Made with Riete Oord (producer),
Barry Ackroyd (cinematographer)
and Richard Lewis (editor)
Running Time: 90 minutes
CH4, who financed it, at first hated it when it was filmed. Riete and I believed it mirrored our experience and refused to change it. They wanted experts in white coats giving their opinions, to make it more objective. It fortunately won the Royal Television Society Award.
Aileen Wuornos is claimed to be the world's first female serial killer. A hitch-hiking prostitute, she killed seven of her clients, and is now on death row in the State of Florida facing the electric chair. The three main characters are Aileen Wuornos, whom we see in prison, her born-again Christian mother, Eileen Pralee, who just adopted Aileen Wuornos last year, and her lawyer, Steve Glazer. The film raises a number of questions about official corruption, not least of which is whether in fact she is a serial killer at all, or if that label was just a commercial means of selling Aileen Wuornos and her story.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Interstate 75 runs through Central Florida, a route for millions of tourists each year. Eileen Warners, who is better known as Lee, was just a drifter of 16, which she first came down to Daytona Beach. The I-75 was a highway. Lee won us, knew well, she worked as a prostitute. Hitching rides from exit to exit. She claimed to have had thousands of. Men over the. Years, then, between 1989 and 1990, she murdered seven men. The FBI labeled only warn US America's first female serial killer. And since then, the. Book and movie deals poured in. Lee warns his girlfriend, Tyria Moore, once the prime suspect himself was not charged. Before their arrest, police were hunting for two women, popularly referred to as the Angels of death.
NEWSREADER #1: Serial killing seemed to have become a brutal fact of life. Tragically, they happen so often they sometimes take on a horrible familiarity, but there's one string of murders unlike any you've ever heard about.
NEWSREADER #1: First, there was Ted Bundy. Then the Gainesville murders, and now Central Florida is being threatened with news of yet another round of serial killings. Eight men have been shot to death in cold blood on Central Florida highways, including the busy tourist route of I-75. But this time there's an even more chilling twist to the slayings. Police say for the first time in criminal history, these killers may be murdering with a feminine touch. The main suspects are two young women who play damsels in distress along the roadway.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): On January the 9th, 1991, Lee Wanas was arrested at the last resort biker bar in Daytona Beach.
POLICE INTERVIEWER: How you doing?
AILEEN: Well, I came here to confess to murder.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): This the original police video of Lee Warnasch confessing to the murder of seven. Men Tyree, Amor, her girlfriend was not charged.
AILEEN: I just wish I never would’ve done this shit. I wish I never woulda got that gun. I wish to God, I never was a hooker. And I just wish I never woulda done what I did.
I still have to say to myself, I still say that it was in self defense. Because most of ‘em either were gonna start to beat me up or were gonna screw me in the ass, and they’d get rough with me, so I’d fight ‘em and I’d get away from ‘em.
And then I’d…as I’d get away from ‘em, I’d run to the front of the car. Or jump over the seat or whatever, grab my gun and just start shootin’.
Which they would be out of the car. Most of them would be nude ‘cause they took their clothes off, see.
And then they didn’t, you know, didn’t think about runnin’ back in the car or anything.
I would start shooting out… from out of the car, shoot at ‘em.
STEVE: Hi boys and girls.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): This Steve Glazer, Lee's lawyer.
STEVE: When I was a child that was abused by my parents and I've developed an imaginary friend. And I built him, Lothar is the protection that I don't have. My dog died so I keep Lothar out here to keep the drug addicts away from the house and.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): You made Lothar yourself.
STEVE: Made him out of my own… I made him out of my own two hands. I built him.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Stephen Loather lived in. A teepee together for several years. This Steve's office. Before he became a lawyer, Steve worked as a musician. He once opened for Leon Redbone. We're driving with Steve to meet Arlene Praley, who adopted Lee, warned us last year. Arlene, a born again Christian, lives on his 35 acre horse farm where she breeds Tennessee Walker horses.
[wolf howls]
STEVE: The wolves.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She breeds wolves too.
STEVE: Yeah.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): My main problem so far is that Steve and Arlene have told me that Lee wants $25,000 for the interview. I'd always thought the son of Sam Law prevented people from profiting from their crimes, but apparently the son of Sam isn't in effect anymore. Last year, Arlene employed Steve to handle her adoption of Lee Warner.
STEVE: Nick Broomfield
PRALLE: Very pleased to meet with you.
STEVE: Arlene Prailey.
PRALLE: Do you know she has our name?
NICK: She has your name?
PRALLE: Her legal name is Eileen Carroll Warner Praley.
NICK: Because you adopted her.
PRALLE: And changed her name.
NICK: There must be a real bond between you. How were you aware that there was such a. Strong bond between you. What made you feel?
PRALLE: It's a neat story, but I can't tell you, but the one thing I can tell you is our in laws have since legally.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Arlene was refusing to talk until her daughter Lee got paid the $25,000.
PRALLE: My husband myself, yes. That was OK to say right? But as far as me and Lee and how we got together, no, I just I can't. I can't start it cause you see I get so excited when I talk about it that I'll start heading just into one hurdle, which Steven say, OK, you could go over one hurdle, but then I can't stop. It's like a horse that loves to jump, and when I talk about her I just I love her and I keep going.
STEVE: I told you it's a fascinating story because of the way. All the characters in the play here are just so very interesting.
PRALLE: My doctor in Gainesville would probably even be willing for you to interview him. He is a surgeon. And when I had my accident last year on April the 14th. It was horrible. I mean I got kicked in the back, it lacerated my liver and broke three ribs. They thought I was going to die and my doctor said it was the love of God going through me as a channel toward. Eileen warned us that saved my life. They said I was going to die, but the love that I had so much for her and knew she couldn't be alone pulled me through. They all said I was going to die. They beat my husband. He was out in Las Vegas at a convention. And I pulled through. So I mean, there's a lot. There's a lot to. This that just. It's like he says, fascinating.
NICK: So the next stage is really to come up with a counteroffer.
STEVE: No, the next stage is coming with $25,000, But OK, OK, well then then. Then if you don't, then the next thing to do is to really get a counter offer and let's if and well do a counter offer let's tell her something. Okay, because this way, like I told you before you left, I said that when you when you. Please don't come here with the understanding that was perfectly honest with you. Don't come with the understanding that just leave and talk with you. Without pain and I told you that.
NICK: OK, and so we would basically then pay the money to, well, we'll pay money to you or to as her legal or…
PRALLE: As her mom and then Steve gets a percentage as her agent.
NICK: Right.
PRALLE: A very tiny percentage, this man works for nothing.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): In fact Arlene and Lee's relationship is extremely well documented and it seems far cheaper at this stage to buy in some local TV footage.
NEWS READER: Levy County Horse Farm owner Arlene Prolly has come to the aid of accused serial murderer Eileen Warnerbros. Prolly says she and Werno speak on the phone to each other frequently.
PRALLE: We have become super good friends ever since and she is a beautiful woman. She's not at all like the media has portrayed her to be. She's very kind, compassionate. She's got a heart of gold.
NEWS READER: This Thanksgiving should be a. Special one for the Crawley family because this year they hope to be with their newly adopted daughter. But she isn't a newborn she's 35 year old. Aileen Wournos.
PRALLE: Her eyes there was just something about her eyes that before we ever knew her there was something that deep within me said she is not capable of doing what they are accusing her of doing.
Speaker 16: Over the next few weeks a strange friendship blossomed with both women exchanging daily letters, phone calls, and even poetry. In one poem Aileen wrote, you are way too kind to get to know my kind of mind.
PRALLE: I felt like I had known this person forever and that was the weirdest feeling to me because. I've never. I've never experienced that before. There are times when I'm there and she's so sad and I know if I could just hold her and pray over her, it would pick her up. It would make her feel better. It would give her hope. And to not be able to do that this point it's about driving me nuts.
STEVE: I know that it's not motivated by anything like greed or self betterment or improvement or anything like that. I know this a religious spiritual desire and that Arlene and Robert are.
Speaker 15: Probably says she's not interested in any book or movie deals and her only motivation for this adoption is good old fashioned Christian love and the desire to have a family after. All these years.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): While were waiting for Steve and Arlene to hear back from Lee Warners, we travelled to Daytona Beach, where Lee Warners had last. Lift police divers recovered the 22 caliber pistol that Lee Wallace had used in all 7 murders from this lagoon in Daytona Beach. Lee lived here with Tyria, Moore, her lover for over 5 years. A woman she referred to as her wife and whom she was desperately in love with. They lived together at this motel. The Fairview and it was here that Lee warned us and Tyria Moore first saw the police composites themselves. Witnesses claimed to have seen them driving one of the murder victims cars Tarir Moore, fled to her family's home in Ohio, leaving Lee and eventually betraying Lee and testifying against her in court. Lee Warmus was charged with all 7 murders. Terrain Moore became the main police witness against her. This Lee Warner that she was first being charged a prostitute from the age of 14. Lee had a long history of neglect and sexual abuse. Lee was born in 1956 in Troy, MI. 3 months later, she was abandoned by her mother. In 1963, her father committed suicide in prison. He was serving a sentence for sodomizing A7 year old. Tarir Moore represented the most stable relationship in her life.
Speaker 19: You understand that.
Speaker 18: Yes it is.
NEWSREADER #10: Do you wish to be?
NEWSREADER #11: Represented by counsel. Yes I.
Speaker 7: Do can you afford to?
Speaker 19: Hire an attorney.
Speaker 18: Yes Sir, you work.
Speaker 7: I'm in jail. How can it work?
NEWSREADER #11: Well, obviously not working now, but how long? It's been since you've.
AILEEN: Last worked, oh.
Speaker 7: Of 84 possibly.
NEWSREADER #11: And worked in six or.
NEWSREADER #12: Seven years, how do you how?
AILEEN: Do you support yourself? Special call girl?
NEWSREADER #11: Do you own any property here in the motor vehicle?
Speaker 19: You'll sign an affidavit. I will appoint the public defender to.
NEWSREADER #10: Represent you.
Speaker 19: And Miss Warner, you've been ordered to be held without bail. That will be my order.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): The press reported that Lee Warner's favorite hangout was the last resort, a biker bar, near the Fairview, where she was arrested by the police on her last day of freedom. Could be fun.
NEWSREADER #10: Hi, how do you do?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We will give you. Someone call like is it called Cannonball or something?
UNKNOWN: I hope you feel.
Speaker 19: Yeah, were looking for Cannonball.
NEWSREADER #14: See me.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Hi, how do you do alright? Hi, how do you do?, so did you? Did you actually know Lee well or not particularly?
NEWSREADER #13: As well as well as a bartender knows and occasional, she only come in here like maybe 1/2 a dozen times. You know she wasn't really a regular customer or real frequent. She was, well, she's she didn't have no transportation and when she would walk back to where she lived down the road down here, this was on the side of.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): It came in occasionally.
NEWSREADER #13: The road, so she just stopped by. And then she got drunk down there the night before she got. And she came down here, and she slept on. That seat for a little while. And yeah, and.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): On that see see there.
NEWSREADER #13: She was just. Here when I got here the next morning. But as far as. Knowing anything about her personality or anything, I don't really know anything. And she was. She was a flat cracker, . So nobody in here tried to fix her up. Flat flat cracker a lesbian. Right?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Cannonball told us to come back the following day when the human bomb was performing someone who. Reportedly knew Lee well.
Speaker 8: That's why I'm here.
NEWSREADER #11: And I'm like.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Do you feel?
NEWSREADER #10: Real dizzy right now.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Did Lee well?
NEWSREADER #10: I talked to you a.
Speaker 19: Few minutes got to walk this off.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Went to visit **** Mills, who we had heard of from various tabloid accounts of his sex romps with a serial killer. **** Mills spent a week with Lee just before her arrest. He picked her up at Wet Willies bar. Lee was heart broken. The police search was on and Tarir had just left her.
NEWSREADER #16: For it
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Oh hi.
Speaker 19: I hope did not yet. This that paper you're talking about.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Yeah, it's cool. It's and it's cool. My sex runs with ***** Man killer. That's what the article is called.
Speaker 19: All I want to know is who's the best lawyer right there, man, to suit him for this trash? You never talked that ****.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Can I quote can I quote you a bit? OK if you said this right? Can I quote you a bit?
Speaker 19: Well, you read tell me what it is you.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK, it says it says she stayed at my place for five days.
Speaker 19: Want want to close?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): At first she seemed perfectly normal, but after a while she began making some really weird confessions. Were lying in. Were lying in bed one night when she started talking about her favorite sexual fantasies. She said she often got turned on by imagining. She had a black hood over her head and was tied to a tree in a forest. Then a guy would come up, rape her and shoot her in thead. She said the actual killing would make her climax. I was real sickened by what she said.
Speaker 19: Wrong, there's partial truth to that, but most of that I don't know where it came from or who got it or nothing about it, and you can check any film anywhere in the country, or anybody's got it. And I've never said that. OK. It goes along the lines that she told me one time that the idea was that she'd like to lay in bed out in the middle of forest, the woods, or somewhere in the mountains, or some have a hood over here something and somebody crawled in through the window that's had no. They had the hood on or something and would rape her. This and that kind of **** and she liked that.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I mean did you did?
Speaker 19: As far as all these other things go pertaining to it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Did you get?
Speaker 19: There's no reality to it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Any feeling that she hated me?
Speaker 19: I just got the feeling she's what she was a ****, except I didn't know. She was a killer. There's no way I could know that.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But I mean could. You tell that when you made love.
Speaker 19: Nah, not particularly. She just probably liked it. Either way, whatever came along. Didn't really seem to matter much, it's just another bad experience. I'm sure for both of us. But that is a bunch of garbage. Like I say, why don't you ask them where? They got the ******** from. That's what I'm . I'm more amused than that. Who told them? You know, who told them the lies or authorized them to write lies? Can't aren't they capable of telling the truth? I know, I guess the truth doesn't sell them any newspaper sometimes.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But she couldn't have always hated men. If I mean sounded, so you had. Some kind of a relationship.
Speaker 19: I don't know, it's just that we're too lonely, desperate people in a bad situation. But except for the killing factors, I didn't know about and so it's just two people getting along for a little while. You know, I don't really know how to explain the.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But I mean when you made love to her did you couldn't have. Felt that she hated men. Because she's been.
Speaker 19: I never really.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Sort of management, right?
Speaker 19: I never. I never really gave it much thought one way. Or the other? I don't know whatever turned her on at the moment or whatever she could get away with, I guess, but from everything I've heard and read and seen since, not pretending to this, I'm talking about what's been on TV the series.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, why do? You think she didn't kill you as well?
Speaker 19: You have to ask her that.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, what do you what's your feeling?
Speaker 19: Just maybe, maybe one possibility? I don't know what. This other woman look. Like but I might have resembled her. Maybe I do, maybe I don't or she might resemble me and maybe it was just a mental thing with her.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): You mean her lover?
Speaker 19: Yeah, this woman she's living with.
Speaker 12: Her lover.
Speaker 19: Yeah her love her, whoever it is. All I ever heard was tie somebody I don't know anything else. So if you want any answers to those questions, you'll have to ask those people. Whether it be the Thai character or whether it be alien or so, Eileen, Elaine, whatever her name is yourself.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Before she received her first death sentence, Lee planned to live in this cottage on Arlene's Ranch and help her to breed horses. Arlene also raises wolves. She believes they represented an important part of our spiritual lives. All too often forgotten today.
PRALLE: You said you're.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We've been in Florida week now and nothing had been heard from Lee. Arlina was maintained that she and Lee had a very close relationship, but something was obviously wrong. Arlene now seemed to be negotiating her own personal appearance fee entirely separate from Lee. She quoted the Montel Williams show as paying $10,000. But how much do you think you want if? We don't have lean.
PRALLE: You talk to see I've never done this before. I said to Steve, well, you're not my criminal lawyer so can you be my agent? He said yes he said, just have the Brexit to call me. I've never done this before.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): What do you think might be a fair price?
PRALLE: I have no idea. I have no idea. I've never done it. I have never done this before.
Speaker 5: You can talk to.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I mean, do you think it'd be less than that?
