Mind of a Serial Killer - SERIAL KILLER: Aileen Wuornos Pt. 1

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Before she became one of America’s most infamous female serial killers, Aileen Wuornos was a teenage runaway, a survivor of abuse, and a girl the system failed. In Part 1, we trace her early life—from abandonment and trauma to the desperate path that would lead her to murder. Killer Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Don’t miss out on all things Killer Minds! Instagram: @killerminds | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Crime House. Unfortunately, being a woman comes with certain sad realities. One of those is the need to be hyper-vigilant at all times. Most women know they're more likely to be targeted, especially by men. But even when we're being as careful as possible, there's still the possibility that we could be overpowered. That's especially true for female sex workers. Their cases are often trivialized and under-investigated. Many serial killers know this, and specifically go after these types of victims.

That might be why people are so fascinated by the story of Eileen Warnos. She was a sex worker with substance abuse issues and virtually no support network. Exactly the kind of person whose case would have been swept under the rug if she was a victim. But Eileen flipped that script. As she waited on the side of the road, getting into cars with strange men, she knew exactly what she was doing. Because she wasn't the one being preyed upon. Eileen was the one doing the hunting. The human mind is powerful.

It shapes how we think, feel, love and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Killer Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson. And I'm Dr. Tristan Ingalls. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer. Crime House is made possible by you.

Please rate, review, and follow Killer Minds to enhance your listening experience with ad-free early access to each two-part series and bonus content. Subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple podcasts. A warning. This episode contains depictions of abuse, sexual assault and murder. Listener discretion is advised. listener discretion is advised. Today we begin our deep dive on Eileen Warnes, a serial killer who terrorized Florida in the late 1980s and early 90s. She left seven victims in her wake and completely changed the way we understand violent crime.

Because even today, it might surprise some people to learn anyone can be a killer, even a woman. And as Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like how Eileen's troubled childhood shaped her life, why she later gave such inconsistent stories about her crimes, and what goes on in the mind of a killer as they begin to escalate their violence. And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer? Hey everyone, Vanessa Richardson here. I'm narrating the first audiobook from Crime House Studios called Murder in the Media.

Told through the lens of five heart-pounding murder cases, this thrilling audiobook traces the evolving and sometimes insidious role the media has had in shaping true crime storytelling. Murder in the Media is a Crime House original audiobook. Find it now on Spotify. No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at NoFriills.ca. Whether it's a family member, friend or furry companion joining your summer road trip, enjoy the peace of mind that comes with Volvo's legendary safety.

During Volvo Discover Days, enjoy limited time savings as you make plans to cruise through Muskoka or down Toronto's bustling streets. From now until June 30th, lease a 2025 Volvo XC60 from 1.74% and save up to $4,000. Condition supply. Visit your GTA Volvo retailer or go to volvocars.ca for full details. Serial killers often justify their actions by saying they were dealt a bad hand in life. Eileen Warnes was no exception. Her troubles began from the day she was born. And they were relentless. Eileen was born on leap day of 1956 in Rochester, Michigan. Her mother Diane recalled the birth being challenging. Later, Diane even wondered if her complicated labor might have left Eileen with some sort

of brain damage. And Eileen's circumstances at home weren't any easier. Diane was still a child herself. She was only 16 years old when Eileen was born, and she'd already had her first son, Keith, the year before. As if being a teenage mother wasn't hard enough, Diane's husband had abandoned her just before Eileen was born. Even so, Diane tried to make the best of it. But after about six months, she realized she couldn't raise two kids on her own.

So she sent Eileen and Keith to live with her parents, Lowry and Britta Warnos, in the suburban town of Troy, Michigan. After that, the kids barely saw Diane. Lowry and Britta wanted to raise them as their own, alongside their other children, Barry, who was about 10, and Lori, who was still a baby. Eileen, Keith, and her aunt Lori all thought they were full-blooded siblings growing up. Barry was old enough to know the truth, but he respected his parents' wishes to keep it a secret. But in a small town like Troy, secrets never stay hidden for long, and by the

time Eileen was around 10, she learned that Lowry and Britta were actually her grandparents. Even so, Eileen always considered them to be her real parents, and they considered her their daughter. That didn't mean everything was perfect, though. After Eileen learned their family secret, she started to feel different, like Lowry and Britta loved their biological children more. Sometimes Eileen even felt like they punished her and Keith more than the others. Let's discuss how this may have affected Eileen growing up. A child's entire sense of self begins with their attachment to primary caregivers. If those attachments are fractured, deceptive, or chaotic, it creates deficits in how they

understand relationships, their ability to form healthy attachments, and their trust in others. By the time Eileen found out the truth, she already experienced full parental abandonment and inconsistent caregiving. This is a trauma and a blueprint for future instability, rejection, and emotional dysregulation. Sometimes people throw out Ted Bundy as an example of how this familial deception can negatively impact children. Are there any misconceptions you can dispel here, Dr. Engels? Yeah, I immediately thought about

