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I Drove I-95 to Understand Aileen Wuornos · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm in Florida, driving south on Interstate ninety five near
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: daytona beach ahead, a flat and endless road bordered by
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: walls of trees that swallow sound and light. This is
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the same corridor I lean Whereonose moved through.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: What was she like?
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: Just a regular customers she would find because you got
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: to know where quite well, just talking to her in
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: a bag, just want talk on me. It was nothing else.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I've been retracing her world, the motels she slept in,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the roadside pulloffs, the woods where men disappeared.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: What do you think everyone gets a wrong?
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 0:42
  Speaker 5: Well, you know there is no wrong. I mean everybody
• 0:45
  Speaker 5: has an opinion, and I mean there are those that
• 0:49
  Speaker 5: just think she was nuts, you know, just totally bonkers.
• 0:53
  Speaker 5: I don't share that opinion.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: For weeks, I've been trying to reach the people who
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: knew her differently, those who sat across from her when
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the cameras were off, before the story was settled. One
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: is Wornos's first attorney, Steve Glazer, eccentric, controversial, largely silent
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: for years. The day before I'm scheduled to leave Florida,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: he calls and agrees to talk, but he's across the state,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: more than three hundred miles away. Seven hours later, I'm
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: with him.
• 1:27
  Speaker 6: The question is would I ever help Eileen Warnus Again?
• 1:30
  Speaker 6: The answer is, of course I would.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: This is a man who heard Warnos before the narrative,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: calcified before confessions, trials and headlines reduced her to a symbol.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: He was there for the things she never said publicly.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Did that she ever express any remorse or tea? Where
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: did she?
• 1:51
  Speaker 6: That's a tough question because she's asking God for forgiveness,
• 1:55
  Speaker 6: so she is expressing remorse. Uh, what she said to
• 2:00
  Speaker 6: me was different.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Steve's perspective sheds new light on Wornos, a woman he
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: knew as Lee.
• 2:09
  Speaker 6: And she told me something very interesting which nobody has
• 2:12
  Speaker 6: ever heard before. And of course I can't tell you.
• 2:16
  Speaker 6: But it would have gone on.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: You really think it would have gone on.
• 2:20
  Speaker 6: It would have gone on. She stopping, She wasn't stopping.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I'm James buddy day. This is unmarked. After a seven
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: hour drive, we arrive at a campground north of Gainesville
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and pull up to a carefully kept site. Everything is orderly, intentional,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and sitting by the fire is the former death row
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: attorney for Aileen Moornos.
• 2:46
  Speaker 6: My name is Steve Glazer. I've been an attorney for
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: twenty nine years. Predominantly do criminal law, almost ninety percent
• 2:53
  Speaker 6: of my case let's criminal. I do some family law.
• 2:56
  Speaker 6: Did a lot of divorces when my kids were in college,
• 2:59
  Speaker 6: but I won't now. I graduated at the University of Florida,
• 3:05
  Speaker 6: average student, ended up at the public Defender's office in Okala.
• 3:10
  Speaker 6: Two years later. The strangest thing in the world happened
• 3:13
  Speaker 6: to me. I meet Eileen Warnis.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Steve is a welcoming host. He jokes as we set up.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: He's easy and.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Conversational, knock guarded. This is an Amedia hit. It feels
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: like someone speaking because he's decided to speak.
• 3:29
  Speaker 6: We caught up with him while he was camping on
• 3:32
  Speaker 6: the Sunday morning. He didn't go to church.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: If you've seen the coverage, news footage, court tapes, or
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the HBO documentary Eileen Wernos The Selling of a Serial Killer,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: you recognize Steve immediately. He looks much the same, older
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: now his beard has gone gray, but the large afro,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: of the glasses, the presence, it's all still there. He's warm,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: articulate and armingly thoughtful.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: So what was Eileen like as at?
• 4:04
  Speaker 6: I really liked her. I mean, we're two years apart.
• 4:09
  Speaker 6: We grew up with the same music, same generational you know.
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: I think we really became friends.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Gleezer tells me he spent countless hours talking with Warnos
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: in the years leading up to her execution.
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: We talked about a little bit of everything, everything from
• 4:27
  Speaker 6: the Beatles to the murders. And I think the developed
• 4:33
  Speaker 6: the relationship we developed was one of trust, so she
• 4:36
  Speaker 6: could tell me certain things that she wouldn't tell anyone,
• 4:40
  Speaker 6: and I know things that I can't tell anyone because
• 4:44
  Speaker 6: the confidentiality goes to the grave.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Between late nineteen eighty nine and late nineteen ninety, Eileen
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Warnos murdered at least seven men while working as a
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: hitchhiking sex worker. Her victims were shot at close range
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the twenty two caliber handgun that she'd bought at a pawnshop.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Their bodies were left in remote, wooded areas across central
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: and northern Florida, often near major routes like I ninety five.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Warnos was convicted of six murders and confessed to a seventh,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and became the first woman executed in Florida. Since eighteen
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: forty eight. She was put to death by lethal injection
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and two report.
• 5:27
  Speaker 6: And I did everything to make sure that Eileen would
• 5:31
  Speaker 6: die the way she wanted to when she wanted to.
• 5:34
  Speaker 6: She did not want to live on death row. She couldn't,
• 5:38
  Speaker 6: and she wanted to get to heaven. She believed the
• 5:40
  Speaker 6: rapture was coming and she'd be part of it.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: And Steve isn't the only person I've found along my travels.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Another is Jackie Garu, a fellow filmmaker who I've known
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: for years. Jackie met Eileen Warnos in prison and worked
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: with her and nearly everyone in Eileen's life for years.
• 5:59
  Speaker 5: When she call up at that time, we had no
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: cell phone, she was landlines, so when she would call me,
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: my daughter would answer the soh My daughter was like eight,
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: and she would say, hey, mom, it's the serial killer.
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: And Aileen thought that was funny. She said, oh, she's
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: so cute. And she had that embracing personality right as
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: long as you did what she wanted you to do, okay.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: In Eileen Warnos's case, the best place to begin is Michigan,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. Warnos is ten years old. She lives
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: in Troy, a suburb of Detroit born Eileen Pittman. At
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the time, Troy sits on the edge of a region
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: already hollowed out by economic instability and rising crime, part
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of a greater Detroit area beginning its long decline. She
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and her older brother, Keith are being raised by Larry
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: and Britta Warnos, the people they believe to be their parents.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Eileen's biological father was named Leo Pittman, a violent, paranoid schizophrenic.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: At the time, Michigan and Texas authorities suspect him in
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: at least one unsolved murder.
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: She didn't know her real father. Leo Pittman was her
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: real father, and she never knew him, but she turned
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: into him.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: By the time Eileen learns who her father is, Pittman
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: is already dead after being convicted of kidnapping a seven
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: year old girl from a playground and sexually assaulting her.
• 7:32
  Speaker 6: Her father, I think it was an early sixty one
• 7:36
  Speaker 6: or two or three, went to prison as a sex offender,
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: and he ended up hanging himself in prison. I don't
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: think Eileen had any relationship with her dad.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: At eleven, Eileen learns a destabilizing truth, the woman she
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: thought was her sister is actually her mother. It's a
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: profound rupture and identity and in fact, Ted Bundy experienced
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: a similar deception raised by his grandparents. At one point
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: he believed his mother was his sister.
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: She had an emptiness within her, just she hated herself
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: basically of what she was, you know, I mean, she
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: didn't understand why her grandparents, as she got were her
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: parents hated her so much.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Both of Eileen's grandparents are alcoholics. Her grandfather, Larry Warnos,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: a traumatized war veteran, is violent and abusive. Before puberty,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Eileen begins showing signs of sexual exploitation. She allows and
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: at times initiates sexual encounters with boys and adult men
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: in exchange for cigarettes, alcohol and spare change.
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: Actually, the grandfather, who she thought was her father, pimped
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: her out for cigarettes. Robody ever talks really.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: About According to Jackie, who spoke directly to the men
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: who abused Eileen, Eileen's grandfather would demand she go out
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: and get him cigarettes. How she was to get them
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: with no money was left unset. But if she failed,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the consequences were severe.
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: He would hit her, but he would hit her in
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: a very sexual way. He would take he would take her,
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: have Heerleen on a chair. He would take her pants
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: down and smell the belt and then hit her with
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: it and smell it again. So he was a bit
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: of a wacko too.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy one, at the age of fourteen, Eileen
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: becomes pregnant. She leaves school and is sent to a
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Detroit maternity home for unwin mothers. The identity of the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: father remains unclear. Over the years, Eileen claimed she was
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: assaulted by acquaintances, her brother, and even her grandfather, but
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: she confided in Steve Glazer about abuse by a friend
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: of her grandfather's that began when she was a child.
• 10:08
  Speaker 6: Yes, I would say, By now I have come to
• 10:11
  Speaker 6: the personal conclusion that, yes, that is factual. That is
• 10:14
  Speaker 6: something I can believe about her life story.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy one, Eileen gives birth to a boy,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: names him Keith, after her brother, and immediately places him
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: up for adoption. A year later, her grandmother dies of alcoholism,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and her grandfather falls into depression and eventually suicide. From
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: that point on, Eileen has no fixed address until her
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: incarceration decades later. During these early years, her brother Keith
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: dies of cancer. Those sources report he shot himself after
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: his diagnosis. She's assaulted repeatedly, and she survives through sex, work, theft,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and constant movement. By her early twenties, Eileen is suffering
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: from severe psychological trauma, paranoia, depression, and post traumatic stress.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: She attempts suicide after a failed relationship, moves around extensively.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty two, she's convicted of armed robbery after
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: holding up a grocery store with a twenty two caliber
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: pistol and serves time in prison. At one point, she
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: marries an elderly wealthy man named Lewis Fell, though he's
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: old enough to be her grandfather. The marriage is brief.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Fell accuses Eileen of squandering his money and beating him
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: with his own cane. So by nineteen eighty six, about
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: two years before the murders, Eileen, now using the name Lee,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: is twenty eight years old and she's found her way
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: to Florida. It's no coincidence that serial offenders like Wornos
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and Ted Bundy end up in Florida. They're not alone,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: and men like Paul John Knowles, Christopher Wilder, Gerard Schaeffer
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: all gravitated to the Sunshine State. Florida doesn't create serial killers,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: it absorbs them. It's a state with constant transience. It's
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: highways and wooded backroads. It's seasonal workers and forgotten people
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: make it easy to arrive, unnoticed and disappear again. For
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: someone already damaged, already unraveling, Florida offers anonymity, opportunity, and
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: above all time. In nineteen eighty six, Warnos frequents the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Zodiac Bar, a gay bar in Daytona Beach, where she
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: meets a woman named Tyramore known as ty Tie is
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: a Florida transplant raised in Ohio and she's only in
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: her early twenties when she meets Warno's for the first time.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: She has crimson hair and freckles.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: Tyra her parents were divorced and she felt jilted by
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: her father and not loved by her mother. And so
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: Aileen came into her life, and of course they called
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: her Lee, but I still call her Eileen because that's
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: her name, her birth name. Tyra felt like when Eileen
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: came in, Eileen would take her over. Eileen was really
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: the guy and the relationship.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: This becomes the most significant relationship of Eileen's life.
• 13:31
  Speaker 6: Yeah, she really loved her. Eileen was just this was
• 13:36
  Speaker 6: the love of her life and she would do anything
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: for her.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: For the next two years, Lee and Tye move around Florida.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: They're living in motels, sleeping on couches, sometimes to even
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: live in the woods. At one point they rent a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: rundown trailer for several months.
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: Tira was a heavy girl, really looked butch and didn't
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: get too many dance offs, let's face it. And Eileen
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: just anything that she got she gave to. Tyra, just
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: gave it to her.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Lee supports them through sex work, sometimes using the alias
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Cami marsh Green.
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: I mean, if they needed money, she'd leave in the hitchhike.
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: She didn't kill all of them. Remember she didn't kill
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: all of them. She'd come home at fifty dollars. They
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: would make potatoes and onions and that's what they ate.
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: They had to have money for beer they drank. That
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: was something else. I played a big part of this.
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: It wasn't drugs, it was beer. They were drinking like
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: cases of beer a day.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Eventually they settle in Belusha County, living at the Sea
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Sands motel and becoming fixtures at a nearby biker bar
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: called The Last Resort. Both places still exist. The motel
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: has a different name now, fresh paint, new signage, but
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the bones are the same, and the bar it hasn't
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: changed much at all. Entering the Last Resort, it smells
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: like old beer that's soaked into the wood and has
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: never been replaced. There's oil in the air. Cigarette smoke
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: clings to everything, and behind the bar, locals point out
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: where Lee used to sit, where she used to drink,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: and where she'd wait out back. They show me a
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: trailer where she sometimes crashed when.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: They arrested her. She was sleeping in the trailer.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: No, she was inside, She had slept there that night before.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: The motel is a short walk away, just a couple
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: of minutes, close enough that the two places feel connected,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: like part of the same ecosystem, and both sit within
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of miles of I ninety five, where Lee
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: was a fixture.
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: She was at the entrance to the highway, hitchhicking like
• 15:52
  Speaker 6: with her thumb own just with that's.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: It, and it's anyone would pick.
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: Her up, anybody who chose to.
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, she would hitchhig that the sun be behind her
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: so they couldn't see her face.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Were now months before the murders begin, and Lee has
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: a routine. She waits outside the I ninety five entrance,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: once picked up by a single man driving alone. She
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: uses a prepared story.
• 16:17
  Speaker 6: She was giving him the story that I'm trying to
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: get down to Miami, you get to my sister and
• 16:23
  Speaker 6: my kid.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: The story implies she needs money. It allows the conversation
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: to glide into a proposition, and as we're talking, Steve
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: recalls seeing Lee himself.
• 16:36
  Speaker 6: I used to own a truck with North American van lines,
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: and with the CBE radio, you always know whether there's
• 16:43
  Speaker 6: a woman on the road hitchhiking, Okay, always. I was
• 16:47
  Speaker 6: coming back from Disney with my wife and daughter, and
• 16:52
  Speaker 6: I saw Ileen hitchhiking. She was right at the end
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: of the turnpike, and I remember it because she was caught.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: A week later, on November thirtieth, nineteen eighty nine, Lee
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: is working along I ninety five. There's a light rain
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: and she takes shelter under a bridge. She has almost
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: nothing with her, a dirty change of clothes, some loose cash,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and a twenty two caliber pistol she carries for protection.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: That evening, she's picked up by a man named Richard Mallory.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Mallory is just under six feet around one hundred and
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: seventy pounds, but he is significantly larger than Lee.
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: At the time, he.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Owns an electronics business called Mallory Electronics. On November thirtieth,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: he leaves at six ten pm driving his beige two
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: door nineteen seventy seven Cadillac Coupe Deville. At some point
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: he meets warnos. Now, we'll never know exactly what happened,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: but what we do know is this, Lee shoots Mallory
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: several times, he hides his body in the brush, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: abandons his car nearly twenty miles away. For the remainder
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: of her life, Lee will give multiple and often contradictory
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: accounts of that night.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: What was your oppression of what happens with Richard Mallory?
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: And if you can guide to you what you can
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: agin say?
• 18:20
  Speaker 6: We only know what happened by listening to Eileen. The
• 18:26
  Speaker 6: question is do you want to believe her?
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: This is the first murder she's known to have committed,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: and at times she'll claim it was self defense, the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: result of a violent assault by Mallory. This is Eileen
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: on the stand during the Mallori trial.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: I've thought to myself, I gotta fight. I'm gonna die.
• 18:48
  Speaker 7: This guy is gonna play with me and play with me,
• 18:50
  Speaker 7: and then he's.
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: Gonna kill me.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: To be fair, Mallory's past supports that possibility. He was
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: known as a loaner who frequented strip clubs. Mallory had
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a documented history of sexual violence, He served prison time,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: and his records note sociopathic tendencies. But Lee was also
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: deeply mentally ill, paranoid by polar and profoundly traumatized. So
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: we're left with an unanswerable question. Did events unfold as
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: she described them, as she perceived them, or as she
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: later needed them to be.
