← America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
Aileen Wuornos: How She Kept Getting Away With Murder Pt. 2
00:31:25
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- [00:07]
Katie Ring
This is Crime House. By the spring of 1990, Eileen Wuornos had killed a man and gotten away with it. So she kept going. Over the next several months, she killed five more men. And then in November of 1990, a sixth. Each time, she carefully covered her tracks. Each time she got away, and each time the investigation inched a little closer to her without quite getting there. But she finally made one mistake that left something behind she couldn't erase. Today I'll tell you about the victims, the investigation that slowly began to connect the dots and the moment Eileen Warnos face appeared on every television set in Florida. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later, we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us. Today. I want to thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow America's Most infamous crimes wherever you get your podcasts and to get all episodes at once ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Before I get started, please be advised that this episode contains descriptions of physical and sexual assault, abuse and murder. So please listen with care. This is the second of our three episode series on Eileen Wuornos. Today I'll walk you through the six men she killed after Richard Mallory, who who they were, what happened to them, and how investigators across Florida gradually realized they were looking at something they had never encountered before.
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- [02:50]
Katie Ring
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Katie Ring
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Katie Ring
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- [03:21]
Katie Ring
On December 13, 1989, the police found 51 year old Richard Mallory's body nearly two weeks after Eileen Warno shot him on an isolated service road outside of Daytona Beach, Florida. Eileen had cleaned the car, abandoned it at a beach parking lot and returned to her girlfriend, Tyra Moore. She'd briefly confessed what she'd done to Tyra before walking the story back the next morning, afraid that the truth would scare her away. Luckily for Eileen, though, the investigation wasn't going far. There was no forensic evidence, no witnesses who had seen her with Richard, and no thread for detectives to pull. So Eileen went back to her life. She kept working the highways and when their money got tight again in the spring of 1990, she started looking for another victim. On May 19, 1990, a 47 year old construction worker named David Spears left Sarasota, Florida, heading north towards Ocoee. David knew the drive well. His ex wife and children lived about 100 miles away and he made the trip a lot. That particular day. His daughter's birthday was coming up and he was going to see her. But on his way, he would make one mistake that changed his life forever. Friends and family of David said that he was a generous, good natured guy who would always pull over to help hitchhikers. He never thought twice about it. He was about halfway through his drive when he saw Aileen Wuornos on the side of the highway. Unfortunately, he never made it to his daughter's birthday and his car was found nine days later on May 28, approximately 40 miles from where he'd been killed. Like most of her crimes, the car was left on the side of the road in a different county in an effort to separate the vehicle from the crime scene. David's body turned up a few days after that on June 1st. Similar to her first victim. The details of what happened between David and Eileen change depending on which of her accounts you read. In one of the more detailed versions, she said the two of them spent the entire day together, driving, talking and drinking before things turned violent. Eileen claimed that at some point she told David she had no family and that he saw that information as an opportunity. According to her, he reasoned that if no one would come looking for her, he could do whatever he wanted. And he allegedly tried to beat her to death with a lead pipe. But in another version, the story is entirely different. What the physical evidence showed is that David Spears had been shot six times in the torso. When his body was found, he was naked, although it's impossible to say whether that was from a sexual encounter, from deliberate staging by Eileen to obscure the nature of the crime, or or for some other reason. Aside from that, the investigation turned up very little and Eileen was already moving on to her next victim. On May 31, 1990, the day before David's body was discovered, Eileen was back on the highway when she flagged down 40 year old Charles Carscoden. Charles had spent most of his career as a truck driver, but after he developed severe glaucoma, he had to stop. He couldn't see well enough to drive commercially anymore, and that meant figuring out an entirely new direction for his life. He and his fiance had been living in Tampa, but when a friend back in his home state of Missouri offered him a job, Charles decided it was time to make the move. On May 31, he was making the drive from Missouri back down to Tampa to pick up his fiance and bring her back with him. Like David Spears, Charles was described as the kind of guy who stopped for people. He kept tools in his car, loved working on his 1975 Cadillac, and was known among his friends as someone who enjoyed being helpful. When he saw a woman on the side of the road who appeared to need some assistance, stopping was entirely in character for him. What happened after Eileen got into his car is again contested. In one of her accounts, she claimed Charles pulled out a weapon and threatened her and that she shot him in self defense. In another version, the story is entirely different. What is not disputed is that Eileen shot Charles Carscotten nine times. She took his valuables, stripped usable parts from his car, then drove the vehicle to an empty truck stop and set it on fire. Charles body was found on June 6, and like the other victims, there was no trace of Eileen. But she was about to do something careless, something she hadn't done before. On June 7, 1990, the day after Charles Carscotten's body was found, a 65 year old retiree named Peter Seems left his home in Jupiter, Florida to embark on a leisurely road trip. He Was planning to visit his mother in Arkansas and his son in New Jersey. And he decided to take his time, enjoying the kind of casual travel that retirement makes possible. Peter was an evangelical Christian missionary by calling, and the people who knew him described him in almost uniform terms, Extraordinarily generous and extraordinarily trusting. The kind of person who saw helping strangers not as a risk to manage, but as a moral obligation. And somewhere along the highway near the Florida Georgia border, Peter seems spotted Eileen Wuornos and pulled over to offer her a ride. The details of what happened between them are among the most opaque of any of Eileen's victims. She was consistently reluctant to talk about Peter seems in the way she talked about the others. And the accounts she did give were vague. We do know this, though. Eileen murdered him and left his body somewhere in the wilderness and scattered his identification and credit cards in the surrounding area in an attempt to delay the discovery of who he was. But then she made a critical decision that would be her undoing. Instead of abandoning Peter's car, she kept it. She'd ditched every other victim's vehicle far from the scene. It was one of the things that had kept Eileen undetected for months. But for some reason, Eileen held onto Peter. Seems sporty. Pontiac Sunbird. Maybe she liked the car. Maybe she was tired of walking. Or maybe the pressure of always running and always covering her tracks had simply worn her down. About a month after she killed Peter, on the 4th of July, 1990, Tyra and Eileen were driving in Peter's car when Tyra lost control around a curve and crashed into a gate on the side of the road. Both women were shaken, but not seriously hurt. Eileen got a small cut on her face. But there was no time to linger. Two witnesses had already seen the crash and called it in. When paramedics arrived at the scene just minutes later, Eileen and Tyra were walking away down the road. They told the paramedics there had been a misunderstanding. They were just hitchhikers on their way to a fireworks show, and whoever had been in that car must have gone a different direction. The paramedics gave them directions and let them go. But when police arrived shortly after, they ran the car's registration and found that it belonged to Peter Seams, who was listed as a missing person. The connection between the two women and the missing man's car was now on record. Investigators interviewed the witnesses, and the paramedics gathered physical descriptions of both women and put together composite sketches. And when forensic technicians processed the car itself, they found something Eileen hadn't had time to clean up in her rush to get away. On the passenger side door handle, there was a handprint.
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- [11:55]
Katie Ring
the handprint was a significant piece of evidence, but its full significance wouldn't become clear for several months. Because Peter seems his body hadn't been found yet. And without a body, the case was still being treated as a missing person situation rather than a homicide. That distinction mattered for the intensity of the investigation. Detectives were working the case, but without the urgency a confirmed murder would have generated. The handprint just sat in the evidence file awaiting comparison. And Eileen, who didn't know what had been found on the car, went back on the road in late July of 1990. A few weeks after the crash, she crossed paths with 50 year old Troy Burris. Troy drove a refrigerated truck for a sausage company, a job that put him on specific routes through central Florida on a regular schedule. He wasn't supposed to carry passengers in his work vehicle, but on July 30, somewhere in the Ocala National Forest along his usual route, something made him pull over. For Eileen, it was a decision that would cost him everything. Like with her other victims, the accounts of what happened inside the truck vary depending on which version of Eileen's story you read. In one, she claimed Troy turned on her and threatened her. In another, she said she simply saw an opportunity and took it. But the physical evidence showed that Eileen shot Troy Burris twice in the torso, stole his money and valuables, and left his body in the woods. Troy was found partially undressed when his body was eventually located Although like before, it was impossible to tell if it reflected a sexual encounter, deliberate staging of the scene, an effort to remove identifying evidence, or something else entirely. Either way, when Troy didn't come home that night, his wife called his company, and his boss immediately drove along the delivery route looking for him. On his way back, he found Troy's truck sitting at an intersection, engine still running, cab empty. He'd missed Eileen by minutes. A family out for a picnic found Troy's body a few days later. But the heat of the Florida summer had done significant damage to the remains by the time they were found, and the medical examiner made an error that would complicate the investigation. The two.22 caliber bullet wounds in Troy's torso were misidentified as a single shotgun wound. That mistake broke the forensic chain that might have otherwise linked his death to Eileen's other crimes. Each of her victims had been shot with the same type of weapon, and that pattern was one of the few consistent threads investigators had to work with. But Troy's misclassified wounds interrupted that thread. The months that followed were relatively quiet. With money coming in from selling the stolen valuables she'd accumulated, Eileen and Tyra found a brief period of financial stability. But there were limits to what Eileen could safely pawn. Items too distinctive or too easily traceable went into the storage unit soon, when there was nothing left to sell. And by the late summer of 1990, she was ready to go back to work. On the morning of September 11, 1990, 56 year old Charles Richard Humphries, who went by Dick, wrapped up his day at work in Sumterville and called his secretary to say he was heading home. Dick Humphries had led a full professional life. He'd served as a police chief, an air force major, and he was currently working as a social worker investigating cases of child abuse. The hours were long and the work was emotionally difficult. But by most accounts, Dick brought genuine commitment to his job. His family described him simply as the kind of man who would always stop for someone who needed help. It was something a lot of Eileen's victims had in common. And like them, Dick never made it home. Somewhere along the road between Sumterville and Crystal River, Eileen flagged him down. Of all of her victims, she was consistently the most guarded when it came to talking about Dick Humphries, giving the fewest details and the least context for what happened between them. What the physical evidence showed was that he was found with all of his clothes on, which distinguished him from several of her other victims, and that he'd been killed by six.22 caliber bullet wounds. And in an interesting difference, he was discovered the following day in a housing development nowhere near a wooded area. Dick Humphrey's death changed the trajectory of the investigation in a way none of the previous murders had. Because he'd spent years as a law enforcement officer, his case immediately drew attention from multiple departments, and that hadn't been communicating with each other. And when those departments started sharing information and comparing notes on unexplained deaths of middle aged men traveling alone across multiple Florida counties over the past year, the pattern that emerged was impossible to dismiss. Victims found in similar circumstances, men who'd been traveling alone when they disappeared, the same type of weapon used. And the cases were spread across different jurisdictions, which was one of the reasons none of them had been connected before. For the first time, investigators allowed themselves to ask the question out loud. Were they dealing with a serial killer? And if so, they had a serial killer targeting men that was nearly unprecedented in modern American criminal history. The profile was so unusual that some investigators were reluctant to commit to it publicly, but privately, they were already treating it that way. The story broke in the fall of 1990, along with advisories warning middle aged men traveling alone in Florida to exercise caution. The coverage was widespread enough that Eileen pulled back and kept a lower profile for a while. But the pressure to provide for her and Tyra never fully went away. The money situation never fully stabilized, and In November of 1990, she went back out. On November 5, Eileen encountered a guy named Bobby Kopas at a Florida truck stopped. She told him her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride to get her kids from daycare. Bobby was sympathetic and offered to help, but said he needed to stop at the bank first to deposit some checks. Once Aileen saw that he had cash on him, she shifted her approach and propositioned him for sex. He declined. She became agitated when he said no, and Bobby noticed something in her purse that looked like a handgun. Bobby made a quick decision and told Eileen she could make the phone call she'd mentioned putting off at the next truck stop. He pulled in to let her use the phone, and the moment she stepped out of the car, he locked the doors and drove away. As he pulled out, according to Bobby, Eileen pounded on the door and reportedly screamed at him. I'll kill you like I did all them other old motherfuckers. Bobby Kopas had no idea what that meant and didn't connect it to the murders that had been in the news. He was shaken and just wanted to get away from the situation so he didn't call the police. Two weeks later, Eileen claimed another victim. On November 18, 1990, a 60 year old security guard named Walter Antonio was making a drive from Florida north to Alabama, where he was looking into a potential new job in trucking. He was thinking about a career change and exploring what options might be available to him in the years before retirement. At some point along the highway, he saw Eileen and pulled over. Eileen would later say she was intoxicated when Walter picked her up and that she propositioned him directly, which he accepted. He drove them down a logging road into a secluded area. But according to Eileen, when they got out of the car, Walter flashed what appeared to be a law enforcement badge and told her that if she didn't have sex with him for free, he would arrest her. Elaine said she didn't believe him and that when she called Walter's bluff, he became aggressive and physically threatening. And that's when she pulled out her gun and shot him. Once Walter was dead, she went through his pockets and took a gold chain, a ring, a set of handcuffs and a billy club, which were probably from his work as a security guard. Eileen gave Tyra the ring and the rest went into the storage unit. Walter's body was found the following day and his car surfaced several days later in Brevard county, three hours from where he'd been killed. With Walter Antonio's death In November of 1990, Aileen Wuornos had killed seven people in just under a year. And it was all about to catch up with her.
- [20:30]
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- [20:31]
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- [21:31]
Katie Ring
By the end of November 1990, the investigation into the deaths along Florida's highways was finally coming together in a Meaningful way. Investigators across multiple jurisdictions were now actively sharing information. And the consistent use of a.22 caliber pistol across the crime scenes had become a central organizing fact. The composite sketches from the fourth of July crash of Peter Simes car was the best visual evidence they had. Two women, one of whom had left a handprint on the door of a missing man's vehicle. Both of whom had fled the scene before police. Police arrived on November 30, 1990, exactly one year after Eileen had killed Richard Mallory. Investigators flooded local television news with those composite sketches and called on anyone who recognized either woman to come forward. Eileen and Tyra were at home when the sketches appeared on TV and they saw their own faces across the screen. For Eileen, this was the beginning of the end. She couldn't hide from composite sketches being broadcast on every local news channel in Florida. And she couldn't keep hiding the truth from Tyra, who now knew beyond a doubt that the woman she'd been living with for years was responsible for the murders that had been dominating the news. Tyra would later say that when she saw the coverage, she was genuinely afraid she might be Eileen's next victim. Eileen knew their life together was over. So when she told Tyra to go, there wasn't any arguing over it. On December 3, 1990, Eileen drove Tyra to the Daytona beach bus station and sent her to Tyra's parents house in Pennsylvania. She stood and watched the bus pull away from the curb and then she went to the bars. Over the next few weeks, Eileen spent most of her time drinking. She moved between different bars around Daytona beach, spending the money she had left and keeping to herself. The murder investigation was the least of what was on her mind. The sorrows she was trying to drown were really about Tyra. Aileen was struggling with being alone, just like she was before she met Tyra. Meanwhile, the investigation was closing in on her. The composite sketches had generated close to a thousand tips. The most actionable one came from a pawn shop in the area where a woman going by the name Cami Green had sold a radar detector that turned out to belong to Richard Mallory, Eileen's first victim. Under Florida law, pawn shop sellers are required to leave a fingerprint on file with each transaction. That fingerprint was submitted to a criminal database and compared. It matched Aileen Morenos. Investigators then took the match one step further. They compared the pawn shop fingerprint to the handprint that had been recovered from Peter seems crash car back in July. It was a match there too. From that point, their arrest was a matter of Logistics. In the early morning hours of January 9, 1991, police located 34 year old Eileen Wuornos outside of a bar in Daytona beach called the Last Resort, and placed her under arrest. In the days that followed, investigators found her storage unit and opened it. What was inside confirmed everything they'd theorized. A collection of stolen goods, providing a physical record of what Eileen had done over the past year. They had the evidence, they had the fingerprint match. What they wanted now was a confession. And they already knew exactly how to get it. At the end of each episode, I like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts, so make sure to comment below.
- [25:10]
Crime House Analyst
Eileen had been so careful up to that point, wiping down cars, abandoning them far from the scene, varying her locations. And then she held onto Peter, seems his car for a month and let Tyra drive it around. What happened?
- [25:24]
Katie Ring
I think this is one of the clearest windows we get into how Eileen was operating emotionally at the stage of the killing spree. Early on, she was disciplined and methodical. She thought through the cleanup, she put distance between herself and the evidence. She was, in her own way, a careful criminal. But I think holding on to that car, letting Tyra drive it, treating it like it was theirs, reflects something about the dynamic at the center of everything Eileen was doing. From the very beginning, she had framed what she was doing, at least partly as providing for Tyra, bringing home money and bringing home gifts. And I think bringing home the car was another way for Eileen to feel like she was providing for Tyra. And I feel like she felt that because Tyra would leave her otherwise, because so many people left her in her life. And I think there's something both heartbreaking and deeply disturbing about that and the idea that what ultimately exposed her wasn't recklessness in the predatory sense, but something closer to a desire for a normal domestic life acted out with a dead man's vehicle.
- [26:29]
Crime House Analyst
Dick Humphries was a former police chief and a social worker protecting children. Does the identity of a victim change how we process a crime when it
- [26:38]
Katie Ring
comes to law enforcement, it definitely changes how fast other law enforcement moves on a certain case. So I think that played a huge role. Also, Eileen didn't really talk about Dick Humphries as much, and I think that was because the work he did in law enforcement, but also the work he did with abused children. Eileen tells different versions of these stories in each of her accounts, but I think, at least from what we hear with the families of these victims, is that they were all actually good men who were very willing to stop and help someone who is in need. And so I think it complicates things where, you know, I think most of these men deserve to go home. Like David Spears had a daughter with a birthday coming up. Charles Carscotten had a fiance waiting for him in Tampa. Peter seems had family. He was driving to visit. So we have to remember that these were all real people with real lives and with other people who love them. And the fact that their cases weren't generating the interagency cooperation and information sharing that Dick Humphrey's death generated almost immediately, I think that's kind of worth noting. And I'm not saying that to diminish what happened to Dick. I'm saying it because the difference in response tells you something about whose deaths get urgency and whose don't. And in cases involving victims from marginalized communities or victims who are less eligible to law enforcement as people deserving protection, that disparity definitely has consequences. And in this case, I think if they had some of the urgency they had with Dick Humphreys, that they might have solved this case a lot faster. And a lot of men's lives could have been saved.
- [28:19]
Crime House Analyst
Bobby Kopas heard Eileen threatened to kill him the way she'd killed all them other old motherfuckers and didn't report it. How do you think about near misses like that?
- [28:29]
Katie Ring
Honestly, from all of the pictures I've seen of Eileen, I can see why Bobby didn't really take what she said at face value. She had those crazy eyes. I would have probably thought she was on something and just yelling random things. At that point, your main goal is really just getting away. That said, I do think we should all abide by the see something, say something rule, because a lot of people mind their own business. But I think something we should take away from this is that reporting people like this could potentially save someone's life. Luckily, Bobby walked away and survived. But Walter Antonio was killed just two weeks later. And if Bobby had reported her and given a description of her to the police, there's a chance that Walter might not have died. And I obviously wouldn't blame Bobby or any other potential victim for anyone else's death. But I do think that it's a good reminder of the impact we can make with just something really as small as reporting some weird or bad behavior.
- [29:26]
Crime House Analyst
After Eileen put Tyra on that bus, she seemed more focused on losing the relationship than on the fact that she was about to be identified as a serial killer. What does that tell us?
- [29:35]
Katie Ring
I think at this point, Tyra was kind of the only thing that Eileen was living for. If you remember, in the last episode we talked about how many times Eileen had tried to take her own life. And I feel like when she met Tyra, she felt like she finally had something to live for. And Eileen spent her entire life being abandoned. Her mother left her before she could walk. Her grandfather threw her out the day after her grandmother's funeral. She was completely alone, unprotected, and had been fending for herself since she was 15 years old. So I think when she finally found someone who stayed and provided that consistency for her, that attachment became more powerful than almost anything else, including self preservation. And when the sketches came out and she told Tyra to go, I think she accepted that it was finally her time. But at the same time, she was still mourning the fact that she knew their relationship was over. Thanks so much for joining me. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on Eileen Wuornos. Make sure to rate, review and follow America's Most infamous crimes so we can keep building this community together. And to get all episodes at once. Ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts.