Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

Tyria left her job at the Casa del Mar Motel, and in the fall of 1990 they moved into room number 8 at the Fairview Motel at Harbor Oaks on US 1 along Daytona Beach. Tyria was unemployed and the two women were living off Lee’s earnings.

The staff at the local convenience store got to know Lee and Tyria as regular, sometimes troublesome, customers. Brenda McGarry recalled that Lee would often approach men in the 50-to-60 age range while they topped up their cars with petrol. ‘She was very masculine and aggressive,’ she said. ‘Always flexing her muscles and talking about needing to get over to 92, which I thought was a bar or something. It never registered that it was a highway.’

The owners of the Fairview soon tired of them and once again they moved, this time to the nearby Belgrade, a Yugoslavian restaurant owned by Velimir Isailovic and Vera Ivkovich. Vera allowed the women to rent a room at the rear of the premises for $50 a week. Then the problems started.

Contradicting Lee’s later statements to police that Tyria rarely drank and was as pure as the driven snow, Vera confirmed that, ‘Lee and Tyria were drunk most nights… they invaded the quiet dignity of the Belgrade restaurant, night after night singing and making a racket in their room, their loud music upsetting the customers.’

In his deposition, Velimir Isailovic recounted bad times: