True Crime All The Time - Aileen Wuornos Part1

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Aileen Wuornos was a rarity in true crime, a true female serial killer. Wuornos murdered seven men in Florida between December 1989 and November 1990. Her story captivated many as authorities pieced together her murders. The state of Florida called her a cold-blooded murdered while Aileen portrayed herself as a victim who defended herself against men bent on hurting her.Join Mike and Gibby for the 200th episode of The True Crime All The Time podcast. In this first episode, we'll delve into Aileen's tumultuous childhood to see how it may have shaped her future decisions and actions. We'll discuss the relationship that Aileen forged with Tyria Moore and what role that relationship may have played in the murders Aileen committed.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital ProductionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

and welcome to episode 200 of the true crime all the time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime. Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you? I'm doing good, man. 200. I know. I've been with you for 199 of them. Exactly. He left me out of one. I did. But can you believe it, man? I swear it seems like yesterday that you and I were sitting around sweating, trying to put out the first episode. We were wondering if anyone other than family members would even listen. I was like, I don't even know family members would listen. Yeah, I wasn't even sure if they would listen.

Yeah. The next thing you know, it kind of took off and we've had so much fun. We really have. Putting out 200 episodes. We've made so many friends. Oh, man. Amazing listeners. Yes.

It's unbelievable. We want to thank all of you because without you, there's no way we could do the show. Let's start by giving our Patreon supporter shoutouts. Speaking of people that help us put out this show, we had Tanya Huyan jump out at our highest level. Hey, thanks, Tanya. Katja Rantala. What's going on, Katja? Sioban lands down.

What's going on? Seabon. Madison Delaney. Hey, thanks, Madison. John Eaton. What's happening, Jay? Nathan Gardner. Hey, thanks, Nathan.

Bunny. She's just hopping around, man. Jessica Wilson. What's going on, Jessica? Heather Hunter jumped out at our highest level. Hey, thank you, H.H. Wendy Smith. Hey, Wendy.

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We do. Kimberly Field. Hey, Kimberly. Maria Gaggetti jumped out of our highest level. Gaggetti. Nicole. What's happening to Nicole? Divine loyalty.

Hey, divine. Megan Raska. What's up, Raska. Elizabeth Lawson. Thank you, Elizabeth. Michael O'Grady. Hey, O'Grady. Harini jumped out at our highest level.

I appreciate Harini. Tara Cooper. What's up, Tara? And Donna Dornbos. Well, good old Dormboes. So thank you all for that brand new Patreon support. And then if we go back into the Volk Gibbs. Let's go back.

This week, we selected Natasha Fellows. Oh, thank you, Natasha. So we appreciate that. We did. We had some great PayPal donations as well. mystical phenomenon. Phenomenon. Phenomenon.

Phenomenon. Okay. Send us a good chunk of money saying, hey, go out, eat dinner, have a good time. Lori Peterson. Hey, Lori. Whitney Roman. What's happening in Whitney?

And Jennifer Vaughn sent in a considerable donation as well. So thanks to all of you. Yeah, appreciate that, Jennifer. All right, Gibbs, right now on True Crime All the Time and Soft, we have a brand new episode out about Josephine McDonald and Wanda. Amundsen were headed to Australia. Sure, mate.

And this is a very interesting case. But in addition to these two murders, we talk about a lot. A lot of murders. Of murders that center around a supposed killer. Yeah. Who targeted elderly women. Sure did. For some period of time.

Oh, yeah. And so we'll get into all those details. There's a pretty famous serial killer as a person of interest that we'll talk about, but definitely check that out. All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of true crime all the time? I know. I'm excited. I think everybody else is going to be just as excited as we are. For episode 200, we picked Eileen Warnos, a woman who, I have to admit, Gibbs, has fascinated me for a very long time. Now, you and I have profiled many male serial killers over the years on this podcast.

But the female serial killer is relatively rare. It is. It's actually very rare. It really is. Warnos has been called United States first female serial killer. And I think that's pretty true if you're looking at modern times after the FBI classification was created. And I think that's also according to the FBI definition of what a serial killer is.

is Eileen was a woman with a very bizarre childhood who at an early age was essentially on her own. She became a sex worker to get by and self-admittedly shot and killed a number of men during the course of her work. There are a great many things that to me are fascinating about Eileen's life, her crimes. She had a childhood in Michigan that you wouldn't wish on. anyone. It was pretty messed up. It was and we'll we'll get into it. She struck out on her own at such an early age that you know, she didn't have any education. She really didn't have any skills to get by. So she relied on sex work. She fell in love with a woman and the dynamic between those two is

fascinating to me. And then you have the murders. She committed, which the state believed we're all committed for personal gain and to get back at the men she felt mistreated her over the years. Sure. Eileen admitted to killing seven men between December of 1989 and November of 1990. But she contended that she was defending herself against Johns who were trying to hurt her. So I say we jump right into background. And I already said it. Eileen's was a strange one that we'll want to spend a little bit of time on.

Eileen Carol Pittman was born on February 29th, 1956 in Rochester, Michigan to Leo and Diane Pittman. She had a brother named Keith, who was a year older than her. Eileen was born into a pretty chaotic situation. Her mother, who was 16 when she gave birth to Eileen, left Eileen's father, Leo, a 19-year-old handiman, just months before she was born. So Eileen never knew her father, not one bit. And he wasn't a good guy. Leo Pittman, in fact, was incarcerated at the time Eileen was born. So, you know, Leo's out of the picture. You had Diane at the age of 16 to raise two kids. That's a tough ask for many people.

Oh, it's a huge ask. I mean, a lot of people have kids early. I think to have one child at 16, it's a daunting task because, you know, it's 16. Not everybody's ready. Not everybody's mature, right? It's still fairly young, but it happens. But to have two kids at the age of 16 and not have the father in the picture, that is a lot. It really is.