the similarities with Ted Bundy's childhood, and I'm so glad you asked this question. There are definitely misconceptions here that need to be cleared up because people can infer a causation between this and future violence or psychopathy. Firstly, being adopted or being misled about your family does not cause children to grow up and become violent offenders. There are millions of children in foster care or who have been adopted who have

never harmed another person and grew up to be well-adjusted adults. Most children are able to process their origin story and the associated information in resilient ways, particularly if they are given adequate support, nurturance, and even counseling. However, they can be negatively affected if they were repeatedly lied to, made to feel unsafe or unwanted, or given differential treatment. The bottom line is being adopted or misled about family is not a cause of violence, but having an unstable and abusive environment can elevate the risk of emotional and behavioral deficits later in life.

And even if Eileen did consider Lowry and Britta to be her real parents, that didn't mean growing up in their house was easy. Lowry was incredibly strict and would physically discipline the kids any time they misbehaved. There's some dispute over how violent he was, but Eileen claims he frequently beat her with his belt. To cope, Eileen eventually turned to drugs. At only 12 years old, she was already using marijuana, acid, and cocaine, and it seems like physical abuse wasn't the only thing she was trying to forget. Reportedly, Eileen was being sexually abused as well.

According to her, it started around the same time as her drug use. Some reports claim that Eileen may have been sexually abused by members of her own family, her grandfather, Lowry, and her uncle, Barry. Others claim she even had an incestuous relationship with her brother, Keith. However, everyone in Eileen's family has denied these claims, including Eileen herself.

But there was one tragic situation that nobody disputes. In 1969, when Eileen was 13, she was walking around the neighborhood when a strange man offered her a ride. Normally, she would have said no, but it was pouring rain and the man said he knew Lowry. It's not clear if he actually knew Eileen's grandfather, but either way, it was a trap. Once Eileen got into the man's car, he raped her, and Eileen became pregnant. Ashamed and afraid, she tried to keep the pregnancy a secret. But eventually, she couldn't keep it hidden any longer.

And when Eileen came clean about the assault, her worst fears came true. No one believed her. Not even her own family. Instead, they shamed her for being promiscuous. Instead of helping Eileen, her grandparents shipped her off to a home for unwed mothers in Detroit. She was only there for a month or two before she had her son. The birth was difficult, lasting an entire day. Eileen chose to give up the baby for adoption, and when she returned home, she was different. Becoming a mother so young, coupled with all the other

struggles in her life, took a serious toll on Eileen. Soon, she became extremely depressed. Her counselors at school noticed something was wrong and tried to intervene. They tried prescribing her sedatives, but the medication didn't help. And when they recommended therapy, their suggestion was ignored. Eileen continued to struggle and around this time, she tried to end her life. There are so many profound traumas that you just described, it's really hard to know where to start because they're all connected to who she would become. At an age where most kids are in middle school, trying to discover their identity, Eileen was reportedly navigating abuse, drug use, sexual trauma, a pregnancy, shaming, a traumatic

birth, giving up her child, and the total failure of her family to believe her, protect her, and support her even at the recommendation of her school counselors. I imagine that this life interruption also affected her social skills or her ability to make friends with her peers, and she was likely subjected to bullying as well, which means no one and nowhere felt safe. These are a series of significant traumas

that are compounded with existing ones, like full parental abandonment, differential treatment in the home, and inconsistent caregiving. The impact of sexual violence on a child is profound. They experience deep feelings of shame, guilt, emotional numbness, and chronic low self-worth, and they don't even know how to express that.

This greatly elevated her risk for depression and anxiety, as well as risk-taking behavior, all of which we can already see is occurring because Eileen's using illicit substances and she's attempted to end her life at such a young age. The impact of pregnancy from a rape is substantial, and then to be shipped off to Detroit to undergo a traumatic birth without family support is another form of abandonment, only to then have to abandon her own child. This is all absolutely destabilizing. Sadly, she is consistently being taught by the people who should be protecting her that she has no value or worth. She had to have

been absolutely terrified, and at age 13, not only does she not fully understand pregnancy and what to expect, she's in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people, and at her age, pregnancy is five times more fatal than a woman in her 20s. On top of that, there's likely disenfranchised grief because she had to put her child up for adoption. And disenfranchised grief is when someone's grief is not openly acknowledged by others or socially supported due to societal norms or cultural beliefs. She's receiving no cognitive, behavioral, or emotional guidance to help her overcome these

series of traumas and this is going to lead to the delinquency, anger, resentment, and poor emotional regulation that you will outline for us. And as an aside, a 12 year old doesn't just stumble upon marijuana, acid, and cocaine, let alone know what it is and how to use them, especially repeatedly. So those drugs were provided to her and at what cost. It's not like she has money of her own. And they likely came from someone in her immediate environment in exchange for something else, which raises more concerns about her

home life and adds to the complex trauma. Eileen's story obviously is extreme, but what's the best way to help someone recover from an ordeal like Eileen's? How can loved ones offer support? And also, what went wrong here? Sadly, based on what we know, everything went wrong for Eileen in this case from start to finish. She wasn't believed, she had no support, and there was no intervention. Which blows my mind, because mandated child abuse reporting laws were enacted in 1963,

with most of the states following shortly after. So it's kind of surprising and astounding that not a single employee of any system, her current school or the school in Detroit she was sent to, reported her pregnancy or had it investigated. She's a child, she cannot give consent. And this alone should have been cause for a criminal investigation. As for the second part of your question, the most important thing that any caregiver can do

for a child is ensure that they feel safe coming to them. Eileen didn't. She suffered in silence while pregnant until she had no choice but to tell her family, and that says a lot about her home. The next thing that loved ones can do is to believe their child when they report a sexual assault. People often think that believing an accusation means you're blindly accusing someone, and that's simply not true. Believing means you're protecting the child first and investigating next. It's the same thing law enforcement should be doing for all cases of sexual assault, especially when there is reasonable belief that the assault occurred. False allegations of

child sexual abuse are statistically uncommon and there are almost always physical, behavioral, or emotional signs that indicate sexual trauma may have occurred. And the reality is, an estimated 90% of the time, the perpetrator is someone the child knows or trusts, or that the family knows or trusts. And because of this, there are many instances in which a parent or caregiver is in denial, or they project blame, or they experience cognitive dissonance,

all to avoid their own fears or their own discomfort when learning that a trusted family member or friend violated their child. But not believing a child erodes their trust. It affects their sense of value and increases the risk of suicide. It also decreases the likelihood of them ever coming to anyone for support in the future, because what they've been taught is that it's not safe, even when they speak the truth. So the bottom line is this, the response a child receives can either reinforce shame

or it can build resilience. The best way to build their resilience is to take their allegations seriously, remain a consistent presence, check in on them and their emotional and physical well-being, bring them to a trauma-informed therapist, provide education, process their fears, but all while remaining non-judgmental. Unfortunately, things didn't get easier for Eileen after her suicide attempt. Her classmates bullied her, and she eventually dropped out of school altogether. She did have one friend, though, a girl named Dawn Botkins. Dawn was there for Eileen when no one else was. But they were both still young, and Dawn couldn't

do much more than offer Eileen a shoulder to cry on. And by the time Eileen was 15, she was largely fending for herself. To escape her troubled home life, Eileen frequently ran away and camped in the woods at a place called The Pits. It was a popular party spot for the neighborhood kids, and Eileen was no exception. She spent her time there drinking and doing drugs. The more time Eileen spent at The Pits, the less patience Lowry and Britta had for her rebellion, and at some point in 1971, 15-year-old Eileen ran away again. Usually Lowry and Britta held tight and waited for Eileen to come home, but this time they

decided to file a runaway child report with the police. They wanted her to be punished for her actions. But before that could happen, tragedy struck. Eileen had no idea that Britta had been sick for some time, and while Eileen was hiding from the police, her grandmother passed away from cirrhosis of the liver at only 54 years old. The police allowed Eileen to attend Britta's funeral, but that didn't mean they were going to let her return home, and neither was Lowry.

The day after Britta's funeral, Eileen was arrested and sent to an all-girls juvenile detention facility in the next town over. But the new surroundings didn't do anything to curb Eileen's rebellious streak. One day, the girls went on a field trip out in the country. Eileen saw an opportunity to escape and took it. Her jailbreak didn't last long, though, and when she was taken to court on a runaway charge, Lowry said that Eileen would never be welcome in his home again. This is deeply wounding.

Filing a runaway child police report is typically done to help locate and ensure the safety of a child. This could have given Eileen false hope that they truly cared, because it was the first time they did this. By what you described, they would typically just wait it out. Instead, it seems it was done not just to punish her, but maybe even to protect themselves

from any future legal or social services involvement, because if she's running away and they don't report it, maybe even to protect themselves from any future legal or social services involvement, because if she's running away and they don't report it, and she was arrested or worse, found to have been harmed in any capacity, then they would be investigated and charged for neglect. So reporting her was self-serving on all accounts. Then he publicly rejected her, in the most demeaning way possible. This experience validated every ounce of shame

and unworthiness that she had likely been carrying her entire life. It was the last tether she had to something that resembled a sense of belonging, even if it was an unhealthy one. But also it might've just been the last sliver of hope she had left. This kind of rejection can lead to rage,

despair and self-destruction. Eileen has learned that vulnerability leads to abandonment or abuse, and so this is when she learns that she is truly alone and dependent only on herself. And at her age, in a world like this, she has to survive on instinct, manipulation, and pain. When Eileen was finally released, sometime around the end of 1971, the 15-year-old went back to camping at the pits. But it was no longer a rebellious, exciting adventure. Winter was approaching, and she was cold and miserable.

