00:00:06
-November 30, 1989,
Central Florida -- when a 51-year-old male
picked up a prostitute
00:00:12
from the side of the road, he had no idea
that she would turn out to be a cold-blooded killer.
00:00:20
-She was just
utterly remorseless. This is somebody who enjoyed
watching men die.
00:00:25
-She shot him four times
with a nine-shot revolver. -In her mass-murder spree,
hardened killer Aileen Wuornos
00:00:34
targeted middle-aged wealthy men
with expensive cars. -And she killed to steal. There was no sympathy, no...
00:00:43
She was just some ruthless,
mean bitch. -Very few women have ever killed in such a violent,
vile manner in history.
00:00:55
-Eventually, she was
recorded confessing with the help of her girlfriend. In just one year, this female
serial killer callously shot,
00:01:14
robbed, and murdered seven men, making Aileen Wuornos one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:01:21
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Daytona Beach, Florida. It was here
that sex worker Aileen Wuornos went on a murderous rampage
00:01:51
between November 1989
and November 1990. Her actions left locals
fearing for their lives.
00:01:59
-Wuornos shot and killed,
at point-blank range, seven men between 1989 and 1990.
00:02:08
-Here is somebody who is
deliberately targeting men who are looking to engage
in the services of a sex worker,
00:02:15
and she is killing them
and robbing them and disposing of their bodies. -Detective David Taylor was
on the police task force
00:02:23
that was instrumental
in bringing Wuornos to justice. -It shocked the community
that once we identified
00:02:31
Aileen Wuornos
as the killer of these men, that a female was that vicious
in killing these people.
00:02:41
-About 9 in 10 serial killers
are men, and 1 in 10 are women. Female serial killers tend
to use quite remote methods
00:02:49
like poisoning, but Wuornos literally went
and picked victims as they drove past her
on the highway.
00:02:56
It's very rare to have
a female serial killer, but it's even rarer
to have one that kills
00:03:01
in the way that Wuornos did. She essentially killed
like a man. -Mike Joiner was
an undercover police officer
00:03:10
on the Wuornos case
and was key to her arrest. -She would be on the side
of the road and prostituting.
00:03:17
She would pick up men
as they stopped to help her, and then she would take them
somewhere and kill them
00:03:28
and take their money
or take whatever value they had. -Detective Brian Jarvis was also
on the Wuornos task force,
00:03:37
and he recalls the impact her
killing spree had on Florida. -At this particular time
because of the way
00:03:44
the bodies were found,
the way things turned up, there was a lot of panic
over this.
00:03:50
-To have a serial killer
on the loose is something that is going to have
an impact on any community.
00:03:56
Everybody in Florida
uses the highways. Everybody feels that they have
that connection to this case.
00:04:05
-This killer's story
begins in 1956. Aileen Wuornos was born
on the 29th of February
00:04:13
in Rochester, Michigan. Her mother was just
16 years old when she gave birth
and was unable to raise her.
00:04:23
-By March 1960,
when Aileen is just 4, she's formally adopted
by her mother's parents,
00:04:31
her grandparents. -She had a really brutal
upbringing with them, so she was regularly beaten
by her grandfather.
00:04:39
There were allegations
of incest within the family. -Her grandfather had
a homebuilt sauna in his house,
00:04:48
and if he wanted to punish her for doing something
he didn't like, he'd lock her in the sauna
and crank up the heat
00:04:54
and just let her stay in there. -Aileen's abusive childhood
sent her on a downward spiral
00:05:01
and fueled her hatred of men. -This was somebody
who was constantly in fear. Wuornos' grandfather allegedly
00:05:09
repeatedly said to her
that she was worthless, that she should never have been
born, that she was a mistake.
00:05:15
So she's learning that
she can't trust anyone, that she can't depend
upon anybody,
00:05:19
and this is very,
very dangerous. -Aileen learned early to use
any means available to survive.
00:05:28
-Before she got to her
teen years, she was known
as a cigarette bandit. She would trade sexual favors
for packs of cigarettes.