And I think it was for Diane. She would later state that she just couldn't handle it. And she gave Eileen and Keith over to her parents, Lori and Britta Warnos, when Eileen was around four years old. They legally adopted Eileen and Keith. And essentially, Gibbs folded them into their family in Troy, Michigan. Yeah. So what you had was the uncles and aunts.

becoming like brothers and sisters, right, to Eileen and Keith. They were young. Eileen has stated and family members have corroborated that Eileen didn't really fully know the real truth until years later. I think it was somewhere around the age of 10, 11, 12, somewhere around that, when Eileen found out when she heard kids gossiping at school that, that, okay, these people weren't her sisters and brothers. They were really her aunts and uncles. And it seems to me as though from that point forward, her life began a downward spiral.

She began using alcohol and drugs in an early age. But she also began trading sex for money, alcohol, drugs, even cigarettes. Yeah, just for a pack of cigarettes. At a very early age. Yeah. And I think. think this is extremely important because I'm not 100% sure exactly how it happened, but I don't think there's any doubt. Very early on in life, Eileen Warnos learned that she could use sexual favors as a way to get what she wanted. Guys were willing to pay whatever she would ask for, right?

I need some cigarettes. You give me some cigarettes. I'll give you a little bit of this. Yeah. And they'd say, okay. Most reports claim that both Lori and Britta were alcoholics. He was an engineer at the Ford Motor Company in the Detroit area. And the family lived in the city of Troy, Michigan. And I read Gibbs where a lot of people said that Eileen's grandfather looked very much like the comedian Jackie Gleason.

Oh, really? Who starred on the honeymooners. Yeah. So he must have been a big guy because Jackie Gleason. and was a pretty big guy even during the honeymooners. You got much bigger later on. Smoking the bandit. Smoking the bandit.

Yeah. But it does seem as though there was a great deal of abuse in that household. Family members have accused Lori of being physically and sexually abusive. And Britta is being emotionally abusive. And Eileen made a number of statements during her life that her grandfather, Lori, sexually molested her. It's a strange name for a guy. Yeah, it is. It is, I don't hear it very often.

Yeah. It's spelled a little differently. There's no E on the end of it like you see with a lot of women named Lori or the L-O-R-I. Right. This is L-A-U-R-I. It's definitely different. But I think, you know, this is extremely important, right? If this happened, now this is what Eileen claims.

happened. Does it help explain maybe why she got into using her body to get what she wanted? I don't know. But it would explain the fact that she was introduced to adult themes, sexual themes, much earlier than anybody should ever have been. That's for sure. Because she got pregnant around 13 years old. Yeah. and claim that the pregnancy was the result of a rape by a man who had picked her up while she was hitchhiking. But I don't think a lot of people believed her because, number one, she was known to be promiscuous. And I think that haunts her throughout the rest of her life, people not believing some of the things that she says. If that's what really happened and people didn't believe her, that had to be really tough.

I don't know the truth. I think there are a lot of people that do not believe it happened that way. It happened through, you know, some of the risky behavior maybe that she was into at a very early age. But to your point, I know it really hurt her at school. Her classmates didn't believe her. She was ridiculed in school for getting pregnant. Yeah. They didn't accept her explanation as to how it happened.

happened, her grandparents placed her in a home for unwed mothers. And after she delivered a baby boy, he was immediately put up for adoption. You know, when I went to school, when I know you're going to say, oh, yeah, it was back in the day. It was back in the day. It certainly was, yeah. But that's the same thing. You'd hear about a girl that got pregnant and you just wouldn't see her at school anymore. You know, I don't know if that's because they sent her off or she, you know, would do more of a homeschooling and thing, but you just didn't see her after you would hear these rumors that, you know, such and such was pregnant now. So maybe that was the thing to do, you know, was to send them off to. Well, I think it was. Yeah. I think those type of early pregnancies back then were viewed as

socially unacceptable. And I think, you know, if you look at her grandparents, they must have thought that as well because they said, you know what? We're sending you to a home. You're not going to to stay in school while you're pregnant, you can go back after you deliver this baby. Yeah. And I know that's changed because I remember when my daughter went to school, she'd come home and say, oh, you won't believe who's pregnant? Oh, I hear it all the time from my daughters. Yeah.

And I still think it's very young when I hear about it. But I don't think, oh, my gosh, this person needs to be shipped off to a special home. Right. They shouldn't be, you know, congregating with the. other students. I don't think of it that way. Of course, you never hear about the guy, right? He's never going to show because he's not the one pregnant. Right. And it's a double standard. It certainly is. That has existed throughout time. Yeah. The girls, they always seem to have been looked down upon when something like that happens. It's really a very bad double standard

that's existed for a long time. Gives you, you and I both know, it takes two people. It takes two people. Absolutely. And whether you mean for it to happen or not, it still takes too people. You're still a participant in that action. And, you know, unfortunately, the girl takes all the ridicule. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's not right. Eileen dropped out of school during her freshman year. And by this time, her grandmother had passed away. And her grandfather essentially just kicked her out of the house at the age of 15. Just said, hey, I can't deal with you. I don't want you here anymore. What is a 15-year-old girl supposed to do without a home? You know what? It's rough. That's rough to be homeless at 15.

I mean, you're on the streets. You're going to have to figure out how are you going to eat every day? How are you going to find a place to sleep every day? Well, for Eileen, she slept in abandoned cars. I think she tried to stay with friends as much as she could. But I don't know that she had many friends. You know, if she could find a vacant building or a home that was open, she'd sleep there. But it seems through the research that probably more often than not, she slept in the woods.

Yeah. I know she liked the woods around some gravel pits that she would stay in, which is a dangerous place to stay. It really is for a 15-year-old. And when I lived in Detroit, like I mentioned it, I lived one town over from where Eileen Warnos grew up. Now, you and I complain about the winters here in Ohio and Michigan is just one state north of us, right? It's a four hour drive to get to Michigan. But there is something about that air coming off the lake that just makes it brutally cold. Yeah.

Up there sometimes. I can't imagine a 15 year old girl trying to make it on her own out in the woods and especially through those brutal winters. You got to find a way to stay warm. And I want to take a minute to talk about the parallels between Eileen and the father she never knew and the mother who abandoned her. Because I think they're striking. Her father was abandoned by his parents when he was five months old to be raised by his grandmother. So there's a parallel there. Sure.

