Monster by Aileen Wuornos

volumes. The vast majority of murders committed by women are, for want of a better phrase, crimes of passion. They are instigated by abuse or jealousy. Women generally are not as violent or physically aggressive as men, who may kill in brawls or during the course of crime. Without doubt there are different social controls on women which offer them less opportunity to be placed in a position to kill. It is a sign of the times, for instance, that they are not as free to roam the streets and bars at night. As we can see, Lee was an exception. Sometimes society and circumstance throw up a female killer who, because of the nature of her crimes and, indeed, because she is a woman, stuns and sickens us all. Lee Wuornos was that very rare specimen.
    During the third week of May 1990, 41-year-old Charles ‘Chuck’ Carskaddon, a former road digger and rodeo rider, was en route from his mother’s home in Boonville, Missouri, to Tampa to pick up Peggy, his fiancée. He had packed up the hard life and found less stressful employment as a press operator in his home state of Missouri. All he had to do was drive to Florida to collect Peggy, and his life would be complete. We may safely assume that he was driving south along the Dixie Highway when he spotted Lee thumbing a ride. In fact, chilling as it may seem, it is highly likely that, having dumped David Spears’s truck close to I-75, one of the next rides Lee took was with Mr Carskaddon.
    After they stopped – for sex, Lee claimed – she removed her gun from her bag and discharged no fewer than sevenshots into the man’s upper body from the back seat, claiming that it was an act of self-defence. After reloading her .22 she shot two more bullets into the corpse. The reason she gave for this cold-blooded and dreadful act was that she had found his .45-calibre handgun on the hood – or bonnet – of the car and was enraged to further violence by the thought that he may have planned to kill her.
    Of the murder itself, we only have Lee’s account above to inform us of the events that took place. At first she argued that the killing was in self-defence, then she changed her story, saying that she killed him just for the money. During the last few days of her life she told Nick Broomfield off-camera that she had, indeed, killed all of her victims in self-defence. Carskaddon’s naked body was found 23 miles short of his destination on Wednesday, 6 June. The corpse was covered with foliage and a green electric blanket. The autopsy showed that he had been shot nine times in the chest with a .22-calibre handgun.
    The dead man’s brown 1975 Cadillac, a car he had lovingly restored, was discovered the next day around 45 miles north of where the body had been found, near I-75 and CR 484 in Marion County. Although the number plate had been ripped off, the vehicle identification number was still intact. A trace soon revealed the owner’s name.
    Carskaddon’s mother, Florence, told police that when her only son left home he was carrying a blue-steel, .45-calibre pistol with a pearl handle, a Mexican blanket, a stun gun, a flip-top lighter, a watch and a tan suitcase. He was wearing a black T-shirt and grey snakeskin cowboyboots. ‘He had removed the firing pin from the gun,’ she said, ‘because he was scared to use it.’
    None of these items was found in his car, and Lee – minus a firing pin – was now packing more heat than ever before.

CHAPTER SEVEN
PETER SIEMS
    MURDERED 7/8 JUNE 1990
    OH, LET ME SEE… THIRD GUY… I HAD A PROBLEM WITH… UH… LET’S SEE… I THINK THE NEXT ONE’S THE ONE… HE WAS A CHRISTIAN GUY OR SOMETHING. I… I DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS A CHRISTIAN GUY. HE WAS NUDE… THIS IS THE ONE IN GEORGIA, I THINK, AND HE HAD HIS… HE HAD… HE TOOK A SLEEPING BAG… TOOK IT OUT IN THE WOODS AND WHEN WE GOT NUDE, I HAD TAKEN MY BAG WITH ME THAT TIME BECAUSE I SAID, ‘WELL, IF WE’RE GOING TO GO OUT IN THE WOODS, I’M NOT GOING TO GIVE HIM AN OPPORTUNITY TO RAPE ME.