothing, a clipboard and a grass pipe; all of which had been given to her by Lee and could have belonged to the victims.
Dan Henry did not plan to fly back with them since his car was still in Pittsburgh. Before he left, Ty said: ‘Major, I just want you to know, after coming clean yesterday, I got the best night’s sleep since this all began.’
Dan Henry had one last stop to make back in Cadiz. He went to the Moores’ home to pick up a few other items Ty had told them about—a book of definitions called the Legal Word Book, GE ‘21 Memory’ telephone and a pair of men’s gloves, all of which had been given to her by Lee. Bruce Munster had also asked him to pick up Lee’s recent letter, a Western Union moneygram receipt, two T-shirts and a set of airline ticket receipts.
36
By virtue of her inaction through Lee’s killing rampage, Tyria had cast a black shadow over her own character. Turning a blind eye as she did, she would meet few people’s criteria for an upstanding citizen or even an empathetic human being. Yet in terms of any actual culpability she might have for the homicides, once she began cooperating with authorities, every step she took solidified her role as the benign partner. Although Ty was not suspected of pulling the trigger in the Richard Mallory homicide, officially she did remain a suspect. She knew about at least three murders and had victims’ property in her possession. As time went on she looked less and less like a key suspect. Suspicions to the contrary, she had not been granted immunity, and had there been any evidence of her being involved in the brutal crimes themselves, Bruce Munster insisted she would have been arrested.
Agreeing to help with no holds barred, Ty promptly flew back to Florida alongside Bruce Munster and Jerry Thompson. Both parties had clear agendas. Ty’s was to exonerate herself of any involvement in the murders; law enforcement’s was to give Lee the opportunity—within the confines of the law—to incriminate herself beyond a reasonable doubt.
Although forensic evidence linked Lee to Peter Siems’s car, physical evidence was thin on the ground in some of the homicides, and they badly needed a confession.
On the flight down to Florida, Jerry Thompson allotted Ty a task that kept her busy: he wanted her to put together a list of all her and Lee’s various addresses during 1989 and 1990. No small feat. She scratched her head and scribbled, memories popping up with each temporary home she recalled.
The original plan had been to send Ty into the jail upon arriving in Daytona so she could make direct contact with Lee, but red tape prohibited that approach. Instead, she would have to spin her web by telephone. Ty was willing to help and signed consent forms allowing the calls to be taped. Once Ty was ensconced in room 160 at the Quality Inn, she put together a natural-sounding letter that was rushed over by hand to Lee.
‘Hi there,’ Ty wrote. ‘My mom told me you had called and said you were in trouble. I couldn’t call you so I’m down here in Florida for a few days to see you. I wasn’t able to get on your visitors’ list so if you would like to call me, I’ll try to help you out.’
So it went on. Ty had done her part. Now she and the changing shifts of female FDLE agents staying in the adjoining motel room, and the procession of investigators—primarily Munster and Thompson—who came in and out had simply to bide their time and wait for Lee’s collect call. It was a call that had to come. Starved for contact, bitterly missing her lover and isolated behind bars, how could Lee resist? Ty’s willingness to get on the telephone with Lee while surrounded by cops only strengthened the feeling about her that was already permeating the operati
on. Ty was certainly behaving as though she had little to hide or fear. She didn’t balk at talking to Lee cold, with no opportunity to tip her off that they were being taped. No wonder, Bruce Munster recollects, ‘We were becoming less convinced that Tyria was involved.’
It was not a new thought as far as he was concerned. From the outset in the Troy Burress case, a couple of pieces of the puzzle kept niggling at him. They were searching for two women, yet Burress’s sausage truck was found with a hefty equipment box lodged on the front seat. It took up so much space that there was no way it left enough room for three people to have squeezed in there together—especially women of Tyria and Lee’s size—unless one had sat on the other’s lap. Possible, but not likely. Of course, if Burress had been abducted from a market or convenience store, he could have been transported in the refrigerated back. But Munster didn’t think so. It seemed to him that Lee had acted alone.
