Monster
Page 17
Towards the end of her days, and teetering on the black abyss of insanity, Lee would change her story, saying that she had come from a ‘clean and decent family’; her adoptive brother would have people believe that that is correct. However, there are too many witnesses who testified to the contrary, so there is no doubt that during her early years she was damaged beyond repair.
Lee’s early years are documented within these pages. However, all of her accounts are embroidered versions of her life mixed with impenetrable fantasies. To say that she was a pathological liar right to the very end would be an understatement. I will be emphatic in saying that getting to the truth is, and always was, an impossible task, even for Lee herself. She, like scores of other murderers, has cried wolf and lied so many times, we would not recognise the truth if it stared us straight in the face. Indeed, even Lee, herself a sociopath, would no longer know the truth if she were alive today. Such is the nature of a psychopathic personality.
We must ask ourselves why Lee killed for the first time. She had been with scores of men before she shot Richard Mallory. The truth of the matter – again whitewashed and glossed over by most writers, the media, the trial judge, the prosecutor, police and for the convenience of justice – is that Mr Mallory was an extremely dangerous and perverted individual indeed. One would have to stretch coincidence a very long way in thinking that this played no part in him becoming her first victim. Lee had taken many rides during the day prior to meeting Mallory. She had all the money she needed in her purse to pay the deposit on a new apartment for her and Tyria. The simple truth is that Mallory met his nemesis.
Billy Nolas, Lee’s attorney at her trial, tried to prepare the jury for the mitigating factors which the defence team planned to present, and he made a telling point. ‘You have observed Lee’s behaviour,’ he said. ‘Why is Lee the way she is … she did not simply fall out of the sky. There are things that she was born with and things that happened to her along the way … a world which has made her what she is.’
Three other defence psychologists claimed, using phrases that would enliven any Stephen King novel, that the world of Lee Wuornos is a ‘chilling place, a malevolent place, an angry, out-to-get-her place, a threatening place full of perceived terrors’. She perceived the world as having evil spirits, ghosts, things that are beyond our control. She distanced people by seeing them as angels or demons. And she functioned, they all agreed, on the level of a very small child.
Dr Elizabeth McMahon had performed the necessary neurological, psychological and intelligence tests on Lee. She examined her for a total of 22 hours. Dr McMahon testified that the structure of Lee’s brain was normal, ‘but it does not function properly, like sand in a gas tank … the condition is chronic, static, doesn’t change and interacts with other problems.’
Lee was a borderline personality, which is defined by eight classic symptoms. Dr McMahon claimed that Lee evidenced them all: a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relations; impulsiveness; unstable moods; inappropriate, intense anger; recurrent suicidal threats; marked and present identity disturbance; feelings of emptiness or boredom; frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
‘This, combined with the dysfunctional background, produced an unhappy, discontented woman who cannot cope with the world. Lee is always in a state of living on the edge. There is a sense of danger, striving just to get her physical needs met,’ said Dr McMahon. ‘She has some sense that other people are doing it OK, but she’s not … Miss Wuornos is probably one of the most primitive people I’ve seen out of the institution. By that I mean that she functions at the level of a very basic… a small child. Always making an attempt at some sense of security, some sense of contentment.’
When cross-examined, however, Dr McMahon was forced to agree that Lee was sane, and that she knew the difference between right and wrong. Any chance of rehabilitation was remote, if not impossible.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘monster’ as ‘an inhumanely cruel or wicked person’. Aileen Wuornos certainly had a dysfunctional start in life, and we cannot blame her for that. However, she became hooked on murder for murder’s sake. Aileen Wuornos chose her own fate. She knew that if she committed aggravated murder in Florida she could face the ultimate penalty. She decided to kill not once, not twice, but many times, and for this we are obliged to label her a monster.
Most of us have a conscience. Aileen Wuornos had a black void.
