by Sue Russell
The attorneys fought to drive home their points. For the defence: that Champagne couldn’t be sure in all cases that those bullets had been fired in the weapon found in Rose Bay. For the prosecution: some had definitely been fired in that weapon. And those that might not have been still shared the same class and characteristics.
As Billy Nolas and Tricia Jenkins cross-examined and recross-examined witnesses, Nolas repeatedly leapt to his feet with mistrial motions and objections. He was laying the foundation for appeal, of course, but Judge Blount’s patience wore thin. It wore thin, too, with the verbal sparring between David Damore and Billy Nolas throughout the trial. He chastised them like a couple of unruly sons.
On Tuesday 21 January—Monday having been Martin Luther King’s birthday—the process continued. The spoils of Lee’s robberies that had been found amidst the clutter in Jack’s Mini-Warehouses were trotted out, items tied to victims; other victims whose stories were slowly told.
Nine bullets had killed Charles Carskaddon, the jury heard. Throughout it all, the prosecution’s highly visual body-and-car map was building.
And the crowd in the courtroom was shrinking, driven away by the tedium of technical evidence.
The task of adding the human touch and re-engaging any flagging attention fell to Stefan Siems, son of the missionary whose body had never been found but whom Lee had confessed to killing. Stefan identified his dad’s luggage, his radio tape player, his windbreaker and toiletry bag, all of which had been seized from Lee’s storage unit.
Peter Siems’s niece, Kathleen, was called to testify about her ‘Uncle Pete’, but kept getting the date of his disappearance wrong by a year. Broad hints by the prosecution failed to get her back on track so she ended up a wasted witness. No matter. The prosecution could afford to lose her.
That day, during recesses, Arlene Pralle chatted about her and Lee’s plans to sue Volusia County Jail for alleged mistreatment of Lee. They would use, Pralle said, the same attorney who had handled the adoption, Steve Glazer.
Everyone noticed it. At times, Lee looked so bubbly and downright cheerful that it was hard to believe she was on trial for her life.
On Wednesday 22 January, Walter Gino Antonio’s fiancée, Aleen Bury, testified. Struggling to control her emotions, she identified his property. Dr Margarita Arruza, the forensic pathologist who carried out the autopsy on Antonio, hurried State Attorney Tanner towards his goal of blowing Wuornos’s pleas of self-defence out of the water.
As the jury viewed a gruesome photograph of the back of Antonio’s torso, Dr Arruza pointed out the wounds, testifying that all four bullets, including the one to his head, had hit him in the back. The courtroom was silent, but the point was definitely taken.
The doctor had noted that Antonio wore a ring (he had a tan-line) but that it was missing from the body. He had no dentures, she said.
‘It was like he’d been stripped of everything that would give him identity.’
Billy Nolas got her to agree that she couldn’t tell which bullet had been fired first, or if Mr Antonio had been standing or sitting. She also agreed that the bullets were fired in rapid succession. Billy Nolas wanted the jury to think that it happened too fast for premeditation or cold calculation. But Nolas’s by-then-familiar point that the victim could have been in any position or doing anything when he was shot, carried little weight in light of the damning testimony that all four shots had hit him in the back.
Even so, John Tanner didn’t let it go at that, getting the doctor to agree on redirect that death would not have been instantaneous and that Antonio would have had to bleed to death.
‘You didn’t list excessive bleeding as a cause of death?’ asked Billy Nolas, hoping to recover somewhat. It was a bad call.
‘No. That’s what usually happens if you’re shot,’ the doctor replied coolly.
All told, it was very damning stuff. The Fairview Motel’s Rose McNeill followed, then Bobby Copas and James Dalla Rosa, two men who’d picked up Lee hitchhiking and lived to tell the tale.
