Dear Dawn
Page 40
68 Maggie was Wuornos and Moore’s dog.
69 One of the three cats Wuornos owned with Tyria.
70 Apparently a reference to the autobiography Wuornos worked on intermittently.
71 Wuornos stated elsewhere that she needed to see psychologists in Tampa for penalty phase evidence; the penalty phase trials were set to begin with Dixie on January 19 and Pasco on January 25.
72 Likely a reference to the penalty phase of the Dixie trial.
73 Glazer had negotiated for Pralle to receive a percentage of profits from On a Killing Day.
74 The episode of Geraldo featuring Wuornos aired March 23, 1993.
75 At the time, this was the greatest number of death sentences ever received for “serial killing.” Wuornos’s record has since been surpassed by, among others, Tennessee’s Paul Reid, who is currently on death row with seven death sentences.
76 Judge Uriel Blount.
77 There was some controversy over Judge Blount’s words to Wuornos upon sentencing her. The Orlando Sentinel reported that some people in the courtroom heard him say, “And may God have mercy on your corpse,” while others maintained that he said, “And may God have mercy on the court.”
78 Wuornos’s short-term and much older husband, Lewis Fell.
79 Wuornos was arrested for forgery in 1984.
80 Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
81 The international union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America.
82 Beaver Precision Products, Inc.
83 As described in more detail in her letter of August 2, 1999, Wuornos was raped while hitchhiking home from a party in 1970. She became pregnant, and her grandfather sent her to a home for unwed mothers.
84 Dawn had a friend whose son was in law school. Wuornos thought perhaps he would represent her pro bono.
85 Despite Wuornos’s listmaking, there never was a funeral or memorial at which these songs might have been played, though another of Wuornos’s favorite songs, Natalie Merchant’s “Carnival,” was included in the soundtrack of Broomfield’s second documentary on Wuornos, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. Dawn did hold a family gathering for the spreading of Wuornos’s ashes.
86 Wuornos seems to be quoting extensively from Judge William J. Brennan’s dissenting opinion in Glass v. Louisiana, which the Supreme Court decided against Glass in 1985. Glass and his attorneys maintained that electrocution violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments., e.g., in that it causes “the gratuitous infliction of unnecessary pain and suffering and does not comport with evolving standards of human dignity.” Brennan’s dissenting opinion is known for its lurid description of death by electrocution.
87 In Herrera v. Collins (1993), the Supreme Court held that the argument that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the execution of one who is actually innocent is not grounds for federal habeas relief.
88 According to Broomfield’s documentary Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, there were plans to give Wuornos’s tissue samples to geneticists, and plans had been made to examine her brain posthumously. At Wuornos’s request, Dawn viewed the body after death to make sure it was intact and that the body was Wuornos’s.
89 An Australian video artist who became Wuornos’s correspondent during her incarceration.
90 Serial killer Joel Rifkin, who was convicted of killing nine women (primarily prostitutes), and may have killed as many as seventeen.
91 Wuornos was correct. Rifkin received 203 years to life. He will be eligible for parole in 2197.
92 Virginia Larzelere, convicted of engineering the shotgun death of her husband (at the hands of her son, acquitted) for $2 million in insurance money.
93 According to Dawn, Wuornos was receiving more stamps than she could use from her pen pals. Given Dawn’s financial constraints, Wuornos thought it might be helpful to send the surplus to her.
94 According to the Commission on Capital Cases, this would likely be the Direct Appeal to the Supreme Court, which was filed on January 28, 1993. The appeal was based on the grounds that “certain information and documents were withheld from her during pre-trial discovery, law enforcement officials brought notes to the witness stand, the Williams rule prejudiced her case, law enforcement officers tricked her into confessing, the trial court erred in denying a change of venue and in instructing the jury on her offense, meeting the criteria of cold, calculated premeditation and the heinous atrocious and cruel aggravator. She claimed the trial court improperly permitted the State to introduce her lack of remorse and failed to consider mitigating factors.”
95 Kevorkian.
96 Likely a reference to Sondra London, the “Queen of Serial Killer Groupies,” who fell in love with Danny Rollings, known as the Gainesville Ripper, when he was on trial. London coauthored Rollings’s book, The Making of a Serial Killer: The Real Story of the Gainesville Murders in the Killer’s Own Words.
97 Pralle and Glazer.
98 Dawn’s mother, to whom Wuornos frequently wrote, had been diagnosed with lung disease, and she had heart trouble as well. During Wuornos’s childhood, Mrs. Nieman had been kind when other parents were hostile. She had fed Wuornos and allowed her to use the bathroom and shower at their house. She died November 15, 2009.
