By Courtney Wood
“Out of retaliation for taking my life like this and getting rich off it all these years, in total pathological lying... thanks a lot, I lost my fucking life because of it. Couldn't get a fair trial, couldn't even get a fair investigation or nothing. Couldn't even have my appeals right. You sabotaged my ass society and the cops and the system, a raped woman got executed and was used for books and movies and shit ladder climbs reelection everything else. I got a big finger in all your faces. Thanks a lot, you’re an inhumane bunch of fucking bastards and bitches”.
The American justice system is built on the principle of "innocent till proven guilty" to ensure that everyone receives a fair trial. Unfortunately, those accused do not always get this, which raises the question what happens when an overly sensationalized defendant is guilty in the court of public opinion before their trial even begins? How can someone receive a fair and just trial when crucial evidence is completely omitted? Can justice be served when the prosecution team, defense team as well as members of the police force are in talks with Hollywood producers attempting to sell the movie rights for a case that has not even gone to court yet? Many believe that these were the circumstances that lead to the execution of a potentially mentally ill, prostitute who may or may not have started killing in self-defense. Aileen Wuornos has become one of the most infamous serial killers in American history for several reasons other than her crimes. Her notoriety stems from more than the novelty of a female serial killer or the nature of her seemingly cold-blooded crimes; it is also all the questions surrounding her first trial centered around the major blaring question of was justice truly served. If you asked those who worked on the case, the responses would be polarizing but it should not be overlooked that there are private investigators, defense lawyers and people who knew her claim that there are huge issues within her first trial.
*While working as prostitute in Florida, Aileen Wuornos killed 7 men by shooting them point blank range. This article is centered around her first trial for the death of Richard Mallory*
" May they get raped in the ass one of these days... may your wife and kids get raped, right in the ass. I know I was raped and you ain't nothing but a bunch of scum putting someone who was raped to death... fucking mother fucker".
Richard Mallory was a client who Aileen claimed brutally and mercilessly raped her. Aileen testified that during the alleged attack he threatened to hurt and kill her like he had “other women” if she did not do exactly what he said. Wuornos painted a very vivid picture of being tied to a steering wheel, being choked with a long cord around her neck, having rubbing alcohol poured all over her face and rectum all while being violently raped. She continued saying that she was able to break free and eventually killed Mallory by shooting him 4 times with a 22-caliber handgun that she had on her person. What is interesting about this is no one involved thought to investigate the kind of man Richard Mallory was until well after the trial. That fact is truly baffling as she had stated that he threatened her with things that he had done before. Upon later investigation, it was brought to the surface that Richard Mallory had spent 10 years in a hospital for the mentally ill for attempted rape. Even more frightening was that while he was in that institution he attempted to rape one of the nurses. This was a blaring contradiction to the family man and good-natured person that he was betrayed by the prosecution to be. Many believe that if this information had been brought out during the trial it is very possible that the jury would have be more empathetic to her and could have possibly found her not guilty of murder because she was acting in self-defense. Unfortunately, she never got that opportunity, so we will never know for sure.
Another huge mistake made during the Mallory trial was the fact her lawyer did not go into her turbulent childhood. Those who grew up with her have said that Aileen went through agony daily. The torment started when she was forced to live with her very abusive grandparents because her mother left home and her father had committed suicide while in jail for raping a 7-year-old boy. Her grandfather’s brutal punishments varied from hitting her with a belt to the suspicion of sexual abuse. Aileen was forced out of the house at a very young age due to pregnancy, that may have been caused by being raped by her grandfather. After her baby was given up for adoption, she survived by prostituting herself. It was during this time she claimed that she was raped several times while being homeless and forced to live in tents in freezing weather conditions. She suffered from hypothermia which left her with physical effects on her body for the rest of her life. Due to the harsh and bitter winters of Troy Michigan, Aileen decided to move to the much warmer climate of Florida. All of these facts should have been addressed during her trial in order to assess the effects of the childhood trauma as well as correctly explaining the mindset she would have been in during her alleged attacks. Childhood trauma is a huge issue when somebody is claiming self-defense so for it not to be brought up in Aileen’s case is baffling.
Many who have since investigated the trial of Wuornos point an accusatory finger at her ill prepared lawyer Steve Glazer, known from his television commercial as “Dr. Legal”. Glazer came under scrutiny after Nick Broomfield’s 1992 documentary “Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer” was released. The movie showed Glazer allegedly smoking marijuana on his way to the courthouse to give Aileen legal advice. That clip would be used in her later appeals as an attempt to discredit her previous defense. [You can see Broomfield’s testimony during the appeal process in his 2003 follow up documentary “Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer”]. In one of the most unusual moments of the documentary, viewers see Glazer acting like a manager for Wuornos’s adoptative mother by charging Broomfield thousands of dollars for interviews that he ultimately did not get. Finally, there is evidence that Glazer was attempting to sell the rights to the video of Aileen's execution before a verdict was issued. With all these circumstances, it is obvious that Glazer was doing everything he could to make money off of his famed client.
“You sabotaged my ass society and the cops in the system, a raped woman got executed and was used for books and movies and shit".
There was a highly influential factor in this case that stems from just how popular and sensationalized Aileen Wuornos was. All of the media exposure caught the attention of Hollywood and there were an untold amount of movie producers fighting for the rights to the “Aileen Wuornos story” even before she had gone to trial. Everyone from members of the prosecution to Aileen's girlfriend Tyria Moore were offered a lot of money to tell their story. It was Aileen's claim that her case was fast-tracked in order to get a verdict and sell off the rights. She went on to point out that no one could receive money until there was a verdict in the case... most likely a murder conviction followed by an execution. Overall, Aileen claimed that there were a lot of people fast tracking her case in order to collect untold amounts of money. Many people have suspected that the testimony of Tyria Moore against Wuornos was influenced by money and a possible book deal. As if that was not bad enough, shockingly there were 3 members of the Marion County police force who were negotiating with movie producers a month before her arrest. All of those officers left the force before word of this made it to the public, and there were no charges made. This is not that difficult to believe when you consider all of the attention that she received in the press with daily headlines that were sensationalized. It seemed like everybody was fascinated and drawn to the story of the prostitute female serial killer.
“I intend to expose these crooked cops to the people all over the world not just in America not just in Florida all over the world before I die.”
One of the more difficult allegations to believe was Aileen saying that the police knew who she was and were letting her "clean up the streets" by ridding the world of bad men. She added that they wanted more headlines, more press and more victims. She argued that the higher the body count was the more money the story would make. It is hard to imagine the police allowing a serial killer to remain free simply to beef up a body count, but it really is not that hard to rationalize the more victims you have the bigger of the story would become and ultimately the bigger the payoff.
"I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus June 6. Like the movie, big mothership and all. I'll be back".
While on death row, Aileen showed signs of paranoia. She claimed that she was forced to live in an inhumane dirty cell that contained mold, that the guards were poisoning her food and were keeping her up at night by yelling horrible things. She even went as far as to write the state of Florida a 23-page handwritten letter that was subsequently ignored. As her delusions got worse she made the puzzling decision to waive her final appeals. Many suspected that Aileen had simply given up and wanted to die because no one would listen to her claims or see her as anything, but the monster portrayed in the media. On the other side of this there are experts that believe (due to her low IQ) she was simply sabotaging herself without knowing it. No one really knows what was going through her mind or why she gave up her last appeals, but it does raise a lot of questions that we will never have the answer to. In the end Aileen was executed by lethal injection on October 9th 2002, thus ending the lifelong suffering of Wuornos and giving peace to the victims' families.
Editor's note: this article ran in Serial Killer Magazine and is reproduced as written, less four picture captions for images the archive does not hold. It argues a case rather than reporting one, and the distinction matters here. This archive records Aileen Wuornos as convicted at trial of the murder of Richard Mallory and sentenced to death, with five further death sentences imposed on her own guilty pleas and a seventh death attributed to her. The article's flat statement that she killed seven men goes beyond that record. Her account of the Mallory attack was never tested by a jury that had heard his history, and that is the article's point: Mallory's ten years in a mental institution for attempted rape surfaced only after the trial. The claim that police allowed her to keep killing to build a story is her own allegation and is not established. Three Marion County officers did leave the force over dealings with film producers, and no charges followed. She was executed on 9 October 2002.