00:05:36
-It's said that
from around age 11, she's using her body as
something to trade, as a tool,
00:05:42
and this kind of disconnection
from her emotions is something that is going to
have a significant impact
00:05:49
on the rest of her life. -Her behavior left her pregnant,
aged 14. -Now, on the orders
of her grandfather,
00:05:57
that baby is adopted. It's taken away from her,
and this is just reinforcing those ideas
that she already has that,
00:06:07
"Those who are supposed
to love me hurt me," that, "I am worthless," that,
"I'm not deserving of love."
00:06:12
-Shortly after she was forced
to give up her child, Aileen was hit
by another tragedy.
00:06:19
-Her grandmother dies
of liver failure, having been quite a heavy
drinker for many years.
00:06:24
Her grandfather actually blames
her for her grandmother's death. -Her grandfather was furious
00:06:30
and threw Wuornos
out of the house. -Aged just 15,
Wuornos was left homeless. Alone, her only option
was to live in the woods
00:06:39
at the end of their street. -She lives
a very feral existence, sleeping in an old car,
00:06:46
and she's still a child
at this point, and this is
incredibly damaging. There is absolutely
nobody there for her.
00:06:53
She is literally just taking
each day as it comes. She's making sure
that she has enough to eat.
00:07:00
She is basically using her body
as she's used it before. She's learning that life
is full of rejection,
00:07:06
it's full of pain,
it's full of fear, and that she really needs
to hurt others before they get the chance
to hurt her.
00:07:13
-One person she was still close
to was her brother Keith. Just 11 months older
than Aileen,
00:07:19
the rumor was that
their relationship was an unnatural one. -There were allegations
of incest.
00:07:26
School friends of Keith said that they'd witnessed
these things going on. So she felt a connection,
00:07:32
but it was a very pathological
and a very toxic one. -Unable to cope living outside
00:07:38
during the cold winter months
in Michigan, aged 16, Aileen hitchhiked
over 1,000 miles west
00:07:45
to the warmer climes
of Colorado. Two years later, she was arrested
for her first offense --
00:07:53
driving under the influence
and disorderly conduct, which included
the dangerous discharge
00:07:59
of a .22-caliber weapon. Eventually, in 1976, age 20, she hitchhiked 2,000 miles
00:08:08
southeast to sunny Florida. -It is no accident that very shortly after
she gets to Florida,
00:08:21
she falls in love with --
or at least decides to marry -- a 69-year-old man
called Lewis Gratz Fell.
00:08:31
He was president
of the yacht club, but it was a doomed marriage. -She's been incredibly violent
towards him.
00:08:39
Aileen was actually
beating him up. She was hitting him
with his own walking cane.
00:08:44
-Lewis put a restraining order
on Wuornos and filed for annulment just
weeks after they were married.
00:08:50
While the proceedings
were going through, Aileen received
some devastating family news.
00:08:56
-In 1976, her brother, Keith,
dies of throat cancer, and she's absolutely
beside herself,
00:09:02
and even though
that relationship was an incredibly abnormal
and dysfunctional one,
00:09:07
she felt that she had
an ally in him, but now she was
completely on her own. -Aileen received $10,000
when her brother died.
00:09:18
-She spends it
almost within weeks -- guns, cars, motel rooms. And then she decides she has
to sustain this lifestyle
00:09:33
and turns to armed
robbery to do it. -In 1981, she was arrested
for stealing $35
00:09:41
and two packets of cigarettes
from a convenience store. Wuornos spent
over a year in jail,
00:09:47
but that didn't deter her. Over the next decade,
her criminal activity escalated.
00:09:53
-She really did
demonstrate versatility. She was being arrested
for driving under the influence,
00:09:58
for assault and battery,
for robbery. -One man claimed
when she was a prostitute again
00:10:04
that she whipped her gun out and put it to his head
and demanded $200. She was, to put it politely,
out of control.
00:10:13
-In 1986, Wuornos met a woman
who changed her life. -When she met Tyria,
what Aileen thought,
00:10:20
"This is my soul mate.
This is the person I want to spend
the rest of my life with,
00:10:24
and I will do anything
for this girl." -The owner
of The Last Resort Bar in Daytona Beach,
Al Bulling,
00:10:31
remembers Wuornos well,
who was a regular customer. -She used to come in here. She'd shoot pool here
with her girlfriend, Ty.
