Blockbuster crime
We examine the shocking real-life crimes given the Hollywood treatment
On 13 December 1989, Richard Mallory, 52, was found dead in Florida woodland, miles from his car. He’d been shot multiple times.
In June 1990, the naked body of David Spears, 43, was found on Highway 19. He’d been shot six times, and his truck was found days later.
Within days, the body of another naked man, Charles Carskaddon, 40, was found – he’d been shot dead.
Victim numbers were racking up, with bodies found in deserted back-roads, their cars looted and abandoned.
Aged 41 to 60, all had been driving along the Interstates. All were killed with a revolver.
Police were hunting down a serial killer.
On 4 July that year, the car of missing Peter Siems, 60, was found abandoned. His body was never found, but he was presumed murdered.
In August, the body of Troy Burress, 50, was found in woodland. Again, shot dead.
That September, ex-police officer Charles Humphreys, 56, was found dead, shot six times. Then trucker Walter Antonio, 63, was discovered in November, shot four times.
Officers suspected two women were stalking the Interstates, posing as damsels in distress or luring middle-aged men with sex, then murdering them.
The idea of a female serial killer at work whipped the Press into a frenzy.
In December 1990, a sketch of a woman was released. She’d been spotted crashing, then abandoning the car owned by Peter Siems.
Some of his belongings were found in pawn shops. Fingerprints on them and in the victims’ cars matched a woman on police files.
Aileen Wuornos.
Wuornos, then 33, had served time for robbery. In January 1991, police tracked her down and arrested her in Florida’s Last Resort Bar. Officers also picked up Wuornos’ former lover Tyria Moore, 28, in Pennsylvania. She had left Wuornos months earlier, shocked after spotting the sketch resembling her lover on TV. Moore knew Wuornos had killed, but she’d had no involvement herself. To avoid prosecution, Moore made a deal, eliciting a taped phone confession from her ex. In it, Wuornos took full and sole responsibility for the slayings. Wuornos was charged with murder; Moore agreed to testify against her. The world became obsessed with Aileen Wuornos. If convicted, she’d be America’s first female serial killer.
So who was she?
Aileen Wuornos
Her hatred of men intensified until she snapped
had suffered a disturbing childhood. Born on 29 February 1956 in Rochester, Michigan, she’d been abandoned as a toddler by her teenage mother.
Her father killed himself while in prison for raping a 7-year-old girl.
Raised by her grandparents, Wuornos was beaten by her grandfather. She’d been sexually assaulted, raped by a family friend.
By 11, she was exchanging sexual favours for drugs, cigarettes and food, and was pregnant by 13.
She gave up the baby for adoption, and was thrown out by her grandfather. Desperate, Wuornos made her way to Florida, where she began prostituting herself on the highways. In spring 1986, she met Tyria Moore in a bar in Daytona, and they started a relationship. Selling sex to support them both, Wuornos’ hatred of men intensified until she snapped, killing client Richard Mallory, and triggering her ruthless murder spree.
On trial for Mallory’s murder, she claimed he’d tied her up, raped her, and she’d killed him in self-defence.
Moore testified, and Wuornos was found guilty. She was sentenced to death.
She eventually pleaded guilty to murdering five other men, and received five more death sentences.
Outside court, she also admitted killing Peter Siems.
After 12 years on death row, on 9 October 2002, Aileen Wuornos, 46, was executed by lethal injection, saying chillingly,
‘I’ll be back’...