Monster

by Aileen Wuornos

Wuornos: No. Uh uh. I just flung them out the window as I’m driving or… or stopped and threw them and stuff like that. I couldn’t even tell you where because they were way out in the country somewhere where I didn’t even know sometimes where I was.

  Horzepa: There’s something I forgot to ask you. There’s another guy that’s missing that we haven’t found. A guy that worked for the Kennedy Space Center. A guy that worked for the Kennedy Space Center and there was a white Oldsmobile and the car was parked in Orange County off of Semoran and 436. The guy had glasses on and this would have been right around the HRS guy’s car [Charles Humphreys].

  Wuornos: Uh…

  Munster: It was a white car and he was driving from Titusville to Atlanta… it was a white two-door car…

  Wuornos: No, I don’t recall anything like that.

  Munster: Do you have a picture of him, Larry?

  Wuornos: Yeah, yeah, if you got a picture of him…

  Horzepa: What was the name on that?

  Munster: Reid. Curtis Reid.

  Wuornos: Curtis Reid. I don’t know that one. I don’t remember anybody like that.

  Munster: He worked at the Kennedy Space Center and he had a Space Center emblem on his windshield of his rear window and someone scraped it off. He had a lot of money. He just cashed his pay cheque. You might have had…

  Wuornos: I never got anybody that had a lot of money.

  Munster: He might have had a thousand dollars, something like that.

  Wuornos: Oh, I never got anything like that. Uh uh.

  Horzepa: No, I have a flyer of the emblem. I don’t have that one.

  Wuornos: I don’t recall anything like that because I never… I never got a lot of money on it. The only money I got, the most was that one that I didn’t know was a missionary dude, was like $400 [Peter Siems].

  Having settled this matter, Bruce Munster started asking about the various alibis Lee had used.

  Munster: Who’s Susan Blahovec?

  Wuornos: Oh, well, that’s another fake ID I had.

  Munster: How’d you get that one?

  Wuornos: Oh, Lord, let’s see, how did I get… oh, this guy in the Keys had a birth certificate and he told me to use it for… because I had a suspended driver’s licence and he told me I could use that ID. Oh… because… and I had… I think I had a… that forgery warrant was at that time, I think. I had that on me. And he told me I could use this ID, that it was his wife’s ID, that she had never… he hated his wife, big time. And that I could… she’s never been in trouble and that I could turn that birth certificate and licence, but you don’t get into trouble with it, you know, just use it for driving and stuff, so I did.

  Munster: All right. I think that’s…

  Wuornos: How in the world did you find out about Susan Blahovec now?

  Munster: Oh…

  Wuornos: And did I put my name on a motel as that or something?

  Munster: No. You got some tickets with it.

  Wuornos: Oh, OK, I remember that. All right.

  Munster: I know about the time in 1974, you were arrested under the name of Sandra Beatrice Kretch.

  Wuornos: Yeah.

  Munster: Your neighbour.

  Wuornos: Yeah. I was… I was young and she was 33 or something and the judge couldn’t… I spent ten days in jail for that one. She got away with having to go to jail on her damn ticket.

  Munster: How far did you go in high school?

  Wuornos: Tenth and a half grade.

  Munster: Why’d you quit?

  Wuornos: Because my mother died and my father wouldn’t let me stay at home and I was living out on the street. I just want… to know that I hope to God, that you guys do understand that Ty is not involved with this. She doesn’t know. She thought that I had these cars rented or… or borrowed them and all this jazz, and she wasn’t too… too aware of what I was doing. I mean, she didn’t know… exactly what was happening. I mean I… when I’d get drunk I’d say shit from the top of my head just to try to be a bad ass, because I was drunk. And… but she didn’t have anything to do with these murders. She didn’t have anything to do with anything. She just worked, ate, slept, stayed at home, went to volleyball practice and was just a good gal… I’ve dealt with a hundred thousand guys. But these guys are the only guys that gave me a problem and they started giving me a problem just this year… the year that went by. So I, at the same time I was staying with some guy and I noticed that he had some guns and I ripped off his .22, a nine-shot deal… So when I’d get hassle, if the person gave me my money and then started hassling me, that’s when I started taking retaliation… I just wish I never would have done this shit. And I just wish I never would have done what I did. I still have to say to myself, I still say that it was in self-defence… Really inside, right inside me, I’m a good person. But, when I get drunk, like I said, I’d be drinking with these guys and… and when they started messing with me, I wouldn’t tou– I would never hurt nobody. But, if they messed with me, then I would. I’d just… I have to say I was… I’d get just as violent as they would get on me… to try and protect myself.

