Dear Dawn

by Aileen Wuornos

  As Giroux began to shop her script, which would become the made-for-TV movie Damsel of Death, she heard that three policemen who had been involved in Wuornos’s capture were also looking for a movie deal, and that Tyria Moore was in league with the officers.

  In fact, some sort of preliminary arrangement existed between Republic Pictures and three of the leading players in the hunt and capture of Wuornos: Officer Munster, Major Dan Henry, and their captain, Steve Binegar. The officers hired attorney Robert Bradshaw, who fielded an offer from the movie company. Munster suggested that Moore speak to Bradshaw, as well. She did, although a month later, even as movie talk moved forward, she let Bradshaw know that his services were not needed.

  A whistleblower came forward: Sergeant Brian Jarvis publicly accused the three officers of shopping Wuornos’s story to Hollywood. He claimed that although he had been instrumental in the arrest, he had been pushed off the case by attention-mongers and moved from Major Crimes to Property Crimes. In response, it was said that Jarvis had been pushed aside thanks to his own poor performance. But even as Jarvis continued to be a harsh critic of the feeding frenzy around Wuornos’s story, he sold the rights to his own version of the story to a writer for the sum of one dollar.

  A departmental investigation into the activities of Munster, Binegar, and Henry was launched in July 1991, centered on two key issues: whether the making of the movie Overkill, based on their stories, interfered with Wuornos’s right to a fair trial, and whether their alleged financial interest in the movie had caused them to ignore Moore’s possible involvement in Wuornos’s crimes. At the conclusion of the investigation, it was agreed that although documents may have existed that indicated a proposed deal with Republic Pictures, no signed documents had been produced, and there was no evidence that money had changed hands. Additionally, it was established that Moore had not been offered or granted immunity for working with the officers. However, at the conclusion of the investigation, Henry resigned, and Munster and Binegar were demoted.

  Wuornos was convinced—correctly—that her story was up for sale in Hollywood. She was equally convinced that the police believed the movie version of her life depended on her portrayal as a lone, vicious serial killer and could only end with her going to the electric chair. And she was convinced they were bringing this about.

  In the interim, she felt her adoptive mother, Arlene Pralle, and her attorney, Steve Glazer, were “raking in” on her. Glazer did double duty representing her not only in court but in securing paid media appearances for her. He also represented Pralle in a deal according to which she collected a royalty on each copy sold of On a Killing Day, Dolores Kennedy’s book about the murders. The total amount earned by Glazer and Pralle is not known.

  And there was still more money to be made. In addition to the money making activities of the police, Giroux, the Glazer-Pralle team, and Kennedy, there were others, including Sue Russell’s book Lethal Intent: The Shocking True Story of One of America’s Most Notorious Female Serial Killers! and Michael Reynolds’s book Dead Ends: The Pursuit, Conviction, and Execution of Female Serial Killer Aileen Wuornos, the Damsel of Death.

  I’m guilty of shedding there blood. Unwillingly. But then they are to.

  On January 14, 1992, Wuornos went to trial in Volusia County for the murder of Richard Mallory, the first of her victims.

  She had been indicted in the counties where the murders occurred, and the trials were spread across five counties: Volusia, Citrus, Marion, Pasco, and Dixie. Four of these counties had offered a plea bargain whereby Wuornos could plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. But one county—Pasco, where Carskaddon had been murdered—held out for the death sentence, removing the plea as an option.

  In Volusia, for the Mallory trial, Chief Assistant Public Defender of the Fifth Judicial Circuit Tricia Jenkins and Billy Nolas, assistant public defender, comprised Wuornos’s defense, while John Tanner, state attorney, and David Damore, assistant state attorney, headed up the prosecution. Wuornos claimed she killed in self-defense because Mallory was trying to rape her, but prosecutors played her initial confession in which she said there was no attempted rape. The fact that Mallory was a convicted sex offender was never mentioned during the trial. In addition, prosecutors introduced information about the other killings as evidence of a pattern to Wuornos’s crimes. And her family’s time on the stand was damaging: Barry testified for the state, and Lori gave a statement along similar lines, that Wuornos had not been abused as a child, as neighbors had reported.