• 19:26
  Speaker 6: I believe something really seriously wrong went wrong that night,
• 19:34
  Speaker 6: And I don't know that she was tied to the
• 19:37
  Speaker 6: steering wheel. I don't know that they dropped alcohol on her,
• 19:41
  Speaker 6: or whether what he did. But I always had the
• 19:45
  Speaker 6: feeling that that was the spark. I think everybody has
• 19:48
  Speaker 6: a feeling that that was the spark. But I would
• 19:51
  Speaker 6: not take her at her word that all of that happened.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: By then, Wrenos had already lived a lifetime of but
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the US decades of assaults. She once said she'd been
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: attacked so many times that she lost count.
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: I believe if a guy said, smelled or did something
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: like lowry ornos to grandfather, who she thought was her father,
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: if they came close to being like him, she killed him.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Lee warn Knows's story is about what happens with long
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: term abuse. Neurological vulnerability and systematic failure intersect in one
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: person and no one steps in until the damage spills outward.
• 20:37
  Speaker 6: Now she is mentally ill. She was mentally ill, but
• 20:41
  Speaker 6: in Florida, the test for insanity is whether you know
• 20:46
  Speaker 6: right from wrong. Okay, she knew right from wrong. So
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: while she operated under a disability mental disability, she was
• 20:58
  Speaker 6: still understood what she was doing was wrong.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: That distinction is critical. Responsibility is not in question. What
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: is in question is how someone so visibly damaged moved
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: through the world for decades without meaningful help.
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: I mean, there are those that just think she was not,
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: you know, just totally bonkers.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I don't share that opinion.
• 21:24
  Speaker 7: I think she was definitely mentally ill, but she came
• 21:28
  Speaker 7: by it very honestly.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Like you know, some people are.
• 21:31
  Speaker 7: Born where they can't tell their imagination from reality legitimately, yes, but.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: That wasn't her.
• 21:36
  Speaker 7: She was you know, she was shaped in that vulnerability
• 21:41
  Speaker 7: just enabled society to shape her into what she became.
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: Well, there's another interesting side note to all this, since
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: you're going in that direction, which is Aileen Moreno's ever
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: met her real father, Leo Pittman, not one, not one
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: phone call and Eileen none it And he said, I
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: didn't even know he was father until I was in jail.
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: But she became just like him. He used copper quoted
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: bullets on her twenty two and so did she.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: If she was born into a loving family.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: That and that could have been Yeah, yeah, she.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't have ended up as a serial killer. You've never
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: heard of it.
• 22:19
  Speaker 6: I don't.
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: I think you're right. I think if she had been
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: nurtured in another direction, yeah, I agree with you.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: On December thirteenth, nineteen eighty nine, two weeks after the shooting,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: police discover Richard Mallory's body in the woods outside Daytona Beach.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: The autopsy reveals he's been shot three times with Lee's
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: unregistered twenty two caliber pistol. At the time, wornos and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: tie are using the sea sands motel as a base.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: They're coming and going, drifting in and out, and according
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: to Tai's public statements, she keeps Warnos's secret. In regards
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: to the Mallory murder, she believes Werenos's claim that it
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: was self defense.
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: We were sitting on the floor watching TV and she
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: just come out and said, I have something to tell you.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: And I asked her what, and she said that she
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: had shot and killed a man that day.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Is it your opinion, was time more involved than she
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: let on? Or do you think she just knew about it?
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: Oh? I think that she just knew about it, and
• 23:26
  Speaker 6: that's enough. I mean, if you know about it and
• 23:31
  Speaker 6: you do nothing to stop it, you're just as guilty
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: under the law.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: The following spring, on Friday eighteenth, nineteen ninety, Leea's back
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: out working along Interstate four Marii.
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: Between Marii and the second victim, there was nine months,
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: so she got away with it. So Eileen never thought
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: she was going to get hot. So when things got
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: you know, rough again a rough pat she am sharty
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: killing again.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: That afternoon, she's picked up by a man named David Spears,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: a construction worker, driving from Sarasota to winter Garden to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: visit his children and ex wife. Spears is last seen alive,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: leaving Sarasota at two ten pm. About forty minutes later,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: he picks up a league near Route twenty seven, less
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: than thirty minutes from his destination. They pull into a
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: wooded area hidden from the road. They drink beer, they undress.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Spears's body is later found nude except for a baseball cap.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: The autopsy reveals six gunshot wounds to the torso, and
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: as she did with Mallory, Lee abandons Spears's truck miles away,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: But in the case of the second murder, it marks
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: an escalation. While it's possible to inter prit the Mallory
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: scene as self defense, the Spears crime scene reads differently.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: The victim is killed while vulnerable, after being drawn into seclusion, undressed,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and robbed. That scene suggests planning, not panic. It marks
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a shift from reaction to control.
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: She was cleaning up the crime scenes, and she apparently
• 25:24
  Speaker 6: knew how to get rid of some DNA and things.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Like that, so she was quite heredditated.
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: I would say she was quite premeditated. I would say
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: that she knew what she was doing. She had probably
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: watched too many TV shows.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Roughly twelve days later, on about May thirty first, nineteen ninety,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the pattern repeats. Wornos is picked up by Charles Carskinden,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: a forty year old construction worker and rodeo rider passing
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: through Florida from Missouri. This time, the once again involves vulnerability, robbery,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and overkill. Lee lures Carskanon into the backseat of his
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: car and shoots him nine times. Now the details matter
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: here because Lee's twenty two caliber pistol holds seven rounds.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: That means she stopped, reloaded and continued firing after her
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: victim was already mortally wounded. For Lee, something has shifted.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: She's no longer reacting, She's operating. The reload isn't about rage,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: It's about confidence. This is the moment in which many
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: serial offenders begin to feel invincible. She keeps her victim's car.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: She drives it back to where she and tires staying
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and stashes it beside their room. Next, she pawns some
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: of the victim's belongings at a local pawnshop.
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: Every time she killed somebody, she took the guy's goods, clothes,
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: whatever he had, shelby and gave it to Tyra, she
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: hacked very little.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: These decisions will come back to haunt her, but not
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: before she kills again. Just days later, Lee is picked
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: up by Peter Seines, a truck driver traveling through Florida
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: en route to visit his mother in West Milford, New Jersey.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: His wife is in Europe at the time of his disappearance.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: He's driving a gray nineteen eighty eight Pontiac Sunbird. The
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: truth is, we'll never know what happened during this encounter
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: because his body has never been recovered.
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: She had said she had killed some guy up by
• 27:41
  Speaker 6: the Florida Georgia state line. They flew Eileen from Fort Lauderdale,
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: the prison death row. They flew her up to North
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: Florida where the three officers that you know were escorting her,
• 27:56
  Speaker 6: and we went around in a couple of police cars
• 28:00
  Speaker 6: looking for the exit, looking for the body. So it's like,
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: now it's let's go find the body. And we never did.
• 28:09
  Speaker 6: But I would say that she had killed this guy
• 28:12
  Speaker 6: in June, and we were looking for the body in
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: August September, so at that time all the corn is
• 28:19
  Speaker 6: cut down the harvest, so we could not tell where
• 28:24
  Speaker 6: the body was never found. It.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: After the murder, Lee keeps the victims Sunbird, and a
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: month later, on July fourth, nineteen ninety, Lee and Tye
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: spend the day drinking and driving. That night, they crashed
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the stolen car near Orange Springs. Witnesses see the two
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: women bloodied at the scene. Later, Lee throws seems, his
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: keys and registration into the brush, but the abandoned vehicle
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: is recovered by police along with physical evidence, and authorities
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: are able to generate composite sketches of both women based
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: on eyewitness accounts. Lee and Tye begin to see news
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: reports at this time of the police investigation into the murders,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: including their descriptions, but it does not slow the violence.
• 29:14
  Speaker 6: She still worked her her little game on them, and
• 29:17
  Speaker 6: then when somebody said yes, let's do it, she took
• 29:21
  Speaker 6: them far out off the highway.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: One month later, on July thirty first, nineteen ninety, Lee
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: is picked up by a traveling salesman named Troy Burris
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: after driving into a wooded area in Marion County. Lee
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: shoots them twice with her twenty two caliber handgun. She
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: takes his money, and she leaves his body where it's
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: found days later, on August fourth. Just a month later,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: on September eleventh, nineteen ninety, Lee is picked up by
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Charles Richard Humphreys, a retired Air Force major and former
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: police chief. She lures him to a remote area of
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Swanee County and shoots him multiple times. His remains are
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: found the next day, fully clothed, shot six times in
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the head and torso with clear evidence of a targeted
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: and fatal robbery.
• 30:15
  Speaker 6: Fact that they had their pockets turned out, so we
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: know that she was rifling through their pockets. And in
• 30:24
  Speaker 6: the end she did say I killed those men to
• 30:29
  Speaker 6: murder and rob them.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: After each murder, Eileen returns to Tie with her bounty.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: It's now a clear pattern of robbery and.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: Murder, and Tyra found it exciting, to be quite frank
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: with you. I mean, she realizes now that she made
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: a mistake, but she found it exciting on chill around
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: the fifth one when she said, that's when I started
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: thinking I have to leave this girl. This is becoming
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: a ritual that's going on, and they do start to argue.
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: They argue, and Tyra tried to leave her a couple
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: of times.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: You know. By mid November nineteen ninety, ty leaves Florida,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: traveling to Pittsburgh to spend Thanksgiving with her family while
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Lee stays behind. By all accounts, Lee is depressed, she's alone.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: She drinks heavily during this period.
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: But each time Aileen would come and say, I'm going
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: to change. I won't do it again.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Please.
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: You know you're my good side, I'm your bad side.
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: And that's how she would convinces, like a husband and
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: a wife. It's love, it's habits, it's a rituals, it's everything. Man,
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: So Ty, we would go back.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: On November nineteenth, nineteen ninety, Lee is picked up by
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Walter Gino Antonio, a security guard and reserve deputy, who
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: stops for her in Dixie County. After driving off the
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: main road, shoots him four times. She takes his vehicle
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: and belongings, and abandons the car. According to evidence and
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: later testimony, Antonio is executed while on his knees. By
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: this point, Lee only has a month of freedom left,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: though she doesn't know him. What began under a bridge
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: on a rainy night has become repetition, methodical, escalating, and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: increasingly detached. This is no longer about a single act
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: or a single claim of self defense. It's about how
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Eileen Warnos related to the world and how that relationship
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: kept breaking down.
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: Part of the borderline personality disorder is that they will
• 32:43
  Speaker 6: turn against bite the hand that feeds you. So I
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: had a couple of visits at death Row where she
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: would yell at me and accuse me of making money
• 32:54
  Speaker 6: off of her and things like that, and I just
• 32:56
  Speaker 6: take it in stride, and then next time I see
• 32:59
  Speaker 6: her was on Sorry Steve.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: That cycle trust, paranoia, rupture, apology wasn't confined to her
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: relationship with Glazer. It defined her relationships with everyone, with
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: tie with the men who stopped along the highway, with
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the systems meant to contain her. Morenos could form attachments,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: but she couldn't sustain them, and every connection eventually curdled
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: into a threat by the time law enforcement catches up.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: The story isn't about whether Aileen Morenos could have chosen
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: differently in a single moment. It's about how many moments
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: passed years really where intervention might have mattered and never came.
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: She couldn't find happiness. The only happiness she got was
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: people who paid attention to her. And you one knew
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: is she got that mystery prostitution.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: By the following summer, police are closing in. They recovered
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: the items Lee had ponned from the third victim and
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: are able to lift her finger prints. Investigators now know
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Eileen Warnos is responsible for the entire series, and unlike
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the mythology that would later surround her arrest, they don't
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: have to hunt very hard, and after asking around, they
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: find Lee exactly where she's always been, drinking at the
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: last resort bar. They wait for her to step outside
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: and arrest her without incident. In the months that follow
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Warnos becomes a national obsession, branded as the first female
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: serial killer, a label that's demonstrably false. There were, of course,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: others before her, including Sharon Kinney, who by that point
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: had been wanted for decades.
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: She wanted to be recognized as somebody important because all
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: her life she was never recognized, since she had that
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: longing as a child all the way into adulthood.
• 34:53
  Speaker 6: She always put it this way, I'm not a serial killer.
• 34:56
  Speaker 6: I killed a series of men. She had a selection.
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: She had a certain type of man that she would attack.
• 35:03
  Speaker 6: It was always an older man, a big car. She
• 35:09
  Speaker 6: also had this thing for getting men who were cheating
• 35:13
  Speaker 6: on their wives, but.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Warnos fit a narrative the media just couldn't resist, and
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: several officers even go so far as to try and
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: profit from her story.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: You don't understand that the policemen were trying to sell
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: her story.