He was later convicted of raping a seven-year-old girl and hanged himself in prison. And like her mother, Eileen became pregnant at a young age. She claimed she was molested by her grandfather. Her father was a molester. There's just a number of very interesting parallels between Eileen and her parents. Well, you know, everything that happened to her parents definitely had an impact on Eileen's life, not to have her parents around, not to have that type of structure. and to be shift off to live with a grandfather who she says sexually molested her.

You know, all of these things obviously factor into her childhood. Right. Just to find herself out on the street at the end of the day. At some point in the mid-70s, Eileen figured out that she needed to head to warmer climates. If you're on your own and you're essentially roughing it, out in the woods, do you want to live in Michigan or do you want to live down south? I'm head of south, man. I'm not going through those brutal Michigan winners.

No. So she started hitchhiking and it took her all over the country. The thing about Eileen was she really got into using aliases and we'll talk more about them later on in the episode. Some of the aliases she used were established from personal documents. stolen from her family members, she eventually settled in Florida. And in May of 1976,

Eileen married a much older man named Lewis Fell. I think Eileen was around 20 at the time. I believe this guy was in maybe in his late 60s, maybe even 70. The marriage must not have been too good, though, because by July it had ended. So we're talking about a couple of months. Right.

That's usually a sign that, you rushed into something, you didn't know who you were marrying, and one or both of you jacked it completely up. Now, Eileen would later claim that it ended because Fell was violent to her. He would beat her with his cane. But in divorce documents, he claimed that Warnos, quote, has a violent and ungovernable temper and threatened to do bodily harm against him. and he was able to take out a restraining order against her. So I think that says something, not that somebody can't get a restraining order based on some incorrect information.

But if you're trying to weigh between the two who was the aggressor, you might put some weight into that. Sure. Also in 1976, Eileen's grandfather took his own life using carbon monoxide. And then four months after he died, her brother died of cancer. Which she was really close with her. She was.

Yeah. She wasn't close with her grandfather, but she was really close. At least when they were younger, I don't know if they maintained that relationship when she started to get nomadic and kind of hitchhiking around the country. I did read Gibbs somewhere that she got some money, maybe as much as $10,000. And she spent it in about two months. which when you're talking the late 70s, $10,000 is a good chunk of change. Well, sure.

And if you're living on the streets, that 10,000 should really stretch you pretty good. Yeah. You know? Unless you blow it within two months. Exactly. In Florida, Eileen made her money through the sex trade. And we talked about it. She never made it past the ninth grade.

So she had very little education, most likely had very little in the way of life skills, what she did have was a knack for getting by any way she could. And I think for the majority of her life, she got by, got what she needed by selling her body. She also racked up quite a record over the years, which included a number of crimes, but certainly not murder. Right. Most of her crimes were were pretty petty small time things they were crimes but she was not killing people of course she had a number of charges for prostitution she stole she wrote bad checks she was charged with assault and disorderly conduct again these you know forgery and writing bad checks and petty theft those are the things that you see from someone that is barely scraping by trying to survive trying to survive

I'm not saying it's right but right you can see where she's having to do all of these things to get by for her it's low risk well and I also think it's risk reward sure yeah okay they catch me I do what X number of days in jail hell I got a place to sleep gonna feed me they're gonna feed me. I might be even the shower. The most serious thing on her record leading up to her murders was a 1981 robbery of a convenience store. And the story behind this is very interesting.

Eileen would have been 24, 25 years old at the time. She was living with her 24 year old boyfriend. They got into a massive fight one day after she took a bunch of pills and drank a case of beer. Imagine that. Getting a fight after having a case of beer and some pills, huh? I'm trying to picture her swallowing a bunch of pills and then washing it down with a case of beer. It's a lot of beer, man. Eileen Warnos was not a big person. No. I want to say she was 5-4, 5-5. She didn't weigh a lot. No. If I drank a case of beer right this second with you, you literally could not get me up the stairs. No, you'd be out probably after eight beers.

I don't even know if I could drink eight beers at this point. That is a lot. Who knows what pills she took? So they got into this big fight and she later told a psychiatrist that she wanted to find out whether or not her boyfriend truly loved her. So this was her idea of a way to find out. She walked into a convenience store, pulled a gun on the employee and robbed the point. place. Now, she wasn't good at the getaway part. She got arrested. She pleaded guilty to the robbery and was sentenced to three years in prison, of which she served 14 months. So I'm just trying to

figure out how was that going to prove that a guy loved her? I never got that part. Was it, okay, I know I'm going to get arrested. If he waits around for me. Right. If he's there at the end of this, then I know he loves me. Yeah. Man, that's a strong test. That's a, really strong test. And you're also putting yourself through, you know, 14 months or however you don't, you don't know how long it's going to be. Right. But I wondered the same thing. Where's the logic in the love test that she was performing? I couldn't quite come to it. No, this wasn't the George Costanza. My girlfriend's in prison thing. No. No. But maybe you're also not thinking as clearly as you'd like to be when you downed a bunch of pills and drank a case of beer.

Well, that's true. Probably not making the best judgment decisions at that point. The Orlando Sentinel reported that Eileen also told the psychiatrist that she had been raped 10 to 12 times while hitchhiking. She had used marijuana, uppers, downers, LSD, mescaline, cocaine, and PCP. What? No heroin? I guess not. Hmm. She didn't list that one. She also said she had suffered blackouts from the age of 19.

And she had tried to take her life six times. Once in 1978, shooting herself in the stomach, which I think is a very strange way to try to end your life. Most people don't do it that way. No. Because that's an agonizing death if it were to come to that. it means you're going to bleed out over some period of time. I think you just pull that gun up about eight inches higher and put it right over the heart, right?

Well, you know, and not to get macabre about it, but for the most part, when people take their lives with a gun, they're aiming much higher. Yeah, under the chin and the mouth. And it's an instant type of situation. Sure. So hopefully Gibbs, we've been able to paint a picture of Eileen Warnos. and obviously it's not really a good one. Even if everything she has said is not true, I don't think there's any doubts.

