"You Owe Me": Aileen Wuornos on Death Row, Dateline NBC, 1992

Name: "You Owe Me": Aileen Wuornos on Death Row, Dateline NBC, 1992
Uploaded: 2023-05-25
Description: Months after her first death sentences, Aileen Wuornos told Dateline NBC's Michele Gillen that all seven killings were self-defense and that the victims' families owed her, in a report that also heard from Tyria Moore, the prosecutor and a victim's widow.

Months after her first death sentences, Aileen Wuornos told Dateline NBC's Michele Gillen that all seven killings were self-defense and that the victims' families owed her, in a report that also heard from Tyria Moore, the prosecutor and a victim's widow.

Subject: Aileen Wuornos
Recorded: about August 25, 1992
Runtime: 37:50 (the Wuornos report runs from about 4:35 to 33:20)

Content warning: Wuornos describes rape in graphic terms and speaks about the killings; a victim's widow describes his wounds.

The Interview

On August 25, 1992, the night Hurricane Andrew approached the Louisiana coast, Dateline NBC broadcast a two-part report by correspondent Michele Gillen on Aileen Wuornos, then under four death sentences in Florida. NBC described the death-row interview at its center as her first since those sentences. Wuornos tells Gillen that she is "not a serial killer" and "not a murderer", that every killing was self-defense against men who raped or tried to rape her, and that she does not regret it. She addresses the victims' families directly: "You owe me."

Historical Context

Between November 1989 and November 1990 Wuornos, who worked as a hitchhiking prostitute on Florida's highways, shot dead seven middle-aged men: Richard Mallory, David Spears, Charles Carskaddon, Peter Siems (whose body was never found), Troy Burress, Charles "Dick" Humphreys and Walter Antonio. She was arrested on January 9, 1991, at the Last Resort bar in Volusia County. After police persuaded her former partner, Tyria Moore, to make recorded telephone calls to her, she confessed on videotape. She was convicted of Mallory's murder on January 27, 1992, and sentenced to death; in March 1992 she pleaded no contest to three more murders and received three more death sentences in May.

Circumstances of the Interview

The report was made between her fourth death sentence and her fifth (November 1992), while further cases were pending. Gillen intercuts the interview with Wuornos's history, as told by the narration, and interviews with a law-enforcement investigator, Tyria Moore, the psychologist Dr. Elizabeth McMahon, State Attorney John Tanner, Wuornos's attorney Steven Glazer and Shirley Humphreys, widow of Charles Humphreys. Short excerpts of the police telephone calls and of the confession tape are included. The uploaded tape is an off-air VHS recording made in Iowa: it also contains Dateline's live Hurricane Andrew coverage, NBC promos, and local WHO-TV promos and commercials, none of which concern Wuornos.

What the Interview Covers

Wuornos talks about prostitution ("I made a lot of friends"), her childhood, which she says did not affect her, her father, and her account of the Mallory killing: that he tied her up, raped her and threatened to kill her. She says Mallory "did deserve to die", that "everybody has a right to self-defend themselves", and that she still loves Tyria Moore despite Moore's testimony against her. She says she does not want to die. Moore describes the night Wuornos told her she had killed a man. Tanner says she killed "for the thrill of killing" and that he could have lost the Mallory case without evidence of the other killings; the program says it counted 53 mentions of self-defense in her full confession, against his statement that she never mentioned it. Glazer explains why he helped her plead, and McMahon says that emotionally she is a child.

What Makes the Recording Significant

This is one of the earliest national television interviews with Wuornos after her conviction, recorded while her remaining cases were still in court. Set beside her later interviews (60 Minutes Australia, 1994; Nick Broomfield, 2002), it shows how her account of self-defense and her wish to live or die shifted over the years. The report closes by noting that, according to her lawyer, she had again said she wanted to die.

Archival Importance

The report gathers in one place several of the people at the center of the case, Wuornos, Tyria Moore, the prosecutor and her lawyer, speaking in 1992, before her later pleas and long before her execution on October 9, 2002. It also preserves NBC's challenge to the prosecution's account of her confession.

Important Caveats

Wuornos's claims of rape and self-defense are her own; juries and courts rejected self-defense. The narration gives Richard Mallory's age as 52 (he was 51) and says her mother gave her up "at birth" (her mother left her with her grandparents in January 1960, when she was almost four); it also calls her the "first female serial killer", which is the program's (and, as reported, the FBI's) characterization, not a fact. The figure of 53 mentions of self-defense is NBC's count. "First woman in Florida to be put to death by the state since 1840" is the program's statement; in the event, Judy Buenoano, executed in 1998, was reported as the first woman executed in Florida since 1848, and Wuornos was the second. The police telephone-call and confession excerpts are only partly legible in the machine passes.