  On January 27, 1992, it took the jury only 91 minutes to find her guilty. She was sentenced to death.

  There were five more trials to go.

  On May 4, 1992, in a show of the volatility and rash decision-making that were characteristic of her, Wuornos fired the court-appointed team headed by Trish Jenkins. She did so at the behest of Arlene Pralle, a born-again Christian who had read about Wuornos in the newspaper and decided to adopt her. Pralle hired attorney Steve Glazer to defend Wuornos. At the time, Glazer had no experience in death penalty cases but had worked for Pralle in other capacities, such as facilitating her adoption of Wuornos and negotiating her book royalties.

  At times, Wuornos expressed a preference for an expedient death rather than life imprisonment. On Glazer’s poor legal advice, and with Pralle’s encouragement to “get right with God,” she entered a plea of no contest for the other murders.

  For the murders of Dick Humphreys, Troy Burress, and David Spears, Wuornos received three more death sentences. In the final two trials, Wuornos pleaded guilty to the murders of Charles Carskaddon and Walter Jeno Antonio and received two more death sentences, for a total of six.

  In an episode that aired on November 11, 1992, Dateline revealed Mallory’s history as a sex offender, giving hope for an appeal. Additional grounds for appeal included Wuornos’s alcoholism and the potential effect of the selling of media rights on the trial. However, the appeal was denied in September 1994. The following month, the same appellate panel was consulted with regard to Wuornos’s appeals in the cases of Humphreys, Burress, and Spears. These appeals, too, were denied.

  Subsequently, for the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel (CCRC), Joseph Hobson and Kori Anderson, attorney and investigator, respectively, stepped in to identify new grounds for an appeal, in the hopes of getting Wuornos’s death sentences commuted to a life sentence. The CCRC took aim at questions surrounding Steve Glazer’s competence and his allowing Wuornos to plead no contest on death penalty cases. Ultimately, Glazer’s representation was found competent.

  Meanwhile, Wuornos herself was disintegrating. Always paranoid, she believed that the prison personnel were conspiring to torture her and drive her to suicide. She claimed that the intercom was being used to pipe what she called “sonic pressure” into her cell. She believed the prison staff was tainting her food, spitting and urinating in it. Additionally, she complained of low water pressure, manhandling, strip searches, and catcalling. Instead of showering, she sometimes washed her hair with water from the tap, bent over the toilet, just to avoid having to interact with the guards. Wuornos submitted a twenty-five-page handwritten complaint to no avail: The Corrections Department denied all allegations.

  Feeling that life on death row was worse than death itself, Wuornos waived any further appeals of her six death sentences, calling her campaign to recant her earlier self-defense claim “7 and 7”—a reference to the seven murders and seven robberies for which she now wished to accept full responsibility. She sent letters to the Florida Supreme Court and to each county, asking to be executed. In April of 2002, the court allowed Wuornos to fire her attorneys and end her appeals, and Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed her death warrant in September.

  She was executed at the Florida State Prison in Starke in October 2002 by lethal injection.

  Yes we are like Sisters. My heart feels for you as one. I love you as one.

  Dawn Marie Nieman was born in Detroit, Michigan, on March 8, 1956, and at the
age of twelve moved with her family twenty-five miles north, to Troy. Dawn and Wuornos became friends when they were in high school; the girls were brought together by the close friendship of Dawn’s older brother, Ducky, with Wuornos’s brother, Keith. Wuornos dropped out of school in the ninth grade, and occasionally Dawn would skip class and spend the day with her.

  It was during one of their afternoons together in 1972 that Dawn met her future husband, Dave Botkins. Within a week of giving the girls a ride to Dawn’s house, Dave was back at Dawn’s door, asking for a dinner date. They have been together since that day.

