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America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
Aileen Wuornos: The Confession, the Trial, and the Execution Pt. 3
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Foreign. This is Crime House. Eileen Wuornos was arrested with what looked like an overwhelming case against her. A fingerprint linking her to two separate crime scenes, a storage unit full of property stolen from her victims, all tied together with a bombshell confession. What followed was one of the most complicated and debated criminal proceedings in American history. Was Eileen a vicious killer, a victim defending herself from predators, or something else entirely? Those are still questions we're asking ourselves over 35 years later, and we may never get an answer. 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 third and final episode on Aileen Wuornos. Today I'll cover the phone calls that led to her confession, the trial that made her a national obsession, the decade she spent on death row, and a final interview that raised serious questions about whether this country executed someone who was no longer in contact with reality. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. 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Once 34 year old Eileen Wuornos was arrested outside a Daytona beach bar in the early morning hours of January 9, 1991, investigators moved quickly to build their case against her. They located her storage unit and found it full of items stolen from mortar. Multiple victims. Almost like a physical inventory of what she'd done over the past year. Not only that, but they had a fingerprint match connecting her to two separate crime scenes. They had plenty of physical evidence. By most standards, the case was already pretty solid. But they wanted more. They wanted a confession, one that would be impossible to walk back. And they knew exactly who they could get it from. After Eileen's arrest, the police were able to identify the scene second woman in the composite sketches from the 4th of July crash as Eileen's girlfriend, Tyra Moore. They tracked Tyra down at her sister's home in Pennsylvania. And when they questioned her, it was pretty clear that Tyra hadn't participated in any of the murders. But the investigators also thought she knew a lot more than she was admitting to. And knowingly withholding information about a serious crime is a criminal offense. So they made her an offer. If Tyra called Eileen in jail and got her to confess, she would receive complete immunity from prosecution. Without much hesitation, Tyra said yes. On January 14, 1991, she called Eileen in jail on a recorded line. She kept the early conversation light, reminiscing about the good times they'd had together, about the things they used to do, and about the life that they had shared. Eileen was genuinely happy to hear from her. Whatever else was happening, whatever else was coming, Tyra's voice on the phone was still the best thing in her world. But as the calls continued and Tyra started steering conversations towards the murders, Eileen's guard went up. She got cautious and evasive, giving vague answers and changing the subject. But Tyra was persistent. Over two days, she called 11 times. She told Eileen she was terrified of going to prison herself and that she couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, and didn't know what to do. She even said she might take her own life if Eileen didn't come forward and clear her name. Eileen had always loved Tyra more than she had loved her own safety. And eventually, she told Tyra she would confess to everything and make sure Tyra was protected. But before she did, she made one prediction. I'm going to go down in history. And she wasn't wrong. When Eileen confessed, she didn't hold anything back. She gave investigators a full account of all seven of her victims and told them she'd thrown her.22 caliber handgun into a bay near her house. And the police were actually able to recover it from the water. So now they had their confession and the murder weapon. As the trial approached, Eileen's story became a national obsession. Just like Eileen had predicted, the press had settled on a label for America's first female serial killer. That designation has been disputed, but the label stuck. And it fed a cultural fascination that went far beyond the usual interest in true crime. People were fascinated because the profile was so unexpected. Serial killers were supposed to be men. The victims were supposed to be women. The case inverted every expectation, and the public didn't quite know what to do with that. A lot of people reached out to Eileen during this period, including a woman named Arlene Prawley, a rancher from Ocala, Florida, who said she'd been moved by a spiritual calling to contact Eileen after seeing her story on the news. What started as letters and phone calls quickly turned into something more. Arlene filled a void that Tyra's departure had left. But in a fundamentally different way. She offered Eileen something. Maternal attention, regular contact, and a genuine care for her well being. In November of 1991, despite only being nine years apart, Arlene was 44 and Eileen was 35. Arlene legally adopted Eileen. Eileen would later explain the decision in practical terms. She had no close family. She wanted someone to handle her remains after she died. And she valued the additional phone time the formal adoption gave them. Meanwhile, Arlene framed it as an act of Christian love. She simply wanted Eileen to experience what it felt like to have a mother who supported her unconditionally. Critics took a different view. Multiple reporters claim that Arlene was charging journalists a significant fee for access to Eileen and for interviews about the case. Whether she was acting from genuine compassion, self interest, or. Or some complicated mixture of both has never really been fully resolved. Either way, her influence over Eileen in the years to come would have devastating consequences for her adopted daughter's legal situation. And things were about to get very complicated. Girl, winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders that perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done. Hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear open that envelope. It's time for a little in person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about Run Club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop Where Taste recognizes taste Aileen Wuornos trial for the murder of Richard mallory started on January 14, 1990. Although she faced charges for all seven of her victims, the state chose to prosecute the Mallory case first, partly because it was the first in chronological order and partly because the evidence was especially solid. If they got a conviction and a death sentence here, the remaining cases would follow. She'd given so many different versions of what happened between her and Richard Mallory over the past two years that nobody in the courtroom was not the prosecution, not the defense, not the journalists covering the trial was entirely sure what she would say when she took the stand under oath. And what she said was more disturbing than any version she had told before. A content Warning the following account is graphic. If you prefer to skip ahead 30 seconds, please do so now. Eileen testified that Richard had tied her to the steering wheel of his car and raped her. He then tortured her, pouring rubbing alcohol over her body and her face. He told her that he had killed women before and if she didn't do everything he wanted, he would murder her and then violate her corpse. Eileen said she managed to break free from the steering wheel, got hold of her gun and shot him in order to save her own life. Let's listen to part of her testimony. I didn't shoot him on the ground. I shot him as he was coming out of the car and I shot him. I told him to stop, don't move no more, don't come toward me anymore and just stay there. He didn't listen. He was coming out of the car and I shot him again because he didn't know what the dickens he was doing. I didn't know if he had another gun under the seat. I didn't know if he was going to reach for another weapon. I didn't know what he had. According to this account, it wasn't murder, it was self defense. On the stand, Eileen was visibly distressed throughout the testimony. She had to stop multiple times to collect herself and at several points she cried. A lot of people who have watched the footage from her trial and who take a sympathetic view of Eileen's story, argue that this testimony, specifically the emotional weight of it and the visceral detail, is proof that she didn't just make it all up. But Richard Mallory's friends and family pushed back home hard on her testimony. His girlfriend took the stand and insisted that Richard had never been violent with women and that he was a gentle man who wasn't capable of the things Eileen had described. That was the question the jury had to wrestle with. And it only took them about an hour and a half to settle on a verdict. Guilty. But it wasn't over yet, because the trial's penalty phase was next and the jury had to decide if Eileen would get the death penalty. That part took a bit longer and it was harder for them to agree, but in the end, they decided that Eileen should be executed. They weren't operating with all of the information, though. After the trial, it came out that Richard Mallory had served nearly 10 years in prison in Maryland for attempted rape. It's impossible to say, but if Eileen had a better lawyer, I think this fact could have potentially gotten her off on self defense. Maybe it wouldn't have changed anything, but if they believed any part of Eileen's testimony, it could have changed the trajectory of the case, if not for the verdict, at least the sentencing. As it stood, though, Eileen was headed to death row, and this would have a huge impact on the rest of her trials. After her conviction, Eileen turned to Arlene for guidance on how to move forward. And the guidance she received was catastrophic. Arlene's framework was religious. She told Eileen that there was no winning in this life and that the right path, the path that would allow her soul to be cleansed and to enter heaven, was to plead guilty to the rest of the murders and stop fighting. To help navigate the remaining cases, Arlene recommended a lawyer who was a personal friend of hers, a man named Steve Glaser. Here's the thing, though. Steve Glaser was a real estate attorney, he had no meaningful experience with criminal defense and no experience at all in capital cases. Eileen later said that Glaser didn't take her situation seriously. She said he would smoke marijuana before their meetings and give her legal advice while impaired, and that he consistently failed to explain what was happening at the hearings and in court in any way she could understand. But despite her confusion and her growing unease with her legal situation, Eileen followed Arlene's spiritual guidance and pleaded guilty to the remaining six murders. Her fate was sealed, and she embraced it. The years that followed were spent writing letters, reading the Bible, and maintaining the handful of relationships that remained available to her. Eileen reconciled with her Aunt Laurie, and she eventually reached a kind of peace with Tyra but the person Eileen leaned on the most was her childhood friend, Dawn Botkins. Dawn had been the one person who genuinely showed up for Eileen when she was a teenager. They had lost touch over the years, but had found each other again after Eileen's arrest. And they exchanged hundreds of letters over the course of Eileen's time on death row. Eventually, the contact with Don gave Eileen enough of a foundation to fight again. She fired Steve Glazer, and In the year 2000, she filed an appeal on the grounds that she'd received ineffective legal counsel, which, given what we know, wasn't unreasonable. Her new attorneys wanted to present evidence of the childhood sexual abuse Eileen had allegedly suffered, including witnesses who were prepared to testify that she'd been abused by members of her own family. But Eileen didn't allow it. She'd denied those allegations publicly and consistently throughout her life, and she wasn't willing to have them raised in court, even if it meant giving up a potentially viable legal argument. In fact, she made the decision to stop her appeals entirely. And then came the recantation. Eileen withdrew every previous claim of self defense. She told the courts and anyone who would listen that she hadn't killed any of those men to protect herself. She said she'd killed for money and out of a deep, generalized hatred for humanity. She said she was ready to die. And she said that if she were released, she would kill again if given the chance. It was a haunting shift, and Eileen wasn't done. 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He argued to the courts that Eileen wasn't mentally competent to waive her appeals and that the decision she was making did not reflect the judgment of a person in full command of their own mind. Eileen disagreed loudly, clearly and repeatedly. She insisted she was perfectly sane, that she understood exactly what she was doing and why, and that the courts had no business overriding her own wishes about her death. The courts accepted her position and agreed she was competent. Her death warrant was signed in September of 2002. The day before her execution, Eileen sat down for a final interview with documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield, who'd been following her case for years. What she said in that interview has been analyzed and debated ever since by people trying to determine what it meant, what it revealed about her state of mind, what the years on death row had done to her and what was real and what wasn't inside Eileen Wuornos head. At the end of her life, she told Broomfield that the police had known all along she was killing people. She said that they had deliberately allowed the murders to continue because they wanted a movie made about the investigation, that her prison guards were poisoning her food, that they were spying on her through a hidden camera installed behind the mirror in her cell, and that they were beaming what she described as sonic pressure into her cell, which scrambled her mind and made her seem unstable, so that anything she said would be dismissed. And yet, in the same interview, she said she was ready to die, that she wanted it, that God was going to take her to heaven on a spaceship, and that she was at peace. Like so many aspects of Eileen's case, that dissonance led to more questions than answers. Was this a genuine break with reality? The consequences of years of isolation and untreated mental illness? A final attempt to create some. Some kind of alternative narrative around her death? Or something else entirely? We'll never know. Because the next day, Eileen went to her death. On the morning of October 9, 2002, hundreds of people gathered outside the Florida State Prison. Spectators who'd followed the case for years, journalists, protesters on both sides, and some of the family members of Eileen's victims who'd waited more than a decade for this moment to arrive. When the curtain parted at 9:30am Aileen Wuornos smiled. When the warden asked if she had any final words, she said, yes, I'd like to say I'm sailing with the rock and I'll be back. Like Independence day with Jesus. June 6, like in the movie Big Mothership and all. I'll be back. She was declared dead a few minutes later. She was 46 years old. She'd long since severed her relationship with Arlene Prawley, so her remains went to the person she designated Dawn Botkins, her oldest friend, the girl who'd been there for her at 15 when nobody else had. Dawn brought the ashes home to her farm and scattered them on the land. Aileen Wuornos story is one that this country has never quite known what to do with, and I think there's a reason for that. It doesn't fit cleanly into any of the frameworks we usually reach for when we're trying to make sense of violence. There's a version of this story that is entirely and purely about what she did. Seven men who stopped to help a stranger on the highway and never came home. Seven families that lost someone. Seven sets of people who have had to live for decades with a loss that was entirely preventable. Then there's Eileen's version that these were not serial killings, but simply self defense killings, not made out of malice or need, but survival. But regardless of which version you believe, there is the reality of her circumstances. A little girl born to a teenager who couldn't keep her, given to grandparents who were not equipped or possibly not willing to give her what she needed. Raped at 13, got pregnant as a result, was shamed for it and had to give birth by herself. Thrown out at 15 into a Michigan winter with nothing. Sexually assaulted again and again, arrested for trying to survive, imprisoned, guided into a guilty plea by a woman who may or may not have been acting in her best interest, represented by a real estate attorney in a capital case and executed while possibly psychotic by lethal injection at 46 years old. Both of those versions are real, and Eileen's case forces us to hold them at the same time without letting one cancel out the other. What her story ultimately asks of us is a harder question than who was guilty and who was innocent? It asks when a person falls through every crack there is, every family, every institution, every moment where something different might have happened and eventually become someone capable of violence. What does justice actually look like? Aileen Wuornos was executed. We can say she faced consequences for what she did, but the question of whether that constitutes justice for her victims and for her is one that the facts of her life make impossible to answer simply. And that discomfort, the fact that there is no clean resolution here is, I think, the most honest thing we can take from this case. 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. Richard Mallory had served nearly 10 years in prison for violent rape. The jury never heard that. Does knowing it change how you hear Eileen's testimony? For me, it changes everything. She did say that on the stand she embellished a couple things, but overall what he did to her was real. And as horrible as she said on the stand, I also think for me that it was kind of an event that made her crack because she had been doing sex work since she was 15 years old. She had slept with thousands of men and had never killed anyone until this incident. I don't really think that's a coincidence. Regarding the rest of the victims, I don't think we will ever know the whole truth. Friends and family testified about how amazing each victim was. How they were men who were just willing to help someone down on their luck. But Richard Mallory's girlfriend also claimed the same thing about him, that he was an amazing man who was absolutely not capable of doing what he did. Clearly he hadn't been forthcoming with her about his violent past. So there are a lot of things that people are able to hide from their friends and partners. It's also said that eileen had around 400 other clients in this time frame. So why was it these seven men? Maybe the men were as good as their family and friends said. But Eileen had just become paranoid after the incident with Richard Mallory. Or maybe it really was all in cold blood and greed. I don't think we will ever know since her stories changed throughout the years. In the beginning she was adamant that they were all self defense, that two did rape her and that five others tried closer to her execution date. She did walk those stories back and said that she made everything up and that she did really just kill them out of greed. But in her last interview with Nick Broomfield, when she thought she was off the record, she said that they were actually all in self defense. But she couldn't say anything because she didn't want anything to compromise her execution. To be fair, at that point she had definitely lost her mind. But I am still left with some questions. Did she walk back these stories because she wanted to be put to death? Was it all really just a ruse? Or maybe did she recant to allow the victims families to hold on to their good memories of their loved ones Again? I don't think we will ever fully know, but whatever the truth is, the hurt that the families experienced was real and I hope they were able to find peace. What are your thoughts on Richard Mallory's rape conviction not being brought up in court? Honestly, after watching some of the documentaries, I think that the prosecutor in the Mallory case was an absolute sleazeball. At trial, the prosecution framed Eileen's account of what Richard did to her as an extravagant lie to try and get her off on self defense. But the prosecutor conveniently missed Mallory's records and so it was never brought up in trial. And later a journalist that interviewed him said that once the discovery was made available to her, she found Mallory's record within hours. And I absolutely think he knew about the charges. But of course he wasn't going to tank his own case with that information. And also the fact that the whole time it was right there in discovery also gives us an insight into how incompetent her defense was to not catching something like that in a case this big is actually insane. And this wasn't actually the only slimy thing the prosecutor did. At first there was a female judge assigned to the case and she started questioning the ethics behind how they got Eileen to confess. And he was able to get her thrown off the bench. And conveniently, the new judge at the end of the trial made an unprecedented decision in the case and allowed the prosecutor to bring up the six other murder charges. Usually that would be grounds for a mistrial in a normal case, but he allowed it in this case, which is an insane decision. So the prosecution had everything in his favor because without the context of Mallory's violent history and with the information about the six other cases, it was a done deal for him. And the verdict was delivered in, I think, around 90 minutes. So whatever you think about Eileen herself and her guilt, that alone was an absolute failure of the justice system and she did not get a fair trial and it should have also been appealed. But then two other crooks came into her life that changed everything. I'm guessing you're referring to Arlene Prawley and Steven Glaser. What are your thoughts on them? When I first heard about Arlene's story, I thought it was kind of weird, but also a little sweet that she saw this broken woman who had never had anyone in her corner, had never had a family who supported her and looked after her, and she wanted to give her a semblance of that. But then I watched the documentary selling of a serial killer and my thoughts on Arlene and Steven Glaser, the real estate attorney, that Arlene convinced Eileen to represent her. My opinions completely changed on both of them. In my opinion, Arlene was absolutely exploiting Eileen. She was charging huge amounts of money for interviews, appearing wherever she could, and joking that Steve was like her agent because she was getting so much attention and fame. And the whole time she pretended to care. She said that she believed that Eileen was absolutely innocent and Then quickly flipped that narrative, telling Eileen that she needed to plead guilty and to not fight it, and that's how she was going to be saved. Regarding the lawyer, Steve, I think he's partially a scummy person, but also just completely unqualified to represent Eileen, especially in a capital case like this. And I think he just wanted her to plead guilty so that he didn't lose a case. He also charged for interviews, tried to revive his music career through the documentary, and made jokes about the death penalty. So it's just sad to me that even through the end of her life, she was used by every single person except for her childhood friend Dawn. Speaking of people who used her, what are your thoughts on Tyra? And do you think Tyra knew more than she let on? I think something that's interesting about Tyra is that Eileen didn't kill anyone until she met Tyra. And some people have theories about that. I think that maybe it was because Eileen felt more of a pressure to get out there. She also said that Tyra kind of pushed her to explore new clients because she wasn't bringing in enough money. So I think that pressure might have played a role into that. But I do think Tyra knew a little more than she let on. And I think on the phone call where Tyra gets Eileen to confess, it's clear that Eileen would do anything to protect Tyra. Also, as I mentioned in the first episode, I find myself having a little more compassion for Eileen than I do for other serial killers. And I don't really know if that's because I'm a woman or because she had been raped, abused, shamed, and thrown out like a dog before she was 15. And then after that, experience even more rape and abuse at the hands of men she would sleep with on the road. She also had been betrayed by pretty much everyone she loved. But I also think that part of it comes from the fact that she's the only serial killer I've seen expressed genuine emotion. And when this brings it back to Tyra is that when they played the recordings of Tyra convincing her to confess, you can see, like, genuine emotions of her pain and betrayal. So in my eyes, she's absolutely mentally unwell, but has more of a human element than other serial killers I've seen give interviews. And I don't think the killings were as much of a sadistic need, but more of a means of survival, whether that be self defense or a way to survive monetarily. And again, I'm not excusing her murdering people and There are people who have survived similar trauma that have not murdered people. But there is something about everyone around her failing her that makes me more sad than revolted. Eileen recanted all claims of self defense, then in her final interview, seemed to have lost contact with reality. What do you make of those two things together? I think they're almost impossible to read as a coherent whole, and I think that's kind of the point. What I see when I look at the arc of Eileen's final years is someone who had been progressively ground down by isolation, by the loss of every relationship that had mattered to her, by years on death row with mental health conditions that had never been properly diagnosed or treated by a legal situation that had been fumbled by people she trusted. At some point, I think she simply just kind of stopped fighting and she was exhausted, broken, and there was nothing really left. So that recantation in the reading is less of a confession of truth than it is surrender, a way of saying, fine, you want me to be the monster, I'm done arguing with you about it. And the final interview, that sonic pressure, the spaceship, God's plan, I think that is what the end of the road looks like for someone with serious, untreated mental illness who has spent years in isolation on death row. So people have a lot of different opinions on whether she should have been executed or not. I think she definitely got an unfair trial. I think she had people who gave her terrible advice and who didn't represent her to their best effect. In the end, what she really wanted was, I think, just to kind of be off of this earth. And she was really unhappy. So in a way, kind of fulfilled her wishes. But again, you know, you struggle with it because was this person just mentally unwell? Did they deserve what they got? Was this self defense? I think this case is interesting because it leaves. Everyone has so many questions. What is the legacy of Eileen Wuornos for true crime, for how we understand violence, and for how we treat people who fall through the cracks. The interesting thing about Eileen is that I think her legacy changes depending on who you ask. For the general public, I think it's fair to say that most people recognize her as the first female serial killer. Before Eileen, the profile of serial killers was almost exclusively male and a specific type of male. And the victims were pretty much always female. And she definitely broke that mold. So she forced criminologists, law enforcement, the media, and the public to reckon with the reality that the capacity for this kind of violence is not determined by gender, which changed how investigators approach cases involving non male perpetrators and for how the public thinks about danger. There might have been other female serial killers before her, but that's kind of what she's known for now. Other than that, people definitely have varying views on her. Some people believe she is the same as all other serial killers, a cold blooded killer who kills for no real reason other than hatred. Then there are people who believe she is a serial killer who didn't necessarily kill out of self defense, but they still have more compassion for her because of how deeply sad her entire life story had been. And then there are people who believe that the killings were really in self defense. But overall, I think Eileen's case is an example of what happens when a child isn't just failed by her family, but every other system in our society that is built to intervene and help children like Eileen. In the end, Eileen's story is a profoundly sad one, but that also doesn't take away from the pain that the families of the victims had to also endure. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. 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. Come back next week for another deep dive into a true crime that changed America.