Jane Pauley: [inaudible] Hurricane Andrew has passed south and west of New Orleans, still packing 140-mile-per-hour winds and heading northwest. The killer storm already stands, in terms of property damage, as the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history, with damage estimates for southern Florida now put at between 15 and 20 billion dollars. The question: where will Andrew strike next? These shots, taken about 9 p.m. Eastern Time, show scenes around Houma, Louisiana. That's about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans, and as you can see, there's a lot of wind and a lot of rain. It's a foretaste of what may be in store later this evening. Not too many people; residents have taken to higher ground to wait out the storm. And standing by now live is Bob Sheets at the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Bob, everybody wants to know where it's going to hit and when. What can you tell us?

Bob Sheets: Well, Jane, it's getting very close to the coastline. In fact, the eye wall of the storm, and that's the strongest part of the storm, is right on the coast right now, just to the southwest of New Orleans. Morgan City sits right up in here, and the eye wall will pass over that area within the next about three to four hours.

Jane Pauley: And what does that mean for how wide an area? How, how much of the Louisiana coastline there can expect to take some serious punishment?

Bob Sheets: Well, this swath of damage is going to be somewhere around 40 to 50 miles wide as that storm moves across there, just as it was here in South Florida.

Jane Pauley: You expect that [unclear: "what" / "what could"] to be about 20 miles either side of Morgan City, if your prediction now holds?

Bob Sheets: Yes, and primarily on the right side there, in this case, with the wind circulating around a hurricane like this. So Morgan City here, certainly the Lafayette, Louisiana, area has some major problems ahead of it based on our course here.

Jane Pauley: How dangerous is this storm now?

Bob Sheets: It's still almost the same intensity as it was when it passed across here in South Florida.

Jane Pauley: With the potential for perhaps a higher storm surge?

Bob Sheets: The storm surge is about the 12 to 14 feet. Now, that's one of the good things, because it's moving nearly parallel to the coast. The maximum surge was back in here. As the center goes along, the winds around behind the hurricane will be coming from the south. So this area will experience about, oh, somewhere around 12 to 14 feet.

Jane Pauley: So it's going to be a long and rough night for the area.

Bob Sheets: Right on through the nighttime, yes.

Jane Pauley: You bet. Thank you very much. We'll keep you updated. Stone?

Stone Phillips: Well, Jane, Dateline's Jon Scott has been on the Louisiana coast since early this afternoon. He is standing by live right now in Houma, Louisiana. And John, it seems like you're just about due north of Andrew out there in the Gulf. What's the scene along the coast right now?

Jon Scott: Due north is just exactly right, Stone. He's about, according to Dr. Sheets, 30 miles directly behind my back, and the eye is looking right at us. It is windy here. It is rainy, although not as bad as it has been earlier in the evening. I would say that everybody here is nervously waiting and hoping he skirts by us, but I can tell you that we are going to get a whale of a storm here, even if the eye of the storm passes west of us, as Dr. Sheets says it will.

Stone Phillips: John, you heard Dr. Sheets mention Morgan City as the place where the hurricane will move over land. Where are you relative to Morgan City?

Jon Scott: We're about 30 miles due east of there. In fact, we drove through Morgan City on our way here a few hours ago, and it's virtually a ghost town to see it from the street. Everybody is hunkered down inside their houses and shelters and so forth.

Stone Phillips: How much of Houma has been evacuated at this point?

Jon Scott: It is difficult to say. The Red Cross's best estimate is about 3,000 people, of a population of maybe 60,000. So a lot of people have chosen to weather this one out right here, either at home or in the shelters.

Stone Phillips: John, one word about Florida. You live in southern Florida. You were there yesterday when Andrew moved through. The damage estimates are almost unbelievable: 15, 20 billion dollars. Can you describe the damage that you saw?

Jon Scott: It's really impossible to describe, Stone. You hear words tossed around, the, uh, "a war zone", the area being a war zone. The, the destruction is, is unbelievable. We can't really find words to describe what happened in certain parts of, of Dade County, parts of South Florida. Uh, where I was, was perhaps 30 miles away from the worst of the storm, and, uh, it was frightening there. It could be just as bad here tonight.

Stone Phillips: Okay. John Scott, thank you. John Scott in Houma, Louisiana, [unclear: "until Saturday" / "on Saturday"]. ### Dateline NBC: Michele Gillen's report on Aileen Wuornos, part one (04:35 to 17:25)

Dateline Anchor: Again, we'll have more on Hurricane Andrew later in the hour. But now, a story of unnatural violence: the case and confessions of a female serial killer. Over the last few decades, America has seen a steady stream of serial killers, murderers who strike again and again without apparent motive. Often, as in recent cases in Seattle and Los Angeles, their victims are prostitutes. In our story tonight, the roles are reversed. [unclear: "Stone." / "I mean"] Aileen Wuornos is a self-described prostitute who admits killing a number of middle-aged men, most of them married. Despite the brutality of her crimes, her cases received little national attention. Watch Michele Gillen's two-part report, and you may never forget Aileen Wuornos. And we should tell you going in, some of her descriptions are quite graphic.

