THE MURDERS
- Victim 1: 51-year-old Richard Mallory from Clearwater, Florida, owner of an electronics repair shop. On December 1, 1989, Mallory's car was found abandoned in Volusia County. 12 days later his body was found several miles away in a forested area, having been shot three times and wrapped in carpet.
- Victim 2: 43-year-old David Spears, Winter Garden construction worker of Bradenton, Florida. Spears' naked body was found on a dirt road in Citrus County on June 1, 1990. He had died from 6 bullet wounds to the torso.
- Victim 3: 40-year-old part-time rodeo worker, Charles Carskaddon. On June 6, 1990 in Pasco County, Carskaddon's body was found with nine small caliber bullet holes to the upper chest and torso.
- Victim 4: 50-year-old sausage salesman Troy Burress from Ocala. Burress' badly decomposed body was found on August 4, 1990, in a wooded area in Marion county with two bullet wounds.
- Victim 5: 56-year-old Charles Humphreys, a former police chief and child abuse investigator for the state of Florida. On September 12, 1990, Humphreys' fully clothed body was found in Marion County with six bullet wounds to the head and torso. His car was found in Suwannee County.
- Victim 6: 62-year-old Walter Jeno Antonio, truck driver, part-time security guard, and member of Reserve Police. Antonio's nearly nude body was found on November 19, 1990 in Dixie County with four shots to the back and the head. His car was located 5 days later across the state in Brevard County.
- Victim 7: 65-year-old Peter Siems, a retired merchant seaman who spent much of his time doing Christian ministry outreach work, whose car was found in Orange Springs on July 4, 1990. Witnesses identified Tyria Moore and Lee Wuornos as having abandoned the car after crashing it off State Road 15. A witness to the accident said the two women struggled frantically out of the car cursing at one another and throwing beer cans into the bushes, both with minor injuries. Wuornos was alleged to have ripped the license plate off the vehicle with her bare hands in a desperate attempt to remove the car of any discriminating identification. When the fire department found the women a short distance away and asked if they were the ones who had been in the accident, Wuornos reportedly cursed at them and denied involvement, so they let her be. Siems' body was never found.
INVESTIGATION, APPREHENSION, AND SENTENCING
- January 9, 1991, at the Last Resort biker bar in Daytona Beach, Lee Wuornos was arrested on an outstanding warrant following a lengthy investigation into the recent homicides. Detectives had gathered a considerable amount of evidence implicating Wuornos in the murders, including her fingerprints on pawned items belonging to some of the murdered men and from cigarette butts that had been found in their abandoned vehicles. The witness who had seen the two women crash Peter Siems' car was able to help police come up with a composite sketch, which was released statewide. Tyria Moore had seen the sketch and left Wuornos only a few days before her arrest, returning to her sister's home in Pennsylvania. This left Wuornos heartbroken, and she did little other than drink until the time of her arrest.
- Two days later, Moore was tracked down in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and was convinced by law enforcement to trick Wuornos into confessing to the crimes. Strangely enough, rather than becoming a suspect herself, Moore was made into a state's witness. In exchange for prosecutorial immunity, Moore agreed to elicit a confession from Wuornos. She was brought back to Florida and set up in a motel where, under guidance from the police, she made multiple calls to the incarcerated Wuornos, spinning a story about police harassing her and her family, about her concerns that she would be charged with the murders. She cried and told Lee that she was scared, and begged her to confess. Moore even went so far as to suggest that she might kill herself. Lee promised that she would protect Tyria and look after her wellbeing, even if it meant confessing to the crimes.
- January 16, 1991: Lee confessed to having committed the murders, but maintained that she did so in self-defense because most of the men were either going to beat her up or have non-consensual sex with her.
- Additionally, while inconsistencies in Wuornos' three hour confession were being claimed by prosecution and police, Wuornos argued that she was going through delerium tremens during the interview as a result of alcohol withdrawal, and that she was unable to think straight or function properly. She also claimed that police frequently interrupted her and did not allow her to tell her full version of events.
