Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

Two, three days after she [Lee] check in she said, ‘Can you give me a ride to my job?’

I said, ‘OK.’ Because she don’t have car. She don’t have nothing. She stay in the room. She gave money if she go to work. Put her in my pickup truck. Say, ‘Which way are you going to go?’

She says, ‘Going south to the New Smyrna Beach.’

And I ask her, ‘Do you know where you are going to go, do you know the street address?’ Because she tell me she got cleaning business. I think she is going to go somewhere to clean house or something like that.

She say, ‘Keep going.’

I start to laughing, I say, ‘I think, you don’t know where you are going to go.’

She say, ‘I know, turn right to the 95.’

I say, ‘Why don’t you tell me, I don’t have gasoline to go too far.’

She say, ‘OK, if you catch 95, exit south and stop.’

Again, I don’t have in my mind nothing wrong. I ask, ‘How are you going to go from here?’

‘Don’t worry, I’m walking.’

I drop her on 95 exit south. I come back home and I tell my wife, ‘Look she don’t have any business. She does not work anywhere. You know where I put her? Right on 95. Some kind of monkey business, yet.’ But what kind we don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know how long she going to stay out that day, that time. Probably several hours. Not too long.

Three, four, five hours she come back. She bring – give my wife very small money, $30, $40. I don’t know. Not too much. She go in the room, buy beer, drink beer all night long. I say, ‘I don’t know how come she has got money to buy beer, but she don’t have money to pay the rent and food.’ Start to make me really mad and confused.

But, anyhow, I quit to give her any favour. She say, ‘What’s wrong with you?’

I say, ‘Nothing at all, you start to lie, you don’t have any job, you don’t have any business.’

‘Oh yes, I got good business, good for this and that, can you give me a ride?’

I say, ‘No. I told you no any favour for you any more.’

She say, ‘Can you give me ride to Winn-Dixie store?’

Said, ‘No.’

She start to bring $10, $20 to my wife. I say, ‘That’s enough. Better tell her to go out.’ That’s three weeks. Two or three days before Thanksgiving, I think. The other girl left first.

Now, with both women’s composites plastered across newspapers and screened on TV, Tyria bailed out. She went home for Thanksgiving and Lee left their lodgings on 10 December, begging and borrowing her way back into the Fairview Motel.

‘Several times she [Lee] tried to give me things,’ Vera recalled. Once it was an electric razor, and again a gold chain. Several days after they went, Velimir saw Lee in the gas station.

‘Just make joke, I say, “Hey, when you bring me my money?” because she now owed $30 or $40.

‘And, that time she say, “I’m sorry, you are son of a bitch, you are lucky you are still have life.”’

Shortly after this incident, Vera and her husband saw two photofits in the local paper and immediately recognised the faces as Tyria Moore and Aileen Wuornos. They called the cops.