Wuornos' journey nears its final step

DAYTONA BEACH -- Cammie Greene said Aileen Wuornos told her four years before the bullet-riddled bodies of men started turning up along North and Central Florida highways that she would make a name for herself.

Greene said she had taken Wuornos, known to her as "Lee," and Wuornos' lesbian lover, Tyria Moore, into her Holly Hill home when the future serial killer told her: "I'm going to do society a favor -- something no woman has ever done before."

Greene, now 40 and living in Flagler Beach, said Wuornos' predictions of notoriety in 1985 were on target.

The 46-year-old Wuornos, considered by many criminologists to be the nation's first female serial killer, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection Wednesday at Florida State Prison in Starke. The execution is a desire Wuornos has repeatedly expressed to judges, police, the media and anyone else who would listen for nearly a decade.

Though she claimed self-defense during her 1992 trial in DeLand, she has since said her motives were robbery and hatred in a string of murders along Florida highways in 1989 and 1990 while she worked as a prostitute, packing a .22-caliber handgun in her purse.

She was convicted of a Volusia County murder, and pleaded no contest to murders in Marion, Dixie, Pasco and Citrus counties, receiving six death sentences. She also claimed to have killed a seventh man.

Greene said she had no idea what Wuornos meant when she made her prediction, until she started seeing media reports about men being shot execution-style. Greene discovered, after a call from the FBI, that her driver's license had been traced to items belonging to the victims cashed in at local pawn shops by a lone woman with reddish hair. Wuornos had stolen the license; Greene was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Though she opened her home to Wuornos and Moore for six months, Greene said she did not share in their lifestyle.

Greene said Thursday she has been disgusted by the drawn-out legal process, and the sensationalism that has surrounded Wuornos with movies, books and bizarre Web site offerings that portray Wuornos as a larger-than-life serial killer to rival murderers Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, "Son of Sam" David Berkowitz and Holly Hill resident Gerald Stano. Berkowitz is the only one among that group still alive serving a life sentence.

"She should have been executed 10 years ago when they had the chair," Greene said of Wuornos. "She cold-heartedly killed these men for greed. I think she wanted to be caught -- she wanted people to feel sorry for her. She's just a very greedy, coldhearted person."

Last April, after a hearing in Daytona Beach before Circuit Judge R. Michael Hutcheson, the Florida Supreme Court agreed to allow Wuornos to fire her attorneys and stop her appeals.

"I am a serial killer. I would kill again," Wuornos testified at the hearing.

JOURNEY TO VOLUSIA COUNTY

Court records and media interviews with law enforcement and others involved in bringing Wuornos to trial paint a picture of a difficult childhood that became a violent, reckless life.

Wuornos grew up in Michigan, never met her father and was abandoned along with her brother by their mother when Wuornos was a small child. Her father hanged himself after being jailed for raping a little girl. She and her brother became wards of the state when their grandmother died. Wuornos' brother died of cancer when she was 20.

Wuornos got pregnant at 13 and the boy was given up for adoption. She quit school in the 10th grade and hitchhiked to Florida, getting in trouble with the law in Michigan and Colorado.

She met a woman who had money and they started a pressure-cleaning business in South Florida.

When the relationship fell apart, Wuornos moved to Volusia County in the mid-1970s, married an older man in Ormond Beach and divorced him a month later. She spent a lot of time drinking in bars after that. She slept with men, too. Sometimes three to five a day, she told a jury at her murder trial.

She spent a year in prison, having robbed an Edgewater convenience store of $33 while wearing a string bikini in 1981.

Several years after her release, she met Tyria Moore.

The two were inseparable at bars. Moore quit her job and encouraged Wuornos to squeeze as much money from her encounters with men as she could.

Then the body count began -- first in November 1989 with Richard Mallory, a Clearwater television repair shop owner who picked Wuornos up on Interstate 95 near Ormond Beach. His body was found in woods outside the city.

Over the following year, at least six other men would lose their lives in similar fashion, all shot with a .22-caliber handgun. Some were left nude and their vehicles were recovered days or weeks later. Most had been robbed of personal items and money.

Eventually Moore stopped going with Wuornos to the Last Resort, a bar in Harbor Oaks where the two were a fixture and where Wuornos loved to hear her favorite song, Randy Travis' "Digging Up Bones, " according to patrons and bartenders there.

Her killing spree ended with her arrest on Jan. 9, 1991, at the biker hangout, where women's underwear hangs above the bar.

'A RAVAGED SOUL'

In her 1992 trial in DeLand, State Attorney John Tanner said of Wuornos, who was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Mallory: "She was like a spider on the side of the road, waiting for prey -- men."

David Damore, a criminal defense attorney who specializes in capital murder, was a prosecutor with Tanner at the trial.

Damore, now 52, said Wuornos tried to pass herself off as a hapless prostitute defending herself from perverted men looking to rob her, but the jury didn't believe her.

"Aileen Wuornos is a classic anti- social personality without conscience or remorse, but she was and is sane," Damore said Wednesday, hours after Gov. Jeb Bush dropped a temporary halting of her execution so psychiatrists could examine her.

The panel of three doctors determined she was mentally competent to understand the scope of her crimes and the capital punishment that she has long sought. Their finding was no different from what 14 other psychiatrists had concluded early on, Damore said.

The veteran attorney recalled Wuornos' words to the jury, which convicted her of capital murder after less than two hours of deliberation: "I'm innocent! I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scumbags of America!"

"She's a ravaged soul who needs to be put out of her misery -- wants to be put out of her misery," Damore said.

Billy Nolas, who represented Wuornos in that trial, said she suffers from borderline personality disorder as a result of neglect and sexual abuse as a child.

"She is the most disturbed individual I have represented," said Nolas, who now practices law in Philadelphia.

Nolas said he believes Mallory raped Wuornos and that pushed her over the edge. Information on Mallory's prior history of sexual assault was withheld from defense attorneys, he said.

Leta Prather, now 64, of Marion County, whose brother, Troy Eugene Burress, was among Wuornos' murder victims, didn't mince words in an interview Friday.

"Justice is finally going to be served," Prather said, choking back tears. "Buddy was my younger brother. He was a good man. She shot him in the back. I don't forgive and I don't forget."

Burress, 50, married with two daughters, was on his sausage-delivery run when he picked up Wuornos on Interstate 75. Prather was told by investigators that her brother bought Wuornos' hard-luck story on the side of the interstate about being stranded and needing help.

"She's not insane. She's just mean -- she's a murderer," she said.

'DEATH OF A DAMSEL'

Prather said she will be a witness at the execution, along with her husband, John, her two grown daughters and their husbands.

Twenty people will witness the execution -- half from Central and North Florida media and most others relatives of the victims. Tanner also plans to be there.

Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections, said his office was inundated with media requests to witness the execution from all over the world, as well as requests for last-minute interviews with Wuornos. He said she has agreed to speak only with the BBC television network on the eve of her execution.

Prather said she expects a circus-like atmosphere. The Ocala woman remembers vividly the media swirl that came with the trial and subsequent hype that became the cult of Aileen Wuornos with a made-for-TV movie, a San Francisco opera named for the serial killer and several books.

There also were Wuornos groupies at the trial, including Arlene Pralle, an Ocala horse rancher who legally adopted her. In recent years, Pralle's "gone underground" in the Bahamas, said Sue Russell, a British freelance journalist who has written two books on Wuornos.

Volusia County sheriff's Sgt. Bob Kelley, who investigated the killings with sheriff's investigator Larry Horzepa, deputies in surrounding counties and the Daytona Beach Police Department, said there's nothing to celebrate about Wuornos.

"The pattern indicated she wasn't going to stop," Kelley said.

Al Bulling, 62, owner of the Last Resort, where a plaque hangs as a testament to Wuornos' fame, said her infamy will live on after she is gone.

He expressed mixed feelings on the impending execution.

"She never caused me any problems," Bulling said. "Once in a while she got loud. She didn't have very much of a life to begin with. What I'd like to know is why it has taken 11 years. Is (execution) the answer for society? I don't know."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Wournos timeline

The following is a timeline of the events that culminated with Aileen Wuornos being convicted of murder and sentenced to death:

FEB. 29, 1956 -- Born Aileen Pittman in Rochester, Mich., to parents Leo and Diane Pittman. They separate three months before she is born. She never knows her father and her mother abandons her at 2.

MARCH 16, 1960 -- Maternal grandparents Lauri and Britta Wuornos of Troy, Mich., adopt Aileen and her brother, changing their last names to Wuornos.

MARCH 31, 1971 -- At age 14, Wuornos delivers a baby boy at a maternity home. The newborn is immediately given up for adoption.

JULY 7, 1971 -- Grandmother Britta dies. The children become wards of the state and Wuornos drops out of school in the 10th grade.

MAY 1, 1974 -- Using the alias Sandra Kretsch, Wuornos is jailed in Jefferson County, Col., for disorderly conduct, drunken driving and firing a .22-caliber pistol from a moving car.

MAY 4, 1976 -- Wuornos marries Lewis Fell, a man nearly twice her age and the two settle in Ormond Beach. The marriage lasts a month.

MAY 20, 1981 -- Wuornos is arrested in Edgewater for armed robbery of a convenience store. She is released from prison 13 months later.

JUNE 2, 1986 -- Wuornos, using the alias Lori Grody, is briefly detained by Volusia County deputies after a male companion accuses her of pulling a handgun on him and demanding $200. A week later, using the alias Susan Blahovec, Wuornos is ticketed for speeding in Jefferson County. The citation notes: "Attitude poor. Thinks she is above the law." A few days later, she meets Tyria Moore at the Zodiac Club, a gay bar in South Daytona.

DEC. 18, 1987 -- With the alias Blahovec, Wuornos is cited for walking on Interstate 95 by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper who writes on her ticket, "Attitude POOR."

NOV. 30, 1989 -- Richard Mallory, 51, of Clearwater, is last seen alive by co-workers. His body was found two weeks later. A bottle of vodka and condoms are found near the body.

MAY 31, 1990 -- Charles Carskaddon, 40, a part-time rodeo worker from Booneville, Mo., is reported missing, having vanished along Interstate 75 on his way to meet with his fiancee in Tampa. His body is later found shot nine times.

JUNE 1, 1990 -- A nude man's body is found, shot six times with a .22-caliber handgun, near I-75 in woods 40 miles north of Tampa. The body is later identified as that of David Spears, 43, who planned to meet his ex-wife in Orlando.

JUNE 7, 1990 -- Peter Siems, 65, a merchant seaman turned missionary, is last seen after leaving his Jupiter home for a visit to relatives in Arkansas.

JULY 4, 1990 -- Siems' wrecked car is found abandoned in Orange Springs. Witnesses describe two women who flee the car as a blonde and a brunette. Based on eyewitness accounts, police draw up a sketch.

JULY 30, 1990 -- Eugene Burress, 50, leaves the Ocala sausage factory where he works for his normal delivery, but does not return at his expected time of 2 a.m. the next day and a missing person's report is issued. His delivery van is found.

AUG. 4, 1990 -- Burress' fully clothed body is found by a family picnicking in the Ocala National Forest, shot twice in the back and chest with a .22-caliber handgun. Police find credit cards, a clipboard, business receipts and an empty cash bag from a local bank.

SEPT. 11, 1990 -- Ocala resident Dick Humphreys, 56, a retired Alabama police chief, is reported missing by his wife after he fails to come home. His body is found the next day shot seven times.

NOV. 19, 1990 -- The body of Walter Antonio, 60, a Merritt Island truck driver, is found in woods near Cross City, shot three times in the back and once in the head.

JAN. 9, 1991 -- Wuornos is captured by deputies at the Last Resort bar in Harbor Oaks.

JAN. 16, 1991 -- Wuornos confesses to the killings.

JAN. 13, 1992 -- Wuornos' trial for the Mallory slaying opens at the historic Volusia County Courthouse in DeLand.

JAN. 24, 1992 -- Wuornos takes the stand as the sole witness, claiming she was raped by Mallory and forced to shoot him in self-defense.

JAN. 27, 1992 -- After deliberating less than two hours, the jury finds Wuornos guilty of murder.

JAN. 29, 1992 -- Based on a unanimous jury recommendation, Circuit Judge Uriel Blount sentences Wuornos to death by electrocution. She later pleads no contest to five of the other killings, and nearly a decade later asks for and is given permission by the Florida Supreme Court to fire her attorneys and drop her appeals.

em>Compiled by Staff Writer Henry Frederick from police and court records, newspaper archives and Internet sources. /em>

Serial killer's victims

Following is a list of serial killer Aileen Wuornos' victims:

RICHARD MALLORY, 51, Clearwater electronics shop owner, body found Dec. 13, 1989, in the woods near Ormond Beach.

DAVID SPEARS, 43, Winter Garden construction worker, body found June 1, 1990, in Citrus County.

CHARLES CARSKADDON, 40, rodeo worker, body found June 6, 1990, in Pasco County.

TROY BURRESS, 50, a salesman from Ocala, was reported missing July 31, 1990. Body found in Marion County.

CHARLES "DICK" HUMPHREYS, 56, retired Air Force major, former police chief and Florida state child abuse investigator, body found in Marion County.

WALTER GINO ANTONIO, 60, body found on Nov. 19, 1990, in Dixie County.

PETER SIEMS, 65, body never found, but Wuornos admits to killing him.

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