PRALLE: I don't know, it depends how. Much you. To Steve, how many days you want to be here what you want to see? Do you want the tapes? Do you want everything the new stuff? All of the personal, the poems, the letters, the artwork I mean. I'm sure he'll write up some kind of contract for this. You get this and for. This you get everything. Talk to him, he's my agent. An agent, do you believe this?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Arlene adopted Lee just before her first trial for the murder of Richard Mallory. At this stage, her lawyer was Trish Jenkins, a public defender who has been criticised for failing to bring to the court's attention the fact that Mallory had previously served the 10 year sentence for attempted. The rape many think it was Mallory's alleged rape of Lee that started her off on her killings.
Speaker 7: Can you put the cord around my neck? And he said yes, you are *****. He said. You're going to do everything I tell you to do. And if you don't, I'll kill you right now and I'll **** you after. Like just like the other ***** I've done. And he said it doesn't matter to me thereby. Your body will. Still be warm for my huge ***. He said he was choking me and I was holding it like this and he said, do you want to die *** and I just nodded, no. And then he said. Are you going? You going to listen to everything I've got to say, have you do and I just nodded, yes. And you told me to lay down on this car seat.
NEWSREADER #11: OK, what happened next?
Speaker 8: Then he just set. He began to start having.
Speaker 7: Animal sex.
Speaker 8: OK.
Speaker 7: And he's doing this. Very violent manner.
Speaker 5: And then he.
Speaker 8: I don't know if he came to climb.
AILEEN: Backside I talk St talk so.
Speaker 5: I don't know if he.
AILEEN: Did that.
Speaker 7: Any guy only took himself out and violently put himself in my vagina? Were you saying anything to him at that point? No, I was crying my brains out.
NEWSREADER #11: OK then what?
Speaker 8: All right so. He takes advice and he lifts up my legs. And he puts.
Speaker 7: But turns out to be rubbing alcohol in the Biscayne Bowl. And he sticks.
Speaker 5: Up my ****** area. And that really hurt for thead because he tore me up for a while and in my vagina.
Speaker 7: Which really hurt bad. And then he walked around, back to driver's seat side, and he pulled my nose open like this, hold them open and he squirt rubbing alcohol down my nose.
Speaker 8: OK.
Speaker 7: And you said I'm saving your eyes for the grand finale and you put the bicine back on the dash. And I was really ****** and I. Was just I didn't care, I was. Yelling at him and everything else. He was laughing while saying that's what I want to hear when you start crying and all that pain I thought to myself I got to fight. I'm going to die. This guy is going to play with me and play with me. And then he's going to kill me.
Speaker 8: He's already said he's going to kill me. He's he's already saying.
AILEEN: Killed other girls. I got a fight.
Speaker 7: I jumped up real fast and I spit in this. And he said, you're a dead *****. You're dead. He's wiping his eyes and I laid down real quick and grabbed my bag and he was starting to come for me when I grabbed my bag and threw whipped my pistol out toward him and he was coming toward me with his right arm I believe. And I shot immediately and I think I shot twice as fast as I.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Lee had expected to be acquitted, but then Judge Blunt took the unusual move of allowing evidence of the other six murders to be presented.
Speaker 11: Until by warrant of the governor of the State of Florida you, Eileen Carroll warned us he electrocuted until you are dead and May God have mercy upon your course.
Speaker 7: Come back to America.
STEVE: Most of us would probably never worry about spending time in jail, but if you were ever involved in the criminal justice system, you will need a lawyer who. The system to you.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): In a completely unexpected legal move, Lee, with Arlene's help decided to hire Steve to defend her on the next three murder charges and to fire her public defender Trish Jenkins. Steve attracted enormous mediattention when he entered a guilty or no contest plea to the next three murders.
Speaker 12: 37534
NICK (OFF SCREEN): The born again. Arlene proudly believed Lee should come cleand confess her sins.
NEWSREADER #17: As Alan Moore knows, was led from Marion County Jail. She gave no indication that she would plead no contest of three murder charges. Instead, talking about dropping her public defenders and hiring private attorney Steve Glazer. But only seconds after being named her attorney, Glazer surprised everyone and told the court that were knows wanted to change her plea with her adoptive mother. Watching on the national. Most known serial killer pleaded no contest to killing **** Humphries and Troy Burress in Marion County. David Spears and citrus. County legally the no contest plea is viewed as a guilty pleand because there is no pleagreement, we're no still faces the death penalty. In each case, an unusual legal prospect that Judge Thomas Suea was obviously aware of, as he carefully questioned were knows about her decision.
NEWSREADER #14: Got it.
PRALLE: For what she's done and our state has the death penalty. So why not go for it? And I mean wow, she could be home with Jesus in.
Speaker 17: A matter of few years, theory of and the philosophy of Jesus Christ. If you are going to. Believe that you're saved by Jesus Christ. The first thing you have to do is confess, confess your sins and that's between her and God, and that's what she's doing here.
PRALLE: Much better off in heaven. I mean, if I had the choice, I'd rather be up there, but God has not chosen for, go. But I mean he has an open.
Speaker 7: Door here I have made peace with my Lord. And I have asked forgiveness. I am sorry that my acts of self-defense ended up in court like this, but I take full responsibility for my actions. It was them or me. I am sorry for all the pain that my actions have caused. I am prepared to die if you say it is necessary.
Speaker 8: But I am not.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): By pleading guilty, it appeared that Lee Wallace was in reality, hoping for mercy and forgiveness, but that is not what happened.
STEVE: I sent it to you in case #91-463. To death for the murder of Troy Burress case #91-3O4I sentence you to death for the murder of Charles Humphreys. Case #91-112 Citrus County case number I sentence you to death for the murder of David Spears.
Speaker 7: Thank you and, probably see,, I'll be up in heaven while y'all rotting in hell.
NEWSREADER #18: We will handle.
AILEEN: I have taken these days.
NEWSREADER #19: That if not to.
STEVE: Handle that OK. There will be an automatic appeal. You have the right to an appeal. Mr Glaser is that going to be handled by.
Speaker 7: May your wife and kids get raped.
STEVE: You or the public defender.
STEVE: I would ask that you would appoint the public defender's.
Speaker 7: Right in the ***.
STEVE: Office OK, I'll. I'll appoint the public defender's office to handle the appeal. One other thing that I want to say that I think needs. To be said.
Speaker 7: I know I was raped. You weren't nothing but a bunch of stumped.
STEVE: Therefore, these proceedings are now completed.
Speaker 7: Putting somebody who was raped by death.
STEVE: Thank you.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Steve played this song to Lee after she received the death sentences.
Speaker 12: The warden comes to say, good. Reporters come to watch him die. Watch him as he strapped into the chair. Have you seen the? Ladies charm. Legs of steel leather on her arms. Strapping on a man to die for life for life and eye for an eye and deaths. The lady in the chair.
STEVE: I haven't seen that in a long time, I'll Do it again later. But I just haven't seen.
Speaker 17: It in a long long time.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): What does it really take for?
STEVE: That so I gave her a copy of it and I sang it for her in and I didn't have my guitar. But I sang it for her in the cell and she and she enjoyed it, especially the part about in the courtroom. Watch the balance of the scales. If the price is right, there's time for more appeals. The strings are pulled, the switches stayed. The finest lawyers fees are paid, and a rich man's never died upon the.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Chair, we traveled down to visit Lee at this maximum security prison the edge of the Everglades. A7 hour trip from Gainesville where Stephen Arleene lived. I learned that Lee was now enormously depressed. She desperately missed tariand barely communicated with any. Arlene and Steve still hadn't heard from Lee since we'd first arrived in Florida over 2 weeks ago, and I realized their relationship with Lee was not as close as I had first thought.
NEWSREADER #15: How are you doing?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK, Lee is living in a 6 by 8 cell on death row. We had arranged through the Superintendent to meet her at the prison Chapel.
NEWSREADER #16: I'm Lieutenant Dodrill and were just trying to get done and make more notes. We told her that you were here and she's refusing to visit.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She's refusing a visit.
NEWSREADER #16: I just told her that I just told the officer in confinement to get it in writing. So should we have everything we're going? To get it. In writing that.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I can't believe this.
NEWSREADER #16: She says some of the bath her laundry is not back and she does. Wear dress and.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She doesn't have to wear a dress.
NEWSREADER #16: But she won't get dressed.
Speaker 5: That's a problem.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Come all the way down from Gainesville.
NEWSREADER #16: Yeah, I know every time we ask her she's just really uncooperative. She's just. And we can't force it to do it. So she's but I am getting her to write it in writing, so. That I'm get in trouble for not.
NEWSREADER #15: Yeah, yeah.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Were looking for you. That's not that because the gate is locked down.
PRALLE: Why didn't you drive up? Oh, it's just for the horses not to get out, so how did it go? Well, the ride this not good.
AILEEN: Rita, roll their eyes.
PRALLE: I have more bumps. This terrible.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She wouldn't. She wouldn't talk to us, she wouldn't see us. Why no idea? She just wouldn't. She just didn't want to talk, didn't want to. Say anything didn't want to communicate so.
Speaker 6: We didn't get anywhere.
PRALLE: That's a shock. That's a total shock. Well, Steve's going Thursday, so go back with Steve.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I mean, do you have any idea why she? Arlene and Steve were still protesting that they didn't know what was wrong with. Lee, it seemed. Unable to explain why they still hadn't heard from her. So in a sense, now we're trying to find out from you what.
PRALLE: The only thing I can think of is. I was honest with her and sort of disciplinarian that perhaps she was trying to punish both Steve and I. You know, we lost the trial and yet she said I want to die.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): How are you disciplinarian? I mean what?
PRALLE: And I wrote letters and they told her that she acted terrible in the courtroom and that she better improve her behavior and she would. I was very disappointed in her and.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Is that when she is that when she gave the judge the bird or?
PRALLE: Yes, yes. And I wrote a very strong letter. I also told her I was sick of her, doubting me and doubting Steve, that he was a very honest human being. He did just what she wanted and because we lost that was not his. Fault, so I feel in a sense that perhaps with the money. She knows the devastation financially that we are in and she could help now and this. Her way of. Punishing me and punishing Steve by saying, well, good. We could get this money if I gave an interview. I'm not doing it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Why do you think she was so mad at both of you at the end of the last trial?
PRALLE: Because we lost because she has three death sentences. She said she wanted to die, but in her heart she wants to live. So how you say. I'm hungry, I'm hungry, feed me but you really don't want to eat. That's basically it. I want to die. I want to die, but when she got the three death sentences. She was furious. That's why she gave him the bird.
STEVE: If it comes, it comes and when it? Comes it comes, I'm prepared.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Steve, though was still insisting Lee wanted to die. His whole justification for entering a guilty plea for Lee was that she wanted to go to. The chair. And you're sure she wants to go.
STEVE: To the electric chair, yes, I'm sure. I'm sure that in her anger and grief and torment, and the fact that it's very, very hard to live with the fact that she killed seven men and seven people. That she does want to die for it. She cried in the courtroom when she read her statement, she said, I'm. Not afraid to die. But if you feel it necessary to kill. Me, so be it. And as I told her from the beginning. A helper. I don't feel comfortable. But I'll sit there with her when they strap her in. She, she asked that I. Be there for her. She said well, will you be there with me and I said Lee? You're allowed to have a lawyer, and. Member of the clergy. If you want me there, I'll I'll walk right up to. There with you and I'll be. With you in the final moments. And I'll have to deal with the I'll have. To deal with the. That pain later I have spoken to several lawyers who have witnessed the execution of their clients. And they assured me it's something that they. Live with forever. It's nothing I look forward to, but as her friend and I hope I'm becoming her friend I. Would I will be there for her? And I'll give her the advice that Woody. Allen gave in his movie. I think it was taking I was I don't remember the movie. It might. Have been take. The money and run the lawyer's advice to the client who gets the electric chair is don't sit down.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): They call this the death house. If Lee is electrocuted, she will be the first woman ever in the state of Florida to have gone to the chair.
NEWSREADER #12: This the cell that the inmate is kept in up to seven days prior to his execution, about 5:00 o'clock in the morning, he's brought out where he is shaved. His head is shaved and his right leg is shaved and then he is brought through this door which proceeds down 1/4 which goes to where the electric chair is. As he's going down the hallway as he's escorted by the assistant Superintendent and the Correction Officer chief and is brought in here to the actual chamber. At this point, he is seated in the chair in front of the news media witnesses and the official witnesses who are already seated in the witness area. He's brought in and put into the chair and the straps are placed around his chest. And around his lap and on his arms. And then his legs are placed into these straps and secured there. After the inmate is secured in the chair, the Superintendent will check the straps. And ensure that they're all in place like they should be. He will then come over to the microphone that we have here in the witness in the Chamber. And remove the microphone and hold it up for the inmate to make a last statement to the last the inmate. Do you have a last statement and he will either sometimes say something or. Sometimes won't. After that is completed, the Superintendent will go over to the telephone and check with the Governor's office to see if there's any last minute stays. If hears no last minute stays from the governor's office. The electrode den is placed on top of the inmates. Head, it's an actual cap with an electrode inside it's secured onto his head. One of these electrodes here is then fastened onto the top of the. Head piece. Another device is placed around his calf. And the other electrode is placed onto that piece. After that is completed, the Superintendent will make a motion to the executioner who is here inside the execution chamber where the executioner is. And he will nod to the executioner to go ahead and proceed with the execution. The executioner will throw a switch. The switch will start an automatic cycle. Starting out at 2400 volts at about 8 amps. At this point, after they have seen that it has been carried out, they observe some tendencies of the inmate. When the voltage hits him to tense up. So almost simulating as if someone was lifting weights, and that's the only motion that you see out of there. Mate is just a tensing of the muscles. After that its cycle is completed. There's two physicians who are sitting here in the Chamber who come over and examine the body to see that if the inmate is in fact it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): It was 6:00 AM. Steve was off to visit Lee and hopefully get us in the following day. Steve said it was a 7 joint ride to the prison and he brought along a tape of his own music with him singing and. Playing all the. Instruments, especially for the occasion.
STEVE: Let me turn the keys over to you. If I'm not out in 3 1/2 hours, call the SWAT team.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Steve was nervous. He hadn't talked to leave for a month and didn't know how she wanted to plead at the next trial at Pascoe County in five days time. If Lee changed her plea to not guilty, Steve told us that he was going to have to resign from the. Case because he didn't have the necessary resources. To fight it. I'd finally given in and paid Steve $10,000 a figure we'd settled on instead of the 25 apparently, with Lee's consent. Suddenly this guard stepped out of the guardhouse and stopped us. The entire prison was locked down and we learned we'd committed a major security violation by driving along the perimeter fence.
PRALLE: You got a pocket knife, no? Just a shot.
UNKNOWN: Two shoes.
Speaker 6: OK, all right.
STEVE: All right, here's the contract. I'll just have her sign it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): A trip to the prison had gone. Well, Lee warned us was going to keep to her no contest guilty plea for the trial at Pascoe the following week, and Steve and Arlene were to be paid 2500 apiece.
STEVE: What's Davy Crockett doing? Our bill.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Here I am paying our lien and money in advance in exchange for a proper interview and additional information.
NEWSREADER #15: Thank you very much.
STEVE: Would you say yeah? $1000 on sign up in the fourth race at Belmont.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Steve then got concerned about his payment.
STEVE: She wants to know when I was going to get paid so. I told her you. Know I trust her too. I trust you guys. That you pay me when you when you gonna pay me.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): When are we going to pay now? Well, originally were going to pay half the money up front.
STEVE: You might just. Pay me all the way at the end, no. Problem I have trust my fellow person.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): $1000 at the final payment was to go to Lee Warnock directly in prison. I had always thought the son of Sam Law would prevent this kind of payment, but Steve said son of Sam isn't in effect any more. And how did you first get to hear?