00:10:39
She was a little mouthy
with Aileen. If she needed a beer,
she'd sit on a pool table
00:10:44
and kind of demand her
get another beer or whatever. -Having blown her inheritance,
Wuornos took it upon herself
00:10:52
to raise the money
the two needed to live. -Aileen would go out
and prostitute to make money
00:10:57
so that she could buy things
for Tyria. She would want to
take care of her and make sure she was happy
and never want to leave her,
00:11:03
and I think that was
what it boiled down to. -Daytona Beach, Florida. November 30, 1989,
33-year-old
00:11:12
Aileen Wuornos was now living
with lover Tyria Moore and was indulging in a host
of petty crimes
00:11:19
to maintain
their extravagant lifestyle. The frequency of the crimes
and the force
00:11:25
Wuornos used to enact them
was increasing. It all came to a head
the night she was picked up
00:11:32
by 51-year-old Richard Mallory. -Richard Mallory owned
an electrical repair shop,
00:11:39
and he'd been divorced
for many years, and he didn't make
any secret of the fact
00:11:43
that he did enjoy engaging
in the services of sex workers. -He picked her up hitchhiking.
They were drinking.
00:11:49
They were hanging out
as it were, and one thing led to another, some type of violent encounter
where she ended up killing him.
00:11:57
She shot him four times
with a nine-shot revolver. She took a couple of pieces
of property
00:12:03
that belonged to him,
a camera and a radar detector, and she pawned them. She made some money
off of the deal.
00:12:09
-When Richard Mallory's body
was found two weeks after he was killed, there was no evidence to clarify
what sparked her rage.
00:12:17
-When his body was found,
it was very decomposed. Basically, all we have
to work with
00:12:23
is what we have found
at the crime scene -- the physical evidence and
the trace evidence, et cetera.
00:12:29
We do know that he was shot
multiple times, and this victim was found
in a secluded area
00:12:34
right outside
the city of Daytona. -What triggered Wuornos to kill
for the first time
00:12:40
remains a mystery, but what is certain is that
the murder of Richard Mallory was the beginning of a dark
and deadly chapter.
00:12:50
-For her entire life, Wuornos
has been victimized by men. She's been abused by them,
00:12:56
but now
she's turned the tables. She's the one that's in control,
and she's very much enjoying it
00:13:00
because she's learned
from a very early age that violence equals power, and she really is on quite
a high at this point.
00:13:08
-Taking one life once
wasn't enough. Six months later,
Wuornos struck again. -There's usually what they call
a brief cooling-off period,
00:13:18
and this absolutely
applied here. Large part of it was due
to her paranoia and her fear of getting caught,
00:13:26
and when she came back from
that brief cooling-off period, now, she was the predator.
00:13:32
She was looking for who she
was going to kill next. -She's somebody
who's being proactive.
00:13:38
She's seeking out victims. She's getting access to them. She has an opportunity
to harm them,
00:13:45
and she takes that opportunity. -These men, they were
all white males. They were all traveling
the roads alone.
00:13:52
They were middle-aged, 40 to 65. -On May 19, 1990, she was
picked up on the I-75 highway
00:14:05
by a 43-year-old machine
operator, David Spears. When they pulled over,
and he began to undress,
00:14:12
she slipped out
of the passenger side door, walked around to the driver's
side, aimed, and fired.
00:14:20
[ Gunshot ] -He'd been shot six times. One shot was not enough
for Wuornos. She was making a point
with her killings.
00:14:37
She was saying,
"This is for all the men who have abused me
over the years." -This was somebody who enjoyed
watching men die
00:14:46
because for the first time
in her life, she was powerful. She was the one in control.
00:14:51
She was the one
calling the shots. -David was last seen by his son, leaving work at midday
to meet his ex-wife.
00:14:59
When he didn't show up,
his family reported him missing. -Our patrol division
had come upon a vehicle
00:15:06
that was abandoned on I-75. It was in the southbound lane
on the shoulder. It had a flat tire,
and when they ran
00:15:12
the VIN number on the vehicle,
it came back to David Spears, who had been reported
a missing person.
00:15:18
We searched the area. We secured the vehicle
to process it, and we found that she had taken
some stuff out of the vehicle
00:15:24
and tossed it off the side
of the road into the weeds. The items included the license
plate or the tag from the car.
00:15:32
-David Spears' body was found
less than two weeks later, dumped in Citrus County a
few miles from the I-75 highway.
00:15:44
May the 31st, Wuornos went
on the prowl again. In Pasco County, Florida,
40-year-old Charles Carskaddon,
00:15:52
a part-time rodeo rider, picked up Wuornos about
30 minutes north of Tampa. -He was traveling back
from St. Louis.
00:16:00
He had been up there
visiting his mother, and he drove back from St. Louis
to the Tampa area
00:16:05
where he was living
with his fiancée, and just before he got to Tampa,
he encountered Aileen.
00:16:12
-Aileen had developed
a deadly routine. Once a man picked her up,
his fate was sealed.
00:16:19
-They would drive away,
and she'd be undressing, and they'd find
a remote location.
00:16:24
She'd encourage the victim
to also remove his clothes. -As Charles undressed,
Wuornos slipped out of the car
00:16:32
and came round
to the driver's side door. Then, at point-blank range,
she fired.
00:16:38
♪♪ -She didn't just kill. She shot Charles Carskaddon
nine times. ♪♪ -Once she was sure he was dead,
00:16:57
she took his car
and his possessions. -She didn't do that
with Richard Mallory. She just took items
she could use.
00:17:08
Now, she's starting to gather
those souvenirs and those trophies, and it's becoming a passion
of hers to do this stuff.
00:17:15
-She then dumped Charles' body
a few miles from the highway
in Pasco County. -She left these victims
00:17:24
basically
in the middle of nowhere, and to do that to another human
being, there's zero compassion.
00:17:30
She's pure evil. -Just a week
after her last killing, the deadly predator
was on the hunt again.
00:17:39
On June the 7th, Wuornos chose
to work her favorite highway, the I-75 in Central Florida.
00:17:48
After three murders,
she'd honed her technique. -Wuornos' victims were all men
who drove expensive cars,
00:17:56
so they were
the symbol of success. -That night, Christian
missionary Peter Siems,
00:18:02
age 65, left his home
in Jupiter, Florida, and was driving north
on the I-75. -Peter Siems was on a road trip,
00:18:13
and he never made it
to his destination. -His intent was to drive
up to New Jersey,
00:18:18
and from there, he had planned
on going over to Arkansas. He had a number of bibles
in the car with him.
00:18:22
He was going to pass
them out along the way. -Instead, for some
unknown reason, Peter Siems picked up
Aileen Wuornos.
00:18:31
-You could not be thought of
as a more upright character. He also took part in an
Outreach Christian Ministry,
00:18:39
but I think that
that infuriated Wuornos because she thought,
"You hypocrite, I am going to kill you,"
and she duly did.
00:18:47
[ Gunshot ] -The following month,
the car was found in the Ocala National Forest
50 miles west of Daytona Beach.
00:18:57
The evidence discovered
would point to Wuornos as the terrifying
serial killer targeting middle-aged men
across the Sunshine State.
00:19:08
Daytona Beach, Florida,
July 1990. Aileen Wuornos was living
in a local motel with her girlfriend,
Tyria Moore.
00:19:18
In under seven months, the serial killer
had callously shot, murdered,
and robbed four men.
00:19:25
In what was by now
a sadistic pattern, when each of the middle-aged men
pulled over and picked her up,
00:19:32
the 34-year-old sex worker
attacked. [ Gunshot ] -She was just
utterly remorseless.
00:19:40
She didn't just shoot them once. She'd shoot them three times,
four times, five times.
00:19:44
-They had all been shot
with a small-caliber weapon, namely a .22, and another trait
that these victims shared
00:19:53
was that
they had all been robbed of their personal effects, their pants pockets
pulled inside out.
00:19:58
Their personal I.D. was missing, and their vehicle
was missing, as well. -On July 4, 1990,
00:20:05
the car belonging to
65-year-old Peter Siems was found abandoned
in the Ocala National Forest
00:20:11
in Orange Springs, an hour's drive
from Daytona Beach. -Now, this is interesting
00:20:18
because his body
has never been discovered. The only way we know
that he's dead is that his car was taken
by Moore and Wuornos
00:20:30
and driven around. -Aileen and Tyria had decided that they wanted to go see
the fireworks in Daytona Beach.
00:20:38
As they were driving,
they noticed a sign that indicated there was
an Indian reservation
00:20:42
up in the Ocala Forest. They turned around,
and Tyria was going just a little bit too fast.
00:20:47
She went off the road. The car turned on its passenger
side and slid. The engine stalled out.
00:20:52
The carburetor had flooded. They couldn't get it started. -The witness reported
the suspicious encounter
00:20:58
to Marion County
Police Department in Florida, who went to investigate. -Now, the one thing that was
important to note here was,
00:21:07
that was the first time somebody
actually saw these girls. -We had received a telephone
call through our 911 center
00:21:14
that a vehicle had crashed
in the community of Orange Springs, Florida, and walking away from
that vehicle were two women.
00:21:24
-When they got to the scene, the investigators
searched the car and made note
of its distinct condition.
00:21:32
-The license plate
had been removed, the driver's side seat was in
the forward-most position,
00:21:37
and we would find that certain
things were missing from his vehicle. In this case, it was
his receipt book and cash.
00:21:44
So at this point,
we have another missing person. We have no idea
what happened to him.
00:21:51
-Using the VIN number
on the vehicle, the car was soon identified as belonging
to missing person Peter Siems.
00:22:00
-We searched the areas
extensively. I don't know if it was for days
or weeks, but it was a long time
that we spent up there
00:22:06
looking for Peter Siems' body, looking for any type
of evidence. -The police found a series
of pawn-shop tickets in the car.
00:22:15
When they tracked down
the store, they made a major breakthrough
in the case. -One pawn ticket we found
was for a box of tools,
00:22:24
and that's one of the things that was stolen
from David Spears. The other pawn ticket we found
was for a 35-millimeter camera
00:22:32
and a radar detector. That's what was stolen
from Richard Mallory. -They submitted the car
to forensic examination
00:22:39
and made an important discovery on the driver's side
door handle. -Wuornos leaves a palm print
in Siems' car,
00:22:50
which will eventually become
extremely significant. -Wuornos would pawn
many of the items
00:22:55
that she stole from her victims
in order to get some fast money, and her fingerprints would
still be on these items.
00:23:03
Now, because Aileen had such
a significant criminal record, her fingerprints were on file,
00:23:08
and it was only going to be
a matter of time before they were matched up, and she was connected
to these murders.
00:23:14
-But before the police could
piece the puzzle together, Wuornos struck again. -It became very frustrating,
00:23:21
and I can remember
even at times thinking, "Are we going to be able
to solve this?
00:23:25
Are we going to be able
to come up with something?" and every time we got
another body, it mounted.
00:23:30
It, you know, it got worse. -On July 30, 1990, Wuornos selected her
fifth victim,
00:23:38
a 50-year-old salesman called
Troy Burress. -Troy Burress, he'd gone out
to do a delivery run,
00:23:45
and when he got to Daytona, he headed north up
into Ormond Beach, made a few stops up there,
turned around.
00:23:50
When he was returning
to the plant, he disappeared. -On the way back to Daytona,
he picked up Aileen.
00:23:59
Like previous victims, Troy pulled up
at a secluded spot. Minutes later, Wuornos shot him
twice at point-blank range.
00:24:09
[ Gunshot ] [ Gunshot ] 50-year-old Troy's body
was found five days later. -One of our deputies
came upon his truck,
00:24:23
and it had been abandoned
at the intersection of State Route 40 and 19,
a very isolated area.
00:24:31
-A month later,
she took her sixth life. On September 12, 1990,
56-year-old retired police chief
00:24:39
Charles "Dick" Humphreys
was coming off the I-75 when he picked up
Aileen Wuornos.
00:24:45
They drove
to a deserted location a few miles off the highway
in southwestern Marion County
00:24:52
and pulled over. David Taylor was the homicide
detective called to the scene. -The evidence is consistent
with Mr. Humphreys
00:25:02
getting out of the vehicle
from the driver's side, and we're looking
at Aileen Wuornos
00:25:06
getting out
from the passenger side, and it was at that point
that shots rang out,
00:25:12
so Mr. Humphreys
is shot several times. He staggers over
to this location, and that's where
Mr. Humphreys collapses,
00:25:19
but what was so important
to us was the fact that he was shot one time
at a close, non-contact range,
00:25:26
being that the gun was held
only just a few inches away from his chest
when that round was fired.