Copas’s testimony was particularly colourful. Overweight, nervous, and embarrassed about repeating Lee’s graphic language, the likeable witness nevertheless told how she’d offered him ‘the best damn blow job you ever had in your life’. The jury listened attentively as he described her violent reaction when he tricked her out of his car. She’d whirled around, mad as hell, and said, ‘I’ll kill you like I did them other old fat sonofabitches! Copas, I’ll get you, you sonofabitch!’
Mesmerised, the jurors no doubt believed his closing claims that he was ‘scared to death’, and it was an experience he’d remember as long as he lived.
Larry Horzepa, by then a familiar face, went back on the stand, as John Tanner took him through the circumstances under which he and Bruce Munster had elicited the confession. (Despite leading the task force, Munster had been pointedly absent throughout. It seemed the prosecution didn’t want to put him on the stand and give the defence a chance to keep bringing up the TV movie saga.) Tanner established the propriety of the setting when the videotape was made.
He then went on to Lee’s various versions of the time when things went awry during her encounter with Mr Mallory.
‘Did she say it was a surprise that this man wanted to lay on top of her, after she took off her clothes and lay on the front seat?’ Tanner asked incredulously.
‘No,’ Horzepa replied.
‘Point of contention was, he didn’t want to take his pants off? That was the point of contention, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Tanner also established that Larry Horzepa had let Lee talk without prodding her and had given her plenty of opportunity to describe the sequence of events with Mr Mallory.
The following day, Thursday 23 January, the famous videotape took centre stage, although the prosecution ultimately decided to show just an edited, twenty-minute version, keeping their focus firmly on Mr Mallory. They’d won on the Williams Rule issue, but the other cases could not, by law, overshadow the one in hand.
The defence trio didn’t know whether to consider the showing of this truncated tape a blessing or a curse. There were points for and against. The full tape would show the jury Lee’s remarks about self-defence and her repeated professions of love and concern for Tyria. But if they asked for the whole thing to be shown, they’d jeopardise their chance for later appealing the Williams Rule decision. Their hands were tied.
The jury watched the edited version, the picture of stillness. As usual, their faces betrayed very little, but this day, flickers of dismay and discomfort were detectable. The schoolteacher forewoman looked the most visibly pained.
Commenting on the tape later, Arlene Pralle again reinforced the impression she gave of being in deep denial about Lee’s crimes. She had not seen the tape before but her reaction was unlike any other courtwatcher polled. The observers were, without exception, struck by Lee’s underwhelming remorse.
She did not cry—and she sounded casual, as if reminiscing about a vacation.
But her adoptive mother had a very different take on all this. Arlene Pralle hissed, to the amazement of all within earshot, ‘Those men were animals!’
With a few last words from Larry Horzepa, his soft voice barely audible in the further reaches of the courtroom, the state announced that it was ready to rest its case.
Belatedly, Aileen Wuornos Pralle cried, her head cupped in her hands. She was grieving, the timing unfortunately seemed to say, for her own plight rather than that of her victims. As she was led away, she waved Pralle a tearful goodbye.
Outside the courtroom, Tricia Jenkins was still hedging on the defence strategy. It could run anywhere from an hour to two days. And no, she was not prepared to say if Lee would take the stand.
47
It was the moment the courtwatchers had hoped for. The moment the prosecution dreamed of. And the moment the defence could only have dreaded. A charge of anticipation coursed through the spectators, and adrenalin kicked in
, reviving the most jaded reporters.
The defence had called their first and ultimately their only witness, Aileen Wuornos Pralle. Otherwise known as Lee.
She’d been the source of a year of news coverage, interspersed with titillatingly horrific snippets from her various confessions. Now the defendant had her day in court. Lee wanted to have her say, but she would purge herself of her latest version of events at considerable cost to herself and against the strong advice of her counsel. The defence team could see what Aileen could not. Lee was a loose cannon who had problems controlling herself. They were afraid she would hand the prosecution everything they wanted on a plate.
Wuornos, looking particularly pale, oddly pretty and strangely peaceful, made her way to the stand. The box of pink tissues that was always placed so pointedly in front of her also made its way to this new location. A signal that some emotional revelation could be expected.
