Because the body of Peter Siems has never been found, Lee was asked where she had left the corpse. ‘Look. I can’t remember their faces or their names, so don’t shit me. How the fuck am I going to recall where he is? But I’m tellin’ you that he’s got to be seriously dead by now.’
Asked if her grandfather had sexually abused her, Lee said, ‘Ya know. I have said different things about this over the years, but, the truth is, yeah. I was. He’d do stuff to me and give me pocket money to shut up. He’d finger me. I lost my virginity to his fuckin’ finger when I was about seven. He’d beat the shit outa me, ya know. But he’d strip me naked beforehand … that’s fuckin wrong … you understand? He made me what I am. He made me hate men like him. Dirty, cheap, no-good motherfuckers like him. Look at me … I’m shaking all over even thinking about it. For fuck’s sake, let’s leave it. OK, Christopher? I’m sort of getting freaked out and I don’t need this right now.’
* * *
Knowing the enormity of the crimes committed by Lee Wuornos, it is easy just to follow the general line of thinking and dismiss her simply as another one in a long line of serial killers. While there have been many female mass murderers, there have been few female serial killers. Lee Wuornos stands out because of her gender and her dismissal of the compassionate, life-giving qualities of her sex, not in response to a single act of murderous impulse but, time after time, in a series of violent deaths. By making a man suffer, she transformed herself from a victim to the victimiser, eagerly grabbing power for herself with both hands and with the aid of a handgun. She made herself unique in a gross kind of way.
Lee Wuornos has an anti-social personality disorder. Although one-in-twenty males suffer from such a disorder, meaning that their actions are not inhibited by guilt or moral boundaries, very few kill, and even fewer women kill. Even fewer in numbers are hookers who kill for money when selling their bodies; indeed, prostitutes are the all-too-familiar victims of male serial killers. Lee Wuornos may fairly be described as unique and, as such, she merits more than a passing study. She perhaps represents a reason why society should not, out of revenge, use the ultimate penalty of execution, which is usually carried out more for the sake of political expediency, than for the sake of deterrence. If her life serves no other purpose, Lee Wuornos might just provide some valuable insights into a rare breed of killer.
Her life was a tangled thread of alcohol and loneliness, spent for the most part, rootless and penniless, roaming the highways of Florida. She hung around the haunts of bikers, but sought love from her female companion, Tyria Moore, hating men as the source of all her troubles and luring at least six of them to their deaths. But the question remains – what preceded Lee’s dance of death? What finally made the bough break?
To answer the first question, it would be fair to say that she did not enjoy a healthy childhood. Her true father, a man she never met, was a sexual pervert who later hanged himself in prison. Her mother abandoned her when she was six months old, and she was adopted by an authoritarian grandfather and grandmother.
Throughout her entire formative years, the young girl was humiliated, sexually abused, beaten and rejected, and her world was filled with pain, rage and alcoholism, all suffered behind the closed curtains of a house of secrets.
In order to survive, she rebelled in the only way she knew. As she grew older, and mentally stronger, she learned how to fight fire with fire. No longer was she the easy pushover and handy repository for her grandfather’s frustrations which stemmed from his own hatred of his weak daughter who had dumped her children on his doorstep. When this rebellious behaviour showed signs of success, and about the same time as she learned that Lauri and Eileen were not her real parents, Lee knew that she had won the upper hand. In a calculated way of exacting revenge for all of the suffering she had endured, she turned to childhood prostitution, became pregnant, left school and took to the road.
She had one tragic lesson in the forefront of her mind. Her grandfather and her true father, like so many older men, married or otherwise, have money, are attracted to young females and will willingly pay for illicit sex when the opportunity arises. She also knew that she was a law unto herself. No one could tame Lee Wuornos. But, she was not born a serial killer. She had been brought up in an environment where her innocence was mismanaged and abused. The foundations of her antisocial behaviour were implanted by the family surroundings in which she was reared. In that respect, her true parents and grandparents have much to answer for.
When her grandmother died, Lee was not upset. Understandably, when her grandfather committed suicide, she was elated, and when her brother died of throat cancer she was stunned, but the $10,000 she received from his army insurance soon compensated for the grief she endured at his passing.
