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The Damsel Of Death

Meet Aileen Wuornos, the USA's infamous female serial killer
By David Cocksedge

FEMALE SERIAL KILLERS are rare. The vast majority of them have resorted to poisons to kill their victims who were usually known to them. Aileen Wuornos used a small calibre handgun to dispose of seven (or eight) strangers during her "career" as a truckstop hooker. And she only killed men. That made her unusual, and the subject of great media interest in the USA. She also made colorful and profane outbursts in several courtrooms, and currently faces execution on Florida's death row, the recipient of six death sentences as her appeal to the US Supreme Court awaits a hearing.

Crime historians agree that Wuornos never enjoyed many breaks in her sad and violent life. She was born in 1956, the daughter of Dale Pittman and Diane Wuornos (aged 15), who separated a few months before Aileen first saw daylight. Her father, a child molester and sociopath, was killed by fellow inmates whilst in prison in 1969. Aileen and her brother Keith were fostered out to their maternal grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos in 1960, at Troy, Michigan. Aileen fell pregnant at the age of fourteen and was sent to an unwed mothers' home for the duration of the pregnancy. Staff there found her hostile and uncooperative. Her son was put up for adoption in January 1971. When Britta Wuornos died that July, Aileen, now known as "Lee", dropped out of school, left home and drifted into an unstable life of hitchhiking, petty crime and prostitution.

She briefly married Lewis Fell in 1976, but the relationship ended in divorce after he claimed that she squandered his money and lashed him with a chain when he refused to give her any more. She then blew through her recently dead brother's life insurance claim of $10,000 before serving time for armed robbery in Dade County. On her release she went back to renting out her body to interstate truck drivers, and then met Tyria Moore (24) at a Daytona gay bar in 1986. Tyria was a motel maid and the lesbian love of Lee's life. Later, the press dubbed them the "real life Thelma and Louise" after the famous Ridley Scott movie of that name. They lived together until December 1990 in cheap motels, turning tricks to keep themselves in cash. On 30 November 1989 Aileen Wuornos turned to murder.

Her first victim was Richard Mallory (51) a self-employed electronics repairman who was known for his hard-drinking and sordid sex habits. His Cadillac car had been abandoned outside Daytona and his decomposing body was found by Interstate 95 in Volusia County, Florida on 13 December 1989. He had been shot three times with a .22 caliber weapon and robbed of his money, watch, camera and radar detector.

The bodies began to pile up. On 5 May 1990, an unidentified male corpse was discovered in Brooks County, Georgia close to Interstate 75 with two .22 slugs in his head. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation had no leads as to the identity of this "John Doe". On 1 June, another naked male body was found in woods at Citrus County, Florida. This turned out to be David Spears of Bradenton, a truck driver last seen on 19 May. His vehicle had been ransacked and abandoned on Interstate 75. Then on 6 June the decomposing corpse of Charles Carskaddon was found in Pasco County, again off Interstate 75. No less than nine .22 rounds had been pumped into him. Florida police began to observe a pattern emerging in the violent deaths of male motorists in the area.

The first breakthrough for investigating police forces of Georgia and Florida was on 4 July when "Lee" Wuornos and Tyria Moore crashed a car near Orange Springs, and hastily abandoned the vehicle. It was a 1988 Pontiac Sunbird which belonged to Peter Siems, who had disappeared on 7 June after leaving his home in Jupiter, Florida to visit relatives in Arkansas. The body of this 65-year-old Christian minister has never been found. There is nothing in his record to suggest that he ever made use of roadside prostitutes, but he must have met the "Damsel of Death" somewhere on his last drive. Fingerprints inside the car matched those of one Lori Grody, a.k.a. Susan Blahovec and Cammie Marsh Greene, wanted on a weapons charge. "Greene" had pawned possessions belonging to several of the murder victims. All three names were aliases for Aileen Carol Wuornos.

On 4 August, the body of Troy Burress was found by Highway 19 in Ocala National Forest, eight miles from his abandoned truck. He had been killed with two .22 shots to his chest and head. Another dead male showed up in Marion County up on 12 September. This was Dick Humphreys (56), a protective investigator from Florida's Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. Forensic experts dug six .22 slugs out of his body, and his car was found later in Suwanee County. Victim number seven was Walter Gino Antonio (60), a trucker and security guard found with four bullet wounds to his chest on 19 November by a logging road in Dixie County. He had been dead less than 24 hours and his car was discovered five days later across the state in Brevard County.

