All language subtitles for Catching.Killers.2021.S01E02.Manhunter.Aileen.Wuornos.1080p.NF.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.x264-NPMS

When I arrived,

I noticed that there was
a dirt road that runs into the forest.

And all I knew was that,
somewhere down that road,

there was a body.

The first indication of the body
was the smell of decomposition in the air.

It was facedown.

There was a lot of blood.

- He was a white male...
- Uh-oh.

...approximately 50 years of age.

When we turned the body over,

we noticed that there was
a company logo on one pocket

and the name "Troy" sewn above the other.

- Nothing in that right front pocket, Tim?
- No, empty, Brian.

This matched up
with a report we had of a missing person

just several days earlier,

and that was the name of Troy Burress.

How did he get to this area?

How did that body end up up there
and why was it up there?

Who did it?

Looking back on the investigation,

we didn't know how big
or how bad this might get.

Fifty-year-old Troy Burress

worked as a truck driver
for a Florida sausage company.

He had planned on quitting his job
because he hated life on the road.

Burress was found shot in the head.

I was a detective sergeant
supervising the major crimes detectives.

And I would report to Captain Binegar,

who was over the entire
Criminal Investigation Division.

I'm Steve Binegar.

Watch your head.

I'm 63 years old.

Usually, I'm in sweats and Crocs.

That's my new uniform of the day
since I retired.

- I like my Crocs too.
- Yeah.

I probably blew that.

You're gonna have to...

I need a teleprompter.

I had about 50 people at the time

that were in my division.

I would say it was a big job,
especially being 32 years old.

Somebody said
I might've been the youngest captain

in the sheriff's office history
since 1845, but I don't know.

I can't say that for sure.

Hey, Jarvis. How've you been?

- I'm doing good.
- Great.

This is a picture of me in 1998
when I was appointed sheriff.

I was with the sheriff's office
for eight and a half years,

and I was in the FBI four years.

I always gravitated towards
the jobs that I called "day on, stay on,"

so you're constantly on call.

It was, uh, after hours,

I was getting ready
to have dinner with my family.

My pager went off.

Another body
had been discovered in Marion County.

It was possible homicide.

When I got there,

you could see the body
off to the side of the pavement,

actually almost
into the... the weeds itself.

The victim looked like
he had been shot from different angles.

Almost like he was spinning
to try to get away as he was being shot.

Seems like a lot of rage.

There was a lot of anger
in the way the crime was committed.

I'm gonna be honest,

walking up to this crime scene
after 30 years, uh,

you know, the...

the sad part
that somebody lost their life right here,

a few feet from us,

it kind of rushes over you.

You know, what struck me
was there was no vehicle.

It looked like it was
the same sort of scenario

that we're dealing with
with the other case.

You know, we had middle-aged men
shot multiple times.

We start to see that as a pattern.

So, we sent Sergeant Jarvis
to the autopsy.

Seven shots.

So, it was a very, very,

uh, angry killing.

His name was Charles Richard Humphreys.

The medical examiner
said he had been killed

with a .22 caliber weapon.

A .22 is the same
as the Troy Burress homicide.

The ammunition was all the same,

and it was being fired
out of a similar firearm

each time.

We started to realize
there was a good possibility

that we were dealing with the same killer.

I worked straight through the night
and through the next day.

Charles Humphreys was
a 56-year-old former Alabama police chief.

A man who was considered
anything but naive.

They took away someone who loved life.

And, of course, the big part of my life.

So, we had Troy Burress.

And we had Humphreys as well.

We followed leads as they came in,

but there was very little
to go on initially.

And, at one point,

we decided to look at the bulletins
of unsolved homicides in Central Florida.

We noticed there was a similar case
in Citrus County, David Spears,

and a similar case
in Pasco County, John Doe.

The victims were
all middle-aged white men,

traveling alone
on Central Florida highways.

In each case,

.22 caliber weapons were used.

Also, six months
before the death of David Spears,

there was another potential victim
in Volusia County, a neighboring county.

His name being Richard Mallory.

He had property stolen from the vehicle.

A radar detector
and a 35-millimeter camera.

The rest of the victims
had items taken as well.

We noticed that
the driver's side seat in the vehicles

was pulled in the forward-most position.

But if you looked at our victims,

they were anywhere
from five-foot-ten to six-foot-five.

So, they wouldn't be driving a car
with the seat pulled up that far.

I thought back to an incident
that occurred on July the Fourth

in Marion County.

We recovered a vehicle
in the Orange Springs area

that belonged to a missing man
by the name of Peter Siems.

The vehicle had been damaged,

and the seat was
all the way forward in the driver's side.

Same as the other cases.

Even though
we didn't find a body in that case,

we identified some witnesses

who had seen
two females leaving the vehicle.

One was kind of short and really heavyset.

The other was kind of taller with blond...
A little shoulder-length blond hair.

They took off
from the church in the woods.

The tall blond,

she had a scar on her forehead.

And she had blood on her.

So, uh, we had an artist
put the composites together for us

on these females.

We didn't have any idea
what their connection would be.

Could they have stolen the vehicle?
We didn't know.

But what we did know
is that, if we found them,

we'd be able to get some answers.

At this point, we had five bodies,

as well as a missing person,
all in the space of about four months.

The realization
that we might have a serial killer

was overwhelming.

It's something
we had never dealt with before.

We knew, at this point,

we had to ramp up our investigations.

We reached out
to dozens of law enforcement.

It became evident that
we really needed to work together on this.

So, we knew that every victim
was shot with a .22.

It was copper-jacketed, hollow point.

The striations in the barrel
that make the bullet spin,

uh, were all the same,

always a right twist.

It's almost like
a fingerprint for the bullet.

This is the same gun
being used in all these homicides.

It's a smaller weapon,
it gives less kickback,

so it could be
that somebody either smaller or weaker

might be using a .22.

We all started leaning
in that same direction,

that, uh, this could
very well be a female.

A female serial killer.

A few weeks later...

Mr. Humphreys' car was found,

and a receipt was located

underneath the front driver's seat
of the vehicle.

It had the name
of the truck stop in Wildwood, Florida,

at Interstate 75 and County Route 44.

We went in, we talked to the clerk.

We asked her about Charles Humphreys
and showed her a photo of him.

She didn't recognize him
or remember him being in there.

So, we showed the clerk
the two composite drawings.

And she said, "I saw them in here."

"They... they purchased something
and they left."

"But these girls
were acting kind of giddy,

they got my attention."

This lead was really phenomenal

because, now,
this was our first real connection

to two women tied
into a missing person case,

possibly being involved in the death
of Charles Richard Humphreys.

But we still didn't have any names,

so we had to try
and find out who these people were.

It was at this point
that we had another homicide occur.

That of Walter Gino Antonio.

His vehicle was found.

The license plates had been removed,

and the driver's side seat
was in the forward-most position.

He was killed
with the same type of weapon,

same type of ammunition.

This brought the victim count to six,

with the possibility
of a seventh with Peter Siems.

The killer was making a circle around us

and dropping bodies
and victims' vehicles along the way.

But that's a very volatile situation.

You know,
we just cannot let this go on.

We have to do more.

So, we made the decision
to release the composites to the press.

If nothing else,
from a public safety standpoint.

But I think we underestimated
what kind of media interest

this would generate.

It was like a feeding frenzy,
like a bunch of piranhas.

The information that we've received,
there were a variety of scenarios.

This was bigger than anything
I had handled up to that point.

We don't know that at this point.

Right off the bat,
they realized this was a story.

Police say,
for the first time in criminal history,

these killers may be murdering
with a feminine touch.

The main suspects are two young women

who play damsels in distress
along the roadway

and then become dames of doom.

We don't know how the suspects
are getting close enough to our victims

to, uh...

break down the natural tendency
to be wary of strangers.

She may be offering, uh, a sexual favor

or asking for some sort of assistance.

Florida drivers
aren't stopping for anyone,

especially female hitchhikers.

It's just scary, in a way, because, uh...

Knowing somebody's
doing something like that.

I get all these white hairs carrying a gun

hoping nobody catches me with it
and put me in jail.

I'd rather have the sheriff
here in this county catch me with it

than two women catch me without it.

I'd say that the pressure
kind of went through the roof.

It kind of blew the top off of it.

Once we went public, almost immediately,

calls started coming in.

We had obtained over 400 leads
on who these composites might be.

Of those 400 leads,

four of them gave us good information...

...and they all named the same people.

Tyria Moore and her girlfriend, Lee.

They described Tyria Moore
as the short, heavyset individual,

and her friend, Lee, as the taller blond.

It was just amazing that, finally,
we have something concrete to work with.

The next day, we receive another lead
from a detective in Port Orange.

The detective said he had gotten tips
from a confidential source

on who these girls might be.

And from what the source told him,

their last known address
was the Fairview Motel in Port Orange.

Investigators check on the Fairview,

they talk to the clerk,
and they show the clerk the composites.

The clerk looks at them
and says, "Oh, yeah."

"Those girls have been in here.
They stay here regularly."

"They always want room number eight."

The tall blond, who went by the name Lee,

signed in under the name
of Cammie Marsh Greene.

A name that we hadn't heard before.

We found that she lived
in Holly Hill, Florida,

which is just outside of Daytona Beach.

We checked and determined
that she was not involved.

She had not stayed at the Fairview.

So, we knew someone else
had used that name

and had assumed her identity as well.

The next thing we do
is we check the pawn shops.

We knew
that the victims had property stolen,

and we wanna find out if anyone
using any of the names that we had

pawned any items.

The detectives in Daytona Beach...

find a pawn ticket.

And it's in the name
of Cammie Marsh Greene.

It's for a box of tools.

And this was an item
that had been stolen from the vehicle

that belonged to David Spears.

They find a second pawn ticket.

For a radar detector
and a 35-millimeter camera.

We know those are the same items
stolen from Richard Mallory.

At the time in Florida,

the pawn dealers
were supposed to get thumbprints

of people pawning items.

On the first pawn ticket,
with the radar detector and the camera,

they failed to get that thumbprint.

But on the second one,
there was a thumbprint.

We checked it out
through the fingerprint system,

it came up as what we call a "No Hit."

There was no record on file
for that thumbprint.

So, the only thing they could do
would be do a manual fingerprint search.

And they came back
in about 15 minutes with a match.

It was a girl by name of Lori Grody.

Yet another name
that we hadn't heard before.

But you have that "aha" moment
where something comes together.

It was one
of the breakthroughs in the case.

I mean, fingerprints are great.

Next to DNA,

they're the best thing
you got identifying somebody.

When we checked,

a person using the name of Lori Grody
had been arrested in Florida

for possession of a weapon
and skipped out on bond,

so we had an arrest warrant
and booking photos.

And, as we ran the background
on the... the criminal history,

we found
that the actual name of the individual

was not Lori Grody.

It was Aileen Wuornos.

We found that Aileen
was actually a Michigan native.

She was born there.

She was listed
as about five-foot-four-inches tall.

Five-foot-four would be a pretty good size

for somebody driving closer
to the steering wheel.

We contacted the Michigan State Police,

and they did
a comprehensive background on her

that painted a picture.

It showed that she had
a horrible family life.

She didn't have
a mother or a father figure.

Her father was a career criminal.

She went out on her own.

By the age of 13, 14,

she was now
prostituting herself for cigarettes.

She lived in an old car
in the woods for a while.

At one point, she bought a gun
and was gonna rob a convenience store.

Got arrested for that.

So, at this point in the investigation,

we were able to determine
that the people we were looking for

was definitely Aileen Wuornos,
based on the fingerprints,

and her girlfriend, Tyria Moore.

We're thinking,
"Here are two cold-blooded murderers."

We're concerned
that somebody else could die.

The problem was
we didn't know where they were.

All the information
that we had developed up to that point

indicated that
they always seemed to gravitate

back over to the Daytona Beach area.

That's when we got Mike Joyner

involved in the case.

One of the best
undercover guys I've ever met.

