Five Women Serial Killer Profiles (11 page)

Stephen Glazer further admitted that he told Aileen Wuornos that all she had to do if she wished to appeal was point out that he
, Glazer, had a conflict of interest while representing her as he negotiated cash payments for media interviews while Aileen’s' case was major news.

During, this trial, many of Aileen’s childhood friends and acquaintances from Troy were called to give evidence about her childhood in an attempt to have her removed from death row
; Evidence and mitigating circumstances that should rightly have happened in her first trial, along with the evidence of Richard Mallory’s violent, sexual history. Some of the men, who had hung around with Aileen in “the pits” as boys, testified albeit uncomfortably, how they had used her for sex and had been cruel to her; others testified how her grandfather had savagely beat her with a black belt. Aileen, in an extraordinary move that effectively sabotaged her own defense, attempted to get their evidence banned.

Their testimony was ignored and, unbelievably
, Steven Glazer was found to be competent as a lawyer. Judge Cobb said, in his summing up, that Aileen Wuornos' happiness with her odd choice for a defense attorney in Stephen Glazer was of no concern to the court.

In 2001,
at the age of forty-five, Aileen was still languishing in a Florida death row cell when she requested the Florida Supreme Court for permission to fire her lawyers and drop all future appeals. Aileen had simply had enough, feeling that her life on death row was worse than death itself and wanted to die.

Aileen wrote to the Florida Supreme Court
, “I killed those men and robbed them cold as ice and would gladly do it again. I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again."

In a Court hearing in Daytona Beach in April
of 2001 to decide if she should be allowed to take this step, Aileen testified while crying and grabbing tissue after tissue.

"I am a serial killer. I would kill again
," and, "If I have to spend life in prison, I will kill. I will kill again." She wanted, she said, no more "legal jabberwocky."

A defense lawyer argued that Aileen was in no state for the court to honor her request. Aileen responded by saying, “I am so sick of hearing this 'she's crazy' stuff. I've been evaluated so many times. I'm competent, sane, and I'm trying to tell the truth. I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again. Let’s cut to the chase and get on with an execution. I have hate crawling through my system. Taxpayers' money has been squandered, and the families have suffered enough."

The Florida Supreme Court, after a psychiatric evaluation, agreed to allow her to fire her lawyers and drop all appeals.

Execution

Billy Nolas, a lawyer who helped defend Aileen in 1992 in her first trial, described Aileen as "the most disturbed individual I have represented." He said, “She suffered from borderline personality disorder caused by sexual abuse and neglect as a child. As she has gotten older and older, she has gotten worse and worse." Billy Nolas believed Aileen was too mentally ill to comprehend what dropping her appeals and seeking death would mean.

Meanwhile, Aileen was mentally disintegrating even more. Always paranoid, she now believed the prison employees were conspiring to torture her and force her to suicide.

In July of 2002, Aileen appeared dressed in dark green prison overalls, handcuffed and shackled in Broward Circuit Court complaining of abuse by prison guards at the Broward Correctional Institution in Pembroke Pines. She had written a 25-page report detailing her abuse. Her serious allegations included staff members threatening to rape her and some guards putting dirt, spit, and urine in her food.

Aileen also complained of having handcuffs put on so tightly they bruised her wrists, having her cell door kicked by guards, strip searches, low water pressure so she was unable to shower, mildew on her mattress
, cat calling, and general, pure hatred directed towards her.

Aileen with her lawyer Raag Singhal

The Fort Lauderdale lawyer, Raag Singhal, appointed to represent Aileen in her abuse complaint told the court
, "What she is saying is, `I'm a volunteer. I want to be executed. If you can't execute me today than ensure that I am treated fairly until I am put to death.'"

Raag Singhal said he was worried Aileen was volunteering for death just to escape the mistreatment.

Outside the court Raag Singhal, when asked by reporters if he thought Aileen was competent, suggested that Aileen’s competency might arise again if the judge rejected her claims of prison abuse.

"If the allegations don't have any truth to them, Aileen's clearly delusional," he said. "She believes what she's written."

He later wrote a letter to the Florida Supreme Court expressing "grave doubts" about Aileen’s mental condition. A member of a Florida Support Group, Dianne Abshire, which gives emotional support to death row inmates in Florida, said Aileen was clearly insane.

The then Governor of Florida
, Jeb Bush, issued a stay of execution and ordered another psychiatric evaluation of Aileen. He then lifted it after three psychiatrists concluded after interviewing Aileen for fifteen minutes that she was mentally competent enough to be executed.

In the final count down to Aileen’s execution, the biker bar the Last Resort, where Aileen spent her last night of freedom
, had tourists, news crews, and filmmakers visit from around the world. The bar sold black T-shirts with a photo of Aileen and the words, "On a Killing Day." The bar had also adopted a new logo, “Cold Beer and Killer Women."

Aileen, just days before her execution, gave her final media interview to British producer Nick Broomfield, to whom she appeared fond. In the interview, she claimed that her mind was being tortured, and her head crushed by "sonic pressure weapons", as well as other abuses that she said would progressively get worse each time she complained. She also said, “You sabotaged my ass! Society, and the cops, and the system! A raped woman got executed and was used for books and movies and shit!" Her final words in the on-camera interview were "Thanks a lot, society, for railroading my ass."

When Aileen thought the cameras were switched off, she told Nick Broomfield that the murders were, in fact, self-defense, but she could no longer tolerate being on death row.

Later outside the prison, Nick Broomfield said, "My conclusion from the interview is we are executing someone who is mad. Here is someone who has totally lost her mind. She trusts nobody and is stark raving mad. She is multiple people. Every time I met her, she was a different person."

Aileen a couple of day’s before her execution.

It is possible to watch the interview on YouTube and after watching it, virtually impossible to conclude that Aileen was sane. After viewing it, I wondered what one would have to do or say to be found insane!

Dawn Botkins was the last person to visit Aileen before her execution. On leaving her, as the guard opened the door, she said she could not look back as she heard Aileen call to her, “I love you Dawn. See you on the other side.”

Dawn Botkins

Stephen Glazer, who virtually propelled Aileen to her execution when asked by reporters if he was attending the execution, said he had to be in court that day. He then sung, “Oh-ba-di, Oh-ba-da, Oh-ba-ba-di, life goes on,” and chortled with laughter. Then, as an afterthought, told the journalists they could quote him.

Arlene Pralle, her adopted mother, didn’t even know her daughter
’s execution date.

For her execution, Aileen asked to be dressed in a black Harley Davidson T-shirt with wings on it
, as she believed she had earned her wings, a pair of jeans, boots, and a military belt.

On the day of the execution, she refused the BBQ dinner offered to her along with any religious counsel.

Death Row Chamber

Aileen was allowed to choose lethal injection over the electric chair and was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, Florida on October 9
th
, 2002. Thirty-two witnesses watched as an executioner injected deadly chemicals into her body. Her last words to the world were; "Yes, I would just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back, like
Independence Day
with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I'll be back, I'll be back."

Following her execution, Aileen’s body was cremated. Her ashes were taken by Dawn Botkins, her old school friend and closest friend in her final years and who had spent some of Aileen’s last hours with her on death row, to her native Michigan and spread her ashes beneath a Walnut tree that Dawn had planted in memory of Aileen. Thank God, for the likes of Dawn, who out of sheer humanity, reached out to Aileen in her years of isolation on Death Row.

Aileen’s life was made into a film
Monster
(2003) which starred Charlize Thereon and Christina Ricci. The film grossed over $30 million in its first year.

In researching Aileen’s life, I found it impossible not to feel sorry for her. She had been let down by her mother, her grandparents, social services, and virtually everyone she had ever come into contact with. I do not believe she was given a fair trial and that the legal system and society in general completely let her down. I believe that it is highly likely that Aileen, certainly in Richard Mallory’s case, killed in self-defense and that the United States government unjustly murdered an ill, vulnerable, innocent woman.

Aileen was clearly a highly unbalanced character, yet even when she was imprisoned, people continued to abuse her by trying to profit from her disturbed life. To my mind, Aileen’s case demonstrates serious flaws in the criminal justice system, the inhumanity of the death penalty, and the lack of protection for vulnerable members of society.

May Aileen, and the men she shot rest in peace.