Women Serial Killers of the 20th Century (22 page)

Stephen Glazer

He made no attempt at having her death sentence reduced or any kind of plea bargain. Even notorious serial killer Ted Bundy was offered a plea agreement. The “no contest” plea is used as a guilty plea but without a plea agreement, it meant that she was eligible for the death penalty in each case.

Aileen made a rambling statement to the court and Judge Thomas Sawaya in which she said, “
She was sorry her acts of self defense had ended up in court like this, but she took full responsibility for her actions, it was them or me………I am prepared to die if you say it is necessary.”

At this point, she paused and seemed confused, not looking sure if she meant this or if it was indeed wise to say this.

On May 15th, 1992, Judge Thomas Sawaya, handed Aileen three more death sentences. In video-tapes of the sentencing, it would seem by Aileen’s reaction that this was not what she was expecting.

She thanked the judge and declared, “I’ll be up in heaven while you all rot in hell.”

She turned and snarled at the Assistant State Attorney that she hoped his “wife and children get raped in the ass!”

To the judge
, she gave an obscene gesture and muttered, “Motherfucker.”

Stephen Glazer informed the court that Aileen’s automatic appeal should be handled by the public defender’s office.

Following this court appearance Aileen sunk into a deep depression. She refused to communicate with Stephen Glazer or Arlene. The British journalist Nick Broomfield asked Stephen Glazer why he had allowed Aileen to submit a “no contest” plea. He said he had done so because, he claimed, Aileen wanted to die. Yet until 2001, Aileen continued to appeal her death sentence, claiming self-defense.

Stephen Glazer told Nick Bloomfield, that although he did not feel comfortable, he would be there with Aileen as they strapped her into the electric chair as Aileen had asked him to be there. He would be there as her friend and lawyer, and he would give her the advice that Woody Allen, in the movie “Take the Money
and Run,” in which Allen had played the lawyer, Virgil Stockwell, gave to his client about to be executed in the chair, “Don’t sit down.” Stephen Glazer then burst into raucous laughter.

Other lawyers were appalled at Stephen Glazer
’s behavior and whispered amongst themselves that he was unfit to defend her and was helping propel Aileen into the electric chair. Tricia Jenkins, Chief Assistant Public Defender, who had handled Aileen’s first trial, said that Steven Glazer had told her “he was taking the case because he needed the media exposure."

In June
of 1992, again under Stephen Glazer’s advice, Aileen pleaded guilty to the murder of Charles Carskaddon. In November of 1992, Aileen received her fifth death sentence for Charles Carskaddon’s murder.

Aileen realized too late that Arlene Pralle had only befriended her for financial gain
and Stephen Glazer for the promotion of his law firm the media publicity gave him. Aileen had discovered that Arlene was going to start a museum with letters and drawings she had sent her. Aileen told Nick Broomfield in a video-taped interview that Arlene and Stephen Glazer had advised her of ways to kill herself in prison. She said she didn’t see such advice as “very motherly or lawyerly.”

In a letter to
her childhood friend Dawn, Aileen wrote, “As her and Steve conned me to “WAIVE OFF” all remaining trials.”

When Arlene was asked why she had advised Aileen to enter the no-contest plea, she remarked, “The state has a death sentence so, golly, in a few years she could be with Jesus. Why not go for it?”

Dateline’s NBC reporter, Michele Gillen, discovered in November of 1992 that Richard Mallory, Aileen’s first victim, had spent ten years in prison in Maryland for violent rape. During Aileen’s first trial when she had taken the witness stand and described the violent rape she had undergone by Richard Mallory, the prosecution denied that there was any evidence to substantiate Aileen’s claims of rape or any history of sexual crimes by Richard Mallory. Trish Jenkins, Aileen’s public defender lawyer, was heavily criticized for failing to bring this to the court’s attention. Many believe that it was Mallory’s violent rape of Aileen that started her off on her spree of murders.

In November
of 1992, during the Charles Carskaddon post-trial hearing, Aileen’s public defender defense team tried to introduce the newly discovered evidence against Richard Mallory into court. The lawyers thought that the jurors would have seen Aileen’s case differently had they been aware of this fact. The judge refused to allow this evidence to be admitted into the post-trial proceedings and denied Aileen’s request for a retrial. Aileen, during all this time, was locked up 23-hours-a-day in a spartan 6-foot-by-8-foot prison cell rarely seeing anyone except prison guards and devoid of human touch.

Death Row Cell

Aileen spent her time reading the Bible and drawing scenic pictures with her blue ink pen. She also spent her time corresponding with her old school friend Dawn Botkins, to whom she would sometimes write four letters a day.

Aileen’s Art Work

In February of 1993, Aileen pleaded guilty to the murder of Walter Jeno Antonio. Aileen told the court at the sentencing hearing that she wished to waive her right to present mitigating evidence and her right to be present. She said that she already had five death sentences and didn’t want to waste tax payer’s money. Aileen also made the observation that male serial killers normally only received about two death sentences and the number she was receiving was due to a media and political circus. She said she no longer cared and simply wished to return to her cell on death row.

