Monster: Inside the Mind of Aileen Wuornos

What is now the Union Correctional Institution was formerly the original Florida State Prison, and what is now known as Florida State Prison Main Unit was constructed with the death chamber in 1961. Florida State Prison Main Unit’s title was transferred to the East Unit in 1973, and the old Florida State Prison became the Union Correctional Institution. Lee would spend two nights here before her appointment with death.

Lee was held in a special security cell. The three walls were painted a dirty cream; the barred front of her cage, with an additional mesh screen, looked on to the landing. Lit 24 hours a day, the cell had no table, just a stainless-steel toilet, a hand basin and a bunk covered with a light-green blanket and a grey pillow.

On Wednesday, 9 October 2002, as Lee sipped her last cup of coffee, she contemplated the end which she knew would be painful; what she didn’t know was that she was going to be injected with a combination of three drugs which would burn terribly.

Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections, told reporters, no doubt with tongue in cheek, that Lee was awake at 5.30am and was in a ‘good mood’ and ‘ready for the sentence to be carried out’. Ivey said that Wuornos offered no resistance and was cooperative when she was strapped to the execution gurney outside the death chamber, and then wheeled into the room so the assembled witnesses could watch her die. When the lethal drugs began to flow into her, it was a quiet death. Other than her final statement, and two coughs, she made no sounds, said Ivey, who witnessed the execution. ‘She just closed her eyes and her heart stopped beating.’

During her last days of life, Lee had requested no religious advisers, chaplain or a last meal, Ivey said. ‘Lee Wuornos refused an offer to eat a barbecued-chicken dinner that was fed to the rest of the prison population,’ Ivey reported.

An hour before the dread act, the witnesses started to arrive through the main prison gate to be escorted to the death chamber. They might have noticed the sheeting now draped over the steel gates hiding the hearse that was waiting to receive the body. After being given a shakedown to check for hidden weapons or concealed cameras, they were led to the viewing room, which is separated from the gurney by a window and closed curtains.

Around 30 minutes before Lee would take her last walk, she was given a pre-injection of 8cc 2% sodium pentothal. Waiting silently in an adjacent room was the cell-extraction team wearing protective clothing and armed with Mace gas to subdue her if she caused trouble.

Finally, Lee was invited to leave her cell. She agreed, and no guard touched her as she walked the few steps to the chamber door which was opening before her. Lee paused momentarily when she saw the gurney with its white padding and cover sheet. Two arm supports were pulled out and she saw the brown straps dangling loose with an officer by each one. There were tears in her eyes.

Lee was strapped down, and the paramedics inserted two 16-gauge needles and catheters into her right and left arms and connected them, via tubes, to the executioner’s equipment, which was hidden from view. The doctor also attached a cardiac monitor.

The curtains were drawn back and the warden asked her if she had any last words to say into the microphone above her head. She replied, ‘I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the Rock and I’ll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I’ll be back.’

Lee looked scared, as over the next ten seconds she was given an injection of sodium thiopentone (a rapidly acting anaesthetic). She felt a slight pressure and her arm started to ache. She felt light-headed. After a one-minute wait, this was followed by 15cc of normal saline to ease the passage of 50cc pancuronium bromide (a muscle relaxant to paralyse respiration and bring unconsciousness) over a ten-second time period.

Lee would have felt pressure in her chest, a suffocating feeling that caused her to gasp several times for air. She coughed twice as her lungs collapsed. She was dizzy and hyperventilating, her heart beating faster and faster as the whole sympathetic nervous system was activated. This is called stress syndrome, a common feature during the first stages of dying.

As the poison saturated her body, Lee entered the second stage of death. She was unable to breathe or move, but she could still see and hear. Paralysed, she was not able to swallow at this stage, which often gives rise to witnesses thinking that the inmate is already dead, when they are not. During this short period, the autonomic nervous system becomes dominated by the parasympathetic nervous system, or the sympathetic nervous system fails. Lee’s eyes dilated and the hairs on her skin became erect.