by Sue Russell
‘I didn’t shoot him on the ground. I shot him as he was coming out of the car.’
She decided to explain further. ‘I didn’t know what the dickens he was doing, I didn’t know if he had another gun under the seat, and I didn’t know if he was going to reach for another weapon. I didn’t know what he had.’
‘He didn’t have a weapon in that car, did he?’
‘How do I know?’ Lee replied, all sarcasm.
Tanner got back to the robbery aspects. She had dipped into Mr Mallory’s pockets. She’d contended she turned them inside-out, not to steal his money but to retrieve his car keys and that he was wearing tight jeans.
‘They were still zipped up, weren’t they?’
‘Yes, they were.’
‘He had his pants on and that’s what made you mad? He wouldn’t take them off?’
‘That’s not what happened!’
Lee had pawned Mallory’s radar detector for $30 because she needed rent money. And she’d had the car washed to get the fingerprints off. She’d shot him because she had no choice. But she denied Tanner’s contention she had intended to kill him.
‘I’m not the greatest aimer,’ she said.
Revealing further the fracture in her loyalty for Ty, Lee admitted to keeping the razor belonging to one victim because Ty wanted her to. She addressed the issue of the stolen property: ‘I felt like what he did to me was unnecessary, and so therefore, when I took his property … I figured, well, like …’
Jenkins hurried to halt her, but Lee finished her sentence anyway:
‘… he owed me for what he did to me.’
Tanner wanted to address the issue of motive further.
‘Isn’t one of the reasons you killed Mr Mallory because you didn’t want him to tell on you?’
The question prompted a halting, rambling reply. ‘I had to do what I had to do. If he would have been alive, he would have probably told the cops I tried to rob him and kill him, which is not true. I am a prostitute. Nobody is going to believe that I’m a prostitute and that he raped me and that he tried to strangle me and kill me. And he was going to probably do all kinds of other things to me throughout the whole day and the next morning, or whatever … how long he was going to keep me. I don’t believe anybody would have believed me.
‘We’ve got prostitutes out there that are being killed every day, and nobody cares about it. And we’ve got women being raped every day, and it doesn’t seem that they are prostitutes, that nobody cares about. I have witnessed with my own eyes, reading the newspapers, numerous, numerous, numerous times. I believe that nobody would believe me. So, when I made that statement, I meant, referring to the fact that nobody would have believed that I was raped, and that I had to defend myself.’
‘So you decided that you had to kill him?’
‘He was dying. I’m talking about other … different situations. I’m telling you, I’m not talking about Richard Mallory now.’
‘Well, what had you decided after you shot him the last time, square in the chest?’
‘When he was coming out of the vehicle? That’s where it was very obvious to shoot at …’ her voice trailed off.
‘And you say that, here you were, a woman who was ravaged and naked, right?’
‘Yes, I was naked.’
‘Cord marks around your neck which had been strangled, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bleeding from the anus where you’d been raped, right?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was barely audible. She seemed reluctant to answer.
‘Alcohol in a Visine bottle, where this torture took place, right?’
‘Alcohol to drink?’
‘The alcohol that was squirted up your anus.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘A cord with which you had been tied to the wheel and held by the neck, and no one would believe that you’d been assaulted? ’
Tanner asked the question rhetorically, his voice rising in a crescendo of barely disguised disgust. The marks on her neck were very small, she said.
‘Well, how about your anus? You said that was bleeding and ripped?’
‘The way I was, it was too much for me to walk out of there nude with a gun in my hand and walk down the road and say, “Someone help me!” No way.’
She, like everyone else, had the right to defend herself.
‘And you never even bothered to tell your best friend, until the news of the murder came up on television?’
Tanner managed to get that in before the judge sustained an objection by Billy Nolas, cutting him off.
Lee Wuornos’s imagined moment of glorious vindication had disintegrated into disaster. She had realised her counsels’ worst fears.
And as the court adjourned for lunch, the pink tissues in front of the defendant sat pointedly unused.