• 35:27
  Speaker 6: Yes, without doubt, they were trying to get as much
• 35:30
  Speaker 6: as they could because somebody said, we have a female
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: serial killer on our hands here. You know, can you
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: imagine what would have happen today? This is what twenties
• 35:43
  Speaker 6: nineteen ninety two roughly, You imagine what would happen today
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: with CNN and CNBC and Fox you went to heard
• 35:52
  Speaker 6: anything but this.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Inside prison, Lee gives multiple contradictory accounts of her crimes.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: At first, she tried to take full responsibility, an anguished
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: attempt to shield Tie from prosecution, but Tye ultimately escapes
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: responsibility by doing the opposite. She cooperates with police, secretly
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: records Lee and testifies for the state.
• 36:16
  Speaker 6: She was obliterated by the fact that ty would do
• 36:21
  Speaker 6: that to her, But Tyree was the one who was
• 36:27
  Speaker 6: about to go down for the murders or principal accessory
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: after the fact. So, like we do in the criminal world,
• 36:34
  Speaker 6: you get one to flip on the other and that's
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: what happened, and Tyree walks away.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Lee goes to trial first for Richard Mallory's murder, the
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: case where her self defense claim is the strongest.
• 36:48
  Speaker 6: She went to trial on Richard Mallory's case. This was
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: in Daytona. This was the best shot she had at
• 36:55
  Speaker 6: winning because she did have at least a defense.
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: The proper serves of the Department of Corrections of the
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: State of Florida, and by him safely kept until by
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: Warren of the Governor of the State of Florida, you
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: Aileen and Carol Warnas be electrocuted until you are dead.
• 37:12
  Speaker 6: And the jury came back guilty, and then Judge Blount
• 37:16
  Speaker 6: put her into the death chamber. At that point I
• 37:22
  Speaker 6: had just about met her, and she said, well, how
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: many times can they kill me?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: At one point, Lee befriends an eccentric ranch owner who
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: legally adopts Werno's in order to allow visitation. Steve Glazer
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: is the one who facilitates the unconventional adoption, but after
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: receiving six death sentences, Lee drops all her appeals. She
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: offers a final confession, and she actively pressures the state
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: of Florida to execute her.
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: She said to me, Steve, could you help me? And
• 37:58
  Speaker 6: I asked her what, and she said, I want to
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: get to the electric chair as soon as possible.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Glazer himself becomes part of the spectacle, especially after appearing
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: in the HBO Nick Broomfield documentary Eileen Warnos, The Selling
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: of a Serial Killer.
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: I was kind of dragged through the mud for what
• 38:17
  Speaker 6: I did with her. You don't know me. I look
• 38:19
  Speaker 6: like in the bottom of the barrel.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Eileen Warnos was executed by lethal injection on October ninth,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: two thousand and two, at the Florida State Prison. She
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: was forty six years old at the time of her death.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Lee Warnos wasn't a myth or a monster born in isolation.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: She wasn't absolved by her trauma, but she was shaped
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: by it. She understood right from wrong. She was responsible,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: and she was profoundly damaged long before she ever picked.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Up a gun.
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: Everybody that was like her father's slash grandfather, she killed them.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Lee's story isn't about accusing what she did. It's about
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: asking how someone this broken moved through the world for
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: decades without meaningful intervention. By the time the state finally acted.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: There was nothing left to save.
• 39:13
  Speaker 7: They could have stopped it when she got pregnant at fourteen,
• 39:16
  Speaker 7: They could have stopped it.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: When she ran away. They could have stopped it. When
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: she got arrested from robbery in the eighties, they could
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: have stopped I mean, oh, there's.
• 39:23
  Speaker 7: So many checkpoints that that every authority, government agency, responsible
• 39:32
  Speaker 7: person in her life just blew right through. And then
• 39:36
  Speaker 7: inevitably she just resorted to violence to survive.
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: You know, correct it, You nailed it, and nobody cared
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: about her, and nobody.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Cared about journey exactly right, Yeah.
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: No one cared about her, so the checkpoints were ignored.
• 39:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 40:00
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• 40:45
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