  Struggling with homelessness and her difficult family situation, and hurt by Dawn’s increasing unavailability as she began spending more time with Dave, Wuornos soon struck out for Florida. Dawn did not see her friend again until Wuornos showed up in Troy for her brother Keith’s funeral. And then she was gone again, back on the road.

  In 1991, a police officer knocked on Dawn’s door, asking if she knew Wuornos. He told her of her old friend’s arrest for the murders. After the initial surprise wore off, Dawn now recalls, her first thought was, “Thank God Aileen is off the streets. She has food and a bed and is safe from the scum of the world.”

  She asked the officer for Wuornos’s mailing address. A ten-year span of daily correspondence began.

  Rarely missing a day, Dawn wrote in the evenings after her children, David and Kimberly, were in bed. Upon seeing the collection of letters, the documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield asked Dawn how she found the time to write to Wuornos so often. Dawn responded, “I didn’t find the time, I made the time.” Dawn knew she was Wuornos’s only real friend, so she wrote and wrote. Of health issues. Of financial hardship. Of spring and weddings and babies. And of the past.

  As of this writing, Dawn and Dave have nine grandchildren and live in a quiet farmhouse. On the property, there is a walnut tree set among rocks and strawberries and other plants, where Wuornos’s ashes are spread.

  Cause life is to adventure, and thats were our human knowledge comes by. Wheather they be good or bad. The key is there.

  Wuornos received many letters during her imprisonment, and in her early years on death row, she established several pen-pal relationships. She later cut off contact with almost all of these correspondents, but she sometimes suggested they get in touch with Dawn. One of Wuornos’s past pen pals, Jesse Merril, became a close friend of Dawn’s.

  Dawn had long suffered from multiple sclerosis, and in 2007, five years after Wuornos’s death, she told Merril that her illness was worsening and that she needed help: She had promised Wuornos that she would someday find a publisher for her letters. “Someday” now seemed as if it would have to be sooner rather than later. Wuornos had told Dawn over and over that she wanted the truth—her truth—revealed: the way she’d been manipulated by the police, the torture she’d suffered in her cell, and the money others had made from her misfortunes.

  Merril introduced Dawn to her friend Lisa Kester, who had worked in the publishing industry for many years. In the summer of 2007, Kester visited Dawn and agreed to move forward with the project as an editor. Daphne Gottlieb signed on as coeditor.

  If I would’ve gotten into my past . . . you wouldve had some dozzies to listen to. And we couldve gabbed forever . . .

  Wuornos was prolific. Prison rules limited her letters to four pages, but she wrote any number of them daily. It was not uncommon for her to pen twenty or more pages in a single day, with letters distinguished from each other by sequential lettering or topical headings. Our preference would have been to include all of the letters in their entirety, but because of space considerations, this was not possible. Starting with what we roughly estimate at more than a million words, we discovered it was tremendously challenging to edit the letters down to a reasonable book length.

  Our first challenge was to decide whether simply to select a relatively small number of unabridged letters for publication, or to abridge the letters to be able to include more of them in the collection. The smaller selection of uncut letters left the integrity of the individual documents intact but increased the likelihood of omitting important themes and events in Wuornos’s life simply because of space limitations. Redacting the text allowed us to trim the letters’ redundancy (sitting in a jail cell, day in, day out, one’s preoccupations become, to some degree, static), but could potentially manipulate Wuornos’s voice in the process and skew the contents of the letters. In the end, the decision was made to abridge the letters so as to be able to include more of them, while making the best possible effort to retain Wuornos’s voice, concerns, and habit of mind. (In general, throughout the text, ellipses with three evenly spaced dots indicate where text has been abridged, though Wuornos herself often used various styles of ellipses for stylistic effect, as well.) Every effort has been made to maintain the integrity of Wuornos’s texts, including the preservation of Wuornos’s spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. However, we have not been able to include as much of the material as we’d like; because of legal and privacy-related concerns, certain names have been altered and events redacted.