She turned to sex work as a way to escape the elements, staying at hotels or at clients' homes. But that opened up a new set of dangers. At one point Eileen was sexually assaulted again. Like before, she had no support system and no way to process her trauma. Eventually her situation became unbearable, and Eileen decided to hitchhike out of Michigan. She wanted to go see the rest of the country. At first it seemed like the open road was full of possibilities, full of hope, but the good times wouldn't last long.

Because now Eileen was completely on her own, and in order to survive, she'd have to tap into the same cruelty the world had already shown her. Hey everyone, Vanessa Richardson here. I've got an exciting announcement. I'm narrating the first audiobook from Crime House Studios called Murder in the Media. Told through the lens of five heart-pounding murder cases, this thrilling audiobook traces the evolving and sometimes insidious role the media has had in shaping true crime storytelling. From the discovery of America's first serial killer to the shocking murder of a Hollywood

legend to a chilling disappearance that captivated the nation, each of these stories will change how you think about the relationship between the media and true crime forever. Murder in the Media is a Crime House original audiobook. Find it now on Spotify. In early 1972, 15-year-old Eileen Warnos left her home state of Michigan and began her life on the road. She spent the next few years hitchhiking across the country, from New York to California and even up to Canada.

To support herself, Eileen relied on sex work. But it wasn't always enough to get by. So she eventually turned to petty crime, getting arrested a few times for forgery, theft, and disorderly conduct. As the years passed, Eileen went through bouts of depression. In her early 20s, she made a few more suicide attempts, and escalated her drug use, experimenting with different pills and hallucinogens. And she wasn't the only one in her family who was struggling.

In March 1976, when Eileen was 20, her 56-year-old grandfather, Lowry, committed suicide. Eileen didn't attend the funeral. This is pretty significant in terms of understanding Eileen's mental health risks. There is a notable family history of mental illness, substance use, and suicide. It also makes you wonder what her biological mother experienced growing up with her grandparents that she too left the home at such a young age. Well, around that same time, she was down in Florida, busy with someone else, a 69-year-old yacht club president named Lewis fell. They met sometime in 1976 and despite their 50 year age difference, they got married in May. But

the relationship didn't last long. Only two months later in July, Lewis divorced Eileen due to her quote, violent and ungovernable temper. And things didn't get any better for Eileen from there. That same month, her brother Keith lost a battle with cancer. He was only 21. These two losses, the marriage and her brother, likely felt like more abandonment to her. And all these losses in quick succession

had a profound effect on Eileen. In 1978, the 22-year-old tried to die by suicide again, shooting herself in the stomach with a shotgun. Though she ended up in the hospital, she made a full recovery. Even though Eileen's birth mother was still alive, she had no interest in seeking out Diane's support. Instead, Eileen went back to the one place she could call home, the open road.

Yeah, it sounds like she might have been experiencing compounded grief regardless of the status of those relationships. In that, she's not just grieving the person or persons, she's also grieving the childhood she never had and the apologies she will never get, and that's going to cause conflicting emotions like anger and resentment, even guilt. But more importantly, to someone like Eileen, these are also a series of perceived abandonments, like I mentioned. Eileen has a history of sexual trauma and abuse. She has poor attachments with others, inconsistent caregiving, emotional instability, unstable relationships, risky behavior, impulsivity, chronic feelings of emptiness, and self-harm. And all of these are markers for borderline personality disorder.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder experience chronic suicidal thoughts, and approximately 70% of them will attempt suicide at least once in their lifetime, with approximately 10% of them sadly completing suicide. Often individuals with borderline personality disorder engage in self-harm or attempt suicide in response to feelings of abandonment, and this appears to be the case for Eileen as well. Individuals with borderline personality disorder feel emotions intensely and it is difficult for them to regulate them, particularly without treatment or intervention. These series of perceived abandonments and losses are

likely very overwhelming for Eileen, as it would be for anybody, but she lacks healthy coping skills and the ability to self-soothe and she has no support system. She also appears to have co-occurring disorders such as substance use disorder and complex trauma that likely meets criteria for complex post-traumatic stress disorder. And when someone with borderline personality disorder has co-occurring conditions like these, the risk of suicide greatly increases. Do you think that Eileen's short-lived marriage to Louis fell,

maybe was her seeking some kind of replacement for her grandfather? Yeah, definitely. She was looking for stability, fulfillment, belonging, and security. All of those things are things she's never had, but are critically needed, especially as children. The fact that her marriage to Louis coincides with her grandfather passing does indicate that there's some desperation to overcompensate for those feelings of abandonment and emptiness. She likely hoped this would resolve those intense feelings, but unfortunately,

without treatment and intervention, her behavior and her lack of trust in others will only serve to create the abandonment she fears, as we already saw, because according to Lewis, her marriage was short-lived and reportedly due to her own behaviors, and this likely impacted her greatly. Well, after Eileen's suicide attempt, she wandered the country for a few years before ending up in Florida again. She lived there for a while and even started dating someone new. Before long, 25-year-old Eileen was head over heels for her boyfriend. But by this point in her life, Eileen's self-confidence was nonexistent.

