Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

OH, LET ME SEE… THIRD GUY… I HAD A PROBLEM WITH… UH… LET’S SEE… I THINK THE NEXT ONE’S THE ONE… HE WAS A CHRISTIAN GUY OR SOMETHING. I… I DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS A CHRISTIAN GUY. HE WAS NUDE… THIS IS THE ONE IN GEORGIA, I THINK, AND HE HAD HIS… HE HAD… HE TOOK A SLEEPING BAG… TOOK IT OUT IN THE WOODS AND WHEN WE GOT NUDE, I HAD TAKEN MY BAG WITH ME THAT TIME BECAUSE I SAID, ‘WELL, IF WE’RE GOING TO GO OUT IN THE WOODS, I’M NOT GOING TO GIVE HIM AN OPPORTUNITY TO RAPE ME. AND THAT’S THE TIME THIS GUY GAVE ME A PROBLEM TOO. AND SO, I WHIPPED OUT MY GUN AND I SAID, ‘YOU KNOW, I… I… I DON’T WANT TO SHOOT YOU.’ HE SAID… HE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING, HE JUST LOOKED AT ME AND SAID, ‘YOU FUCKING BITCH.’ AND I SAID, ‘NO, YOU WERE GOING TO RAPE ME.’ BECAUSE HE WAS GETTING PHYSICAL WITH ME AGAIN AND I KNEW. AND HE… AND HE SAID, ‘FUCK YOU, BITCH,’ AND STARTED TO COME AT ME AND HE WAS, YOU KNOW, TRYING TO GET THE GUN FROM ME AND STUFF, WE’RE STRUGGLING ON THAT ONE. AND HE TRIED TO GET THE GUN FROM ME AND STUFF, WE’RE STRUGGLING WITH THE GUN AND EVERYTHING ELSE AND A COUPLE OF BULLETS SHOT UP IN THE AIR AND FINALLY I RIPPED IT AWAY AND I HAD THE GUN IN MY LEFT HAND AND I PUT IT BACK IN MY RIGHT HAND AND I SHOT HIM IMMEDIATELY… AND I’M POSITIVE THE ONLY ONE IN GEORGIA IS THE MISSIONARY GUY… I REMEMBER THE MISSIONARY GUY. I SHOT HIM ONCE.

Deeply religious, easy-going and considered a real gentleman in every respect, Peter Siems was a 65-year-old retired merchant seaman living on Florida’s east coast near Jupiter, Martin County. He had found the Lord many years previously; soon he was to meet the Antichrist.

Early in the morning of Thursday, 7 June 1990 – the same day Carskaddon’s car was found – neighbours saw the part-time missionary placing luggage and a stack of bibles into his 1988 silver-grey Pontiac Sunbird. They assumed, correctly, that the balding, bespectacled man was off on another of his trips to spread the word. On his travels, he intended to visit relatives in Arkansas and then drive up to New Jersey to see his sister. He promised his wife that he would phone later in the day – she never heard from him again.

The most direct route for such a mammoth drive would be to join the Florida Turnpike near his home then cut up through the centre of the state until he joined I-75 near Wildwood, which was Wuornos country.

After her arrest, Lee admitted that she was very drunk when Siems stopped on I-95, though it was more likely to have been along I-75 where it crosses the Florida Turnpike in Marion County. She vaguely recalled crossing a state line in his car, but could not remember if it was Georgia or South Carolina. It was Georgia. She claimed that Siems ‘became threatening during a sexual encounter in the woods, so I shot him’.

His body remains undiscovered. It lies rotting somewhere in the pinewoods of Georgia.

The mystery of the sudden disappearance of Mr Siems took a bizarre twist on Wednesday, 4 July when a silver-grey Pontiac Sunbird – not a red car as portrayed in the movie Monster – careered off CR 315 near Orange Springs, Florida, just ten miles east from where Lee dumped David Spears’s truck. The car shot round a bend, skidded sideways and smashed through a steel gate and a barbed-wire fence, shattering the windscreen before coming to rest in the undergrowth. For a brief second it appeared that it might roll over, but it soon righted itself. With steam hissing from the radiator, and a slowly deflating tyre, the car, like its late owner, was doomed.