Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

Back at the police pound, a closer examination of the car’s interior revealed a cash-register receipt for beer, or wine, from EMRO store number 8237, a Speedway truck stop and convenience store located at SR 44 and I-75 in Wildwood – the same store from which receipts were found in Peter Siems’s car. The receipt was time-stamped 4.19pm, 11 September 1990, the day that Humphreys had disappeared. The clerk who had been on duty at the time could not identify the man but did recognise the composite police sketches of Lee and Tyria. When they left the store, the clerk believed they drove away and therefore did not call the police, as she was obliged to, because prostitutes are banned from truck stops throughout Florida.

Most of the victim’s personal effects, including his pipe, pen and pencil, wedding ring and wristwatch – all covered with blood (Lee would claim that, after shooting him, she heard his gurgling moans and took pity on him by shooting him in the head to ‘put him out of his misery’) – were found a month later in a wooded field off Boggy Marsh Road, around 18 miles from where his body was found in southern Lake County near US 27. They were returned to his wife.

On the face of it, this murder seems much like the previous killings: a lone woman is picked up while hitchhiking; she kills the driver and robs him. However, on this occasion, all is not as it seems.

As an investigative criminologist, my work often demands that I look laterally at criminal investigations. Tyria Moore has always denied knowing anything about Lee’s crimes and the public have always believed this to be the case. But Tyria had been riding around with Lee in Peter Siems’s car, and we know this because she was driving the vehicle when it crashed near Orange Springs. The girls had been drinking prior to the accident on the nearby Indian reservation. We also know all about Tyria riding around in Richard Mallory’s car and accepting his property; and the property of Corky Reid was found in her possession.

This brings us back to Charles Humphreys. It is known that he left his office in Sumterville on 11 September and was driving west towards his home in Crystal River, when he stopped to give a blonde woman a ride – Lee and Tyria were certainly at the EMRO store around the same time as Humphreys drove past. His obvious route was to leave his office, drive north to Wildwood, cross I-75 and head home along SR 44. What we now know is that at around 4pm he pulled into the EMRO store number 8237 in Wildwood.

On this occasion, the EMRO clerk recalled two women purchasing beer or wine – evidence found later showed it was cans of Budweiser and bottles of Miller Lite. The women bore striking similarities to Lee and Tyria. The clerk was unable to identify the male who had been driving the car, but he could only have been the soon-to-be deceased because the two women climbed into the car.

Police evidence reveals that this man’s body was found in one of Lee’s favourite dumping grounds, along CR 484, the day following his murder. The distance from the truck stop to where he was shot to death was about 20 miles – maybe 15 minutes’ driving time at best.

The scenario can only be that Lee and another woman, who has never been positively identified, were hitching a ride and Humphreys stopped his car. Within a short distance after leaving work he picked up the two women then met his death.

Tyria denied any knowledge of being in the dead man’s car that day; she said she knew nothing of the murder until police later questioned her about Lee’s movements. She claimed never to have met anyone called Charles Humphreys, but she was unable to account for her movements during the time in question.

In an affidavit following Lee’s arrest, Tyria described what had happened during the last few months she was with Lee: