Aileen Wuornos: Monster

She would later add, ‘In order to test his love for me, I held up a convenience store. If he loved me, he would have gotten me out of that fix. I didn’t give a fuck.’

Russell Armstrong was the criminal defence attorney who represented Lee on the charges of armed robbery in 1981. He found 25-year-old Lee bright but suicidal, and asked the judge, Kim C. Hammond, to order a psychiatric evaluation prior to trial. Dr George W. Barnard examined Lee and arrived at the following conclusion:

The prisoner is a 25-year-old white divorced female who has an appreciation of the charges against her and she says she does not know the range and nature of the possible penalties. She understands the adversary nature of the legal process and has capacity to disclose to attorney pertinent facts surrounding the alleged offense, to relate to attorney, to assist attorney in planning her defense, to realistically challenge prosecution witnesses, to manifest appropriate courtroom behavior, to testify relevantly, to cope with the stress of incarceration prior to trial and is motivated to help herself in the legal process. It is my medical opinion the defendant is competent to stand trial, was legally sane at the time of the alleged crime and does not meet the criteria for involuntary hospitalization.

Lee was sent to the Florida Correctional Center in Lowell on Thursday, 4 May 1982 where she was disciplined six times for fighting and disobeying orders. Released on Thursday, 30 June 1983, she went to live with middle-aged Thomas Sheldon, one of several prison pen pals. Tom immediately realised that she had problems. He tried to get psychiatric help for her, but the clinic he contacted refused to admit her for treatment when she claimed, quite wrongly, that her problems were all his fault. After a few months he sent her back to Florida. Her previous boyfriend would not take her back. Rejection was following Lee like a ghost, haunting her every relationship.

In January 1984, Lee drifted into New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona Beach, where she moved in with a retired truck driver for a few months. ‘Two men came and dropped her off one day,’ he would later tell reporters. ‘She needed a quiet place to stay. She cleaned and cooked. I wanted somebody quiet, because it’s a quiet neighbourhood. She seemed bitter somehow, but she always put herself together. She could have taken advantage of me if she had wanted. She did have a temper, but was a pretty girl.’

On Tuesday, 1 May 1984, Lee was arrested for attempting to pass a forged cheque at the Barnett Bank in Key West, Florida. She had foolishly forged her employer’s signature on two cheques – one for $5,000 and the other for $595. She was bailed, and two years later she pleaded guilty to forgery after the prosecution agreed to drop related charges. Sentencing was set for 30 April 1986. She did not show up and a warrant was issued for her arrest.

On Saturday, 30 November 1985, she was named as a suspect in the theft of a pistol and ammunition in Pasco County. The victim was a man who had given her a few nights’ board and lodgings in return for sex. During this year she had her first recorded lesbian affair with an Italian woman called Toni in Florida Keys. The relationship was passionate, enlivened by frequent jealousies and physical violence. Toni and Lee had travelled to Orlando and purchased equipment to start a steam-cleaning firm, and Lee said that it was her own earnings that had paid for it.

‘Toni, she was like a really good friend,’ Lee recalled. ‘I wasn’t alone any more. I wanted to stay with her.’

After several months, Lee says she came home to find Toni, the cleaning equipment and all of her possessions gone. ‘The only items left behind,’ she said, ‘were a fan and a phone bill for $485. She was using me. I was so upset about losing a business that I’d have had for the rest of my life.’

Shortly after this bust-up, Lee borrowed the alias of Lori Grody from an aunt in Michigan and, 11 days later, the Florida Highway Patrol cited Grody for driving with a suspended licence. On Saturday, 4 January 1986, her rap sheet shows she was arrested in Miami under her own name and charged with auto theft, resisting arrest and obstruction by giving false information. Police found a .30-calibre revolver and a box of ammunition in the stolen car. She was bailed and vanished.

On Monday, 2 June 1986, Volusia County deputies questioned Lee after a male companion accused her of pulling a gun on him and demanding $200. In spite of her denials, Lee was carrying spare ammunition in her pockets and a .22-calibre pistol was found underneath the passenger seat she had occupied. She was charged with grand theft and carrying a concealed firearm. Again she failed to appear in court and another bench warrant became outstanding.

A week later, using the new alias of Susan Blahovec, she was ticketed for speeding in Jefferson County, Florida. The citation included a telling observation: ‘Attitude poor. She thinks she is above the law.’

Later that year she was arrested in Dade County for grand larceny and resisting arrest. Eventually the charges were dropped.

At this point in the life of Lee Wuornos, it is perhaps of value to take a brief look back and refresh our minds. Lee has said that she suffered an abusive childhood, contradicting the evidence given in court by her adoptive brother Barry. Indeed, Lee would apportion all of the blame for her failings, and later crimes, on the way she was raised by her grandparents, only then to say, when she was on the verge of insanity, that she came from a clean and decent family.

After leaving home, there is no doubt that Lee was exploited by men; but she also used men, and her own words prove that she had no real concerns or morals about this. However, what does shine through is her need to be wanted and loved.

Throughout the many years during which I have studied the psychopathic personality, I have noted in more cases than I can even recall that these offenders blame their antisocial behaviour for the most part on the alleged treatment meted out to them by others. More often than not these criminals are simply not mentally equipped to shoulder the blame for their crimes themselves. And Lee seems to be cast in the same mould. It was always others who failed her, but there is never a mention from Lee of her perhaps failing herself: it was her genetic mother and father; her adoptive parents; the alleged systematic abuse she suffered at their hands, and at the hands of her peers. She claimed Lewis Fell was at fault, as were several of her on-and-off-again boyfriends who failed to understand her needs, who were unable to make her happy and secure. She blamed Toni for stealing the cleaning equipment and her own belongings – all matters where Lee is the innocent, wide-eyed party. Surely we can see a pattern developing.

We know that by this time in Lee’s turbulent life she had a criminal record that included armed robbery – a trivial amount of money was stolen, but armed robbery is still a serious offence. She was a forger and a hooker who could be an honest, hardworking girl one moment, a spitting demon the next. Lee carried firearms and she was prepared to threaten people with them. She thought she was above the law.

When Lee met 24-year-old Tyria ‘Ty’ Jolene Moore at a Daytona gay bar in 1986, she was lonely, angry and ready for something new.

IT WAS LOVE BEYOND THE IMAGINABLE. EARTHLY WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW I FELT ABOUT TYRIA. I THOUGHT TYRIA MUST BE TAKEN CARE OF AS SHE, HERSELF, HAD NEVER BEEN. THE ONLY REASON I HUSTLED SO HARD ALL THOSE YEARS WAS TO SUPPORT HER. I DID WHAT I HAD TO DO TO PAY THE BILLS, BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE ANOTHER CHOICE. I HAD WARRANTS OUT FOR MY ARREST. I LOVED HER TOO MUCH. THEN THE FUCKING BITCH SOLD ME DOWN THE RIVER. I HATE THE BITCH.