CHRONOLOGY OF DATES AND EVENTS
29 February 1956 – born Aileen Carol Pittman
1960 – Lee’s mother abandons her 18 March 1960 – Adopted by her grandparents Lauri and Britta Wuornos
January 1971 – Lee’s baby boy adopted
1971 –Lee’s natural father hangs himself in prison
7 July 1971 – Britta Wuornos dies
1974 – Jailed for the first time
January 1976 – Lauri Wuornos commits suicide
March 1976 – Lee marries Lewis Gratz Fell
16 July 1976 – Lee’s brother Keith dies of cancer
July 1976 – Lee and her husband separate
19 July 1977 – Lee and Lewis divorce
4 August 1977 – Fined for assault and battery
1978 – Attempts suicide with a gun
1981 – Moves into a mobile home with a boyfriend
20 May 1981 – Lee robs store at gunpoint
4 May 1982 – Imprisoned for robbery
30 June 1983 – Released
January 1984 – Hitchhikes to Smyrna Beach, Florida
1 May 1984 – Arrested for passing forged cheques
1985 – First lesbian love affair with a girl called Toni
30 November 1985 – Suspect in the theft of a pistol and ammunition
4 January 1986 – Arrested and charged with auto theft
2 June 1986 – Arrested for threatening a man with a pistol and demanding money. Bailed
8 June 1986 – Ticketed for speeding
June 1986 – Meets Tyria Moore
November 1986 – Arrested for grand larceny
March 1987 – Lee and Tyria move into a trailer at Ormond-by-the-Sea
1 December 1989 – Richard Mallory murdered and, later, his car discovered
6 December 1989 – Lee pawns Richard Mallory’s property
13 December 1989 – Richard Mallory’s body found
19 May 1990 – David Spears murdered
20 May 1990 – David Spears’s vehicle found
21/22 May 1990 – Charles Carskaddon murdered
1 June 1990 – Spears’s body discovered
6 June 1990 – Charles Carskaddon’s body found
7 June 1990 – Charles Carskaddon’s vehicle found
7/8 June 1990 – Peter Siems murdered
4 July 1990 – Tyria and Lee crash Peter Siems’s car
30 July 1990 – Troy Burress murdered
31 July 1990 – Burress’s truck found
4 August 1990 – Troy Burress’s body discovered
6 September 1990 – Curtis Reid murdered
11 September 1990 – Curtis Reid’s car found
11 September 1990 – Charles Humphreys murdered
12 September 1990 – Humphreys’s body discovered
19 September 1990 – Humphreys’s car found
13/15 November 1990 – Tyria leaves Florida for Thanksgiving
16 November 1990 – Bobby Lee Copus picks up Lee and narrowly escapes with his life
17 November 1990 – Walter Gino Antonio murdered
18 November 1990 – Antonio’s body found
23 November 1990 – Tyria returned to Lee in Florida. Lee gives Tyria Antonio’s ring
24 November 1990 – Antonio’s car discovered
2 December 1990 – Lee throws her murder weapon into Rose Bay promising Tyria that she will never kill again
3 December 1990 – Lee and Tyria part company for the last time. Tyria hands back the ring
7 December 1990 – Lee pawns Antonio’s e
ngagement ring
10 December 1990 – Lee leaves lodgings
8 January 1991 – Lee spotted by police
9 January 1991 – Arrested
10 January 1991 – Tyria located in Pennsylvania
11 January 1991 – Tyria relocated to Florida. For three days she speaks on the phone to Lee in jail
19 January 1991 – Lee presented with a movie contract while in the county jail
28 January 1991 – Indicted for the murder of Richard Mallory
29 January 1991 – Police try to thrash out a $2.5 million movie deal with Tyria
14 January 1992 – Lee sent for trial
27 January 1992 – Found guilty of the murder of Richard Mallory
31 January 1992 – Sentenced to death. Received at the Broward Correctional Institute, Death Row
31 March 1992 – Pleads ‘no contest’ to the murders of Humphreys, Burress and Spears
15 May 1992 – Given three more death sentences
9 October 2002 – Executed by lethal injection
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