  Munster: I know what I wanted to ask you. You said that you put the gun and a flashlight, some handcuffs into the water.

  Wuornos: Oh, yeah.

  Munster: Over by the bridge around Fairview. Now you walked to the… on the bridge there… were you in the middle or towards one side or the other?

  Wuornos: Oh, when you go over the bridge…

  Munster: Uh, huh.

  Wuornos: … there’s the other little bank there…

  Munster: Uh, huh.

  Wuornos: … and it’s right underneath the bridge there.

  Munster: OK.

  Horzepa: Is it actually in the water or did you hide it up underneath the bridge?

  Wuornos: No, it’s… it’s in the water.

  Munster: OK. You took the gun and threw it underneath there?

  Wuornos: Yes.

  Munster: Now did you throw the handcuffs someplace else?

  Wuornos: No, I just dropped them along… they’re straight down… yeah.

  Munster: All right.

  Horzepa: Could you see them when they hit… hit the bottom of the…

  Wuornos: No, but I know it’s waist deep… around there. Because some guy said he had cemented that part out there. And he had to get his net untangled from the crab trap and he told me it’s about anywhere from here to there, in the water.

  Horzepa: Lee, would you be willing, if we needed you to, uh, go out with us to try to locate that .22 that you threw into the water… if you can show us the exact location where you had tossed it? Would you be willing to do that for us, Lee?

  Wuornos: I am willing to do anything. I want to just let you know I’m the only one involved in this deal… stuff… shit.

  Horzepa: Also, too, uh, later on, would you be willing to talk to other investigators…

  Wuornos: Oh, no problem.

  Horzepa: … if needed, from the other counties that have cases involved.

  Wuornos: I want all this out in the open and I want them to know that there’s not two girls. Ty is as innocent as can be. There was only one person. It was me, because I’m a hooker and I got involved with these guys because they were phys– and it was a physical situ– because I’m telling you now, I’m serious, every day when I was hitchhiking, I would meet anywhere from five to eight guys a day and make… now, but some would say no, and some would say yes.

  Munster: Mmm… mmm.

  Wuornos: And I would make money. But they wouldn’t abuse me or nothing. I’d just do my thing and make my money, stick it in my wallet and go.

  Munster: OK. That about wraps it up. All right, now, I’m going turn the tape off and it is 2.21 in the afternoon.

  Wuornos: Can I ask you something?

  Munster: You certainly can.

  Wuornos: Do you mind if I keep these cigarettes because I don’t have any cigarettes at all?

  Horzepa: You are quite welcome to them a
nd I’m glad you didn’t ask to keep my jacket.

  Wuornos: Oh, yeah, that was warm. Thank you.

  Horzepa: Sure, no problem.

  Wuornos: I’m very sorry…

  After getting the most pressing, and somewhat self-serving, issues off her chest, a resilient Lee settled down to jail life, her mood alternating between abject depression and joviality. She had been allowed newspapers, and she avidly poured over the notoriety she was now receiving from the world’s media. Her emotions, which had originally centred around Tyria, started to take a back seat. Religion and turning to God was way back in the past. She was becoming a celebrity – a person of some import and, for the first time in her life, she felt she had at least achieved something of value. If she could beat the rap – and she was sure she could convince everyone that she had only killed in self-defence – she could make a mint and buy a decent attorney and her way to freedom.

  The true nature of Lee’s psychopathic personality was about to be unleashed; not, this time, in a car with a vulnerable man at some lonely place, but in a more insidious way in the county jail, where she was observed by corrections officer Susan Hanson.

