Aileen Wuornos - Monster

Horzepa: It’s all right. Take your time.

Wuornos: Yeah. OK, I jumped out of the car. I pulled my gun out when he started to physically do shit with me.

Horzepa: Now, what type of gun did you have?

Wuornos: Nine… .22 nine-shot, you know.

Horzepa: Twenty-two long rifle?

Wuornos: No, it’s a gun, like about this big…

Horzepa: OK. Why did you keep that gun with you?

Wuornos: I was keeping it for protection.

Horzepa: Where did you get the gun from?

Wuornos: I stole it from a guy at a house.

Horzepa: How long before?

Wuornos: Oh, God, I don’t know. I think it was…

Horzepa: Months? Years?

Wuornos: I don’t know, man, it might have been about, a couple of months ago… I might have got the gun just then. I don’t… I can’t remember. Like… like two days before or something.

Horzepa: OK. That’s no problem.

Wuornos: Because, I can’t remember. It’s such a long time. I did a lot of stuff in the time, you know.

Horzepa: OK, so you’re back there. You jump out of the car…

Wuornos: I jumped out of the car because he was physically starting to abuse me. And I remember now. He didn’t even give me any money. This was another guy. This guy, he said, ‘Well, I’ll give…’ No, I said, ‘Well, I always take my money first,’ and he said he wanted to see how the merchandise fit.

Horzepa: This is what Mr Mallory told you?

Wuornos: Yes.

Horzepa: OK.

Wuornos: So I said, ‘Well, since I’ve been talking to you all night long, I think you seem like a pretty nice guy, you know, so OK, let’s… let’s go have fun. So I started to lay down and he was going to, you know, unzip his pants. And I said, ‘Why don’t you take your clothes off?’ My God, you know, I said, ‘Well, it hurt to do that.’ Then he got pissed, calling me… He said, ‘Fuck you, baby, I’m going to screw you right here and now…’ Something like that.

Horzepa: Now where are you?

Wuornos: I’m in the woods with this guy and the doors are open.

Horzepa: OK.

Wuornos: I remember that. And I said, ‘No, no, you’re not going to just fuck me. You got to pay me.’ And he said, ‘Oh, bullshit.’ And that’s when he got pissed. Now, I’m coming back to recollection. OK, so that’s when we started fighting and everything else and I jumped out. He grabbed my bag and I grabbed my bag and the arm busted and, when I got the bag again and I pulled it out of his hand, that’s when I grabbed the pistol out. And when I grabbed the pistol out, I just shot him in the front seat.

Referring to Richard Mallory later in the questioning, Lee changed the earlier version of her account and claimed: ‘See, one guy, he was trying to screw me in the ass and stuff… he was going to try to a… anal screw. You know, anal screw or whatever you call it. So I started fighting with him and I got to my bag and I shot him. And then when I shot him the first time, he just backed away. And, I thought… I thought to myself, Well, hell, should I, you know, try to help this guy or should I just kill him. So, I didn’t know what to do, so I figured, Well, if I help the guy and he lives, he’s going to tell on me and I’m going to get it for attempted murder, all this jazz. And I thought, Well, the best thing to do is just keep shooting him. Then I get to the point that I thought, Well, I shot him. The stupid bastard would have killed me so I kept shooting. You know. In other words, I shot him and then I said to myself, Damn, you know, if I didn’t… sh— shoot him, he would have shot me because he would have beat the shit out of me, maybe. I would have been unconscious. He would have found my gun going through my stuff, and shot me. Because he probably would have gone to get it for trying to rape me, see? So I shot him and then I thought to myself, Well, Hell, I might as well just keep shooting him. Because I got to kill the guy because he’s going to… he’s going to… you know, go, and tell somebody if he lives, whatever. Then I thought to myself, Well, this dirty bastard deserves to die anyway because of what he was trying to do to me. So, those three things went in my mind for every guy that I shot…’

Munster: Did you watch TV?

Wuornos: I watched TV all my life.

Munster: Did you watch to see if the police…

Wuornos: I watched TV all the time, but after the crimes, yes I did.

Munster: To see what the police were doing?

Wuornos: To see if they had found the bodies.

Horzepa: OK. From all the shootings that you have told us about, for the most part, you’ve always gotten the drop on these guys. You’ve been able to get your gun and point it at them.

Wuornos: Uh huh.

Horzepa: Right?

Wuornos: Right.

Horzepa: OK. At that particular time, you were in control. Why didn’t you just run? Why didn’t you…

Wuornos: Because I was always basically totally nude with my shoes off and everything and I wasn’t going to run through the woods and briars and the…

Horzepa: No, but still, like I say, you’re in control. You got that gun. You could go ahead and get dressed while you had, you know, them do whatever you basically wanted. Why did you go ahead and… shoot these people?

Wuornos: Because they physically fought with me and I was… well, I guess I was afraid, because they were physically fighting with me and I… what am I supposed to do, you know, hold the gun there until I get dressed and now I am going to walk out of here? When the guy, you know, might… you know, run me over with his truck or might come back when I’m walking through the woods or something… uh, have a gun on him too or something. I didn’t know if they had a gun or not.

Horzepa: So was it… was it your intent, during each of these times, to kill this person so they couldn’t come back at you later?

Wuornos: Because I didn’t know if they had a gun or anything. I… once I got my gun, I was like, ‘Hey, man, I’ve got to shoot you because I think you’re going to kill me,’ see?

Horzepa: What about the ones who didn’t have a gun, like Mr Mallory?

Wuornos: I didn’t know they had… didn’t have a gun.

Horzepa: OK. So you were taking no chances.

Wuornos: Right. I did not know… what… had… they… what was in their vehicle. See?

Horzepa: OK.

Wuornos: I didn’t know if they had it under the seat, close by them. I didn’t know if they were in arm’s reach of another weapon or what. See?

Horzepa: What made you take property… a lot of property or a little property from some and not from others? Was there anything there that…

Wuornos: I guess it was.

Horzepa: Motivated you to…

Wuornos: I guess it was after, it was pure hatred. Yeah, I think afterward, it was like, You bastard, you would have hurt me and, uh, I’ll take the stuff and get my money’s worth because some of them didn’t even hardly have any money. They were going to… they were… some of them didn’t have any money. Like that guy, uh, the drug-dealer guy… he had 20 bucks and he was… he wasn’t going to give me any more money. The one with the .45 on the hood [Carskaddon].

Horzepa: Mmm. Mmm. So you just started living off the items that they had? Is that what you were doing?

Wuornos: No, I think I took them just for the fact that, you bastards, you were going to hurt me, you were going to rape me, or whatever you were going to do. Well, I’ll just, you know, keep these little items so I don’t have to buy them or something. I don’t know. I just…

Horzepa: It was like a final revenge?

Wuornos: Yeah. OK. That would… that would do. Mmm… mmm.

Munster: Lee, after you shot one time, I mean you could have left. You could have taken their stuff and [inaudible].

Wuornos: I didn’t want to do that because I was afraid that, if I shot them one time and they survived, my… my face and all that, description of me, would be all over the place and the only way I could make money was to hustle. And I knew these guys would probably… would, you know, rat on me if they survived and all this stuff… and I would… I was hoping that I… after what I had to do, that I wouldn’t have gotten caught for it because I figured that these guys deserved it. Because those guys were going to either rape, kill… I don’t know what they were going to do to me. See what I’m saying?