When the sentencing date arrived, Aileen was brought to the court. The defense lawyers presented a letter from Dr. Harry Krop, a psychiatrist, stating that Aileen was incompetent and delusional. The court then ordered Aileen for another evaluation by psychiatrists Dr. Joel Epstein and Dr. Donald DeBeato. They declared that Aileen suffered from a personality disorder but was competent. The court decided Aileen was mentally competent enough to proceed.

At the sentencing, Aileen complained profanely and vehemently about mistreatment. The court threatened to bind and gag her unless she remained silent; she was, however, permitted to address the court. In her statement, Aileen again asserted she had acted purely in self-defense. The court rejected Aileen’s claim of self-defense, and she received her sixth death sentence.

Aileen’s lawyers continued to fight through appeals for her life. In 1996, the US Supreme Court denied her appeal. In 1989, the US Supreme Court ruled that it was not unconstitutional to execute the mentally impaired.

In 2000, Aileen’s new public defender attorney, Joseph Hobson, and an investigator, Kari Anderson, who both believed that Aileen had been let down completely by the entire legal system launched a new appeal for a new trial. They based the appeal on Stephen Glazer’s incompetence as a lawyer in a death penalty case. Moreover, the fact that, as was filmed in Nick Broomfield’s excellent documentary,
“The Selling of a Serial Killer,”
Stephen Glazer would smoke as many as seven marijuana joints before giving Aileen legal advice. Joseph Hobson also accused Stephen Glazer of financially profiting from the media for arranging interviews with Aileen.

In support of his appeals, Joseph Hobson entered a seventy-four page deposition Stephen Glazer had given the previous year.

In the deposition, Stephen Glazer admits smoking marijuana, both recently and in 1992, and admitted he was filmed smoking marijuana and had told Nick Broomfield’s that the journey from his office to Aileen Wuornos' South Florida prison was a "seven-joint ride."

Stephen Glazer further admitted that he told Aileen Wuornos that all she had to do if she wished to appeal was point out that he
, Glazer, had a conflict of interest while representing her as he negotiated cash payments for media interviews while Aileen’s' case was major news.

During, this trial, many of Aileen’s childhood friends and acquaintances from Troy were called to give evidence about her childhood in an attempt to have her removed from death row
; Evidence and mitigating circumstances that should rightly have happened in her first trial, along with the evidence of Richard Mallory’s violent, sexual history. Some of the men, who had hung around with Aileen in “the pits” as boys, testified albeit uncomfortably, how they had used her for sex and had been cruel to her; others testified how her grandfather had savagely beat her with a black belt. Aileen, in an extraordinary move that effectively sabotaged her own defense, attempted to get their evidence banned.

Their testimony was ignored and, unbelievably
, Steven Glazer was found to be competent as a lawyer. Judge Cobb said, in his summing up, that Aileen Wuornos' happiness with her odd choice for a defense attorney in Stephen Glazer was of no concern to the court.

In 2001,
at the age of forty-five, Aileen was still languishing in a Florida death row cell when she requested the Florida Supreme Court for permission to fire her lawyers and drop all future appeals. Aileen had simply had enough, feeling that her life on death row was worse than death itself and wanted to die.

Aileen wrote to the Florida Supreme Court
, “I killed those men and robbed them cold as ice and would gladly do it again. I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again."

In a Court hearing in Daytona Beach in April
of 2001 to decide if she should be allowed to take this step, Aileen testified while crying and grabbing tissue after tissue.

"I am a serial killer. I would kill again
," and, "If I have to spend life in prison, I will kill. I will kill again." She wanted, she said, no more "legal jabberwocky."

A defense lawyer argued that Aileen was in no state for the court to honor her request. Aileen responded by saying, “I am so sick of hearing this 'she's crazy' stuff. I've been evaluated so many times. I'm competent, sane, and I'm trying to tell the truth. I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again. Let’s cut to the chase and get on with an execution. I have hate crawling through my system. Taxpayers' money has been squandered, and the families have suffered enough."

The Florida Supreme Court, after a psychiatric evaluation, agreed to allow her to fire her lawyers and drop all appeals.

Execution

Billy Nolas, a lawyer who helped defend Aileen in 1992 in her first trial, described Aileen as "the most disturbed individual I have represented." He said, “She suffered from borderline personality disorder caused by sexual abuse and neglect as a child. As she has gotten older and older, she has gotten worse and worse." Billy Nolas believed Aileen was too mentally ill to comprehend what dropping her appeals and seeking death would mean.

Meanwhile, Aileen was mentally disintegrating even more. Always paranoid, she now believed the prison employees were conspiring to torture her and force her to suicide.

In July of 2002, Aileen appeared dressed in dark green prison overalls, handcuffed and shackled in Broward Circuit Court complaining of abuse by prison guards at the Broward Correctional Institution in Pembroke Pines. She had written a 25-page report detailing her abuse. Her serious allegations included staff members threatening to rape her and some guards putting dirt, spit, and urine in her food.

Aileen also complained of having handcuffs put on so tightly they bruised her wrists, having her cell door kicked by guards, strip searches, low water pressure so she was unable to shower, mildew on her mattress
, cat calling, and general, pure hatred directed towards her.