  I shut the door on her Royal. So please do not help her in any way . . . She out completely I mean the door is locked. O.K.

  A number of themes recur in Wuornos’s letters.

  She rails frequently against the “crooked cops,” the officers she accused of manipulating her and shopping her story for a movie deal. She accused others of attempting to profit from her story, as well. Nick Broomfield’s two documentaries about Wuornos explore allegations that both Pralle and Glazer profited from Wuornos’s many media appearances, in part because the Son of Sam laws prohibited her from being paid, herself. In fact, one scene in the first documentary specifically depicts Broomfield counting out bills he had agreed to pay Pralle for an interview. As a result, Pralle and Glazer were summarily, and repeatedly, thrown out of Wuornos’s life when she believed she was being manipulated for profit, and called back in when she perceived she needed help. Over and over in her letters to Dawn, Wuornos wrestles with her relationship with Pralle and Glazer; first she believes they are on her side, then they are her hated enemies. They are excised from her life forever, then they are the only ones who can help her. Such behavior fits the profile of the borderline personality disorder she was repeatedly diagnosed with, initially by the state’s expert psychologist, Dr. George Barnard, when she was examined for her first trial. Over and over, she embraces people as her saviors—Phyllis Chesler, the professor and author who tried to advocate on her behalf; Tony Alexander, a British attorney found for her by Broomfield; Linda, a favorite correspondent of hers; the CCRC—only to demonize them as she finds her circumstances remarkably unchanged, herself unsaved.

  I am as sane as God is, and do know what I’m talking about.

  In her time on death row, Wuornos’s relationship with her God grew and grew. This was reflected in her letters, not only in her frequent discussions of religion, but also in her habit of copying pages and pages of the Dake Bible and other religious tracts and sending them to Dawn and Dawn’s mother (and likely to others, as well). Ultimately, it seemed more important to fill these pages with letters by Wuornos herself rather than copied Bible passages, but as a result, her dedication to, and love for, her Bible studies are undoubtedly underplayed.

  So who cares about court! Court isnt ever gonna change. They fucked me good to death. Just like the rapist tried . . .

  Wuornos had her day in court. And then another. And another. From the offhand, conversational references in her letters, it is often hard to tell which court she was appearing in, and for which crime. After all, every capital case is really two trials in one: Each has a guilt phase and a penalty phase, and they are followed by appeals. Wuornos had six trials, and her letters do little to mediate the confusion. To compound the difficulties, throughout the process, Wuornos referred to her trials not by her victims’ names, but by the counties where the murders were committed and the trials were held: Volusia, Di
xie, Pasco, Citrus, and Marion. It may be helpful to think of her legal proceedings as being nonstop, but with ebb and flow, times of greater and lesser activity.

  . . . way in the distance I could hear them callin my name. As I just laughed an walked on.

  If you are looking to read the darkest heart of the murders, the most intimate details, you will be sorely disappointed. There are no such letters in this book. As far as we can tell, and by her own account, Wuornos didn’t write them. She couldn’t. She tried. Something inside her prevented her—perhaps the desire never to return to that place beyond words where she took man after man’s life, perhaps a total inability. Call it decency. Call it blackout. Call it shame. Call it privacy, a strange sort that can only exist around murder. The exact happenings of the killings—and the location of the seventh body, that of Peter Siems—remained between her and her victims and went with Wuornos to her grave.

  What the letters make apparent is that it’s not so simple as understanding “what happened.” Because what Wuornos claimed happened—perhaps even what she believed happened—changed in her own account. She frequently contradicted herself: The killings were done in self-defense—except when her crimes were simple robberies and she killed in cold blood. She sometimes claimed that she recanted her claim of self-defense in order to hasten her execution. The crimes exist in a liminal space of intent, intent that vacillates based on Wuornos’s changing motivations. Clearly, incontrovertibly, she committed these crimes. Maybe that’s enough for us to know.