Aileen Wuornos Changes Her Story
Maggie
'I'll kill again and again and again"
RICK CUNDIFF
Staff Writer
PEMBROKE PINES -- Broward Correctional Institution is a place of
contradictions.
On a sunny South Florida afternoon, a road through an open gate leads visitors
past a vacant guard shack to an unassuming single-story administrative
building. But directly behind, a massive stone prison looms. That's the
building where Florida sends its women who kill.
Past the perimeter of high chain-link fence ringed top and bottom with razor
wire, inside interior walls painted pastel pink, the prison houses, among
others, the three women on Florida's Death Row.
The most notorious is Inmate No. 150924, Aileen Carol Wuornos — and she is
every bit as contradictory as the facility that has been her home for the past
nine years.
She professes to love Jesus, and says she hopes to go to heaven — but in the
next breath, declares she's not a Christian.
"I'm not gonna claim Christianity. I'm just saying I believe in God. I'm not no
Christian," she said. "I just believe in God, and I believe in Jesus Christ . .
. I just believe that God wants me to tell the truth, no matter how evil it
sounds."
Asked about her childhood, she spins a fanciful story of an idyllic period that
could have come straight from a Norman Rockwell painting — in stark contrast
to the court testimony of childhood friends who have described her upbringing
as a hellish time of incest, abuse, alcohol and drugs.
"I was raised by a real decent family. My childhood experiences were
wonderful," she said. "I reminisce in my cell all the time about my childhood."
She calls a $10,000 benefit from her late brother's life insurance policy
"blood money" — but isn't bothered that she once took a man's life for $20.
"I can't say that I really regret what I've done," she said. "It was an
experience."
Ask why she killed seven men along the highways of Central Florida, and she'll
weave a tale of love, money and vengeance for being wronged by society — but
not a word about either rape or self-defense, the claims she made in court
against all seven victims a decade ago.
"There is no self-defense in any of these cases. I just flat robbed, killed
them, and there was a lot of hatred behind everything," she said. "I robbed
them and then I killed them."
But Aileen Wuornos is absolutely certain of these three things: The killing
came easy. She has no remorse. And, given the opportunity, she would kill
again.
"I can't say I have regrets for anything," she said. "I'm too cold, man, I'm
too cold. I don't care."
Wuornos, sentenced to death six times, has been on Death Row since 1992,
waiting as her appeals process has run its course in state and federal courts.
Now she says she's ready to die and wants to end all remaining appeals.
Circuit Judge Victor J. Musleh gave Wuornos an opportunity to do just that
during a February hearing held in Ocala. At that time, she chose to continue
the appeals.
Now, claiming she was misled by state-appointed lawyer Joe Hobson, Wuornos says
she wants to go to God.
She recently sent letters to the Florida Supreme Court and to prosecutors in
Marion, Volusia, Pasco and Dixie counties, saying she's ready to be executed.
On June 13, the court ordered the matter remanded to Volusia County, the place
where Wuornos first killed, for a hearing on whether she is competent to seek
her own death.
Ruck DeMinico, who replaced Hobson as Wuornos' current Capital Collateral
Regional Counsel attorney, said Hobson didn't lie to Wuornos.
"That would be a misinterpretation on her part of the discussions with her,"
DeMinico said.
She's also keeping her options open. In her motions to the state Supreme Court,
Wuornos asked to be allowed to drop her appeals, but without prejudice in case
she wants to re-file them.
The hearing could end up back in Ocala. Assistant State Attorney Jim McCune has
filed a motion to have the hearing transferred, arguing that an appeal hearing
last February gives the 5th Circuit the most recent experience with Wuornos'
appeals.
Wuornos' relationship with the media has been a prickly one over the years. On
more than one occasion, reporters have traveled from foreign countries to BCI
to interview her, only to have her turn them away as they stood outside Death
Row.
But now she says she wants to tell her true story, to get right with God and go
to heaven when she dies.
"I'm being honest, man, trying to tell the world the truth and go to God
righteously," she said. "Anybody in their right mind would be a fool to die not
believing in God, and being a little worried what's on the other side . . .
I've made my mistakes, I've fell and everything.
"But I think it would be really crazy for a person to allow themselves to die
without some kind of fear of God . . . allowing yourself to slip off the planet
onto the other side, and not face judgment for dying under the iniquity without
repentance."
Yet despite her talk of repentance, Wuornos shows no sign of it, believing she
needs only to tell the truth to win divine forgiveness.
"I want to tell the truth so I can get to God, and He will forgive me for being
honest and letting everybody know the truth," she said. "There's no sense in
dying in lies, man. I can only see going to hell for that."