(‘They’ve put them within reach of the judge,’ one veteran reporter drily observed, singularly unmoved.)
Somehow, that simple box of tissues stood as a curious symbol of what might and should have been. It remained untouched by Lee throughout what should have been, for her, in any context a devastating experience.
What unravelled under the gentle guidance of Tricia Jenkins was an account of events that bore no resemblance to anything previously heard. It began simply enough with Tricia eliciting basic data. Lee, looking positively demure—mirroring her counsel in a white blouse with puritan collar, long floral print skirt and blue velvet jacket—was startlingly composed. First she gave an account of her background. Aged 35, from Troy, Michigan. Left home just prior to turning fourteen. Hitchhiked alone to Florida because she’d been sleeping rough in the snow and it was too cold. Supported herself with a couple of jobs but earned only 75 cents an hour, so was basically a career prostitute from the age of sixteen on.
When she hitchhiked, when men approached her asking if she wanted to make some money—the kind of offers she’s sure were extended to any young girl travelling the highways—she accepted. She had a child at fourteen, but was made to give it up by her grandmother. (A perhaps revealing slip, in light of her unaddressed anger at Britta.) She then corrected herself. She was made to give up the baby by her grandparents. Her grandparents had raised her, she informed the jury.
She pursued her prostitution work three to seven days a week, riding with anywhere from eight to fifteen men a day, servicing anywhere between three to eight of those sexually. She worked from highway exit to highway exit. If a sexual deal wasn’t struck, she asked to be dropped at the next off-ramp to try all over again. She spoke softly, her account surprisingly devoid of street language.
Tricia Jenkins then steered her questioning into the relationship with Tyria Moore. It was in this emotionally charged terrain that Lee’s dramatic change of heart about her lover revealed itself, in public at least, for the first time. The room was hushed as she spoke, calmly and softly.
‘From the very first day I met her, we fell head over heels in love. The first year we were pretty sexual. The second year, and as it went on, we became like sisters. I loved her very deeply. She loved me very deeply, but we didn’t care about the sex part any more. We just cared about each other.’
‘Did your hustling stop once you got into the relationship with Ty?’ quizzed Jenkins.
‘No. She … as a matter of fact, she quit her job that week. The first month that I was with her, she quit her job. I told her I was making $150 a day and you only make $150 a week, so if you want to quit, I’ll support you. She continued to support me like a cheerleader. She wanted me out there,’ she alleged.
After that allegation, Lee then testified, and this is where her tone took on the first hint of an edge, that during their last year together, Ty didn’t like trailer living.
‘She was just constantly telling me I wasn’t providing enough for her. She wanted me to go out there and make more money.’
At Jenkins’s prompting Lee went on to claim she was pressured by her lover.
‘She’d tell me to go on out there and if I didn’t, she was going to break up with me and find another girl that would take care of her.’
‘Did you talk about your experiences on the road with her?’
‘Not really. She didn’t want to hear it. She never … she had me totally not talk about it. She didn’t want to hear what happened to me.’
‘Did you try to talk to her about Richard Mallory?’
‘Yeah, I did, but she didn’t want to listen.’
Lee’s tone sounded as if she hoped to elicit considerable sympathy on that score.
‘And during the times that you were with Ty, she never worked?’ Jenkins enquired.
Lee could no longer disguise her feelings or keep the edge of sarcasm from her voice. Ty had worked for a month at the El Caribe Motel, then she had taken care of her. Ty then worked at Zephyrhills Motel but she didn’t get any money there, so Lee still took care of her. She’d worked in a laundry, but that didn’t last.
‘The only solid job she ever had was at the Casa Del Mar last year.’
‘Was she working when you two split up?’ Jenkins enquired, ready to cast her own shadow over Tyria.
‘She got fired.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘She beat up her boss,’ Lee replied sweetly.
While Lee had wanted to save up for a house and a pressure-cleaning business, Ty was a spendthrift, Lee alleged.
