Aileen Wuornos: Monster

At her murder trial, Barry Wuornos was called to the witness stand to be questioned by the counsel for the accused, and he faced several searching questions as to Lee’s early days. Barry started by stating that, ‘It was a normal lifestyle, a pretty straight and narrow family. Very little trouble in the family while Aileen was growing up. They picked her up when I would say she was two years old. Father was a kind of disciplinarian.’

‘What was your impression of your father?’

‘Well, he was a strong character… a gentle man… laid down strong rules.’

‘Did you ever see him beat her? Was he the kind of man who would beat a child.’

‘Absolutely not,’ came the emphatic answer.

Barry then went on to describe his father’s interaction with Lee from the time she arrived at the house until he went into the army.

‘Would you describe her grandfather as being abusive?’

‘Not at all. Normal spankings, but the general rule was grounding for two or three days.’

‘After you left for the service, did you stay in touch with Miss Wuornos?’

‘Well, I stayed in contact with my mom and dad.’

‘Did your mother and father provide her with a home, shelter, food and clothing?’

‘Oh, yes,’ came the solid reply.

He began to question the period during which Lee had been badly burned.

‘Was medical care denied to Miss Wuornos?’

‘She did go to the doctor for a period of eight months and received salves,’ Barry replied. ‘Mom took care of those things. She was a very quiet, studious, laid-back woman, very in the background. Much easier-going than my father, and no punishment of any kind came from her. My father worked at Ford and Chrysler as an engineer, was a janitor for a while and then worked in quality control… He was strong on school. He was disappointed because I started at the university and dropped out to go into the service.’

He was not getting the answers he wanted from Barry Wuornos, so he turned up the heat. ‘Was Aileen treated differently than any of the rest?’ he asked.

‘Not that I ever saw,’ replied Barry Wuornos. ‘One time she was going to be spanked and she brought up the fact that she was adopted and she said, “Don’t lay your hands on me. You’re not even my real dad.” From that time, I never saw any attempts on the part of my dad to physically spank her.’

At the defence table, Lee was visibly angry at her adoptive brother’s testimony and she started scribbling furiously on a legal pad.

‘When did she learn that she was adopted?’ the attorney continued.

‘She was ten or eleven at the time. How long before that she knew, I don’t know.’

The attorney now turned his focus towards Lee’s mother – Barry Wuornos’s sister.

‘Lee’s mother. What was she like?’

‘She was like a normal older sister. She had run-ins with her first husband, naturally. We picked up Aileen at the age of two. And she was in no trouble at that point, but before that she was a model student at Troy and she got mixed up with Leo Pittman… She was with Leo – an on-and-off marriage.’

‘What about Aileen’s father?’

‘I knew very little about Leo. I remember he was trying to date Diane. He was pretty abusive. I remember one day he threw me down and threatened to choke me if I didn’t give a message to Diane. He was generally a criminal type… He was sent to prison and later killed himself.’

The attorney elicited from the witness that Diane had married around the age of 15 or 16 and that it had been a sore point in the family at the time.

‘Did Lee do well at school?’ asked the lawyer.

‘Yeah, I think she did well in school until she reached the ninth grade. She had great artistic ability… through letters in the service I heard that she was getting into trouble.’

The court learned that Lauri Wuornos drank around a bottle of wine a day, and finally that Barry came home one day and found his father dead in the garage. Lee claims she found her father and her brother was not around.

On hearing the sad news about Lauri, Diane Wuornos invited Lee and Keith to stay with her in Texas, but they declined. Lee, although now a ward of the court, dropped out of school, left home and took up a feral existence, a life of hitchhiking and prostitution, drifting across the country as her spirit moved her.

So, much to the relief of Troy, Lee was leaving on her right thumb. Taking little more than the clothes she wore and carrying a few possessions in a bag, she hit the road, seemingly ill-equipped to start a new life down south. In truth, Lee had all the necessary skills required of the profession that was beckoning. She had good looks, a tough spirit, a neat figure, a cheeky smile, the morals of an alley cat and a strong right hook. She knew what men wanted from her and she would do well out of any gullible guy who crossed her path. Her mind, however, was brooding and silent, a dormant volcano building up to an eruption.

SURE, I THREATENED HIM WITH A MEAT SKEWER. SO FUCKING WHAT? HE LOOKED AT ME LIKE ALL MEN DID. RIGHT FROM THE OFF. DIRTY OLD FUCKER.

Lee Wuornos next comes to our attention in 1974 when, using the alias Sandra Kretsch, she was jailed in Jefferson County, Colorado for disorderly conduct, drunk driving and firing a .22-calibre pistol from a moving vehicle. Additional charges were filed when she skipped bail ahead of her trial.

In March 1976, Lee, now aged 20, married multi-millionaire Lewis Gratz Fell. By any measure, this was a curious match. Silver-haired Fell, with his reputable Philadelphia background, was 69 years old when he picked up Lee while she was hitchhiking. He was well connected and kept a plastic business card case containing all of his contacts which included judges, attorneys, state’s attorneys and police officers, among others. When Lee and Lewis parted company under somewhat acrimonious circumstances, this wallet went missing, the significance of which we shall soon discover.

Lee saw Fell coming from the word go and, as we now know, this young lady was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. We have to give her credit for that. However, what we can see is that Lee’s first big hit, even if it was not a murderous act, was against an elderly man who was several years older than her grandfather.

Quite what was going through Lewis’s mind at that time can only be a matter for conjecture: perhaps he was thinking with the parts he hadn’t used for several decades. Nevertheless, he offered Lee his hand in marriage, which she accepted in a heartbeat and, after buying her a very expensive engagement ring, they married in Kingsley, Georgia.

The wedding took place less than two months after the death of Lee’s 65-year-old grandfather Lauri.

Most of those who knew Lee viewed her marriage cynically. They racked their brains and scratched their heads, finding it impossible to judge it as anything other than a purely mercenary move, which it certainly was. They knew that Lee was capable of just about anything.

The unwitting Lewis Fell had no idea what he was letting himself in for. He was clueless. Some on the fringes took the view that it was a mutually acceptable relationship, and they would be correct. Others thought he was stark raving bonkers. For his part, Lewis had a pretty young woman on his arm and in his bed, while Lee enjoyed the fruits of what his money could buy.

Early in July 1976, husband and wife rolled into Michigan in a brand-new, cream-coloured Cadillac and, while raising a few eyebrows, they checked into a motel. Now smiling all the way to the next bank, Lee stuck a finger up at small-city Troy by sending a few friends newspaper cuttings of their wedding announcement. Carefully clipped from the society pages of the Daytona press, they came complete with a photograph of a man who looked old enough to be her grandfather, knees buckling and leaning heavily on a stick.