When that money was exhausted, she hitch-hiked south and, after a series of one-night stands, met the wealthy Louis Gratz Fell, a well-connected man who should have known better. The 69-year old, with a grand ego, obscenely flaunted the 20-year-old as his fiancée. He paid for his mistake when a streetwise Lee Wuornos took advantage of the old man’s sexual predilections. ‘The bottom line,’ said Lee, ‘is that he was a cheap, flashy, dirty old man who had money. Basically, he bought my sex. Wanted to keep me at home with him. Give me a break … what else do you want to hear?’
After splitting with Fell, and like many millions of Americans, Lee went in search of a dream. She ended up in Daytona with all its sun-kissed mirages and promises and it was there, while drinking in a gay bar, that she met another lonely young woman. Tyria Moore would become the only true love of her life. Lee discovered that Tyria, unlike everyone else she had met, did not want anything from her. On the contrary, Tyria was not a materialistic person and demonstrated her love and respect by devoting most of her free time to be in Lee’s company.
In an interview, Tyria said, ‘Lee was very pretty in those days. She dressed very provocatively and I considered her a real catch. We had some great times. She was a great lover. Very gentle and caring as if she needed my love in return. She was my best friend. But what I admired the most was her strength. She was very … er, over-protective of me. No one messed with me when Lee was around. I truly loved her, but I don’t think anyone will understand this. Even when she was drunk, she was funny. It was a ball of laughs, you know. They won’t kill her, will they?’
So, why did the bough break, and why did Lee turn to serial homicidal violence? There are those who subscribe to the view that all serial killers enjoy using, abusing and controlling fellow human beings. This is why some observers have stated that Wuornos is a new type of breed of killer, leaping on the notion that she is a pioneer, a predatory hitchhiker, stalking the highways, from whom no man is safe. Conversely, it seems to be generally agreed that women rarely kill just for kicks.
Lee has always said that she was short of cash. That was a problem which could always be resolved with a trick here and there; besides, there is the undeniable fact that she hitched hundreds of rides from men, and only murdered six. There is no doubt that she had sex with many of those who offered her lifts and who were probably blissfully unaware that she always carried a gun.
So what was the murderous impulse that led her to homicidal violence? Captain Steve Binegar argued that ‘when she was picked up by men they usually lived, but when they went into the woods with her, they never came out alive’. This is a simplification, as Captain Binegar later agreed. ‘Maybe I was generalising,’ he said. ‘No guy is going to strip on the highway … risk police seeing a parked car … windows steamed up … rocking up an’ down. Perhaps I was wrong. I’m damned sure I wouldn’t mess around like that on the highway.’
In trying to understand what triggered Lee’s impulse to kill, it is plausible and, indeed, likely that her ‘killing days’, like those of Michael Ross, were precipitated by personal crisis or extra stresses in her life. As her feelings of powerlessness heightened, her mind tried to compensate by converting those feelings into a desire to exert control o
ver another human being. Many serial killers, including most of those featured in this book, commonly admit that an argument with the opposite sex, a close partner or a parent, preceded the act of murder.
A study carried out, by the FBI, on male subjects, showed that 59 per cent specifically mentioned conflict with a woman. Lee had conflicts with Tyria Moore, her only love, at the time of the murders of Mallory, Spears, Carskaddon, Siems, Humphreys and Antonio. Either Tyria was threatening to leave, or the presence of a competing force for Tyria’s affections had made Lee fear she might lose her.
Another attractive lesbian, called Sandy Russell, had entered Tyria’s life, just a few days before Lee murdered Richard Mallory. When another woman, Tracey, visited Tyria, Lee killed David Spears, Charles Carskaddon and Peter Siems. When Tyria was dismissed from employment at the Casa Del Mar restaurant, she talked about leaving Florida and, by implication, deserting Lee. This happened in the week before Richard Humphreys was murdered. Tyria had left for Ohio, for Thanksgiving, amid talk about making a break from Lee, when Walter Antonio was shot dead. There seems to be a pattern here and it takes no great stretch of the imagination to envisage a crisis in their relationship, at the end of July, which preceded the murder of Troy Burress.
