Monster by Aileen Wuornos Page A

AND THAT’S THE TIME THIS GUY GAVE ME A PROBLEM TOO. AND SO, I WHIPPED OUT MY GUN AND I SAID, ‘YOU KNOW, I… I… I DON’T WANT TO SHOOT YOU.’ HE SAID… HE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING, HE JUST LOOKED AT ME AND SAID, ‘YOU FUCKING BITCH.’ AND I SAID, ‘NO, YOU WERE GOING TO RAPE ME.’ BECAUSE HE WAS GETTING PHYSICAL WITH ME AGAIN AND I KNEW. AND HE… AND HE SAID, ‘FUCK YOU, BITCH,’ AND STARTED TO COME AT ME AND HE WAS, YOU KNOW, TRYING TO GET THE GUN FROM ME AND STUFF, WE’RE STRUGGLING ON THAT ONE. AND HE TRIED TO GET THE GUN FROM ME AND STUFF, WE’RE STRUGGLING WITH THE GUN AND EVERYTHING ELSE AND A COUPLE OF BULLETS SHOT UP IN THE AIR AND FINALLY I RIPPED IT AWAY AND I HAD THE GUN IN MY LEFT HAND AND I PUT IT BACK IN MY RIGHT HAND AND I SHOT HIM IMMEDIATELY… AND I’M POSITIVE THE ONLY ONE IN GEORGIA IS THE MISSIONARY GUY… I REMEMBER THE MISSIONARY GUY. I SHOT HIM ONCE.
    Deeply religious, easy-going and considered a real gentleman in every respect, Peter Siems was a 65-year-old retired merchant seaman living on Florida’s east coast near Jupiter, Martin County. He had found the Lord many years previously; soon he was to meet the Antichrist.
    Early in the morning of Thursday, 7 June 1990 – the same day Carskaddon’s car was found – neighbours saw the part-time missionary placing luggage and a stack of bibles into his 1988 silver-grey Pontiac Sunbird. They assumed, correctly, that the balding, bespectacled man was off on another of his trips to spread the word. On his travels, he intended to visit relatives in Arkansas and then drive up to New Jersey to see his sister. He promised hiswife that he would phone later in the day – she never heard from him again.
    The most direct route for such a mammoth drive would be to join the Florida Turnpike near his home then cut up through the centre of the state until he joined I-75 near Wildwood, which was Wuornos country.
    After her arrest, Lee admitted that she was very drunk when Siems stopped on I-95, though it was more likely to have been along I-75 where it crosses the Florida Turnpike in Marion County. She vaguely recalled crossing a state line in his car, but could not remember if it was Georgia or South Carolina. It was Georgia. She claimed that Siems ‘became threatening during a sexual encounter in the woods, so I shot him’.
    His body remains undiscovered. It lies rotting somewhere in the pinewoods of Georgia.
     
    The mystery of the sudden disappearance of Mr Siems took a bizarre twist on Wednesday, 4 July when a silver-grey Pontiac Sunbird – not a red car as portrayed in the movie Monster – careered off CR 315 near Orange Springs, Florida, just ten miles east from where Lee dumped David Spears’s truck. The car shot round a bend, skidded sideways and smashed through a steel gate and a barbed-wire fence, shattering the windscreen before coming to rest in the undergrowth. For a brief second it appeared that it might roll over, but it soon righted itself. With steam hissing from the radiator, and a slowly deflating tyre, the car, like its late owner, was doomed.
    Rhonda and Jim Bailey, who were sitting on their porch drinking lemonade and enjoying the sun, witnessed the spectacular accident. Somewhat bemused, the elderly couple observed two women clamber out of the car. Lee, whose arms were bleeding from the cuts sustained in the crash, started throwing beer cans into the woods and swearing at her fellow passenger, who said very little.
    The Baileys noted that the women grabbed a red- and-white beer cooler from the back seat and, still arguing, staggered off along the road. At the approach of other cars, they would dash into the woods and hide, only to reappear after the vehicles had passed. When the coast was clear, they returned to the car.
    When neighbourly Rhonda ambled over to offer what little assistance she could, the blonde begged her not to call the police, saying that her father lived just up the road. The two women climbed back in the