She had trouble believing her boyfriend felt the same way about her. One day, after mixing alcohol with her anxiety medicine, she came up with a misguided plan to put his devotion to the test. Eileen decided she was going to get arrested. If her boyfriend tried to get her out of jail, it would be confirmation that he really loved her. At some point in 1981, 25-year-old Eileen went out and robbed a convenience store at Gunpoint for $61.

As planned, she was arrested, but she never got to test her boyfriend's loyalty. It seems like bail was never an option, so he couldn't even attempt to get her out. In the end, Eileen was sentenced to three years in prison. She wound up spending just over a year behind bars where she was psychologically evaluated. The psychiatrist who examined her said Eileen was of average intelligence. And although she had memory problems,

she didn't seem to have any delusions or signs of a serious thought disorder. Again, this behavior is very consistent with someone with severe borderline personality disorder. The core of that disorder, as I mentioned, is avoiding real or perceived abandonment, and it has a pattern of unstable relationships. And one of the ways this can manifest is through extreme or provocative behaviors designed to test the loyalty, commitment, or emotional availability of a partner.

This isn't manipulative in the way people sometimes assume. It's typically rooted in deep emotional dysregulation, attachment, trauma, and a desperate need for reassurance. The behavior may feel chaotic to outsiders, but to them, it can feel like a matter of emotional survival. Other behaviors of loyalty testing include threatening to leave someone, self-harming, or making suicidal gestures, accusations of abandonment or cheating or creating a crisis. The goal isn't control,

but to elicit an emotionally validating response. They need constant reassurance that their partner is safe for them. And these behaviors are reactive. They're not necessarily calculated. The majority of the time they're trying trying to stop the pain not cause harm. But because Eileen also has antisocial traits and behaviors, her testing behavior involved illegal activities, which can cause significant functional impairment and actually inadvertently cause the harm she's trying to avoid.

And it's also worth noting that this kind of loyalty testing may have been occurring with her grandparents with running away. And it brings me back to the point I was making when they finally filed a police report. That might have been her hope that they actually cared, only to learn when Laurie showed up that that was not the case. How does substance abuse factor into this situation? Eileen apparently had 24 beers and four sedatives

before concocting this plan. That's really concerning. If I was told this about a patient, I would immediately assess if that was intended to be a suicide attempt because she's mixing two depressants. They can cause sedation and suppress respiratory activity and when you mix them in large amounts like this, it can be fatal.

And I'm fairly certain she knew that. Also to your question, substances are disinhibiting. They impair judgment and reasoning and they make it difficult for her to assess the risks and make sound, rational decisions. So her substance use definitely played a role in this plan in more ways than one. Well it doesn't seem like Eileen's time in prison had much of an effect on her behavior. Over the next few years, she had multiple run-ins with the law, getting in trouble for things like forgery, petty theft, and a resisting arrest.

But it was all leading up to something much bigger, and in the late spring of 1986, Eileen attempted a much more serious crime, one that would come to define the rest of her life. On June 2nd of that year, Eileen was walking near the Arkansas-Texas border when she caught a ride with a man named Wayne Manning. According to him, Eileen seemed like a friendly, harmless hitchhiker, but her intentions were anything but kind. After hanging out for nearly the whole day, Eileen pulled a gun on Wayne and tried to

rob him on the side of the road. Other drivers passing by intervened and called the police. However, Wayne decided not to press charges. He didn't think Eileen was dangerous, just down on her luck. He had no idea how wrong he was. After this latest brush with the law, Eileen decided to put down some roots. So the 30-year-old went back to Florida, where she settled near Daytona Beach and began building a life for herself.

It wasn't long before Eileen found a new romantic partner whom she called the love of her life. A 24-year-old woman named Tyra Moore. Eileen and Tyra were happy together, but their lives weren't easy. They moved around a lot and were always on the edge of financial ruin. Tyra worked odd jobs while Eileen was still engaging in sex work along Florida's highways, but it was inconsistent and during the rainy season she never made as much. By the fall of 1989, their money problems were getting dire. 33-year-old Eileen decided to cast a wider net, hitchhiking to different cities to find

new clients. Sex work was a dangerous job though, and throughout the years she'd been assaulted both physically and sexually by clients. With Tyra depending on her, she knew she had to take the danger seriously. So she stole a 22 caliber handgun, supposedly for protection, and she wasn't afraid to use it. On the last day of November 1989, Eileen was on the side of the road looking for potential

clients. She found one in Richard Mallory. At 51 years old, Richard was comfortable in life and even owned his own business, a TV repair shop. He lived about three hours from Daytona Beach in Clearwater, Florida. That weekend he was coming into town for some fun. And when he saw Eileen on the side of the road, he couldn't resist. The two of them drank, smoked marijuana, and hung out for a while. Eventually, Richard drove them to an isolated service road where they vanished into the woods together.

