Killer Women (15 page)

Wet Willie’s was the kind of bar you never went into alone.

The shoebox-sized saloon was filled with
denim-clad
drifters and hard nosed bikers with no place to go.

They were the type of people who would ‘bust your head open for a buck,’ according to regular Dick Mills.

Night after night the same crowd of no-hopers would fill the cramped bar playing pool, drinking beer and raising hell. It was the sort of place you read about, but tried to avoid. A room full of renegades existing on incredibly short fuses.

It was situated slap bang in the centre of Daytona’s most notorious red light district. The Florida city made famous by the one of the world’s most dangerous motor cycle circuits, was a haven for bikers of every race, creed and religion. But, unlike the immensely wealthy speed heroes of the track, most of these enthusiasts had little to offer other than a passion for their machines.

The Daytona race was held just once a year – but these people lived their entire existence in the
beachside
city.

Many of them scraped a living out of manual labour. Others just gave up hope and survived by sleeping rough and stealing a meal every now and again.

Dick Mills was a stocky sort of guy with lots of tatoos up each arm. He was different to most of the crowd. He had tried desperately to get out of the vicious circle of violence and excessive boozing by marrying Connie - a local girl with a good background.

Dick had been through a hell of lot in his life.

A Vietnam Vet, he witnessed the horrors of war
first hand. It was a time that haunted him still, made worse by the realization that the awful carnage he’d seen in South-East Asia was also happening much closer to home. Murders. Rapes. Muggings. They were all everyday occurances in Daytona.

Dick’s first marriage had failed miserably, because he had got caught inside that short-sighted bikers’ world. Now he was trying to make amends and start again with a new wife and, he had hoped, a new life.

Connie seemed the perfect kind of girl for Dick. He was gone 40 now and knew he wouldn’t have many more opportunities to find happiness. When they married in the summer of 1990, it really had seemed the perfect match. But, just four months later, Dick was wondering what had gone wrong. He had dropped his biker image. She wanted them to settle down. Be responsible. Lead a careful life.

It didn’t last. There were too many temptations around for Dick to handle.

Connie had kicked him out because the arguments seemed never ending. They rowed about the dishes, the TV, the money. You name it, they battled over it. It all proved too much for either of them to stand.

Now his life was back where it had started. No future. No job. No money.

He slouched into Wet Willie’s to drown his sorrows. It was Christmas, 1990. For Dick, that was
simply an excuse to get drunk.

Country music blared out from the bar’s jukebox in the corner. Two bikers dressed in oil stained denims played a round of pool at a furious rate – spurred on by alcohol and a need to act macho. Three Hell’s Angels talked about engine bearings and the inner workings of their Harley Davidsons. Every now and again, prostitutes with hard, gaudy faces walked into the bar, cast a glance at any lonely looking men and then ‘home in’ to do business. For these girls, it was a damn sight more pleasant inside Wet Willie’s than cruising the sidewalks of nearby North Ridgewood Avenue. There, the girls were often raped or attacked after plying for trade with a motorist – who just happened to want to make a woman suffer. They all dressed in either skin tight jeans and stilettos or pencil thin skirts, often made out of slinky leather or rubber. It was a uniform really. They had to attract the eye of every passing male and the glistening shininess of their outfits spelt the message out loud and clear. An advertisement that read: ‘I am for sale. Why not buy me?’ Then, as a curb crawling driver slowed down to inspect the goods, they would make eye contact. Nine times out of ten that would guarantee success.

Dick Mills wasn’t interested in paying for sex that night. For one thing he was skint. And, more importantly, his mind was on other things. His
disastrous marriage. His failure in life. His failure as a man.

As he supped at a can of ice cold beer, he was only just aware of the music being played. If a woman had come up and sat right next to him at that moment, be probably wouldn’t even have looked up.

He eventually awoke from his problems when one of his all time favourite country songs broke through his stupor. Johnny Paycheck’s ‘Take This Job And Shove It’ had a certain aptness to his own current situation. It brought a wry smile to his face.

