by Sue Russell
In the endless speculation about Arlene, the money question inevitably reared its head. From the beginning, Arlene herself blew smoke clouds of confusion over her motives in the entire affair. She spoke of putting up her horse farm, Maranatha Meadows, to pay Lee’s legal costs, and of hiring Lee a couple of ACLU lawyers, but ultimately said that Lee didn’t want her paying $50,000 for them. She didn’t say that she didn’t have $50,000, she said that Lee didn’t want her paying it. If she really had that kind of money, it rendered all her other desperate cries for money suspect.
Despite various requests for sometimes quite large sums of money from Jackelyn Giroux and the media, Arlene had always said she wasn’t in it for the money. And she said that by becoming Lee’s parents, she and Robert would also be forbidden from reaping the rewards under Son of Sam. That, she said, would prove they weren’t in it for the cash. As cheques come in, it will be interesting to see if the State of Florida, which warned Jackelyn Giroux, will go after Lee’s and the Pralles’ earnings.
In one of her times of frustration in dealing with Lee and Arlene, Giroux admitted she had a fantasy. She’d like to see Lee and Arlene living on the farm alone together, cut off from the world, ‘with barbed wire all around, and not allowed to receive any money or receive any publicity. Then let’s see how long it would last!’
41
Awaiting trial in Volusia County in the spring of 1991, Aileen Wuornos showed two faces. Sure enough, there was the grandiose Aileen, opinionated, demanding, and strident. Warmed by the glow of media attention, and enjoying the newfound feeling of power.
But there was also evident at least one other Lee, who spoke in a softly gentle, girlish voice and in whom a palpable, creeping, cold fear became increasingly visible. Became visible, perhaps, because of the slow but inevitable dawning of the realisation that she had perhaps chosen a doomed path of glory.
She swung between personalities, but whatever fantasies of Ma Barker and gang molls may once have excited her, they were surely crumbling, confronted as she was with the harsh reality of incarceration, her impending murder trials, and the dark, looming shadow of Florida’s active death penalty.
Preoccupied in her own way with her appearance and with keeping her hair looking immaculate, jail came as a jolt, if not a new experience. She was forced for most of the interminable days and nights to use the unshielded toilet facility in her cell—a loathsome experience, and at first, she ate as little as possible in the hopes she could cut down on the frequency of the ordeal. Behaviour that doubtless contributed to her weight loss in an environment where the stodgy cuisine usually guarantees the opposite effect.
When Lee’s ‘killing day’ remarks seeped out and were reprinted by the press in cold black and white, they sent shock waves through a close-to-unshockable society that is literally battle-fatigued by the daily onslaught of violence in the news. And in jail, there was no denying the hard shell around Aileen Wuornos, accused cold-blooded killer. But it wasn’t a one-dimensional picture. Reaching behind that atrocious veneer there was also, lurking in there somewhere, a frightened, disturbed woman who wrapped her arms tightly around herself for comfort and rocked back and forth, still the rejected little girl, desperately craving love, safety, attention, warmth and affection. She drank iced water, watched TV, played Monopoly and cards (when she was in the general prison population), and cried over missing her ‘baby’, Ty.
To some inmates, it seemed Lee had three distinct personalities, not two. She could be the sweetest, nicest person in the world, she could be depressed, or she could just snap. She once asked another inmate’s middle name and out of the blue, slammed her fist on the table and shouted: ‘Bitch, I will kill you! You don’t want to fuck with me!’
Guards came running and moved her to lockdown. When she got angry, Lee also spoke of sharpening her spoon and using it to stab someone.
In calmer moments, usually over communal meals, she told some of the other women that she’d killed the men because they were all cheating on their wives and deserved it.
‘How do you know they were cheating on their wives?’
‘Because I had sex with them before I killed them.’
Again, evidence did not bear out the claim about their marital status nor the sex, but it represented another variation on her story.
Men, Lee said, were maggots. During meals, she also infuriated other inmates who had enough difficulty handling the jail fare, which was prepared by male inmates, by glaring at it and saying: ‘Man, you never know what these men did to our food before it got to us. They could be coming in our food, spitting in our food. This is a man’s jail!’