Michele Gillen: Across central Florida, amid the traffic of tourists making their way to Disney World, a hitchhiking prostitute named Aileen Wuornos spent her days and nights selling sex to men.

Aileen Wuornos: I, I was going out with [unclear: "a whole lot of men. I was going out," / omitted] hundreds, maybe even thousands.

Michele Gillen: For seven of those men, the ride with Aileen Wuornos was fatal. After she propositioned them, and in some cases had sex with them, she shot and killed them.

Investigator: We look at women as being frail. This woman's not frail. This is probably the meanest woman I ever met in my life. I mean, I mean...

Michele Gillen: The FBI calls her the first female serial killer, comparing her to men who have killed stranger after stranger, again and again, over months or years. But Wuornos is a woman, and she says she killed to protect herself.

Michele Gillen: You say you are not a serial killer.

Aileen Wuornos: I'm not a serial killer, and I'm not a murderer. I know that when I die, I'm going to heaven, and I'm going to have Jesus right beside me, and I'm going to have them on Judgment Day in front of me, and they're going to pay for their wrongdoing. I am innocent. It was self-defense.

Michele Gillen: The legal system didn't believe you.

Aileen Wuornos: I am not, I do not regret it. Do not regret it. They were going to kill me. I killed them. That is a normal thing to do. It's a human thing. I did the right thing, or I wouldn't be here today.

Michele Gillen: Our interview with Aileen Wuornos on death row was her first since receiving four death sentences. She now stands to become the first woman in Florida to be put to death by the state since 1840. What made this 36-year-old woman a killer? Why does she have no remorse? Who is Aileen Wuornos?

Michele Gillen: Her world was a highway punctuated by truck stops, a woman living among road men, drifters and transients. Her path of violence began in December 1989. Her first victim: Richard Mallory, a 52-year-old TV repairman. Cause of death: four bullet wounds. June 1990, six months later: David Spears, his truck abandoned. He was found nude with six bullet wounds. A week later: Charles Carskaddon, en route to his fiancée's house, his body dumped in the woods, shot nine times.

Speaker Not Identified: [unclear: "The witnesses told us they saw" / "the witnesses told to say so"].

Michele Gillen: Sergeant Robert Douglas (as heard) was on the task force formed to stop the killings in central Florida.

Michele Gillen: What evidence began to emerge?

Sgt. Robert Douglas: Well, it's just about an overkill in every one. They were shot multiple times. They were robbed. They were left in secluded areas for days and days on end.

Michele Gillen: It was seven months after the killing started that police got their first break. Missionary Peter Siems disappeared in June 1990. Then his car was involved in a crash. In the car, two women.

Michele Gillen: It was on this road that you first got the clue the serial killer you were looking for was a woman.

Sgt. Robert Douglas: That's true. What happened was, they were traveling on this road right here, coming around this bend, coming around this corner, traveling through here, ran off the road, hit this gate, went through the gate, on into these bushes here, where, when the car came to a stop, they got out, took the tag off, started wiping it down, uh, took some belongings they had in there, and beat feet down the road.

Michele Gillen: Witnesses saw the two women running. One was later identified as Aileen Wuornos. A sketch of Wuornos was posted around Florida, but three more men would be murdered on the highway. Again, the victims were middle-aged white men, all shot with a .22-caliber pistol. Wuornos says the seven men she killed threatened and raped, or attempted to rape, her.

Aileen Wuornos: I was raped, tormented badly, and I'm sitting on death row for defending myself. Justifiable homicide.

Michele Gillen: You're explaining now that these men were abusive, in your opinion. You understand that for many people, because you were a prostitute, they don't understand how a prostitute can be raped.

Aileen Wuornos: I don't understand how nobody can understand how a prostitute can be raped, because when a man rapes a woman, he assaults your whole body. He puts his [inaudible] down your throat, cramming it down your throat, he tears your hair out of your head, he beats her face in, he, he rips your [unclear: "uh" / "face in. He rips her"] wide open.

Michele Gillen: Police traced Wuornos to Daytona Beach, where witnesses recognized the sketch. She was hiding out at the Fairview Motel, drinking heavily. In January 1991, 13 months after the first killing, police arrested Wuornos. The hunt for her was over, but the search to understand what made her a killer was just beginning.

Michele Gillen: Aileen Wuornos spent her last night of freedom here, at the Last Resort bar. She slept on a couch. She'd been living on and off the streets since she was a child.

Michele Gillen: How young were you when you first began prostituting?

Aileen Wuornos: Sixteen.

Michele Gillen: Why did you do it the first time?

Aileen Wuornos: I was on the road. I was a teenager, homeless.

Michele Gillen: Wuornos had run away from home after having a child at age 14, which she was forced to give up for adoption. She worked the roads for sex and money.

Aileen Wuornos: I made a lot of friends, and I loved it. I loved it. I wanted friends. Social communication, I loved it. The sex, I loved the, the fun we had. I loved the communication we had. I liked the friendship.

Michele Gillen: Do you understand that for some people, they would find that strange? In other words, that they couldn't imagine getting love and attention in that way.

Aileen Wuornos: I don't understand what's so strange about it. You just made a bunch of friends. So what?

Michele Gillen: At birth, Wuornos's mother gave her up to be raised by her grandparents in this house. Her mother disappeared from her life. Her father was jailed for raping a child and committed suicide in prison.

Aileen Wuornos: Well, I heard that he raped a seven-year-old girl, and so I didn't really [unclear: "care. He raped a little girl and killed her, and it didn't..." / "he raped a little grin and didn't"]. Anybody who rapes, to me, is a, is a sick, deranged piece of puke that doesn't even deserve to live.

Michele Gillen: Wuornos says her grandfather beat her, and that she was raped as a child by a friend of the family. Shockingly, she is convinced she is not affected by her childhood.

Aileen Wuornos: Because I really did take my past and just throw it in the river. I mean, I never, never thought, I never dwelt on my past. Every day was a new day for me.

Michele Gillen: Do you think that you didn't want to dwell on it because it represented something ugly for you?

Aileen Wuornos: Well, maybe that could be, that could be. I, I didn't, uh, I didn't like my childhood, that's true. But I didn't dwell on it. It didn't mess my life up.

Michele Gillen: Psychologist Dr. Elizabeth McMahon met with Wuornos for over a year. She says Wuornos's childhood did affect her deeply, filling her with rage and crippling her emotionally. Here's her evaluation of Aileen Wuornos. She calls her Lee.

Dr. Elizabeth McMahon: [unclear: "Probably that" / "That"] Lee is one of the most primitive individuals I've ever met. By that, I mean that she is probably at the level of about a three- or four-year-old child emotionally.

Michele Gillen: There are many people who were abused as children, who were raped. They don't pick up a gun and kill. What's the difference?

Dr. Elizabeth McMahon: My sense is, Lee strikes out at everybody and is angry at everybody, feels betrayed by everybody, cannot figure out how the world operates, that there's a whole set of rules out there that everybody else knows about, and Lee doesn't.

Michele Gillen: That set of rules came crashing down on a rainy December night in 1989. Aileen Wuornos had been carrying a gun for six months. Now, within her unstable mind, anger at her childhood abuse collided with rage at sexual assault. Richard Mallory drove her to this secluded area off the highway. It was here that Aileen Wuornos became a killer. Wuornos says Mallory told her he would pay for sex and then refused to. When she tried to leave, she says, he tied her up and repeatedly raped her.

Aileen Wuornos: He said, "You better do what I say, or I'm gonna kill you." He said, "It doesn't matter to me. Your body will still be warm. I'll kill you right now, I'll screw you later."

Michele Gillen: But then, Wuornos says, she turned the tables. He untied her, she got her gun, and shot him four times.

Michele Gillen: Well, let me ask you: in your opinion, did Richard Mallory deserve to die?

Aileen Wuornos: Okay, for what he did to [unclear: "me" / "did today"], the way he tortured me and everything, yes. Yes, he did. But, hmm, how can I explain this? Yes, he did deserve to die, but the way I left him was so kind, because the way he was going to leave me, I'm sure, would not have been this way. He would have left me probably dismembered, scattered out in the woods.

Michele Gillen: So you feel [inaudible]...

Aileen Wuornos: I left him with a rug over him, so the vultures [unclear: "wouldn't" / "couldn't"] get him.

Michele Gillen: But [unclear: "you" / "she"] left him dead.

Aileen Wuornos: That's right.

Michele Gillen: This violent encounter would change Aileen Wuornos forever. She would now respond with a gun to those she says assaulted her, to those who reneged on paying for sex.

Aileen Wuornos: The day I met Richard Mallory, the way he sexually abused to me, I said to myself, I said, "If anybody ever comes up to me again and ever tries to rape me like that, he will definitely wish he had not met this prostitute."

Michele Gillen: But I gotta ask you. One case, you claim rape, you say, "I shot him in self-defense." But seven killings?

