Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

News that the police had secured a female serial killer’s confession soon leaked out to the public domain and an avalanche of book and movie deals poured in to detectives, to Lee and Tyria and to the victims’ relatives. Lee seemed to think she would make millions of dollars from her story, not yet realising that Florida had a law against criminals profiting in such a manner. She commanded headlines in the local and national media. She felt famous, and continued to talk about the crimes with anyone who would listen, including Volusia County Jail employees. With each retelling, she refined her story a little further, seeking to cast herself in a better light each time.

On Monday, 28 January 1991, Lee Wuornos was indicted for the murder of Richard Mallory. The indictment read:

In that Aileen Carol Wuornos, a/k/a Susan Lynn Blahovec, a/k/a/ Lori Kristine Grody, a/k/a/ Cammie Marsh Greene, on or about the first day of December, 1989, within Volusia County, did then and there unlawfully, from a premeditated design to effect the death of one Richard Mallory, a human being, while engaged in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetuate robbery, did kill and murder Richard Mallory by shooting him with a firearm, to wit: a handgun.

Counts two and three charged her with armed robbery and possession of a firearm and, by late February, she had been charged with the murders of David Spears in Citrus County and Charles Humphreys and Troy Burress in Marion County.

Lee’s attorneys engineered a plea bargain whereby she would plead guilty to six charges and receive six consecutive life terms. One state’s attorney, however, thought she should receive the death penalty, so on Monday, 14 January 1992 she went to trial for the murder of Richard Mallory.

The evidence and testimony of witnesses were severely damaging. Dr Arthur Botting, the medical examiner who had carried out the autopsy on Mallory’s body, stated that he had taken between 10 and 20 agonising minutes to die. Tyria testified that Lee had not seemed overly upset, nervous or drunk when she told her about the Mallory killing. Twelve men went on to the witness stand to testify to their encounters with Lee along Florida’s highways and byways over the years.

Florida has a law known as the Williams Rule which allows evidence relating to other crimes to be admitted if it serves to show a pattern. Because of the Williams Rule, information regarding other killings alleged to have been committed by Lee was presented to the jury. Her claim of having killed in self-defence would have been a lot more believable had the jury only known of Mallory. Now, with the jury made aware of all the murders, self-defence seemed the least plausible explanation. After the excerpts from her videotaped confession were played, the self-defence claim simply looked ridiculous. Lee seemed not the least upset by the story she was telling. She made easy conversation with her interrogators and repeatedly told her attorney to be quiet. Her image on the screen allowed her to condemn herself out of her own mouth. ‘I took a life… I am willing to give up my life because I killed people… I deserve to die,’ she said.

Tricia Jenkins, one of Lee’s public defenders, did not want her client to testify and told her so. But Lee overrode this advice, insisting on telling her story. By now, her account of Mallory’s murder barely resembled the one she gave in her confession. Mallory had raped, sodomised and tortured her, she claimed.

On cross-examination, prosecutor John Tanner obliterated any shred of credibility she may have had. As he brought to light all her lies and inconsistencies, she became agitated and angry. Her attorneys repeatedly advised her not to answer questions, and she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 25 times. She was the defence’s only witness, and when she left the stand there was not much doubt about how her trial would end.