48
After lunch, Jackie Davis, Mallory’s ex-girlfriend, took the stand outside the jury’s presence so that the defence, who had not had the chance to depose her, could decide whether or not to call her. After Lee, Davis was anticlimactic, to say the least. She seemed to all assembled spectators to be fudging the answers to Billy Nolas’s questions. She had suffered a head injury a few years earlier which she now claimed meant she was unable to remember portions of her interview with Larry Horzepa two years before. Yet her responses, and the instances of ‘amnesia’, seemed spotty, hopping around in a manner consistent with someone who simply didn’t want to testify.
Richard Mallory, she agreed, had told her he’d been charged with a burglary in his teens and had been put on a rehabilitation programme. She wasn’t clear what kind of rehabilitation. He’d had an involvement with an ambassador’s wife and had thought at times that he was being followed. Yes, she remembered telling Horzepa he was paranoid.
Nolas asked if she recalled telling detectives that Mallory had said he’d been in jail for ten years? She did not. Perhaps this sea change had less to do with her injury, more to do with the fact that upon reflection she felt less comfortable with repeating gossip she’d heard. And Mallory’s obsession with washing himself? She’d forgotten that completely.
The jury did not see or hear Jackie Davis, for the defence decided not to call her, after all.
Instead, they saw Lee returned to the stand (looking drained and subdued) as the defence went on to formally rest its case.
John Tanner recalled Larry Horzepa to clarify once and for all that his and Munster’s interview with Wuornos began and ended with the tape rolling, that he did not try to cut her off, and that he never once threatened her, or threatened to arrest Tyria Moore if she didn’t confess to the murders.
The jurors had the weekend to relax. On Monday, they would hear closing arguments.
Speaking that weekend from her home behind bars, Lee Wuornos admitted that she’d been ‘scared shitless’ before testifying. There was a new piece of evidence, she said, sounding optimistic. It would prove she was raped and the jury would have to be crazy not to believe her. (Supposedly a photograph of scratch marks on Mallory’s steering wheel, it was never presented in court.)
By Monday morning, back in DeLand, the judge (wearing a dusty pink jacket and white polo shirt that he topped with his robes for the jury) asked the defendant if she had any questions. Lee spoke softly, her voice childlike. ‘No, sir, I don’t think so; I trust my lawyers.’
Before William Miller and John Tanner went on to present their closing arguments, the judge tossed out a word of warning, a classic example of what those assembled had come to recognise as a true Bunky-ism: ‘I only remind you, counsel, that the mind can assimilate only what the posterior can endure.’
A low communal chuckle rippled through the gallery.
William Miller, who had been on the sidelines throughout much of the trial, had been selected for this crucial task. Speaking softly, he went straight to what was for the defence the veritable heart of the matter. So much of what the jury had heard had nothing to do with Mr Mallory, Miller said imploringly.
It was their task to consider Mr Mallory that night—and other juries would consider the other men they’d heard about. He reminded them that Ty was a suspect, and requested that they ask themselves, maybe Aileen Wuornos did act in self-defence?
He hit home again with the way Ty had coerced Lee, who loved her. How she had lied to her and threatened suicide and made those taped phone calls. Ty had said that never once in their time together had Lee laid a hand on her.
Larry Horzepa, Miller said, going back to something that had come up in the trial, had written a note to himself in the margin of the typed transcript of Wuornos’s confession, a note saying, ‘Don’t use’. Miller’s voice rose in indignation, planting again the suggestion that the investigator had been intending to edit what transpired in that interview to the benefit of the prosecution: ‘You’re to hear that Lee shot Richard Mallory—but you’re not to hear why!’
Just like Ty Moore, Miller went on, Horzepa didn’t want to hear about the rape. He also addressed the way John Tanner had so tied Lee in knots. ‘Lee Wuornos may have been confused, may have been rattled by the skilful cross-examination of Mr Tanner. Don’t forget Mr Tanner is here before you, asking you to send her to her death.’