She had an extremely rough childhood. If everything is true, she kind of had a nightmarish childhood. Right. Which included sexual abuse and that probably shaped her thoughts and things on sex for years to come. I think that's the danger. right there's danger in sexual abuse for sure i mean that's obvious right there's also danger in being introduced to sex at a very early age whether it's criminal or not i mean like you know two kids playing around right there's a danger there that because you lose some of the inhibitions

that are naturally there i think for for kids and to me it just kind of all powed on top of each other for for eileen warnows yeah i think she also learned very quickly that this is something that boys men want it and she knew she could get paid for it yeah i think she figured out that it was a way that she could get by yeah she wasn't going to become a millionaire but she could squeak by she could survive sure on her own using what she had. And like you said, men were willing to give her money. I mean, there's a reason why it's the oldest profession in the world, right? It sells. It sells itself. Because men are horny scumbags, to some degree. Some degree. I think you'd have to say that some of these guys,

these guys were. Right. Especially any of these guys that were messing around with Eileen Warnos at age 11. Oh, for sure. 12. Yeah. And I didn't get into exactly who it all was. And but those are scumbags. Yeah. Now, some of those were probably also kids.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, there was definitely. There were a lot of kids that she had sex with. There were. But I think there were some non-kids. Right. And then you get into an area where that's just plain sick. Right.

For me, the bottom line is that, you know, depending on. what you believe regarding her childhood, it had to have been something that scarred her. Maybe you could use the word desensitized. I think that's a good word. I just think it hurt her in a lot of ways down the road. Heard her back then, but it also hurt her for what was to come as an adult and the way that she was going to see things and the way that she was going to think about things. Well, you know, when you are selling your body, sometimes those transactions don't go the way you think they're going to go.

And, you know, she was pretty vocal about that she felt through a lot of her younger years and her adult years that she was taking advantage of and raped. And that's going to add to your anger towards men in general. Yeah. And obviously, we're going to get into more of that as we detail out her crimes. and what Eileen has said about her crimes. Eileen had relationships with men over the years, some we've talked about, but she also had relationships with women. Her most important relationship was with a woman named Tyrea Moore.

The two met in 1986 at a bar in Daytona Beach, Florida. Lee and Ty as they went by became a couple. Eileen was 30 years old at the time. And as we've detailed out, it had been. been a hard 30 years, barely making it through sex work. Tyrea was younger at 24, and she worked as a hotel mate. And this relationship is so key in the story of Eileen Warnos. She had not had a lot of love in her life, abandoned and abused by those that should have loved her. She had failed relationships with both men and women. I think she saw in tie someone she could love that would love her back. And that was

something that she had longed for, something that had really been missing from her life. Yeah. So, you know, she kind of put tie up on this pedestal. She wanted to provide for her. She wanted to take care of her. But how was she going to do that Gibbs when she could barely take care of herself? I was just going to have to turn it up a little bit. Well, and Lee convinced Ty to quit her job as a maid and said, you know what, don't worry, babe, I will take care of you. So that's a lot of pressure, right? They lived off what money Eileen made working, but it was tough.

They lived in cheap motels. They had an apartment here and there. But when things got tough, they lived in the woods. That's tough, man, you know, not to be able to stay. within the hotel or apartment that you're going back to the woods again, you know? Well, and I think very tough for Eileen, because she's desperate to hold on to this relationship with Ty, really the only good thing that she's ever known. That's the way I think she viewed it, right?

This is the only person that has really ever truly loved her. really the one person in her life who had not yet abandoned her. Because if you look at it, everybody else had. Sure. Yeah. Gone. The relationship she had didn't work. The family either kicked her out.

They died. Yeah. She must have felt extremely abandoned. And I think that's why the relationship with Thai was so important. Well, she felt she had a special bond with Ty. Yeah. I believe she did. Now, the question that is really going to come up is, did that go both ways?

Did Ty feel the same way about Eileen as Eileen felt about Ty? I think the answer is no. I don't think it was reciprocal in the same way. I think Eileen's feelings for Ty were much stronger than Ties were for Eileen. That's my personal opinion. That's what I get from, you know, everything that I've read. But what I do believe is that Eileen would have done anything to hold on to Ty. And in her mind, if she couldn't provide, she felt as though Ty would leave her. And I also think for Lee, that ability to provide was getting harder and harder. You know, as the years went by,

Sure. You know, she's working the bars. She's working the interstates. That's tough. That's not an easy life. No, that's not big money either, right? No. And when you look at Eileen Warno's, when you see the pictures of her, she had a very hard look.

Yeah. I think because she had a very hard life. Well, sure. Yeah. She had some scoring on her face from a lighter fluid incident where she was playing. around with her brother Keith when she was a child. Yeah, she was rough around the edges. Yeah, I think she was. And her demeanor was as well. Right. I think she could be very loud, very confrontational. Yeah. It's going to scare some potential Johns away. I absolutely believe that.

And, you know, look, these Johns, when they're looking for some action, they're not trying to get the know, the real you to see the beauty on the inside. No. Oh, there's no time for that. No. They're wanting one thing, one thing only. That's it. Yeah. I wish it didn't sound like it was coming from a place of such knowledge, but I have to assume that you're correct there. Make your assumptions. It's okay. So bottom line, Gibbs, I really feel as though as the years went on, because they were together for about four years. Yeah. I think Eileen Warnos got more and more desperate with each passing year that Ty was going

to leave her. Right. She needed to do something to ensure that didn't happen. Eileen committed her first murder in December of 1989. 51 year old Richard Mallory owned an electronics repair shop in Clearwater, Florida. This is a guy who liked to frequent the nightclubs in the Daytona beach. in the Daytona Beach area. On December 1st, 1989,

he picked up Lee in his 1977 Cadillac. But something went terribly wrong. And Warnos ended up shooting Mallory multiple times with her 22 caliber pistol that she always kept on her. And that's something that you find quite a bit about in the research. She carried a gun in her bag pretty much everywhere she went. Well, in that line of business that she was in, and when you're working, the truck stops and those bars. And the interstate.

And that was the one thing that came up a lot. I mean, she was literally on the interstate trying to get people to pick her up. Yeah. So it was almost like she was hitchhiking, but she was hitchhiking for a date. Right. That's a tough way to go about it. It really is. But it's also combines the dangers of hitchhiking, which we've talked about, and the dangers of sex work, which we know are there. It's a very dangerous job. Very tough. Now, this first murder has been hotly debated.

Eileen Warnos has always claimed that she acted in self-defense. The state would later claim that it was a simple cold-blooded murder. And to cloud things even more, Richard Mallory, it would come out later, had a record that included a conviction for rape. But one thing's for certain. After Eileen shot Richard Mallory, she took his money, she took a number of his personal items, and she drove off in his Cadillac and dumped his body in a wooded area. Warnose returned home to tie that day with Mallory's Cadillac and said to her, I killed a man today. I'd say, uh, hey, honey, how was your day at work? The last thing you really want to hear, right, is, well, you know what?

I kill a guy today. Yeah, it's kind of a tough conversation to have. Yeah. You know, the one thing we haven't talked about was it wasn't like Ty didn't know what Eileen did. Right. You know, she knew how Eileen was making her money. Now, she said she didn't like it.

She had tried a number of times to get Eileen to quit. But for Lee, I don't think she knew any other. way. That's all she's ever known. It's where her skill set was. Yeah. I don't think she was the type of person who was going to say, you know what, I'm done. I'm going to Denny's. I'm going to apply for a job. I just, I just don't think that was in her wheelhouse. Well, I think she thought I could work 10 hours, maybe make 50 bucks. Or I could go up here to the truck stop, work an hour, get 50 bucks and be done for the day. Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. with you there. So now, not only does Ty know how Eileen makes her money, which she's known for a long

time, she's now privy to the fact that Eileen has committed a murder. Now, again, Lee would say it was self-defense. This guy came after me. I had no choice. He was going to rape me. He was going to hurt me. I see where you can take this very first killing. And you could make that argument that somebody has picked you up and then, you know, got violent. Right. Didn't want to pay. Something went wrong. Right.

Now, when it happened six more times, as we're going to find out, that's where it becomes very, very hard to believe. Yeah, it definitely waters that story down. Yes. Mallory's car was found a few days later, abandoned near Ormond Beach, Florida. His body was found by two men. on December 13th in a wooded area underneath a piece of carpet. And this was a couple of weeks later, right? So by this time, his body was pretty badly

decomposed, but police were able to lift fingerprints and determine that the body was Richard Mallory. He had died from 22 caliber gunshots to the chest, but really Gibbs, police had no leads on who killed Richard Mallory. They didn't have a clue. while they were investigating, Eileen and Ty were pawning the items that Eileen had taken from Richard Mallory and they were using that money to live. The high life.

Well, what they consider the high life. Which is probably buying a six pack of high life. There you go. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. But I will say this. You know, to me,

this murder of Richard Mallory is extremely important. Yes, you can debate Eileen's claim. of self-defense, but it sure doesn't look good, right? When you dump this person's body, you take this person's car, and you steal everything that the man has on him. And then you go around town pawning all the items. Yeah. And if you were assaulted the way that you said you were, then you would think that that would be easily seen and understood by anybody investigating that if you came forward and said, this is what happened, self-defense. Would it?

I think it's a question that has to be asked because Eileen Warno's had a pretty lengthy record. Well, that's true. And she would have had to have said that, you know, this shooting occurred in the commission of a sex for money transaction. Right. So I don't know if it's as easy as a mugger comes. up on you in the park and you're carrying and you shoot this person in self-defense.

Right. I don't think it's that easy. Right. It's not. Now, I'm not giving her an excuse for why she didn't do it. She could have done it that way and taking her chances on how it played out. But if it happened the way she said it happened, then maybe she was just like, what am I going to do?

I can't go to the police with this anyway. I might as well dump his body and take all of his shit. Well, dumb me dump his body and got to do something with this stuff. Why not make some money off of it? Because I still need to eat. And he never did pay me for what he should have. I think there's a number of ways to look at it. But for me, it's the timing, right?

Richard Mallory is killed in December of 1989. And Warnos doesn't commit her next murder until May of 1990. Why? That's the question that kept running through my mind. Was it because she hadn't planned on killing Richard? Mallory, but when it happened, she realized that, you know what? This was a pretty easy way to get money. We talked about it. She's desperately trying to hold on to tie. Sure. And to do that, she needs to provide for her. I think it's an interesting talking point because in 1990,

she killed six men. So however the murder of Richard Mallory happened, I almost view it as she got a little taste of it. She got a taste of not only the killing and how easy maybe it was for her, but also what she could gain monetarily by going this route. In May of 1990, 43-year-old father of three David Spears picked up Eileen Warnams and became her next victim. She shot Spears six times with her 22 caliber pistol. His truck was found. abandoned on May 25th, but his body was not found until June 1st. Gibbs the same day his 18-year-old daughter was set to graduate from high school. The body of David Spears was found nude in the woods, about 40 miles north of Tampa.

I know it's a 22, but six shots seems like a lot. So it kind of makes me feel like there was definitely some rage behind that. Yeah, I see where you're going there. and I think the prosecution later is going to make a similar argument, right? This was a woman who hated men, hated what they had done to her in the past, her whole life. Right. And so she was getting back at them. So there's rage there.

Sure. And then she's also taking all their stuff. So she's profiting at the same time. Right. We'll get into that more in episode two. But that's going to be one of their main contention. On May 31st, Eileen shot 40-year-old Charles Karscadden nine times. Charles was a part-time rodeo worker who was driving along I-75 to meet up with his fiancé in Tampa

when he encountered Warno's. His nude body was found on June 6th, about 30 miles south of where David Spears' body had been found. On June 7th, police found his car. and it had been cleaned out of all his personal item. Eileen's next victim was a 65-year-old man named Peter Seams. Seams was a merchant marine turned missionary who left his Jupiter, Florida home on June 7th, to visit his son in Arkansas. A missing person's report was filed, but police were unable to find his body or his car.