If this line of reasoning is valid, the idea that Lee took the lives of her victims in the image of her abusive grandfather is erroneous. Despite the monstrous picture she has painted for herself, she has always been – and will continue to be – a lonely, scared woman who shares the fundamental human desire for love, respect, and attention. She was denied such fulfilment from the beginning of her life and when she found the one person she could really love, and whom she imagined, unequivocally, loved her, she cherished this relationship in her own particular way.
Alone, out on the wet highways, with her domestic problems in the forefront of her mind, Lee found ‘Murder Crossroads’. Older men with sex on their minds, maybe in the image of her grandfather, crossed her path. Seemingly respectable men with money, wives and lovers, who were only too keen to buy six-packs of beer and booze in exchange for cheap sex in the sordid confines of a car on a lonely track.
‘I was really OK with these guys. That is the God’s honest truth,’ said Lee Wuornos during an interview, ‘A few drinks, they thought I was cheap … started talking rough an’ dirty like I’m shit, man. I’ve had that all my life … didn’t need the shit … I’m a reasonable person. They wanted to fuck my ass … couldn’t get that with their wives an’ stuff. They wanted to abuse and humiliate me. Ya know, despite what you think, I’ve got respect for myself. Always did have. Weird, right!
Giving a ride to Lee Wuornos, buying her a few cheap drinks, pulling off the highway and talking her down was a murderous cocktail, indeed.
This chapter is based on an interview between Lee Wuornos and Christopher Berry-Dee on Death Row, Pembroke Pines Correctional Institute, Florida, in 1996, and other research.
KENNETH
ALLEN
McDUFF
USA
‘Killing a woman’s like killing a chicken. They both squawk.’
KENNETH MCDUFF’S CHILLING APPRAISAL TO HIS ACCOMPLICE ROY DALE GREEN
‘He was out on parole when McDuff killed our kids. We got three death sentences, and now he is out on parole again. They are going to have blood on their hands, those people who turned him loose.’
BILL BRAND, FATHER OF ROBERT BRAND, ONE OF MCDUFF’S 1966 VICTIMS
He didn’t just kill his victims; he savaged them in unspeakable ways. He raped them with a sadism that made veteran police officers cringe. This killer blew off his victims’ faces at point-blank range, he slashed and stabbed with knives, and bludgeoned with clubs. He crushed one victim’s neck with a broomstick.
* * *
Tall, dour and icy-eyed, McDuff had scattered corpses around Central Texas – estimates have ranged upward of 15 – since he was a teenager, so who is this ogre who terrorised a whole State?
There is little recorded information on the early life of Kenneth McDuff. What we do know is that he was born on Sunday, 3 March 1946, at 201 Linden Street, in the small, central Texas hamlet of Rosebud, Falls County. The saying, ‘All is Rosy in Rosebud’, suggests a cosy place untroubled by violence.
The earliest settlers arrived in Falls County from Mexico at the time of the War of Independence, in 1836. The economy depended on cotton, slavery was rife and, between 1866 and 1890, the Chisholm Trail and Kansas railroads passed close by.
During the Wild West days, Rosebud’s 11 saloons were filled with drunken cowboys. Saturday night shootouts were commonplace and, today, the original calaboose remains intact, as does ‘open-range law’, meaning that cows have the right of way.
On the eastern edge of Rosebud, Linden Street heads south from Main Street toward a baseball field, carved out of surrounding farmland. Small wooden houses, old but well kept, and shaded by large pecan trees, line the streets. On the east side of Linden, only the second building from Main, stands a premises that was once the Rosebud Laundromat. A small living area is connected to the rear of the laundromat, where the family of John Allen ‘JA’ McDuff lived. At least some of the McDuff’s children, including two boys named Lonzo (Lonnie) and Kenneth, were born in far-off Paris, Texas, and no one seems to know why the McDuffs, who lived in the Blackland Prairie before moving to Rosebud, ended up in the area.
Kenneth was one of four children born to Addie L McDuff and John Allen ‘JA’ McDuff. ‘JA’ did farm, masonry and concrete work. His wife was a hefty, domineering woman named Addie. Addie ruled the roost and she was known locally as ‘The Pistol Packin’ Momma’, on account of her violent temper and her habit of toting a sidearm in her handbag. Ken was in trouble from the moment he could walk.
He grew up to be a bully, a sadistic child who roamed the neighbourhood with a .22 calibre rifle, shooting any animal or bird that fell into his sights. The town’s residents called him ‘the bad boy of Rosebud’. People feared him even as a teenager and he beat up any youth who upset him, whether they were older or not.
Mrs Martha Royal, McDuff’s fifth-grade teacher, remembers him as intelligent youngster, but something of a loner. ‘Kenneth was the son of a mild-mannered, hard-working father who was in the building trade, and a permissive mother who was quick to excuse his misdeeds. His troubles began in junior high, and never stopped. He did not get on with the other children very well. He seemed to live in a world of his own. On several occasions, I tried to speak with him in private, to ask if he had any problems at home, and things like that. But he wouldn’t say a word to me. He just stared straight into my face. From the age of five, he had murder in his eyes. It was quite disturbing, I can tell you that.’
McDuff was always in trouble. In his teens, he was involved in robberies with his brother and, more than once, Sheriff Larry Pamplin said he tried to shoot their car tyres out, but they always got clean away.
McDuff’s documented criminal career began in 1964, when, aged 18, he was convicted of 12 counts of burglary and attempted burglary in Bell, Milam, and Falls County. He received 12 concurrent four-year sentences for these crimes but achieved parole in Falls County in December 1965. Several months later, he got into a fracas and his parole was revoked. In 1966, he was released and, a short time later, he committed capital murder with an accomplice, a somewhat weak-willed 18-year-old, called Roy Dale Green.
Green was employed as a carpenter’s helper. He had previously lived with his mother but, after she remarried, he moved in with a friend called Richard Boyd. It was Boyd who introduced Green to McDuff and, at the time of the triple homicide, the two men had known each other only a month.
The two men seem to hit it off well. McDuff was a well-built, good-looking 20-year-old, who was proud of his criminal record. He was a tough, no-nonsense young man. He spoke his mind and he bragged about his sexual conquests, to the point that he said that he had raped two young women, and killed them. Green, on the other hand, was a weedy individual with a speec
h impediment who looked up to his stronger companion. But, secretly, he put McDuff’s murderous claims down to hogwash.
The two men spent Saturday, 6 August, pouring concrete for McDuff’s father and, after completing their labours, decided to drive into Fort Worth for a few drinks. At around 5.00pm, they climbed into McDuff’s brand new Dodge Coronet, and rode around before buying a pack of beer from a 7–11 store. At 7.00pm, they visited Edith Turner, a mutual friend, and later they bought a hamburger.
Meanwhile, three teenagers – Robert Brand of Alvarado, aged 18; his cousin, 16-year-old Mark Dunman from Tarzana, California; and Robert’s girlfriend, vivacious 16-year-old Edna Louise Sullivan, from Everman – spent the evening at a drive-in movie. When the show finished, they drove to a spot near a baseball field in Guadalupe County where they parked their 1957 Ford. At around 10.00pm, McDuff and Green came on the scene and the trio of teenagers became their randomly-selected quarry.
What took place is graphically described in the statement Green gave to Detective Grady Hight. This is dated Monday 8 August 1966, the day Green gave himself up:
We rode around the baseball park and wound up on a gravel road. He [McDuff] saw a car parked there, and we stopped about 150 yards in front of it. He got his gun and told me to get out. I thought it was all a joke. I just didn’t believe what he said was going to happen. I went halfway to the car with him, and he went on. He told the kids in the car to get out or he would shoot them. I went on up there and he had put them in the trunk of their car. He drove his car back to their car, and he told me to get in his car and follow him. I did, and we drove for a while across the highway we had come in on, and he pulled into a field. I followed, and he said that the field wouldn’t do, so we backed up and went to another field. He got out and told the girl to get out. He told me to put her in the trunk of his car. I opened the trunk and she climbed in. It was then that he said that we couldn’t leave any witnesses, or something like that. He said, ‘I’m gonna have to knock ’em off,’ or something like that.
Talking with Serial Killers Page 22
