Aileen Wuornos

The backstory

Richard Mallory

On Dec. 1, 1989, a Volusia County deputy found Richard Mallory’s abandoned car, and on Dec. 13 his body was found several miles away in a wooded area, according to the Florida Supreme Court’s statement of the facts.¹ He had been shot several times; the court wrote that “two bullets to the left lung were found to have caused hemorrhaging and ultimately death.”¹ His belongings were later traced to Wuornos, including items in a warehouse unit she rented and items she had pawned or given away.¹

At the time, the court wrote, Wuornos “worked as a prostitute along Central Florida highways” and had lived for years with Tyria Moore, who worked as a maid.¹ Wuornos told Moore she had shot a man.¹ Moore later left Florida; officers “later contacted her in Pennsylvania,” and Moore “agreed to return to Florida in an attempt to clear herself of any wrongdoing,” then pressed Wuornos for a confession and “ultimately” got one.¹ Wuornos gave taped confessions after a public defender had advised her not to talk; the court later held the confessions voluntary.¹ She had thrown the gun “into Rose Bay,” and Moore showed officers where to find it.¹

Her accounts

The court found that “Wuornos’ confession changed considerably in later versions.”¹ In the earliest, she said Mallory picked her up while she was hitchhiking and that “she grabbed a bag in which she kept a gun, and the two began struggling over possession of the bag.”¹ In that confession she also said she killed Mallory to eliminate him as a witness, the court wrote.¹ Later versions added hours of drinking, a violent rape and her hands being tied to the steering wheel before a fight for the gun.¹

The Mallory trial

The trial began on Jan. 13, 1992.¹⁷ The state introduced evidence of the deaths of five other men under Florida’s Williams rule, which allows evidence of other crimes when it is relevant to an issue such as intent; the court noted that “the bullets all bore similar characteristics.”¹ The court held that the evidence was properly admitted “to rebut Wuornos’ claims regarding her level of intent and whether she had acted in self-defense.”¹

Wuornos testified. The court wrote that “Wuornos’ own testimony at trial portrayed her as the actual victim here,” and that the “judge and jury were entitled to reject that testimony as self-serving.”¹ On Jan. 27, 1992, the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and armed robbery with a firearm.¹³¹

Why the Mallory jury chose death

The penalty phase began Jan. 28, 1992.¹ Three defense psychologists testified that she had borderline personality disorder and impaired capacity, and raised the possibility of brain damage; one, Dr. Toomer, testified that “Wuornos believed she was in imminent danger at the time of the murder.”¹ The state’s expert, Dr. Bernard, agreed that she had borderline personality disorder and also found “that she suffered antisocial personality disorder,” but he testified that her impairment and disturbance were not substantial or extreme.¹ The defense also presented evidence of her childhood (see Personal backstory).¹

The jury recommended death, 12 to 0.¹ Judge Uriel Blount sentenced her to death on Jan. 31, 1992, and to ten years for the armed robbery.⁵ The trial court found five aggravating circumstances: a prior violent felony (a 1982 robbery conviction), a murder committed during a robbery, a murder committed to avoid arrest, a murder that was heinous, atrocious or cruel, and a murder that was cold, calculated and premeditated.¹ It found one mitigating circumstance: “that Wuornos suffered borderline personality disorder.”¹

The Mallory appeal

The Florida Supreme Court affirmed on Sept. 22, 1994.¹ It held that her testimony did not entitle her to acquittal because “her testimony clearly was controverted by her own prior inconsistent statements.”¹ It upheld the heinous-atrocious-or-cruel finding as a question for the factfinder, given “the protracted nature of this killing together with the mental suffering it necessarily would entail.”¹ It found the jury instruction on cold, calculated premeditation flawed but the error harmless.¹ The court also held that the trial judge should have found and weighed her alcoholism, her childhood difficulties and some nonstatutory impaired capacity as mitigation, but that “the failure to find these nonstatutory factors in mitigation is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”¹ Justice Kogan concurred specially, writing that “Aileen Wuornos obviously is an extreme case, but her general life history itself is not rare,” and that “early victimization leads to even greater victimization”; he concluded that the aggravation would outweigh the mitigation even without the premeditation factor.¹

Charles Humphreys, Troy Burress and David Spears

The Marion and Citrus County indictments charged three murders, decided together on appeal.²

Troy Burress, a delivery truck driver, vanished while making deliveries on July 30, 1990. His truck was found the next day without its keys and delivery receipts, and his body was found on Aug. 4, about eight miles away. An autopsy found two gunshot wounds, to the chest and back, and his cash was missing.²