00:25:32
-Wuornos shot Charles Humphreys
multiple times. -She's using much more violence
than she needs
00:25:39
to get the job done. It shows, to me, that she's
enjoying this overkill. It's not enough to kill him.
00:25:47
She has to destroy
this individual, and this is somebody
whose behavior is escalating.
00:25:54
-By the autumn of that year,
investigators were still unable to identify the killer
and stop the murders.
00:26:05
-By the time
Mr. Humphreys was killed, we had thought about
there being a connection,
00:26:14
so we had contacted every agency
in Central Florida, whether it was on a local,
state, or federal level
00:26:19
because we didn't know anything. We were almost in the dark
on this, and it was very frustrating.
00:26:25
-Officers revisited
the evidence from the previous
six murder cases, searching for clues.
00:26:31
-And it wasn't more than
just a couple weeks later when Sgt. Brian Jarvis was actually going through
other cases in Florida
00:26:43
that had very similar M.O.s
such as an older white male shot multiple times,
vehicle missing,
00:26:51
and shot with
a small-caliber weapon. And it was Brian that began
to connect a couple dots.
00:27:00
-By winter of 1990,
a task force was formed, made up of detectives from
several of Florida's counties.
00:27:10
-We actually all met at the
Marion County Sheriff's Office. That's when this picture
began to evolve.
00:27:16
"Eh, there's a possibility
these cases could be related." -While the police continued
their investigation,
00:27:24
Wuornos was free to kill again. -The most important thing
on our minds at that point was,
00:27:28
"We got to stop the killing. We have to do something
to stop the killing," and then we started
with the task force,
00:27:35
and we had another body. It was devastating. -She kills Walter Jeno Antonio,
a man of 62,
00:27:42
who was found
in a logging road. He'd been shot four times
in the back, in the head,
00:27:51
and his car had been stolen. -Antonio's abandoned car
was found five days later just south of Daytona Beach
in Brevard County.
00:28:00
-Walter Jeno Antonio was
a reserve deputy sheriff with the Brevard County
Sheriff's Office,
00:28:07
and some of the things
that were taken from him, personal effects, were like a set of handcuffs
and a flashlight.
00:28:15
-For the task force, another murder
was a mighty blow. -It's like,
"Why couldn't we do more?"
00:28:23
You know,
"How could we let this happen?" and it's kind of
a personal blame, and it's,
"What can we do?"
00:28:29
-The task force refocused on the
case of missing man Peter Siems, hoping to find clues that would
lead them to the killer.
00:28:37
-We were perplexed
with that case because we had not
located his body, but he was
a middle-aged white male.
00:28:45
The biggest piece of evidence
in that case was we had eyewitnesses
that seen these two females
00:28:52
leaving the scene
of that crash. -After interviewing
the witnesses, the police were able to draw
a composite sketch
00:29:00
of the two women,
and that changed everything. -I think the eureka moment came
the first time we went public.
00:29:07
Within the first hour
of releasing these composites, we had a call that came in.
00:29:12
It was item number five, our fifth lead
that named Tyria and Aileen, and in very short sequence,
00:29:20
we had three other leads come in
that also named the same girls, so now we knew
there was something to that.
00:29:27
-Those leads initially took us
to some biker bars. Now we have undercover
investigators
00:29:34
that are now going
from bar to bar looking for people
that look familiar with the people
in the composite sketches.
00:29:43
-One of the undercover officers
sent to find the suspected serial killer
was Mike Joiner.
00:29:50
-I was the lieutenant over
at Special Investigation Unit, SIU Unit. They'd called me into a meeting
and said that they had found out
00:30:02
that she was staying in Daytona
or close to Daytona and wanted me to go over there
and see if I could find her
00:30:13
in some of those biker bars
over there and maybe, you know,
get close to her. -Daytona Beach, Florida,
January 1991.
00:30:25
After callously shooting
and murdering seven men, the net was finally closing in
on a cruel serial killer,
00:30:32
Aileen Wuornos. -She is a woman who took
pleasure in not only killing but also robbing her victims.
00:30:44
-Wuornos is targeting adult men,
and she's a sex worker. It's normally the sex workers
00:30:50
who are vulnerable victims
of their clients, so she looks very different. She kills like a man.
