Serial killer Wuornos' last hours at hand

Daytona NJ ^ | 10.09.02 | By HENRY FREDERICK (henry.frederick@news-jrnl.com)

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Guess the local dems will lose two votes this November.

[My Favorite Headache]

No they will gain 2. This is dead people we are talking about.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

And a felon. That make 3.

[Anti-Bubba182]

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[motexva]

I would be interested in hearing more about this case. I have a fairly conservative friend in FL who believes her execution is a travesty of justice, that there is evidence that she killed in self-defense. I read an article once that asserted that she was a true psychotic - ie, someone who cannot help but kill, due to some conditioning event in their lives, in her case it was a series of vicious beatings she received at the hands of different "johns" who she had serviced. I'm open to more information about this case, but I have my qualms about this execution - and I say this as a death penalty supporter.

[John Jamieson]

You need to learn more about this case alright.

[L.N. Smithee]

I have a fairly conservative friend in FL who believes her execution is a travesty of justice, that there is evidence that she killed in self-defense.

SIX TIMES???

[South40]

Goodnight Aileen, and good riddance!

[OldFriend]

OJ and David Westerfield are innocent too! Sheesh!

[JudyB1938]

That's the problem .. having qualms without first educating oneself as to the facts in the case.

Regardless of the "trauma" that woman faced in her life, she deliberately killed innocent men.

Quite frankly, I am tired of "excuses" for mad dog killers & rapists. Execute them all. Let God sort them out, and He will!

[motexva]

But I guess you're not the one to actually give any more info. Thanks for your help!

[motexva]

An idiotic response, adding nothing to the discussion. I always felt Westerfield was guilty and was unsurprised by the verdict. The OJ comment is even more inane. I have a feeling I probably do know more about this case than anyone else on this thread, and even then I am unsure how I feel. None of the responses to my post add anything to my or anyone elses understanding of this case. What's the point of your comment? Humor? It wasn't particularly funny.

Credible conservatives who support the death penalty have qualms about this case. My own knowledge of this case leaves me uncertain about whether this woman deserves the death penalty. There are serious questions as to whether Wuornos was "of sound mind" when she committed these crimes. Perhaps, like another poster, issues of mental competence mean nothing to you. How primitive.

[Tall_Texan]

Here's a pretty lengthy account. There are actually several places. Just go to Google.com and type in the last name.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial4/wuornos/

[Tall_Texan]

The OJ comment is even more inane. I have a feeling I probably do know more about this case than anyone else on this thread, and even then I am unsure how I feel.

FWIW, I'm one of the view people who think both OJ juries got it right. The difference was the first trial was "beyond a reasonable doubt" and the second was a "preponderance of the evidence". In other words, the first jury had to be 95% sure he did it. The second jury just needed to be 51% sure. I believe the "Dream Team" was successful in calling into question the integrity of the blood evidence and this provided reasonable doubt. This was further supported by later revelations that the LAPD often planted evidence at crime scenes - exactly what the "Dream Team" alleged.

But there were too many other factors, plus the introduction of the Bruno Magli shoes to not convict him in the second trial with the lower burden of proof.

[Helix]

An article on here yesterday stated the woman herself admitted to deliberately murdering those men. I'll see if I can find it for you.

[Skywalk]

One problem. Contamination of DNA evidence would yield a nonsensical or misleading result, NOT an EXACT MATCH for the suspect in that case. The odds against such an occurrence are beyond astronomical.

[Skywalk]

Beyond the confession pointing to her guilt in pre-meditated murder, one can simply look at a recent Law & Order: SVU episode. It basically duplicated the Wuornos case, female prostitute found to commit several homicides.

Though prostitutes DO get raped, robbed and murdered, to believe that she had to end 6 lives(if not more) in self-defense stretches credibility. Heck, even 2-3 in the lifespan of a prostitute might be warranted, but 6?

Also, the lesbian angle is not something to be ignored. No, I don't think all lesbians hate men, but I think this one might have developed such a hate and become a lesbian AFTER the fact.

[motexva]

I am familiar with that site, but had not read the Wuornos section there. I'm looking at it now, and while it clearly takes the editorial position that she is deserving of the penalty she received, the opening paragraph here contains this passage:

On March 31 she pleaded no contest to the murders of Dick Humphreys, Troy Burress and David Spears, saying she wanted to “get right with God.” In a rambling statement to the court she said, “I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I’ve told you. But these others did not. [They] only began to start to.” She ended her monologue by turning to Assistant State Attorney Ric Ridgeway and hissing, “I hope your wife and children get raped in the ass!” On May 15, Judge Thomas Sawaya handed her three more death sentences. She made an obscene gesture and muttered, “Motherfucker.”

While Wuornos made changes to her story as the noose tightened, one constant to all of it was that she stuck to the story that all the men she killed had tried to rape her. She didn't make any friends at the trial and did not participate in her defense in any effective fashion. Whether she acted out of murderous rage or self-defense, she stole property of her victims.

But Wuornos was a prostitute, and almost certainly had been raped before. The "true psychotic" defense arose from the idea that she was not in control of her actions once someone started to rape her. Wuornos is certainly a demented personality, and few doubt her guilt in these crimes. Several of her victims were shot several times, with at least one victim shot in the back (after being shot in the stomach or chest first) so she certainly used excessive force if she was defending herself.

I just can't get past the fact that she may have been defending herself from rapists (another theory, equally valid, is that she killed men because they refused to pay her for her services.) I guess given the circumstances, I would feel more comfortable giving her a life sentence. Unlike other women executed in Texas in the last few years - I'm thinking of Karla Faye Tucker, who helped butcher two people and claimed she had an orgasm during the killing, and an older woman who claimed her husband beat her, but had also killed another husband who certainly did not beat her - there seems to be at least the possibility that Wuornos tale could be true. Honestly, if those guys tried to rape her, they deserved what they got. And we'll never know what happened. (Another tragic facet of this case is that many people have serious questions about the character of her victims, especially the first one. While congress with a prostitute is certainly not an executable offense, the families and friends of these victims will always wonder just what the hell the victims were up to when they were killed.)

I suspect you disagree with that, and that's fine. You were civil in your response to me, and I hope I have been civil in mine to you. I am very tired with the constant anger and belligerence responses that pop up here recently. The character of FR is changing and I am tired of seeing people jumped on by people who have nothing valuable to add to a discussion - they merely insult, or whine that someone is wrong without offering any kind of information or argument. This behavior has long been a feature of any internet bulletin board, but seems to have gotten worse here in the last year or so.

[Joe Boucher]

She killed 6 different times and admitted them all. She may have been abused but that is a hazzard of the profession she chose. Other prostitutes have gotten beaten and don't end up killers. Initially she said that in each case they were johns who had gotten what they deserved for trying to do whatever to her but then changed her tune. One guy was an old preacher who had picked her up while hitchhiking. Another she had picked up at a Daytona area bar.It doesn't matter if she had a dificult childhood or that maybe she was abused as a child. It matters that she killed 6 people in six different episodes. It only matters that she killed and she should go to old sparkey and not even the humane lethal injection route.