Aileen Wuornos - Monster

Shortly before Lee’s trial for the murder of Richard Mallory, Deanie and Jim were invited to look at some property which was held at the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. It had been confiscated from none other than Tyria Moore. ‘My father’s suitcase, which Corky had borrowed, was there. His Levi “Members Only” jacket was there. Sweatshirts like my brother wore – I recognised them all, but I couldn’t prove they were his,’ Deanie claimed. ‘There were no identifying marks, but I knew they belonged to my brother.’

Bruce Munster explained in front of Dan Carter that, if Deanie could not ‘positively identify the items’, there was no more he could do.

At this stage in the investigation, it is worth mentioning that Munster and two of his colleagues were negotiating a movie deal to the tune of $100,000 each. Tyria was to receive considerably more. Individually, the items were of little significance. Collectively, along with the suitcase, they were damning evidence against Lee, and Tyria had already confided in Munster that Lee had given them to her.

Indeed, Tyria was to become quite a collector of dead men’s property…

IF I MADE $130, I’D TAKE $30 AND GIVE HER [TYRIA MOORE] THE REST TO PAY THE BILLS. SHE ALWAYS TOLD ME, ‘GET A MOTEL WITH A SWIMMING POOL, BECAUSE IT’S SO BORING HERE ALL DAY LONG.’ SO I FOUND A PLACE WITH TWO SWIMMING POOLS, A SHUFFLEBOARD, A LOUNGE, AND A STORE WITH BEER… THE PROBLEM WAS I WASN’T SUPPORTING HER AS RICHLY AS SHE WANTED. SHE ALWAYS WANTED A BRAND-NEW CAR OR A RENTED ONE. SHE WANTED CLOTHES, SHE WANTED AN APARTMENT WITH PLUSH FURNITURE. ‘I’VE GOT TO HAVE MY THINGS,’ SHE SAID. SO MATERIALISTIC. I BROUGHT HOME ABOUT $300 EVERY TWO WEEKS, BUT IT WEARS YOU OUT, CONSTANTLY TALKING TO ALL THOSE MEN, STAYING UP.

A thoroughly decent chap, Charles Humphreys lived in the east-coast city of Crystal River, which is located about seven miles north of Homosassa along US 19, and he never made it home from his last day of work at the Sumterville office of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitation Services (HRS). Sumterville was right in the centre of Lee’s territory.

Aged 56 years, he was a man of some experience who had formerly served as a police chief in Alabama. Now an investigator specialising in protecting abused and injured children, he was about transfer to the department’s office at Ocala. He had three children, and his kindly nature made him an excellent choice to work with kids. He picked up his killer the day after his thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. His wife Shirley had been battling cancer for years.

‘He was always in the driveway ten minutes after six,’ Shirley recalled. ‘At six-thirty, I thought it was car trouble. At seven, maybe he stopped for a beer. At eight, I panicked. I got the Highway Patrol… The Wildwood Police Department started a search. The next day my son came. I sat and waited. I woke up at two-thirty the next night. I heard a knock on the door and knew right away what it was.’

It is claimed that on Tuesday, 11 September 1990 – the day Corky Reid’s car was found abandoned near Orlando – Humphreys disappeared after picking up a hitchhiker, or hitchhikers, and the following evening his body was found off CR 484 within a stone’s throw of where both Spears’s and Carskaddon’s vehicles had been found.

Charles had been shot seven times. Six .22-calibre bullets were recovered from his body, but the seventh copper-jacketed round had passed through his wrist and was never found. His money and wallet were missing. His trouser pockets had been turned inside out.

Humphreys’s blue four-door Firenza car was found on Wednesday, 19 September some 70 miles to the north. It had been backed into a space behind an abandoned Banner service station at the intersection of I-10 and SR 90, near Live Oak in Suwannee County, and some 15 miles south of the state line with Georgia.

The number plate, keys and a bright yellow Highway Patrol Association bumper sticker had been removed from the car. During an initial examination of the vehicle, it was noted that everything which told the world it had belonged to Humphreys was gone or trashed – just like his life. Little things like his ice-scrapers, his maps, his personal papers, business papers and warranties. His favourite pipe in the newly carved wooden tray up on the dashboard was also gone.

By way of compensation, the killer left one can of Budweiser beer under the passenger seat. The police never dusted the can for prints.

Back at the police pound, a closer examination of the car’s interior revealed a cash-register receipt for beer, or wine, from EMRO store number 8237, a Speedway truck stop and convenience store located at SR 44 and I-75 in Wildwood – the same store from which receipts were found in Peter Siems’s car. The receipt was time-stamped 4.19pm, 11 September 1990, the day that Humphreys had disappeared. The clerk who had been on duty at the time could not identify the man but did recognise the composite police sketches of Lee and Tyria. When they left the store, the clerk believed they drove away and therefore did not call the police, as she was obliged to, because prostitutes are banned from truck stops throughout Florida.

Most of the victim’s personal effects, including his pipe, pen and pencil, wedding ring and wristwatch – all covered with blood (Lee would claim that, after shooting him, she heard his gurgling moans and took pity on him by shooting him in the head to ‘put him out of his misery’) – were found a month later in a wooded field off Boggy Marsh Road, around 18 miles from where his body was found in southern Lake County near US 27. They were returned to his wife.

On the face of it, this murder seems much like the previous killings: a lone woman is picked up while hitchhiking; she kills the driver and robs him. However, on this occasion, all is not as it seems.

As an investigative criminologist, my work often demands that I look laterally at criminal investigations. Tyria Moore has always denied knowing anything about Lee’s crimes and the public have always believed this to be the case. But Tyria had been riding around with Lee in Peter Siems’s car, and we know this because she was driving the vehicle when it crashed near Orange Springs. The girls had been drinking prior to the accident on the nearby Indian reservation. We also know all about Tyria riding around in Richard Mallory’s car and accepting his property; and the property of Corky Reid was found in her possession.

This brings us back to Charles Humphreys. It is known that he left his office in Sumterville on 11 September and was driving west towards his home in Crystal River, when he stopped to give a blonde woman a ride – Lee and Tyria were certainly at the EMRO store around the same time as Humphreys drove past. His obvious route was to leave his office, drive north to Wildwood, cross I-75 and head home along SR 44. What we now know is that at around 4pm he pulled into the EMRO store number 8237 in Wildwood.

On this occasion, the EMRO clerk recalled two women purchasing beer or wine – evidence found later showed it was cans of Budweiser and bottles of Miller Lite. The women bore striking similarities to Lee and Tyria. The clerk was unable to identify the male who had been driving the car, but he could only have been the soon-to-be deceased because the two women climbed into the car.

Police evidence reveals that this man’s body was found in one of Lee’s favourite dumping grounds, along CR 484, the day following his murder. The distance from the truck stop to where he was shot to death was about 20 miles – maybe 15 minutes’ driving time at best.