Alibi was a lie
Richard Mallory was the first man to die at the hand of Aileen Wuornos, and the
only victim for which she went to trial, in January 1992. At that trial,
Wuornos took the witness stand and told a graphic story of rape, sodomy,
torture and fear for her life.
In later court appearances at which she pleaded no contest to murder charges,
she made similar claims against the remaining victims.
Wuornos' lawyers later learned that Mallory served time in prison in Maryland
on a rape charge, which supported Wuornos' claims.
A decade later, Wuornos says Mallory never hurt her, in fact tried to help her.
The 51-year-old Clearwater electronics technician just happened to pick her up
on a rainy day.
"I just got lucky that he was a rapist," she said. "I was real lucky that he
had to . . . have a rape charge in his life. But no, Richard Mallory is not
nothing. None of them are."
When Mallory picked her up in November 1989, Wuornos was working as a
hitchhiking prostitute, along the four interstate highways that run through
North-Central and Central Florida — I-10, I-75, I-4 and I-95. Her home base
was Daytona Beach, since she was 20.
Ocala was a convenient spot, with access to I-75, I-10 further north, and a
convenient shortcut across State Road 40 back to Daytona. Among the area's
highway exits, Wuornos favored Exit 72, just off County Road 318 in the
northwestern corner of Marion County, Exit 67 at Belleview, and a little
further south in Sumter and Hernando counties, Wildwood and Brooksville.
In November 1989, Wuornos and her lover, Tyria Moore, had recently moved from
Homosassa Springs to Daytona, living in a recreational vehicle. But they
quickly ran into problems.
"A lot of people, when they found out we were homosexuals, wanted to oust us
from where we were living," Wuornos said. "A lot of landlords, if they found
out we were homosexuals, instantly tried to throw ’em out."
The RV resort on State Road A1A in Daytona Beach where they had parked the RV
was one such place. The landlord gave Moore and Wuornos 24 hours to move out.
So they moved to the motel where Moore worked. But the couple's pets, a dog and
a cat, caused too many problems. Once again, the manager of the motel asked
them to leave.
The search for a new apartment triggered a financial crisis.
"We found a lady that said 'Only 200 bucks, you could move in, and then just
start paying slowly so you can get back on your feet.' So that was cool,"
Wuornos said. "We only needed two hundred down at Burleigh Avenue. So I figured
I could get that, no problem."
Wuornos said she didn't mind the prostitution. But settling down with Moore
caused financial troubles.
"Prostitution is OK. You make good money," she said. "See, if you're on the
road, you don't really have a problem. You can make money and live here, there
and everywhere. But if you're with somebody, you settle down with somebody,
they got these demands that they want, like Ty wanted this, and Ty wanted
that."
With only a week to come up with $200, Wuornos didn't count on the rain.
"If it's raining, I can't hitchhike and hustle," she said. "If I do, the most I
would have made would have been about 80 bucks that day, because I'm all wet
and funky-looking. And it's hard to get a ride, and somebody accept . . . doing
business with you when you're looking pretty funky on the road like that, all
wet and nasty looking from all the cars, you know, slopping and slooshing."
Although they had been together for three years by that point, Wuornos was
afraid she could lose her lover, she said.
"I'm lost in love with her," she said of Moore. "I'm falling in love with some
girl, a brand new thing, the first time in my life. I've never been a
homosexual in my life, and so it was a brand new thing, a puppy love thing, you
know. Just hypnotic, entranced, virginally love thing.
"So I was pretty much falling out of reality with her," Wuornos continued. "And
then I was willing to do anything, whatever it took, to keep her happy. And so
if I had to rob and kill, I was gonna do it."
'. . . always wanted to kill somebody'
Wuornos decided robbery and murder were the solutions to her financial woes.
"I gotta give this apartment 200 bucks, it's raining, I can't get the money.
I'm willing to rob," she said. "So then I decided if I rob them, I know I'm
gonna have to kill ’em. Because if I don't, there's gonna be a witness . . .
So I knew I was gonna roll somebody, and when I roll ’em, I'm definitely
gonna have to kill ’em."
Richard Mallory picked up Wuornos at 10:30 one night, under a bridge at the
intersection of I-4 and I-75. He was drinking a mixture of vodka and orange
juice and smoking marijuana at the time, Wuornos said. He offered to share both
the alcohol and the pot, but Wuornos declined.
"I told him . . . 'I'm only into beer, you got any beer?' " she said. "He said
'When I get into Orlando and fill up, I'll get you a six-pack.' I said 'Hey,
cool, man.' So he did."
By the time they got to Daytona about 1:30 a.m., both Wuornos and Mallory were
tired. Wuornos persuaded Mallory to drive into the woods. Both went to sleep in
Mallory's Cadillac, with Mallory promising to see if he could help Wuornos with
the move from the motel to the apartment later in the morning.