‘Every time I came home with money, she always wanted to go to the mall.’
Meanwhile, Lee didn’t buy clothes for herself, didn’t seem to care about herself, and even wore ‘a bra with Band-Aids on it’. The self-serving note that had worked its way into her still-ladylike voice was unmistakable.
When she was prostituting out on the road, she would consume anywhere from two to six beers.
‘Why?’ asked Jenkins.
‘It was like my tranquilliser. I was shy. I was sometimes too … just shy. I was embarrassed about my body. I was scared, nervous.’
That admission of vulnerability regained her a little ground in the sympathy arena, although her claim of shyness (one repeatedly reinforced by Arlene Pralle) strained credibility. Speaking clearly on the stand and with the appearance of ease, this woman had shown no glimmer of this supposed shyness throughout her year of media exposure.
Did Lee purposely solicit an older clientele? Jenkins asked her, harking back to a point made earlier on by John Tanner.
‘Yes, I did. The young guys, I decided not to deal with, because I’d learned throughout time that they were always high, always stoned, or something. They just seemed a little more aggressive and like a violent attitude. I didn’t trust them. It was obvious they were stoned or something, and I don’t do drugs.’
Next Jenkins wanted the history of abuse brought out. Lee was still operating within the realms of plausibility as she described a profession and a world that is generally recognised as hazardous. Few prostitutes escape abuse at the hands of at least some of their clients, and it would have been odd if Lee were any different. Her claim to have twice had mace guns taken from her was feasible. While she lived on Oleander Avenue between 1986 and 1988, she said, ‘A couple of guys raped me without any weapon. I got hurt on that.’
She then described an attack by a man in Jacksonville. ‘He beat me up so bad I couldn’t describe my face. I got away from him, and finally got help. The police arrived and they told me that he’d raped a police officer’s daughter … and that he’d killed two teenagers and they were in the backyard of his house, buried. That was one. I got away.’
Why did she stay on the roads after she’d been so badly hurt?
‘Because it was my only way.’
She’d tried to get churches to help her, but was turned away because she wasn’t a member of the congregation. She’d also tried to become a correctional officer, she said, seeming unaware of the irony of this revelation. The Salvation Army offered her refu
ge for one night only. She’d even tried to get into the military. Ultimately, prostitution was her only option.
Tricia Jenkins was ready to lead Lee into the testimonial minefield that centred on Richard Mallory. Lee amplified the account Ms Jenkins had outlined in her opening statements. She had been coming from Fort Myers where she had spent a couple of nights. She saw one head in Mr Mallory’s car, an indication she would be safe in accepting a ride. Her responses became lengthy and descriptive, forming an almost uninterrupted narrative that gripped the attention of all present. She was fleshing out the story with the colour and detail only she could provide. It was the very kind of intricacy that could lead her into treacherous waters. And indeed, she wove a tangled web that stretched the sympathies of even the most open-minded onlookers. One could only hazard a guess at the impact on the jury of the contradiction-laden, implausible and convoluted versions of events that emerged. Their faces were like masks.
She said she’d had a gun for protection for at least six months before Mr Mallory’s death. He’d offered her a drink. She recalled seeing tonic bottles, what she thought was a Smirnoff vodka bottle, and perhaps orange juice. He’d offered her marijuana but she declined.
They chatted about their respective lines of work: Mr Mallory’s video business and Lee’s pressure-cleaning business. He said he was heading for a topless bar in Daytona and asked, Lee said, if she knew any girls out there, claiming he paid $2,000–3,000 or more for these sessions. Lee told him she didn’t.
She was getting drunk, having emerged from the Office Pub in Fort Myers with a few beers already inside her before hitching her ride.
She did not proposition Mallory for sex, she told the jury, because she was exhausted, had made enough money on her trip, and was anxious to get back to Ty. By her own account, Mallory was pleasant company and complimented her on being such a good listener that she was almost like a psychologist.