00:30:56
She's right in front of them,
watching them die and really quite enjoying it. -34-year-old Wuornos
did not know it yet,
00:31:04
but she was about to meet
her destiny in Daytona Beach. After a composite sketch
was released to the public,
00:31:13
dozens of leads came in, and Aileen Wuornos was
identified as the prime suspect.
00:31:19
-When we reviewed the leads,
it showed us that they had ties to the locations
that we were looking at.
00:31:25
It indicated
that they'd gone inland, which would've
been Marion County, and then to the East Coast,
which was Daytona Beach.
00:31:32
So a number of the undercover
officers from all over the state that we were working with
went over to Daytona Beach
00:31:39
in an attempt to locate her. -Within a couple of days, she was found by undercover
police officer Mike Joiner.
00:31:48
-I walked in the bar down there,
and I saw her. She was shooting pool,
and I recognized her,
00:31:56
and she had a bad scar
on her forehead. Did my heart go to racing
and beating? No.
00:32:04
An undercover officer's
worst enemy here can be hisself if he don't control
his emotions.
00:32:15
So I just ordered another beer
and kept on working. But I knew I had her, and I knew I wasn't going
to let her out of my sight.
00:32:29
-Mike spent three days
following Wuornos around the biker bars
in the area. In his bid to get close to her,
00:32:36
he even slept at her favorite
hangout, The Last Resort. -And they had school buses,
seats all on the back porch,
00:32:45
and that's where I slept
was on the school bus. And when they'd open the bar up
at 7:00,
00:32:51
I went back inside
and went drinking again and shooting pool. I mean, that's all you done.
00:32:56
You shot pool and drank beer, and she had no money,
and I had all the money, so who's she going to
stay the closest to?
00:33:06
Bitch got nowhere.
From then on, I had -- I started buying her beer,
playing pool,
00:33:11
and we had kind of
hung together. -With a task force
secretly stationed outside,
00:33:18
on January 9, 1991,
Mike Joiner made his move. -We were in the bar. We were dancing,
and I had a wad of money,
00:33:30
and that's what
she was interested in, and she wanted to know
if I wanted to go out
00:33:36
one night and party,
and I told her, I says, "Yeah, I'd love to go out, but,"
I said, "You stink.
00:33:46
You ain't had a bath
in I don't know when," and I said, "I stink,"
and I said, "I ain't doing that.
00:33:54
I'll go get a motel room,
and we'll clean up, but I ain't going out
with no stinking-ass woman."
00:34:02
-Mike told Wuornos
to wait for him at the bar while he went
to get his room key.
00:34:07
Instead, he met with
the task force outside. -And I meet with my outside
people and tell them --
00:34:17
you know, we make a plan because
they knew what she had in mind. The exact words
I had told him was,
00:34:24
"Piss on the fire
and call in the dogs. This hunt's over with. This is her,
and I'm not going off with her
00:34:32
'cause I'm not going to be
the next victim." -Mike returned to the bar
with a motel key
00:34:38
and showed it to Wuornos. He then waited for her
to make the next move. -Did I get worried about it?
No.
00:34:47
She wasn't going to kill me
in the bar. You know, I really
wasn't worried about it,
00:34:52
not at that point. I just went and got another beer
and said just, "Whenever you get ready,
I'm ready to go. Let's go."
00:35:01
-A little while later,
Wuornos and the undercover cop walked out of the bar. The owner of The Last Resort,
Al Bulling,
00:35:09
was an eyewitness
to what happened next. -They were just sitting
at the bar drinking, you know?
00:35:14
They didn't want to arrest her
in the bar or anything because they didn't know
what she had
00:35:20
or didn't want
nobody else getting hurt, so they're waiting for her
to walk out the door.
00:35:25
Soon as they hit the door,
that's when they arrested her. -Wuornos was bundled into a car
and taken away.
00:35:31
The task force had successfully
executed the arrest safely. -I wasn't worried
about my safety
00:35:39
'cause I had
the best backup in the world. -It was a relief.