Everything the investigators learned about the two women had seemed to substantiate Wuornos’s role as the protagonist. Whether it was handling the witnesses when they crashed Siems’s car, or having altercations with the Votrans drivers, Lee was always at the forefront. The other strong factor pointing the finger in Lee’s direction was her longtime familiarity with firearms.
‘When wasn’t she arrested without a gun?’ was Bruce Munster’s point. ‘She was arrested in Colorado with a .25 automatic, driving a car, shooting it. She was arrested in Orlando with a .38 revolver, driving a stolen car. She was arrested in Volusia County with a .22 revolver. She just had guns all the time. Tyria Moore, on the other hand, graduated high school, I believe. Had one arrest that we could find.’
Backing up her promise of cooperation, Tyria was coming through in other ways, too. She said she’d give the investigators a conducted tour of the homes in which she’d lived with Lee (in fact, they went alone to the addresses Ty gave them) and she showed them the very spot in Rose Bay where Lee had dumped her gun.
Bruce Munster came to believe Ty’s claim that she had gone to Pennsylvania to hide out because of her fear of Lee. He also felt that eventually she would have come forward and told what she knew.
‘Tyria realised that she was in a lot of trouble,’ he notes. ‘She didn’t love Wuornos any more, she didn’t want anything to do with Wuornos any more, because of what Wuornos had done. I think Tyria felt real bad that she didn’t come forward because she could have saved a lot of lives.’
He came to view Ty’s relationship with Lee as something akin to an abusive husband and dominated wife. Lee seemed to take charge and take care of paying the bills while Ty either worked or played Suzy Homemaker.
‘Lee had quite a temper and was fairly physical when she had to be,’ Larry Horzepa concurred, also noting her stout build at the time of arrest and that it took considerable brute strength to rip off licence plates with bare hands as she had done.
On Monday 14 January, at 3.32 in the afternoon, the officers tested their tape set-up to make sure it was working properly. The door between Ty’s and the FDLE agents’ rooms was open at all times, day and night. As if on cue, Lee’s first collect call took place soon after.
‘Hey, Ty?’ Lee said, her voice small, anticipatory.
‘Yeah,’ Ty growled, in her huskier tones.
‘What are you doin’?’ Lee went on.
‘Nothin’. What the hell are you doin’?’ Ty replied, sounding less nervous than she felt.
‘Nothing. I’m sitting here in jail,’ Lee replied.
‘Yeah, that’s what I heard.’
‘How … what are you doin’ down here?’ Lee asked, suspicion rising, but fighting it.
‘I came here to see what the hell’s happening.’
‘Everything’s copasetic,’ Lee reassured her. ‘I’m in here for a … a … uh … carrying a concealed weapon back in ’86 … and a traffic ticket.’
Gently, Ty began to rope Lee in to her imaginary scenario. She was scared (that much was true) and damn worried. The cops had been up to her parents’ home asking questions and looking for her. Lee soothed her, her voice sweet. Ty had nothing to worry about. And she missed her.
‘Do you miss me?’ Lee asked in a small voice, hoping desperately for some declaration of affection in return.
‘Nahhh,’ Ty said in the manner of a transparent lover’s bluff, pretending to be above it all.
‘Kinda?’ Lee persisted, her voice still childlike.
‘Evidently I do or I wouldn’t be here. I guess I worried about’ cha …’
Ty went on to tell Lee about her factory job in Ohio, how she was saving money, how she’d hopped a bus to come down to Florida. Unable to stay away from the fire, it was Lee who raised their problem; she told Ty she’d been reading the paper and that she wasn’t ‘one of those little suspects’.
‘And I’m gettin’ really pissed off, them accusing us … uh, me. You know?’ Lee continued, switching then to her old, familiar tack. ‘ ’Cause just … I’ll have a lawsuit out.’
‘Will ya?’ Ty replied.
‘In a heartbeat.’
Her confidence riding high again, Lee felt she needed to reassure Ty about the storage unit. It was gone, got rid of, she lied. (By some strange quirk of fate, her claim coincided with the day investigators finally swooped down, seizing everything in it.) The call ended with Lee going off to get some visiting information and promising to call back. She wasted no time, and by then she had cold feet.