‘Shut up!’ cried the others. ‘We’re hungry!’
To Puff, a fellow inmate who was in on prostitution and drug charges, Lee came off as a heavy-duty homosexual, linking up with a hefty black girl called Virginia. (Lee told Karen Collins, the Pasco County detective who went undercover in jail, that she’d had a black girlfriend in prison in the early 80s.) Lee was jealous of anyone else getting Virginia’s attention and couldn’t stand it when she hung around other ‘girls’.
They were seen coming out of one another’s ‘rooms’, which was an absolute no-no. Getting caught doing that meant big trouble. But, of course, homosexual relationships, many of necessity rather than natural inclination, were prevalent. Puff admitted she’d stood guard for girls many times.
Besides Doral Menthol cigarettes (she’d switched brands), when Lee got her commissary allowance, she loaded up with Pepsi and with junk food like Swiss rolls, cakes and brownies. The other ‘girls’, who knew nothing of Lee’s history of buying friends, suspected Lee was ordering Virginia a lot of commissary with money from Pralle and Jackelyn Giroux, who sent Lee sixty dollars a month. (Despite all she said, although Lee sometimes refused Giroux’s money orders at first, they were always ultimately cashed.)
Puff heard some of Lee’s morning ritual phone calls to Arlene Pralle and concluded that, despite Pralle’s denials, there was a lesbian undertone to their conversations. ‘I’ve been in these places too long,’ she said firmly, ‘I know how they act.’
Arlene Pralle has said, ‘I am not, nor will I ever be, Lee Wuornos’s lover.’ And of course, Puff only heard one end of the conversation. Also, Lee reputedly manipulated Arlene frequently when she wanted money and favours. She was furious if her money for commissary was late in arriving.
When her commissary privileges were taken away as a punishment for some incident, she briefed Arlene to deposit some money into another inmate’s account, and Arlene rushed to do as she was asked. Speaking from behind bars, Puff had Lee in full view as she expounded her theories on the Pralle relationship; theories that seemed to have a ring of manipulative truth.
‘I’ve been a prostitute, and I find men that will do that for me,’ Puff explained. ‘Like older, lonely men. It’s sad, but I’ll be honest with you, I prey on that loneliness. And I make them think I’m in love with them. And I keep a fat account over here and get whatever I want from them. And I think she does the same thing with that lady.’
By a quirk of timing, Lee’s jail time coincided with that of another celebrated inmate, Virginia Larzelere, who with her son was accused of murdering her husband for financial gain. Lee couldn’t stand having to share her spotlight with Larzelere and was infuriated when the stories about their cases ran side by side in the newspapers.
‘I’m going to kick your ass for the 4th of July,’ Lee was heard to yell at Larzelere that day during linen exchange. When Larzelere complained of threats by Wuornos, she also said she’d been warned by her not to say she had been threatened when she talked to the officers. One officer noted that Larzelere, herself no prize, at least gave the appearance of being scared and upset. And by the time the officers interviewed other inmate witnesses, it appeared that some of them had also received a pep talk from Wuornos. One inmate told an officer that she couldn’t hear what was said between Lee and Virginia Larzelere, but that no one had been threatened.
How could she know that, asked the officer, if she couldn’t hear what was said?
On 19 July Lee was reported for insolence towards the staff after officer Edwards inspected her cell and Lee said, ‘You’re gonna be in one big lawsuit for harassment!’
‘I’m scared,’ the officer coolly replied.
Changing tack, Lee said, ‘Guess what? I’m gonna be on Geraldo! ’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t watch TV, so I’m afraid I’ll miss that one.’
‘Bitch!’ Lee retorted.
Edwards returned with her disciplinary report for Lee to sign as required, but Lee snapped, ‘Forget it! I ain’t signing it. Fuck you!’
When the report was read to her, as required, Lee’s response was that she’d have her attorney contact them because there would be a huge lawsuit coming for mental cruelty. She said she wasn’t going to kill herself because she’d rather have a lawsuit. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) would come down and get them all for what they’d done.
(On another occasion she shouted that she was going to ‘sue the motherfucking jail’, adding, ‘just wait till Geraldo Rivera gets ahold of this!’)
More serious, of course, were the accusations that Lee and Arlene Pralle repeatedly levelled against the jail for maltreatment. Puff, like most inmates, had no great love for life behind bars or her jailers, yet she denied Lee was ever badly treated while she was around her: ‘The guards don’t like her, but they don’t really fool with her unless they have to. They do not abuse anybody in here.’
If Lee was locked down, Puff said, there was a reason and that reason was that she repeatedly threatened people. With her violent history, if she’d hurt someone, the jail might be sued. Of course they segregated her. They had to. Certainly, the jail records seem to bear that out.
Lee, however, complained that inmates filed reports against her that weren’t true and indeed for a time she did seem to fare better in segregation.
The grandiosity was clearly apparent in her behaviour. In June, she had a verbal confrontation with another inmate and she refused to stop arguing. Officer Marsee wrote in her report: ‘She continued to make statements in an angry/demanding tone, and stated: “Do you know who I am? I’m Aileen Wuornos of television!” ’
Marsee ordered her to her cell, from which Lee called out, once again in a demanding and angry tone: ‘I’m in here for murder! ’
‘This is not the first time inmate Wuornos has tried to control the cellblock due to her celebrated status,’ Marsee wrote in conclusion. ‘Actions should be monitored closely to avoid any incidents. ’ Marsee had also overheard Wuornos say of a fellow inmate, ‘If she provokes me, I’ll take care of her myself.’
Lee, of course, saw all of this very differently. She felt it was she who was being picked on, telling another officer: ‘I’ve been in here long enough for you to know that I’m not the one who causes problems here.’ She claimed to have a sweet, loving, kind nature. The reports were falsified, she said, and ‘actually in all reality is a reversed situation’. The reverse theme is, of course, a familiar one—she accused Lewis Fell of beating her with his cane, and the men she murdered of holding guns to her head.
In August, she lodged a request to have a cell from which she could see the TV once her trial began.
By November, she was spending some time on suicide watch. She was also threatening lawsuits for inhumane treatment. ‘This is harassment!’ she said. ‘You take my cross! My jumpsuit doesn’t fit! I wish you’d leave me alone.’
After yet another incident, a fellow inmate reported that Wuornos had told her to go in and talk to all the other white girls and ask them to back her up by saying they’d heard someone threaten her. The inmate refused. If Lee was the Christian she claimed, she wouldn’t ask her to lie for her.
Lee had been indicted on three charges in connection with Richard Mallory’s death back in January. These were: First Degree Murder, a capital felony; Armed Robbery with a Firearm or Deadly Weapon; and Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon. They were the first in a long line of indictments.
Not long after, holding court from her new home behind bars, Aileen had also told Jackelyn Giroux that she picked Mallory up outside a topless bar and negotiated a $35 fee with him for a varied sexual menu called ‘around the world’. The terms agreed, Mallory drove them both to a spot on a wooded dirt road. Aileen asked for her money. Mallory slipped the cash in the ashtray, closed it, and said, ‘You can have the money after it’s over.’ He took off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. She then unzipped his pants and performed oral sex. Afterwards, as she reached for the money, he picked up his gun. Simultaneously, she reached for her plastic bag of clothing which concealed her .22. Aiming her weapon through the bag, she said, she shot her client.
In May 1991, Aileen told Giroux the story somewhat differently, claiming that she and Mallory got out of the car for the sexual encounter and that he moved aggressively toward her with the .45, forcing her to act to defend herself. Knowing what we know now about the weapons and about Lee’s confusion over her victims, it is of course possible that she was describing her version of her encounter with Chuck Carskaddon. In any event, getting out of the car would indeed be logical and more comfortable for the full sexual service she said he requested. And Carskaddon was naked. Mallory, of course, was fully clothed at the time of his death.
‘She told me that each and every one of the murders was self-defence, ’ Jackelyn Giroux continues, ‘that each and every one of them had a gun, and that some of them she killed because they didn’t pay her. She decided to take what was hers, which was the money.’
If there was one thing guaranteed to make her really mad, it was not being paid what she was due.
In time, Giroux also discovered that the very old friends that Lee had specifically asked her to track down and contact turned out not to be old friends at all. Not of hers, at any rate. They were buddies of Lori’s and Keith’s. Mostly, they had belittled, rejected or ridiculed Aileen. Or, worse still, turned their backs and ignored her. Now, it seemed, Aileen wanted them to hear all about her. Now, she was sure they would change their minds.
42
What preceded Aileen Wuornos Pralle’s dance of death—the disfigured childhood and flawed genetic heritage—is infinitely easier to pinpoint than precisely what it was that set her off on her murderous path. What, in her case, made the bough break?
Again and again she was humiliated, abandoned, rejected. Her world was filled with pain, rage, and alcoholism. And she was desperate for the world to notice her. Desperate for love.
But there are multitudes of harmless, upstanding citizens who suffered far worse. Being made to eat a baked potato retrieved from the trash is cruel and unusual punishment, but pales by comparison with some of the nightmares child welfare professionals encounter every day. Children who have been burned and battered and tortured but who somehow rise above their deadly beginnings and end up as law-abiding bank tellers.
Why one person takes the homicidal road and another doesn’t, remains a tantalising mystery. So, too, is why, despite various experts’ estimates suggesting there could be between two and thirteen million people in the U.S. with antisocial personality disorder (meaning their actions are not inhibited by guilt or moral boundaries), very few kill.
One driving force known to propel serial killers is an urgent need for power, for domination, and for control. Those serial killers are predominantly rather ordinary if inadequate white men in their thirties. And, however hard it may be for us to connect a woman, the giver of life, with brutality, violence, blood and gore, with the cold-hearted selection of victims, that same hunger for power by the powerless was at work with Aileen Wuornos.
The serial killer enjoys playing God.
Deciding the fate of another human being.
Determining who will be allowed to live.
And who will die.
By making a man suffer, Aileen transformed herself from victim to victimiser, grabbing that
power for herself with both hands, regardless of the consequences.
She was also a robber. Long familiar with theft. And money, too, empowered Aileen.
Female serial killers, still a comparative or complete rarity depending upon your definition (criminologists and psychologists all have their own interpretations), are propelled by some different issues from men and have traditionally operated in different arenas.
Women have killed children, husbands, lovers. Black widows, killing off their men for money. Spurned wives murdering those who’ve betrayed them. Mistresses out for revenge. Crimes of passion. Crimes of lust. Crimes of jealousy. Crimes of greed.
Women, who are meant to be selfless nurturers, have also positioned themselves in the caring professions and in nursing, only to do the unthinkable and take the lives they’re entrusted with: babies, children, the elderly. The small, the weak, the infirm. Those who can’t fight back. There, too, Aileen Wuornos is different. Her victims were anything but infirm.
Mary Beth Tinning, of New York State, allegedly killed a total of nine of her own babies by suffocation. Because they were labelled accidental or SIDS (‘cot’) deaths and because she kept moving home, she survived undetected for a long time.
Dolores Puente, a Sacramento landlady, preyed on the elderly, allegedly drugging then killing nine of her senior citizen tenants so she could collect their Social Security cheques.
What women have done very little of, relatively speaking, is killing strangers in cold blood. Which is why Aileen Wuornos was leapt upon as being the pioneer of a new breed: the preying hitchhiker, stalking the highways. What women have also done very little of is killing for sexual kicks.
Looking into the minds of murderers, the perpetrators of some of the most gruesome and heinous killings imaginable, might seem a strange way to earn a living, but criminologists who study serial killers are a vital cog wheel. Such killers, a minor but menacing plague lurking in the shadows of society, must be caught so we can sleep at night.