Richard Mallory, Miller contended, had ultimately tortured Lee. She’d been a prostitute for some seventeen years prior to Mr Mallory. As a prostitute, Lee had been beaten before. Richard Mallory raped and tortured her and she finally took a life. Maybe something had finally snapped in her, Miller suggested. And she finally took a life. But ‘Far from being the predator that John Tanner describes, Lee Wuornos is a victim; victim of a brutal attack. ’
After lunch, it was John Tanner’s turn to talk about premeditation. Premeditation, he wanted the jury to be assured, did not mean, as they may have in their minds, long-range planning.
‘It may only be the time between picking up a firearm and firing. Or it may only be between the first and second shot. But surely by the third shot, and certainly by the fourth shot.’
He told them they would be called upon for two verdicts. One, on the robbery. Wuornos could be guilty of armed robbery; robbery with a deadly weapon but without a firearm; robbery without a firearm or a deadly weapon; robbery without a weapon. She could also be guilty of petty theft. Or she could be not guilty.
On the murder charge, she could be guilty in the first degree of premeditated and felony murder as charged. She could also be guilty only of first-degree, premeditated murder. She could be guilty of first-degree felony murder; or of second-degree murder; or of second-degree murder with a firearm. She could be guilty of third-degree murder; or of third-degree murder with a firearm. She could be guilty of manslaughter, or manslaughter with a firearm. Or she could be not guilty.
The judge would instruct them on all their alternative findings. Mr Tanner went on to say that Aileen Wuornos, despite the way she had been portrayed by the defence, was not a victim in any sense of the word. She was not a victim because she was a prostitute. She was not a child but a grown, healthy woman. She was a prostitute because of money. She indicated she liked sex, and there was nothing wrong with that, said Mr Tanner, Daytona’s famous porn-buster. He harked back to Tricia Jenkins’s story of Lee being afraid as she hitchhiked that night. Of what? Mr Tanner asked. This was what she did. Hitchhikers are usually delighted when a car stops for them!
Tricia Jenkins, Tanner went on, had said that her client was beaten and raped repeatedly. Yet not once had she told anyone! Not even Ty, her best friend, during four and a half years of living together! He also disputed Lee’s contention that she was royally drunk. Mallory had bought her a six-pack of beer and she’d had at least one left after the murder. That was not a person who was royally drunk out of her mind.
Similar fact evidence, he told the jury, was not that unusual, and it was relevant and material and admissible in court. The other victims were key issues in this case, and they were all relevant. It was relevant to prove identity, opportunity, preparation, planning, pattern, intent, motive. And in this case the absence of self-defence was relevant.
All the men were travelling major thoroughfares alone.
‘Each of them made one fatal mistake—they found Aileen Wuornos.’
She left no witnesses. Stripped their vehicles. He stacked up the points against her. Her pattern had begun to change, Tanner contended. Her appetite to control men—shared by most prostitutes—was tremendous. There was only one thing left; and that was to kill. He pointed out that the bullet holes were not consistent with the picture Lee painted of a man on his knees on top of her.
Tanner also asked them to think about why Ty Moore would come in and lie. Had Lee in fact acted in self-defence, that might have given some moral justification for Ty not reporting her crimes. If that were true, it would have been better for Ty to have said so. Lee had said that Ty would make a lot of money lying about the self-defence issue. Untrue, Tanner said.
‘Wouldn’t it be a much more interesting story, a much more sellable story, if this poor, pitiful prostitute who was simply doing her job and some guy does horrible things to her—she killed him in self-defence? Now, that’s a good story.’
Tanner had the courtroom’s full attention.
‘And then her girlfriend who knew all about it got on the stand and told the jury how it was self-defence. How when Aileen came in, she had bruises on her neck—she could hardly talk, he almost choked her—and had been beaten brutally, and that she administered to her private parts of her body because they were torn … and there was blood on her clothes and underwear, and that this was a terrible thing.’