Aileen Wuornos: It wasn't every day. I was out prostituting, and I was dealing with hundreds and hundreds of guys. You got a jerk that's going to come along and try to rape me, I'm going to fight.

Michele Gillen: But you don't blow people away. You blew him away.

Aileen Wuornos: Oh, geez.

Michele Gillen: But most prostitutes encounter some kind of [unclear: "violence" / omitted]...

Aileen Wuornos: Yeah, what do they do? They get killed or something then? Yeah, no, I don't believe in that. I believe in, everybody has a right to self-defend themselves. I don't care who you are.

Michele Gillen: Do you realize that what you did [unclear: "was wrong" / "wasn't wrong" / "was no wrong"]?

Aileen Wuornos: No. And I'm getting sick and tired of the families, too. The fam... Now, I've got a message for the families, okay? Here's a message for the families: you owe me. Your husband raped me violently, Mallory and Carskaddon. And the other five tried, and I went through a heck of a fight to win. You owe me, not me owe you.

Michele Gillen: You killed a loved one.

Aileen Wuornos: So? They almost killed me. Who's supposed to die? It's a battle. That's the way it is. That's life. It's a, you got a battle going between life and death. Whoever wins, more power to you. I mean, that is the way it is. That's life.

Dateline Anchor: No matter what your reaction to Aileen Wuornos, there is this question: how did she come to commit these crimes? So, when we come back, a window on the tortured private world of Aileen Wuornos, and you'll meet her lover, whose active betrayal set the stage for the arrest and conviction of Wuornos. Michele's report continues in a moment.

Dateline Anchor: In the trial of Aileen Wuornos, this woman provided key testimony. She's the lover of Wuornos, and she tells her story to Michele Gillen when Dateline continues.

Dateline Anchor: We continue now with the case of Aileen Wuornos, the woman the FBI has called America's first female serial killer. Her seven victims: all middle-aged men. Wuornos claims she killed in self-defense. How, then, did she get four death sentences against her? Well, the answer in part lies with another woman you're about to meet, Aileen Wuornos's female lover. She knows Wuornos better than anyone, and as you'll see, when authorities wanted a confession out of Wuornos, they used her lover as bait. Michele Gillen picks up the story.

Michele Gillen: There is a side to Aileen Wuornos only one person knows: a woman who moved with her from motel to trailer park to motel, a woman who was in love with Aileen Wuornos and lived with her during the killings. Her name is Tyria Moore.

Tyria Moore: Living with her for four and a half years, I know her better than I think anyone else does, and I think she's very intelligent.

Michele Gillen: What attracted you to Lee Wuornos?

Tyria Moore: She was very caring. She cared a lot about me. I cared a lot about her.

Michele Gillen: Moore, for the first time, tells of their life together, a life that began three years before the first murder. She says she came to Florida in 1985 to escape the suburban life of her parents' home in the Midwest. Six years younger than Wuornos, the two met at Daytona's Zodiac Bar and became inseparable. But something changed, something that would make Tyria Moore decide to lead Wuornos toward the electric chair. The bizarre story begins in December 1989, on the night Wuornos killed for the first time, came home and told her lover.

Tyria Moore: "I shot and killed a man that day," is what she told me. And I definitely didn't want to believe her, because she was, I mean, she was acting so, so normal. I mean, it was like it didn't bother her at that time.

Michele Gillen: But did you believe her?

Tyria Moore: After a certain point, yes, I did. She later cried, after she had thought about what she had done. It seemed like it bothered her that she had done it.

Michele Gillen: Incredibly, Moore says she thought the killing would exorcise Wuornos of her rage.

Tyria Moore: One of the reasons that I didn't come forward and tell anybody was because I was hoping that, you know, that would change her attitude towards life, that all her hatred had gotten out, and that, you know, she would, she would change.

Michele Gillen: During the fall of 1990, the two lived in this motel room, Wuornos leaving weekly to prostitute on the highways. Moore says Wuornos was often drinking, often angry.

Michele Gillen: How did you deal with anger, when you felt anger?

Aileen Wuornos: I wasn't an angry person. Tyria ripped a T-shirt off of me, man. She beat up a guy in a bar, and I had to break it up and everything else. I wasn't an angry...

Michele Gillen: But I see anger today, when we talk about these men.

Aileen Wuornos: Yeah, well, you're a year and a half, nothing but people choking you to death, saying, "Hey, you're a prostitute, we want you to die, man, we don't give a damn, you know, we're gonna make a whole lot of money off of you, man, we don't care about you," and that you, you were almost dead, and all this other stuff. I'm pissed.

Michele Gillen: When she would come home from all these tricks, would she ever express anger, you know, towards men? I mean, did she like men?

Tyria Moore: No, she didn't. Actually, she said she hated them. That's why I couldn't understand how she could go out and have sex with them, to make money, as much as she hated them.