PRALLE: Of that I read about her in the newspaper. I saw her pictures in the paper and my dad was in the hospital with a heart attack. And my husband I have nothing to do but read papers, and so we read the papers on her and. As soon as we saw the pictures in the paper, her eyes. I mean, I read people's eyes and I just knew she was not capable of being a serial killer and doing what they said. So we prayed for 2 1/2 weeks and finally at the end of 2 1/2 weeks we reached out to her through a letter and I told her that she was going to think I was crazy. But that Jesus himself told me to write to her, and she said that when she first got arrested, she went and said, God, if you were real, send a Christian woman into my life to befriend me through this mess. So she got my letter and I mean it was just like instant explosion like ****. Here's this person. That's how it started and lots of phone calls later and hundreds of letters later and. Thousands of dollars of phone bills. Here we are.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Arlene believed Lee Warner should take the guilty no contest pleand confess her sins to Jesus.
PRALLE: This my favorite picture. This of Steven Lee in the courtroom after she came clean.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): When she how do you mean came clean?
PRALLE: Pleaded no contest.
STEVE: The amazing thing about it is that you can see the look on her face. It's one of the few pictures that anyone has ever taken of her that show that she's happy or content. This almost like the first time she's actually, I think she's relieved if you look at her face there. She's actually smiling, relieved most of the pictures that the press put in the newspaper are always the unflattering.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Now that Leah been paid, we returned to the prison the following day. Hi, we've come to try and do to see Lee warn us.
NEWSREADER #1: I didn't hear you, Sir.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Lee Warner
NEWSREADER #15: Eileen, is that what you say?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Yeah, Lee Lee.
NEWSREADER #14: Driver's license please. I need your driver's licenses, driver's license, and her drivers.
NEWSREADER #1: It's like.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): License you need your driver. 's license, Sir. OK, we're gonna have to go back to the car and get them. That's right.
UNKNOWN: Yeah, you were the one that was held.
NEWSREADER #1: Just the rear gate. When I spoke to you.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I was the one who was what?
UNKNOWN: You were being.
Speaker 7: Held hostage at the rear gate remember?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We unfortunately drove around and we photographed the institution and got into a lot of trouble.
NEWSREADER #1: You called me, tell me.
NEWSREADER #15: I remember I need a picture ID or a driver's license.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And method.
UNKNOWN: Thank you.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We waited for an hour for the prison escort to take us through. And we heard Lee was again refusing to call. Apparently, since Tahrir betrayed her to the police, he just wanted to be left alone in her cell. There's been enormous public pressure to send her to the chair, and each county wants to be seen. To be the one to do it.
NEWSREADER #17: You don't want to be present for.
Speaker 7: Today's hearing because I'm tired. This reelection jazz or just trying to get promotional ladder climbing and political prestige from this and I'm sick and tired of this. I'll probably get three more death row sentences and then I got to go to Pasco and Dixon for two more days death row. How many times you got to kill? Me, I. Mean this this. ********, they don't need to be doing this. Raising taxpayers.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Several of the victims families have said they want to be present at the execution. Steve is even talking about selling the film rights off to the highest bidder to publicise the horrors of the.
NEWSREADER #14: The people that did this just cannot imagine the grief. The hurt, the anguish that they have caused. This family.
NEWSREADER #11: This a man.
PRALLE: That I have.
Speaker 18: I hope she meets up with quote old Sparky. You know who old sparky is? And if the. Other lady's soul wishes. She can stand there and hold her hand. As far as I'm concerned.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): People were also concerned Tyria Moore's Lee's girlfriend had not come forward earlier.
NEWSREADER #14: And I feel like the other girl. Could have stopped some of them if she'd have come forward in time. She knew about them some of. Them, but she didn't say anything. Maybe saved four men could have been saved.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Mrs Prater's brother was the 4th victim. Lee, meanwhile became increasingly withdrawn and hostile.
STEVE: OK, all right, you don't have to be here, but let me give it some thought and I'll decide. Where to OK?
Speaker 7: Back at prison, I don't care. Sentences I'm already on death row. I'm going to see the chair I've done.
Speaker 12: And then.
Speaker 7: This all reelection purposes. This not for nothing but get you guys reelected and this a bunch of ********. This doesn't even need to happen, I'm trying to save taxpayers money. You people don't care, you want to press on with a with a jury and everything else to try to impress the public. And all I want to do is go back to prison. Wait for the chair and get thell off this planet. That's full of evil and your corruption in these courtrooms.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): It was in these woods that Lee Warnors claimed Richard Mallory raped and abused her. Many believed her testimony. But then what about the other six victims? We contacted the police who conducted the investigation. Tricia Jenkins, Lee's ex public defender. The psychiatrist who examined her and Taria Moore, her lover would all refuse to talk. At her trial, Lee Warmus was medically described as a damaged and primitive child who sees the world as a place full of evil spirits and ghosts. She was described as having uncontrollable rages and temper tantrums and being too immature to properly grasp the finality of death. Mike Reynolds has just published a book on Warners called Dead Ends.
UNKNOWN: What is it about?
NEWSREADER #10: Well, Lee's life was. This pretty much you'd run out as a prostitute, which was never that to very successful with she never put much effort into it. We never put much effort into her her crimes either. If crimes prior to that. She didn't have much of a commodity out there. She was overweight. She was beary. She, never dressed as a prostitute, never wore makeup. She wore cut offs sneakers, camo T-shirt and a cap and glasses standing on the side of. The road and her and her hustle as you look at her hustle. She wasn't soliciting, she would get in the car, engage the situation. Say I'm, these are my kids here and show the photographs of the children. On Larry grody
NEWSREADER #11: 's children he.
NEWSREADER #10: Was Aunt sisters children and give them some song and dance story. I need some. Money and I'll tell you what I'll do this for you and we could go over here in the woods and do this. It was a she was running out of. She was running out. Of options.
Speaker 12: Oh Oh yes, I'm a public defender.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): It was the night before the trial at Pascoe County. Other lawyers were accusing Steve of greeting Lee's path to the electric chair and being unfit to represent her.
Speaker 12: That's what.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): They would turn their backs on Steve as he walked into the courthouse.
Speaker 12: Oh yes, I'm a public defender. Pretending that I'm doing well. When the rich make bail and the poor stay in jail, I wonder what? I'm doing here.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Steve, still in Sicily, wants to. So why did she get so angry? She was sentenced. I mean, why did? Why did she have the outburst that she had in court? Why did she give the judge the bird? Why ? Why did she react to you and to Arlene in the way that she did? After that sentence was. Passed if she.
STEVE: Maybe you misunderstand what I have no problems with lately. No problems with me after that play.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, I thought she there was a long time when she didn't write to either of you.
STEVE: Or we're talking on March 31st, she entered a change of play, May 15th she was sent. May 15th till now is one that's only it's 30 days. In that 30 day period I have written to lead twice and seen her. And I.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But you just.
STEVE: Saw, yeah, just saw.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We are finally about to see Lee Warnock. On her way to court. All the press attention has made her into something of a star. Even before her arrest, up to 15 Hollywood movie companies were competing first. To date, Republic Pictures and CBS have produced a TV movie called Overkill starring Gene Smart as Lee, warn US and there are two feature films being negotiated. There are also the chat shows, documentaries and the books. The deal on a killing day gives Arlene Crowley 33% on every paperback sold. Leave facing yet another death sentence seemed to be more upset about these deals thanything else.
Speaker 7: Yes, I'd like to say that.
NEWSREADER #15: Wait a minute.
Speaker 7: To the public and to all the people. Of the world. And to the news personnel. That have been working on this these trials and these cases for the past 16 months that had stated defamations and mendacious lies of 98.6%. Magazines and news articles to probably paid off by the cops to vile. My character make me look like a monster and deranged or something like a Jeff Dahmer. Which I'm not. Intend to expose the crooked cops to the to the people. All over the world. Not just America, not just Floridall over the world before I die. And also feel that. The movie Overkill that is a total fictional lie. That they framed me as a first time serial female serial killer for the title for that movie. Or first female serial killer is not what I am and I'm not even near it and my confessions prove it, yet they did not. They have taken the confessions and gone 200% against what my confession stated to get their bogus movie out. And it stated self-defense totally which they hid from the jury at the Mallory trial, and they've had have hid from the public eye.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Lee warned us insists she is not a serial killer and she did not stalk her victims or plan her crimes. As with the movie deals, Lee is also surrounded. By a web of. Experts or competing with their own theories on her behaviour.
Speaker 7: That they had been cementing.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Lee is portrayed as anything from a neglected and abused child who hates her father and is murdering him over and over again to a sadist who takes pleasure in the agony of her victims.
Speaker 7: They made $100,000 contract.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Geneticists have asked for samples of Lee's body tissue, and there are plans to preserve levona's brain for future experimentation.
Speaker 7: I think it's been changed again. Received that money. Thank you.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Sheriff Mullan We're chasing Sheriff Don Moreland across the Marion County car park. Sheriff Moreland has avoided our phone inquiries about three of his officers reportedly having had movie discussions with Hollywood a month prior to Lee's arrest. We've also contacted the Public Defenders Office, the state Attorney's Office, and the Public prosecutor's office, all of whom have refused to talk to us. We tried to get Sheriff Moreland to speak, but all he did was to lock the door of his public building from.
STEVE: Gareth Moller
NICK (OFF SCREEN): The inside. The only person who would talk to us was Sergeant Brian Jarvis of the Marion County Police force, who led the murder investigation. I asked him whether the case had caused his demotion. You were demoted into the.
NEWSREADER #18: Traffic right? I was actually transferred back into the patrol division. It had followed a month of continual harassment on the job. In the current position I was in, which ultimately started when Captain Vinegar had realized that I found out about their plan to work. With Tyree Moore in obtaining a movie rights package.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And who was Tyria Moore?
NEWSREADER #18: Tyria Moore, during the course of this investigation she was. Targeted as one of the two suspected killers of these men. And there was a lot.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Of a state attorneys report found that three of Jarvis's fellow officers, Captain Vinegar, Sergeant Munster, and Major Dan Henry were involved in movie discussions with Tyria Moore after Lisa Wrath.
NEWSREADER #18: There's never any doubt. Yeah, ultimately, when the when the arrests came. Lee Warnors was charged with the murder, and Tyree Moore was not charged with anything, but she was made a states witness and she was working with these fellow officers on obtaining movie rights.
NEWSREADER #11: I met her in.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): A bar. The police had found Tarea in Ohio where she agreed to set up her lover to confess.
NEWSREADER #11: Were sitting on the floor watching TV and she just come out and said I have something to tell you and I asked her what and she said that she had shot and. Killed a man that day.
Speaker 6: She loved you, didn't she?
NEWSREADER #10: She said.
NEWSREADER #13: She'd do anything.
Speaker 11: For you, didn't she? Yes she did.
NEWSREADER #12: And in order for her to say what she wanted her to you liked.
NEWSREADER #13: It was in fact much.
NEWS READER: More than a couple of times, wasn't it?
NEWSREADER #11: It could have been. Yes I did.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Taria Moore agreed with Sergeant Jarvis's superiors to help get Lee to confess. Taria was brought back down to Marion County and housed in a motel. From the motel, Taramon had a number of phone conversations with Lee, but at that time was held in custody in jail, but had not yet confessed to the murders. These conversations were monitored and made under police supervision.
NEWSREADER #15: Hello yes yes hi hey hey I had to call you early because I didn't know if you're going to leave today or what. I don't. What thell is going on Lee? They've called. They've been up to my parents again. They've got my sister now asking her questions so it will tell us, huh? Are they asking your sister questions? I don't know. If Lee they're and they're coming after me I. Know they are. They've got tooth and why are they asking so many questions then? Honey, listen, listen, listen.
AILEEN: Do what you gotta do, OK?
NEWSREADER #15: I'm going to have to because I'm. Not gonna go to jail for something that you did. Thisn't fair. My family is a nervous wreck up there. My mom has been calling me all the time. She doesn't know what the. Hell's going On OK, what she's gotta do OK, alright?
AILEEN: I'm not going to let you go to jail.
NEWSREADER #15: You two, you evidently don't love me anymore. You don't trust me or anything. I mean, you're gonna let me get in trouble for something that I didn't do. Said, I'm not. Commission quick crime. I can't help and I'm. Scared ********, I don't know whether. I should keep on living. Or if I should. No tie Tyler. What if they don't believe me? To go to jail, listen if I have to. OK, yes. How did you do this? Why did you do this? Listen time. Yes, I love you. If I have to do everything just.
Speaker 8: To keep you.
NEWSREADER #15: From getting I will OK don't worry. OK, OK no we'll do it now. Get it over with get it over with. Alright, OK you can call me back later. Alright OK bye.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): At her confession, Lee repeated part of the phone conversation with Ty and said it was because of Ty that she was confessing.
Speaker 15: I didn't do.
AILEEN: Anything you got me involved in this down because that car that got wrecked. You need to. Go and tell. Them that did it and get these straight down. And my daughter, her family, are very attentive.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Tarir came from what police called a small town, quintessential American family, something which Lee was greatly drawn to.
NEWSREADER #18: It seems anytime something comes up with the Werno's case, we get affected. For example, in October on October 31st, just days after depositions have been taken on the case, I came home from work. And went to my back door and noticed a note in the door. And the note the back door of my house, yes, and the note was stuck in the door and I read it and essentially it said, keep your mouth shut.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): In the back door here.
NEWSREADER #18: Unless you want your family to get hurt. And I really didn't think too much of it at the time because. You know I’ve seen threats before, that's no big deal. But I turned it over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, just in the event that anything did happen, I wanted them to have it documented less than a month later, on November 25th, my wife had gone out to the post office in the store during the daylight hours like 10:00 o'clock in the morning when she came home, the house had been broken into, the doors were ajar. She went up to my office and all of the files on the warehouse case on the. The investigators and all the information I had had been trashed. Nothing else had been touched in the house.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): This the note that was pinned to Brian Jarvis's back door. He suspects the burglary was connected with the Warner's case, but has been unable to prove who was responsible.
NEWSREADER #18: Most frustrating. I have no way to prove who broke into my house. I went to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. I went to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. I had hoped that I could get an A good investigation done. Instead, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement initially accused the media of breaking into my house to create a story. It was ridiculous. They refused to acknowledge the fact that there was something wrong here that they had to check into and they refused to check into it. After accusing the media they accused me of setting up the burglary totally ridiculous, they wouldn't.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Brian Jarvis now works as a private investigator. Kemper he resigned from the police.
Speaker 8: OK.
NEWSREADER #18: Force and I could see from that point on the state Attorney's office wouldn't do anything in their investigation. Up in Ocala, FLE wouldn't do their job down here. I wrote to the. The FBI took four months to get a reply from him. In the meantime, were. Literally awake for weeks at a time because we're afraid to go to sleep at night. And it just it really messed up our whole lifestyle, but just. Thought that. The evidence confronting Tyrea Moore she was in possession of property belonging to one of the murder victims, yet she was never charged with anything she had been. When we had brought the composites around a person in a convenience store said I saw two people fitting those descriptions in here and the date and time she gave was the same date and time that we narrowed Mr. Humphries down to being there because we had found a receipt in his car. A statement was taken from her. It was never followed up on. She was never shown photographs of the girls. She was never followed up on in any manner.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): There is no evidence that Tahrir Moore was involved in the killings. We talked to the clerk at the convenience store. She remembered seeing Tahrir and Lee together, but refused to give us an interview. None of the witnesses attached to the case would talk to us. This man met Tyree Moore and Lee Wanos when they crashed a car in these woods belonging to Peter Sims. One of the murder victims.
PRALLE: If y'all don't get in that vand get out of here, I'm going to call the law.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, we just wanted to ask about Leo and US and Tyrion more at the truck stop.
Speaker 19: I don't want I got nothing to say.
NEWSREADER #19: I don't know if something happened to that car before or after or whatever.
NEWSREADER #12: I don't know.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Because there was a guy called Ray who fixed it right? We tried to talk to him. You seemed very frightened.
UNKNOWN: What do you think? Why do you?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Think he was right all right.
NEWSREADER #19: Might be scared that girl gonna get out y'all and get him next.
Speaker 11: I don't know.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): It was Tyria. Moore driving the victim's car when it. Crashed Lee warn US, has never implicated Tyria in the murders.