Charles Humphreys was reported missing by his family on Sept. 11, 1990, and two boys found his body the next day. His pockets had been turned inside out and his wallet and car were missing; the car was later found behind an abandoned gas station near Interstate 10. The autopsy found seven gunshot wounds, and the court wrote that “Humphreys had suffered bruises and abrasions and was shot while in the act of twisting or writhing in a vain effort to avoid his attacker.”²

David Spears’s body was found in June 1990. A forensic anthropologist concluded that he died of six gunshot wounds. His truck was found abandoned elsewhere, and his toolbox, clothing, vehicle tag and keys were missing.²

On March 31, 1992, Wuornos “pled no contest on all counts with advice of counsel.”² At the plea she said her religious beliefs required her to go to the electric chair, that she wanted to “go to God,” and that she wanted to “get off this crooked, evil planet,” the court recorded; it found these statements consistent with a religious conversion, not incompetence.² She waived her presence at the penalty phase. Her defense presented her taped confession and testimony from a woman who had adopted her as an adult; the state showed that this witness had screened media requests and been paid $7,500 for a broadcast.² The jury recommended death by a vote of 10 to 2, and Judge Thomas D. Sawaya imposed three death sentences on May 15, 1992.²⁵

The trial court found four aggravators for each murder (a prior violent felony, pecuniary gain, witness elimination and heightened premeditation) and, for Humphreys alone, that the murder was heinous, atrocious or cruel. Its order listed remorse, a religious conversion and a deprived childhood as mitigation, but it also found these “not supported by the greater weight of the evidence” and wrote that the aggravators “overwhelmingly outweigh” any mitigation.² On witness elimination, the Florida Supreme Court noted that “Wuornos herself stated in one of her confessions that she killed to eliminate witnesses.”² It affirmed the convictions and sentences on Oct. 6, 1994, rejecting her claims that the plea was involuntary and that the judge should have ordered a competency hearing on his own.²

Charles Carskaddon

Charles E. Carskaddon was last seen alive on May 31, 1990, when he left home for Tampa in his Cadillac. His body was found on June 6 in a secluded area of Pasco County. The medical examiner determined that he died of gunshot wounds; eight bullets were recovered. Witnesses saw Wuornos with his car, and she pawned a gun identified as his.³

Wuornos told the court she wanted to plead guilty while also complaining of pretrial publicity and claiming self-defense; the judge warned her that a plea would give up that defense, and she pleaded anyway.³ Before the penalty phase a defense expert, Dr. Harry Krop, wrote that she was delusional and incompetent; two other doctors found her competent with a personality disorder, and the court agreed.³ She then waived a penalty-phase jury, the presentation of mitigation and her own presence, saying she “didn’t care anymore.”³ The trial court found three aggravators (prior violent felonies, a murder during a robbery and cold, calculated premeditation), found no mitigation, rejected her self-defense claim, and sentenced her to death in February 1993.³⁵

On Sept. 21, 1995, the Florida Supreme Court held that the plea colloquy fell short of the procedural rule but caused no prejudice; that the premeditation finding was error because it rested only on evidence of the other crimes; and that the judge should have weighed her personality disorder. With two valid aggravators and minimal mitigation, it held the errors harmless and affirmed.³

Walter Antonio

Walter Antonio, 62, left Cocoa, Florida, for Montgomery, Alabama, on Nov. 18, 1990. The next day his body was found “in a wooded area north of Cross City, Florida”; he had been “shot four times in the back with a .22 caliber gun.”⁴ By her own confession, Wuornos was engaged in roadside prostitution when Antonio picked her up; she said he showed a false police badge and demanded sex in exchange for not arresting her, and that she shot him.⁴ She took his car and some of his belongings. Officers found that she had pawned his ring and found his belongings in a warehouse unit she rented, and Moore helped them recover the murder weapon from a bay.⁴

“At trial Wuornos eventually entered a guilty plea,” the court wrote. A jury recommended death, 7 to 5.⁴ The trial court found four aggravators: nine prior convictions for violent felonies; a murder during a robbery and for pecuniary gain, treated as one; cold, calculated premeditation; and a murder to avoid arrest.⁴ It found no statutory mitigation but found as nonstatutory mitigation her antisocial and borderline personality disorders, possible childhood physical abuse, the suicides of her natural father and grandfather, an alcoholic grandmother, and a mother who “abandoned her as an infant.”⁴ It rejected testimony from a defense expert that she acted under extreme emotional disturbance.⁴ She was sentenced to death and to 17 years for armed robbery.⁴ The Florida Supreme Court affirmed on May 9, 1996, holding that the victim-participation mitigator “does not encompass situations in which the killer surprises the victim with deadly force,” and that her claims about her plea and her lawyer belonged in a postconviction motion.⁴

