September 8, 2022 • 46 mins
This week, Rasha and Yvette discuss the complex case of Aileen Wuornos, perhaps the most famous female serial killer in history. Wuornos was subject to a life of abuse, and many believe that led her down a deadly path. But how do you weigh that abuse against seven murders?
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
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(00:27):
Hello everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot TV
and I Heart Radio. We are your host. I'm Rasha
Peccarero and I Amy Vegentel and here is always with
our amazing producer Trevor Young. Hey there, how's it Gollo?
Hi Trevor, Oh my god. Okay, So I have to
(00:48):
tell you two about what I hope pray beg for
the two of you and all of our listeners to
binge watch immediately. And again we are not sponsored, but
if if you want to sponsor us, please tell us
Amazon Prime. But a league of their own, the reimagined
(01:09):
series from creator Abby Jacobson, and she's also one of
the stars in it, she's the co creator. But it's
so incredible. I have to tell you a little bit
about this series and why. Of course, as the card
holding lesbian that I am. Of course I want to watch,
you know, the reimagining of a baseball you know, female
(01:30):
baseball players baseball show. But there's two reasons that I
want all of our listeners and for the two of
you to watch it. One In in Penny Marshall's original
movie in the nineties, she only alluded to the fact
that there were African American women that played baseball during
that time, right, but they weren't allowed to play in
the all American you know, girls professional baseball League, which
(01:54):
is what this series is based on. It took place,
I believe in three she like did like a little
odd to it, just like one scene, but she didn't
allude at all to the queer scene of that time.
And in the new series they allude, not only allude,
they slap you in the face with it beautifully. They
bring in beautiful characters and people of color and it's
(02:19):
absolutely brilliantly incredible, laughing, crying, all the things. So please, please, please,
please please please watch it. Absolutely And what did you say?
It was on again? Amazon? No, Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime. Okay, yeah,
I can't wait to watch. It's so interesting that you
say that, because I was just on a plane to
New York and I just watched for the first time
(02:39):
forty two Chadwick Boseman, and you know, the story about
Jackie Robinson, and that was amazing and just to think
about you know what, you know, Jackie endured during that time,
and I could imagine the same for those those women
back then. I mean you had to be fierce, you know,
(03:01):
just the insults and the hate that was being thrown
out there. So yeah, I can't wait to watch that.
But forty two is amazing as well. Yea already. Well, Trevor,
will you please take us through today's case, but now
a story of unnatural violence, the case and confessions of
(03:23):
a female serial killer. She was tired of being in
the spotlight. She was tired of reporters and police and lawyers,
everyone making a career off of her. There are many
people who were abused, his children, who were raped. They
don't pick up a gun and kill No. I wasn't
born bad. You guys got it same time. Tell you
(03:45):
me and they lie. They lied so bad to you all.
Eileen Warnos was a Florida based serial killer who murdered
seven men between ninety nine in n Eileen had a
troubled upbringing. At the age of four, she was abandoned
by her parents and adopted by her maternal grandparents. Her
(04:06):
grandparents were alcoholics and known to be abusive, both verbally
and sexually. At age eleven, Eileen reportedly engaged in sexual
activity at school for drugs and cigarettes, and at age fifteen,
she was thrown out of the house by her grandfather.
She survived through sex work and frequently got into trouble
(04:26):
with the law. Then, in November of nineteen nine, she
committed her first murder. According to Eileen, she shot the
man because he had raped her. Over the next year,
she would kill six more men in a similar fashion.
Eileen was eventually captured and sentenced to death for the murders,
and in October of two thousand two, she died by
(04:49):
lethal injection. The following year, a biographical film called Monster premiered,
which revealed a new layer to Eileen, depicting her not
just as a killer but also was a victim of
the circumstances in which she was brought up. And so
who was Eileen warnos? What drove her to murder seven men?
(05:09):
And to what degree was she just as much a
victim as the people she killed. This is such an
incredibly wild story. I mean, I think the case of
Eileen Warnos is so important because it really brings up
a question of who the victim really is in a
(05:30):
case like this. Right, Like, everyone, I believe during that
time was so quick to think that Eileen was this
man hating, lesbian, cold blooded killer who went on this
murder spree, right, But in reality, let's face it, she was,
I believe, truly a victim herself. Of course the people
(05:52):
that she took the lives of we're victims as well.
But I think that both can be true, and I
think not enough people actually talk about that exactly. But
you know, there is no denying that she she was
a killer. But however, she also lived a life of
abuse and neglect. Eileen was a woman who was mistreated
(06:14):
from the very first day, like I mean, all the
way until the end of her life. She was born
into a violent lifestyle where she literally had to fight
to survive. Yeah, but you know, like you said, she
also murdered at least seven men. And no matter what
(06:36):
we say today, it's an incredibly complicated case. People are
on both sides in the middle all over the place.
But you know, we're going to dig into all the
sides today. And one quick note before we get going.
One of the accounts of Eileen Woronos's life that sheds
so much light on her victimhood is then Nominal, sometimes
(07:02):
hard to watch because it's so intense, but the phenomenal
film Two thousand Threes Monster. It is an absolutely incredible
film that truly captures who Eileen was as a person
and as a human being. And the director of that
(07:22):
film is the great, the most phenomenal, one of the
most phenomenal humans I've ever met in my entire life,
Patty Jenkins. And Patty is going to be joining us
for an interview on the next episode of Facing Evil. Yes,
we are so excited to talk to Patty. And for
those who don't know, Patty is our Ohannah. She is
(07:44):
the one who brought our mother's life story to Fruition
and we have always wanted to talk to her about Eileen.
Warren knows, so definitely, you must, you must look out
for this episode. Absolutely, Lee, It's going to be incredibly fantastic.
And even though we've known Patty for years, we've never
(08:05):
talked to her about Eileen, so With that said, stay
tuned for that. But we're going to start talking about
Eileen right now, and let's learn about Eileen's early life. Yeah.
So Eileen was born in Rochester, Michigan, on February of
nineteen fifty six, and her mother, Diane, was only sixteen
(08:26):
at the time of giving birth to Eileen. Her father
was Leo Pittman, and he was nineteen at the time
of her birth, so her parents had been married when
Diane was only fourteen, which is kind of wild. They
also had a son named Keith, who was born before Eileen. Yeah,
so Diane was super young when she was having kids.
(08:48):
But the couple divorced two months before Eileen was even born,
So this was already kind of a tumultuous situation, potentially
a recipe for disaster. And Leo was supposedly a pretty
trouble old guy. Reportedly he had issues with alcohol. So
as you can imagine Diane as a teenager, you know,
just aged sixteen, wasn't really prepared to deal with children
(09:11):
and an alcoholic husband. So they divorced, and then she
was just kind of all alone with these kids. Yeah,
and then Diane actually she abandoned both of her children.
There's this one story where Diane left Eileen and Keith
with a babysitter for one night, and then she called
(09:32):
later to say that she wouldn't come back. Can you imagine.
Can you guys imagine being the babysitter on the other
line and you have two kids and the parents says,
I'm not coming back. I'm surprised she called it all
that's just wild. But eventually Eileen and her brother were
adopted by Diane's parents. Yeah, I mean, so both of
(09:54):
her grandparents where she now lived, they were both incredibly abusive.
They were also both alcoholics. Diane warnos. Eileen's mom would
say that both of her parents were very verbally abusive
to her and to Eileen, and Eileen would also say
that her grandfather at some point sexually assaulted her. So
she never had a chance. No, Yeah, I mean, she's
(10:17):
a kid, and she's already dealing with all those right Sadly,
you know, it started to catch up with her and
at the tender young age of eleven, you know, she
reportedly started having sex with her classmates in exchange for food, drugs,
and cigarettes. So she basically became a sex worker at
the age of eleven. It's all heartbreaking and just horrible,
(10:41):
you know. Eileen also struggled with behavioral problems, everything ranging
from truancy, not going to school, two fights at school.
She was also diagnosed with different disabilities, and that had
to have had a huge impact on all of the
other issues and factoring middle school, Eileen was diagnosed with
(11:02):
hearing and visual problems and they tested her i Q
and she only scored one, which is technically considered borderline
intellectual functioning. And basically, so many things were stacked up
against Eileen. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't
know about that. Oh, I don't think so. I remember
(11:23):
there's a story that one of the school officials spoke
to her grandparents and they were urging her to get
her special counseling, but her grandmother refused to provide any treatment.
They were asking or telling I should say, you know,
can you help you know your granddaughter? And they said no.
(11:45):
And so the school went as far as to give
Eileen a mild tranquilizer. But and I guess is that
normal for like back then where they gave kids tranquilizers.
I don't know, but definitely not. I don't think you'd
get away with that today but definitely not today. But
that didn't work either. I mean, she was clearly showing
(12:05):
problems and nobody was helping her. Yeah. So anyways, there
are some other unfortunate things that happened. Um In nineteen
seventy Eileen is reportedly raped by a friend of her grandfather's,
so this is a much older man, and at the
age of fourteen, as a result of this, Eileen became pregnant.
(12:29):
So during her pregnancy she was actually sent to a
home for unwed mothers. And then on March one of
nineteen seventy one, Eileen gave birth to a son, and
that child was placed up for adoption, and Eileen then
dropped out of school entirely. I don't think we know
who that son is or what happened to them, and
(12:51):
I don't think Eileen ever met them. I don't believe
either we can you imagine, Yeah, they're getting sexually assaulted
like that and then having to deal with that at fourteen,
and she was sent to an unwed mother's home. And
you know, we've heard that story before because our our
own grandmother, that's our mother's story, our grandmother Tomorrow Hodel
was sent to an unwed mother's home when she got
(13:12):
pregnant with our mother at the age of fifteen. She
was actually fourteen, she was fourteen, gave birth at fifteen. Yeah,
that's a really interesting parallel. Yeah, I think that's what
they did during that time, right, although this was this
was vent one, but when it happened to tomorrow it
was twenty years earlier, so in ninete. But yeah, So
(13:33):
the idea of being there is that like when women,
you know, something shameful happens to them or something like that,
that you just kind of shuffle them off and like
hide them away until they have the baby and then
they get placed up for aduction. Yeah. And so later
that very same year, in nineteen seventy one, Eileen's grandmother
died of liver failure and then her grandfather kicked Eileen out,
(13:57):
so she was left to fend for herself at the
age of fifteen, and she took up sex orc to survive.
She even lived in the woods. Yeah. Yeah, she just
went back to what she'd been doing from the time
she was eleven. And according to the Tampa Bay Times
here and this is a quote, at fifteen, Eileen was
left to fend for herself. She spent nights sleeping and
(14:18):
abandoned cars or seeking the refuge of homes in the area.
Family and neighbors told investigators that's like, you know, when
you think about that, like they just left her out
to be a wild animal. Anyhow, Eileen left Michigan, and
rightfully so. But she sort of becomes a vagabond, like
she's traveling and she's hitchhiking across the country. We know that.
(14:43):
On May nineteen seventy four, Eileen was arrested in Colorado
for a d UI and she was also arrested for
disorderly conduct for firing a pistol out of a moving car.
And so she was then charged with a oh you're
too appear in court. So obviously she never showed up
(15:03):
for that. Right, So, she's, you know, hitchhiking across country.
She's handling guns and getting into trouble with the law.
I mean this this all just seems like a bad
situation getting worse, right, Yeah, things are definitely starting to
spiral at this point. Um And eventually she makes her
way down all the way to Florida. And this is
(15:28):
where really most of the story takes place. This is
where Eileen lives when she eventually murders seven men, and
we'll get into that right after we take a quick break.
So I want to point out a few more notable
things that happened with Eileen before her murdering spree begins. First,
(15:50):
in ninety six, she met and married a sixty nine
year old man named Louis grats Fell. During their marriage,
Eileen beat Louis with his very own cane, and Lewis
ended up getting a divorce from my Leen and even
took out a restraining order against her. And he would
be quoted as saying Ornos has a violent and ungovernable
(16:14):
temper and threatened to do bodily harm end quote. What
do we think about this? It's weird. I mean, this
marriage clearly doesn't last very long for a good reason.
Is I guess the first case we have of Eileen
being incredibly violent, you know, especially to somebody she's I
(16:35):
supposedly romantically involved with. I wonder how much of that
was just survival, right, Yeah? And you know, things proceeded
to go even more downhill from there, and in nineteen,
at the age of twenty two, Eileen attempted suicide by
shooting herself in the stomach. And that wasn't even her
(16:56):
first suicide attempt. I think it was her sixth suicide
attempt and her first time that she had tried to
kill herself. She was only fourteen years old. Yeah, and
then at that point it was just seemingly crime after
crime that she was caught for throughout the years. Just
a couple of notable examples. She robbed a convenience store,
in she tried to cash forwards checks at a bank.
(17:19):
She was also arrested in Miami in six for car
theft and for resisting arrest. And then also that year
she robbed a mand at gunpoint, demanding two So this
is unfortunately Eileen's life. Now it seems like, well it's
been that way forever. It feels like, yeah, exactly, She's
like now she's resorting to violence, right, crime and violence. Yeah, Yeah,
(17:42):
it's definitely gone to the next step. Yeah, And everything
is spiraling out of control with her, right. But then
she meets someone who is very, very important in this story.
She meets a hotel maid named Tyra Moore. And for
anyone who had didn't seen Monster, she is portrayed by
(18:03):
the great Christina Ricci. And this character that Christina Ricci plays.
Her name is Selby in the movie, in the movie Monster.
But this is really the beginning of a love story.
When she meets Tyra. I mean, I don't know, but
it might have been the only like glimmer of light
in Eileen's life, and the two of them, you know,
(18:27):
begin a very enduring but very tumultuous and difficult relationship.
And Eileen was thirty and Tyra was twenty four years
old at this point. They moved in together not long
after meeting, like the typical lesbians. I can joke about
that because hello, we do that with you haul really fast.
(18:47):
So they of course, you know, we're living together. And
the only way that Eileen could support Tyra was by
doing sex work, and that's how they survived. You know.
I'm I'm sure this was hard on them as a couple,
but to be honest, I'm I'm just glad that Eileen
had Tira for however brief a time. As you alluded to.
(19:11):
Though Russia, this doesn't last very long because in nine
the murders begin, and let's go through them in order
rather quickly. So on November, a fifty one year old
man named Richard Charles Mallory picked up Eileen in his
car and supposedly this is for Eileen to provide him
(19:32):
with sexual services. So Eileen would claim that Mallory tied
her to the steering wheel of his car and raped her.
And then after this assault, she pulls out her gun
and shoots him multiple times. So two of those shots
punctured his left lung, killing him. Eileen then dumped his
body in the woods nearby. The police wouldn't discover the
(19:54):
body until December, a few weeks later, And this is
officially eileen first killing. Yeah, I want to say that
Eileen did this first one in self defense, But as
much as I want to defend Eileen for everything that
she's been through, this happens six more times, not once,
(20:15):
not twice, six more times, and we only have her account, right, like,
we don't have anybody else to the story up or
say that something else happened, you know. So yeah, just
Silene's testimony, right, just Eileen's recollections of this. So on
June one, police discovered the naked body of forty seven
(20:36):
year old David Andrew Spears, who had also been shot
to death, and just a few days later, on June six,
they found the body of forty year old Charles Edmund
Cark Sadon wrapped in an electric blanket. In both of
these cases, investigators determined that they had been killed with
(20:57):
the twenty two caliber gun. Eileen was later spotted driving
Carskanon's car, and she had also pawned a gun that
was in his name. Crazy. It just seems like she's
not covering any tracks. I mean, I don't think she
really had any concept of covering her tracks, you know.
I think she was just in these very probably desperate
situations and just reacted. I mean that said, like she
(21:20):
could have had the I don't know, the thought to
throw evidence away. Maybe not like drive that person's car around.
I don't know. So anyways, the next victim is Peter
Abraham Seams, and on July four, police find his car,
but they never find his body. To this day, they've
actually never found his body, but Eileen and Tyra had
(21:43):
been spotted leaving his car a few days earlier, and
they also find Aileen's handprint on the inside door handle,
again not thinking. She probably wasn't even thinking about it.
She was just trying to survive China. Oh my god,
I just killed another person. What do I do next?
I mean, I don't know I'm to kill her. I
don't know what her mind was like, but yeah, I'm
just thinking about what you were just saying. And you
(22:04):
know she had to you know, in the moment, of course,
you're not thinking about that, in the hype of doing
all the things that she's done. But eventually she has
to know that it's going to catch up to her, right, right,
you would think. So, I think this is where it
was a pivotal point in where everything changed for Eileen.
(22:26):
And this is depicted so beautifully in the movie Monster
by Patty Jenkins, and you're just like riveted. You're like,
what is going on? So a witness actually sees Eileen
and Tyra in you know, Peter seems car and she
sees them get into a car accident and they don't
(22:48):
ask for help from her. They freak the f out
and take off. So this woman is like, what just happened?
And you see that in the scene in the movie,
and it actually happened in real life. So this witness
was able to give you full descriptions of Tyra and
Eileen to the authorities, and then basically I mean, we're
(23:09):
supposed to say man hunt, but the woman hunt began,
So I mean, yeah, exactly. Up until this point, there
was not really a big connection between all of these
different murders. Um, you know, I think they were sort
of figuring out what was going on eventually. But now
they're seeing like, oh, like these women are probably behind this,
They had the victim's car. You know, a lot of
(23:30):
things are lining up now. So a couple more murders
happened before they actually catch So the next victim is
fifty year old Troy Eugene Burths. He was found on
August four of that year. And victim number six is
Charles Richard Humphreys, who was found on September twelve. And
then the final victim was sixty two year old Walter
(23:52):
Gino Antonio and he was found on November nine. And
this is so it's now been a full year since
Eileen started killing. That's just so crazy, all of that
in one year. That's seven victims. Well, you know, it
(24:13):
doesn't take police very long to figure out that it
is Eileen that has been behind all of these murders,
and they do finally track her down, and as we said,
I mean Eileen wasn't covering her tracks very well for
that year of all of those murders, she was pawning
her you know, her victims belongings at pawn shops all
(24:35):
around Florida, and her fingerprints were actually found on one
of the pawn shop receipts. And then so once they
matched up that print that was on the pawn shop receipt,
authorities put out a warrant for her arrest, finally after
that year of her killing. Yeah, and of course at
this point it's just a matter of time, right, So finally,
(24:55):
on January nine, Eileen is arrest did at Last Resort,
which is a biker bar in Volucia, Florida. So technically
police arrested her for an outstanding warrant for something else.
She was under the assumption that the warrant was related
to one of the many fake names that she had
been using, going around using. She didn't think she was
(25:16):
getting arrested for murder. Okay, yeah, I mean, she had
no idea that investigators had linked her to these murders
at all, or that she was under suspicion for them
at all. So anyways, she's arrested, taken into custody, and
then we'll talk about what happens after we take another
quick break. So after the police arrest Eileen on January nine,
(25:42):
they find Tira the next day in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where
she I guess she was staying with her sister. They
don't charge her, but they do question her about Eileen's activities.
So I do want to read this quote from Crime Library.
Worry about what Tyra told them at that time. And
(26:02):
just side note here, Tyra always called Eileen Lee, so
she's going to be referring to Lee here in this quote.
She had known about the murder since Lee had come
home with Richard Mallory's Cadillac. She said. Lee had openly
confessed that she had killed a man that day, but
Moore told her not to say anything else. I told
(26:23):
her I didn't want to hear about it. She had
her suspicions, she admitted, but wanted to know as little
as possible about Lee's doings. The more she knew, she reasoned,
the more compelled she would feel to report Lee to
the authorities, and she didn't want to do that. I
was just scared, she said. She always said she'd never
heard me, but then you can't believe her, So I
(26:46):
don't know what she would have done. End quote. Mm hmm.
We do know, like Tyra genuinely loved Eileen, you know,
and I and she wanted to protect her, um, but
I don't know. Like at the same time, she's saying
that you can't believe her, but she's like, I don't know, right,
(27:10):
I'm not because she knows that she's killed people. Yeah,
I don't know if if Tyra really trust her or not. Yeah,
because you can love someone and not trust them. But
as the quote kind of says, she was wilfully ignoring
it or like trying not to believe it, right, which
is I think a thing that happens in relationships that
(27:33):
involve some sort of like dark behavior on one part
of the relationship. The other person in the relationship tends
to kind of like block it out of their head
and pretend it's not a problem, right, compartmentalize exactly. So
deep down Tyra knows, but she's trying to like push
it down, just move along and trust her. But deep
down knows that like Filing is probably not trustworthy. Probably
(27:57):
not that said police do convince Tired to speak with
Aileen on a recorded phone line, and they persuade her
to confess. In exchange for this, they offer Tira immunity
from prosecution. So the first call happens on January when
tiracalls Eileen, who is in jail, but Eileen does not
(28:17):
confess at first. In fact, Eileen was under the impression,
as we said before, that she was only in jail
for a minor weapons violation and a traffic ticket. It's crazy.
I also read that Eileen was speaking in code words
on that entire phone conversation, which obviously suggests that she
knew more about the situation than she led on. I mean,
(28:40):
she she had to have been just playing it cool.
She knew, yeah, she knew she was being recorded. Yeah,
I mean she knew that. It was only a matter
of time, right. But on the third day of phone calls,
which was January six, Eileen finally agree to confess in
(29:01):
order to protect Tyra. So here's another interesting quote from
crime Library quote. More became more insistent that the police
were after her, and it became clear that Warnos knew
what was expected of her. She even voiced suspicion that
More was not alone, that someone was there taking their conversations,
(29:22):
but as time passed, she became less careful about what
she said. She would not let more go down with her.
Just go ahead and let them know what you need
to know, what they want to know or anything, she said,
And I will cover for you because you're innocent. I'm
not going to let you go to jail. Listen, if
I have to confess, I will end quote right. So
(29:45):
when it comes down to the final decision, Eileen decides
to choose Tyra over herself, and she does ultimately confess.
So Eileen goes in to confess, but there are two
big points she insist on while she is confessing. One
is that Tyra had nothing to do with any of
the murders, and two that none of this was any
(30:08):
of her fault Eileen's. That is, so, she claims that
all of these murders were done in self defense, that
each of the victims had either assaulted her, threatened her,
or raped her, and this idea becomes essentially the mantra
of Eileen during the entire trial and all of this
process of her defending herself. Um It is important to
(30:29):
note that investigators during the confession said that her story
kind of seemed to develop as she told it. So
when she thought she'd said something that was like kind
of incriminating, like when she caught herself, she would like
back up and rewind and be like no, no, no no,
actually yeah, and then she would retell it, changing little
details to kind of like fix it along the way.
(30:50):
So it's again kind of hard to trust Eileen's account,
at least according to the investigators. To me, this was
clearly self defense, especially for the first one. That's my opinion.
She was fighting for her life against violent men who
were not trying but who had raped her. But do
(31:11):
you think it was self defense after that point or
you know, do you think like she was making up
the self defense part for the ones after the first one.
That seems to be a big question in this case.
You know, that's the difficult thing about this case, is
like you don't really know. But I just have to say,
for me, I feel like the first victim was clearly
(31:35):
self defense. The other six I don't think so, m hm, yeah.
So let's talk about the trials then. So Eileen's first trial,
which is for the murder of Richard Charles Mallory, begins
on January so because police had already connected her to
the other murders. By this point, prosecutors here were able
(31:59):
to bring in all of the evidence from those other cases.
And this is something that's kind of unique to Florida law,
which says that you can actually pull in evidence from
other cases if you can demonstrate that there's a pattern
between all the different cases, right, or that there's a
pattern of behavior evidence in comparing all the cases. Do
we are we okay with this law? Like I'm like,
(32:19):
I'm not really sure, do you know what I mean?
Because it's like, feel like that first murder was self defense.
But I can see why they're allowed to bring in
other evidence because they're trying to prove that it was
a pattern because it wasn't only Richard Mallory, it was
Richard Mallory and six other people. But um, now that
the jury knew right about all of those murders, that
(32:41):
made Eileen's claim of self defense against Richard way less
probable because it happens six more times. So to them
this looked much more like a serial killer killing spree. Right. Well,
there was also this to consider. Um, the was the
videotaped confession, and to be honest, this didn't really help
(33:05):
the whole self defense case either. So supposedly, Eileen appears
very confident and unbothered by the stories of rape and
resulting murder that she was confessing to. So she also
made apparently quote easy conversation with her interrogators, and she
even told her public defender to be quiet multiple times.
(33:27):
So she apparently just seemed very in control of the
situation throughout. Um So, I don't really know what to
make of that. To me, that's just that account seems
very um sexist in nature, like she wasn't emotional enough
as a woman about these terrible things, Like they wanted
her to be more like, Oh, no, that such a
(33:48):
terrible thing that happened. I wanted to say, Yeah, I
mean that said, it's also a bit I don't know,
sociopathic to like, no matter what who you are, to
talk about like murdering people and every like callis. And
I can see why the Jerry would hear that and
be like, oh, this person like does not have a
lot of remorse for killing. So you know, I think
(34:09):
that's really what the Jerry saw here. Yeah, So unsurprisingly, Eileen,
like you just said what the jury was convicted of
first degree murder for killing Richard Charles Mallory on January
The jury deliberated for less than two hours before determining
(34:30):
she was guilty. And then as she left the courtroom,
Eileen exploded into this rageful shouting fit. And this is
so incredibly hard for me to even say these words,
but this is coming from her mouth, and she says,
I'm innocent, I was raped, and I hope you get raped,
(34:51):
scumbags of America. Thanks well. The next phase of her
trial was the penalty phase, and that's to determine punishment
she gets. Um. The defense argued that Eileen was quote
mentally ill and suffered from borderline personality disorder, and that
her tumultuous upbringing had stunted and ruined her. So her
(35:12):
lawyer basically pleaded to the jury to save Eileen's life
by saying that you know, she was too mentally ill
to know what she was doing. However, this argument really
didn't have much impact on the jury. They pretty quickly
recommended the death penalty, and on January thirty one, Judge
Gurie Blunt sentenced Eileen to death by electric chair for
(35:34):
Malory's murder. Do you think this was justified? The death penalty.
Is the death penalty ever justified? No, I don't know
if we want to go there, but I can go
back to like talking about, you know how she was
just thrown away. She was literally thrown out to fend
for herself like a wild child, and she, you know,
(35:57):
was born on that mentality like either she was going
to get killed or she was going to kill them, right,
that was rage that was inside of her. So I
think this is where I'm really torn, right because I
feel so bad for Eileen, because you know, we always
(36:17):
say on this show, you're not born a victim, but
it's almost like she didn't have a chance. You know,
I'm surprised she lived as long as she did without
killing herself, you killing herself, killing anyone. I mean, she
did attempt to take her own life, you know, half
a dozen times. Like it's heartbreaking to me. But I
(36:40):
don't believe she should have been killed. I think she
should have been given a chance to get mental health help.
I want to point out something that I think a
lot of people don't think about when it comes to
something like Eileen. She's one of the very few female
serial killers out there. Right, It was not a ton
of precedent for someone like Eileen Um. So when she's
(37:05):
going through this trial, when she's going on the stand,
they're not just viewing her as a serial killer, they're
viewing her as a woman, right, And so a lot
of their lens is very clouded by perceptions of womanhood,
how a woman should act, and that compounds a lot
on the again, the perceptions of the jury. And so
(37:27):
I think part of her sentence was you know, based
on a lot of probably misogyny or at least misunderstanding
of what women go through. And there was just a
lot working against her in a big part of that
was just that people listening to her story or trying
to understand her just had nothing to work with, right,
(37:47):
And I wondered too, like with the death sentence, did
they do that to make an example of her. That's
a you know, very valid point that you just made, Trevor.
And it's like, you know, the jury, the judge, they
all have this kind of cookie cutter image of what
a woman is supposed to be, right, and and that
(38:11):
is not what they were looking at, you know, in
their eyes, they weren't looking at you know, what this
woman had endured. You know, her whole life they were
looking at, you know, well, this is this is a monster. Yeah,
And I do wonder, like just theoretically, like what if
it was only the first murder, what if it had
(38:32):
just been Richard Charles Mallory, Like, would she still have
been convicted the same way or not? And my theory
is that she would have really because I think to
that jury and that judges, it didn't matter if it
was one man, didn't matter, if it was seven, it
didn't matter, if it was self defense, didn't matter, if
it was cold blooded, you know, thrill of the kill.
(38:54):
I think, to them, a woman who was out of
control and who killed who was the lifestyle that she
had was already condemned, you know before she walked in
that courtroom, especially especially during that time. You're absolutely right, Trevor,
and in Florida, absolutely right. So on marcht one, it
(39:15):
was decided that Eileen would not stand trial again, and
Eileen pleaded no contest to the other murders, and she
pleaded no contests to the murders of Charles, Richard Humphreys, Ture,
Eugene Burris, and David Andrew Spears. In a statement about this,
Eileen would say, quote, I wanted to confess to you
(39:38):
that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I've told you,
But these others did not. They only began to start
to end quote. So yeah, there you go. So that
that changes the game right there. So in total, even
though we believe Eileen killed seven men, and she ends
(40:01):
up with only six total death sentences, and that's because
the seventh death sentence couldn't be carried out for the
murder of Peter Abraham, seems because his body, like Trevor said,
was never found. So Eileen's lawyer spent much of the
next decade trying to appeal her sentences, but apparently Eileen
(40:23):
wasn't interested in having her sentence changed. In fact, in
two thousand and one, Eileen petition to have her lawyers
dismissed and cancel all of her pending the pills she
just gave up. Yeah, exactly. This is a quote. This
is what she said. She said. I killed those men,
I robbed them as cold as ice, and I do
(40:45):
it again too. There's no chance in keeping me alive
or anything because I kill again. I have hate crawling
through my system. That's heavy. Yeah. Yeah, And one thing
that did happen. She requested that her method of execution
be changed to lethal injection instead of electric chair, and
(41:07):
I think rightfully so, uh, And the Florida Supreme Court
did agree to all those requests that you laid out, Vett,
so they dismissed the appeals and her lawyers. On October nine,
two two, Eileen Warnos was executed by lethal injection at
Florida State Prison. She declined the last meal, just asking
(41:31):
for one single cup of coffee instead. In her final
statement before her execution, she seemed to accept her fate.
And I'll be honest, I googled it. I tried to
look it up. I was trying to decipher this last
quote that I lean left with the world, and I
couldn't make sense of any of it. But I'm going
(41:52):
to read it to you and maybe you can figure
it out, and please tell me if you do. Quote,
I'd just like to say, I'm stailing with the rock
and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus June six,
like the movie Big Mothership and all I'll be back.
End quote. So my understanding is that the last few
(42:16):
years of Eileen's life she was not well mentally right, um,
so maybe there is some sense to be made here,
but I kind of when I read that, I chalked
it off to Okay, those are the last semblances of
lucidity coming through so well. After those words, Eileen was
(42:38):
pronounced dead at nine PM. She was the first woman
to ever be executed in the state of Florida, and
only the tenth woman to ever be executed in the
entire country since capital punishment had been restored in the
United States in nine She was cremated and her ashes
(43:00):
were spread in Michigan by lifelong friend Don Botkins, and
the song Carnival by Natalie Merchant was played at Eileen's funeral.
There's a lot more to talk about here about Eileen's
life and the way that she was treated, and we're
going to do a deep dive into that on the
next episode when we sit down with our friend, our
(43:24):
oh Hannah, miss Patty Jenkins, So please please stay tuned
for that for this week's IMUA. There are two sides
to this to think about. First of all, most importantly,
we want to remember those whose lives were taken violently,
(43:48):
the victims in this terrible case, and their families. But
we also want to recognize that Eileen was a victim herself,
a victim of general rational abuse and generational trauma. That
she was undoubtedly a product of the system that she
was born into. But with proper resources and a more
(44:11):
carrying upbringing, Eileen might have got the help she needed,
but instead she was subject to physical, sexual, and emotional
abuse and that set her on the crash course to
becoming a monster. And we hope that people think about
the consequences that their actions have on others, break the
(44:35):
cycles of trauma of abuse, and instead of blame, try
to seek understanding and love. Onward and upward. Ima. Well,
that's our show for today. Make sure to tune in
(44:55):
for our next episode where we interview the amazing Patty Jenkins. Well.
As always, we'd love to hear what you thought about
today's discussion and if there is a case that you
would like us to cover, find us on social media
at Facing Evil Pod or email us at Facing Evil
Pod at Tenderfoot dot tv. And one request, if you
(45:16):
haven't already, please find us on iTunes and give us
a review in a good rating. If you like what
we do, your support is always cherished. Until next time,
ah Loha Facing Evil is a production of I Heart
(45:37):
Radio and tenderfoot TV. The show is hosted by Russia,
Pecarero and a Vettel. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are
executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio with producers
Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Donald Albright and Paine Lindsay
our executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer
(45:58):
Tracy Kaplan. Are researcher is Claudia Dafrico, original music by
Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on social media or
email us at Facing Evil, pot at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio or Tenderfoot TV,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(46:19):
you listen to your favorite shows
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of I Heart
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this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in
the show and do not represent those of I Heart
Radio or Tenderfoot TV. This podcast contains subject matter which
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(00:27):
Hello everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot TV
and I Heart Radio. We are your host. I'm Rasha
Peccarero and I Amy Vegentel and here is always with
our amazing producer Trevor Young. Hey there, how's it Gollo?
Hi Trevor, Oh my god. Okay, So I have to
(00:48):
tell you two about what I hope pray beg for
the two of you and all of our listeners to
binge watch immediately. And again we are not sponsored, but
if if you want to sponsor us, please tell us
Amazon Prime. But a league of their own, the reimagined
(01:09):
series from creator Abby Jacobson, and she's also one of
the stars in it, she's the co creator. But it's
so incredible. I have to tell you a little bit
about this series and why. Of course, as the card
holding lesbian that I am. Of course I want to watch,
you know, the reimagining of a baseball you know, female
(01:30):
baseball players baseball show. But there's two reasons that I
want all of our listeners and for the two of
you to watch it. One In in Penny Marshall's original
movie in the nineties, she only alluded to the fact
that there were African American women that played baseball during
that time, right, but they weren't allowed to play in
the all American you know, girls professional baseball League, which
(01:54):
is what this series is based on. It took place,
I believe in three she like did like a little
odd to it, just like one scene, but she didn't
allude at all to the queer scene of that time.
And in the new series they allude, not only allude,
they slap you in the face with it beautifully. They
bring in beautiful characters and people of color and it's
(02:19):
absolutely brilliantly incredible, laughing, crying, all the things. So please, please, please,
please please please watch it. Absolutely And what did you say?
It was on again? Amazon? No, Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime. Okay, yeah,
I can't wait to watch. It's so interesting that you
say that, because I was just on a plane to
New York and I just watched for the first time
(02:39):
forty two Chadwick Boseman, and you know, the story about
Jackie Robinson, and that was amazing and just to think
about you know what, you know, Jackie endured during that time,
and I could imagine the same for those those women
back then. I mean you had to be fierce, you know,
(03:01):
just the insults and the hate that was being thrown
out there. So yeah, I can't wait to watch that.
But forty two is amazing as well. Yea already. Well, Trevor,
will you please take us through today's case, but now
a story of unnatural violence, the case and confessions of
(03:23):
a female serial killer. She was tired of being in
the spotlight. She was tired of reporters and police and lawyers,
everyone making a career off of her. There are many
people who were abused, his children, who were raped. They
don't pick up a gun and kill No. I wasn't
born bad. You guys got it same time. Tell you
(03:45):
me and they lie. They lied so bad to you all.
Eileen Warnos was a Florida based serial killer who murdered
seven men between ninety nine in n Eileen had a
troubled upbringing. At the age of four, she was abandoned
by her parents and adopted by her maternal grandparents. Her
(04:06):
grandparents were alcoholics and known to be abusive, both verbally
and sexually. At age eleven, Eileen reportedly engaged in sexual
activity at school for drugs and cigarettes, and at age fifteen,
she was thrown out of the house by her grandfather.
She survived through sex work and frequently got into trouble
(04:26):
with the law. Then, in November of nineteen nine, she
committed her first murder. According to Eileen, she shot the
man because he had raped her. Over the next year,
she would kill six more men in a similar fashion.
Eileen was eventually captured and sentenced to death for the murders,
and in October of two thousand two, she died by
(04:49):
lethal injection. The following year, a biographical film called Monster premiered,
which revealed a new layer to Eileen, depicting her not
just as a killer but also was a victim of
the circumstances in which she was brought up. And so
who was Eileen warnos? What drove her to murder seven men?
(05:09):
And to what degree was she just as much a
victim as the people she killed. This is such an
incredibly wild story. I mean, I think the case of
Eileen Warnos is so important because it really brings up
a question of who the victim really is in a
(05:30):
case like this. Right, Like, everyone, I believe during that
time was so quick to think that Eileen was this
man hating, lesbian, cold blooded killer who went on this
murder spree, right, But in reality, let's face it, she was,
I believe, truly a victim herself. Of course the people
(05:52):
that she took the lives of we're victims as well.
But I think that both can be true, and I
think not enough people actually talk about that exactly. But
you know, there is no denying that she she was
a killer. But however, she also lived a life of
abuse and neglect. Eileen was a woman who was mistreated
(06:14):
from the very first day, like I mean, all the
way until the end of her life. She was born
into a violent lifestyle where she literally had to fight
to survive. Yeah, but you know, like you said, she
also murdered at least seven men. And no matter what
(06:36):
we say today, it's an incredibly complicated case. People are
on both sides in the middle all over the place.
But you know, we're going to dig into all the
sides today. And one quick note before we get going.
One of the accounts of Eileen Woronos's life that sheds
so much light on her victimhood is then Nominal, sometimes
(07:02):
hard to watch because it's so intense, but the phenomenal
film Two thousand Threes Monster. It is an absolutely incredible
film that truly captures who Eileen was as a person
and as a human being. And the director of that
(07:22):
film is the great, the most phenomenal, one of the
most phenomenal humans I've ever met in my entire life,
Patty Jenkins. And Patty is going to be joining us
for an interview on the next episode of Facing Evil. Yes,
we are so excited to talk to Patty. And for
those who don't know, Patty is our Ohannah. She is
(07:44):
the one who brought our mother's life story to Fruition
and we have always wanted to talk to her about Eileen.
Warren knows, so definitely, you must, you must look out
for this episode. Absolutely, Lee, It's going to be incredibly fantastic.
And even though we've known Patty for years, we've never
(08:05):
talked to her about Eileen, so With that said, stay
tuned for that. But we're going to start talking about
Eileen right now, and let's learn about Eileen's early life. Yeah.
So Eileen was born in Rochester, Michigan, on February of
nineteen fifty six, and her mother, Diane, was only sixteen
(08:26):
at the time of giving birth to Eileen. Her father
was Leo Pittman, and he was nineteen at the time
of her birth, so her parents had been married when
Diane was only fourteen, which is kind of wild. They
also had a son named Keith, who was born before Eileen. Yeah,
so Diane was super young when she was having kids.
(08:48):
But the couple divorced two months before Eileen was even born,
So this was already kind of a tumultuous situation, potentially
a recipe for disaster. And Leo was supposedly a pretty
trouble old guy. Reportedly he had issues with alcohol. So
as you can imagine Diane as a teenager, you know,
just aged sixteen, wasn't really prepared to deal with children
(09:11):
and an alcoholic husband. So they divorced, and then she
was just kind of all alone with these kids. Yeah,
and then Diane actually she abandoned both of her children.
There's this one story where Diane left Eileen and Keith
with a babysitter for one night, and then she called
(09:32):
later to say that she wouldn't come back. Can you imagine.
Can you guys imagine being the babysitter on the other
line and you have two kids and the parents says,
I'm not coming back. I'm surprised she called it all
that's just wild. But eventually Eileen and her brother were
adopted by Diane's parents. Yeah, I mean, so both of
(09:54):
her grandparents where she now lived, they were both incredibly abusive.
They were also both alcoholics. Diane warnos. Eileen's mom would
say that both of her parents were very verbally abusive
to her and to Eileen, and Eileen would also say
that her grandfather at some point sexually assaulted her. So
she never had a chance. No, Yeah, I mean, she's
(10:17):
a kid, and she's already dealing with all those right Sadly,
you know, it started to catch up with her and
at the tender young age of eleven, you know, she
reportedly started having sex with her classmates in exchange for food, drugs,
and cigarettes. So she basically became a sex worker at
the age of eleven. It's all heartbreaking and just horrible,
(10:41):
you know. Eileen also struggled with behavioral problems, everything ranging
from truancy, not going to school, two fights at school.
She was also diagnosed with different disabilities, and that had
to have had a huge impact on all of the
other issues and factoring middle school, Eileen was diagnosed with
(11:02):
hearing and visual problems and they tested her i Q
and she only scored one, which is technically considered borderline
intellectual functioning. And basically, so many things were stacked up
against Eileen. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't
know about that. Oh, I don't think so. I remember
(11:23):
there's a story that one of the school officials spoke
to her grandparents and they were urging her to get
her special counseling, but her grandmother refused to provide any treatment.
They were asking or telling I should say, you know,
can you help you know your granddaughter? And they said no.
(11:45):
And so the school went as far as to give
Eileen a mild tranquilizer. But and I guess is that
normal for like back then where they gave kids tranquilizers.
I don't know, but definitely not. I don't think you'd
get away with that today but definitely not today. But
that didn't work either. I mean, she was clearly showing
(12:05):
problems and nobody was helping her. Yeah. So anyways, there
are some other unfortunate things that happened. Um In nineteen
seventy Eileen is reportedly raped by a friend of her grandfather's,
so this is a much older man, and at the
age of fourteen, as a result of this, Eileen became pregnant.
(12:29):
So during her pregnancy she was actually sent to a
home for unwed mothers. And then on March one of
nineteen seventy one, Eileen gave birth to a son, and
that child was placed up for adoption, and Eileen then
dropped out of school entirely. I don't think we know
who that son is or what happened to them, and
(12:51):
I don't think Eileen ever met them. I don't believe
either we can you imagine, Yeah, they're getting sexually assaulted
like that and then having to deal with that at fourteen,
and she was sent to an unwed mother's home. And
you know, we've heard that story before because our our
own grandmother, that's our mother's story, our grandmother Tomorrow Hodel
was sent to an unwed mother's home when she got
(13:12):
pregnant with our mother at the age of fifteen. She
was actually fourteen, she was fourteen, gave birth at fifteen. Yeah,
that's a really interesting parallel. Yeah, I think that's what
they did during that time, right, although this was this
was vent one, but when it happened to tomorrow it
was twenty years earlier, so in ninete. But yeah, So
(13:33):
the idea of being there is that like when women,
you know, something shameful happens to them or something like that,
that you just kind of shuffle them off and like
hide them away until they have the baby and then
they get placed up for aduction. Yeah. And so later
that very same year, in nineteen seventy one, Eileen's grandmother
died of liver failure and then her grandfather kicked Eileen out,
(13:57):
so she was left to fend for herself at the
age of fifteen, and she took up sex orc to survive.
She even lived in the woods. Yeah. Yeah, she just
went back to what she'd been doing from the time
she was eleven. And according to the Tampa Bay Times
here and this is a quote, at fifteen, Eileen was
left to fend for herself. She spent nights sleeping and
(14:18):
abandoned cars or seeking the refuge of homes in the area.
Family and neighbors told investigators that's like, you know, when
you think about that, like they just left her out
to be a wild animal. Anyhow, Eileen left Michigan, and
rightfully so. But she sort of becomes a vagabond, like
she's traveling and she's hitchhiking across the country. We know that.
(14:43):
On May nineteen seventy four, Eileen was arrested in Colorado
for a d UI and she was also arrested for
disorderly conduct for firing a pistol out of a moving car.
And so she was then charged with a oh you're
too appear in court. So obviously she never showed up
(15:03):
for that. Right, So, she's, you know, hitchhiking across country.
She's handling guns and getting into trouble with the law.
I mean this this all just seems like a bad
situation getting worse, right, Yeah, things are definitely starting to
spiral at this point. Um And eventually she makes her
way down all the way to Florida. And this is
(15:28):
where really most of the story takes place. This is
where Eileen lives when she eventually murders seven men, and
we'll get into that right after we take a quick break.
So I want to point out a few more notable
things that happened with Eileen before her murdering spree begins. First,
(15:50):
in ninety six, she met and married a sixty nine
year old man named Louis grats Fell. During their marriage,
Eileen beat Louis with his very own cane, and Lewis
ended up getting a divorce from my Leen and even
took out a restraining order against her. And he would
be quoted as saying Ornos has a violent and ungovernable
(16:14):
temper and threatened to do bodily harm end quote. What
do we think about this? It's weird. I mean, this
marriage clearly doesn't last very long for a good reason.
Is I guess the first case we have of Eileen
being incredibly violent, you know, especially to somebody she's I
(16:35):
supposedly romantically involved with. I wonder how much of that
was just survival, right, Yeah? And you know, things proceeded
to go even more downhill from there, and in nineteen,
at the age of twenty two, Eileen attempted suicide by
shooting herself in the stomach. And that wasn't even her
(16:56):
first suicide attempt. I think it was her sixth suicide
attempt and her first time that she had tried to
kill herself. She was only fourteen years old. Yeah, and
then at that point it was just seemingly crime after
crime that she was caught for throughout the years. Just
a couple of notable examples. She robbed a convenience store,
in she tried to cash forwards checks at a bank.
(17:19):
She was also arrested in Miami in six for car
theft and for resisting arrest. And then also that year
she robbed a mand at gunpoint, demanding two So this
is unfortunately Eileen's life. Now it seems like, well it's
been that way forever. It feels like, yeah, exactly, She's
like now she's resorting to violence, right, crime and violence. Yeah, Yeah,
(17:42):
it's definitely gone to the next step. Yeah, And everything
is spiraling out of control with her, right. But then
she meets someone who is very, very important in this story.
She meets a hotel maid named Tyra Moore. And for
anyone who had didn't seen Monster, she is portrayed by
(18:03):
the great Christina Ricci. And this character that Christina Ricci plays.
Her name is Selby in the movie, in the movie Monster.
But this is really the beginning of a love story.
When she meets Tyra. I mean, I don't know, but
it might have been the only like glimmer of light
in Eileen's life, and the two of them, you know,
(18:27):
begin a very enduring but very tumultuous and difficult relationship.
And Eileen was thirty and Tyra was twenty four years
old at this point. They moved in together not long
after meeting, like the typical lesbians. I can joke about
that because hello, we do that with you haul really fast.
(18:47):
So they of course, you know, we're living together. And
the only way that Eileen could support Tyra was by
doing sex work, and that's how they survived. You know.
I'm I'm sure this was hard on them as a couple,
but to be honest, I'm I'm just glad that Eileen
had Tira for however brief a time. As you alluded to.
(19:11):
Though Russia, this doesn't last very long because in nine
the murders begin, and let's go through them in order
rather quickly. So on November, a fifty one year old
man named Richard Charles Mallory picked up Eileen in his
car and supposedly this is for Eileen to provide him
(19:32):
with sexual services. So Eileen would claim that Mallory tied
her to the steering wheel of his car and raped her.
And then after this assault, she pulls out her gun
and shoots him multiple times. So two of those shots
punctured his left lung, killing him. Eileen then dumped his
body in the woods nearby. The police wouldn't discover the
(19:54):
body until December, a few weeks later, And this is
officially eileen first killing. Yeah, I want to say that
Eileen did this first one in self defense, But as
much as I want to defend Eileen for everything that
she's been through, this happens six more times, not once,
(20:15):
not twice, six more times, and we only have her account, right, like,
we don't have anybody else to the story up or
say that something else happened, you know. So yeah, just
Silene's testimony, right, just Eileen's recollections of this. So on
June one, police discovered the naked body of forty seven
(20:36):
year old David Andrew Spears, who had also been shot
to death, and just a few days later, on June six,
they found the body of forty year old Charles Edmund
Cark Sadon wrapped in an electric blanket. In both of
these cases, investigators determined that they had been killed with
(20:57):
the twenty two caliber gun. Eileen was later spotted driving
Carskanon's car, and she had also pawned a gun that
was in his name. Crazy. It just seems like she's
not covering any tracks. I mean, I don't think she
really had any concept of covering her tracks, you know.
I think she was just in these very probably desperate
situations and just reacted. I mean that said, like she
(21:20):
could have had the I don't know, the thought to
throw evidence away. Maybe not like drive that person's car around.
I don't know. So anyways, the next victim is Peter
Abraham Seams, and on July four, police find his car,
but they never find his body. To this day, they've
actually never found his body, but Eileen and Tyra had
(21:43):
been spotted leaving his car a few days earlier, and
they also find Aileen's handprint on the inside door handle,
again not thinking. She probably wasn't even thinking about it.
She was just trying to survive China. Oh my god,
I just killed another person. What do I do next?
I mean, I don't know I'm to kill her. I
don't know what her mind was like, but yeah, I'm
just thinking about what you were just saying. And you
(22:04):
know she had to you know, in the moment, of course,
you're not thinking about that, in the hype of doing
all the things that she's done. But eventually she has
to know that it's going to catch up to her, right, right,
you would think. So, I think this is where it
was a pivotal point in where everything changed for Eileen.
(22:26):
And this is depicted so beautifully in the movie Monster
by Patty Jenkins, and you're just like riveted. You're like,
what is going on? So a witness actually sees Eileen
and Tyra in you know, Peter seems car and she
sees them get into a car accident and they don't
(22:48):
ask for help from her. They freak the f out
and take off. So this woman is like, what just happened?
And you see that in the scene in the movie,
and it actually happened in real life. So this witness
was able to give you full descriptions of Tyra and
Eileen to the authorities, and then basically I mean, we're
(23:09):
supposed to say man hunt, but the woman hunt began,
So I mean, yeah, exactly. Up until this point, there
was not really a big connection between all of these
different murders. Um, you know, I think they were sort
of figuring out what was going on eventually. But now
they're seeing like, oh, like these women are probably behind this,
They had the victim's car. You know, a lot of
(23:30):
things are lining up now. So a couple more murders
happened before they actually catch So the next victim is
fifty year old Troy Eugene Burths. He was found on
August four of that year. And victim number six is
Charles Richard Humphreys, who was found on September twelve. And
then the final victim was sixty two year old Walter
(23:52):
Gino Antonio and he was found on November nine. And
this is so it's now been a full year since
Eileen started killing. That's just so crazy, all of that
in one year. That's seven victims. Well, you know, it
(24:13):
doesn't take police very long to figure out that it
is Eileen that has been behind all of these murders,
and they do finally track her down, and as we said,
I mean Eileen wasn't covering her tracks very well for
that year of all of those murders, she was pawning
her you know, her victims belongings at pawn shops all
(24:35):
around Florida, and her fingerprints were actually found on one
of the pawn shop receipts. And then so once they
matched up that print that was on the pawn shop receipt,
authorities put out a warrant for her arrest, finally after
that year of her killing. Yeah, and of course at
this point it's just a matter of time, right, So finally,
(24:55):
on January nine, Eileen is arrest did at Last Resort,
which is a biker bar in Volucia, Florida. So technically
police arrested her for an outstanding warrant for something else.
She was under the assumption that the warrant was related
to one of the many fake names that she had
been using, going around using. She didn't think she was
(25:16):
getting arrested for murder. Okay, yeah, I mean, she had
no idea that investigators had linked her to these murders
at all, or that she was under suspicion for them
at all. So anyways, she's arrested, taken into custody, and
then we'll talk about what happens after we take another
quick break. So after the police arrest Eileen on January nine,
(25:42):
they find Tira the next day in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where
she I guess she was staying with her sister. They
don't charge her, but they do question her about Eileen's activities.
So I do want to read this quote from Crime Library.
Worry about what Tyra told them at that time. And
(26:02):
just side note here, Tyra always called Eileen Lee, so
she's going to be referring to Lee here in this quote.
She had known about the murder since Lee had come
home with Richard Mallory's Cadillac. She said. Lee had openly
confessed that she had killed a man that day, but
Moore told her not to say anything else. I told
(26:23):
her I didn't want to hear about it. She had
her suspicions, she admitted, but wanted to know as little
as possible about Lee's doings. The more she knew, she reasoned,
the more compelled she would feel to report Lee to
the authorities, and she didn't want to do that. I
was just scared, she said. She always said she'd never
heard me, but then you can't believe her, So I
(26:46):
don't know what she would have done. End quote. Mm hmm.
We do know, like Tyra genuinely loved Eileen, you know,
and I and she wanted to protect her, um, but
I don't know. Like at the same time, she's saying
that you can't believe her, but she's like, I don't know, right,
(27:10):
I'm not because she knows that she's killed people. Yeah,
I don't know if if Tyra really trust her or not. Yeah,
because you can love someone and not trust them. But
as the quote kind of says, she was wilfully ignoring
it or like trying not to believe it, right, which
is I think a thing that happens in relationships that
(27:33):
involve some sort of like dark behavior on one part
of the relationship. The other person in the relationship tends
to kind of like block it out of their head
and pretend it's not a problem, right, compartmentalize exactly. So
deep down Tyra knows, but she's trying to like push
it down, just move along and trust her. But deep
down knows that like Filing is probably not trustworthy. Probably
(27:57):
not that said police do convince Tired to speak with
Aileen on a recorded phone line, and they persuade her
to confess. In exchange for this, they offer Tira immunity
from prosecution. So the first call happens on January when
tiracalls Eileen, who is in jail, but Eileen does not
(28:17):
confess at first. In fact, Eileen was under the impression,
as we said before, that she was only in jail
for a minor weapons violation and a traffic ticket. It's crazy.
I also read that Eileen was speaking in code words
on that entire phone conversation, which obviously suggests that she
knew more about the situation than she led on. I mean,
(28:40):
she she had to have been just playing it cool.
She knew, yeah, she knew she was being recorded. Yeah,
I mean she knew that. It was only a matter
of time, right. But on the third day of phone calls,
which was January six, Eileen finally agree to confess in
(29:01):
order to protect Tyra. So here's another interesting quote from
crime Library quote. More became more insistent that the police
were after her, and it became clear that Warnos knew
what was expected of her. She even voiced suspicion that
More was not alone, that someone was there taking their conversations,
(29:22):
but as time passed, she became less careful about what
she said. She would not let more go down with her.
Just go ahead and let them know what you need
to know, what they want to know or anything, she said,
And I will cover for you because you're innocent. I'm
not going to let you go to jail. Listen, if
I have to confess, I will end quote right. So
(29:45):
when it comes down to the final decision, Eileen decides
to choose Tyra over herself, and she does ultimately confess.
So Eileen goes in to confess, but there are two
big points she insist on while she is confessing. One
is that Tyra had nothing to do with any of
the murders, and two that none of this was any
(30:08):
of her fault Eileen's. That is, so, she claims that
all of these murders were done in self defense, that
each of the victims had either assaulted her, threatened her,
or raped her, and this idea becomes essentially the mantra
of Eileen during the entire trial and all of this
process of her defending herself. Um It is important to
(30:29):
note that investigators during the confession said that her story
kind of seemed to develop as she told it. So
when she thought she'd said something that was like kind
of incriminating, like when she caught herself, she would like
back up and rewind and be like no, no, no no,
actually yeah, and then she would retell it, changing little
details to kind of like fix it along the way.
(30:50):
So it's again kind of hard to trust Eileen's account,
at least according to the investigators. To me, this was
clearly self defense, especially for the first one. That's my opinion.
She was fighting for her life against violent men who
were not trying but who had raped her. But do
(31:11):
you think it was self defense after that point or
you know, do you think like she was making up
the self defense part for the ones after the first one.
That seems to be a big question in this case.
You know, that's the difficult thing about this case, is
like you don't really know. But I just have to say,
for me, I feel like the first victim was clearly
(31:35):
self defense. The other six I don't think so, m hm, yeah.
So let's talk about the trials then. So Eileen's first trial,
which is for the murder of Richard Charles Mallory, begins
on January so because police had already connected her to
the other murders. By this point, prosecutors here were able
(31:59):
to bring in all of the evidence from those other cases.
And this is something that's kind of unique to Florida law,
which says that you can actually pull in evidence from
other cases if you can demonstrate that there's a pattern
between all the different cases, right, or that there's a
pattern of behavior evidence in comparing all the cases. Do
we are we okay with this law? Like I'm like,
(32:19):
I'm not really sure, do you know what I mean?
Because it's like, feel like that first murder was self defense.
But I can see why they're allowed to bring in
other evidence because they're trying to prove that it was
a pattern because it wasn't only Richard Mallory, it was
Richard Mallory and six other people. But um, now that
the jury knew right about all of those murders, that
(32:41):
made Eileen's claim of self defense against Richard way less
probable because it happens six more times. So to them
this looked much more like a serial killer killing spree. Right. Well,
there was also this to consider. Um, the was the
videotaped confession, and to be honest, this didn't really help
(33:05):
the whole self defense case either. So supposedly, Eileen appears
very confident and unbothered by the stories of rape and
resulting murder that she was confessing to. So she also
made apparently quote easy conversation with her interrogators, and she
even told her public defender to be quiet multiple times.
(33:27):
So she apparently just seemed very in control of the
situation throughout. Um So, I don't really know what to
make of that. To me, that's just that account seems
very um sexist in nature, like she wasn't emotional enough
as a woman about these terrible things, Like they wanted
her to be more like, Oh, no, that such a
(33:48):
terrible thing that happened. I wanted to say, Yeah, I
mean that said, it's also a bit I don't know,
sociopathic to like, no matter what who you are, to
talk about like murdering people and every like callis. And
I can see why the Jerry would hear that and
be like, oh, this person like does not have a
lot of remorse for killing. So you know, I think
(34:09):
that's really what the Jerry saw here. Yeah, So unsurprisingly, Eileen,
like you just said what the jury was convicted of
first degree murder for killing Richard Charles Mallory on January
The jury deliberated for less than two hours before determining
(34:30):
she was guilty. And then as she left the courtroom,
Eileen exploded into this rageful shouting fit. And this is
so incredibly hard for me to even say these words,
but this is coming from her mouth, and she says,
I'm innocent, I was raped, and I hope you get raped,
(34:51):
scumbags of America. Thanks well. The next phase of her
trial was the penalty phase, and that's to determine punishment
she gets. Um. The defense argued that Eileen was quote
mentally ill and suffered from borderline personality disorder, and that
her tumultuous upbringing had stunted and ruined her. So her
(35:12):
lawyer basically pleaded to the jury to save Eileen's life
by saying that you know, she was too mentally ill
to know what she was doing. However, this argument really
didn't have much impact on the jury. They pretty quickly
recommended the death penalty, and on January thirty one, Judge
Gurie Blunt sentenced Eileen to death by electric chair for
(35:34):
Malory's murder. Do you think this was justified? The death penalty.
Is the death penalty ever justified? No, I don't know
if we want to go there, but I can go
back to like talking about, you know how she was
just thrown away. She was literally thrown out to fend
for herself like a wild child, and she, you know,
(35:57):
was born on that mentality like either she was going
to get killed or she was going to kill them, right,
that was rage that was inside of her. So I
think this is where I'm really torn, right because I
feel so bad for Eileen, because you know, we always
(36:17):
say on this show, you're not born a victim, but
it's almost like she didn't have a chance. You know,
I'm surprised she lived as long as she did without
killing herself, you killing herself, killing anyone. I mean, she
did attempt to take her own life, you know, half
a dozen times. Like it's heartbreaking to me. But I
(36:40):
don't believe she should have been killed. I think she
should have been given a chance to get mental health help.
I want to point out something that I think a
lot of people don't think about when it comes to
something like Eileen. She's one of the very few female
serial killers out there. Right, It was not a ton
of precedent for someone like Eileen Um. So when she's
(37:05):
going through this trial, when she's going on the stand,
they're not just viewing her as a serial killer, they're
viewing her as a woman, right, And so a lot
of their lens is very clouded by perceptions of womanhood,
how a woman should act, and that compounds a lot
on the again, the perceptions of the jury. And so
(37:27):
I think part of her sentence was you know, based
on a lot of probably misogyny or at least misunderstanding
of what women go through. And there was just a
lot working against her in a big part of that
was just that people listening to her story or trying
to understand her just had nothing to work with, right,
(37:47):
And I wondered too, like with the death sentence, did
they do that to make an example of her. That's
a you know, very valid point that you just made, Trevor.
And it's like, you know, the jury, the judge, they
all have this kind of cookie cutter image of what
a woman is supposed to be, right, and and that
(38:11):
is not what they were looking at, you know, in
their eyes, they weren't looking at you know, what this
woman had endured. You know, her whole life they were
looking at, you know, well, this is this is a monster. Yeah,
And I do wonder, like just theoretically, like what if
it was only the first murder, what if it had
(38:32):
just been Richard Charles Mallory, Like, would she still have
been convicted the same way or not? And my theory
is that she would have really because I think to
that jury and that judges, it didn't matter if it
was one man, didn't matter, if it was seven, it
didn't matter, if it was self defense, didn't matter, if
it was cold blooded, you know, thrill of the kill.
(38:54):
I think, to them, a woman who was out of
control and who killed who was the lifestyle that she
had was already condemned, you know before she walked in
that courtroom, especially especially during that time. You're absolutely right, Trevor,
and in Florida, absolutely right. So on marcht one, it
(39:15):
was decided that Eileen would not stand trial again, and
Eileen pleaded no contest to the other murders, and she
pleaded no contests to the murders of Charles, Richard Humphreys, Ture,
Eugene Burris, and David Andrew Spears. In a statement about this,
Eileen would say, quote, I wanted to confess to you
(39:38):
that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I've told you,
But these others did not. They only began to start
to end quote. So yeah, there you go. So that
that changes the game right there. So in total, even
though we believe Eileen killed seven men, and she ends
(40:01):
up with only six total death sentences, and that's because
the seventh death sentence couldn't be carried out for the
murder of Peter Abraham, seems because his body, like Trevor said,
was never found. So Eileen's lawyer spent much of the
next decade trying to appeal her sentences, but apparently Eileen
(40:23):
wasn't interested in having her sentence changed. In fact, in
two thousand and one, Eileen petition to have her lawyers
dismissed and cancel all of her pending the pills she
just gave up. Yeah, exactly. This is a quote. This
is what she said. She said. I killed those men,
I robbed them as cold as ice, and I do
(40:45):
it again too. There's no chance in keeping me alive
or anything because I kill again. I have hate crawling
through my system. That's heavy. Yeah. Yeah, And one thing
that did happen. She requested that her method of execution
be changed to lethal injection instead of electric chair, and
(41:07):
I think rightfully so, uh, And the Florida Supreme Court
did agree to all those requests that you laid out, Vett,
so they dismissed the appeals and her lawyers. On October nine,
two two, Eileen Warnos was executed by lethal injection at
Florida State Prison. She declined the last meal, just asking
(41:31):
for one single cup of coffee instead. In her final
statement before her execution, she seemed to accept her fate.
And I'll be honest, I googled it. I tried to
look it up. I was trying to decipher this last
quote that I lean left with the world, and I
couldn't make sense of any of it. But I'm going
(41:52):
to read it to you and maybe you can figure
it out, and please tell me if you do. Quote,
I'd just like to say, I'm stailing with the rock
and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus June six,
like the movie Big Mothership and all I'll be back.
End quote. So my understanding is that the last few
(42:16):
years of Eileen's life she was not well mentally right, um,
so maybe there is some sense to be made here,
but I kind of when I read that, I chalked
it off to Okay, those are the last semblances of
lucidity coming through so well. After those words, Eileen was
(42:38):
pronounced dead at nine PM. She was the first woman
to ever be executed in the state of Florida, and
only the tenth woman to ever be executed in the
entire country since capital punishment had been restored in the
United States in nine She was cremated and her ashes
(43:00):
were spread in Michigan by lifelong friend Don Botkins, and
the song Carnival by Natalie Merchant was played at Eileen's funeral.
There's a lot more to talk about here about Eileen's
life and the way that she was treated, and we're
going to do a deep dive into that on the
next episode when we sit down with our friend, our
(43:24):
oh Hannah, miss Patty Jenkins, So please please stay tuned
for that for this week's IMUA. There are two sides
to this to think about. First of all, most importantly,
we want to remember those whose lives were taken violently,
(43:48):
the victims in this terrible case, and their families. But
we also want to recognize that Eileen was a victim herself,
a victim of general rational abuse and generational trauma. That
she was undoubtedly a product of the system that she
was born into. But with proper resources and a more
(44:11):
carrying upbringing, Eileen might have got the help she needed,
but instead she was subject to physical, sexual, and emotional
abuse and that set her on the crash course to
becoming a monster. And we hope that people think about
the consequences that their actions have on others, break the
(44:35):
cycles of trauma of abuse, and instead of blame, try
to seek understanding and love. Onward and upward. Ima. Well,
that's our show for today. Make sure to tune in
(44:55):
for our next episode where we interview the amazing Patty Jenkins. Well.
As always, we'd love to hear what you thought about
today's discussion and if there is a case that you
would like us to cover, find us on social media
at Facing Evil Pod or email us at Facing Evil
Pod at Tenderfoot dot tv. And one request, if you
(45:16):
haven't already, please find us on iTunes and give us
a review in a good rating. If you like what
we do, your support is always cherished. Until next time,
ah Loha Facing Evil is a production of I Heart
(45:37):
Radio and tenderfoot TV. The show is hosted by Russia,
Pecarero and a Vettel. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are
executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio with producers
Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Donald Albright and Paine Lindsay
our executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer
(45:58):
Tracy Kaplan. Are researcher is Claudia Dafrico, original music by
Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on social media or
email us at Facing Evil, pot at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio or Tenderfoot TV,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(46:19):
you listen to your favorite shows
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