Captain Steve Binegar, commander of the Marion County Sheriff's Criminal Investigation Division, knew about the murders in Citrus and Pasco Counties and was formulating a theory on noting the similarities. A serial killer (or two) was at work here. Many members of the multi-agency task force, now working with the FBI to clear the case, agreed with him. The perpetrator(s) of these crimes had to be initially non-threatening to their victims. They therefore must be women - specifically the two women who had wrecked Peter Siems's car at Orange Springs in July and then fled the scene. Newspapers in Florida ran stories about the multiple murders, along with police sketches of the suspects.

Leads now came pouring in. Police at Port Orange, Daytona had been tracking the movements of "Lee Blahovec" and Tyria Moore who had stayed at the Fairview Motel in Harbor Oaks from September until mid-December 1990, before they separated. Florida police traced Tyria Moore and persuaded her to turn state's evidence rather than be an accomplice to murder. She furnished officers with enough information to stake out bars and clubs in the Daytona Beach area in search of Aileen Wuornos.

At a seedy bikers bar known as The Last Resort, Mike Joyner and Dick Martin, two undercover FBI officers posing as drug dealers from Georgia, finally located their target. After chatting and drinking with Aileen on 5 January 1991, they suddenly flipped their badges on leaving the building and arrested her on the firearm warrant to avoid undue publicity. (The female serial killer(s) that preyed on male motorists was a major news item nationally by now). Joyner and Martin also relieved Wuornos of her gun, and ballistics experts soon established that it was indeed the murder weapon that had been used in all seven killings. The 'Damsel of Death' case was building to a conclusion.

The trial of Aileen Wuornos opened at Deland, Florida on 14 January 1992. Although she had made a chilling videotaped confession to seven killings, there was only one charge on the indictment - the first-degree murder of Richard Mallory. Aileen's lawyers had engineered a plea bargain, in which she would plead guilty to six charges and receive six consecutive life terms. One state attorney, however, thought she should receive the death penalty, so the trial proceeded.

Wuornos never denied State Prosecutor John Tanner's opening statement to the jury: Mallory had picked her up, driven along Interstate 4 to Daytona Beach where they had pulled off the road and had sex in the car before Aileen shot Mallory and hid his body. Her claim was one of self-defense. She said that Mallory had handcuffed her to the steering wheel, and was brutally sexually assaulting her when she managed to pull her handgun from her purse and shoot him. Aileen's attorney Tricia Jenkins said, "what happened was bondage, rape, sodomy and degradation". But then Tyria Moore testified that Wuornos had not seemed unduly upset or agitated when she calmly told Moore that she had killed Mallory later that evening in November 1989.

The state of Florida has a law known as the "Williams Rule" that allows evidence relating to other crimes to be admitted in open court if it helps to establish a pattern. Because of the Williams Rule, the jury was told of Aileen's confession to six other murders, and shown the videotape. A plea of self-defense now seemed improbable at best. On 27 January Judge Uriel Blount summed up and sent the jury off to deliberate. They returned with a verdict of 'Guilty' less than two hours later. As they filed out of the courtroom, Wuornos exploded with rage, shouting, "I'm innocent! I was raped! I hope you get raped, you f****** scumbags of America!"

Expert witnesses for the defense had testified that Wuornos was mentally ill, suffered from borderline personality disorder and that her unstable upbringing had stunted and ruined her. Jenkins referred to her client as "a damaged, primitive child" as she pleaded for her life. But on 31 January 1992, Judge Blount sentenced her to die in the state's electric chair. On 31 March Wuornos pleaded 'no contest' to the murders of Dick Humphreys, Troy Burress and David Spears, saying that she wanted to "get right with God." When Judge Thomas Sawaya handed her three more death sentences on 15 May, she gave him 'the finger' before shouting, "Thank you! I will go to heaven, whilst you rot in hell, motherfucker"

For a time there was speculation that Wuornos might receive a new trial for the murder of Richard Mallory. It transpired that Mallory had served time for sexual violence in the 1970's and attorneys felt that jurors might have seen the case differently had they known this fact. (It seemed unfair that whilst the Williams Rule had allowed her crimes to be made public, details of Mallory's offences had been suppressed). But no retrial was forthcoming. John Tanner speculated later that Mallory might well have assaulted Wuornos, but that after murdering him, she decided that this was a good way to handle her clients. By killing them, she gained their cash, credit cards and vehicles. At the trial, Tanner had said. "She killed out of greed. No longer satisfied with twenty dollars, she wanted it all. She wanted her victim's property and his life".

America's infamous "Damsel of Death" freely admitted that she had hated men all her life; and may even have enjoyed killing them.

(Research: Aileen Wuornos by Marlee MacLeod, crimelibrary.com)

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