99 Wuornos is quoting in the following passage from a religious pamphlet of some kind. This text has been widely reproduced, but the original source is unclear.
100 Smart Alex Lounge in Tampa, Florida.
101 In her letters to Wuornos, Dawn decribed this farmhouse as being nicer than it was, not wanting Wuornos to worry. However, at the time, the farmhouse was exceedingly run down and in desperate need of improvement.
102 From How to Pray, by R.A. Torrey.
103 “Making a Killing” by C. Carr, Mirabella magazine, March 1994, pp. 72 – 73.
104 The article.
105 Wuornos mentioned in a prior letter that she was responding to an article by Karen Avenoso that appeared in the New York Daily News.
106 A reference to Jean Bethke Elshtain, political philosopher, professor, and contributing editor to The New Republic, who was quoted in Avenoso’s article.
107 This is the same episode referenced in Wuornos’s letter of December 9, 1992.
108 A reference to the chief of admissions and releases for the Florida Department of Corrections.
109 Wuornos’s initials.
110 Wuornos does not appear to have been too far off the mark in her understanding of the status of Florida’s Son of Sam law. In 1991, the publisher Simon and Schuster challenged New York’s Son of Sam law, which was subsequently overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that it was overly broad and jeopardized prisoners’ First Amendment rights. While the Court held that Son of Sam laws could potentially be constitutional depending on their wording, and Florida still had a Son of Sam law on the books, Florida instead used a general forfeiture law to seize proceeds from the sale of serial killer Danny Rollings’s artwork and book in 1994, suggesting that prosecutors did not have confidence in the law’s constitutional viability.
111 A reference to Arlene Pralle.
112 One of the attorneys.
113 Nick Broomfield’s Aileen Wuornos: Selling of a Serial Killer (1992). Wuornos has not herself seen it, but is responding point by point in the next several letters to Dawn’s descriptions. It would seem that years after its release, Dawn has finally acquired a VHS copy.
114 The documentary includes Wuornos’s wrenching testimony on the Mallory rape.
115 In The Selling of a Serial Killer, Broomfield goes to Pralle’s horse farm, where she repeatedly asks him to turn off the camera and leave.
116 Glazer had a television ad in which he dubbed himself “Doctor Legal.”
117 This is believed to be Dick Mills, who kept company with Wuornos just after Tyria Moore left.
118 Wuornos is responding to Dawn’s reiteration of the Broomfield documentary.
119 Someone pa
inted Wuornos’s likeness on a van’s passenger seat that had been left at the Last Resort, and the object became an attraction.
120 The question of incest is brought up in the Broomfield documentary.
121 Wuornos is likely quoting from an “Institutional Adjustment” report of July 16, 1994, when she was cited for “spoken threats.” Reportedly, no discipline was exacted as a result of this infraction.
122 A reference to Dawn’s impending visit.
123 Old Testament.
124 Phil Donahue. It does not appear that The Phil Donahue Show ever featured Wuornos or her case.
125 Linda was a correspondent of Wuornos’s, as mentioned earlier. Laura was her partner.
126 Diane, Wuornos’s biological mother, who left her and Keith as babies.
127 A reference to Wuornos’s grandmother, Britta Wuornos.
128 Nieman was Dawn’s maiden name.
129 The Capital Collateral Representatives, which later became the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel (CCRC). The CCRC stepped in to represent Wuornos after she exhausted her direct appeals. The mission of the CCRC is to find new grounds for appeal. On September 22, 1994, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed Wuornos’s convictions and death sentence.
130 Susan Smith was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 for the murder of her two young sons.
131 Jim Bakker, televangelist and founder of the PTL Network, resigned in 1987 following accusations that he raped church secretary Jessica Hahn and subsequently paid her hush money. In 1988, Bakker was sentenced to forty-five years on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy, but served five years.
132 Televangelist who claimed during a fundraising drive that God would “call him home” unless he raised $8 million.
133 In 1988, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was found to have solicited a prostitute. He first denied the allegations, then apologized during a broadcast.
134 Theresa Walsh, attorney with CCR.
135 Theresa Walsh.
136 Wuornos claimed she was being abused by the prison staff.
137 Wuornos was sending Dawn’s mother pages and pages copied from religious readings.
138 Wuornos quoted the full chorus of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page.”
139 The superintendent.
140 Wuornos wrote a three-page letter to both Chesler and Glazer, firing them, and copied it for Dawn.
141 $4,000.
142 Wuornos’s new attorney Tony Alexander, based in England, who was found by Nick Broomfield.
143 Sue Russell, author of Lethal Intent: The Shocking True Story of One of America’s Most Notorious Female Serial Killers!