Peter Siems

The state’s Williams rule evidence at the Mallory trial also tied Wuornos to Peter Siems: witnesses placed her and Moore at his car where it was later found, but “Siems’ body has never been found,” the Florida Supreme Court wrote.¹ No conviction for his death appears in the state’s record of her cases, and he is not counted here.⁵ People reported that she confessed to killing him but was not charged because his body was never found, and Fox News, citing the Florida Sheriffs Association, also reported that she was not charged.¹⁸¹⁹

Ending the appeals

In April 2001 Wuornos asked the Florida Supreme Court to let her discharge her lawyers and drop her remaining appeals; the court sent the question of her competency to a circuit court, which found her competent on July 20, 2001.⁵ At that hearing she testified that she had lied at trial, the Associated Press reported: “I killed those men in the first degree, robbed and killed them.”⁸ She also said, “I am a serial killer. I would kill again,” and “There’s no sense in keeping me alive.”⁸ UPI reported her saying at a July hearing, “I robbed them and I killed them as cold as ice, and I’d do it again, too.”⁹ Her collateral lawyer said she did not understand the consequences.⁸ On April 1, 2002, the Florida Supreme Court approved the competency finding, discharged her lawyers and dismissed her remaining appeals.⁵

The governor’s commission and the execution

Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant on Sept. 5, 2002, setting the execution for Oct. 9.⁵ At the end of September, Bush stayed the execution and said it would go forward if three psychiatrists found her competent.¹⁰¹¹ Florida law requires the governor, when told that a condemned person “may be insane,” to stay the execution and appoint “a commission of three psychiatrists” to determine whether the person “understands the nature and effect of the death penalty and why it is to be imposed.”⁷ The three psychiatrists concluded that “she understood she would die and why she was being executed,” and Bush lifted the stay.¹¹

She was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on Oct. 9, 2002, and pronounced dead at 9:47 a.m.¹²¹¹ Her last words, as reported, were “I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the Rock and I’ll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6.”¹¹ A daughter of Charles Humphreys who witnessed the execution said, “I’m glad that it’s over.”¹¹

Personal backstory

Early life

Wuornos was born on Feb. 29, 1956.⁵ The evidence presented in mitigation at the Mallory trial, as the Florida Supreme Court summarized it, was that “her biological father hanged himself in prison,” where he was serving time for rape and kidnapping; that she was abandoned and taken in by her grandparents; and that “her grandfather was an alcoholic, and later committed suicide.”¹ In the Antonio case the trial court found that her mother “abandoned her as an infant” and that her grandmother was an alcoholic.⁴ The evidence was that “at about age 14, Wuornos was raped by a family friend,” and that her grandfather “later forced her to give up the child for adoption.”¹ Her IQ “was established at 81, in the low dull-normal range.”¹ Chesler, writing in support of her self-defense claim, added that she was scarred in a fire at 9 and had an uncorrected hearing impairment.²⁰

The state disputed the account of abuse. In rebuttal, her grandparents’ son, who grew up in the same household, described a “straight and narrow family” and testified that he never saw his father beat her, “although the girl sometimes was spanked”; he agreed that her biological father was abusive.¹ In the Marion County case, the court noted that much of the defense evidence of an abusive childhood was hearsay.²

Mental health

At the Mallory penalty phase, defense psychologists diagnosed borderline personality disorder and testified to impaired capacity and possible brain damage; the state’s expert agreed on borderline personality disorder and added antisocial personality disorder.¹ The Mallory trial court found borderline personality disorder as mitigation, and the Dixie County trial court found both disorders as nonstatutory mitigation.¹⁴ In 1992 a defense expert called her delusional and incompetent, and two other doctors found her competent; the courts that took her pleas and, in 2001 and 2002, her waiver of appeals, found her competent.³²⁵

Life before the killings

Mitigation evidence at the Mallory trial described years of life on the streets, and the Florida Supreme Court held that her alcoholism should have been weighed in mitigation.¹ In 1982 she was convicted of robbery.¹ By the time of the killings she “worked as a prostitute along Central Florida highways” and had lived for years with Tyria Moore.¹ The state’s capital case record lists three other names she used.⁵

In custody

She spent about ten years on death row; the state’s record lists eight disciplinary entries at Broward Correctional Institution between 1992 and 2000.⁵ The Marion County trial court listed remorse and a religious conversion as mitigation.² In a 2000 television interview she said, “After you’re done killing a person and you realize what you’ve done, it will haunt you the rest of your life,” UPI reported.⁹ In 2001 she told a judge, “I know what the heck I’m doing.”⁸ In a final interview before her execution she said that once the men parked in the woods, “I whipped out the gun and shot ‘em,” CBS News reported.¹¹

The sources reviewed contain no statement from Richard Mallory’s family.