First Blood (2022–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Aileen Wuornos: The Damsel of Death - full transcript
In 1989, Richard Mallory is found shot dead in the brush off the side of a Florida highway, just the first of seven murdered men found in a similar setting. Their predator is Aileen Wuornos, a woman fleeing a troubled past and yea...
- I killed those men.
I robbed them and I
killed them as cold as ice,
I have hate crawling
through my system.
- They call her the
damsel of death.
- She killed these
men in cold blood
and knew what she was doing.
- Authorities call her the
first true female serial killer.
- Her first killing, it
was the pinnacle of rage.
It's like, that felt good.
Now I'm gonna do it again.
- All middle aged men,
all shot multiple times
with virtually no remorse.
- She was the predator.
- In her mind, she needed
to kill these people.
She was finally gonna get even.
- This is a wicked wicked world.
- You had two guys that were out
just a little ways
off of I95 up US one.
They were in this very
wooded, densely wooded area.
- They're looking
for scrap metal
And they see this red carpet.
And there's a buzzard
pecking away at the carpet.
As they got closer and looked,
they saw this hand
sticking out of it.
- And they call 911.
- During the 80s and 90s,
central Florida was
not highly developed.
- This crime scene.
You'd have to get there by
vehicle or some other thing.
And there was no vehicle.
The body is covered
up by a heavy rug.
It's obvious the
individual who's dead
didn't put it over himself.
- In Florida, it's very warm.
It doesn't take long for
decomposition to occur.
So once the tarp or the
carpet had been removed,
As far as a possible cause of
death, you just couldn't tell.
- The suspicion was we
had a robbery homicide.
You see a human being
that's been killed.
And you wonder, you know,
who is this person, who
is gonna be grieving?
If anyone, for the person.
His autopsy revealed he
had been shot four times.
And the weapon used was
a .22 caliber weapon.
- Your priority is to
identify the victim.
In this case, we were
behind the clock.
The victim's been dead
for a couple days.
- In cases like this, you ask
yourself, how did he get here
and where did he come from?
And then, who did he
meet along the way?
- No, I wasn't born bad.
You guys got it, I'm trying
to tell you, man, they lied.
They lie so bad to you all.
- I was Aileen's best friend.
I think we're 15.
Aileen did write me
for 12 years straight.
Just about every day.
At least 5,000 letters.
She was easy to get along with.
We'd done a lot of
stuff together,
like going to the mall,
going to the pool hall,
going to the racetrack.
She just wanted to
watch the horses.
- I think Aileen always felt
that she was who she was
because of her family.
She never met her father.
He killed himself in prison.
And when she was about four
years old, her mother took off.
She was left in the care
of her mother's parents.
And she referred to
them as mom and dad.
- [Narrator] From my experiences
with my father, I hated him.
He was cold as ice all
because of world war II.
He felt like I was the enemy.
- I don't think she felt anybody
truly loved her or
wanted her there.
Especially the grandfather.
- The grandpa.
He just was a cold-hearted man.
I don't think he probably
ever smiled a day in his life
and just took it
out on the family.
- He was both physically abusive
and also extremely verbally
and emotionally abusive to her.
Saying that if he had his way,
he would take the kids out,
shoot them and hang
'em from a tree.
Aileen did not have
the kind of support,
love, affection that we
hope most kids will have.
If she didn't have that family,
perhaps things would've
turned out differently.
- So many people that
get a hold of me say,
they look in her eyes and
see such beautiful eyes.
I tell people you're crazy.
Those are sad eyes.
- In the very early stages.
We didn't know who
this victim was.
But eventually this victim was
identified as a white male,
51 years of age by the
name of Richard Mallory.
Richard Mallory did
VCR repair work.
His home was the
Clearwater area, Florida,
which is on the entire
opposite side of the state.
You're looking about
250 some miles.
- He was over six feet tall.
He was a loner,
lived by himself.
Frequented strip joints.
Had friends that
suspected that he
had been actually coming
over to Daytona beach
for the purposes of going
to a couple of the clubs.
- Once this victim was
identified as Richard Mallory,
it struck a chord.
- And they started looking
for Richard Mallory,
but had no idea where he was.
- There were no
fingerprints found.
His car had been wiped down
by somebody who took
some time to do it.
There was some blood on the
front seat of the driver's side.
- The driver's seat
had been pulled
to the forward most position,
which knowing what we
know about Richard Mallory
he was a very tall individual.
So that tells you his vehicle
got there by another person.
Despite everything
that was found
with Richard Mallory's vehicle,
you don't have anything
that would help you
identify who
committed this crime.
- So the truth is
we were following
a dead trail at that point.
- After Mr. Mallory's
case goes cold,
bodies start being found
throughout central Florida.
- [Reporter] David Spears,
a construction worker
found nude, shot six
times with a .22.
Charles Carskaddon, found nude,
shot nine times with a .22,
and Peter Siems, a
missionary still missing.
- All middle aged men,
traveling on a highway, shot
with a .22 caliber handgun.
And we start to wonder,
maybe there's more
to Mr. Mallory's
death than simply
just a single homicide
out in the woods.
- Troy was not the type of
man to just up and disappear.
Troy was planning on coming down
to West Palm and see the kids.
I said, okay, be careful.
I love you, see you
when you get here.
Well, he never showed up.
We copied photos of him
missing and we put it all over,
up and down highway 40.
You're walking through woods.
And it was in the
middle of summer,
and it was storming,
and it was hot.
Ugh. It was just, yeah,
it was heart wrenching
to think that he was out,
hurt somewhere and we
couldn't get to him.
- There was a
couple and they were
looking to have a little picnic.
They go down this dirt road,
They noticed a foul
smell in the air.
And they're kind of
wondering what it was.
And they looked around and
they saw something kind of
covered up in the,
in the distance.
And it was blue in color.
It was blue jeans
And there was a
badly decomposed body
inside of the blue jeans.
- And the nightmare truly
began from that moment on.
From that moment.
- [Reporter]
December 13th, 1989,
the badly decomposed body of
52 year old Richard Mallory
was found in the woods,
north of Daytona.
- Several bodies are found
throughout central Florida.
But at that time,
it's not as if law enforcement
has any clue that
they're connected.
- The call came in for a
body out in the forest.
Even though he was
badly decomposed.
It said the name
Troy, on his shirt.
- We saw detective Tilley
pull up in the driveway.
And he brought in Troy's
wedding band to my mom.
Who would wanna hurt Troy?
He was a good man.
We figured it had to
have been a stranger
because anyone that knew him,
would never wanna hurt him.
Never.
He wanted a garden and
he wanted to retire.
He was tired of driving.
But, that didn't happen,
I'm sorry.
- The autopsy revealed
that Troy Burress
had been shot numerous times
with a .22 caliber weapon.
At the time that we're working,
the Troy Burress homicide,
we didn't know about
any connection
to any other homicides
because they covered almost
the entire state of Florida.
- But months later
in September of 1990,
we have yet another case.
- Mr. Humphreys,
former police chief.
He had been shot seven times
with a .22 caliber weapon.
And you think, doesn't
that sound familiar?
We were thinking,
we got a problem.
- [Narrator] Once I
hit junior high,
there went my good old morals.
Skipping out the house, at
least every three months,
once the age of 13 would arrive.
My rebellious butt kept
saying freedom, as off I'd go.
- As Aileen got older,
she would sneak out
her bedroom window
to get away from the
abusive home situation.
And the grandfather's wrath.
- We all hung out at the pits.
That's like in between my
house and Aileen's house.
We all used to go there
and party at night
because there was
no homes there.
After us kids would party
and stuff like that,
she would get with certain
ones and go into the woods.
And she would sleep with some
of the boys around
for cigarettes
and get extra money or whatever.
- For the first time in
her life, she felt wanted.
And she felt loved.
She was seeing that
she could use her body,
her sexuality, to gain
favors from others.
And she was enjoying the
attention she was getting.
- Until she was raped
and had that baby.
Just changed her whole life.
It was horrible thing
for her to happen.
- She was raped by
an older individual.
She said it was an acquaintance
of the grandfather.
- [Narrator] I was 14 stuck
in an unwed home in Detroit,
just before I had
the little tike.
Only to then have to put him
up for adoption, once born.
- Her grandfather blamed
her for the pregnancy,
said it was her fault.
She was told that she could
no longer stay at home.
- [Narrator] I remember
winters when I was a runaway.
Sleeping in the snow,
no money, no warmth,
no where to go, hungry as hell.
- She started getting with
gentlemen and the rest of us
were all sleeping and she was
out hitch hiking at night.
- She felt she's never been
in control of her life.
The only things that, for the
most part, she ever felt control
of was when she was
working as a sex worker.
- It was never for pleasure,
it was just a business,
but she gets paid for it
so she didn't mind so much
cause it was her
that was in control.
Now that makes sense, don't it.
- With these killings,
we noticed that there was a
similarity and we thought,
wouldn't it be amazing if
it was the same person?
But we don't know.
So what we had was the Florida
department of law enforcement.
They were our state
investigators.
- In criminal profiling
we try to join the
cases together.
So in September, all
of the investigators
who had a similar case,
all went to Marion county.
- For the first time in
these series of cases,
we have all the key players
in one place, in one room.
- One by one,
each of the investigators
presented their case.
- [Man] Richard Mallory.
- [Woman] David Spears.
- [Man] Charles Carskaddon.
- [Man] Peter Sims, Troy
Burress, Dick Humphreys.
- You could see, as you
were going around the room,
with investigators
laying out their cases.
It is apparent that we have
one single person committing
multiple homicides.
- Okay, we got a serial killer.
- You try to conjure up in
your mind, who is this person?
You try to assess your
enemy, if you will.
How would they be
in a situation where
their paths crossed with every
one of these victims?
- The way some of those bodies
are found in the
state of undressed,
it was believed
that sex was a part
of some of these homicides.
- And they were killed with
a small caliber weapon.
Well, who was killing these
big men carrying a .22?
You had the driver's seat
that was pulled to the
forward most position.
- There was something
different about this crime.
And so I turned to my
partner and I said,
are you thinking
what I'm thinking?
And he says, yeah, I think I am.
And so I looked at the lead
investigators and I says, well,
we think that your
perpetrator is a woman.
- [Reporter] For a year, bodies
kept turning up in the woods,
along Florida's highways.
- [Repoerter 2] The victims
were all white males
and had their vehicles stolen
and was shot to death with
a small caliber handgun.
- After Dale Henman
had laid on the table,
have you thought about
this being a female?
You had a couple jaws
that drop on the floor.
- For me as a profiler,
the only way I could
make those cases work,
is a man rode with somebody
out into the woods.
A woman had made sexual
advances towards him,
or was picked up as
a hitchhiker,
and then he was killed.
- I don't know that I'd ever
heard of a female serial killer.
You will see male serial killers
that will search for women.
But to be a female that was
going after men, to kill them.
That was unheard of.
She was the predator.
- [Narrator] There,
I was every day.
Oil all over me, black
bikini on, radio jamming.
Enjoying every breath
I took out there.
- Aileen saw herself
pretty much as a vagabond.
So she ends up hitch
hiking into Florida.
- A nice warm place,
different people,
people that didn't know
anything about her background,
and stuff like that.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
- She felt like she fit in
somehow in Daytona beach.
- Aileen did meet an older man.
His name was Lewis.
He was a wealthy man and
had a normal, nice life.
And they got married,
and all that.
And she thought this is
her ticket off the streets.
- I don't remember Aileen
ever saying that
he was a substitute
for her father or grandfather.
But I think it was pretty
obvious that was the case.
He would give her
money typically freely,
but then it got to a
point where one time
he refused and she got upset.
- Once we were married,
where he felt full control,
he began to air it.
Come near to killing
him one night.
Grabbed a 22 rifle, threw
him on the floor and said,
I want a divorce within 24
hours for I'll kill you.
- It became pretty easy
to get her riled up
to the point where she
could become pretty violent.
- He divorced her and she
was back hitchhiking again.
That's all that was to it.
It was her life, she
was picking it out,
not somebody telling
her what to do.
- So our next steps was look
at every case and
compare all the evidence.
Maybe the person
had made a mistake.
- We started with Peter
Siems, the missing person.
We sent up a team of detectives
and started searching the area.
But we were never
able to find him.
But they found that
there had been two women
that had been seen
walking away from the car.
- The females had removed
the license plate
from that vehicle.
- When a car would come by,
two women would duck off
the side of the road.
- They were absolutely
females of interest.
- We were able to develop
composite drawings
and we had an idea maybe
of who was in that vehicle.
But if we release
these composites
and these two girls are watching
the news, are they gonna flee?
We thought we could
act quickly enough
so that nobody else
would be killed.
And we were wrong.
It was almost
immediately thereafter
that we had our seventh
victim, Walter Gino Antonio.
Our goal is to save lives
And it was really weighing
heavily on the detectives.
We felt we failed.
- How many more is
she's going to kill?
She has blood, the taste of
it, she's not gonna stop.
- [Reporter] Central
Florida is being threatened
with news of yet another
round of serial killings.
The police say for the first
time in criminal history,
these killers may be murdering
with a feminine touch.
- They call her the
damsel of death.
- Authorities call her the
first true female serial killer.
- The fact that it was
women just blew me away.
And then I saw the sketch.
I don't know, I
just stared at it.
I just stared right into
their eyes and wondered
if that was the last face
Troy ever got to see.
- We had hoped to get leads in.
And we did.
We had thousands of
leads that came in.
- The phone literally
rang off the hook.
The nucleus of these leads
was in Volusia County
and Daytona, Florida area.
- One of the calls that I
received was from a woman
that said that she knew a
couple of girls that hated men.
The person that
called this lead in
gave us the name of Tyria Moore.
- So who is this person?
- [Narrator] My life
has been a struggle.
On the road until 20, married
60 days, 28 found Tyria.
- All her life, I think Aileen
wished she had stability.
Somebody that cared for her,
and she just never
had any of that
until she started
hanging out with Ty.
- Tyria was the first
time that I think
Aileen was really in love.
But despite this great romance,
Aileen would go to bars a
lot, she was drinking a lot.
That was the only way that
she could make
everything disappear
and not have to think about
what her life was like.
- [Narrator] I've been
raped violently in life.
The drunker I got as I reflected
back to rapes, that was it.
The wilder my thoughts
became with hatred,
all bitterly built up.
- She's choosing to hitch
hike be the prostitute,
but she needed the money.
I'm sure she knew all
the dangers of it.
She'd been doing
it her whole life.
- I think that she may
have had some flashbacks
as to what's happened to
her when she was younger,
her violence had been
escalating over the years
and it was easier for
that anger to come out.
- [Narrator] The slightest spark
of provocation led to bastards.
I had enough.
- I think she got to a point
where she just
didn't really care.
She was going to take
advantage of people,
just like they've
taken advantage
of her all of her life.
- I never hated men.
But now I do.
- When Peterson's
vehicle was crashed,
two people walked away,
but there was certainly
never any indication
that any of these crimes were
perpetrated by two people.
- So now all efforts are out
to find the other female.
We go to the pawn shops and
see if anything's being pawned
from our homicide victims,
with these different aliases.
And one alias that kept
coming up in all of the leads,
turned up at two
different pawn shops.
The items that had been pawn
were 35 millimeter camera
and a radar detector.
And those were the
two items taken
from the vehicle
of Richard Mallory.
- Back then Florida had
a pawn shop law in effect
as to where you had
to leave a thumbprint.
- We run that thumbprint
from that pawn ticket.
- There was a positive match.
- She had a criminal history
and so they had
fingerprint records.
- Bingo.
- Finally, we have a name.
Aileen Wuornos.
So where is she?
- We decided to invite as
many undercover officers
as we could from central Florida
to come over
to Daytona beach.
Saturate the bars
and try and find her.
And it only took a
couple days before
one of our undercover
officers ran into her
in the Last Resort bar.
We couldn't take a chance
on her killing again.
We had to act quickly.
- The undercover officer told
Aileen that he had a room key
and that they could go over
there and party at the motel.
- We still had to
make sure we got her
into custody without
anybody be getting hurt.
- She was most likely armed
and she already had
killed seven men.
- There is no way we can
let her out of our sight.
- [Reporter] If the regulars at
the biker hang out near
Daytona, didn't know the woman,
the undercover deputies watching
the Last Resort certainly did.
They were on the trail
of Aileen Lee Wuornos.
- The high sign was
given to draw her outside
to go ahead and take
her into police custody.
- Never stopped.
- When you make that arrest,
that's where you
feel the relief.
That's where you know
you've done your job.
You can never bring back
the life of a victim.
You could never stop the hurt
of the victim's
family and loved ones.
- But you know that
everybody who was gonna be
a potential victim
of hers is now safe.
It's a happy feeling of relief.
And I think all of us shared it.
- The cops come to
my house and said,
do you know Aileen Wuornos?
I said, oh hell yeah.
And they're like,
she killed seven men.
I said, holy cow, for real?
I thought she'd be the one dead.
- Now the biggest
challenge of this
entire case, it was before us.
We had to have a confession.
- When you have two
people involved,
one could be turned
against the other.
So, it became a very easy
endeavor to lean on Tyria Moore.
- She agreed to work
with law enforcement
to contact Aileen.
She was ultimately not
prosecuted as a result of this.
She sent Aileen a letter
at the Volusia County jail
asking her to call
her at this motel.
- Hi.
- [Narrator] Through my
years on the road as a teen
and then in Florida, I
faced a lot of male abuse.
Fending for myself, alone.
No one else to help me.
The final year became too much.
- [Narrator] In one
set frame of mind,
bent with revenge
and set to kill,
a Cadillac pulled
over to give me a ride
with Richard Mallory inside.
- Richard Mallory picked me up
around 10:30 at night on I4.
He mentioned along the way,
a dislike for various women.
So with that, the
fire was fueled.
- They started getting
ready to have sex.
And he said something
along the lines of,
well, you're gonna
do what I tell you.
And I can only speculate
that there were some level
of flashing back to
what she went through
when she was younger,
when she felt
that she had no control
over the situation.
And in this case, she
actually did have control
because she had a
gun in her purse.
- We've seen instances
of rage with her.
We've seen her become violent.
This was the pinnacle
of that violence.
And it's like, that felt good.
Now I'm gonna do it again.
- After Mr. Mallory,
she felt that
she was finally gonna get even
with all the men who have hurt
her throughout her lifetime.
- I think after Richard Mallory,
it was very easy
for her to do.
That made her feel like
a queen bee.
I think she thought she was
all that and a bag of chips.
Nope, she'd become a
murderer is what she did.
- I've been framed by
the law enforcement
as a serial killer.
What I was, was a prostitute,
and I defended myself.
- Aileen not only
claimed self defense.
She testified, on the witness
stand, that she was a victim.
Highly unusual for
a suspect to do.
- He said, you're going do
everything I tell you to do.
And if you don't, I'll
kill you right now.
I thought to myself,
I gotta fight.
I just gotta fight for my.
- In her mind, she
may have believed
that she needed to
kill these people
or something could
have happened.
But I don't think
there was evidence
that her life was in danger.
- She fully expected
to be found not guilty.
In her mind, she felt
she was a victim.
- We, the jury find
the defendant
Aileen Carol Wuornos
guilty.
- She was able to rationalize
that she's been a
victim all of her life.
All the way to
the death penalty.
- During the time that Aileen
Wuornos spent on death row,
she had a lot of
time of reflection.
- From when I went to
see her on death row
many years later, Aileen's
mental state changed.
She eventually admitted that
her self defense claim
was completely fabricated.
- Then I killed those men.
I robbed them and I killed
them as cold as ice.
There's no chance
in keeping me alive
or anything cause
I'd kill again.
I have hate crawling
through my system.
- She had resentment toward
men and society in general.
I think she was
just ready to get
out of this life,
out of this world.
- Oh man, if I was
to leave this planet,
it wouldn't be no big deal to me
cause this is a
wicked, wicked world.
Wicked world.
- She's a murder.
But it did take a lot of crap
to get her there, didn't it?
- She's gotten a
raw deal outta life.
But that is not to say that she
had a right to kill anybody.
- A lot of people say
the system failed her,
but I think that everybody
makes a decision in their life.
I didn't feel sorry for her.
I felt sorry for the
families of the victims
that had to live with
what had happened.
- She took my dad's
life and many others.
I just wished he
wouldn't have been
such a great guy to
stop and help her out.
You know?
Cause he'd be here today.
- Oh, of course.
Don't you?
I robbed them and I
killed them as cold as ice,
I have hate crawling
through my system.
- They call her the
damsel of death.
- She killed these
men in cold blood
and knew what she was doing.
- Authorities call her the
first true female serial killer.
- Her first killing, it
was the pinnacle of rage.
It's like, that felt good.
Now I'm gonna do it again.
- All middle aged men,
all shot multiple times
with virtually no remorse.
- She was the predator.
- In her mind, she needed
to kill these people.
She was finally gonna get even.
- This is a wicked wicked world.
- You had two guys that were out
just a little ways
off of I95 up US one.
They were in this very
wooded, densely wooded area.
- They're looking
for scrap metal
And they see this red carpet.
And there's a buzzard
pecking away at the carpet.
As they got closer and looked,
they saw this hand
sticking out of it.
- And they call 911.
- During the 80s and 90s,
central Florida was
not highly developed.
- This crime scene.
You'd have to get there by
vehicle or some other thing.
And there was no vehicle.
The body is covered
up by a heavy rug.
It's obvious the
individual who's dead
didn't put it over himself.
- In Florida, it's very warm.
It doesn't take long for
decomposition to occur.
So once the tarp or the
carpet had been removed,
As far as a possible cause of
death, you just couldn't tell.
- The suspicion was we
had a robbery homicide.
You see a human being
that's been killed.
And you wonder, you know,
who is this person, who
is gonna be grieving?
If anyone, for the person.
His autopsy revealed he
had been shot four times.
And the weapon used was
a .22 caliber weapon.
- Your priority is to
identify the victim.
In this case, we were
behind the clock.
The victim's been dead
for a couple days.
- In cases like this, you ask
yourself, how did he get here
and where did he come from?
And then, who did he
meet along the way?
- No, I wasn't born bad.
You guys got it, I'm trying
to tell you, man, they lied.
They lie so bad to you all.
- I was Aileen's best friend.
I think we're 15.
Aileen did write me
for 12 years straight.
Just about every day.
At least 5,000 letters.
She was easy to get along with.
We'd done a lot of
stuff together,
like going to the mall,
going to the pool hall,
going to the racetrack.
She just wanted to
watch the horses.
- I think Aileen always felt
that she was who she was
because of her family.
She never met her father.
He killed himself in prison.
And when she was about four
years old, her mother took off.
She was left in the care
of her mother's parents.
And she referred to
them as mom and dad.
- [Narrator] From my experiences
with my father, I hated him.
He was cold as ice all
because of world war II.
He felt like I was the enemy.
- I don't think she felt anybody
truly loved her or
wanted her there.
Especially the grandfather.
- The grandpa.
He just was a cold-hearted man.
I don't think he probably
ever smiled a day in his life
and just took it
out on the family.
- He was both physically abusive
and also extremely verbally
and emotionally abusive to her.
Saying that if he had his way,
he would take the kids out,
shoot them and hang
'em from a tree.
Aileen did not have
the kind of support,
love, affection that we
hope most kids will have.
If she didn't have that family,
perhaps things would've
turned out differently.
- So many people that
get a hold of me say,
they look in her eyes and
see such beautiful eyes.
I tell people you're crazy.
Those are sad eyes.
- In the very early stages.
We didn't know who
this victim was.
But eventually this victim was
identified as a white male,
51 years of age by the
name of Richard Mallory.
Richard Mallory did
VCR repair work.
His home was the
Clearwater area, Florida,
which is on the entire
opposite side of the state.
You're looking about
250 some miles.
- He was over six feet tall.
He was a loner,
lived by himself.
Frequented strip joints.
Had friends that
suspected that he
had been actually coming
over to Daytona beach
for the purposes of going
to a couple of the clubs.
- Once this victim was
identified as Richard Mallory,
it struck a chord.
- And they started looking
for Richard Mallory,
but had no idea where he was.
- There were no
fingerprints found.
His car had been wiped down
by somebody who took
some time to do it.
There was some blood on the
front seat of the driver's side.
- The driver's seat
had been pulled
to the forward most position,
which knowing what we
know about Richard Mallory
he was a very tall individual.
So that tells you his vehicle
got there by another person.
Despite everything
that was found
with Richard Mallory's vehicle,
you don't have anything
that would help you
identify who
committed this crime.
- So the truth is
we were following
a dead trail at that point.
- After Mr. Mallory's
case goes cold,
bodies start being found
throughout central Florida.
- [Reporter] David Spears,
a construction worker
found nude, shot six
times with a .22.
Charles Carskaddon, found nude,
shot nine times with a .22,
and Peter Siems, a
missionary still missing.
- All middle aged men,
traveling on a highway, shot
with a .22 caliber handgun.
And we start to wonder,
maybe there's more
to Mr. Mallory's
death than simply
just a single homicide
out in the woods.
- Troy was not the type of
man to just up and disappear.
Troy was planning on coming down
to West Palm and see the kids.
I said, okay, be careful.
I love you, see you
when you get here.
Well, he never showed up.
We copied photos of him
missing and we put it all over,
up and down highway 40.
You're walking through woods.
And it was in the
middle of summer,
and it was storming,
and it was hot.
Ugh. It was just, yeah,
it was heart wrenching
to think that he was out,
hurt somewhere and we
couldn't get to him.
- There was a
couple and they were
looking to have a little picnic.
They go down this dirt road,
They noticed a foul
smell in the air.
And they're kind of
wondering what it was.
And they looked around and
they saw something kind of
covered up in the,
in the distance.
And it was blue in color.
It was blue jeans
And there was a
badly decomposed body
inside of the blue jeans.
- And the nightmare truly
began from that moment on.
From that moment.
- [Reporter]
December 13th, 1989,
the badly decomposed body of
52 year old Richard Mallory
was found in the woods,
north of Daytona.
- Several bodies are found
throughout central Florida.
But at that time,
it's not as if law enforcement
has any clue that
they're connected.
- The call came in for a
body out in the forest.
Even though he was
badly decomposed.
It said the name
Troy, on his shirt.
- We saw detective Tilley
pull up in the driveway.
And he brought in Troy's
wedding band to my mom.
Who would wanna hurt Troy?
He was a good man.
We figured it had to
have been a stranger
because anyone that knew him,
would never wanna hurt him.
Never.
He wanted a garden and
he wanted to retire.
He was tired of driving.
But, that didn't happen,
I'm sorry.
- The autopsy revealed
that Troy Burress
had been shot numerous times
with a .22 caliber weapon.
At the time that we're working,
the Troy Burress homicide,
we didn't know about
any connection
to any other homicides
because they covered almost
the entire state of Florida.
- But months later
in September of 1990,
we have yet another case.
- Mr. Humphreys,
former police chief.
He had been shot seven times
with a .22 caliber weapon.
And you think, doesn't
that sound familiar?
We were thinking,
we got a problem.
- [Narrator] Once I
hit junior high,
there went my good old morals.
Skipping out the house, at
least every three months,
once the age of 13 would arrive.
My rebellious butt kept
saying freedom, as off I'd go.
- As Aileen got older,
she would sneak out
her bedroom window
to get away from the
abusive home situation.
And the grandfather's wrath.
- We all hung out at the pits.
That's like in between my
house and Aileen's house.
We all used to go there
and party at night
because there was
no homes there.
After us kids would party
and stuff like that,
she would get with certain
ones and go into the woods.
And she would sleep with some
of the boys around
for cigarettes
and get extra money or whatever.
- For the first time in
her life, she felt wanted.
And she felt loved.
She was seeing that
she could use her body,
her sexuality, to gain
favors from others.
And she was enjoying the
attention she was getting.
- Until she was raped
and had that baby.
Just changed her whole life.
It was horrible thing
for her to happen.
- She was raped by
an older individual.
She said it was an acquaintance
of the grandfather.
- [Narrator] I was 14 stuck
in an unwed home in Detroit,
just before I had
the little tike.
Only to then have to put him
up for adoption, once born.
- Her grandfather blamed
her for the pregnancy,
said it was her fault.
She was told that she could
no longer stay at home.
- [Narrator] I remember
winters when I was a runaway.
Sleeping in the snow,
no money, no warmth,
no where to go, hungry as hell.
- She started getting with
gentlemen and the rest of us
were all sleeping and she was
out hitch hiking at night.
- She felt she's never been
in control of her life.
The only things that, for the
most part, she ever felt control
of was when she was
working as a sex worker.
- It was never for pleasure,
it was just a business,
but she gets paid for it
so she didn't mind so much
cause it was her
that was in control.
Now that makes sense, don't it.
- With these killings,
we noticed that there was a
similarity and we thought,
wouldn't it be amazing if
it was the same person?
But we don't know.
So what we had was the Florida
department of law enforcement.
They were our state
investigators.
- In criminal profiling
we try to join the
cases together.
So in September, all
of the investigators
who had a similar case,
all went to Marion county.
- For the first time in
these series of cases,
we have all the key players
in one place, in one room.
- One by one,
each of the investigators
presented their case.
- [Man] Richard Mallory.
- [Woman] David Spears.
- [Man] Charles Carskaddon.
- [Man] Peter Sims, Troy
Burress, Dick Humphreys.
- You could see, as you
were going around the room,
with investigators
laying out their cases.
It is apparent that we have
one single person committing
multiple homicides.
- Okay, we got a serial killer.
- You try to conjure up in
your mind, who is this person?
You try to assess your
enemy, if you will.
How would they be
in a situation where
their paths crossed with every
one of these victims?
- The way some of those bodies
are found in the
state of undressed,
it was believed
that sex was a part
of some of these homicides.
- And they were killed with
a small caliber weapon.
Well, who was killing these
big men carrying a .22?
You had the driver's seat
that was pulled to the
forward most position.
- There was something
different about this crime.
And so I turned to my
partner and I said,
are you thinking
what I'm thinking?
And he says, yeah, I think I am.
And so I looked at the lead
investigators and I says, well,
we think that your
perpetrator is a woman.
- [Reporter] For a year, bodies
kept turning up in the woods,
along Florida's highways.
- [Repoerter 2] The victims
were all white males
and had their vehicles stolen
and was shot to death with
a small caliber handgun.
- After Dale Henman
had laid on the table,
have you thought about
this being a female?
You had a couple jaws
that drop on the floor.
- For me as a profiler,
the only way I could
make those cases work,
is a man rode with somebody
out into the woods.
A woman had made sexual
advances towards him,
or was picked up as
a hitchhiker,
and then he was killed.
- I don't know that I'd ever
heard of a female serial killer.
You will see male serial killers
that will search for women.
But to be a female that was
going after men, to kill them.
That was unheard of.
She was the predator.
- [Narrator] There,
I was every day.
Oil all over me, black
bikini on, radio jamming.
Enjoying every breath
I took out there.
- Aileen saw herself
pretty much as a vagabond.
So she ends up hitch
hiking into Florida.
- A nice warm place,
different people,
people that didn't know
anything about her background,
and stuff like that.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
- She felt like she fit in
somehow in Daytona beach.
- Aileen did meet an older man.
His name was Lewis.
He was a wealthy man and
had a normal, nice life.
And they got married,
and all that.
And she thought this is
her ticket off the streets.
- I don't remember Aileen
ever saying that
he was a substitute
for her father or grandfather.
But I think it was pretty
obvious that was the case.
He would give her
money typically freely,
but then it got to a
point where one time
he refused and she got upset.
- Once we were married,
where he felt full control,
he began to air it.
Come near to killing
him one night.
Grabbed a 22 rifle, threw
him on the floor and said,
I want a divorce within 24
hours for I'll kill you.
- It became pretty easy
to get her riled up
to the point where she
could become pretty violent.
- He divorced her and she
was back hitchhiking again.
That's all that was to it.
It was her life, she
was picking it out,
not somebody telling
her what to do.
- So our next steps was look
at every case and
compare all the evidence.
Maybe the person
had made a mistake.
- We started with Peter
Siems, the missing person.
We sent up a team of detectives
and started searching the area.
But we were never
able to find him.
But they found that
there had been two women
that had been seen
walking away from the car.
- The females had removed
the license plate
from that vehicle.
- When a car would come by,
two women would duck off
the side of the road.
- They were absolutely
females of interest.
- We were able to develop
composite drawings
and we had an idea maybe
of who was in that vehicle.
But if we release
these composites
and these two girls are watching
the news, are they gonna flee?
We thought we could
act quickly enough
so that nobody else
would be killed.
And we were wrong.
It was almost
immediately thereafter
that we had our seventh
victim, Walter Gino Antonio.
Our goal is to save lives
And it was really weighing
heavily on the detectives.
We felt we failed.
- How many more is
she's going to kill?
She has blood, the taste of
it, she's not gonna stop.
- [Reporter] Central
Florida is being threatened
with news of yet another
round of serial killings.
The police say for the first
time in criminal history,
these killers may be murdering
with a feminine touch.
- They call her the
damsel of death.
- Authorities call her the
first true female serial killer.
- The fact that it was
women just blew me away.
And then I saw the sketch.
I don't know, I
just stared at it.
I just stared right into
their eyes and wondered
if that was the last face
Troy ever got to see.
- We had hoped to get leads in.
And we did.
We had thousands of
leads that came in.
- The phone literally
rang off the hook.
The nucleus of these leads
was in Volusia County
and Daytona, Florida area.
- One of the calls that I
received was from a woman
that said that she knew a
couple of girls that hated men.
The person that
called this lead in
gave us the name of Tyria Moore.
- So who is this person?
- [Narrator] My life
has been a struggle.
On the road until 20, married
60 days, 28 found Tyria.
- All her life, I think Aileen
wished she had stability.
Somebody that cared for her,
and she just never
had any of that
until she started
hanging out with Ty.
- Tyria was the first
time that I think
Aileen was really in love.
But despite this great romance,
Aileen would go to bars a
lot, she was drinking a lot.
That was the only way that
she could make
everything disappear
and not have to think about
what her life was like.
- [Narrator] I've been
raped violently in life.
The drunker I got as I reflected
back to rapes, that was it.
The wilder my thoughts
became with hatred,
all bitterly built up.
- She's choosing to hitch
hike be the prostitute,
but she needed the money.
I'm sure she knew all
the dangers of it.
She'd been doing
it her whole life.
- I think that she may
have had some flashbacks
as to what's happened to
her when she was younger,
her violence had been
escalating over the years
and it was easier for
that anger to come out.
- [Narrator] The slightest spark
of provocation led to bastards.
I had enough.
- I think she got to a point
where she just
didn't really care.
She was going to take
advantage of people,
just like they've
taken advantage
of her all of her life.
- I never hated men.
But now I do.
- When Peterson's
vehicle was crashed,
two people walked away,
but there was certainly
never any indication
that any of these crimes were
perpetrated by two people.
- So now all efforts are out
to find the other female.
We go to the pawn shops and
see if anything's being pawned
from our homicide victims,
with these different aliases.
And one alias that kept
coming up in all of the leads,
turned up at two
different pawn shops.
The items that had been pawn
were 35 millimeter camera
and a radar detector.
And those were the
two items taken
from the vehicle
of Richard Mallory.
- Back then Florida had
a pawn shop law in effect
as to where you had
to leave a thumbprint.
- We run that thumbprint
from that pawn ticket.
- There was a positive match.
- She had a criminal history
and so they had
fingerprint records.
- Bingo.
- Finally, we have a name.
Aileen Wuornos.
So where is she?
- We decided to invite as
many undercover officers
as we could from central Florida
to come over
to Daytona beach.
Saturate the bars
and try and find her.
And it only took a
couple days before
one of our undercover
officers ran into her
in the Last Resort bar.
We couldn't take a chance
on her killing again.
We had to act quickly.
- The undercover officer told
Aileen that he had a room key
and that they could go over
there and party at the motel.
- We still had to
make sure we got her
into custody without
anybody be getting hurt.
- She was most likely armed
and she already had
killed seven men.
- There is no way we can
let her out of our sight.
- [Reporter] If the regulars at
the biker hang out near
Daytona, didn't know the woman,
the undercover deputies watching
the Last Resort certainly did.
They were on the trail
of Aileen Lee Wuornos.
- The high sign was
given to draw her outside
to go ahead and take
her into police custody.
- Never stopped.
- When you make that arrest,
that's where you
feel the relief.
That's where you know
you've done your job.
You can never bring back
the life of a victim.
You could never stop the hurt
of the victim's
family and loved ones.
- But you know that
everybody who was gonna be
a potential victim
of hers is now safe.
It's a happy feeling of relief.
And I think all of us shared it.
- The cops come to
my house and said,
do you know Aileen Wuornos?
I said, oh hell yeah.
And they're like,
she killed seven men.
I said, holy cow, for real?
I thought she'd be the one dead.
- Now the biggest
challenge of this
entire case, it was before us.
We had to have a confession.
- When you have two
people involved,
one could be turned
against the other.
So, it became a very easy
endeavor to lean on Tyria Moore.
- She agreed to work
with law enforcement
to contact Aileen.
She was ultimately not
prosecuted as a result of this.
She sent Aileen a letter
at the Volusia County jail
asking her to call
her at this motel.
- Hi.
- [Narrator] Through my
years on the road as a teen
and then in Florida, I
faced a lot of male abuse.
Fending for myself, alone.
No one else to help me.
The final year became too much.
- [Narrator] In one
set frame of mind,
bent with revenge
and set to kill,
a Cadillac pulled
over to give me a ride
with Richard Mallory inside.
- Richard Mallory picked me up
around 10:30 at night on I4.
He mentioned along the way,
a dislike for various women.
So with that, the
fire was fueled.
- They started getting
ready to have sex.
And he said something
along the lines of,
well, you're gonna
do what I tell you.
And I can only speculate
that there were some level
of flashing back to
what she went through
when she was younger,
when she felt
that she had no control
over the situation.
And in this case, she
actually did have control
because she had a
gun in her purse.
- We've seen instances
of rage with her.
We've seen her become violent.
This was the pinnacle
of that violence.
And it's like, that felt good.
Now I'm gonna do it again.
- After Mr. Mallory,
she felt that
she was finally gonna get even
with all the men who have hurt
her throughout her lifetime.
- I think after Richard Mallory,
it was very easy
for her to do.
That made her feel like
a queen bee.
I think she thought she was
all that and a bag of chips.
Nope, she'd become a
murderer is what she did.
- I've been framed by
the law enforcement
as a serial killer.
What I was, was a prostitute,
and I defended myself.
- Aileen not only
claimed self defense.
She testified, on the witness
stand, that she was a victim.
Highly unusual for
a suspect to do.
- He said, you're going do
everything I tell you to do.
And if you don't, I'll
kill you right now.
I thought to myself,
I gotta fight.
I just gotta fight for my.
- In her mind, she
may have believed
that she needed to
kill these people
or something could
have happened.
But I don't think
there was evidence
that her life was in danger.
- She fully expected
to be found not guilty.
In her mind, she felt
she was a victim.
- We, the jury find
the defendant
Aileen Carol Wuornos
guilty.
- She was able to rationalize
that she's been a
victim all of her life.
All the way to
the death penalty.
- During the time that Aileen
Wuornos spent on death row,
she had a lot of
time of reflection.
- From when I went to
see her on death row
many years later, Aileen's
mental state changed.
She eventually admitted that
her self defense claim
was completely fabricated.
- Then I killed those men.
I robbed them and I killed
them as cold as ice.
There's no chance
in keeping me alive
or anything cause
I'd kill again.
I have hate crawling
through my system.
- She had resentment toward
men and society in general.
I think she was
just ready to get
out of this life,
out of this world.
- Oh man, if I was
to leave this planet,
it wouldn't be no big deal to me
cause this is a
wicked, wicked world.
Wicked world.
- She's a murder.
But it did take a lot of crap
to get her there, didn't it?
- She's gotten a
raw deal outta life.
But that is not to say that she
had a right to kill anybody.
- A lot of people say
the system failed her,
but I think that everybody
makes a decision in their life.
I didn't feel sorry for her.
I felt sorry for the
families of the victims
that had to live with
what had happened.
- She took my dad's
life and many others.
I just wished he
wouldn't have been
such a great guy to
stop and help her out.
You know?
Cause he'd be here today.
- Oh, of course.
Don't you?