Michele Gillen: The police search got bigger, and closer to home. Remember the crashed car that gave police their break? Moore had been the driver. She now saw the car on local news reports and learned it belonged to one of the victims.

Michele Gillen: You had been in that car?

Tyria Moore: Yes, I had.

Michele Gillen: Moore's love was turning to fear, but she still didn't call police.

Tyria Moore: Probably at that time I was more scared, if I did, you know, she would hurt me. And I did still care about her a lot.

Michele Gillen: By the time police arrested Wuornos in Daytona Beach in January 1991, Moore had left her. But the police needed Moore to make their case against Wuornos. They tracked her down and brought her to this motel. They told Moore she was a suspect, that to clear her name she had to convince Aileen Wuornos to confess. Moore decided she would betray her love for Wuornos. While a police tape recorder rolled and a police officer sat at Moore's side, she spoke by phone 11 times to Wuornos. Moore even threatened suicide to convince her.

Michele Gillen: And to save Tyria Moore, she did confess. Her love was taking her towards the electric chair.

Michele Gillen: In her videotape confession, Wuornos described in chilling detail how she murdered the men she says threatened her.

Aileen Wuornos: [unclear: captions read "as confidence to speak internally during a close Journeys come acting like this and you've got to stop again and I think I have time around here when he fell to the ground"; small.en recognized no speech].

Michele Gillen: With Moore testifying against her in court, Wuornos was convicted in the trial of her first victim, Richard Mallory. Yet today, Aileen Wuornos says she's not angry at Moore for betraying her.

Michele Gillen: Let me ask you this. You really love Tyria. Some people would say, you know, by wanting to protect her, you confessed, and you, you know you're going to go to the electric chair. You feel betrayed by Tyria?

Aileen Wuornos: Oh, yes. I mean, I think it's sad that she didn't say it was self-defense, what she knew was self-defense. It's, but then again, see, I don't understand, because, see, I don't know. I think the cops threatened her and said, "Look, you're going to get first-degree murder, you're going to go to prison the rest of your life, you might even go on death row with her." I spoke to her yesterday.

Michele Gillen: You spoke to Tyria Moore? Oh, tell me about it.

Aileen Wuornos: And she said to me...

Michele Gillen: You smile. You know, [unclear: "some of us" / "sometimes"]... Why are you smiling? This is a woman who testified against you.

Aileen Wuornos: I still love her. I always will love her. I'll love her. [unclear: "I hope I see her in heaven" / "help us here in heaven"].

Michele Gillen: Why do you still love her?

Aileen Wuornos: I loved her. You don't understand the love. Uh, see, people don't understand the love. They think it's not a, it wasn't sexual. My love was a mental thing between me and Tyria. I loved her for who she was, although I did not know she had, she had a two-faced heart.

Michele Gillen: But not only does Aileen Wuornos say her lover betrayed her, she claims the prosecution used that to railroad her toward the electric chair. Was she right? The issue comes down to whether the prosecution was truthful in portraying Wuornos as a woman who killed not from threat but for thrills.

John Tanner: This woman was killing for the thrill of killing. She was selecting her victims at random, and she was killing whenever the opportunity and the mood coincided.

Michele Gillen: State Attorney John Tanner, who handled the Richard Mallory trial, was determined to put her on death row. He knew convincing the jury would be tough.

John Tanner: Well, we had to convince them to vote for death. It's difficult, uh, in any criminal case to convince the jury to vote for death, regardless of the facts, but especially if the, uh, if the accused is a woman.

Aileen Wuornos: I'm thinking, this guy is thinking how he's going to kill me.

Michele Gillen: To make his case, Tanner needed to discredit Aileen Wuornos's claim of self-defense. When we spoke to him after the trial, here's what he told us about the confession she had given to police detectives.

John Tanner: When she ultimately gave the confession to the investigating detective, the Volusia County [unclear: "Sheriff for Zepa" / "Sheriff for zeppa" / "Sheriff's investigator Horzepa"], she never once mentioned self-defense.

Michele Gillen: Not exactly. In Wuornos's full confession, she brought up self-defense again and again. We counted a total of 53 times.

Michele Gillen: But despite a fight by Wuornos's lawyers, the jury was shown an edited version, with Wuornos's claims of self-defense deleted. Then Tanner pulled off an extraordinary legal maneuver. He convinced the judge to let him introduce evidence of the six other killings Wuornos confessed to but had not stood trial for. This [unclear: "sensed" / "since"] the death sentence, and was key to getting a guilty verdict in the first place.

Michele Gillen: If you had gone in and only been allowed to argue the Richard Mallory case unto itself, were you guaranteed to win?

John Tanner: No. Oh, if we had had to try the case on simply the evidence of Mr. Mallory's killing, with her story of self-defense, of sexual assault, of brutal torture that she described, a jury would be hard-pressed to, to sort out the truth in that case. We certainly could have lost it.

Michele Gillen: But John Tanner got the death penalty and more. Convinced she would never get a fair trial, Wuornos's mood darkened. She stunned her lawyers by asking for the death penalty in her remaining cases. When her public defender lawyers objected, she fired them. A new lawyer, Steven Glazer, helped her plead guilty or no contest in those cases. There were no other trials. She got the death sentence in each case.

Steven Glazer: She said, "Steve, I want to get out of this. Let's get it over with. I'll save my own grief. I won't have to go from county jail to county jail. We won't be spending 10 to 20 to 30 million dollars of taxpayers' money, and the victims' families could get at peace."

Michele Gillen: When she first looked at you and convinced you that she wanted to die, and she wanted the electric chair, you cried.

Steven Glazer: I cried, because I do feel, somewhere in my heart, I say, "Steve, are you walking her to the electric chair? Do you have a right? And isn't it your obligation to talk her out of it?" I believe in her right to decide her fate. I believe in her right to choose her death.

Michele Gillen: Psychologist McMahon disagrees. She says Wuornos is too unbalanced to make such a decision.

Dr. Elizabeth McMahon: She wants the situation, as she perceives it to be right now, to be different, and the only way she sees to do that is to request the death penalty.

Michele Gillen: Does she fully understand that this means that she will die and not be here tomorrow?

Dr. Elizabeth McMahon: No. Lee doesn't understand that ramification of her statements.

Michele Gillen: McMahon has dealt with hundreds of killers. She believes that Wuornos is a special case, that she should not be put to death.

Dr. Elizabeth McMahon: One of the things in our law is that we do not put to death children. In my clinical opinion, Lee is a child. She's chronologically an adult. She is emotionally, psychologically a child.

Michele Gillen: Shirley Humphreys, widow of Wuornos's sixth victim, says no matter why she pulled the trigger, Wuornos should pay for what she did.

Shirley Humphreys: She just emanated evil. No soul. No, I said, I think she's, you know, completely immoral.

Michele Gillen: Shirley Humphreys's husband, Charles, was a former police chief. The day after their 35th wedding anniversary, he disappeared.

Michele Gillen: What haunts you most about his final hours or minutes?

Shirley Humphreys: The violence. How hard he had to die. I mean, she shot him in the gut, she shot him in the heart, that [unclear: "by having" / "I have"] his pen and pencil back there, where one bullet was deflected. She shot him seven times. The pain that that man had to suffer is just unthinkable.

Michele Gillen: Do you believe in the death penalty?

Shirley Humphreys: I do now. Very definitely I do now. Before this, [unclear: "before this, no" / "oh, it is now, no sense"].

Michele Gillen: But Aileen Wuornos, the woman described as an emotional child whose rage came easily and sometimes violently, who police say will go down as the first female serial killer, now says she wants to live.

Michele Gillen: I hear from you today that you really don't want to die.

Aileen Wuornos: I don't. I don't want to die. I had to plead no contest because there's no sense in going through the trials that are totally unfair.

Michele Gillen: Wuornos says she wants to fight her case in a new trial. She is still unrepentant.

Michele Gillen: But the seventh man that you shot, did you say to yourself, "I'm out of control. I'm killing people. I need help"?

Aileen Wuornos: No, no, no. I thought to myself, those men are out of control. I'm sick and tired of those men out there thinking they control us and do whatever they damn well please with our bodies, and think they can get away with it because it's a male-dominant society, and "We're gonna, we're gonna treat you the way we want, abuse you, treat you and destroy you. It don't matter to us, because we can get away with doing that."

Michele Gillen: Just last week, Aileen Wuornos, according to her lawyer, had yet another change of heart, again saying she wants to die, and die quickly. It seems to underline what psychologists have said about those mood swings of hers, even when it's a question of her own life or death. Next month, more court appearances, and probable outcome: two more death sentences.

Dateline Anchor: Michele, if the psychologist is right, this is a woman whose emotional and moral growth was stunted at an early age. Did you get the impression, sitting across from her during the interview, that this was a child trapped in a woman's body?

Michele Gillen: That was exactly my take after just the first few minutes of asking her questions. I realized I had to put my set of values and ethics, leave them at the door. Aileen Wuornos just doesn't grasp the concept that killing is wrong. She just doesn't get it. At best, she might say death and murder is sad. And it was striking that even as she denied her rage against men, it was coming out during the interview.

Dateline Anchor: How is she different from other female killers?

Michele Gillen: Well, there's a reason why the FBI has classified her as the first female serial killer, without exception. Other women who have killed repeatedly nearly always are caregivers who have a distorted sense that if they kill the elderly or sick, it's a mercy killing. Aileen Wuornos is an exception, a frightening exception.

Dateline Anchor: Thank you, Michele. Much more to come. Later, an update on Hurricane Andrew. But first, with kids, maybe yours, heading back to school any day now, I'll take you inside one of the best public high schools in the country. ### [UNRELATED TO WUORNOS] NBC network promos (33:24 to 34:08)

Nbc Promo Announcer: But now the truth is out, and the killer's identity will shock you. His hands are bloody. Television's most powerful drama, now at a new night and time: Law & Order, NBC, Wednesday.

Nbc Promo Announcer: There's a little something for everyone on this one: the family values show, with comedian Larry Miller and actress Sarah Jessica Parker. Don't miss Jay tonight.

Nbc Promo Announcer: Dave might be on his best behavior with manners expert Letitia Baldrige, or he might not. Plus the music of Lyle Lovett and actor Charles Dutton, only on Late Night. ### [UNRELATED TO WUORNOS] Dateline NBC: second Hurricane Andrew update and close (34:08 to 35:35)

Stone Phillips: Almost 11 p.m. in the East, and Hurricane Andrew is now landing a second punch to the U.S. mainland. The eye is forecast to hit land at Morgan City, Louisiana, around 2 a.m. Dateline's Jon Scott is in Houma, Louisiana, about 30 miles due east of Morgan City. John, talk to us.

Jon Scott: I don't know if you can tell, Stone, from the last time I spoke to you, but I can tell you that I'm significantly more drenched. There is a, a resigned sense here that the storm is coming. Everybody knows that, but I don't get the feeling that everybody wants to fear or worry about it tremendously until they see exactly where it hits and how much damage it does.

Stone Phillips: Well, John, John, realizing that this is at or near ground zero, what's the mood like?

Jon Scott: I think that people here have been through major hurricanes before, unlike the part of South Florida where Andrew hit last, a couple of days ago. That part of Florida hasn't seen a hurricane in 25 years. Hurricanes are a more recent memory here, and, and people, I think, are ready for it.

Stone Phillips: Okay, John Scott in Houma, Louisiana. Thank you, John. And that's our program for tonight. Thanks for being with us. And to those of you along the Gulf Coast and in southern Florida, the rest of the country's pulling for you. Stay tuned to NBC for continuing coverage of Hurricane Andrew. I'm Stone Phillips.

Jane Pauley: And I'm Jane Pauley.

Stone Phillips: And for all of us here at Dateline, good night. ### [UNRELATED TO WUORNOS] WHO-TV (Des Moines) local promos, NBC announcements and commercials (35:35 to end)

Who-Tv Anchor: This is [unclear: "Tim" / "Kim"] Kerrigan. Coming up next on the news: a Grinnell College student missing tonight, Hurricane Andrew makes its move on the Louisiana coast, and Miss Iowa wins the Miss Teen USA Pageant. These stories and much more, coming up next.

Nbc Announcer: For a transcript of this program, please send a $5 check or money order to NBC News Transcripts, Box 7, Livingston, New Jersey, 07039.

Nbc Promo Announcer: [inaudible] The Miss America Pageant, Saturday, September 19th, on NBC.

Who-Tv News Promo: Next up from your 24-hour news source: New Orleans gets a calling card from Hurricane Andrew. Team coverage next. And while Louisiana gets pounded, Iowa sees a turn to much cooler weather. I'll have details ahead. A Waterloo teenager pulled to safety after a harrowing experience in an underground sewer. [unclear: "Illinois authorities" / "An Illinois historian"] searching for a missing Grinnell student. I'm Kathy [unclear: "Salter" / "Saltero"]. I'll have [unclear: "the tale" / "to tell"]. Those stories, plus Iowa's gearing up for the Kickoff Classic. Rick has that. All the day's news is coming up next.

Commercial: It happened overnight. Strange changes. But there it was: cats had taken over the Iowa Lottery. It finally ended in the scratch game department, where the names of games began changing mysteriously. Now there's the newest scratch game, Fat Cat. And it's not your typical game, either. It got special treatment: four games on each ticket, so you could win up to four times on a ticket, at a top prize of $1,000. Play, then enter your cat in the Fat Cat Look-Alike Contest at any Iowa Lottery retailer.

Commercial: You know, there's real magic in Diet Pepsi. It's got that special [unclear: "uh-huh" / "ahoy" / "aha"] ingredient. [Singing:] [unclear: "Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" / "Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy"], you got the right one, baby. Diet Pepsi, [unclear: "uh-huh" / "ahoy"], you got the right one, baby. Okay, girls, now what's that magic ingredient? [recording ends] ---