Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

Copus drove to his bank, withdrew approximately $4,000 for his insurance bill and tucked the money into his sun visor. He continued to Orlando along a country road. Lee was soon to proposition the man, asking for $100 with the promise of giving him the best blowjob he had ever had in his life. Copus, who was happily married, had no intentions of cheating on his wife so he declined. Twice more Lee propositioned him, insisting that he stop in an orange grove. Again he refused, and Lee became angry.

Speaking in a thick cowboy drawl as he gave evidence at Lee’s trial, Copus said, ‘When she propositioned me for the third time, she wasn’t the same person. She opened her purse for a comb. I’d seen what I thought was a small-calibre pistol in her purse. At this point I was really scared. I just wanted her out of my car in the presence of a lot of people.’

Copus was not as dumb as he may have appeared and he gambled on a trick which saved his life. He stopped at a truck-stop payphone and, after telling Lee he would drive her all the way to Daytona Beach, gave her $5 to call her ‘sister’. As soon as she climbed out of the car, he slammed the door closed and locked it. Lee flew into a rage. ‘What I saw was a woman in total frustration, mad as hell,’ Copus recalled.

As he sped off in a cloud of dust, she screamed after him, ‘Copus, I’ll get you, you son of a bitch! I’ll kill you like I did the other old fat sons of bitches!’

It is highly probable that the next man who stopped to give Lee a ride, more than likely the very same day, was Walter Gino Antonio.

Hailing from Merritt Island, Cocoa Beach – near Cape Canaveral, along the east coast of Florida – 60-year-old Walter Gino Antonio was a trucker who doubled as a reserve police officer in Brevard County. On Saturday, 17 November, he was driving to Alabama in search of a job. Recently engaged, he wore a gold and silver diamond ring, a gift from his fiancée. It was a size 10 ¾, yellow gold with a diamond set in a field of white gold. When Tyria arrived back in Florida after Thanksgiving, Lee gave her this ring as a gift to prove how deeply she loved her.

Walter’s obvious route was more or less identical to that of the late Peter Siems. He would use the Florida Turnpike as far as Wildwood then head upstate along I-75, probably pulling into the Speedway truck stop before the long haul north.

On Sunday, 18 November, a police officer out hunting game found a man’s body, naked except for a pair of socks, near the intersection of US 19 and US 27 – 15 miles south of Wildwood. Walter Antonio had been shot four times, three times in the torso and once in the head, with a .22-calibre handgun.

After the murder, Lee drove the car back to the Fairview Motel where she asked the manager, Rose McNeill, if she could park her ‘boyfriend’s car’ behind the building. She was told that the boyfriend was married and he did not want to have his wife drive by and find his car parked at the motel. Mrs McNeill recalled that Lee left the car there for just a few days. The maroon Pontiac Grand Prix was found on Saturday, 24 November in a wooded area near I-95 and US 1 in northern Brevard County, 20 miles south from where he started his journey. The number plate and keys were missing and a bumper sticker had been removed. A piece of paper had been crudely pasted over the vehicle identification number, and the doors were locked.

A number of empty Budweiser cans were found on the ground near the vehicle, which had been wiped clean of fingerprints.

Detectives learned that Antonio meticulously recorded every purchase he made of car fuel, retaining the filling-station receipts on which he noted his mileage. From this methodical behaviour, they were able to deduce that, in the week since his disappearance, his car had been driven over a thousand miles.

Walter’s fiancée gave the police a list of possessions that had been in his car, including handcuffs, a reserve-deputy badge, a police billy club, a flashlight, a Timex wristwatch, a suitcase, a toolbox and a baseball cap. All of these items were missing. Walter Antonio’s personal identification and clothing were discovered in a wooded area in Taylor County. The rest of his property has not been found.

Lee would later claim that she was out looking for custom as a hooker when Antonio pulled up. She asked if he wanted to help her make some money, but he pulled out his police badge and threatened to arrest her unless he got a ‘free piece of ass’.

Under interrogation by officers, she was asked how many times did she shoot Antonio.

‘Twice, I think.’

‘OK. Now how did you feel when you thought he was a cop?’

‘At first, I… because that one guy, that HRS guy telling me he was a cop, I said to myself, this… he’s a… that guy was an HRS guy. So this is another faker. He’s just trying to get a piece of free ass. And that’s all I thought. Yeah, it pissed me off.’

‘Well, when you shot him the first time, what did he do?’