We had used him previously

where we put him in jail
with a possible suspect...

...to try to see if the suspect
starts talking about the case.

And he was good, he was really good.

I have worked undercover in...

...contract killings, drug deals,

extortion cases,

homicide cases.

I've done it
to get the baddest of the baddest

off the streets if I could.

But this was the first time

that I worked a case of this magnitude
that women were the suspects.

Captain Binegar was a leader
and demanded quality work.

He didn't want you to half-ass do nothing.

And they said, "Mike, what do we do?"

"How do we catch them?"

"What's your suggestion?"

I said, "They're barflies."

"Take us to Daytona,

let us start working all the bars.
Eventually, we're gonna run into them."

Daytona was wild. Full of bikers.

You're looking for a barfly

in a party town.

I think we were over there
for like eight, nine, ten days.

I have no idea how many bars I went into.

If they served a beer, I went in it.

We went to a bar in, uh,

Port Orange.

When I headed up to the bar
and got me a beer,

I looked over and...

I seen the lady.

The picture looked just like her,

but the scar is what alerted me to her.

It was Aileen.

She wasn't with anybody.

Tyria wasn't with her.

I told my partner, "Go tell my captain."

"Let him know
I found her and I'm staying."

"I'm not letting her out of my sight."

I got the word
that they had located her.

It's like a needle in a haystack.

It was like a miracle moment.

I'm like,
"This can't be really happening."

"This is unbelievable."

And driving from Ocala
to over there, you know,

I just felt like I was on cloud nine.

I eased my way over there
where she was, at the side of the bar,

and I asked her, I said,
"Can I buy you a beer?"

I had a wad of money in my pocket.

Money can open up anybody's mouth.

And maybe get her confidence

to maybe say something
that nobody else would know

about the homicides.

And that was our goal.

That woman, though,
she can drink a beer now, I promise you.

She was very friendly.

Until she got enough to drink in her

she turned.

I've been known
to take a shot from a pool stick.

And she hit me across the back with hers.

I went to my knees.

I just got up and I said,

"You... effing idiot!"

"Why did you hit me?"

She reached out there,
and hugged my neck and said,

"Honey, I don't know."

"It just comes over me."

And I let it go.

But it makes you keep your guard up.

If she could've killed seven people...

why not eight?

She come up with the idea
we need to go to The Last Resort.

It is a unique place.

Very much a biker bar.

We had a surveillance team out front.

I told her I was going to gas up my truck.

So, when I did, I met some of the guys,
and they put a wire on me.

Let me know you hear me.

- You hear me?
- Yep.

Okay, bud.

I was actually
just down the street

listening to the conversations

on the body mic.

But there's a lot
that's out of your control.

She might have been carrying a gun.

A .22 revolver.

It's... It's risky.

Grab me a beer.

We started drinking again.

She kept saying she had nowhere to live,

no money.

That's why I kept pulling out my money

and buying stuff.

Yeah, I'd definitely like
to stay in contact with you and all.

You're my type.

It wasn't a flirting, it was a

baiting for the next victim.

It's just that,
you know, I am so fucked up,

- and so hurt that...
- Why you hurting so bad?

What's wrong?

I lost somebody
I was in love for five years... with.

Run off
and left you or something?

Yep.

And then
she started telling me about Tyria.

She was very upset that Tyria had left.

How long
y'all been broke up?

- Two weeks. You want it?
- That's hard.

But the thing about it,
you come into this world,

you had nothing
but a naked ass and not a dime,

and you made it, didn't you?

- Huh?
- Yes.

All right.
By God, you can do it again, then.

She loved Tyria so much.

She just was devastated.

She said, "Let's go out tonight."

"I'll show you a big time."

"Bring all your money,
and I know some places we can go."

Well...

I kind of figured what that was.

So, I excuse myself to the bathroom,

and I told my backup team,

I said, "Guys, this is...

This is it, okay?"

If we leave,
I'm gonna be your next victim.

And I said,
"Piss on the fire and call in the dogs."

"This hunt's over with."

I walk outside...

Hey,
if you hear me, she wants to walk.

Blow the horn if you hear me.
She wants to walk now.

Okay, buddy.

We're gonna try
to get her outside first, right?

All right, is everybody ready?

Even though we didn't have enough

to charge her
with a homicide at that point...

Come here, baby!

...I said we gotta arrest her
on the outstanding warrant

under the name of Lori Grody
for carrying a concealed firearm.

Gotta take her down.

Sheriff's department, Volusia County.
Step over there a minute.

What's your name, pal?

Hey.

My name's Jones, man. What's wrong?

My name is investigator Horzepa
with the sheriff's office.

- Volusia County Warrants Division.
- Yeah?

- Can I see some ID?
- I ain't got none, man.

I don't want her to know
I'm an undercover cop.

I want her to try to talk to me some more.

- Let me see some ID.
- I ain't got no identification.

Let me see some...

I ain't got
no fucking identification!

I ain't got none!

I ain't got no fucking felony, man!

You can see Mike
getting combative with the officers.

He was really playing the part.

I wanna know
what the hell is going on here.

- I'll tell you, you're under arrest.
- For what?

- For a warrant!
- For what warrant?

A warrant!

Four years ago,
you didn't show up to court.

And then they just put us
in the back of the patrol car.

They left us there for me to try
to get some more out of her if I could.

- What's going on, girl?
- I don't know!

What do they mean
by a warrant?

I have no idea.

Honey, you're probably one
of these little undercover suckers that...

Doing some kind of shit
that I don't know what's going on and...

- Who you talking about?
- You ain't...

- Who the fuck you talking about?
- I don't know what's going on!

I don't know
what the fuck's going on either!

Neither do I!

We got no confession,
no mention of the homicide.

No gun.

We didn't have... anything.

- You don't even remember me, do you?
- Yeah, I do.

Did we have
enough evidence to convict her?

No.

When I heard the news,
I was in the sheriff's office.

There was really no time
to sit back and relax,

because getting a confession
under these circumstances

is gonna be very difficult.

We had to decide how to approach Aileen,

and Mike was a key part
of this investigation

because now we know
she felt so strongly about Tyria.

Mike was very adamant
that she would do anything for her,

so we knew we had to locate her.

We received a lead
that had named Tyria Moore

and given a phone number for her.

The detectives
brought her back down to Florida,

and they interviewed her.

If Tyria
decided to not cooperate,

then we'd kind of be back to square one.

She was key to this case.

Okay, first of all,
how do you know Aileen?

Um, I met her in a gay bar
in South Daytona in June of 1986.

We lived together for four years,

and started out as lovers,
and later we were just like sisters more.

I think...
think she was very nervous.

But it was a relief
that she was so cooperative.

She came home one morning
with a two-door Cadillac.

Now, this would have been when?

In December of '89.

We were sitting on the living room floor,

and she openly confessed

that she had shot
and killed a man that day.

She's talking about
the Mallory homicide in Volusia County.

That Aileen told her
that she had shot a guy that day.

And, at first, I didn't believe her.

'Cause she lies about a lot of things.

But I saw it
about a week later on the news.

- I heard.
- You heard...

It's like taking a big exhale.

If there was ever
any doubt in anybody's mind

that we were after the right person,

you know, the pieces
were all starting to fit together.

If you're looking
at the letter of the law,

she had a responsibility to report that,

and she didn't.

Could you charge her? Yes.

But it was a prosecutor's decision

to say, "We wanna use her as a witness,

not as a co-defendant."

I mean, she was scared to death

that she was
gonna have to go to prison also.

So, Tyria flipped and said
she would help us get a confession...

...out of Aileen.

So, we set her up
in a motel room in Daytona

and had her make contact with Aileen.

She wrote out a letter
and sent it to her in the jail

and said,
"I'm at this motel, here's the number."

"Call me, I'm scared."

I iterated to Tyria,

"Prove to her how scared you are

and make Aileen believe it."

We were hopeful
Aileen would do what she needed to do

as far as trying to keep Tyria
as much out of this as possible.

Tyria was sitting on the bed.

It would be like church bells going off.

Everybody stood up and sprang up.

Tyria answered the phone. It was Aileen.

- Hi.
- Hey.

What the hell's going on?
They've called.

They've been up to my parents' again.

They've got my sister now
asking her questions.

I don't know what's going on.

Huh.
Why are they asking your sister questions?

- I don't know.
- Hmm.

Lee, I think they're coming after me,
I know they are.

No, they're not, you're innocent.

I'm not gonna let you go to jail...

...you hear me?

You evidently
don't love me anymore,

you don't trust me or anything.

You're gonna let me get in trouble
for something I didn't do.

I said I'm not!

Tyria was very emotional,
and that was not put on.

- Why in the hell did you do this?
- Huh?

- Why did you do this?
- I don't know.

- Listen, Ty.
- What?

I'm probably never
gonna see you again, you know that?

Yes.

I love you.

I mean, you can't help but it pull
at your heartstrings a little bit.

If I have to confess everything

just to keep you
from getting in trouble, I will.

- Okay.
- So, don't worry, okay?

Okay.

I love you.

Well, do it now, get it over with.

- Right this very moment?
- Yes, get it over with.

- All right.
- Okay.

- All right. I love you.
- Okay, bye.

Aileen really cared about Tyria.

She really did.

Probably the most stable relationship
she had in her entire life.

Within an hour
of her getting off the phone with Tyria,

she reached out
to corrections officers at the jail.

She was ready to talk.

Okay, so then what you're telling us

is you're voluntarily
coming forward to talk to us now.

Yeah, to let you know
that I'm the one that did the killing.

The truth comes out.

I know that I don't want
my girlfriend involved.

She did not do anything,

and I'm trying to make this clear,
that's why I'm confessing.

Just, uh... She was protecting Tyria,
but she was also being truthful.

I just felt a...

You know, a great relief.

But what I did,

I don't understand why I did it,
I just don't.

I... I just don't.

I should have never done it.

See, most of times, I was drunk as hell,
and I was a professional hooker.

You know, she had a tough life.

But there's a lot of people out there
that's had tough lives,

and they don't go on a killing spree.

They were bad,
'cause they were gonna hurt me.

This person was either gonna
physically beat me up,

rape me or kill me.

And I don't know which one.

And I just turned around

and did my fair play
before I would get hurt.

I don't know that anybody,

including her,
knows exactly why she did it.

Some people,
that's all they wanna concentrate on,

but that, uh...

That really wasn't my job.

My job was to figure out
who committed these murders

and put that person
where they needed to be,

and that was, you know, behind bars.

There was never
any evidence that indicated

that Tyria Moore was responsible
for any of these homicides.

She was critical to making,
uh, the case against Wuornos.

- She loved you, didn't she?
- Yes.

She said she'd do anything for you,
didn't she?

Yes, she did.

And in order for her to say
what you wanted her to,

you lied to her.

- Right?
- Yes.

In Deland, Florida, tomorrow,

a judge will sentence
the first female serial killer

ever brought to trial in this country.

Today, the jury in the case recommended

that Aileen Wuornos
get the electric chair.

Wuornos is a prostitute.

She was convicted of killing a man
who picked her up for sex.

There was something
that would flip her off,

like a switch going off
to where she went into this mode

where she was
that aggressor, that predator,

and she would, uh, be out for the kill.

There's no sense
in keeping... keeping me alive,

because I just would
absolutely kill again.

I've got too much anger,

too much hatred in me.

Thirty years
after the deaths of these men,

there's this fascination
from people that they're looking at

a real true crime story

that could just as well be fiction,
as wild as it is.

Huh.

You see a picture of her,
and they even got her victims up there.

I didn't know that.

I just retired last year,

and, uh, we're still talking about it.

So, I guess
it's gonna follow me to the grave.

I don't know.

So, Steve,
just watch the mic for us. Yeah.

I wouldn't have done
anything any different.

I'm glad that no one had to suffer

because of her hands anymore.

But I'm sad that she killed seven people.

And my part of it is over with.

I crawl back in my dirt hole,

I hide from the public

and wait for the next time.