I think that's the best way
00:35:44
to describe it,
as a relief. -The next day, investigators
manage to track down Wuornos' partner, Tyria Moore,
in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
00:35:54
-And they said to her,
"Let's make a deal. If you can provide evidence, if you can help us
convict Aileen Wuornos,
00:36:01
then we will give you
immunity from prosecution," so I think this was a very,
very tempting offer.
00:36:09
-Tyria agreed to call Aileen and let the police record
their conversations. -What?
00:36:44
[ Crying ] -The same month
she was arrested, Aileen Wuornos fully confessed
to the seven murders.
00:37:17
-Sure. -Despite the seriousness
of her crimes, Wuornos refused an attorney. But in what was the cornerstone
of her defense,
00:37:50
she claimed that in each case,
the men had tried to rape her. -[ Crying ] -Wuornos is trying to
look out for herself.
00:38:20
She's still trying to perform
this role as the victim because I think she's more
than familiar
00:38:25
with the fact
that many sex workers are regularly raped
and assaulted by their clients,
00:38:30
and I think she's trying
to garner a bit of sympathy for herself in doing this. -Her trial for
first-degree murder
00:38:51
started a year later
on January 13, 1992, at the Volusia County Courthouse
near Daytona.
00:39:01
It was an extraordinary defense. After all, she could simply have
reported them to the police,
00:39:08
but she didn't do that. She took the law
into her own hands and indeed executed
them herself.
00:39:17
-Wuornos is a simmering
pot of resentment, and it's not enough
that she's killed her victims,
00:39:23
but she wants to make them
suffer after they've died. She wants to tarnish
their reputations,
00:39:29
so she says that
her victims picked her up. They targeted her. They were the predators,
not her.
00:39:37
-In an unusual twist, Wuornos was only tried
for her first murder, that of 51-year-old
Richard Mallory.
00:39:45
Florida State Attorney John
Tanner was the lead prosecutor. -In Florida, if you have
a series of crimes
00:39:53
that are related
in certain factors, then you may be able to bring in
evidence of those other crimes,
00:40:01
and in this case,
it was murder. -Called the Williams Rule,
John Tanner was able to draw
00:40:06
a link
between the seven murders. -Each of these killings
looked almost identical,
00:40:12
showing, I think, basically
that this appeared to be the print
of the same killer,
00:40:17
and it certainly challenged
the theory that she was simply
defending herself against rape.
00:40:24
When you're saying that, "Everyone that picked me up
tried to rape me," the credibility
becomes a real issue.
00:40:29
-On January 27, 1992, Aileen Wuornos was found guilty
of the murder of Richard Mallory
00:40:37
and sentenced to death. Then she pulled
a major surprise. -One of the odd twists
of this whole thing --
00:40:46
after being sentenced
for Richard Mallory's death, she elected to plead guilty for five other counts
of first-degree murder,
00:40:56
and she accepted the death
penalty without going to trial. She really just wanted
to get it over with.
00:41:02
She didn't want to go
to trial again, and she didn't
want to face Tyria. -By November 1992,
Wuornos had been given a total
00:41:10
of six death sentences. She was never charged
with the murder of Peter Siems as his body was never found.
00:41:19
After 10 years of appeals
and litigation, she finally met her fate. -Very close to the end
of her life, she said,
00:41:29
"I have hate crawling
through my system. I'm competent, sane,
and trying to tell the truth.
00:41:39
I'm one who seriously
hates human life, and I would kill again." -Aileen Wuornos was executed
by lethal injection
00:41:49
on October 9, 2002. -Her reactions
were typical Aileen. She was verbal. She was discussing
something about,
00:42:00
"The mother ship's ready
to blast off," that she would be back
again one day, and, "Here we go."
00:42:06
-I've told a lot of people
that, when we stop talking
about Bonnie and Clyde, that'll probably be
the same day
00:42:14
we quit talking
about Aileen Wuornos. -Some people believe
that she was an abuse victim,
00:42:19
that she was
very childlike, vulnerable. Other people feel that
she was a sadistic killer.
00:42:25
She enjoyed ending men's lives. In reality, it was probably
a bit of both, and that's why we continue
to be fascinated by her.
00:42:33
-In just one year, she callously
killed seven men in cold blood and then robbed them.
00:42:40
She had a record unmatched
by any other female killer. The violent nature
of her multiple murders
00:42:47
makes Aileen Wuornos one of
the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