Wuornos woke first, around 5:30 a.m. She retrieved her pistol from her purse,
hiding it under her thigh. Then she woke Mallory.
"We started talking," she said. "Then I said, 'How much money you got on you?'
He said 'Two hundred.' I said 'You got exactly $200 on you?' He said 'Yeah.' I
said 'Whoa . . . I can't believe this,' to myself . . . Well, now that I know
you got exactly $200 on you, this, to me, is the perfect robbery.
"So I'm definitely gonna roll this guy. And I thought to myself, the way he
talked about his family and his kids and everything else, I decided to go ahead
and shoot him. He was real nasty to his wife, real nasty to his kids. He was a
woman-hater and all this other jazz."
In an instant, Mallory became a surrogate for everyone who had ever wronged
Wuornos.
"When I looked at him, I looked at all the guys ever (expletive) with me, man .
. . I thought, well I've always wanted to kill somebody for everything they
ever done to me in my life, so here goes," she said.
"I lifted out the gun, and I told him 'Well, Richard, this is a robbery, and
you're not going to be living through it.' "
"While he was saying 'I figured you'd do that,' I started shooting."
She didn't hesitate to pull the trigger.
"It was easy. I really didn't care. I was so mistreated as a prostitute that it
didn't matter to me anymore," she said. "It was very easy, very easy to point
the gun at him and kill him."
Wuornos wrapped Mallory's body in a carpet and dumped it in the woods. She
didn't wait long before returning to the interstates.
More rain, more killing
"I laid low for about a week, I think, or two maybe. I was scared, first time,
you know. Then I went back out and hitchhiked, and did my regular
hitchhiking-hooking every day," she said.
But then it rained again.
"Another rainy day I ran into, so I went and robbed David Spears," Wuornos
said. "Another rainy situation, and I need some money, and so that's what
happened."
Spears' body was found in Citrus County in June 1990. Over the next five months
of Florida's rainy season, Wuornos killed five more men — Charles Carskaddon,
Peter Siems, Troy Burress, Dick Humphreys and Walter Gino Antonio. The bodies
of Burress and Humphreys were found in Marion County, Carskaddon in Pasco, and
Antonio in Dixie. Siems' body was never found, and she was never charged with
his murder, but Wuornos admits she killed him.
"They were all killed to rob, and they were killed in pure hatred for all past
experiences I ever had with guys, in life or anything," she said.
With each killing, Wuornos was looking for a big score.
"I robbed a guy earlier, like two years, three years earlier, and he had 4,900
bucks on him," she said. But I wasn't hitting the right guys. They didn't have
very much on them. Like Carskaddon, he only had 20 bucks on him."
To this day, she offers no condolences to the families of the men she killed.
"I am a cold person. I would kill again. I don't really have any feeling for
the situation. So for me to say anything to them would be like an iceberg
mentioning something to them. It's not fair for somebody who doesn't have a
conscience about the situation to comment to them."
Wuornos has given some thought to which method she wants the state to use to
execute her.
"It'll be lethal injection. I'm not crazy enough to go to the electric chair.
Anybody who goes in the electric chair has gotta be crazy."
Throughout her appeals, Wuornos' lawyers have made her mental state an issue.
Wuornos herself believes she acted rationally when she killed,
"I don't think you have to be crazy," she said. "If you're a real angry person,
really pissed off and sick and tired of what you've been through, I don't think
you have to be crazy for that."
Lawyer DeMinico questions Wuornos' grasp of reality.
"I think there are times when she is what would be considered rational, and at
times irrational," he said. "At what time and what decision she is rational,
and what time irrational is the point in question."
Because the sole purpose of the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel is to
appeal death sentences, DeMinico said CCRC could be working against Wuornos'
wishes at some point. If a judge allows Wuornos to end her appeals and be
executed "the system loses," he said.
"I would say that the ability to ensure that the death penalty is carried out
justly would be compromised," he said.
Wuornos doesn't question her sanity now either.
"I've got so much common sense in me, there's no way I can be crazy. And I've
got too much want to be a level-headed person," she said.
But in a dead calm voice, she offers a grim self-assessment of what would
happen if she were free.
"There's no hope here," she said. "I'm so (expletive) with that I'll kill
again, and again and again."
Rick Cundiff covers the courts. He can be reached at
rick.c...@starbanner.com, or at 867-4130.
Maggie
"Researchers have long known that there is one extremely common genetic factor
that confers at least a ten-fold increase in the propensity to exhibit
criminally violent behavior. It is called the Y chromosome."--Francis S.
Collins
DaBrettman
killer Andrea Yates, but that's just my opinion. I think she and her story are
fascinating. Or as fascinating as a serial killer can be. I wouldn't want to
be alone in a car with her.