‘I gotta ask you something. Is there anybody in that room?’ she asked immediately.
Somewhat reassured by Ty on that score, she said she didn’t think it was such a good idea for Ty to visit the jail. She just wanted to get the warrants cleared from her name, then to see Ty again. Dinner interrupted the second call.
Lee’s third collect call arrived so soon after she hadn’t had time to digest her food. Her agenda by then was to claim that those pictures in the paper were all a case of mistaken identity. Someone at the Casa Del Mar must have said it looked like them. Mistaken identity, that’s what it was. Ty wasn’t buying it and argued with her: ‘I just know I didn’t fuckin’ do anything and I don’t want to get … into any shit. I don’t want my life messed up because of somethin’ that you did.’
She hadn’t done anything, though, Lee insisted. Ty told her not to lie, reminding her that she knew ‘damn well that I’ve seen some of the cars and heard it on the news’. She’d just be making it harder on herself if she lied, Ty said. Lee stayed in the denial mode. It wasn’t going to be easy. She then accused Ty of having someone there with her, listening in, and then shifted gears. Any car she had was borrowed. You know we’re not the people, she cajoled Ty.
Ty then drove home a hard fact of life. She’d tell what she knew if she had to.
‘To save my ass?’ Ty said. ‘You’re damn right I will. ’Cause I’m not gonna go to fuckin’ prison for somethin’ that you did. No way.’
Lee told her she loved her and missed her like hell, then, the little gremlin of suspicion prodding her again, asked how Ty could afford these phone calls! They weren’t long distance, Ty assured her, maintaining her charade. Lee went back to hammering home her mistaken identity claim. She bet someone at Ty’s job had told that Ty had a heart tattooed on her arm. Fear breaking through, she shed a few tears. Anyway, Ty had nothing to worry about, she’d been working the whole time and could prove it.
‘I’ll betcha ten bucks,’ Lee warned Ty, ‘they’ll say, “Oh, well, we found fingerprints” just to scare the shit outta you to see if you’re gonna say somethin’, but it’s not true.’
Ty tried drawing Lee out by asking about the car they wrecked, but Lee played dumb. She didn’t know what Ty meant. She started muttering about two guys that picked them up. It was Ty’s turn not to understand.
Over Ty’s denials, Lee said it again: ‘I’ll bet you ten bucks you got somebody sittin’ there and you got a little tape recorder and you’re tryin’ to pin me with this shit.’
The suspicions kept flooding bac
k. It didn’t make sense, Ty coming all the way down to Florida to talk to her on a phone. But she loved her. Ty was the best woman she’d ever known, and she wouldn’t let her get into trouble. She’d gladly die for her, and wait to see her in heaven. Would Ty just do her a favour and try to keep her mouth shut?
‘This is so sickening,’ Lee said, softer. ‘How did our life fall apart? I miss you and all this stupid, stupid fucking warrant … I just hope I get over this warrant and get out.’
She had nothing to do with anything, she said, alluding obliquely to the murders. Then why, Ty coaxed, had she said she did?
‘I was bullshitting,’ Lee replied.
‘Oh, that ain’t nothing’ new.’
‘I know. I’m the biggest bullshitter, right? … Just trying to be a bad ass, I guess.’
Lee told Ty to try to forget what she’d told her.
‘I try to forget a lot,’ was Ty’s revealing response.
Lee didn’t want to be pinned for something she hadn’t done. ‘You know, if one of these guys that got killed and my prints happened to be in their vehicle, it was not me that did it.’
As far as Lee was concerned, those two guys she’d referred to were the motherfuckers that wrecked the car. You know I’m not a very good liar, was Ty’s response.
Tears began falling at both ends of the phone line. Then Ty signed off so she could go and buy beer.
And if Ty did not sound fearful, beleaguered or submissive, or anything resembling a subservient wife, Bruce Munster put that down to the fact that she knew by then that the relationship was over. She was afraid of Lee and wanted no part of her, but, for now, Tyria was in control.