"So What?": Aileen Wuornos on Death Row, 60 Minutes Australia, 1994
On Florida's death row, Aileen Wuornos told an Australian reporter the killings were self-defence, that she now hated "those male cops", and that leaving this "wicked, wicked world" would be no big deal.
- Subject
- Aileen Wuornos
- Recorded
- about 1994
- Runtime
- 12:29
Content warning: Concerns the shooting of seven men; refers to the sexual abuse of a child; includes a graphic remark about mutilation and a description of the electric chair.
The Interview
In the mid-1990s the Australian program 60 Minutes interviewed Aileen Wuornos on Florida's death row. In the report she insists the men she shot were killed in self-defence ("All they were was shot and left"), denies she was "born bad", and says she has come to hate "those male cops". Asked whether she is afraid to die, she says she is not: "I know where I'm going." The report also hears from her lawyer, her adoptive mother and the prosecutor, and includes courtroom footage.
Historical Context
Between late 1989 and late 1990 seven men were shot dead in central and northern Florida after picking up a woman on or near the highways. Wuornos, who had worked for years as a highway sex worker, was arrested on January 9, 1991, at a bar in Port Orange. Her partner, Tyria Moore, cooperated with police and helped draw out her confession. In January 1992 a jury convicted her of the murder of Richard Mallory, the first victim, and she was sentenced to death. She later pleaded no contest or guilty to five more murders and received six death sentences in all. She was never charged over Peter Siems, whose body was not found.
Circumstances of the Interview
The report was made during her years of appeals, after the Broomfield documentary "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer" (1992) had drawn international attention. It presents a "cast of characters": Steve Glazer, the lawyer who helped her plead no contest, whom the report calls "the singing lawyer"; the Christian woman who adopted her as an adult; Tyria Moore, shown testifying; and Ric Ridgway, introduced as a prosecutor, who speaks about members of the sheriff's office who sought to sell her story to film makers.
What the Interview Covers
Wuornos describes her life as a highway sex worker, rejects the label of serial killer and agrees with the reporter that the killings were spread over twelve months. The narration covers her childhood of abuse and abandonment, her arrest, her videotaped confession, and the no-contest pleas. Courtroom footage shows her being sentenced to death for the murders of Troy Burress and David Spears, and she replies that she will be "up in heaven" while they are "rotting in hell". Glazer defends helping her toward execution as what she wanted. A prison official describes the electric chair.
What Makes the Recording Significant
The report shows Wuornos within a few years of her convictions, her anger now directed at the police, lawyers and others she believed were profiting from her case. It records her claim of self-defence in her own words, alongside the prosecutor's account of the attempted film deal by members of the sheriff's office.
Archival Importance
Wuornos was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on October 9, 2002. The report, made by a foreign broadcaster and re-released by the program in 2019, preserves an interview from the middle of her years on death row.
Important Caveats
Wuornos's account of self-defence is her own claim; juries and courts rejected it. The program's title and narration call her "the first female serial killer"; this is wrong, as female serial killers are documented long before her. The narrator's statement that she had waived her right to appeal reflects the program's view at the time; her appeals continued (the US Supreme Court denied review in 1995 and 1996), and she was executed in 2002 by lethal injection, not the electric chair. Several speakers are not named in the audio, and some attributions are marked uncertain.
Narrator: The dark woods off Florida's highways. It was down dirt roads like this that seven men met the madness of one angry woman. Lee Wuornos murdered them, robbed them and then drove home in their cars.
Aileen Wuornos: Those men were shot, just, just shot, [unclear: "in self" / "and somebody said"], boom, boom, boom, you know. They weren't cut up, they weren't sliced up, no O.J. jazz, you know. And he said, I did the most horrendous crime in the whole wide world.
Reporter: Not true?
Aileen Wuornos: I guess not. All they were was shot and left. If it was a horrendous crime, why didn't [unclear: "I" / "they"] shoot them between the eyes, cut their penis off, stick it in their mouth, you know, do all kinds of gross stuff? All they were was shot and left, you know.
Narrator: She's been called the damsel of death and the hooker from hell. But embellishment aside, the story of history's first female serial killer is macabre enough, even without its supporting cast of characters.
Steve Glazer: [singing, partly heard] Oh yes, I'm a defender.
Narrator: First, there's Lee Wuornos's lawyer. She's given him the job of getting her to the electric chair.
Steve Glazer: [singing, partly heard] [unclear: "want to plead out"]. That's what I'm all about. Just sign this no contest plea.
Narrator: Then there's the serial killer's new mother. She first met Lee after her arrest and then legally adopted her.
Adoptive Mother: [unclear: "Shea" / "Sheba" / "See"], you know, we believe in the Holy Spirit, and so we feel it was him prompting us that this person really needed help, and she had nobody, and just reach out to her. So we did.
Tyria Moore: I met her in a bar.
Narrator: And there's Lee's gay lover, who betrayed her to the police.
Tyria Moore: We were sitting on the floor watching TV, and she just come out and said, I have something to tell you. And I asked her what, and she said that she had shot and killed a man that day.
Reporter: Lee, it sounds like you've been betrayed by everyone.
Aileen Wuornos: That's right, I was, I was. That's why I don't care if I'm executed and leave this planet.
Narrator: If anyone was destined to end up here on death row, it was probably Lee Wuornos. Psychologists sketch a portrait of a damaged person with a lurid history of abuse that began in childhood. Abandoned by her teenage mother when she was just six months old, Lee was raised by her alcoholic grandmother and a cruel grandfather who regularly beat her with his belt buckle. When she was two, her father committed suicide in jail, where he was doing time for kidnapping and raping a child. By 13 she'd been raped and was pregnant. At 14 she quit school, and when her grandfather kicked her out of home, Lee Wuornos's life on the road began. From age 15, Lee Wuornos worked prostitution's lowest and most dangerous trade, a hitchhiking hooker turning tricks from exit to exit on Florida's interstate highways.
Aileen Wuornos: Basically, I'd say I had five to six guys per day interested. They could be interested in 30, they could be interested in 40, they could be interested for 100. I wasn't too high-priced, so I could keep my customers satisfied. And you know,
Narrator: That all changed when she turned 33. After years of abuse and degradation at the hands of men, Lee Wuornos started evening the score. The killings all began like this: a middle-aged man pulled over to pick up Lee Wuornos. That's the first of just two facts on which everyone agrees. The way Lee tells it, she was just a hooker trying to turn a trick, and the men knew it. The state of Florida maintains she tricked her victims by posing as a damsel in distress. The men thought they were helping her out. Either way, the second fact on which everyone agrees is that Lee Wuornos shot them dead.
Reporter: Maybe you were just born bad.
Aileen Wuornos: [unclear: "How do you" / "I don't know about you"]. I'm telling you, man. No, I wasn't born bad. You guys got to see, I'm trying to tell you, man. They lied. They lied so bad to you all.
Reporter: But you've been convicted of killing seven men. Everybody's looking at the number. Does that not, you, you killed seven men, seven strangers. Does that not make you a serial killer?
Aileen Wuornos: So I didn't kill them every day, did I? Did I go out there every day and say, I'm going to kill? If I did, there were
Reporter: No, it took you 12 months.
Aileen Wuornos: Yeah. And, and that's a hell of a lot of men I went through before the next jerk came along, and I used a protection, like a condom.
Reporter: So it was, it was self-defence?
Aileen Wuornos: Yeah.
Reporter: Lee, the first one perhaps, the second maybe, but seven times?
Aileen Wuornos: So what?
Narrator: Lee Wuornos began the last day of her miserable life on the road here, ordering her first beer at 11 in the morning. Close to broke as usual, it was Lee's style to hustle quarters for the jukebox so she could listen to her favorite song. On this day, that was made easier by two undercover cops. They struck up a conversation with her, bought her some more beer, and then convinced her to step outside. Lee was prepared for anything but the six Florida police officers who arrested her. It was from this point the story of the first female serial killer becomes truly perplexing. First, her videotaped confession.
Aileen Wuornos: Go ahead and put the electric chair to me. I should have never done it,
Narrator: she told police. But by the time of her trial, Lee was pleading self-defence.
Defence Lawyer: She loved you, didn't she?
Tyria Moore: Yes.
Defence Lawyer: She said she'd do anything for you, didn't she?
Tyria Moore: Yes, she did.
Narrator: Her case wasn't helped when Tyria Moore, now very much her ex-lover, turned star witness for the prosecution.
Defence Lawyer: In order for her to say what you wanted her to, you lied to her, right?
Tyria Moore: Yes.
Narrator: But it gets worse. Tyria had another deal going with the arresting police. They were trying to sell Hollywood the movie rights to Lee Wuornos's life and crazy times.
Defence Lawyer: Why did you lie to [unclear: "her" / "Kirk"] about those number of things?
Tyria Moore: Because I wanted her to keep talking about the offences, so I would be cleared.
Narrator: District Attorney Ric Ridgway is one of the only officials willing to talk about the Wuornos case anymore. The police certainly won't, out of sheer embarrassment.
Ric Ridgway: There was a tremendous amount of, of almost frenzy about the case, and everybody wanted to get a scoop on the next guy about the case. And there were so many people who were willing to pander to that, in order to be the one who gets quoted or who gets the movie made about them.
Reporter: People from your own sheriff's office?
Ric Ridgway: Well, unfortunately, yes, they did.
Reporter: As the prosecutor, were you dismayed by that?
Ric Ridgway: Well, to put it mildly, we went through the roof when we found out about it.
Narrator: In the end, it was only the producers of this American TV movie who were able to cash in on Lee's story. Tyria and the police's conspiracy to get rich quick came to nothing once they were caught.
Unidentified Voice: [captions only] Give me something. I'm going to give you something.
Narrator: But that hasn't stopped Lee Wuornos suspecting that someone somewhere wants to exploit her name.
Aileen Wuornos: It's making me get bitter, evil, angry. I've never been before in my life. Worse than even out there with those men. This is evil, what those people have done to me.
Reporter: Do you feel anger or even hatred towards men?
Aileen Wuornos: I never hated men, but now I do. I mean, not all. I have a category. I hate those male... God, I hate those male cops. Real bad, because they're dirtballs. The cops, the judges, the lawyers, they were all male.
Aileen Wuornos: I have made peace with my Lord, and I have asked forgiveness.
Narrator: The final twist in this already mad tale was when Lee Wuornos decided to plead no contest to the remaining six murder charges.
Judge: I sentence you in case number 91-463 to death for the murder of Troy Burress.
Narrator: Her lawyer, Steve Glazer, found himself in the bizarre position of helping his client take the express route to the electric chair.
Judge: [unclear: "County"] case number [inaudible]. I sentence you to death for the murder of David Spears.
Aileen Wuornos: Thank you. And, uh, probably see, I'll be up in heaven while y'all are rotting in hell.
Reporter: In effect, though, weren't you trying to kill your client?
Steve Glazer: It's not what I was trying to do, okay? It's what she wanted to have done to her. She was tired of being in the spotlight. She was tired of reporters and police and lawyers, everyone making a career off of her. She did not like the man-hating killer label. She didn't like the lesbian killer angle. She didn't like what people were saying about her. And she knows if she has to go to trial five more times, she's going to be in [unclear: "for" / "the, for"] the next ten years.
Reporter: Do you still believe she was competent to make that decision?
Steve Glazer: Without a doubt.
Steve Glazer: [singing, partly heard] [unclear: "Murders deter the crimes"].
Narrator: Not much fazes the singing lawyer, Steve Glazer. Not the three heart attacks he's suffered since taking on this case, nor the criticism he's endured for seeking Lee Wuornos's execution.
Steve Glazer: [singing, partly heard] [unclear: "upon the chair"].
Reporter: Has this case been good for your career?
Steve Glazer: No. But that's life, you know. You take, [unclear: "oh blood, oh blood, die" / "blood da"], life goes on, you try something else.
Reporter: Is there anyone in this cast of characters who isn't a little bit crazy, a little bit eccentric?
Steve Glazer: I think you've got to be a little wild to be in this business.
Narrator: If Steve Glazer has done his job, Lee Wuornos could be executed in this chair within three years. She's waived her right to appeal.
Prison Official: If he hears no last-minute stays from the governor's office, the electrode then is placed on top of the inmate's head. It's an actual cap with an electrode inside. It's secured onto his head. One of these electrodes here is then fastened onto the top of the headpiece.
Narrator: Alone and lost in her own nightmare, Lee Wuornos is an American horror story. She could escape death row, but her bitterness and hate will see Lee become the first woman in over a century to be executed in Florida.
Reporter: Aren't you afraid?
Aileen Wuornos: No, I'm not afraid. I know where I'm going. I'm going to be with the Lord. [unclear: "Thank you."] Take care of yourself, and tell everybody I said hi.
Reporter: Do you want to die? You want to
Aileen Wuornos: Oh, man, if I, if I was to, uh, leave this planet, it wouldn't be no big deal to me, 'cause this is a wicked, wicked world. Wicked world.
Allison Langdon: Hello, I'm Allison Langdon. Thanks for watching. To keep up with the latest from 60 Minutes Australia, make sure you subscribe to our channel. You can also download the 9Now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 Minutes content. ---