51 year old Troy Burris was a delivery driver for a sausage factory who went missing on July 30th. His truck was found the next day and a missing person's report was filed. Kit this Gibbs, his body was found fully clothed by a family picnicking in the Ocala National Forest. I mean, you're just out trying to have a nice picnic getting your sound of music on. and the next thing you know, you stumble upon a dead body. It'd be freaky, man. Right.

You're laying out your blanket, you're opening up your picnic basket, yogi bears singing some song behind you. It's supposed to be a picturesque day. Yeah. Until you come across this. Yeah, it's ruined pretty quickly by the discovery of a body.

And I know this probably ruins your dream of ever wanting to be a sausage delivery guy. I know you always wanted that. I did. You used to talk about how you like to deliver saucy. That was a big dream of mine. Yeah. Troy Burris had been shot twice with a 22 near his body. Authorities found a clipboard, some business receipts, and an empty bank bag.

Warnos next struck on September 11th, 1990, when she met and killed 56-year-old Dick Humphreys. Humphreys was a retired Air Force major and instructor in terrorist negotiations. and at one time he had been a police chief in Alabama. Pretty decorated guy. Yeah, pretty impressive resume. Yeah. I think at this time, he was working as a Florida state child abuse investigator. So he had done a lot.

The father of three was found the next day in a Marion County subdivision that was being built. He had been shot seven times with the 22. Pretty aggressive. Still aggressive. When he was found, he was dressed, but his pockets were turned inside out. Authorities found his car about a week later with the license plates removed, but it took them about a month to trace the car to Humphreys. And it was around the time that they found out it was his,

that they found some of his personal belongings in Lake County about 70 miles away. Eileen's seventh and last victim was a 60-year-old man named Walter Antonio. He was a Brevard County Reserve Deputy and a truck driver who was driving to Alabama to search for a job. His nude body was found in Dixie County. On November 18th, he had been shot three times. One shot was to the back of his head. His car was found in Brevard County and it was determined that several I, were missing. But the most important item was a gold ring that his fiance had recently given him.

So these last couple victims were actually previous law enforcement. So they had that knowledge base. So she was pretty good at surprise. And here's the big question that I think a lot of the families of some of these victims had. I don't think Richard Mallory, the very first victim, because what I I got from the research about Mallory was that he didn't really have much family, didn't have a lot in the way of friends. He was kind of a loner. He was known to frequent the bars. I think he had a history of picking up sex workers. Right. But when you get to some of these other individuals, their families were shocked that authorities were hinting at the possibility that they were out trolling for sex.

So then you got into the area of, okay, if she's working the interstate, she's just got her thumb up in the air. Were these people all looking for sex? Or were some of these people just helping a woman on the side of the road out? Yeah, I think they were probably helping a woman on the side of the road out, but also read an article where she would kind of seek out who her potential targets would be too by scoping the cars coming down the highway and she would really try to target those cars that had just one individual one I'm right that look like potentially an easy

target. And I think she definitely sought out middle-aged men. Yeah. Whatever definition you want to give to middle age, but 40, 50, 60 years old, most of her victims almost all were in that that kind of that range. But I know especially the family of Dick Humphreys, you know, this retired Air Force major, Alabama police chief. They said no way. No way would he have picked up someone looking for sex. Now, he was known to help people out. And they thought he very likely could have pulled over to help.

a woman who he felt was in distress. Right. And then whatever happened after that happened. But it's a big question when it comes to all of these victims. I mean, the end result was still the same. And Eileen Warnos killed them. In a lot of instances, she took their car. Right.

She even drove it around for a while. Personal belongings. She took the personal belongings. She would pawn things. She would take all their cash. But now we have to back up a little bit because on July 4th, 1990, Warnos and Moore were driving around in Peter Seams car, a man who Eileen had killed. When they got into an accident, I'm pretty sure Ty was driving the car.

Witnesses gave police information about the two women they saw fling the car after the accident. And it was really this incident that all. ultimately led police to Eileen Warnos and Tyrea Moore. Police sketch artists made some composites and a bloody print was lifted from the trunk of the car. But it wasn't until November 30th of 1990 after the pattern of murders became, you know, very obvious to police that they went public with the composite sketches. Because you got to realize up to this point, these murders were happening in several different counts. counties and the counties were investigating these individually and not as a whole yet. Yeah. If you if you kind of go through the counties we talked about,

Brevard, Marion, Dixie, I mean, I mean, I think in that regard, Eileen Warnos was being somewhat, I don't want to call her smart, but she was being calculating. Right. Right. By not dumping each and everybody in the same place. and not kind of making it super obvious that these were all tied together. But after you have seven, that pretty much happen in the same way, they all happened along I-75. I think at some point, the police cracked that code that these were all related. So they sent out these composites to the newspapers, television news programs, and calls started

rolling in. There was one article that said they got 500. calls, like right away. And some of the calls, people were naming the women in the composite sketches. One name given was Tyria Moore. And the other one was Lee. Because Eileen had been using so many aliases by this point. Police were hearing the names Lee Blahovec, Cammy Marsh Green, Lori Grody, Sandra Crutch. I mean, she was like a chameleon. She would just take on different names and she got in trouble a lot and would use some of these different names so not everything would follow her. But we knew she was used to passing bad checks and forgery. So when you're when you're

doing those type of things, you need to have some aliases and you need to to be able to do things in a name other than your your own. Yeah. So it's easy to do that. Especially if you know these people and you can lift their IDs. Yeah, gives you a little bit of credibility when you walk into some places. But the one thing she couldn't escape was her fingerprints, which were on file, because obviously she had a number of run-ins with the law over the years. Her fingerprints were definitely on file in Florida. When police searched local pawn shops, they discovered some of the items that had belonged

to the victims. and that's when some of Eileen's aliases started popping up as the person who pawned the items. So police were able to get fingerprints off of some of these items, and that's what led them to the name of Eileen Warno's. Yeah, that was a really interesting story too, because they had to do it the old school way, right? They had to get the fingerprint cards out, take the fingerprint that they lifted at the pawn shop and go one by one through those cards. Right. You're not scanning it into a computer and the computer's doing all the word. Yeah, you're going through one by one of these index cards and eventually they got lucky, man, and they hit it.