He swivelled round on his bar stool towards the jukebox. Dick wanted to see if a real soulmate had put the record on. He was starting to feel sociable again.

There, sitting next to the jukebox, was a blonde woman, all alone.

It was the first time Dick had noticed anyone the entire evening. But then he could not help seeing this particular girl.

She was crying and singing to the droning music all at the same time. She looked up and smiled briefly at Dick.

He smiled back – immediately attracted by her face and her grief.

He examined her for a moment. Even amongst the bikers and the prostitutes, her outfit seemed sexually charged. She was wearing a black leather,
tightfitting, all-in-one motorcycle jumpsuit. It had a red stripe down each side, showing up the contours of her body as she sat down at a table on her own.

Aileen Wuornos was heartbroken. She had also just split up with a lover. They had enjoyed such passion together. But now all that was gone.

Every time she thought of the outrageous sex, it made her cry because they would never enjoy each other again. They had parted, split up for good. Now, she realised just how much she needed her lover. She’d been the dominating one, but they both got the same pleasure out of their relationship. If only she had appreciated that at the time.

But then love between two women is often more powerful and possessive than any heterosexual affair.

Dick was perturbed. He had come into Wet Willie’s to forget his troubles, not pick up a woman. But the alcohol had gradually begun to ease the pain and now he felt the sort of urges that had nothing whatsoever to do with a broken heart.

He watched the woman by the jukebox closely.

And she knew he was watching her.

As her tears began to subside, she too started to feel something. It was the need to be loved by
someone
. Anyone. It didn’t really matter who.

However, Dick was a shy sort of bloke underneath and he couldn’t conjure up the courage to even ask this girl if she wanted a beer. He kept
getting up off his stool and then sitting down again – unsure how to make the initial approach.

She was gyrating her body to the music now. Slightly rocking in her seat. Squeezing those leather clad thighs together. Thinking of Tyria Moore, her beautiful blonde lover. Remembering those glorious, hot days when they would spend 24 hours in bed together exploring each other’s bodies.

They tried everything together. It was a never ending world of sexual experimentation. And Tyria never objected. She just wanted to please Aileen all of the time.

Dick couldn’t help noticing her gyrations. It was quite exhilarating to watch. This girl had real rhythm. She must be one hell of woman, thought Dick.

At the fifth attempt to move towards her, he actually got up and began the short walk to the table, where she was sitting. He was nervous. He did not like rejection. Even though he was there alone, he found it embarrassing.

Aileen was howling to the music and swigging back bottles of beer at an alarming rate. People in the bar had noticed her all right. But they just looked away, bemused. The sight of a lone woman getting drunk was unusual even in Wet Willie’s.

All Dick could see in the dimly lit bar was the slinkiness of her leather suit in the lamplight. He was
just a few feet from her when he heard the leather stretch and rub against the plastic seat as she moved in the chair. It was an exciting sound. As he approached the table, he still did not think he could bring himself to talk to her.

‘You got a car?’ Aileen broke the silence between them. It was a relief to Dick. She had made the first move. Now he felt the confidence to press further.

‘Yep. Sure do.’

As he stood by the table next to the jukebox, the music was now loud enough to trigger nosebleeds in the car park outside.

Finally, he sat down opposite her. She smiled wearily. But at least she did not tell him to get lost.

‘You wanna lift someplace?’

Dick looked at the zip fastener at the front of her leather outfit. It was undone just enough to show a hint of her breasts, which were squeezed tightly against the hide.

‘Hi. My name’s Lee Green. What’s yours?’ said Aileen.

Her real name was just one of many deep and dark secrets she would always keep from Dick.

Within minutes, he had agreed to give her a ride to the Greyhound Bus Station in Daytona. It was the place where Aileen kept her belongings including a well-used pistol.

As they walked out to the car park, Dick’s mind
was only on her body, so distinctly outlined by the tightfitting black leather outfit. Even when she abruptly refused his offer to open the car’s passenger door for her, he thought nothing of it. She was just some women’s libber – not a deadly man hater, he thought.

They drove along North Ridgewood Avenue, past the hookers and the drug dealers on every corner. At one point, while they waited for the lights to change, a tall, black prostitute beckoned to them.

Dick noticed how Aileen stared at the street walker, intensely examining her mini-skirted body. She seemed to know her. But then again maybe not. As they moved off, Aileen turned and watched the girl disappear behind them. Dick didn’t think much of it. Just another hooker, he presumed.

Aileen’s interest had, of course, been sexual. When she saw that girl’s shapely body it had, momentarily, awoken her animal instincts once more. She remembered why she had always preferred women to men. Their bodies were so much more interesting.

Aileen was relieved to get a lift – even from a man. But the fact remained that men had ruined her life a long time before…

It had all begun when she was still in her cradle, 33 years earlier in Rochester, Michigan.

Her mother Diane could not cope with baby
Aileen and brother Keith, so she turned them over to her parents for adoption and disappeared. The reason she ran away was simple – her husband had a terrifying temper and used to beat her regularly. Later Leo Pittman’s psychopathic tendencies resulted in the sex abuse of one child and the suspected murder of another. Aileen’s mother was well rid of that evil man.

The next man to ruin Aileen’s life was a brutal teenager, who made her pregnant at just 13. He raped her and then denied being the father. Aileen’s
grandparents
swept the entire episode under the carpet and packed her off to a home for unwed mothers, where the baby was born and then taken away.

When Aileen ran away at 14, it was no surprise that she ended up supporting herself as a prostitute. With no home and no family to turn to, she had been living under the shadow of death since the day she was born. Men were the root of all evil as far as Aileen Wuornos was concerned.

Now she was accepting a lift from a strange man in the middle of a dangerous town. She would never learn.

‘Pull over. Pull over now.’

The police car megaphone was loud and clear. The patrol car alongside Dick and Aileen was stopping them for a traffic violation, or so Dick presumed.

Aileen was scared. Her fear of cops had steadily increased during the previous 12 months to the point of paranoia. She had a lot to hide. And she wasn’t going to stop running now. She wanted to get away.

She felt the cold steel of the pistol inside her
overnight
bag. In some ways she hoped she would have to use it. Then the end might come more quickly.

Her breathing was uneven now. Aileen was nervous. She watched as the two officers walked around to Dick.

‘Tell them to fuck their asses,’ she hissed.

Dick thought a more cautious approach might be wiser. He had enough problems at that moment. He didn’t want any trouble with the cops.

‘Hey. Fuck off cops. Leave us alone.’

Aileen couldn’t control herself. She had to get the first words in.

She gripped the pistol hard in her hand as she spoke. But it was still hidden from view inside that bag.

Dick was taken aback. What the hell was she playing at. It was as if she wanted to get them arrested. Why was she doing this?

‘Shut the fuck up will you?’ he retorted.

Dick was adamant. Aileen turned her head away in fury. No man could tell her to shut up. Men were nothing. They were scuzzbags. They used women and then discarded them like old packets of
cigarettes.

They had no right.

Dick somehow managed to smooth over the cops but he was stunned by her aggressive nature.

‘She went wild at the sight of them. Completely crazy. I just didn’t understand it at the time,’ he said later.

But it was only one of the many warnings signs that were to follow.

‘Just drive around for a while.’

Aileen recovered her composure. They had only been making a random licence check – nothing more.

Perhaps she wished it had been something more, then she could have fired at them. They would have fired back and maybe, it would have been the end. Then she could have confessed her sins.

Instead, she had Dick to talk to. He seemed all right, for a man.

They soon discovered their mutual bond – the pain and anguish of broken relationships.

‘We’re both in the pits of hell. You’re blown out over your broken love affair with Ty. I’m blown out over wanting Connie back. We’re both manic depressives. Insane in a way,’ Dick told her.

He was absolutely right of course. But Aileen didn’t want to tell him how correct he really was.