by Sue Russell
Much later, Giroux would see memos sent by Kevin Mills of Republic Pictures to attorney Robert Bradshaw, an ex-reserve cop and close personal friend of Major Dan Henry’s, indicating that by January 28, Bradshaw had been enlisted to represent the officers and was at least talking to movie folk about Tyria Moore as well. The day before Giroux signed her deal with Lee, Kevin Mills received a memo from Adoley Odunton, also of Republic Pictures, asking him to structure a deal with ‘Major Dan Henry, Bruce Munster and Captain Vinegar (sic).’ Tyria Moore’s name had been handwritten in on the memo, along with the notation, ‘Les. Lover.’
Kevin Mills’ January 29 handwritten notes from a conversation with Bradshaw bore the words, ‘confession on videotape.’ They also noted: ‘Son of Sam Laws? No but Robbie is checking. ’ (The so-called Son of Sam law was intended to prevent criminals from profiting from their crimes.) The memo set out a tentative deal which was formalized on January 31 in a letter Kevin Mills wrote to Robbie Bradshaw, entitled: ‘Re: Motion Picture Rights Option/Purchase.’
On February 5, Republic issued a second letter addressed to Bradshaw naming ‘the three cops’ and Tyria Moore and monetary terms. The letter had space for signatures, yet remained unsigned. Signed or not, in February, writer Fred Mills was hired to write a teleplay. Work was moving ahead, with or without the cops.
For Aileen’s various appeals, including the Ocala Evidentiary Hearing in February 2001, precisely when the officers began talking movies with Bradshaw would be a key issue. The sooner the talks took place after Lee’s arrest, the more mileage her CCRC defence lawyers could get out of arguing that the movie issue might have tainted the purity of the criminal investigation. Overkill was an obvious topic to raise because it hinted that Lee might have received less than a fair shake from law enforcement.
Had the allure of a movie, and the tempting prospect of seeing their investigative handiwork depicted on screen, led the officers to compromise their investigation or to corrupt her trial? Had Tyria Moore’s possible involvement in the homicides been fully explored? At the very least, the officers had exercised poor judgment—as key players in the case against Lee, they might be called as witnesses at trial.
From the moment the tantalizing word went out that police were seeking two women for the Florida murders, media interest was at fever pitch. Captain Steve Binegar fielded all related enquiries—a job commonly tackled by a public information officer. Enterprising Hollywood producers always chomped at the bit to sign up the main characters in any juicy crime saga but would usually hit a brick wall or two when seeking cooperation from law enforcement during an active case. (The three cops weren’t the only ones crossing the line. All media has access to information once it’s made part of the public record but transcripts of Aileen’s three-hour videotape confession were somehow circulating before that happened … and long before her trial. Some journalists keen to get an early jump on the story were quietly offered black market copies for thousands of dollars.)
Testifying in court hearings in both 2000 and 2001, Munster, Binegar and Henry admitted movie deal discussions took place but said they were quickly aborted. Red flags went up as soon as they ran the idea by Sheriff Moreland who said that no one in the department would make any money from such a deal. He suggested they might establish a victims’ fund with any proceeds, but things never got to that stage.
‘We started getting a lot of flak over it,’ Bruce Munster testified. ‘I guess that we were all pretty naïve in being involved in something like this and we quit it.’
When Dan Henry went under oath, he denied knowing that Munster had told attorney Robbie Bradshaw that Tyria might be party to a deal. He also denied entering into a contract with Republic Pictures. He assisted them, ‘No more than I did anybody else that came and asked questions.’
As far as receiving money? He might have gone to lunch with somebody, but he wasn’t sure about that, and normally paid his own way at lunches. He had trouble remembering the names of media folk or writers he might have met with.
All three officers stood firm: Overkill came to fruition, but their own deal did not. That didn’t negate Bruce Munster having discussed the subject with Tyria Moore, a suspect and possible co-defendant. Munster contended that he simply gave Ty Bradshaw’s phone number in case she was interested; there was no persuading her to join forces with them.