The other thing that I thought was interesting about that is, so you have an item that belonged to someone. So that person's fingerprints are all over it. Right. The person who stole it touched it. Yeah. But then you take it to a pawn shop. Well, how many people touched it after that? That's true. The fact that they were even able to lift her prints. Yeah. I thought all of that was amazing. Got lucky. There's a lot of luck there. Amazing, lucky, great police work slash lucky. Kind of all combines together as to helps out.

Yes. But the key is police were looking for Tyrea Moore and Eileen Warners. But they moved around so much that finding them was easier said than done. I think what it did do at the. this point in time was caused tie to leave. You know, she left Lee, took off to Pennsylvania where she had some family. I think she knew Gibbs. It was just a matter of time before police closed in on them and she wanted to get

the heck out of Dodge. Well, yeah, if you're seeing these composite drawings in the newspapers, news, whatever, and you're like, I know that's me and I know that's her. Well, and I think at some point, once the police learned the names, maybe the names went out as well. So it wasn't a guessing game at that point. Right. On January 9th, 1991, police arrested Eileen Warnos at the last resort bar in Volusia County, Florida on an outstanding warrant.

So they didn't arrest her for murder, right? They arrested her on some other outstanding warrant. And over the years, Gibbs, this place has become somewhat of a tourist attraction. I don't know if it's still there or not. But people would come from all over to see the. place where police nab the infamous Eileen Warnas. Yeah, it's just a, to me, like it's just a small hole in the wall type of bar. Yeah, I think it was kind of a biker bar back then. I don't know what it is today, but,

but, you know, you can watch the arrest video. You can see all that. And it's kind of interesting. You know, if you're into that, you'd maybe want to go there and say, oh, that's where she was standing, walking back and forth by the, you know, the pool table. And there she is when she was outside of the place. Well, if you're a fan of true crime. Yeah. And you knew for a fact you were, I don't know, 10 minutes away from this bar, would you not stop and just kind of check it out so that you could later tell people? Oh, yeah, I went to that bar.

Yeah. You probably ride your motorcycle over there. I would. Yeah. I want to sit in the booth where Eileen Warnow said. Well, maybe the next Daytona Beach bike event, whatever they call those. You're very knowledgeable. Yeah.

Daytona bike week. Yeah. That's right there, man. Tell your hog all the way down. Then get on it and ride it around because there's no way you would ride that from here down to there. All would love to do that. Would you?

That's my dream. My dream is to set up a trip where I'm riding the bike. I have everything I need in the saddlebags. And I just go, man. I stop at hotel. stay the night, get up the next morning and ride. That's my dream. The problem is we've got to put out these episodes every week.

Yeah. So I don't know how that's going to work. It doesn't leave time for vacations, motorcycle trips. And this is why you want me to get a bike so I can do this torture ride with you. Yes. Okay. We mean torture ride. It's freedom ride.

Freedom ride. It's easy rider, man. Have you felt some of these highways, man? They're pretty bumpy, man. You obviously have not ridden a high-end motorcycle. Well, I can't afford the type of motorcycle that you ride, man. My wallet doesn't open that large. I like the, you know, a couple thousand dollar motorcycle.

Yeah, you're not taking that on a long trip. I can tell you that right now. When they arrested Eileen in her possession, police found a key to a storage unit. She had rented. And there they found property that belonged to six of the. the seven victims. So police had some evidence. Right. Right. But they needed time. And they wanted a bit more to build out a rock solid murder case against Eileen. So they came up with a plan. They found Tyrea Moore in Pennsylvania and they struck a deal with her. They gave her immunity from prosecution

in exchange for her help building the case against Eileen. I don't know that it was a hard decision for Tyrea? I really don't. It shouldn't be a difficult decision for anybody once you're in that position, right? Well, it depends on how low you are to the person that they're asking you to help prosecute. Yeah, well, look, we're going to put you away forever. Or you can help us out. You won't have to do any time or limited time. What do you want to do?

No, I get what you're saying. I guess where my head was, I just don't know. what the true feelings were on the part of Thai for Lee. I know what they were. Oh, for sure. Yeah. She obviously would do anything. But I don't think those feelings were exactly reciprocal.

Oh, I agree with you. Yeah. And so I think for Ty, that decision was pretty easy. Yeah. Number one, she hadn't killed anybody. But you know they would have went after. her for maybe accessory after the fact. I mean, she would have faced some really serious charges and some serious jail time. But I think her feelings towards Lee waned over the years.

I think they did. Yeah. Yeah. I think they were pretty intimate early on. Yeah. The feeling that I got was over the last two or three years, like you said, it had waned to the point where they were more friends than anything kind of getting by together that's kind of the way i took it but not to lee right lee was was holding on to this thing for dear life right this was you know her rock she needed this person she didn't want to be abandoned once again exactly so tie agreed and they brought her back to florida and put her up in a motel authorities listened and recorded a series of calls between Eileen and Tyrea Moore. On these calls, Ty cried and told Eileen that she was scared, that she was going to go to prison for what Eileen had done. She even threatened to end her life.

And I think for Eileen Warnos, that was all it took. She was so enamored with Ty that she was willing to do anything to make sure that she was okay. I think she truly loved this woman, Gibbs. It was a love unlike anything she had probably ever had in her life. On one call, she said to Ty, you're not the one. I'm the one who did everything. I did it all by myself. And after that, Eileen Warnos set down with investigators to confess to a number of her crimes. But Gibbs, there's so much more to go in the case of Eileen Warnos in part two. We'll discuss her trials. we'll discuss more details about the murders. We'll get into her increasingly bizarre behavior,

which really seemed to spiral over time. We'll probably get to hear a little bit from her. Sure. To really get the sense of her mental state at different points in time. We'll get into the last days and execution of Warnos and the pop culture aspect. of her story because there is one there. Oh, certainly. For sure.