144 Michael Reynolds, author of Dead Ends.
145 On May 9, 1996, the Florida Supreme Court upheld Wuornos’s convictions and death sentences.
146 Tony Alexander, Wuornos’s new attorney.
147 Dawn and Dave were facing a period of financial hardship.
148 Likely a reference to the 39th District Corruption Scandal, in which a group of Philadelphia police officers were convicted of a long history of brutality and corruption. Fourteen hundred cases were eventually brought under examination for tainting and rights violations, and hundreds were overturned.
149 American swimmer who won four gold medals in the 1996 Summer Olympics.
150 Kerri Strug, American gymnast who vaulted injured, clinching the gold medal for the women’s team.
151 Wuornos wished to confess the details of the killings in exchange for the right of the women on Death Row to smoke.
152 Dawn, Dave, their grown children Kim and David, and Kim’s partner.
153 Neighbors in Troy who, according to Dawn, allowed Lori and Keith to stay with them, while Aileen slept outside in one of several abandoned cars on their lot.
154 Lori’s husband.
155 To the best of Dawn’s knowledge, the adoption was never reversed.
156 A reference to the mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult on March 26, 1997.
157 A reference to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a child beauty pageant queen. The case remains unsolved.
158 Broward Correctional Institution.
159 A reference to Louise Woodward, an English nanny convicted of the murder of the child in her care. Her sentence was later reduced to involuntary manslaughter and she had recently been released from prison.
160 Karla Faye Tucker was convicted of murder in 1984 and executed by the state of Texas in 1998. She attempted—with some popular support—to have her sentence commuted to life imprisonment given that she had been on drugs at the time of the murders and had since become a Christian.
161 Wuornos’s fellow inmate Judias Buenoano.
162 Wuornos had begun to write pieces of her life story and send them to Linda.
163 Judias Buenoano was executed on March 30, 1998.
164 Andrea Hicks Jackson, resentenced to life in 2000.
165 Steinhatchee, a small coastal town in northwestern Florida.
166 Both men earned a reputation for being pro – death penalty during their terms as governors of their respective states. Wuornos confused the two brothers. George W. Bush during his six years as governor of Texas presided over 152 executions. Jeb Bush, as governor of Florida, oversaw 21 executions.
167 This is a reference to David’s birthday party.
168 A reference to Nick Broomfield’s depiction of Steve Glazer in his documentary Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer.
169 Dawn was hoping to buy tickets to a Rod Stewart concert.
170 Wuornos was carrying her belongings in a pillowcase.
171 Jeb Bush had become governor of Florida that January.
172 A reference to Wuornos’s grandparents.
173 A reference to Wuornos’s age at the time of the events described herein.
174 Wuornos’s closest friend during this period.
175 A reference to Wuornos’s counselor.
176 Arlene Pralle’s husband, Robert.
177 Money order. Wuornos was concerned her account would not have enough money in it to sustain her until her execution.
178 Likely a reference to Joseph Hobson and Kori Anderson, attorney and investigator, respectively, for the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel.
179 Dawn recalls that Wuornos seemed to believe she could counteract what she thought were the prison’s attempts to spy on her by arranging paper or cloth to block out their signals.
180 The “7 an 7” slogan is Wuornos’s shorthand for refuting her self-defense claim. (As she wrote in a letter of March 2, 2002: “7 counts of first degree Murder and 7 counts of Robbery.”)
181 Dawn’s stepfather.
182 The current web address for this story is http://www.wesh.com/news/291655/detail.html.
183 Kori Anderson, investigator for the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel.
184 Darlene was Dawn’s close friend.
185 Likely a reference to Court TV producer Mary Beth Ross.
186 Jackie Giroux was suing Wuornos, stating that her exclusive rights to Wuornos’s story had been infringed upon by the police officers’ deal with Republic Pictures. Wuornos was annotating Giroux’s deposition, enumerating all of the statements she believed were lies. Wuornos apparently sent a copy to Dawn as well.
187 Wuornos’s annotations on Giroux’s deposition.
188 Most likely a reference to Frank Lee Smith, who died of cancer on Death Row in 2000 and was posthumously exonerated.
189 National Geographic.
190 From The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien.
191 In February 2001, an evidentiary hearing was held to determine whether errors in Wuornos’s first trial had unfairly led to her being given the death penalty.
192 The testimony included the assertion that Wuornos was beaten by her grandfather and that it was rumored she had sex with her brother.
193 Florida Assistant State Attorney Jim McCune.
194 Wuornos had believed the purpose of th
is hearing would be to expose the corruption around the book and movie deals, and now felt that CCRC deliberately misled her, intending to use the hearing to find a way to appeal her death sentence against her wishes. She based this conclusion on the fact that CCRC did not question Jarvis at the hearing.