Over the years, Eileen told a few different stories about what happened next, so we'll take a look at the first version. According to this story, things got tense when they started talking about what kind of sex Richard wanted. Eileen said he became unfriendly and confusing. She thought he was implying he wanted free sex from her. As Eileen told it, her internal alarms were going off at this point. She pulled out her

gun and yelled at Richard, accusing him of plotting to rape her and steal her money. According to her, Richard denied it, but she shot him anyway. He managed to get out of the car, but Eileen shot Richard again, fatally wounding him. When she was sure Richard was dead, she went through his pockets. Then she grabbed a rug someone had discarded in the woods and hid his remains. Someone with complex trauma has a consistently activated threat response system.

The body and brain are primed to detect danger, even when there is none. So, if Eileen killed Richard because she believed that he was going to hurt her, even if that belief wasn't grounded in reality, we are likely looking at a perfect storm of complex trauma, hypervigilance, and a distorted threat perception. If Richard made a comment, moved too fast, or reminded her of someone who had harmed her before, it may have triggered a trauma response that hijacked her ability to reason.

She may not have been processing the moment logically. She may have been responding to an entire history of violence that her nervous system could no longer separate from the present. To be clear, that's not a justification. It's just an explanation. Regardless of her reason for killing Richard, the psychological effects of murder can include dissociation, intrusive thoughts or nightmares, heightened paranoia, and moral injury. How about her substance abuse throughout the day? Could

that have had a significant enough impact on her judgment when it came to shooting Richard? Absolutely. Substance use can amplify trauma responses. It lowers inhibitions, it heightens paranoia or distorts perceptions, and it increases aggression and the fight-or-flight reaction, as well as impacts judgment. So as a result, substances can elevate the risk of violence in anyone, but it can definitely exponentially make that worse for someone like Eileen. Whatever the circumstances were, this was the first time Eileen said she'd killed someone.

But she was no stranger to crime, and she knew how to cover her tracks. She sprayed Windex all over Richard's car and wiped it clean of any prints, then abandoned the vehicle at a crowded parking lot by the beach. Police quickly discovered Richard's car, but he was nowhere to be found. By then, Eileen was long gone.

And she was already thinking about her next victim. loss every day after court about what she's seeing inside, the witnesses, the evidence, and what it all means. Dateline True Crime Weekly. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. In November 1989, 33-year-old Eileen Warnos claimed her first victim, 51-year-old Richard Mallory. The circumstances around his death are still up for debate, but in the aftermath, Eileen stole Richard's valuables and returned to her girlfriend, 27-year-old Tyra Moore.

When Eileen got back to Daytona Beach on December 1, she was drunk, and she wanted to tell Tyra everything. Eileen explained that she'd killed a man that morning. She said it happened after he tried to scam her. Tyra thought Eileen was lying about the whole thing, and she told Eileen she didn't want to hear about it anymore. They spent the rest of the day hanging out, and everything seemed fine. But when Eileen sobered up, the reality of the situation seemed to hit her. She worried

that Tyra was freaking out about the confession and might leave her. That was the last thing Eileen wanted, so she backtracked and told Tyra that she'd simply stumbled upon a body under a rug in the woods. That only made things worse, though. After that, Tyra became distant. Eileen could tell Tyra was scared of her. Commenting on it later, Eileen said, quote, Sadly, she knew I'd lost my mind. Let's unpack psychologically why Eileen did not seem upset about the murder. I mean, obviously she was drunk and as I've outlined, substances really are disinhibiting and they impair judgment and rational thought. So that does play a role.

On the one hand, Eileen has lived through prolonged and overwhelming trauma and it is possible her emotional system shut down, something we call emotional blunting or numbing, or she's desensitized to violence because of so much exposure to it. However, she does also have a pattern of antisocial behavior,

which essentially is a disregard for societal norms and rules. So it could be a combination of emotional blending or desensitization and a lack of remorse. Eileen grew up in a world where boundaries were violated and rules were blurred. She wasn't taught that violence was wrong, but rather that it was normal or expected. Eileen was diagnosed with both borderline personality disorder and anti-social personality disorder. What does it say that her biggest concern seemed to be what Tyra would think of her, instead of the fact that she killed someone? Yeah, I definitely see both of those disorders in her and what she described. I would also add complex PTSD, though that wasn't recognized

back then, but it explains in part this behavior after the murder. With borderline personality disorder, Eileen fears abandonment, and I know I've outlined that, but she's done unlawful things in the past to test the loyalty of partners. Her confession to Tyra could have been a form of loyalty testing behavior, as if she is saying to her, this is the real me, are you going to stay? It's also worth noting that Tyra is the only real connection she has, since she's lost most of her family and has a history of unstable relationships, so she may have a significant degree of emotional dependence on Tyra. Eileen's confession may have driven a wedge between her and Tyra, but for the moment,