Yeah. You've got books, movies, you know, all kinds of things. But all of that in part two, which will be coming at you next week. So that's it for part one of Eileen Warnos. Like I said, gives a lot of juicy stuff to come in part two. Yeah. The trial stuff is very interesting. Yeah.

And there are certain details I didn't want to talk about in this first part because they don't come out. Let's say maybe until the trial or, you know, something like that. We'll definitely talk about them then. We've got some voicemails. You want to check those out? Let's hear it. Hi, this is Shelley Clancy, and I'm from Madera, California.

I love your podcast. Your voices are very easy to listen to, and that's a biggie for me. Some of them might would be good, but their voices just go right through my head. So I really enjoy the content, the way you guys banter. just all around great podcasts. I also would like to recommend a story that happened in Madeira, and it's about two high school kids, jealousy, murder, gruesome. You know, this kid that murdered his ex-girlfriend, you know,

he was the son of the owner of the theater here. It was a big deal. My daughter went to school with the girl that got murdered. She knew her very well. And I just would love to know the details, and like you guys put it out there. You might want to look it up. The girl that got murdered was Krista Pike.

So I don't know. Just a suggestion. So anyways, you're my favorite, favorite, favorite podcast. Thank you. Bye-bye. All right. Now, when she first said that, I immediately thought of Krista Pike

because we did an episode about Krista Pike, but she was the murderer. If you remember that, Gives, a group of people, they murdered a girl named Kala. Slimmer, believe was her name. And that episode, I think, is titled The Murder of Colleen Slimmer. But if there was a Krista Pike that was murdered, we'll definitely have to check that out. Mandira.

Hi there. My name is Loamy, and I'm from Quebec, Canada. First of all, I want to tell you how much all of your show. The chemistry has been between you two guys is so hilarious and amazing. I would like to submit you a case that happened in the province of Quebec that shocked everyone in my province. The case about the cardiologist Dr. Gizs of Kourke, he was going through a rough divorce with his wife who worked at the same hospital as him, also as a doctor. In the end, their relations escalated quickly. He killed his two children and tried to commit suicide right after. The way he killed them is particularly bruised and bonchilling. Also, his trial raised lots of concerns and mistrust in the Quebec legal system because of his profession,

no statute, and the lack of recognitions of violence towards women through their children. Anyway, I think this is a story worth getting. Thanks again, sorry for my Quebec French accent. Goate and Gibby. Well, I'm glad you slowed that down for us. So, I mean, one of the things, I don't know if everybody knows this, but for the sake of time. Right. I cut out like all the pauses in the voicemails. Yeah.

So sometimes they sound faster than what they really are just because there's no pauses. I don't speed up the words, but that one did seem very fast. It did. I don't know if it's the French-Canadian accent, which I really dig, by the way. Right. I know you do. Or, I don't know what it was. But it did sound very fast, but I did not speed that up.

But very, very, uh, detailed. Yeah. And team Gibby. Team Gibby. So, yeah, we'll definitely check that out. Yeah, we will. Hi, Mike. Hi, Gibby.

This is Ruthie from Middle Tennessee. My hometown is in Vandalia, Ohio. I'm calling about Alton Coleman and Deborah Brown. I remember vividly when they were operating. I had two toddlers and was I teacher at a date public school. Not only was I terrified. terrified from my own family, but for my students as well. I had such a hard time leaving my children with the babysitter. I went through scenarios with her on how to get her and my children

out of her home safely. And I was especially terrified because our starter home was on an access road just about a thousand feet from Needmore Road. Thanks for the story, I learned more by you all than I did with even the competent Don Wang reporting. Well, I'll sign off with keep your own time ticking. Well, that's impressive because, you know, I grew up in Vandale, yeah. I went to kindergarten and Vandalia. Yeah, we know Vandalia. We know Nymour Road very well. And it's a timely voicemail because, all right, we're doing episode 200.

She's talking about episode one. Yeah. And then when you throw Don Wayne in there, it's like, you know, he was kind of a Dayton newscasting legends. Like Walter Concrete. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You want to take that. back, but I'm not going to let you.

For 200, that's got to stay in. It's there, man, isn't it? What was his name? Yeah. Good old Walter. Walter, what? Grong crack. You said it wrong again. That time you just put two R's in. The first time, you just put

the R's in the wrong place, I think. Anyway. What's his last name? Just good old Walter. He's missed. Yeah, he's missed. Yeah. He's not happy either. About the way you butchered his name. No, I would not be either. I'm sure. But, you know, that's me. Hi, Mike and Givie. This is Kim. I'm calling from Syracuse, New York. I've been listening to you guys

for the past several months while working from home during the pandemic, and you guys crack me up. I love the show, and I want to thank you for all that you do. I would also like to suggest a case for you to cover and look into. It's on John Jemowski, also known as the Syracuse Dungeon Master. He kidnapped several women over a 10-year period and kept them prisoner in an underground dungeon he had built under his home. Crazy story. Well, worth looking into. Thanks again. And keep your own time ticking.

Bye. Wow, that sounds like a case that would be right up our alley. Yeah, dungeon master. Well, because I know you, you're a dungeon master. I am. I mean, it's for that weird game, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons. But you have a business card that says dungeon master on it. I carry the sword too.

It's just a different type of dungeon master. Yeah. But that case sounds pretty brutal. It does. Like it would be right up our alley. Up in Syracuse, too. Mm-hmm. What town?

Syracuse. They get a lot of snow, by the way. Yeah, they do. Yeah. Gives, we had some mailbag. All right. Lucy from Australia. Yeah.

Send us a goodie box. Tim Tams, some amazing soap, which my daughter's already stole. Yeah. So forget about that. They do that right away. Yep. They do that right away. And a whole bunch of Harley chips.

Really? Yeah, it was a really cool box. A lot of good stuff in it. Awesome. So we appreciate that, Lucy. We do. But that's it, Gibbs for episode 200. We'll be back next week with part two and most likely the finale of Eileen Warnos.

So until then for Mike and Gibby. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.