Aileen Wuornos - Monster

Things came to a head at the Ocean Village Camper Resort during the early hours of one morning when a volley of shots echoed around the site and the neighbours were subjected to very loud country-rock music emanating from Lee and Tyria’s trailer. They were ordered to leave immediately.

They returned to Daytona where, on Friday, 18 December 1987, a highway-patrol officer cited Lee, who was using the alias Susan Blahovec, for walking on the interstate and possessing a suspended driving licence. The citation noted ‘Attitude poor’, and ‘Susan’ proved it over the next few months by sending threatening letters to the circuit-court clerk on 11 January and 9 February 1988. As for what happened to the trailer, no one seems to know.

On the occasions when Lee could not hitch a ride, she would catch a bus. The anger of this woman was apparently well known among bus drivers who picked her up. Terry Adams, operations supervisor of Voltran, the Volusia Country Transit company, was ‘swamped’ with reports from his drivers that Lee was ‘nasty mostly and threatening them with bodily harm, cursing at them because of certain situations’.

On Saturday, 12 March 1988, using the alias of Cammie Marsh Greene, she accused Daytona bus driver Richard Loomis of assault, claiming that he had pushed her off a bus following an argument. Tyria Moore was listed as a witness to the incident which concerned the confrontation with the black bus driver, who said, ‘She started screaming and hollering, “I’m not going to tell you where I am going or my name or where I live or anything.” If she had her way, she would sit down and just ignore everybody. If for whatever reason she got on and started, which was frequent, it would be like she was trying to find a way to argue with you… she always mentioned men. I don’t know of a woman driver in the place that ever had trouble with her.’

Richard Loomis recalled that his bus picked Lee and Tyria up near I-4 and 92 and he commented to Tyria that she was ‘looking good’. ‘Well, Aileen didn’t care for this,’ Loomis told the court at Lee’s trial. ‘She punched me right in the mouth, and I knocked her through the door, I think.’

Driver Metcalf was another victim of Lee’s abusive behaviour. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘when she was at the bus stop, say when you pull up and the buses have kneelers on them. And she would say, “Kneel the fucking bus, you asshole” or “You nigger, you cocksucker”… She was just mean as a rattlesnake.’

On Saturday, 23 July 1988, Daytona landlord Alzada Sherman accused Tyria Moore and ‘Susan Blahovec’ of vandalising their apartment, ripping out carpets and painting over the walls in dark-brown paint without her approval. At this time, Tyria was back working as a maid at the Casa del Mar Motel, 621 South Atlantic Drive, Ormond Beach. Alzada Sherman, Tyria’s friend at the motel, was later questioned by both defence and prosecution counsel about that period. Once again, we can gain a valuable insight into the turbulent domestic affairs of this lesbian couple, and more importantly into the mind of Lee, who was now a troublesome, loud-mouthed, hard-drinking hooker.

‘Now, you indicated before you went on record that Lee and Tyria stayed with you for a month?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And that is the address you gave at the beginning?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Did you live at the motel that you were working in?’

‘No.’

‘What was the name of the motel?’

‘Casa del Mar.’

‘But they stayed at your apartment?’

‘Yes. I have a two-bedroom apartment.’

‘They shared one of the bedrooms?’

‘One of the bedrooms. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.’

‘How was it supposed to be?’

‘It was told to me that Lee was going away for a year and a half and she wouldn’t be back. And Tyria needed a place to live. I liked Tyria. So I needed a roommate at the time to share the rent. So I offered her the room. To share the rent.’

‘Did she initially move in by herself?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long was it before Lee moved in there?’

‘Well, Ty moved in on the Friday. Lee moved in on the Sunday. She left and I thought she was gone, but she showed up again on the Wednesday.’

‘Was there any conversation between Friday and Sunday about her possibly moving in?’

‘No.’

‘What happened on that Sunday?’

‘I confronted Tyria about it. And she said, let her spend the night and she’ll be gone in the morning, which she was. But then she shows back up Wednesday. It was like every other day she would come back.’

‘And did that routine go on throughout the month?’

‘Yes. And I told them they had to move.’

‘What would be said to you, typically, each time she would come back to spend the night?’

‘She had no place to go.’

‘And did you ever ask them where she was during those days that she wasn’t there?’

‘Yes. Their answer was “working”.’

‘Did she say where she was working?’

‘Lee said she was working in Orlando. She did floors with those big machines.’

‘Pressure-cleaning-type things?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, she would be gone for a day or two and show back up?’

‘Then she showed back up. Sometimes she would come at night in a cab.’

‘During that time frame when Lee would come back in, would she ever have anything with her that she didn’t have when she left?’

‘No. She always took a bag, like a – when you go to the gym, you know, gym bags. That’s the kind of bags she would leave with. And she would come back with the same bag.’

‘While Lee was in your home, how did she act?’

‘Very difficult. When she wasn’t drinking, she was calm. But when she drank, she was loud and obnoxious.’

‘How often would she be drinking?’

‘During the time she stayed there that’s all she did, mostly.’

Alzada told the court that Busch and Budweiser seemed to be Lee’s favourite drinks, and that her drinking sessions were often followed by loud arguments with Tyria behind the closed bedroom door.

‘Can you estimate, when she was there drinking, how much she might drink in an evening or a day?’

‘Normally she would come in with a 12-pack and maybe drink two or three 12-packs in a night and in a day. She is a heavy drinker. They trashed the place.’

Lee often said she liked sex with men, and her sex life with Tyria waned enough for Tyria to complain to her best friend about it. Lee herself said that her ‘greater love’ for Tyria ‘wasn’t sexual’. The real driving force in Lee’s life wasn’t sex at all; it was a search for an emotional bond and love – love that she had never really had from her abandoning mother, her emotionally and physically abusive grandfather or, it seems, from the grandmother who failed to protect her from him, and certainly not from the callous young males who had sex with her while she was an adolescent. She was far more familiar with loss than with love, having lost her brother Keith to cancer, and having had her baby son snatched from her after she gave birth. Lee found the deep emotional bond she desperately craved with Tyria. Her borderline personality disorder carried with it an overwhelming fear of abandonment. She would do anything to keep her, even kill if needs be, and so deep-seated was her love for Tyria, she would even give up her life to protect her in the years to follow.

Lee’s market value as a hooker, never spectacular, fell even further. When Lee hit the road searching for johns, she would pose as a hitchhiker or a disabled motorist at highway on-and-off ramps – she became an ‘exit-to-exit prostitute’. Money was always tight and they were constantly moving from lodgings to lodgings because they failed to pay the rent. Their existence, meagre though it was, became more difficult to maintain. Clearly something had to change, but getting out of Daytona was not easy. There was never enough money to get to Miami, and the two women now realised that jobs were scarcer than they had first thought. They had blown all their money, and their dreams of good times had faded as quickly. Desperation crept in, and temptation was quick to follow. It is a formula that often leads to crime. In November 1988, Lee was causing problems once again. Using the alias Susan Blahovec, she launched a six-day campaign of threatening phone calls against a Zephyrhills supermarket following an altercation over lottery tickets.