Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

Judge Uriel ‘Bunky’ Blount Jr charged the jury on Monday, 27 January. They returned their verdict 91 minutes later. Pamela Mills, a schoolteacher, had been elected foreperson and she presented the verdict to the bailiff. He, in turn, handed it to the judge. The judge read it and passed it to the clerk who spoke the words that sealed Lee’s fate. ‘We, the jury, find Aileen Wuornos guilty of premeditated felony murder in the first degree,’ she told an expectant assembly in the courtroom. As the jury filed out, their duty done, Lee exploded with rage, shouting, ‘I’m innocent! I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scumbags of America!’

Her outburst was still fresh in the minds of jurors as the penalty phase of her trial began the next day. Expert witnesses for the defence testified that Lee was mentally ill, that she suffered from a borderline personality disorder and that her tumultuous upbringing had stunted and ruined her. Jenkins referred to her client as ‘a damaged, primitive child’ as she tearfully pleaded with the jury to spare Lee’s life. But the jurors neither forgot nor forgave the woman they had come to know during the trial. With a unanimous verdict, they recommended that Judge Blount sentence her to die in the electric chair. He confirmed the sentence on Friday, 31 January, first quoting his duty from a printed text:

Aileen Carol Wuornos, being brought before the court by her attorneys William Miller, Tricia Jenkins and Billy Nolas, having been tried and found guilty of count one, first-degree premeditated murder and first-degree felony murder of Richard Mallory, a capital felony, and count two, armed robbery with a firearm… hereby judged and found guilty of said offenses… and the court having given the defendant an opportunity to be heard and to offer matters in mitigation of sentence… It is the sentence of this court that you Aileen Carol Wuornos be delivered by the Sheriff of Volusia County to the proper officer of the Department of Corrections of the State of Florida and by him safely kept until by warrant of the Governor of the State of Florida, you, Aileen Wuornos, be electrocuted until you are dead.

And may God have mercy on your corpse.

A collective gasp arose from the courtroom, diminishing the solemnity of the occasion. The sense of shock was less to do with the judge’s sentiment than his choice of words. May God have mercy on your corpse? Did Judge Blount really say that? Corpse? Members of the media stopped with pencils poised in mid-air. He had got it wrong. Surely he should have said, ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’ Could they quote him? they whispered among themselves.

Aileen Wuornos did not stand trial again. On Tuesday, 31 March 1992, she pleaded no contest to the murders of Dick Humphreys, Troy Burress and David Spears, saying that she wanted to ‘get it right with God’. After a rambling statement to the court, she concluded, ‘I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I’ve told you. But these others did not. [They] only began to start to.’ She ended her monologue by turning to assistant state’s attorney Ric Ridgeway, and hissing, ‘I hope your wife and children get raped in the ass!’

On Friday, 15 May, Judge Thomas Sawaya handed her three more death sentences. She made an obscene gesture and muttered, ‘Motherfucker.’

For a time, there was speculation that Wuornos might receive a new trial for the murder of Richard Mallory. New evidence uncovered by the defence – not presented to the jury at her trial – showed that Mallory had spent ten years in prison for sexual violence, and attorneys felt that jurors would have seen the case differently had they been aware of this. No new trial was forthcoming, though, and the State Supreme Court of Florida affirmed all six of her death sentences.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE EXECUTION