  Two days after Lee’s interviews with police, Susan Hanson was on duty and assigned to keep an eye on Lee. Although this inmate was not supposed to be treated any differently to the other prisoners, a certain mystique had built up around the so-called ‘mystery guest’ – everyone was curious and everybody wanted a piece of the action that was focused on Lee Wuornos.

  As cocky as one would like, Lee saw Officer Hanson peering through the glass panel of her cell, and said, ‘Listen to this. They say here [in the newspaper] “This woman is a killer who robs, not a robber who kills.” That’s… sure, I shot them, but it was self-defence.’

  Later, in her deposition, Hanson recalled that Lee said that she had been raped many times, ‘and I just got sick of it… If I didn’t kill those guys, I would have been raped a total of 20 times maybe. Or killed. You never know. But I got them first… I figured that at least I was doing some good killing these guys. Because, if I didn’t kill them, they would have hurt someone else.’

  Officer Hanson in took every word, but said very little in return. Her instructions were to listen and document as much as she could remember as soon as it was possible to get to her notepad. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you any of this,’ continued Lee, ‘but get this. I had these two guys say they were cops, or at least they flashed their badges at me. They picked me up and wanted sex but didn’t want to pay. Said if I didn’t they’d turn me in. One grabbed my hair and pushed me towards his penis. We really started fighting then so I killed them. Afterwards I looked at their badges and one was a reservist cop or something [Walter Gino Antonio was a Brevard County reserve deputy] and the other worked for like the HRS [Charles Humphreys was a supervisor for the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, referred to as the HRS.]

  ‘I had lots of guys, maybe ten to twelve a day,’ boasted Lee. ‘I could have killed all of them, but I didn’t want to. I’m really just a nice person. I’m describing a normal day to you here, but a killing day would be about the same. On a normal day we would just do it by the side of the road if they wanted oral sex, or behind a building or maybe just off the road in the woods if they wanted it all.

  ‘On a killing day those guys always wanted to go way, way back in the woods. Now I know why they did it: they’re going to hurt me… I figured if these guys lived, and I got fried for attempted murder, I thought, Fuck it, I might as well get fried for murder instead.’

  In her deposition, Officer Hanson said, ‘She was laughing a lot when she talked to me. When she would talk about, specifically, how she shot the guy, the one guy with the .45, she just stood there. She was very… sometimes she would laugh, sometimes she was calm in explaining this. Other times she would just get very excited. She was never sad in any way. Never once did she say, “I’m upset about this.” She just said, “If I hadn’t killed him, he’d kill other people.”’

  The jailhouse medic also witnessed Lee’s cheerful mood when he stopped by to give her some medication to calm her nerves. ‘I never really saw her down,’ he said. ‘She was always jovial and boasted of having done 250,000 men in the past nine years.’

  ‘We kind of looked at her a little strange for that,’ said Officer Hanson. ‘The doctor just kind of walked away after that, and she sat down and began reading the papers again.’

  News that the police had secured a female serial killer’s confession soon leaked out to the public domain and an avalanche of book and movie deals poured in to detectives, to Lee and Tyria and to the victims’ relatives. Lee seemed to think she would make millions of dollars from her story, not yet realising that Florida had a law against criminals profiting in such a manner. She commanded headlines in the local and national media. She felt famous, and continued to talk about the crimes with anyone who would listen, including Volusia County Jail employees. With each retelling, she refined her story a little further, seeking to cast herself in a better light each time.

  On Monday, 28 January 1991, Lee Wuornos was indicted for the murder of Richard Mallory. The indictment read:

  In that Aileen Carol Wuornos, a/k/a Susan Lynn Blahovec, a/k/a/ Lori Kristine Grody, a/k/a/ Cammie Marsh Greene, on or about the first day of December, 1989, within Volusia County, did then and there unlawfully, from a premeditated design to effect the death of one Richard Mallory, a human being, while engaged in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetuate robbery, did kill and murder Richard Mallory by shooting him with a firearm, to wit: a handgun.