- Allegations of police misconduct began to surface, in which claims were made that Tyria Moore and a number of police officers involved in the investigation and arrest of Lee Wuornos had been making movie deals with producers and authors wanting to document the life of "America's first female serial killer." Additional allegations were made that Sheriff Dan Moreland and 3 of his officers were reportedly discussing movie deals with Hollywood a month BEFORE Wuornos' arrest.
- Sargent Brian Jarvis of the Marion County police force, who led the murder investigation against Wuornos, claimed that he was harassed at work following his discovery that members of the force had plans to elicit the help of Tyria Moore in obtaining move rights to Lee's story. A state attorney's report backed up this claim with the finding that Captain Binegar, Sargent Munster, and Major Dan Henry were all involved in movie discussions with Moore following Aileen's arrest, and that there were documents which indicated a movie proposal with Republic Pictures. However, since no signed documents were found or proof of money having exchanged hands uncovered, the repercussions were minor.
- Major Dan Henry resigned after the surfacing of a bugged phone conversation he'd had about making movie deals around the Lee Wuornos case.
- Sargent Munster and Captain Binegar were transferred out of the criminal investigation division following the exposure of their movie deal forays, but no other disciplinary action was taken, nor were there any attempts to give Wuornos a fair trial.
- Adding to the insidious corruption was an incident where Captain Jarvis' home was broken into following a threatening note, and the Wuornos case files and investigator files inside were destroyed while nothing else was touched. The Florida Police Department suspiciously refused to investigate the incident, even going so far as to claim Jarvis had set up the burglary himself.
- Shortly before her trial for the murder of Richard Mallory, Wuornos was legally adopted by a strange born-again Christian woman named Arlene Pralee, who claimed that God had sent her to help Aileen. Wuornos hungered for this kind of positive attention, and their friendship blossomed. However, it wasn't long before Arlene began attempting to negotiate her own money-making deals with film producers and writers. It was suspected that her adoption was simply a cover to be able to get access to Lee for the purpose of profit, because only relations were allowed to visit Wuornos at the time.
- Meanwhile, Wuornos continued to maintain that she killed all of these men in self defense after they became violent with her and attempted to rape her. She claimed in court that Mallory had tied her to the steering wheel of his car, anally and vaginally raped her, choked her with a cord, and squirted a Visine bottle full of rubbing alcohol into her anus and vagina, as well as her mouth.
- While Mallory had previously served a 9-year prison sentence for assault and attempted rape, there were no other confirmed reports of his violence against women during any of the many encounters he had with prostitutes and other sex workers in gentleman's clubs.
- Further, Moore testified that on the day Wuornos returned home after the murder of Mallory, she showed no signs of trauma or injury, and Wuornos herself seemed to tell conflicting stories regarding the events that had unfolded prior to the killings.
- Yet Wuornos claimed that at the beginning of the Mallory trial, there was picture evidence of damage to the steering wheel which was indicative of someone being tied to it and struggling to free themselves, but the pictures were not brought out as evidence in the trial. But the validity behind this claim is difficult to verify.
- However, it is important to keep in mind the corruption that went on behind the scenes during this case, which could call into question the validity of Moore's testimony, as well as the hyper-critical manner in which Lee's behavior was approached. It would make sense that, in an attempt to continue to portray her as a predatory serial killer, taking seriously allegations of rape might interfere with the public's perception of her character.
- January 13, 1992: The first and only murder trial held was for the death of Richard Mallory. It was during this trial that Wuornos relayed that a graphic rape and assault had occurred at the hands of Mallory, but his history of having served time for an assault and attempted rape, as well as institutional documents stating that he possessed strong sociopathic traits, were not brought out in the trial. Trish Jenkins, Lee's lawyer at the time, was heavily criticized for her failure to bring Mallory's previous conviction to the court's attention, and this was in many ways considered to be a grave injustice against Lee's right to a fair trial. Wuornos was also the only person to testify on her behalf, but her inability to control her emotions would again come back to damage her case.