The three officers said that all discussions happened after the investigation was over, after Aileen confessed, and after Tyria was eliminated as a suspect. Nevertheless, this was almost a year before Aileen’s trial. Just talking to Ty about movie deals smacked of a conflict of interest, with Aileen the loser. An aroma of impropriety wafted around the whole business.
Detective Munster had thirty-one years in law enforcement, a job liaising between the sheriff’s office and the Department of Child and Family Services reviewing child abuse cases, and retirement looming, when he was quizzed at the 2001 Marion County Evidentiary Hearing.
Munster saw no conflict in talking to Tyria, he said, because he was satisfied that she had no involvement in the murders. He’d been active in creating a timeline of Aileen and Tyria’s movements, checking with Tyria’s former places of employment and interviewing ex-neighbours.
‘When we met her up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she was interested in exonerating herself,’ he said. ‘She was very helpful. She was agreeable to come back to Florida to prove that she wasn’t involved.’
‘Did you tell her: “Tyria, you’re off the hook. Don’t worry about it,?”’ asked Lee’s lawyer, Joseph Hobson.
‘Never did,’ said Munster. He certainly didn’t have the power to grant her unilateral immunity, and with five counties involved, she remained subject to prosecution by any of them if ever any new evidence came to light.
‘This investigation was being conducted by several different State Attorneys’ offices and several different police departments and sheriff’s departments, and everybody had access to her,’ Munster explained. ‘If they wanted her, go get her.’
Except for the wrecking of Peter Siems’s car, he said, ‘There was absolutely no evidence that I could find that these two girls had ever hitchhiked together or been involved in anything together. ’
Yet, Tyria had not officially been ruled out as a suspect and however innocent they believed her to be, they were in effect throwing their hats in the ring with her. Not clever. Looking back, the officers would not disagree.
The feelings of elation soon faded, but Bruce Munster remembered initially being quite dazzled by the idea that there might be a movie about the case:
‘I thought that was pretty neat. I’d never been involved with anything like that before.’ Clueless about Hollywood’s ways, Munster claimed he had no idea what he was getting himself into. ‘I didn’t know that you sold your rights and people paid you money and stuff … I was naïve.’ That, he says, is precisely why they involved Robbie Bradshaw.
With hindsight, suggested Assistant Attorney General Scott Browne, ‘Would it have been wiser, perhaps, to wait until after a conviction to even talk about a movie deal?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Munster. ‘Hindsight being 20/20, I’ve learned a lot, my agency has learned a lot, and I don’t think you would ever find us being involved in anything like that again.’
Captain Steve Binegar, an ex-Marine and ex-FBI agent (now a Chief of Staff at the Marion County Sheriff’s Office) was commander of C.I.D. and Munster’s superior during the Wuornos investigation. Originally he got caught up in the excitement too:
‘It was almost an ego trip for me, personally. In hindsight, I would have ran from these people. With the benefit often years of more maturity now and—you know, we were just blown up with the idea that we had participated in a case of this magnitude …’
‘Was it fair to say you all got caught up in it?’ Joseph Hobson asked.
‘I think that’s fair to say,’ admitted Binegar.
Yet he maintained his actions weren’t affected by a possibl
e movie deal, nor did it in any way affect the Wuornos investigation. And he’d never signed a contract with anyone.
‘Did you receive any compensation, a free meal, a free trip to Hollywood?’ asked Scott Browne.
‘No sir,’ said Binegar. ‘Nothing but heartache, really.’
Looking back on the episode, he saw their blunders in glorious technicolour:
‘Even by considering it in our naïve state, we gave … you know, we handed the defence in my opinion, a … something to hang their hat on. Because the case itself, the real case, the case that’s made for who actually killed these people, that was rock solid, in my opinion.’ He continued, ‘But … we had nothing to say: “Big red flag. Yo.” We certainly do now.’