  Counts two and three charged her with armed robbery and possession of a firearm and, by late February, she had been charged with the murders of David Spears in Citrus County and Charles Humphreys and Troy Burress in Marion County.

  Lee’s attorneys engineered a plea bargain whereby she would plead guilty to six charges and receive six consecutive life terms. One state’s attorney, however, thought she should receive the death penalty, so on Monday, 14 January 1992 she went to trial for the murder of Richard Mallory.

  The evidence and testimony of witnesses were severely damaging. Dr Arthur Botting, the medical examiner who had carried out the autopsy on Mallory’s body, stated that he had taken between 10 and 20 agonising minutes to die. Tyria testified that Lee had not seemed overly upset, nervous or drunk when she told her about the Mallory killing. Twelve men went on to the witness stand to testify to their encounters with Lee along Florida’s highways and byways over the years.

  Florida has a law known as the Williams Rule which allows evidence relating to other crimes to be admitted if it serves to show a pattern. Because of the Williams Rule, information regarding other killings alleged to have been committed by Lee was presented to the jury. Her claim of having killed in self-defence would have been a lot more believable had the jury only known of Mallory. Now, with the jury made aware of all the murders, self-defence seemed the least plausible explanation. After the excerpts from her videotaped confession were played, the self-defence claim simply looked ridiculous. Lee seemed not the least upset by the story she was telling. She made easy conversation with her interrogators and repeatedly told her attorney to be quiet. Her image on the screen allowed her to condemn herself out of her own mouth. ‘I took a life … I am willing to give up my life because I killed people … I deserve to die,’ she said.

  Tricia Jenkins, one of Lee’s public defenders, did not want her client to testify and told her so. But Lee overrode this advice, insisting on telling her story. By now, her account of Mallory’s murder barely resembled the one she gave in her confession. Mallory had raped, sodomised and tortured her, she claimed.

  On cross-examination, prosecutor John Tanner obliterated any shred of credibility she may have had. As he brought to light all her lies and inconsistencies, she became agitated and angry. Her attorneys repeatedly advised her not to answer questions, and she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 25
times. She was the defence’s only witness, and when she left the stand there was not much doubt about how her trial would end.

  Judge Uriel ‘Bunky’ Blount Jr charged the jury on Monday, 27 January. They returned their verdict 91 minutes later. Pamela Mills, a schoolteacher, had been elected foreperson and she presented the verdict to the bailiff. He, in turn, handed it to the judge. The judge read it and passed it to the clerk who spoke the words that sealed Lee’s fate. ‘We, the jury, find Aileen Wuornos guilty of premeditated felony murder in the first degree,’ she told an expectant assembly in the courtroom. As the jury filed out, their duty done, Lee exploded with rage, shouting, ‘I’m innocent! I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scumbags of America!’

  Her outburst was still fresh in the minds of jurors as the penalty phase of her trial began the next day. Expert witnesses for the defence testified that Lee was mentally ill, that she suffered from a borderline personality disorder and that her tumultuous upbringing had stunted and ruined her. Jenkins referred to her client as ‘a damaged, primitive child’ as she tearfully pleaded with the jury to spare Lee’s life. But the jurors neither forgot nor forgave the woman they had come to know during the trial. With a unanimous verdict, they recommended that Judge Blount sentence her to die in the electric chair. He confirmed the sentence on Friday, 31 January, first quoting his duty from a printed text:

  Aileen Carol Wuornos, being brought before the court by her attorneys William Miller, Tricia Jenkins and Billy Nolas, having been tried and found guilty of count one, first-degree premeditated murder and first-degree felony murder of Richard Mallory, a capital felony, and count two, armed robbery with a firearm … hereby judged and found guilty of said offenses … and the court having given the defendant an opportunity to be heard and to offer matters in mitigation of sentence … It is the sentence of this court that you Aileen Carol Wuornos be delivered by the Sheriff of Volusia County to the proper officer of the Department of Corrections of the State of Florida and by him safely kept until by warrant of the Governor of the State of Florida, you, Aileen Wuornos, be electrocuted until you are dead.