NEWSREADER #19: And Tyria, Moore, the mysterious Tyria Moore.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Michael McCarthy is writing a book with Brian Jarvis, the ex policeman.
NEWSREADER #19: I believe the person that she as she perceived it loved for the first time in her whole life and was willing to do whatever under whatever circumstances to provide what she probably had for the first time, was like a nuclear family. She became a couple. She was the husband, quote UN quote. And Tyria Moore was the wife, or at least that seems to be the setup. Out of that spirals, a life of incredible resentment, frustration and rage and. Who does she kill? She kills her father over and over and over again. The police say we don't know how many men she killed. She kept killing. The same guy. We don't know what triggered it off, but it wouldn't take a Sigmund Freud to try to figure out the relationship between her and her father, and to look at these middle-aged white men. Sort of business types who must have epitomized to her. Everything that she hated in this culture.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I'd also learnt to my horror that Arlene had written to Lee, saying that she didn't trust my eyes and Lee should be very careful in dealing with us. Arlene herself hadn't visited Leena for over 2 months and had said in an unguarded moment that she wished she'd never heard of Arlene Warnock.
PRALLE: I am asking very quietly turn the cameras off and leave.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We have We have paid you half your money.
PRALLE: I did not get anything and this says nothing.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): You've got 12. We've got $12150 from us.
PRALLE: This has nothing, no listen to me.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): The last time.
PRALLE: This has nothing to do with my. This has to do with trespassing and invasion of my privacy. I'm asking you. To turn the cameras.
NEWSREADER #12: This has to do.
PRALLE: Off and leave until Steve comes.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): This has to do with reneging on a deal that you. Made and the contract that have signed.
PRALLE: I said I would speak with you. Yes, Steven Glazier would be here. I do not see Mr Glazier's body anywhere on the provinces.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Mr Grazer is not. Written into the contract, the only time we can film you is. With Mr Glazer, is it.
PRALLE: No, but it also is not in the contract that this 27th or 8th day of June that I have to speak alone. I said I will talk.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We arranged that we would see you on Sunday.
PRALLE: Correct with Mr Glazier and I was yes.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Right not with Mr Glass that was. Your arrangement with. Mr Glass, it's nothing to do with us.
PRALLE: Rita, I'm asking them for the third time to turn off the.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We've been here now for four weeks. We've been here now for four weeks. Originally were. Going to see Lee the first week.
PRALLE: Look at legally I have a right? To tell you're. Trespassing now I will talk to you with my attorney, period. I don't like coming home from heart.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I think you're a very, very deceptive person, and I think you've been playing games, and I think you're incredibly mercenary.
PRALLE: Well, that's fine. I think you are a trespasser.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And I think you've been playing around with us and.
PRALLE: I've had enough fine. I am asking you to please leave and I will speak with you with Mr Glazier, period. I don't like coming home after hard days doing stuff and having cameras on you. This has gone on forever.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): You arranged a. We paid. You which is something I never.
PRALLE: I have not gotten.
UNKNOWN: That you we gave you 12.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): $150.00 the last time were here. You didn't get that it was given to Steve Glaze, who put it in your hand. We filmed us giving it to you.
PRALLE: I now this the fifth time I have counted. I am asking to turn off the cameras you weren't trespassing.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Did we or did we not give? You the money.
Speaker 12: I've been waiting so long.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I've been Lee has finally.
Speaker 12: Where I'm?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Agreed to see us and Steve is coming too to make sure we get in.
Speaker 12: With him so long be where I'm going in the sunshine. 1967 and the hits keep rolling on www.itsbeenin stacks of wax back-to-back.
NEWSREADER #10: All right, yeah?
NEWSREADER #11: Will you let me know when she is?
Speaker 19: OK.
STEVE: You don't have any secret cameras in your belt.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So now I just have to. Throw the large one right here. Hi, how you doing?
Speaker 7: When I just got from trial. There was no way I mean right after trial. I mean after thearing, everything .
NICK (OFF SCREEN): After thearing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, where I was at Pasco.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): It's been a struggle to actually see you.
Speaker 7: I know, yeah. Is it? Did you have any problems with Arlene?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): With Arlene It's been a little tough going, darling. Yeah, OK, did that we have?
Speaker 7: Yeah, she told me about it.
UNKNOWN: OK.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I said a couple of things to.
Speaker 7: Arlene yeah.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I mean, I, I hope you got. All the money. And everything.
Speaker 7: Yeah, as long as they get their share everything, that's all right.
Speaker 6: Came through.
Speaker 7: I don't care about the money all. I care about is. The crooked cops.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): One of the questions I wanted to. Ask you was why? Why the money? In a sense? Talking to you because you can't. How much can you spend here a month?
Speaker 7: Not very much, and the money is not, but it seems like it might be to you people.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): No, I was just wondering if. I mean, because presumably most because Alino, Steve, and.
Speaker 7: Arlene and Steve seem to be the money. Hungry people yes. And I have. I'm having a problem with Arlene and Steve and I do believe that's their purpose. Their main purpose, and I do believe that's their main purpose. See me die.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So I have to be honest with you. I told Darlene I thought she was very mercenary. That's what the bottom of our argument.
Speaker 7: Did you pay them more than? OK, I wanted to make sure on that too because. I don't believe them. I have my doubts about Arlene and Steve. I believe that Arlene and Steve are.
NEWSREADER #11: I have proof.
Speaker 7: I can't discuss it right now, especially on camera.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I mean.
Speaker 7: Arlene did not adopt me to be my mother. She adopted me to bury me and she adopted me just to visit in, have easier access to visitation. They're and, and she's doing a lot of Steve is doing a lot of in the mediand so is Arlene, and they're both really ******* me off because I think their motive was just to make money. I can't, I just can't go any further. Than that because I'll do it. Later, just before I go or something.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, how much did they have to do when you're changing your defense as well? To deal with you changing your.
Speaker 7: They did it. They convinced me. They convinced.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): For you to not contest your.
Speaker 7: I'll give you an example and this what's really ******* me off is when they wanted me to plead no contest. Steve did and Arlene Arlene started it I think, and Steve just. Kind of fell in, but Arlene.
UNKNOWN: And three one.
Speaker 7: Why don't you plead guilty? You know, don't go through all these trials. I can't take it anymore. I'll all these trials.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She couldn't take it.
Speaker 7: And your mother, you're killing your new mom, adopted mom. Now with these trials and stuff, and if you don't go to the to the trials and the cops don't have anything for the movie and it and I yeah, and I found out that it didn't matter because the day that I pleaded no contest to Marion, it was a big write up in the front page about the cops doing their movie anyway. So it didn't make a difference. I already too late already said it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So why do? You think? I mean, I know in the.
Speaker 7: Because they convinced me that the cops would not be able to do their movie, have any access to this movie because they needed the trials to go through?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But do why do you think Arlene and Steve would want you to plead guilty?
Speaker 7: Arlene and Steve have both suggested how I could kill myself. That's not very motherly, is it?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Or kill yourself. While you're in the in this institution.
Speaker 7: I mean they both suggested it. It's not very motherly, nor very lawyerly, is it? And even giving me some ideas. So that's pretty sick., I know they’re not on my. But it's too late now. All I need to do is slide through the rest of these stupid trials. Pasco Dixon Dixie. Find me a real good detective and a real good investigative reporter to go out and figure out what's going on with. Find out that I'm telling the truth and they're lying. And find the evidence. And once you've got evidence, I can get a new trial and I need to go to a new trial through the Supreme Court.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And what about before all this happened?
AILEEN: Did you?
Speaker 7: I mean before the crimes themselves. Yeah, I was doing fine till Tara told me to start going to see strangers and make more money. That's how I wound up in this situation because.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But Henry, you've been, but you've been working as a prostitute for a while before then, haven't you?
Speaker 7: I was doing real good. Charlie, yeah I was making. Hand over fist of money.
Speaker 8: I was doing real good.
Speaker 7: The only thing the only problem that happened is when Saudi Arabia came in. And my client. Started going to Desert Storm and going to the bases and training and getting ready to go overseas and do that deal in Kuwait. And so I lost a lot of my regulars, and Tyra told me, well, why don't you go out there and? Do your strangers again like you did from the beginning? When I started hooking and I thought I can deal with my regulars I have now I only make about 100 and 100. And 50 a week.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Do you feel that Tyra was into it for?
Speaker 7: But Tyra wanted me to bring in 700 or 1000.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Their money as well.
Speaker 7: A week what?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Did you feel Tyra was into it for money as well?
Speaker 7: Well, now I look at it, yes. Definitely she was. She was she was using me monetarily. So was my first lover before Tyra I bought her a pressure cleaning business and everything and she took off. Two months after I. Bought it for her.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And now Steve and Arlene as well.
Speaker 7: Everybody, they just they must be the economy man.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Why do you think? Why do you think?
Speaker 7: People just everybody seems like they. Just care about. The money they don't care about me. Eileen Warren has killed 7 people. She deserves to die. Who gives a darn let's make some money and forget about her, but that's not the point. It's the. I say it's this. The principle is self-defense. They say it's number. I say it's a principle. Theck with what? It has nothing to do with the number kill, it's the principle, but they're saying if there is a number, no self-defense and self-defense matter, how many times it is. I don't care if it's 100 times, I was very I never provoked those guys. I never provoked them. I never showed any provocations whatsoever. Was very nice, very decent. Very clean, very ladylike. I didn't even swear in front of my clients and a lot of my clients. I talked about Jesus and I talked political both mixed together and we never argued. So there was number provocation whatsoever. There was no need for them to look for the closest weapon in the vehicle and try to use it on. Me to rape me. Two did five tried?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): How long do you do?
Speaker 7: I think it's ready. For me.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): You want 3 minutes, do you? Want to two or three more minutes?
Speaker 5: OK.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK. Do you want to break any more?
Speaker 7: So what are you guys? Going to do are you going to? Try to investigate some of this task.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Yeah we will.
Speaker 7: If you guys can look for the Republican pictures, the contract you've got it right there.
UNKNOWN: I just got 4 right. If you have the bigger landlord tenant, .
Speaker 7: If you can find that, that will set me a new trial. For Supreme Court. Yeah, Republican pitchers. That's where they're working at overkill movie. If you can find the contract, they’re dead mate.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): You're saying you're saying that? Wanted to. They said that this section is being covered by this voiceover because of potential legal problems that might otherwise arise.
NEWSREADER #13: The three police officers.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): As with the bleep section, that is to follow.
Speaker 7: Made-up in their mind, she's a serial killer. We're gonna even if she's innocent we don't care we're gonna make the public believe she's stereotype. But anyway that's what she said. And that you've got two things you're gonna have to do. You have to get the public to believe that she's serial killer and you're gonna have to get her convicted in order. To get this movie to go, we're gonna be in Ocala.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Over the next couple of days. And we'll try and ask the police their involvement in it, and then we'll come back and see you again on Tuesday.
Speaker 7: Great because see.
Speaker 5: What did you say?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): We tried to contact the police officers Lee mentioned, but they declined comment.
NEWSREADER #15: OK.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): This data, Turner's report concluded, there have been no exchange of contracts or money between the police and Republic pictures. OK, thank you.
Speaker 7: Take care yourself.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): When we return for our Tuesday meeting with Lee Warner, the prison informed us were no longer welcome. They cited our previous security violation.
Speaker 7: Maybe I'll look better next. Time I'm getting my commissary today. Some mascara. And a brush.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Shortly after we left, it was discovered that Richard Mannery Lee won us. His first victim had spent ten years in an institution for attempted rape.
Speaker 8: OK.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Should there be an appeal, Steve Glazer will not be in charge of the case. Several months after we left the Hollywood movie, discussions reportedly caught up with the police. Sergeant Munster and Captain Vinegar have both been transferred out of the Criminal Investigation Division and here Sheriff Moreland is announcing the resignation of Major Dan Henry following the bugged phone conversation he had about the Warners movie deals.
NEWSREADER #10: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. This one of the most unpleasant things I've ever had to do. And I'll read to you a release. On November the 10th, 1992 major Dan Henry resigned as chief of staff of the Marion County Sheriff's Office. After being notified of an investigation being conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The investigation was requested by Sheriff Don Moreland sheriff elect Ken Ergil. After information was received by the Sheriff's Office from Attorney Bill de Carlis in behalf of his client deputy Bruce Muntz. The investigation being conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement centers around tape telephone conversations made by Deputy Monster between he and Major Henry involving the Eileen Warner's case. The Florida Department.
Speaker 6: Of law, there's speculation that if it is found, the officers did receive money, or Lee warned his death sentences could be overturned.
NEWSREADER #10: Enforcement was notified. Decided that Mr. Dukov.
Speaker 19: Sheriff's Office Carr
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Could I speak to Sheriff Moreland please?
Speaker 19: Sir, I'm sorry the sheriff is not in right now. Can I take a message and.
Speaker 11: Have him call you back.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Our Superintendent Butler please.
PRALLE: 's office?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Oh hello, could I speak to Superintendent Butler please? Yes, I'm trying to get hold of Trisha Jenkins please.
STEVE: Sheriff's Office you can help.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Yes, it's Nicholas Broomfield calling back for Sheriff Moreland.
NEWSREADER #1: He's not available right now.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Any idea when he might be back?
Speaker 7: No Sir, I really don't.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Know is he coming back today?
AILEEN: I'm really not sure has been given your messages, Sir.
NEWSREADER #15: Superintendents office.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Oh, hello, and I'm calling back for Superintendent Butler.
AILEEN: He is in a meeting right now. Mr Broomfield. It will be.
Speaker 18: At least two hours.
NEWSREADER #15: Get up.
Speaker 12: Hello, you've reached the office to see if they need someone to get up and stand up for your rights.
STEVE: Or maybe I can help you send me a message to send to the tone.
Speaker 6: And I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
Twelve years ago Nick Broomfield made a film "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer".
Aileen's lawyer, her born again Christian mother and the Florida state police had all been involved in trying to sell her story, the story of America's first female serial killer, to the highest bidder. Aileen herself, who was convicted of murdering seven men, ironically emerged as the most honest person.
Aileen and Nick Broomfield kept in touch writing occasionally and then last year he was served with a subpoena to appear at Aileen 's final state appeal before execution. Extracts of "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer" were shown in court, showing her lawyer pufling on a big joint, before giving her legal advice in prison. Many of her childhood friends were also called as witnesses.
Then unexpectedly Aileen suddenly announced she had killed the seven men in cold blood, not in self defense as she had pled previously and she wanted to die immediately. Jeb Bush, the State's governor, welcomed Aileen's decision and announced his intention to reunite Aileen with her maker as soon as possible. ln a subsequent interview Aileen admits in an unguarded moment when she thinks the camera is tumed off that she did kill in self defense but that she can no longer stand being on death row (12 years) and has to die.
The film portrays Aileen's childhood in Troy Michigan as one of unbelievable abuse and violence, which continued with her years on the road as a hitch hiking prostitute and ultimately culminated in the murders. ln her last interview, which Aileen asked Nick Broomfield to do, she said she believed her mind was being controlled by radio waves and that she would be taken away by angels on a space ship. The film provides an insight into the mind of a deeply paranoid yet sympathetic person who lost her mind and killed seven people.
lt is a powerful statement against the death penalty and raises disturbing questions about executing the mentally insane.
Aileen Wuomos was executed in the state of Florida on October 9th 2002.
This is the most personal and most disturbing film l have made. l knew Aileen over the course of 12 years, and the barbaric nature of her death had a profound effect on me, and months of nightmares. lt was one film l didn't choose to make, l came to it as a witness and ended up attending an execution.
The violence of taking a life remains the same whether it is legally sanctioned or not. lt introduces murder into our vocabulary of behaviour.
"I was moved and impressed. If the earlier film indicted a system corrupted by money and media speculation, this one exposed a wider social neglect and abuse. Broomfield's rapport with Aileen - if I can call it that - really paid off, she's a tragic figure."
- Tom Charity, Time Out
"Terrific. It's an extraordinary document: astonishing, tragic, gutting, and terribly funny in the most ghastly way. Perhaps his gift to cinema is the simple fact that the truth is a bar of soap- It's also -- clearly -- despite his efforts at Roger Cook dispassion, a very personal film. The cruel (heartless) question is how important it is. (Of course it is.) But will films like this -- brilliant, brave, quixotic -- change the world? I wonder, and hope."
- James Christopher, The Times
[tires crunching on debris]
[theme music]
<strong>NICK BROOMFIELD:</STR`ONG> It was here in these woods off Florida's I-75 that in the space of one year the police found the bodies of seven men.
They were killed with this gun, a High Standard double 9.22.
Richard Mallory, Walter Antonio, Dick Humphreys, David Spears, Charles Carskaddon, Peter Siems, and Troy Burress.
REPORTER [ON RADIO]: Eight men have been shot to death in cold blood on central Florida highways, including the busy tourist route of I-75.
But this time, there's an even more chilling twist to the slayings.
Police say for the first time in criminal history, these killers may be murdering with a feminine touch.
NICK BROOMFIELD: On January 9, 1991, Aileen Carol Wuornos was arrested in Daytona Beach, Florida.
She worked as a hitchhiking hooker.
-Oh.
-How are you doing?
NICK BROOMFIELD: This is the original police video of Aileen Wuornos' confession.
NICK BROOMFIELD: The idea of a woman killing men, a man-hating lesbian prostitute who tarnished the reputation of all her victims, brought Aileen
Wuornos a special kind of hatred.
Terry Humphreys' father was a retired police chief.
-There wasn't any sex involved in my dad's murder.
They cut him-- they did an autopsy on my dad.
They wouldn't release his body for over a week.
They cut him from stem to stern.
There wasn't any semen there anywhere.
-You just cannot imagine the grief, the hurt, the anguish that they have caused this family.
This is a man that I had for--
-I hope she meets up with quote, "Old Sparky."
You know who Old Sparky is.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Politicians and the Christian right campaigned for Aileen Wuornos' execution.
-Because I'm tired of this reelection jazz.
They're just trying to get promotional ladder climbing, political prestige from this.
And I'm sick and tired of this.
I'll probably get three more Death Row sentences.
And then I got to go to Pasco and Dixon for two more d-- Death Row.
How many times you got to kill me, you know?
I mean, this is-- this is bullshit.
They don't need to be doing this.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Even Ted Bundy was offered life imprisonment.
This was never offered to Aileen Wuornos.
By the time I met Aileen, she already had four death sentences.
But surprisingly, in an odd way, I found her to be the most honest person involved in the case.
All the others, her lawyers, her born-again Christian mother, the police, had all been involved in trying to sell her story for as much money as possible.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Hi.
How you doing?
NICK BROOMFIELD: This is Aileen when I first interviewed her in 1992 for my original film, "The Selling of a Serial Killer."
-I say it's this.
The principle is self-defense.
They say it's a number.
I say it's a principle.
To heck with what-- it-- it-- it has nothing to do with the number killed.
It's the principle.
But they're saying, there's a number.
No.
Self-defense is self-defense, no matter how many times it is.
I don't care if it's 100 times.
I was very-- I never provoked those guys.
I never provoked them.
I never showed any provocations whatsoever.
I was very nice, very decent, very clean, very lady-like.
I didn't even swear in front of my clients.
And a lot of my clients and I talked about Jesus and I talked political both mixed together and we never argued.
NICK BROOMFIELD: My old film had ended with this announcement of the resignation of Florida police officers who had illicitly entered into Hollywood movie deals to sell the story of America's first female serial killer, the Aileen Wuornos story.
-Major Dan Henry resigned as Chief of Staff of the Marion
County Sheriff's Office after being notified of an investigation being conducted by the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement.
The investigation being conducted by the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement centers around taped telephone conversations made by Deputy Munster between he and Major Henry involving the Aileen Wuornos case.
NICK BROOMFIELD: There was speculation at the time that if police officers did, in fact, receive money, all Aileen Wuornos' death sentences could be overturned.
12 years later, Aileen is still on Death Row.
There was no proper investigation into the police officers and their movie deals.
It all got covered over.
Aileen and I kept in touch over the years.
And then a few weeks ago I opened my front door, and to my amazement, was served with a subpoena to attend Aileen's final appeal before execution.
I had no idea how things would turn out and that I'll be witnessing an execution in 1 and 1/2 years' time.
This is Ocala, Florida.
All us witnesses were housed together in a motel.
-We're going to win this thing.
I'm telling you, we're going to win.
NICK BROOMFIELD: This is Joe Hobson, Aileen's attorney.
Lawyers like Joe are kept very busy.
4,000 people are on Death Row waiting for execution.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK.
-OK.
What--
NICK (OFF SCREEN): You're not very good at wheeling this.
-I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, bro.
-And has this particular case been stressful, the Aileen case?
-Uh, It's so important because this is the legal system in a-- in a phase where it's doing the most important thing it can ever do, and that is taking a human life.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Mm-hm.
-It's more important than a money judgment or an adjudication of guilt, or 30 years in prison.
And we've really got to be careful.
I mean, the whole system's got to be careful.
And my opinion and the whole gist of our motion is that she's been failed by the legal system.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Joe Hobson felt that Aileen had been poorly represented by her previous attorney, Dr. Legal.
-Most of us will probably never worry about spending time in jail.
But if you're ever involved in the criminal justice system, you will need a lawyer who can--
NICK BROOMFIELD: Joe Hobson was hoping to get Aileen a retrial by discrediting Dr. Legal, otherwise known as Steve.
This is the Ocala Courthouse, where we were going to spend the next week.
Steve the lawyer had made no attempt to investigate the cops.
He plead guilty to all the murders and didn't even try and make a deal for lesser sentence.
Aileen had no money to pay him, so Steve used the money obtained from interview fees.
This man in front of me is the state prosecutor, who wants to execute Aileen immediately.
This is the first time I've seen Steve for 11 years.
He said my film got him run out of town.
-Fuck you.
-What?
-Fuck you.
Fuck you and the [inaudible].
-I'm like, what are you reading?
-Fuck you and your documentaries.
-Well, nice to see you anyway.
-Don't talk to me.
-What?
-Don't talk to me.
BAILIFF (OFF SCREEN): All rise, please.
Circuit Court is back in session.
-OK.
You may be seated.
All right.
Let's continue.
-Now, um, you were contacted by Mr. Broomfield in 1992.
Do you recall specifically charging, or attempting to charge Mr. Broomfield $25,000 for an interview?
-I didn't attempt to charge anybody anything.
If Miss Wuornos asked me, Steve, I-- or told me, Steve, I want $25,000 for this interview, I would have passed that onto the person who was interviewing.
But it's-- it's not my position to, um, um, set fees or we didn't have a fee schedule.
-Will you admit at you're depicted on the movie
"The Selling of a Serial Killer doing exactly that?"
Trying to get $10,000-- or I think $25,000 for an interview?
-There's-- there's-- I don't think there's any evidence that
I tried to get $25,000 or anything.
-So the next stage is really to come up with a counteroffer?
-No, the next stage is to come up with $25,000.
-Right.
NICK BROOMFIELD: We're just talking to you about--
-But--OK. OK.
Well, then--
DIANE WUORNOS (OFF SCREEN): Well then, do a counteroffer.
-If you're not, then the next thing to do is to really get a counteroffer and let's-- and let's tell her something.
-So we would basically then pay the money to-- well, we pay the money to you, or to, as her legal--
-As her mom, and then Steve gets a percentages as our agent.
-Right.
I see.
DIANE WUORNOS (OFF SCREEN): Very tiny percentage.
This poor man works for nothing.
-Nick, wait a second.
What's Davy Crockett doing on the $100? bill?
Thank you, very much.
-Have you seen the-- Mr. Broomfield's production, "The Selling of a Serial Killer?"
-Yes.
-OK.
And you've seen yourself depicted in that movie?
-Yes, sir.
-Do you recall joking in that movie that your advice to any client facing the electric chair was, to quote Woody Allen, don't sit down?
-I remember making a lot of jokes in that movie.
-Judge, we're talking about the depictions of Mr. Glazer in the movie "The Selling of a Serial Killer," that the defendant submits fairly captures the essence of his approach to a representation, which clearly impeaches his claim that he had taken this as an altruistic pro bono national lawyer's guild [inaudible].
It helps establish the claim that all along his motive in taking this case was the publicity and the money to be made.
NICK BROOMFIELD: I have to say, I always liked Steve.
He was an old hippy from Micanopy who was just way out of his depth.
-The only thing really to do here is to have breakfast and then leave.
[all chuckle]
NICK BROOMFIELD: This is Dawn Botkins, Aileen's best friend.
-What was that little ditty you had about Ocala?
NICK BROOMFIELD: I really don't believe Steve took the case on for money, but he was so inexperienced he could only plead guilty for Aileen.
He didn't even have a fax machine or law office.
-When I was living in a tepee in Micanopy, I had--
I went through the whole thing, cows, chickens, geese, and--
DAWN BOTKINS (OFF SCREEN): I got all that.
--pigs.
I had a cow called Sir Angus McBeef, just so you know what he's going to be.
You know, you try to rationalize that you're going into the refrigerator, you're going-- and that was the last meat I was able to eat.
DAWN BOTKINS (OFF SCREEN): I guess you can look at it that way.
-Yeah.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Aileen lived in a total fantasy world.
She thought she'd get off the murders and then live with this woman, Arlene Pralle, a born-again Christian who had seen Aileen's picture in the local newspaper and had adopted her.
Together, they planned to run a horse ranch and raise she-wolves
Arlene Pralle, the born-again Christian, hired Steve and persuaded Aileen to come clean with God and plead guilty.
Steve had been advised that Aileen was paranoid and suffered from borderline personality disorder, but still went along with this cockeyed scheme.
Aileen seemed to think a miracle might happen, and was outraged to receive three more death sentences.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): I sentence you to death for the murder of Charles Humphreys, case number
91-112, Cypress County case number.
I sentence you to death for the murder of David Spears.
-Thank you.
And, I'll probably see you.
I'll be up in Heaven while ya'll are rotting in hell.
I hope they get whipped in the ass one of these days.
COURT OFFICIAL (OFF SCREEN): Fifth Circuit to handle that.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): OK.
There will be an automatic appeal.
You have the right to an appeal.
Mr. Glazer is that going to be handled by you or the public defender?
-May your wife and kids get raped--
-I would ask that you appoint the public defenders office.
--right in the ass.
I know I was raped and you ain't nothing but a bunch of scum.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): Therefore, these proceedings are now concluded.
-Putting somebody who was raped to death?
-All rise, please. Court will be adjourned.
-You bunch of motherfuckers!
NICK BROOMFIELD: In many Death Row cases, a client in despair will say they want to die.
It was a measure of Steve the lawyer's inexperience that he took Aileen's wish on face value.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): Sir, will you come on up here, please?
NICK BROOMFIELD: I like to flatter myself that I was being asked for my legal opinion.
But it turned out I was there to talk about Steve's marijuana smoking.
The big question was whether Steve had consumed seven very strong joints before giving Aileen legal advice in prison.
-You know, I've got a short video clip I want to show, if I may.
It's an excerpt from the film that depicts this alleged six, seven joint ride.
And as a preliminary question, isn't it true that in doing your work, you routinely edit things, correct?
-Well, you always edit afterwards, yeah.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): And editing involves cutting and pasting and putting things together.
-Mm-hm.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Correct?
-Yeah.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): And that's what you do all the time?
-Well, I don't know about the pasting, but you certainly can't.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Pasting in terms of inserting and connecting and making things fit together.
-Correct.
-OK.
NICK [ON VIDEO]: It was 6 AM.
Steve said it was a seven joint ride to the prison and he brought along a tape of his own music with him singing and playing all the instruments, especially for the occasion.
[music playing on video]
-OK.
Let's go back.
You recognize that?
-Yes.
Apol-- -That's your work, isn't it?
-I apologize for the quality.
It's not a very good copy.
-But that's still your work?
-Yes.
-You notice that the shirt that Mr. Glazer has on is white?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Uh-huh.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Now, here he's got a blue shirt on, correct?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Maybe he changed his shirt.
I don't know.
I mean--
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): He had a blue shirt on.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And now he's got a white one on.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Now he's got a white shirt.
-Well, it's possible he changed his shirt.
I've-- I've got-- maybe he put a clean white shirt on for the prison visit.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): But isn't it also possible that you just cut and paste and took footage from one episode and cut and paste it into another episode to make it look like something that hadn't, in fact, happened?
-Uh, I remember distinctly the-- I mean, the seven joint ride if that's what you're referring to.
I don't remember him changing his shirt.
But we could-- if you want, we can make all the outtakes available from that particular journey.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Well--
-Because they're still available.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): -that's not very convenient right now.
And you hadn't made those available before.
-Well, I didn't know you wanted them before.
And I-- you know, I didn't even know that the film was going to be submitted as evidence.
If I was making that trip, I would probably change my shirt at the end of the trip.
I don't know about you.
-But that's not part of my question, is it?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I don't know.
But I would-- I would probably bring a clean shirt along for my visit.
Wouldn't you?
I would.
-Keep in touch.
-Uh-uh, sir.
No, sir.
-Sorry.
Sorry.
-I got a message that Aileen wanted me to come meet her at the local jail.
She had something to say.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Thank goodness.
-Oh my, God.
-How are you?
-I'm doing good.
Get it out of there, Nick.
-I'm just trying to-- sorry.
-Ah, there.
Shoo!
-It was the microphone, we're adjusting now.
Sorry about that.
-Oh, Lordy.
-All right.
-OK.
I can't believe this microphone, how small it is, you know, and it actually works.
-It actually works.
[aileen laughing]
-OK, Nick.
Nick, this-- this interview, man.
I got to-- I-- I just-- let me do this thing over one more time because I know you guys pre-tape then you clip and stuff.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Right.
-So let me say it one more time, kind of right, OK?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK.
-Because I'm really concerned about the family members.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Right.
-I got to get my hair out of my face while I'm doing this.
Because I'm really concerned about family members, man.
So I want to say this again over.
Nick, the reason I'm-- I'm coming forth with you with this interview is because I'd like to come clean about my cases.
And because there's only about a 1% chance that a person can get off Death Row.
And I come to realize that that is actually true.
Very, very true.
There's only, like, about 82 people that got off Death Row af-- in-- in like 30 years out of like about 4,000 or 5,000
Death Row inmates, and those are only DNA people, blood samples.
So the chances of getting off Death Row are 1%.
99.9% you're going to be on it and you're going to die.
OK, I cannot go in the execution chamber and die in the execution chamber as a liar.
And I cannot go in the execution chamber and be executed under the devil.
I have to come clean and clean-- cleanse my spirit in the name of Jesus Christ.
So I have to come clean and tell the world the lies that went on through my mouth.
I mean, now prosecutors and cops--
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And that you killed seven men.
-Huh?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): That you killed those men in cold blood.
-Yeah.
I got to come clean that I killed those seven men in first-degree murder and robbery.
As they said, they had it right, a serial killer.
Not so much like thrill kill.
I was into the robbing biz.
I mean, you know, serial killers are in this thrill killing jazz.
I was into the robbing just-- and eliminate a witness.
But still, again, I got a number so it's serial killer.
But I'm coming clean before I go in that execution chamber and be executed that I killed them.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And so when you met them from the beginning, did you know that you were going to kill them?
When they picked you up in their cars?
-I pretty much-- I pretty much had them selected that they were going to die.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But when you're saying that there was no self-defense, so there was no self-defense?
-No.
There was no self-defense.
Uh, I'm being really straight up about everything.
There's no self-defense.
I'm really sorry what happened about everything.
I was in-- in this-- this-- to me, this world is nothing but evil and all of us are full of evil one way or another.
And whatever we do, we have evil in us.
All of us do.
And my evil just happened to come out because of the circumstances of what I was doing.
Hitchhiking, hooking, on the road, I was a homeless person all my life.
And then the hitchhiking and hooking I learned off the homelessness and cruising all over the United States of America and stuff.
And so, learning how to be a hooker as a hitchhiker eventually got tiring in the end.
I carried the gun for protection, but then I got where I was getting a real problem and our rent was due, $1,200 behind.
Tyria was doing a lot of beer-drinking and stuff.
She wanted to go out all the time, so she was burning up the money I was making.
I was making good, about $200 to $300 a day sometimes.
Sometimes $150.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But did she-- and did she know what you were doing?
-Oh, yeah.
Tyria always knew everything I was doing.
-I met her in a bar.
NICK BROOMFIELD: This is Aileen's great love, Tyria.
One of the reasons I had felt so much sympathy for Aileen was that she was betrayed by those closest to her all her life.
-We were sitting on the floor watching TV and she just come out and said I have something to tell you.
And I asked her what, and she said that she had shot and killed a man that day.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Tyria know about the murders all along, but didn't come forward to say anything until she was questioned by police.
Tyria, who was never charged with anything, was then made a state's witness.
And, it has been asserted, became part of the movie rights package in the Hollywood police film deal.
It was Tyria who got Aileen to confess in a series of taped phone calls.
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: Hello.
OPERATOR [ON RECORDING]: Miss Ty?
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: Yes.
OPERATOR [ON RECORDING]: Collect call from Aileen.
Do you accept?
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: Yes.
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: Yes. TYRIA [ON RECORDING]:</strong> Hi.
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: Hey.
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: Hey, I had to call you early because I didn't know if you were going to leave today, or what.
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: I don't-- what the hell's going on, Lee?
They've called.
They've been up to my parents again.
They've got my sister now asking her questions and I don't know what the hell's going on.
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: Huh.
What are they asking your sister questions for?
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: I don't know.
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: Hmm.
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: Lee, Lee, listen.
They're coming after me, I know they are.
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: No, they're not. [inaudible].
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: They've got to.
Then why are they asking so many questions then?
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: Honey, listen.
Listen.
Listen.
Do what you gotta do, OK?
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: I'm going to have to because I'm not going to go to jail for something that you did.
This isn't fair.
My family is a nervous wreck up there.
My mom has been calling me all the time.
She doesn't know what the hell's going on.
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: OK.
Do what you gotta do, OK?
All righty?
Tyria?
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: What?
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: You-- I'm not going to let you go to jail.
You hear me?
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: I don't know whether I should keep on living or if I should--
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: No, Ty.
Ty, listen to me.
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: And what if they don't believe me?
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: Tyria, listen to me.
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: What?
AILEEN [ON RECORDING]: I'm not going to let you go to jail or anything.
Listen, if I have to confess, I will.
TYRIA [ON RECORDING]: OK.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So you were very close?
-Yeah, we are.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): All right.
-And I still miss her and I still love her.
And I really-- and I'm really sorry about everything
I've done.
I miss Ty.
I lost Tyria over this.
And then the people that lost their loved ones and everything.
I really think first about the people that lost their loved ones and then Ty second, because I have to put them in first on this whole thing.
I'm really sorry for, you know, them losing their loved ones, man.
I know the feeling.
-And what about with Richard Mallory?
Because you gave that testimony with Richard Mallory.
-Yeah, Richard Mallory is definitely-- was not self-defense.
Richard Mallory I killed in-- for he had-- uh, I needed his wheels to move the stuff and he had the right amount of money I needed to move into the apartment, so.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But what about the testimony that you gave in court about--
-Oh, that's just-- like I was saying.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): About the Visine.
-Oh, I just doing a lying biz.
It was just my lying gig to try to beat the system.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Really?
So that was really all-- none of it was true?
-And he said, it doesn't matter to me.
Your bod-- your body will still be warm for my huge cock.
And he said-- he was choking me and I was holding it like this, and he said, do you want to die, slut?
And I just nodded no.
And then he said, are you gon-- you going to listen to everything I've got to say, have you do?
And I'm just nodded yes.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Then what happened?
-Takes the Visine and he lifts up my legs and he puts what turned out to be rubbing alcohol in the Visine bottle and he sticks some up my rectum area.
And that really hurt real bad, because he tore me up for a while.
And he put some in my vagina, which really hurt bad.
And then he walked around back to the driver's seat-- side and he pulled my nose open like this-- pulled them open and then he squirt rubbing alcohol down my nose.
And he said, I'm saving your eyes for the grand finale.
And he put the Visine back on the dash and I spit in his face.
And he said, you're dead, bitch, you're dead, and he was wiping his eyes.
And I laid down real quick and I grabbed my bag.
And he was starting to come for-- for me when I grabbed my bag and turn-- whipped my pistol out toward him.
And he was coming toward me with his right arm, I believe, and I shot immediately.
And I think I shot twice as fast as I could.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Because in court, you gave such a graphic description of what had happened with Richard Mallory.
-Yeah, after sitting around thinking how I could drum up a story.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): That was pretty convincing.
-Was it?
That's sad.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, I thought so.
-God, that's sad.
Well--
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And it's not-- and it's not that you just decided that you wanted to die and you wanted to get it over and done with that you changed your story?
-No.
The reason is, it's serious.
You-- there's no way-- nobody should go in that execution chamber dying on a hope for a lie, and even by the second make it out of this thing on a lie.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But I hear, you know, that you just couldn't stand being on Death Row after 12 years.
-Nick, and that-- this is the last time I'm going to say it.
You have to kill Aileen Wuornos because she'll kill again.
NICK BROOMFIELD: I had always believed that Aileen Wuornos had acted in self-defense, and that Richard Mallory, her first victim, who had a long history of sex crimes and who had spent five years in an institution for sex offenders, had tortured and tormented Aileen, pushing her over the edge into an insanity which led to the other six murders.
This is what Aileen said to Judge Uriel Blount before the sentencing on the Richard Mallory murder.
-What I did was what anybody else would do.
I defended myself, which everybody has the right to defend themselves.
And I had no intentions of killing anyone.
I would not do that.
Not-- I'm not that type of person.
NICK BROOMFIELD: But the jury didn't go for it.
This was Aileen's reaction on receiving her first death sentence.
COURT OFFICIAL (OFF SCREEN):</strong> Count one, the majority of the jury by a vote of 12-0, advise and recommend to the court that it impose the death penalty upon Aileen Carol
Wuornos, also known as Susan Lynn Blahovec, also known as Lori Christine Grody, also known as Cammie Marsh Greene.
Dated at DeLand, Volusia County Florida, this 30th day of January 1992.
REPORTER (OFF SCREEN): Hi, Lee.
How do you feel about the verdict?
-Innocent.
And I was raped and I was tortured.
And I-- they had a steering wheel.
They took the steering wheel and it had scratches all over it and it was broken.
And it proved that I was tied to that steering wheel.
And I cannot believe-- I cannot believe what happened.
REPORTER (OFF SCREEN): Why did this jury find you guilty?
-I think it's the media coverage.
It's a conspiracy.
NICK BROOMFIELD: I couldn't believe what happened the next day in court, Aileen objecting to her own witnesses.
-Um, and-- and I need to get this on record, if I could.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN):</strong> She's taking it down.
-OK.
Uh, the-- there's some witnesses that are coming.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN):</strong> Yes, ma'am.
-And I've already told my attorneys on numerous occasions these people did not grow up with me at all.
Um, they lived in the neighborhood, but they didn't really associate with me, my brother, and my sister and everybody else.
-Here's the only thing.
The attorney can call them, but he can't put on anyone he thinks is, uh, committing perjury.
That's unethical for him to do that.
If he thinks they're lying-- if he knows that they're lying, he can't put them on.
-OK.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN):</strong> Thank you.
-Thank you.
-Judge?
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN):</strong> Yes ma'am--uh, yes, sir.
-May the defense request a, uh, 10 minute recess?
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN):</strong> Yeah, OK.
In view of-- OK, in view of those statements.
-I need to confer with my associates.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN):</strong> Of course.
Yeah.
OK, they want to take 10 minutes and confer on what they want to say, OK?
-Yes, sir.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): All right.
We'll be recessed for 10 minutes.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Aileen was deliberately sabotaging her own defense.
But the witnesses were called anyway.
[background conversation]
NICK BROOMFIELD: Danny Caldwell, like many of the boys in the neighborhood, lost his virginity to Aileen.
Aileen was trading blow jobs for cigarettes from the age of nine.
-I was just heading over there to see who was there and got up to the fort and the door was kind of closed, so I, you know, opened it up.
And Keith had-- Keith and Mark had Aileen in there.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): What do you mean that they had Aileen in there?
-Well, they had her in there and, you know, she was naked and--
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): And-- and what was happening?
-Well, um, Keith was having sex with her.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Did you stay during that?
-Yes.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Did you ever have sex with Aileen again afterwards?
-Uh, just that day.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Jerry Moss, who was a lover of Aileen's, pretended in public he didn't even know her.
-She-- she wanted us to be boyfriend-girlfriend in public, and I--
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): When-- when you were in public around other kids, when the rest of the kids were around, how did you treat her?
-Like she was nobody.
Like she was dirt.
Like I had nothing to do with her, you know.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): What would you say to her?
-Tell her, get the fuck out of my face and go some fucking place else.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Would you call her any names?
-Call her ugly, bitch.
[deep sigh]
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): If she were following along behind you, what would you do?
-It would, uh, depend on who was with me or whatever.
But I'd turn around and throw rocks at her and tell her to get the fuck out of there, go home.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Why--why would you do that?
-Because I didn't want to be seen with her.
I didn't want to be associated with her.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Do you know whether she was having sexual relations with anyone else at this time?
-Yes, I do.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): And who was that?
-Um, her-- her brother, Keith.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Is that her uncle?
Or is that her actual biological--
-That's her actual-- actual brother.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): I just want to make sure that, you know.
-I just wanted to remark that they need to take a polygraph on what their saying because there's too much perjury going on.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): All right.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Michelle Chauvin recalled an incident with Aileen's grandfather.
-Raise your right hand.
-I don't know how much you want me to say.
He was a bastard.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Do you recall an incident when you and Aileen skipped school?
-Yes.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): What happened when-- did you go to Aileen's house with her?
-Um, I walked home with her and we had gotten caught.
And I remember looking through the front-- they had a screen door view.
And the minute she walked in, he had her over a chair.
And I stood there and watched him.
And he beat the hell out of her with a black belt that was around his waist.
He took it off and told her to lean over the chair, and walloped on her for a good five minutes.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Was this what you would call a spanking?
-Oh, no.
No.
It was like, I was-- it left me hypnotized.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Did he know you were watching?
-Yeah, he did.
He was aware I was watching.
PROSECUTOR (OFF SCREEN): Is that, uh, just an example as to--
-That's an example, yes.
NICK BROOMFIELD: It had been a long week, all the witnesses stuck together in this motel.
-Do you think we'd all go mad if we were locked up here much longer together?
-Well, I'm getting tired of it.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Dawn insisted that gays hadn't been invented when she and Aileen first became friends.
-They weren't invented or whatever.
There was no gay people.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): Well, what were they all doing?
-They weren't gay.
There was no such thing as gay.
-They were in the closet.
-No they weren't There was no such thing.
I don't remember a person at school gay.
I didn't hear this gay stuff until 10 years ago.
Well, maybe 15.
It's just now starting to be acceptable.
But, no, there was not.
Was there gay people when you went to school?
-I'm sure that there probably were.
I went to a British public school, there were many-- that's where it was invented, us and the Greeks, you know?
-No way.
Really?
-Yeah, of course.
-I just have to do this.
Sorry.
Look!
Come on you guys.
NICK BROOMFIELD: After all that, Aileen decided to volunteer for execution and we all went home.
Now that Aileen was confessing to being a coldblooded killer, Aileen found she had a lot of new friends.
-Her appeals have been exhausted.
She wants to meet her Creator.
She's on the list.
Absolutely.
REPORTER (OFF SCREEN): Governor Jeb Bush is expected to sign Wuornos' warrant soon.
NICK BROOMFIELD: We had all come to this as witnesses, hoping to get Aileen off Death Row.
But it now felt like we were taking part in an execution.
There was talk of making an appeal on the grounds of Aileen's mental competence.
We traveled to Troy, Michigan, where
Aileen grew up to find out more.
This is Dawn's house.
-Hi, Joan.
How are you?
I think about you a lot.
My kids just come over with the grandbabies, so you get to see them.
-Her granddaughter and her grandson.
-How are you?
NICK BROOMFIELD: Dawn gets up and writes to Aileen at 5 AM every morning.
-I got looking for one thing today, so I figured while I had Aileen's shit out, you can sit here.
-What, all this?
-Yeah, and I got lots of pictures of her brothers and stuff like that, that you might want to look at.
-Really?
-Well, yeah.
-All this?
-All this.
I was looking for her Will.
I couldn't find her Will.
-Her Will?
-Yeah.
OK, here you just sit down for a while.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Aileen does the most amazing ink drawings that you can only see against the light.
-It's because you can't see them by looking down at them, but it's perfect with the sunlight outside.
See how that does that?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Wow.
Have you got any-- any pictures of when she was quite young?
Ah.
-Isn't that kind of funny?
-That is funny, isn't it?
-Oh, that's her sister.
-That's--
-That's her graduation.
-That's Lori?
-Yeah.
That's what she looks like now.
NICK BROOMFIELD: There were other photos, too.
Aileen aged four.
Her brother Keith, age six.
Aileen's biological mother, Diane, who abandoned Aileen when she was six months old.
Aileen's father Leo, who was convicted of kidnapping and sodomizing an eight-year-old boy.
He committed suicide in prison.
Aileen's grandfather Lowry, who she called dad and is rumored to be Aileen's biological father.
He abused both Aileen and her mother.
Aileen, aged 13, when she got pregnant and had a baby boy that was put up for adoption.
After the baby, Aileen became the local untouchable.
She spent two years living in the woods at the end of her street.
DAWN (OFF SCREEN): Aileen used to have a fort back here, as a matter of fact.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): A fort?
DAWN (OFF SCREEN): A fort.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): With Dennis.
DAWN (OFF SCREEN): Uh, yeah.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So Aileen would just sleep rough?
DAWN (OFF SCREEN): Mm-hm.
She would either sleep in the cars or she would go around prostituting at night to keep warm.
Stuff like that.
And, hopefully, she'd get a hotel.
You know, some of these guys would say we'll go get a hotel and she could get a shower.
That's how she washed and stuff like that.
Or she would go to that gas station up there, which is still there by the way, used to be the Clark.
That's-- we used to go in there and pinch our nose and drink what was it?
MALE (OFF SCREEN): Boone's Farm.
-Peppermint schnapps.
It's disgusting.
It's the only way you could drink it to get the quick buzz.
I know it sounds sickening, it was sickening.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But it must've been freezing in the winter.
-Well, it was for her.
I didn't come out here in the winter, I'm sure.
I don't think none of us did.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She was out here in the winter?
-Yeah.
That's why she left.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So did the other kids pick on her at all?
-Yeah.
Do you remember where we're at?
Yeah, they always picked on her or she picked on them, because they always had something terrible to say about her.
But that's because she had a baby, and they naturally assumed that she-- well, she did get-- you know, she slept with people for money and all that.
So I imagine the girls in our days probably thought, well, she sleeps with everybody and they just didn't like that.
They don't think it's funny now, though.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): How do you mean?
DAWN (OFF SCREEN): I think it's terrible how they treated her.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Now--
-And everybody all of a sudden comes out of the woodwork and said, oh, I was nice to her.
I gave her clothes and stuff like that.
No they didn't.
NICK BROOMFIELD: We went to visit Dennis Allen, who lived in the woods with Aileen and now lives in this house.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Hi.
-How are you?
-Hi.
How do you do?
I'm Nick.
-Nick?
Dennis. -Hi.
How do you do?
-Hi.
JOAN (OFF SCREEN): Hi.
I'm Joan.
-Hi, Joan.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Hello.
-Hi.
-And who-- who are these fine creatures?
-Oh, those are my birds.
That's, uh, Freckles and Freda.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Freckles and Freda.
-Mm-hm.
NICK BROOMFIELD: This is a picture of Dennis, who used to be a cross dresser.
Dennis looked out his only picture of his time in the woods with Aileen.
-Now, it was kind of a mess around there.
In fact, the police took this picture.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Oh, did they?
-That's how I got it.
Yeah, I don't know if you can see--
NICK (OFF SCREEN): What's it of?
-Let me see.
Well, this was when they were subdividing.
They threw all the stumps over in one section and these were all made with stumps with straw packed in around.
This is where I slept.
It was just long enough to get in there and sleep.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And so, Aileen would come and visit you.
-Yeah.
Every now and then, she'd find one of my camps and come.
In fact, the last camp I was at when Aileen found me was what we called the little round lake.
It was way down at the bottom of a gully and it was round.
And I had a piece of plywood that somebody had left there and I just made a lean-to with two posts and put that up on it.
And that was the last place, in fact, Aileen-- the last camp she come that I had was that one.
NICK BROOMFIELD: This is a picture of Chief, the local pedophile.
He's thought to be the father of Aileen's child.
Chief later committed suicide.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): He was like this bit of a strange old man, wasn't he?
-Kind of, yeah.
A lot of people thought he was.
But they were a gathering place there for kids because they had kids from everywhere that came there all the time.
And I remember when I was little, see, Chief would want to pick kids up and put them on his lap and he'd talk and tell them about this and that.
And I never would allow it because I just-- he kind of freaked me a little bit.
I can remember one time he had some chicken eggs because he had chickens and all this kind of thing, and he'd pick them open when they were ready to hatch.
And I couldn't stand it, him doing that.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): He'd pick them open?
-He would pick the shells open as they were trying to come through.
He would pick them open and it would be too early for them still, you know.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And they'd die?
-A lot of times they would.
They weren't really ready to come out of there yet.
They wouldn't live.
-They're still there.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Michelle drove us to Aileen's old home.
They grew up as Vietnam was ending and drugs were everywhere.
-Aileen's house is right over there.
You want to go by it?
-Yeah.
-OK.
I'll take you by it.
This was Mark Farron's house.
We are all connected together.
We all used to hang in the neighborhood.
You know, all the kids packed together.
This was Terry Cox' house right here.
Um, she used to do a lot of drugs with [bleep] who lived in this little white one.
This is Aileen's house right here.
This is it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): That's it there?
-That's it.
This is her house.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And when you saw her being beaten.
DAWN (OFF SCREEN): Ah, that door right there.
I was in front of that door.
See, they've redid the house since then.
But that room in the very back is her bedroom.
Not the first one, but the one in the back.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And that's where she was being--
DAWN (OFF SCREEN): Yeah. This one.
The second window.
And see how low they are?
She used-- she used to climb right out of them.
If somebody sees us in there, they will come out and raise hell, because I'm-- Corey was with me when that happened last time.
And [bleep] lived right here.
And they were druggies also.
We used to hang together and go over there and smoke pot and do what not and get in all kinds of shit.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But lots of different drugs?
-Yes!
Lots of, um, pills actually.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Pills?
-LSD, mescaline, blotter acid.
Um--
NICK BROOMFIELD: Aileen, age 16, left Michigan and traveled down here to Florida looking for sun and friends.
She was young and pretty, earning good money as a hooker, but with a violent temper and soon in trouble.
She knocked one man out with a beer bottle, another with a billiard ball.
She particularly liked it here near Daytona Beach.
This is one of the motels, the Fairview, where she frequently stayed.
It was all so new and exciting.
Just down the road is the Last Resort biker bar, where Aileen liked to hang out.
She was allegedly great friends with the Human Bomb.
[all counting together]
-3, 2, 1.
[explosion]
[cheering and applause]
-How do you feel?
-Real dizzy right now.
Real dizzy.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Did you know Lee well?
-Yeah.
Uh, can I talk to ya'll in a few minutes?
I gotta walk this off.
NICK BROOMFIELD: After Keith, her brother, died of cancer at age 21, Aileen surprised everyone by marrying this man, Lewis Fell; who was 76 years old and President of the Keystone Coal Company.
But after only a month, Lewis filed for restraining charges after Aileen beat Lewis with his own walking stick.
In her late 20s, Aileen gave up on men and started dating women.
Here's Tyria, who became Aileen's family.
They lived together for over three years.
This was one of the homes they had.
Aileen saw herself as a kind of Bonnie and Clyde character on the run with her lover, Tyria.
Aileen and Tyria's favorite pastime was drinking beer and firing their pistols in the woods.
Aileen got books on being a survivalist.
She wanted Tyria all to herself.
Tyria described Aileen as a fantasist, who became jealous and possessive, and who could be violent and frightening.
In the end, Tyria ran off as the police were closing in.
In loneliness and desperation, Aileen ended up with this man, Dick Mills.
-This is that paper you're talking about?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Yeah.
It's-- it's called "My Sex Romps with Kinky Mankiller."
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Dick had sold his story to the "News of the World."
-All I want to know is, who's the best lawyer out there, man, to sue them for this trash?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Can I quote--
-I never even talked that shit.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Can I quote you a bit?
And get-- if you said this, right?
We were lying in bed one night when she started talking about her favorite sexual fantasies.
She said she often got turned on by imagining she had a black hood over her head and was tied to a tree in a forest.
Then a guy would come up, rape her, and shoot her in the head.
She said the actual killing would make her climax.
I was real sickened by what she said.
-Wrong.
Wrong.
There's partial truth to that.
But most of that, I don't know where it came from or who got it or nothing about it.
And you can check any film anywhere in the country or anybody that's got it.
I never said that, OK?
It goes along the lines that she told me one time that the idea was that she'd like to lay in bed out in the middle of the forest, the woods or somewhere in the mountains or something.
Have a hood over her head or something, and somebody crawl in through the window.
No-- they had the hood on or something, and would rape or this and that kind of shit and she'd like that.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I mean, did you--
-As far as all these other things go pertaining to it, there's no reality to it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Did you get any feeling that she hated men, or?
-No, I just got the feeling she is what she was, a dyke.
Except I didn't know she was a killer.
There's no way I could know that.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I mean, could you tell that when you made love to her, or?
-Nah, not particularly.
She just probably liked it either way, whatever came along.
Didn't really seem to matter much.
It's just another bad experience, I'm sure, for both of us.
NICK BROOMFIELD: This is Aileen when first charged with the murders.
It was just after the phone conversations with Tyria that had led her to confess.
What Aileen didn't know was that Tyria, herself, was involved in movie discussions involving Florida State
Police and production companies in Hollywood.
They were selling her story, the story of America's first female serial killer.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): You understand the nature of the charges?
-Yes, I do, sir.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): Do you wish to be represented by counsel?
-Yes, I do.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): Can you afford to hire an attorney?
-No, sir.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): Do you work?
-No.
I'm in jail.
How can I work?
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): Well, obviously you're not working now, but how long has it been since you've last worked?
-Oh, about, um, '84, possibly.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): You haven't worked in six or seven years?
How do-- how do you support yourself?
-I was a special call girl.
NICK BROOMFIELD: When Sergeant Brian Jarvis, who is now police chief in New York State, objected to these movie discussions, he was taken off the Wuornos case.
-Right, I was actually transferred back into the patrol division.
It had followed a month of continual harassment on the job in the current position I was in, which ultimately started when Captain Binegar had realized that I found out about their plan to work with Tyria Moore in obtaining a movie rights package.
NICK BROOMFIELD: The state attorney's report found that three of Jarvis' fellow officers, Captain
Binegar, Sergeant Munster, and Major Dan Henry were involved in movie discussions with Tyria Moore after Aileen's arrest.
-Yeah, ultimately when the--when the arrest came, Lee Wuornos was charged with the murder and Tyria
Moore was not charged with anything.
But she was made a state's witness and she was working with these fellow officers on obtaining movie rights.
NICK BROOMFIELD: This note was them pinned under Sergeant
Jarvis's back door and his home burgled.
-Less than a month later, on November 25, my wife had gone out to the post office and the store during daylight hours, like 10 o'clock in the morning.
When she came home, the house had been broken into.
The doors were ajar.
She went up to my office and all of the files on the Wuornos case, on the investigators, and all the information I had had been trashed.
Nothing else had been touched in the house.
REPORTER (OFF SCREEN): How do you feel, Aileen?
-Bust these crooked cops and their conspiracy, please!
REPORTER (OFF SCREEN): Are you afraid, Aileen?
-I'm innocent.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Aileen was right about the cops and their movie deals.
But in her paranoia, she also believed that the police had known about the first murder but allowed her to become a serial killer, because then they'd get more money for their film deals.
Aileen's lawyers are challenging the execution on the grounds of her mental competence.
Not that executing insane people seems to be a problem.
In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled it was not unconstitutional to execute the mentally impaired.
Aileen's paranoid delusions have gotten much worse on Death Row.
She now believes her mind is being controlled by radio waves beamed into her cell.
-Aileen Wuornos says her food is being tainted and she's being threatened with rape.
-CBS 4's Joan Murray is live in Fort Lauderdale with the story.
John Joan.
-Well, now she has written a 25-page letter where she names names, names security-- or rather guards at the prison where she was being held in Pembroke
Pines accusing them of harassing her while she awaits execution.
-And I need some-- an attorney, like a private attorney to oversee my well-being until my execution.
Maybe that would keep things kind of in line because there's a lot of illegalness going on.
NICK BROOMFIELD: It's actually pretty hard to help Aileen, who by now, not surprisingly, doesn't trust anyone.
And she's threatening to fire her lawyer if he continues to try to fight the execution.
Dawn told Aileen about our visit to Troy.
And Aileen asked for the opportunity to put the record straight about her childhood.
-All right.
Yep.
Will-- will you let me know when she is?
OK.
You don't have any secret cameras in your belt, do you?
-Oh, no.
I just have this rather large one right here.
[INDISTINCT YELLING FROM INMATES]
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Hello.
-Hello!
Hey, how you doing?
Good to see you.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Hi.
It's good to see you.
-Hi, Nick.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Hi, how are you?
-I'm doing all right.
How you doing?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Good.
-Check out the orange shirt.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Wasn't it orange-- wasn't it orange before?
-No, they changed it.
It was-- there-- they got this new thing to wear the orange shirt out for Iraq or wherever-- whenever you get out of your cell, like-- like Death Row has never escaped.
Nobody on Death Row has ever escaped, right?
And they're acting like we're escape risks or something.
-What-- what it's like being here all the time?
-What's it like being in here?
Well, here it's OK.
It's all right.
But, you know, you have your problems with some staff don't like you--
[laughs]
Oh, you're a serial killer, you know, biz and stuff.
And so they-- you know, some staff won't treat you right because of who you are.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Have you got any friends?
-You can't be in control of everybody.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Have you got any friends here at all?
-No, I stick to myself.
I just stick in-- in the cell with myself.
I don't even care about going outdoors.
There's nothing out there.
I don't smoke anymore, so.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So what's you're day like?
How does it start?
-I spend 24/7 in the cell watching TV, reading the Bible, writing letters to Dawn.
Um, sitting around doing a lot of thinking, preparing.
Think-- memory-- going back in time, memory of all-- everything I've been through in my life and then just preparing for my death.
Get all the tears out of me and stuff so I won't cry and that sort of jazz, you know.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So you won't cry?
-Because it is going to be a little bit tough when I go.
Huh?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Getting all the tears out of you?
-Yeah.
Because I just don't want to be in the execution chamber crying my eyes out, and I'm not going to.
I'm going to tough it out as tough as I can.
Just lay on the table, give everybody a little smile, and close my eyes and go.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): With Richard Mallory, he was the first that you killed?
-Mm-hm.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Did he abuse you or not?
Because in the court you said that, you know--
-Aw, see, I'm not going to go into the-- wait a minute.
Ow.
No, I won't go in-- I won't go into the murder.
I won't go into the murders if it was self-defense or not.
I'm not going into any of the murders.
Whether or not they died in self-defense or what, I'm not going to say.
I'm not saying nothing.
My concern-- the only reason I'm doing interviews for anybody or anything-- my concern is there's-- you've got law enforcement out there allowing people to die.
You got those 50 men in Canada-- I mean, those 50 women in Canada that died, I'm sure the cops knew who the guy was.
They're letting them kill.
They want to turn them into high-profile cases for books and movies.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, what was it-- so what was it--
NICK BROOMFIELD: I wondered how Aileen, herself, viewed her childhood in Troy.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): -quite nice living there?
-Yeah.
Troy's all right.
Oh, and I want to straighten out something, man.
See-- hey, Nick, I've got to get this straightened out.
See, the cops lied about my family, Jackie, Drew, and them.
They all lied about my--
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, how did they lie about your family?
-Because see-- OK, now I got-- see, I got-- if this documentation, I got to square some stuff up here.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK, so tell me about your family.
-OK.
The truth about my family is this.
My dad was so straight and so clean he wouldn't even wear-- take his shirt off to mow the lawn.
He did not believe in cussing.
He did not believe in-- in, uh, long hair and mini skirts and stuff.
He was really straight, really decent.
And so was my mom.
My mom hated swearing in the house.
If you swore-- if you said one swear word, you had a whole bar of Lava soap in your mouth.
So I came from a real clean and decent family.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But why, then, did you get thrown out after the birth?
-See, after my mom died-- after my mom died, my dad got pissed.
He's like, OK, this is the last straw, you know?
I think you are the cause of mom's death because she had physical problems that-- because of all the stress and the pain and suffering and everything.
And what I'm going through as a wild kid is pissing him off.
I mean, he thinks that that killed her as well, induced her death, and so he's pissed off.
And he doesn't want me home anymore.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And how-- how did it feel, like, having to live in cars and in other people's house?
-It was living hell. That's why I went to Florida.
[aileen laughs] NICK (OFF SCREEN): Living hell?
-Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, sleeping in the snow.
I mean, sleeping in snowy weather in a vehicle on cinder blocks at Richie's house.
Sleeping in it with no blank-- I think I had one blanket and one pillow and it's ice cold outside.
That's when I said, well, I got to go.
I got it down to Florida or something now, because I was sleeping in the snow.
Out in the woods sleeping on the ground in the snow.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): You must have been frozen.
-I was frozen, man.
Yeah.
I still got marks where my toes are blue to this day, and the bottom of my feet are blue.
And this is probably why I even got my hands like this today.
I don't know.
My hands are-- as you can see, they're like they're frostbit looking.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And how were the other kids, though?
-How-- the other kids?
They were all living in their houses.
[aileen laughs]
While I was out on the streets.
But that's all right, man.
Because, see, I lived through it.
I survived.
I went down to Florida.
And then I could-- you know, started trekking all over the United States of America and stuff.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Aileen, let me ask you one question.
Do you think if you hadn't had to leave your home and sleep in the cars and stuff it would have worked out differently?
-Now, if I could do my life all over again and I came from a background of a family that was right on, where-- I-- I mean, my family was right on.
When I was thinking that I meant as far as my mom not dying, my dad not freaking out, and us-- if I could do it all over again, my family died too young, I had to hit the road.
And I came from a family that was supportive, we didn't have split sister-- half-sister and brother stuff and all that.
It was all true blood, real blood and everything was financially stable and everybody was really tight, I would have became more than likely an outstanding citizen of America who was-- who would have either been an archaeologist, a paramedic, a police officer, a fire department gal, or an undercover worker for DEA, or arch-- did I say archaeology?
Or-- oh, or a missionary.
Because I believe in God, but I'm not a Christian freak.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So you think it would've--
-And so scrub missionary, because I'm just-- I'm just thinking what-- you know, I would've came from a decent, I would've done it real decent and stuff.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Let me ask you something.
What-- what do you think was the single most happy time in your life?
What-- what do you think you've enjoyed most?
[aileen sighs]
-Nick, I've been through so much hell I can't even think of something there right now.
And I'm so burning fucking mad about how I'm being-- I got to wait for my execution!
I want to get in the fucking chamber tomorrow and leave.
And then they play-- since-- since I waved off, I've had nothing but psychological and physical fucking problems playing with it because I'm on hold with my execution.
I'm so fucking mad I can't see straight.
And they're just daring me to kill again.
They got me pissed.
United States Supreme Court, you fucking-- I'm telling you, man!
You motherfuckers keep fucking with my goddamn execution, there's going to be bloodshed.
I'm sick of this!
Get that fucking warrant signed.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Aileen waited until she thought we weren't filming to talk about the murders.
AILEEN [OFF CAMERA]: I can't do it.
I would never be able to handle a life sentence or anything.
And then they've said other things that are really crazy.
They do crazy things to people while they're incarcerated.
I'd never be able to handle it, so I'm going for the death.
I have to because they're too evil.
They're too evil to people incarcerated.
And they're too evil on the cases.
They're so corrupt it's not funny, so I've got to go down.
I have to.
That's why I can't say nothing about self-defense on tape or anything.
-But was it self-defense?
AILEEN [OFF CAMERA]: Huh?
-Was it self-defense?
AILEEN [OFF CAMERA]: What?
-Was it self-defense?
AILEEN [OFF CAMERA]: What?
-Was it self-defense.
AILEEN [OFF CAMERA]: Yes, but I can't tell anybody.
Never.
I have to go down to the execution.
They're too corrupt.
They-- they-- they stick together.
Hand over fist, hand in glove, man.
-So, it was self--
AILEEN [OFF CAMERA]: Let's see.
Hand-- hand over fist, friend in glove.
-So was-- wasn't there any self-defense?
AILEEN [OFF CAMERA]: Yeah.
And so was some others.
But there's nothing I can do about it.
All they'd do is give me an overturned sentence.
They would never do me righteous.
You see what I'm saying?
Never do me right.
They'll only fuck me over some more, so I can only go to the death.
-You know, I'm going to always remember you and love you.
-Yeah, Aileen.
-I love you so much, man.
Take care of yourself.
-All right.
-And nice meeting you.
Take care. -Nice to meet you.
Take care.
-Goodbye, Aileen.
Bye.
-See you later!
NICK BROOMFIELD: Six months later, this announcement was made.
REPORTER (OFF SCREEN): Governor Jeb Bush signs death warrants scheduling executions.
44-year-old Aileen Wuornos is one of the nation's first known female serial killers.
She will be executed October 9 for the murders of six men.
Wuornos has dropped all of her appeals.
-I did it because, uh, I believe in the death penalty and I have a duty to implement the law.
And a great majority of Floridians want their governor to do this.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Jeb Bush is running for reelection on a law and order pro death penalty ticket.
Aileen's execution date for October 9 fits him perfectly, a month before these elections.
Brad Thomas, Jeb Bush's political adviser, is reported as saying, we want to become more like Texas.
Bring in the witnesses, put them on a gurney, and let's rock and roll.
We're driving to meet Diane Wuornos, Aileen's biological mother.
They haven't laid eyes on each for 25 years.
This is Calumet, a copper mining town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
The Wuornos family originally came here as immigrants from Oulu in Finland to work down the mines.
-OK, let me fix my pillow again.
OK, I want to tell you, I'm probably going to cry a little.
I want to tell you something about her birth.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK.
-She was a frank breech birth, that means bottom first.
And a breech birth is very dangerous.
And that's feet first, and a frank breech, bottom first, is really very bad.
The doctor even called in other people to watch it because it was so unusual.
But I thought maybe that she got some kind of brain damage during that birth.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Yeah.
-And that may have cau-- while she's mentally competent, it may have caused her problems.
What does Aileen think about what caused her to act like that?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, originally, she said she did it in self-defense.
And then she said she just needed the money.
And she says that if she'd, you know, come from a home that wasn't split and--
-Oh, because her-- her father and me getting a divorce.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I-- she didn't say that.
But I think, um, I think she's confused.
Because she, on the one hand, says she-- says it had nothing to do with her childhood.
But then on the other hand, she was sleeping out in the snow for a while and living in the woods.
-She was sleeping in the snow and living in the woods?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Mm-hm.
Immediately after she had the baby.
-I know nothing about that.
I never heard Barry tell me that.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): After she had the baby, she couldn't-- she couldn't move back into the house with your father.
-Yeah.
-Then she was living in the woods in the snow.
-Didn't agenc-- agency find her and take-- take care of her?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): No.
And then she ended up, you know, hitchhiking around.
-Which she liked.
Do you know the exact date of the execution?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I think it's soon.
-OK.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): I think it's very soon.
-I think I'll rest better.
NICK BROOMFIELD: As we were leaving, Diane asked for Aileen's forgiveness.
I heard Aileen just fired her lawyer.
I drove to Stark, Florida, where the execution will happen.
And to meet Dawn, who's doing the funeral arrangements.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So what does Aileen want to wear, again, for the execution?
-Um, a black Harley Davidson t-shirt with wings, because she believes she's earned her wings, which she has.
A pair of jeans.
A pair of boots with, um, corner toes.
And a military belt.
I think that's it actually.
She might have something else on that, I don't know.
Probably a leather jacket if I know Aileen.
I know if she can or not, but.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): No other wishes that she make?
-You mean to be-- afterwards?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Mm-hm.
-To be cremated and come home to my house, be around the people that love her.
Why would she want to stay in Florida?
Hmm-mm.
She's coming home to Michigan.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Aileen's ex-lawyer made a last minute plea to stop the execution.
But Jeb Bush was not going to be stopped.
-Based on his concerns, uh, we're going to, um, ask three psychiatrists to, um, analyze her to make sure that she's fit for the execution, which is a duty that I have.
And I intend to do it.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Jeb ordered a stay of execution, but guess what?
His psychiatrists examined Aileen for just 15 minutes, and then gave the thumbs up to go ahead.
-Lynn Gordon is in our newsplex now with the latest details.
Lynn.
-Laurie, we have just learned that Governor Jeb Bush has lifted the stay of execution for serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
She has been found to be mentally competent.
That means she will be executed next Wednesday.
NICK BROOMFIELD: Aileen's given up the opportunity to do a mass press conference and has asked me to do her last interview.
I'm sure that's because she wants me to communicate her ideas about what she calls the crooked cops.
The last interview, dumb rules like I've got to stand behind this rope.
There'll be 15 guards, including the warden, in attendance.
And Aileen, for no good reason, will wear shackles throughout the interview.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She-- is he on her way?
-Pardon?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Is she on her way, or?
-Not yet.
NICK BROOMFIELD: It's been proven that the death penalty is absolutely no deterrent.
States without the death penalty, in fact, have lower murder rates.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Hi, Aileen.
Hi.
-Hi.
You know, I already told you everything, so you know, you just go ahead and ask me questions.
And if I want to answer them, I'll answer them, OK?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK.
So-- so I-- I guess, you know, I was just wondering how you're going to be, you know, at 9:30 tomorrow morning?
Are you prepared?
-I'm prepared.
I'm all right.
I'm all right with it.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And how--
-I'm all right with it.
But, like I said, remember and tell-- let them know that I know that the cops knew who
I was after Richard Mallory died.
I left prints everywhere and they covered it and let me kill the rest of those guys to turn me into a serial killer.
I know they did because I was no professional serial killer or anything, murderer or whatever you want to call it.
Wasn't specialize, what I was doing.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So, Aileen, how--how--
-Did some sloppy work, you know, and I left prints.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): -how have you prepared yourself for tomorrow morning?
-How?
I'm all right with it.
Hey, I'm ready to go.
Hey, I was tortured at BCI.
They had-- they had the intercom on in the room and they kept lying that it wasn't on.
And they were using sonic pressure on my head since 1997.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Sonic pressure?
-And every time I was trying to write something, they-- and I think they had some kind of eye in the cell, I'm not sure.
But every time I started writing something, it went up higher.
So I'm thinking that they probably had the TV rigged.
The TV or the mirror or something was rigged.
They got a huge satellite on the compound.
After they put the huge satellite on the compound, it could have been either rigged to the TV set or the mirror or something, because the electrician, when he put the mirror on the wall, he said, doesn't that look like a computer?
The back of it, and he stuck it to the wall.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And do you-- did that affect your mind, do you think?
-Huh?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Did that affect your mind in some way, the sonic?
-It was crushing i my head in.
They were using sonic pressure continually.
Then when I had three meetings with Miss Villacorta on it, every meeting I had she increased the pressure of the volume of the com, increased the harassment on the floor, increased the trays being inedible.
Just increased every bit of my complaints and trashed all grievances.
They're trying to make it look like I was crazy at all times, rig up the room with torture.
If I said anything about-- their whole--
I think their whole plan was to try and make it look like I was totally crazy and so nobody wouldn't believe anything
I had to say about anything.
And then drive me there, if they could.
I suffered so bad.
I was really struggling to survive.
Had a lot of trays that were attempted murder and everything.
I had to wash all my food off.
And then one day, I didn't wash my food off and I was sick for three weeks, almost died.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But you're OK now?
-I'm OK.
I'm OK.
God is going to be there.
Jesus Christ is going to be there.
All the angels and everything.
And, you know, whatever-- whatever's on the beyond.
I think it's going to be more like "Star Trek," beaming me up into a space vehicle, man.
Then I move on, recolonize to another planet or whatever.
But it's-- whatever's beyond, I know it's going to be good because I didn't do anything as wrong as they said.
I did the right thing.
And I saved a lot of people's butts from getting hurt and raped and killed, too.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So are you saying that you killed in self-defense or in-- in cold blood?
What do-- what do-- because you've changed your story.
I'm just trying to--
-What are you ta-- talking about?
Changed the story on what?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): No, about whether it was self-defense or not.
-I'm not going to say in-- I'm not going to get into depth about my cases, Nick.
I'm on my way to the chamber.
Nothing's stopping it.
You can believe it or you don't have to believe it.
That's up to you, man.
Put a big question mark on your film.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Just before we came here, we met with your-- with your mother, Diane.
-You met with my brother and Diane?
I could give a--
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Your--your mother.
-Oh.
My mother, Diane, let me tell you something.
She plopped me out of her belly, left me with my grandparents, and we never knew her.
So tell that damn whore I could give a fuck if she even had me.
She had me and left to Texas.
And my mom, my dad, Barry, Keith, Lori, all of us never saw her ever again, accept at funerals.
My mom's funeral, my dad's funeral, and my brother's funeral.
And if she's at mine, sp-- I'll probably be spitting on her.
I could care less.
I don't give a damn about that whore.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Well, she-- she ask you--
-I don't know her!
I never even knew her.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She asked you for your forgiveness.
-She can go to hell.
She doesn't have any of my forgiveness.
I don't know-- I don't even know her, don't even want to know her.
My only interview concerns are about cops letting me kill.
So if you don't ask me about that, I'm going to cut this interview.
Ask me about the cops.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): What do-- I mean, what more is there to-- what more is there to say about the cops?
What more do you want to say about the cops?
-A lot of stuff.
Did you know that they were surveilling me before I killed, and that I knew it?
And that was covered up.
Did you know there was helicopters dropping down from the sky, deputy sheriff with decoys picking me up four or five months before my arrest?
It was covered up?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But nonetheless--
-Nobody ever asked me these questions.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): -whether the cops were following you or not, Aileen--
-Oh, whether the cops were following me or not, Aileen, what?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): OK, let's say-- let's say the cops were following you.
-Yeah.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Let's say they were following you--
-Uh-huh.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): -and they did everything that you're-- you're saying they did.
-Uh-huh.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Nonetheless, you killed seven men.
-Yeah, sure did.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And I'm asking you what got you to kill the seven men?
-And I'm telling you because the cops let me keep killing them, Nick.
Don't you get it?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Not everybody is killing seven people, so there must have been something in you that was getting you to do that.
-Oh, you are lost, Nick!
NICK (OFF SCREEN): So explain.
-I was a hitchhiking hooker!
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Right.
-Running into trouble, I shoot-- shoot the guy if I ran into trouble.
Physical trouble.
The cops knew it.
When the physical trouble came along, let them-- let her clean the streets and then we'll pull her in.
That's why.
JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): But how come there was so much physical trouble and just-- because it was all in one year.
Seven people in one year.
-Oh, well.
Oh, well.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): But why not say now?
-Because I'm-- out of retaliation for taking my life like this and getting rich off it all these years and-- and total pathological lying.
Yeah, thanks a lot.
I lost my fucking life because of it.
Couldn't even get a fair trial.
Couldn't even get a fair investigation or nothing.
Couldn't even have my appeals right.
You sabotaged my ass, society, and the cops and the system.
A raped woman got executed and was used for books and movies and shit.
Ladder climbs, re-election, everything else.
I got to flip the finger in all your faces, thanks a lot.
You're inhuman-- you're an inhumane bunch of fucking living bastards and bitches, and you're going to get your asses nuked in the end.
And pretty soon it's coming.
2019, Iraq's supposed to hit you anyhow.
You're all going to get nuked.
You don't take fucking human life like this and just sabotage it and rip it apart like Jesus on the cross and say, thanks a lot for all the fucking money I made off of ya.
And not care about a human being and the truth being told.
Now I know what Jesus was going through.
I've been trying to tell the truth and I keep getting stepped on, concerned about if I was raped, if I-- I'm not giving you m-- book and movie info.
I'm giving you info for investigations and stuff and that's it.
We're going to have cut this interview, Nick.
I'm not going to go into anymore detail.
I'm leaving, I'm glad.
Thanks a lot society for railroading my ass.
OK, let's go.
You dirty son of a bitches.
Took a raped woman and sent her to-- well, you sent her to God.
But you're going to get your nuke someday soon.
NICK (OFF SCREEN): Hey, Aileen?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
-Nice try, Nick.
And thanks a lot.
NICK BROOMFIELD: It was really pretty incredible that Aileen had just sailed through the psychiatric tests the day before.
It makes you wonder what you would have to do to fail.
Later that night, Dawn met Aileen for her last meal, Kentucky Fried Chicken and french fries.
She was limited to a $20 budget.
-She's sorry, Nick, that she-- she didn't give you the finger.
She gave the media the finger, and then the attorneys the finger.
She didn't give you the, uh, finger.
And she knew if she said much more that it could make a-- make a difference on her execution tomorrow.
So she just decided not to.
OK?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): They thought-- she thought they might not execute her if she said--
-Yeah.
She's afraid-- she's afraid of something jeopardizing her ex-- you know, execution in the morning.
OFFICER (OFF SCREEN): Keep going, ma'am!
Don't stop!
[muffled pa announcements]
-At 8 o'clock, time ticking away for serial killer Aileen
Wuornos.
-Her date with death set for about 90 minutes from now, 7's Patrick Fraser is live in Raiford as her sentence is about to be carried out.
Good morning, Patrick.
-Christina, in an hour and a half exactly Aileen Wuornos will be injected with a poison.
Within about two minutes, she will begin to stop breathing.
Now, it's tough to say who will be happier that she is dying, the families of the victims she brutally murdered or Aileen Wuornos.
-We did wake her up at 5:30.
She, uh, um, requested a towel and wash cloth to wash her face and freshen up.
And she is very calm this morning.
Not-- not as talkative as she has been in the past.
NICK BROOMFIELD: It was hoped Aileen would confess all to a priest before execution, but she remained angry and defiant to the very end.
Aileen sent the priest packing, and then knelt down and prayed for her victims, believing they might be too evil to be accepted by God.
--talk about dying and--
NICK (OFF SCREEN): She did talk about dying at all.
REPORTER (OFF SCREEN): What about remorse?
NICK (OFF SCREEN): And it was ver-- all she wanted to do was talk about the police.
And I--I-- you know, I just formed the impression that here was somebody who is-- has obviously lost her mind, has totally lost touch with reality, and we're executing a person who's mad.
And I don't really know what kind of message that-- that gives.
I found it very disturbing.
[background conversations]
-We're going to have a briefing.
We're going to have a briefing then the witnesses.
-Is everybody ready?
-Good.
-At 9:47 this morning, the case of "The State of Florida versus Aileen Wuornos" was carried out at Florida State
Prison in a very professional and humane manner.
During Aileen Wuornos' brief one-minute final statement, she alluded to the fact of-- that she would be sailing away with the Rock.
She'll be back with Jesus Christ like on "Independence Day," on June 6, just like the movie, on the big mothership.
I'll be back.
I'll be back.
[MUSIC -- NATALIE MERCHANT, CARNIVAL]