Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

By the time 55-year-old Siems had reached the truck stop at Wildwood, he would have been tired and in need of a fuel top-up and refreshments. It is while here, I suggest, that he was approached by Lee and Tyria who had just purchased beer and the two cosies. From Wildwood, I suggest that the threesome – Siems, Lee and Tyria – headed north up I-75, crossed the state line into Georgia and continued on to Atlanta where they stopped at the Eckerd store. We know that the two women were at the Eckerd store on a Friday night because the manager identified them from composite drawings. Whether Siems was still alive at this point, or was murdered shortly afterwards, we may never know.

John Wisnieski of the Jupiter Police had been working on the case since Siems was reported missing. He sent out a nationwide Teletype containing descriptions of the two women, and he also sent a synopsis of the case, containing descriptions of the two females together with the sketches, to the Florida Criminal Activity Bulletin. Then he waited. He was not optimistic about finding Siems alive. The man’s body had not been found, his credit cards had not been used and money had not been withdrawn from his bank account.

But what of the bloody fingerprints found in the wrecked Sunbird? The police knew that the owner of the car had vanished without trace – he had been reported as missing some three weeks before the crash on 4 July. A missing-person report had been circulated and a copy held on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement computer. Now police had found the vehicle smashed up and two women had fled the scene in more-than-suspicious circumstances. But did the police run a fingerprint check through their own department at Orange Springs, or through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement? No, they did not.

CHAPTER EIGHT EUGENE ‘TROY’ BURRESS

MURDERED 30 JULY 1990

HE PHYSICALLY ATTACKED ME… AND HE WAS… HE LAUGHED. HE PULLED OUT A $10 BILL AND SAID, ‘THIS ALL YOU FUCKING DESERVE, YOU FUCKING WHORE’… LIKE THAT. AND I SAID, ‘WAIT,’ AND THEN HE JUST… HE THREW THE FUCKING MONEY DOWN AND I WAS STANDING IN FRONT OF THE TRUCK HERE, AND HE HAD THE DOOR OPEN HERE, AND HE JUST CAME… DIDN’T KNOW I HAD A GUN OR ANYTHING. HE CAME AT ME. WE WERE FIGHTING. AND, UH, WHEN I GOT AWAY FROM HIM, AND I RAN BACK TO THE TRUCK, AND I HAD MY GUN IN THE BACK, AND I RAN IN THE BACK REAL QUICK, AND HE… NOW, WE’RE STILL FIGHTING, AND SOMEHOW HE… I KICKED HIM OR SOMETHING. HE BACKED AWAY AND I PULLED MY GUN OUT AND I SAID, ‘YOU BASTARD,’ AND I THINK I SHOT HIM RIGHT IN THE STOMACH OR SOMETHING.

Ever-smiling Eugene ‘Troy’ Burress celebrated his fiftieth birthday in January 1990. A short, slightly built, blonde-haired man with a natural gift for the gab, he was employed as a part-time salesman for the Gilchrist Sausage Company in Ocala, a resort town in northern Florida where he lived with his wife Rose. Ocala is just 15 miles from Orange Springs, close to where the two women crashed Peter Siems’s car.

Troy had formerly owned a pool-cleaning company, Troy’s Pools, in Boca Raton on the south-east coast between West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, but it went bust and the couple had moved to Ocala in 1989. Everyone liked Troy, who was now resigned to his new life. He had only one gripe: the lack of air-conditioning in his truck.

On Monday, 30 July 1990, Burress set out on Gilchrist company business. He would be travelling the Daytona route, which took him to several customers throughout central Florida. His last planned stop was to have been Salt Springs in Marion County, part of the extensive Indian reservation area and within a spit of Orange Springs where Lee and Tyria crashed Siems’s Pontiac Sunbird, and close to where Lee dumped David Spears’s truck.