Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

On Tuesday, 11 September, Corky’s white two-door car was found, it is claimed, in a parking lot near the I-95. Deanie and her daughter Tina drove there immediately, expecting to find the Orlando Police at the scene. They were, in fact, met by the security guard for the parking lot. He explained that he was concerned because it had been there several days. He had called the police who, in turn, had called Tina.

So, there we have it. A man is reported missing, his car is found, and the police are informed yet they do nothing. With the great gift of hindsight, perhaps it would have been wiser to leave the car where it was until the police had given it the once-over. However, for reasons unknown, Deanie elected to drive the car back to their own parking lot, trying as hard as she could to preserve any fingerprint evidence en route.

When she arrived home, Deanie conducted a perfunctory search of the vehicle. Keys to the car and Cape Canaveral were on the floor, along with a torn Trojan condom pack and empty cartons of Marlborough and Camel cigarettes. The car, which Corky had regularly maintained in good working order, showed that there was no oil in the sump and little petrol in the tank. The brakes had been worn down. Someone had thrashed the car very hard indeed. Of even more significance was the fact that the glove compartment had been emptied out, although the registration papers remained. Corky’s toolbox was missing and the driver’s seat had been pulled forward, which indicated that someone shorter than the owner had driven the car. The NASA emblem had been scraped off the rear window – all the hallmarks of a Wuornos killing.

Corky’s body has never been found.

Dan Carter of the Titusville Police Department took up the case but got nowhere despite it having all the signs of the serial-murder cases going on in the area. This lack of progress we cannot attribute to Dan Carter. He was told, in no uncertain terms, to back way off the case as soon as Lee and Tyria were located.

Totally frustrated, Deanie started calling the Marion County Sheriff’s Department, demanding to know if any action was being taken on her brother’s behalf. ‘No one returned my calls,’ she said. ‘No one. They were always out in the field.’

Not one to be thwarted, Deanie called the attorney general and reported the non-action of the Marion County investigators. Soon afterwards, principal investigator Bruce Munster called her back.

‘Does this call have anything to do with my call to the attorney general?’ she asked.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Munster admitted with some hesitation.

When she later learned that Lee had been arrested and Tyria had been brought back to Florida, Deanie asked Bruce Munster to show the women a photograph of her brother to see if they could identify him as a victim. Munster blatantly insisted that Curtis Reid was not one of Lee’s victims.

‘I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now,’ Deanie says.

Deanie’s anger was further fuelled when she learned from one of Corky’s friends at the Cape that the Marion County investigators had not been cooperating with other members of the task force. ‘They told me that Dan Carter’s name was not even on the task-force list,’ she complained. She started to petition in an effort to force Munster to include Carter in the questioning of Aileen Wuornos:

We, the family of Curtis L. (Corky) Reid, ask for your help to sign this petition, so that Det. Dan Carter of the Titusville Police Department can question one Aileen Carol Wuornos now in custody, about the disappearance and possible death of Curtis L. (Corky) Reid. Mr. Reid disappeared Sept 6, 1990 from Titusville, Fl. where he has lived for the last 30 years.

‘Within two days, I had received a phone call from Dan Carter asking me to pull the petitions in or Marion County would not cooperate,’ she remembers.

To put a stop to all of this, Bruce Munster did have Corky’s photograph to show both Lee and Tyria. He and his sidekick Larry Horzepa merely mentioned the missing man’s name as an aside and only to Lee – who denied it all. After that, Corky’s death was airbrushed into history. Or was it?

Shortly before Lee’s trial for the murder of Richard Mallory, Deanie and Jim were invited to look at some property which was held at the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. It had been confiscated from none other than Tyria Moore. ‘My father’s suitcase, which Corky had borrowed, was there. His Levi “Members Only” jacket was there. Sweatshirts like my brother wore – I recognised them all, but I couldn’t prove they were his,’ Deanie claimed. ‘There were no identifying marks, but I knew they belonged to my brother.’