Jackelyn Giroux, for one, found the officers’ claims of naivete hard to swallow—especially in the case of Binegar with his FBI background. Under questioning by Joseph Hobson, she had to concede that she’d never seen a contract or cheques or cash change hands. (Nevertheless, it remained her personal belief—and still does—that the three officers had an unwritten deal with Republic Pictures.)
Besides criticism from Giroux and Tricia Jenkins, the three officers also had to contend with their own colleague, Sgt. Brian Jarvis, who also testified at the evidentiary hearing. Jarvis, the supervisor of the Major Crimes Unit, was Bruce Munster’s immediate superior and friend, and created the computer programme that collated all the phone leads generated by the sketches of the two suspects seen leaving Peter Siems’s crashed car. But as Wuornos’s arrest grew closer, Jarvis was increasingly left out of the loop. ‘I was in charge of the investigation and I was the only guy at home,’ he complained to a journalist in 1991. He was subsequently moved from Major Crimes to Property Crimes, and Bruce Munster was promoted to fill his slot.
Feeling slighted and pushed aside from the excitement of this big celebrity case, Jarvis hired his own representative, Michael McCarthy, who tried (unsuccessfully) to sell Jarvis’s own version of the Wuornos story.
By 2001, Jarvis was ensconced as chief of police for the Chester Police Department in New York State, a small department with eight officers. He testified that he left Marion County, where he worked from 1985 to 1991, of his own volition, after becoming a sergeant in major crimes in November 1988 and receiving several medals of commendation.
To Jarvis, there was something wrong when his colleagues not only didn’t charge Tyria but actually referred her to their lawyer. However, he could not point to any specific harm that had resulted and could only speculate that there may have been a basis to bring charges against her: ‘There could have been. I think the leads needed to be investigated further.’
Under questioning by Hobson, Jarvis claimed that some of Dick Humphreys’ property was located on both sides of a dirt road which seemed to him to suggest at least two people in a car, throwing things out on either side. The clear inference: Tyria Moore could have been involved. (Munster’s account disagreed with Jarvis’s. He said, ‘The stuff was strewn everywheres.’)
Weakening the impact of Jarvis’s arguments: once the case extended beyond Marion County, his involvement really ended at the computer and he’d never interviewed Wuornos or Tyria Moore.
Jarvis found it odd that later in the investigation, Binegar and Henry got so deeply involved, stressing that Captain Binegar hadn’t gone out to the sites when Mr. Burress’s and Mr. Humphreys’ bodies were found.
Was it really so surprising to find senior officers jumping in with both feet once they realized they had a search for a prolific serial killer on their hands? Maybe not. But to Jarvis, it was. And it was odd to see Binegar and Henry go out in the field conducting background investigations where Wuornos and Moore grew up.
‘What if anything struck you as unusual about that development? ’ asked Joseph Hobson.
‘The unusual part initially was that Captain Binegar and Major Henry were not investigators,’ Jarvis replied. ‘They were administrators. They had not done investigations before, they had not become involved in investigations before. So I thought it was a little odd, but I really didn’t know of any motive or anything; just that it was happening.’
Jarvis’s comments skirted this: Binegar was in a desk job but with his FBI background, was far more than just an administrator. Jarvis traced his troubled relationship with Binegar back to mid-September 1991 when Jarvis re-released the composite sketches of the two ‘wanted’ women to the media and suggested the crimes might be linked:
‘He criticized me for releasing that information. He said, furthermore, he didn’t feel females were involved; it wasn’t any more than a fifty per cent chance that they were involved.’
Jarvis told of his desire to write a book about the case, and of receiving one dollar from Mike McCarthy on signing their agreement and in turn paying McCarthy $500 to help him research and write it.
‘The next day, (McCarthy) called me back and asked me who Binegar, Munster, Henry and Moore were,’ he said.