All of that, plus how she’d been a victim of the state of Florida, he contended, was a good story. ‘That would sell a lot of books.’
Tanner criticised, too, the defendant’s attacks on Deputy Horzepa. She had told the jury that everyone had lied, from Richard Mallory to Mr Copas, whom she’d accused of wanting publicity.
Tanner then went right to the heart of the matter: ‘Well, did Richard Mallory give her money in advance which she then was afraid he’d take back, as she said in her first statement? Or was he just a nice guy, and she decided she could trust him and wasn’t worried about the money until they had an argument about unzipping his pants, as she said in her second story? Had she had the gun two months or two days?’
She knew what she was doing, she wasn’t missing a lick, he said, repeating her damning comment about thinking the body was too decomposed for law enforcement to be able to tell the angle of the bullets. She had, Tanner said, carried her pattern of manipulation into the courtroom to try to manipulate their verdict. He pointed out that there was no physical evidence found to tie with her claims of brutality: no cords, no rope. He then went on to her suggestion that she’d been threatened with the persecution of Ty Moore if she didn’t confess.
‘I think you have a clear choice here. Either Deputy Horzepa planned to sit there and not tell you the truth, or she’s not telling you the truth. There’s no grey area there. Someone of the two is not telling the truth.
‘In fact she told us in her testimony; she said, “I’m the only one telling the truth. Everybody else is lying.” She said that in court. That everyone else is lying—to convict an innocent person? ’
Tanner then moved on to Tyria Moore. She’d told Ty just enough that she wouldn’t flip out when she saw the car, but didn’t tell her everything. And Ty should have come to the police.
‘Maybe, just maybe, it would have stopped right here. Ty Moore is not on trial. Aileen Wuornos is.’
Ty hadn’t wanted to get involved. People don’t want to get involved. The system cannot work that way, Tanner opined. Ty’s refusal to accept and believe, her not telling anyone, had perhaps cost six men’s lives.
‘That doesn’t hold her up with anything respectful or honourable at all. But by the same token, if she’d been told this was a brutal, anal rape, etc., it would at least give her some moral justification for not saying anything. She knows that. And she would have
said that if it was true. Because it’s not true, she didn’t say it. It was bad enough that she didn’t come forward. But at least she didn’t sit on that witness stand and lie to you to perpetuate and protect this woman who killed Mr Mallory.’
That point forcefully made, he closed by hammering home the portrait of a murder born of greed: ‘This was a woman who could make, according to her own testimony, $30–50,000 a year, and squander it just as quick. This is a woman moving out of power and control into a new and unfathomable—for you and I—area of domination, to the extent of snuffing out a life.’
His voice rose with horror. ‘It became obscenely simple to have it all!’
She chose her life, Tanner said, and she had left the jury with no reasonable choice but to find her guilty of murder in the first degree, and of armed robbery.
The defence had more to say on behalf of their visibly furious client. William Miller was rapidly back on his feet, suggesting that Mr Tanner was dealing with speculation not proof. Tanner had argued that Ty would have been on high moral ground if she had come in here and admitted that Lee told her about being anally raped by Mr Mallory. Miller argued, unclearly, that if Ty knew everything, there was no better reason for her not going to the police.
‘Mr Tanner spoke some about the robbery charge in this case. If you listened carefully to the robbery charge, and you’ve listened to whether or not there was any evidence that Lee Wuornos threatened anybody, or killed anybody, or did anything to get property—is Lee Wuornos guilty of theft? Sure. Find her guilty of that. She should not have taken that property.’
He suggested to the jury that Lee’s actions and her state of mind meant they should not find her guilty of murder. ‘I’m not asking you to feel sorry for Lee Wuornos. She doesn’t need your sympathy. She needs fairness, she needs justice, she needs you to understand what really happened.’
He went back to the self-defence claim. ‘She had every right to shoot Mr Mallory. She had every right to shoot him not once, not twice, not three, but four times. She was terrified. She was drunk. She was naked. She was tortured. And she defended herself. That’s not a crime.’