- During the Mallory trial, the prosecution was also permitted to bring in evidence from the other six murders, despite the fact that prior bad acts are normally inadmissible in criminal cases, and this also was believed to greatly influence sentencing. Lee was convicted of Richard Mallory's murder, and became furious in the courtroom, verbally attacking the jury members as they exited, which no doubt influenced sentencing the next day. She was likely also hurt and angry after realizing that Moore had betrayed her, and had cried in the courtroom while listening to police recordings of the deceptive phone calls. Having Moore in the courtroom testifying against her was also likely very difficult on Wuornos, who at this point must have felt as though she had been betrayed and used by everyone.
- After Tyria's betrayal, Lee refused to leave her cell or speak with anyone. While on death row in a maximum security prison, she became deeply depressed and withdrawn.
- After the Mallory trial, Arlene Pralle hired a new lawyer to work on Lee's case named of Steve Blazer, who would also end up being accused of improperly defending her.
- Arlene Pralle and Steve Blazer convinced Wuornos to plead no contest to the next three murders, which is legally viewed as a guilty plea. Blazer was suspected of having urged Lee to plead no contest because he had absolutely no experience with death penalty cases, and might have known that he was out of his league. Pralle apparently believed that if Lee "came clean in the eyes of the Lord," she would be absolved of her sins, and also claimed that the death penalty would be a positive outcome, because Lee could return home to Jesus more quickly.
- March 31, 1992: Lee plead no contest to the murders of Dick Humphreys, Troy Burress, and David Spears. She continued to maintain that Richard Mallory had violently raped her, but recanted similar claims against the others, saying that they had only tried to. Yet during an interview with documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield, when Lee thought that the cameras were turned off, she admitted that recanting her allegations of rape was only done for the purpose of receiving the death penalty, because at that point she claimed that she just wanted to die.
- May 15, 1992: Wuornos was given three more death penalties for the aforementioned murders.
- In June of 1992, Wuornos plead guilty to the killing of Charles Carskaddon, and in November received a fifth death sentence. During this trial, the defense did make efforts to bring to light Mallory's sexually violent offense, but the judge refused to allow this evidence into court, and later denied requests for a retrial.
- February of 1993: Aileen plead guilty to the death of Walter Jeno Antonio, and received yet another death sentence.
- In the case of Peter Siems, since a body was never found, Aileen could not be tried for the crime.
- Arlene Pralle and Steven Glazer were to be in and out of Wuornos' life. Lee would consistently suspect that they were using her for profit, kick them out of her life, and then feel as though she desperately needed their help and re-establish contact with them. This pattern of throwing people out for being liars or traitors, and then feeling as though they were the only ones who could save her would be a chronic habit of Lee's. She also had this kind of behavior with various members of her legal representation team, making it impossible for anyone to actually help her.
- Lee did have one constant friend who did not betray her, an old companion from high school named Dawn Botkins. Wuornos wrote many letters to Botkins during her time on death row, which Botkins saved. Dawn promised Lee that she would someday publish Lee's letters in a book, in order to allow Lee to communicate her truth in the midst of all the book and movie deals that Lee claimed were full of lies. Dawn would ultimately make good on this promise some years after Lee's execution, producing a book called "Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words."
- Yet Lee's time on death row would still prove to be extremely hard on her emotionally. Locked down 23 hours a day in a small cell with very little human contact would eventually lead to further deterioration of Lee's mental state. Her written correspondence with her dear friend Dawn Botkins and her devotion to reading the Bible would be her lifelines for coping on death row.
- July of 2001: Wuornos appeared before a circuit judge to request that her mandated appeals be stopped so that the criminal justice system could proceed with her death sentence. In an attempt to speed up her execution, Wuornos recanted her claims that the murders were in self defense.
- October 9, 2002: Aileen Wuornos was put to death by lethal injection in Florida State Prison at the age of 46.