Then Binegar called him in to his office. ‘And I was chastized for wanting to write a book. After that point, I could tell my job seriously changed. And this actually happened right after her (Aileen’s) arrest. I was removed from major crimes and Bruce Munster was promoted to sergeant and put in charge of major crimes. And then Captain Binegar was basically criticizing every bit of work that I was doing, no matter how minute it was.’
Jarvis testified that the focus on two female perpetrators also died away once Wuornos was located. After that, ‘There was never the mention or the implication of two females; only one. My concern was a large portion of evidence which linked two females to these cases. It was not followed up on.’
‘What evidence are you referring to?’ asked Hobson.
Jarvis cited Mr. Humphreys’ belongings being found in Pennsylvania with Tyria. He suggested other avenues of investigation, like finding out if Tyria was in the area of any of the murders:
‘I checked her time cards to make sure she wasn’t working during that time, and I got copies of the time cards from her employment that showed she had been released a week prior to Mr Humphreys’ disappearance and murder. But that was never followed up on.’
(Bruce Munster asserted that he was satisfied with Tyria’s timeline.) Jarvis also found it odd that in Overkill, only the names of Binegar, Munster, Henry and Tyria Moore were not fictionalized.
Scott Browne asked Jarvis if his departure from MCSO was ‘fairly acrimonious?’
‘I left because I didn’t feel safe here,’ Jarvis replied.
‘In fact, were you disciplined for removing items and information from a computer?’ asked Browne.
‘Yes, I was,’ he replied.
Browne noted that a State Attorney’s investigation found no serious or criminal misconduct by Munster, Binegar or Henry: ‘You are aware of that conclusion, are you not?’
‘Yes I am,’ said Jarvis.
On redirect, Hobson brought out the fact that the disciplinary action against Jarvis came within weeks of learning, ‘that there was a movie deal involving my superiors.’
Why did he remove the computer programme he’d devised? ‘To prevent myself from being subject to copyright infringements, ’ he said.
When Tyria Moore testified, she said she heard nothing about any ‘movie deal’ until after she’d told the police everything she knew relating to the crimes—and after she had helped the police secure Aileen’s confessions via those taped jailhouse telephone calls.
Ultimately, two official movie-related investigations took place. To testify about the one instigated by Marion County State Attorney Brad King in July 1991, the state called Ric Ridgway, who had prosecuted Lee in the Spears, Burress and Humphreys murders. Ridgway’s office had conveyed to the sheriff concerns about the movie issue, ‘as to the obvious impeachment issues it would create for the witnesses,’ and subsequently headed the investigation.
‘What conclusion did you reach,’ asked Scott Browne, ‘as a result of your investigation, with regard t
o what impact, if any, the movie deal had on the prosecution and investigation of the Wuornos murders?’
Ridgway explained that there were two key issues—was there anything in, ‘What was commonly referred to as “the book and movie deal” that would have interfered with our prosecution of Aileen Wuornos?’ Secondly: ‘Was there any evidence of the involvement of Tyria Moore in the homicides that had not been properly developed or found, either because of the book and movie deal, or any other reason?’
Tyria’s involvement was, Ridgway admitted, ‘Always kind of an open question. There was always a question she was involved; and if so, to what extent?’
Ridgway confirmed that the five different Florida sheriff’s offices and his own investigation came up empty-handed regarding evidence of Tyria’s criminal involvement:
‘There was never any credible evidence, or there wasn’t any admissable evidence, that Tyria Moore had any involvement, either as a principal or as an accessory after the fact on any of the homicides.’
Tyria was neither offered nor granted immunity by Ridgway’s office. ‘She never asked for it,’ he confirmed, ‘nor was she ever offered it. There was never any deal cut for her testimony.’
In August ’91, the investigation’s report concluded that a document outlining a payment scheme in a potential movie deal existed, but that contracts were never signed and the officers never received any money. It found that the deal idea was aborted because it might conflict with the investigation.