their relationship seemed to hold steady, even after Richard Mallory's body was discovered about two weeks later on December 13, 1989. Eileen had covered her tracks well, nobody suspected her, and life went on as normal. But it wasn't long before she and Tyrus started to have money troubles again, which meant it was time for Eileen to go back on the road. And in the late spring of 1990, she hitched a ride with a 43-year-old man named David Spears. David worked at a concrete plant in Sarasota, but his ex-wife and children lived a hundred

miles away in Okohe, which meant he was in the car a lot, going back and forth. His daughter's birthday was coming up, and on May 19th, he left Sarasota around noon to go see her. David was halfway through his drive when he saw Eileen Warnes on the side of the highway. David liked helping hitchhikers, so he pulled over to give her a ride. We don't know what Eileen told David about herself, but other witnesses have said she initially hid the fact that she was a sex worker, so it's not clear if David was looking for sex, or if he thought he was just helping out a

stranger. We also don't know exactly what happened after she got into his car. Over the years, Eileen changed her story numerous times. But in one of her more detailed accounts, Eileen said that she and David spent the whole day together, drinking and talking. Then things took a turn when she told him she didn't have any family. Allegedly, he then tried to beat her to death with a lead pipe because he realized no one would come looking for her. But this was just one story of many. All we know for sure is that Eileen shot David six

times in the torso. We also know that when David's body was found, he was naked. His daughter's birthday came and went, and David never showed up. It's not clear if his family filed a missing persons report, but there wasn't any mention of his disappearance in the media. However, that didn't mean he was forgotten. David's car was found nine days later on May 28th, about 40 miles away from where he'd been killed. His body was discovered a few days later on June 1st. So from a forensic psychology perspective, inconsistent narratives doesn't always mean

deception, especially when we consider context. It can signal emotional fragmentation, trauma, identity confusion in a desperate attempt to find meaning or a way to rationalize what happened. Eileen has multiple accounts for each case, but there does seem to be one consistent version in each so far. And that is, she repeatedly asserted that she's attacked after spending a large part of her day with her victims, talking, drinking, smoking marijuana, and seemingly having fun. In this version of the narrative, she has moral justification for what happened. She's inserting herself into a shared experience,

one that started out normal and fun, until she was unexpectedly attacked and she defended herself. It's also an attempt to humanize herself, especially if she wants to control the narrative and present herself as kind, even fun, and not just a calculated predator. She's a trauma survivor,

and this could be her attempt to frame her actions within the only language she knows, which is first there's a connection, then a betrayal, then reaction and survival. And especially when telling Tyra what happened, this version she probably felt was more likely to gain sympathy and reduce the risk of abandonment because to her, that is a story that is both believable and relatable, as it had been her lived experience. But when she saw that Tyra was responding negatively, she quickly backtracked her story.

So this just is another illustration that her inconsistent narratives doesn't just mean it's deception for her. Well, when the police examined David Spears body, there wasn't much evidence to go on. But even if they had been on to Eileen, it wouldn't have saved her next victim because she'd already killed him. On May 31st, 1990, the day before David Spears' body was discovered, Eileen hitched a ride with a man named Charles Karsgaden.

Charles was a truck driver by trade, but he was getting ready for a new career. Though he was only 40 and nowhere near retirement age, he had severe glaucoma and couldn't make a living as a trucker anymore. Charles was originally from a small town in Missouri. He and his fiance had been living in Tampa, but he missed the laid-back attitude of the Midwest, and when a friend back home said they could get him a job, he saw it as a sign to move back. So Charles had gone to Missouri on his own to sort some things out. On May 31st, he headed back to Tampa to pick up his fiancé, but before he got there, he spotted Eileen Warnes.

It's possible she was pretending to have some kind of car trouble. Charles was always happy to pull over anytime he saw someone stuck on the side of the road. One of his favorite hobbies was fixing up his 1975 Cadillac, so he always carried tools with him, and his friends said he could even be a bit of a show-off. Like with Eileen's other victims, she never consistently described what happened next. One version was that Charles pulled out a gun and threatened to kill her, but she managed to escape and shoot him first. Eileen said he was a dangerous man, and she was lucky to escape with her life.

Regardless of how it happened, Eileen took the opportunity to steal Charles' valuables. She stripped parts from his car and took some of his tools, adding to a growing collection of stolen goods. She then drove Charles' car to an empty truck stop, where she burned it to a crisp. It didn't take the police long to find the car, but once again, Eileen got away clean. And when they found Charles' bullet-ridden body a few days later, on June 6th, there was no trace of her. However, it was only a matter of time until Eileen got sloppy.

And on June 7th, 1990, the day after Charles Karsgaden's body was discovered, a man named Peter Seams headed out on a road trip. At 65 years old, Peter was just beginning to enjoy retirement. Now he was planning a leisurely road trip to see his mother and son in different parts of the country. Peter left his home in Jupiter, Florida on the morning of June 7th. Peter's family had no doubt that he would have picked up a hitchhiker. As an evangelical missionary, he was not only incredibly generous, but also incredibly trusting. And somewhere near the

Florida-Georgia border, he decided to help Eileen Warnes. As with all of her victims, the following details are unconfirmed. All we know for sure is that she murdered Peter Seams and left his body in the woods. Although Eileen would later say that Peter Seams was one of the only victims that she felt true remorse for killing. Let's talk about why she might have felt remorse or regret here, but not previously. People with antisocial traits or trauma histories or even personality disorders can still feel genuine grief, guilt, or remorse, but it's usually selective and it often occurs in cases

where the victim represents something emotionally meaningful. Peter wasn't a symbol of abuse, control, or exploitation. By all accounts, he was a genuine and kind man, so he represented hope or even normalcy. But her experience with men has been the opposite. So there was no moral justification for Eileen to take his life in her mind, thus creating a moral injury. Because of that, it likely caused her to question her humanity and her sense of self-worth. She may have thought that, even when someone was genuinely being kind and had no ulterior motive, she ruined it and therefore was undeserving of their

kindness. And this is a core belief that she has been deeply affected by. And that is that she feels she's undeserving of love, kindness, or value. And this encounter reinforced that belief, which is likely why she had selective regret or remorse following his murder specifically. What about romantic connections or love? How could Eileen show such a deep level of care for Tyra, but also be willing to commit murders like these? So at her core, Eileen desperately wants connection and stability. She wants to feel loved and valued by another because we are wired for that kind of connection and she's been missing that her entire life.

I don't think she's incapable of feeling that. What I do think is that she deeply cared for Tyra or at least for what their relationship represented to her. It's also important to consider that Tyra was a woman, which may have allowed Eileen perhaps for the first time to experience a sense of emotional and physical safety in a relationship. The majority of Eileen's abusers were men, and her anger was overwhelmingly directed toward them. She never targeted women, and that choice reflects her lived experience, the power and balances she endured, and her unresolved trauma.

So to Eileen, men represented danger, dominance, and the predators that she had spent her life trying to survive. Tyra in no way represents any of those things. Well, even if Eileen felt bad about killing Peter Seams, she had no intention of getting caught. She left his body deep in the wilderness, then scattered his ID and credit cards around the woods. But when it came time to ditch his car, she decided to hold on to it instead.

About a month later, on the 4th of July 1990, Eileen still had it. That day, she and Tyra were out for a drive. Ever since Eileen killed her first victim, she'd been giving some of their valuables to Tyra as gifts. At this point, it seems like Tyra wasn't asking any questions. Because even though there was no way Eileen could afford a car like Peter's sporty Pontiac Silverbird, Tyra was happy to take it for a spin. That day she was behind the wheel, with Eileen in the passenger seat. But as Tyra sped down the road, she lost control of the car around a bend, crashing into a gate on the side of the road. Eileen and Tyra were shaken up, though not badly injured. Eileen got a small cut, but

it was nothing serious. In any case, she had bigger things to worry about. She was focused on getting away from the car that belonged to a man she'd killed. And they had to move fast, because two people who'd witnessed the crash reported it immediately. The paramedics dispatched to the scene were eager to make sure that no one was hurt, but when they arrived, Eileen and Tyra were already walking away. They said there was some kind of mix-up. They were just a couple of hitchhikers on their way to a fireworks show. The people who'd been driving the car had to be somewhere else. The witnesses weren't there to correct them, and the paramedics weren't police officers,

so they gave Eileen and Tyra directions, and the two women went on their way. But police did show up a few minutes later, and when they ran the car's information through their system, they realized it belonged to Peter Seams, and most likely the women the paramedics talked to had stolen it. However, Peter's body hadn't been discovered yet. The police thought they were just dealing with a missing person's case, not a homicide. For all they knew, he was alive and well, and the two women had simply stolen his car for a joyride.

But it was still a serious matter. So they interviewed the witnesses who'd seen the crash and talked to the paramedics. Using that information, the police put together a composite sketch of Eileen and Tyra, and when they examined the car, they found some promising evidence. Because the women had run away in such a hurry, there wasn't enough time for Eileen to wipe down the car, and in her haste to get away, she left behind a major clue, one that could lead the police straight to her. On the passenger side door handle, there was a handprint. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time as we conclude our deep dive into Eileen Warnos. Of the many sources we used when researching this episode, the ones we

found the most credible and helpful were the Tampa Tribune newspaper archives and the book Dear Dawn by Lisa Kester and Daphne Gottlieb. Killer Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media at Crime House. And don't forget to rate, review, and follow Killer Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of Killer Minds ad-free, along with early access to each thrilling

two-part series and exciting bonus content. Killer Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and Dr. Tristan Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Killer Minds team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pertsowski, Sarah Camp, Bethany Branson, Sarah Tardiff, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.