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You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them. Gaesy Bundy, Dahmer, The night Stalker Dck. Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Hello, this is your host Dan Zupaski for the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that have written about them. On November thirtieth, nineteen eighty nine, in Florida, a man was shot four times by a naked, heartfaced blonde prostitute. He suffered a slow, agonizing death while the woman stripped him of his valuables and drove his Cadillac back to the motel where her
lesbian lover was waiting. In nineteen ninety her killing spree kicked into high gear, with three men slain in three weeks. Of the six of seven male victims whose bodies were found, some were nude, all had been robbed and shot dead. In January nineteen ninety one, pawnshop records led to the arrest of Aileen Carol Warnos a k A. Lee an abusive,
alcoholic man hater with a murderous hair trigger temper. Tired of turning twenty Duller tricks and often being abused, Warnos decided to rob her customers of everything they had, including their lives. Her arrest and trial prompted a world wide media frenzy and even an Academy Award winning movie Monster. In the end, Warnos received six separate death sentences. Lethal Intent is the definitive account of a killer who confounded the profiling exists, forever changing their concepts of the crimes
of which a woman is capable. My guest today is journalist and author Sue Russell, discussing her true crime classic lethal Intent, the shocking true story of one of America's most notorious female serial killers. Welcome to the program, Sue Russell, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Good morning, Dan, Thank you for having me on the show.
Well, thank you very much. It's my pleasure and I'm sure our audiences as well. Oh yeah, I'm sure, I'm certain. Now. First off, this is a question that's always intrigues me and I always ask it of all guests. You are give you a little bit of a background to our audience. You're an internationally syndicated journalist and author, a past editor of Women Magazine, a Woman Magazine, and a regular contributor
to various British and US publications. You've written about the beauty industry and co authored The Star Mothers The Moms Behind the Celebrities. Now, what was it about the Alien Warno's case? Because you've written about so many diverse cases, what was it about the Alien Warno's case specifically that compelled you to write not only Lethal Intent but also Damsel of Death, both about Alien Warnos. What was it about Alien Warnos and her case that interested you so much?
Well, I'd written a lot of crime stories and features on related issues about crime, and I was dying to write a true crime book No pun intended. And the minute I heard about Eileen, of course my is pricked
up because it was such an extraordinary case. It was such an amazing piece of news that was coming across the wise, this woman being arrested with all these casualties of her at the end of her twenty two caliber gan and it was in modern day times unprecedented and defied the definitions of a serial killer, you know, as outlined by the FBI. So it just seemed crazy not to just immediately jump up and say, Okay, this is the one I have to write this book. I felt
very much interested in women's violence. I'd written about women as victims of violence, and this was just too good to pass up in terms of being such a fascinating story.
Dan, Right now, I'm a little bit confused, and maybe you can tell our audience. You wrote Damsel of Death and in also Lethal Intent. Are they two separate books.
I'm glad you asked that, because it does confuse people somewhat. What happened was I wrote Damsel of Death first for England and Australia. As you may be able to tell, I don't know if I have any of my accent left. I am a natives of Londoner, and so the book came out over there first, and due to various publishing industry hiccups, it didn't come out here until, you know, after two thousand what was it two thousand and two, I think right, And at that point they put another
title on it. It was exactly the same book, but I updated it with her ten years on death row at the end. So lethal Intent is definitely the one if anyone's interested in getting hold of the book, because it does go right up to, you know, the point of her execution.
Yeah, okay, that's that clarifies that I was interested to know about that. It would seem unusual that you would write two separate books about the same thing. Now I understand that you've spent some two years researching the life of Alien Warnos. It is a fascinating story just on its own. Let's go back. What was Alien Warno's early life like growing up in Troy, Michigan, just outside of the city of Detroit.
Right, Just to clarify, I didn't spend two years researching it. I spent two years researching and writing it. I don't want people to think I'm the slowest person in the world on hemisphere. Eileen was born to Diane Warnoff, who
was briefly married to Leo Pittman. They were both very young and this was in Troy, Michigan, And basically what happened is, first there was the brother, Keith, who's about eleven months older than Eileen, and then Eileen was born, by which time Leo Pittman had exited the picture, and within the first two years of Eileen's life, her mother abandoned her twice, dumping her and Keith on the grandparents, Brita and Lowry Warnoff vote in the Troy, Michigan area
there and so she left the babies with the grandparents once and then she came back and tried to make a go of it, but that didn't work, and so she took off twice. So for anyone who believes, you know, the abandonment during that very early formative stage is a powerful influence on a person's future, then I think you could say that Eileen had a double dose of it.
The grandparents then raised Eileen and Keith as their own and alongside their own children Diane's brothers, Barry and Laurie, so it was Barry and Laurie and Eileen and Keith as if they were all siblings, although in fact Barry and Laurie were aunt and uncle to Eileen and Keith. Her prime making sense, Yeah, yeah, So it was a
rough childhood. It was a hard scrabble Michigan life. But Lurie warn us Lowry, I'm sorry, the father, we called him Lowry to try to distinguish from Lourie the daughter, but Lowry warn Us was generally recognized in the neighborhood as a mean man, and neighbors would hear the kids getting a whipping from across the backyards and what have you, and here screaming and carrying on. The shades were always drawn.
They were a very private family. It was one of those cases of what is going on behind closed doors, and school kids who went to school with her would always say, or said when I interviewed them years later that they always assumed that bad things were happening and it was not a happy place to be living, but they kept all of it very much hidden. And grandmother Brita was also later was revealed an alcoholic and was drinking heavily behind closed doors too.
So you've got.
Two drinking grandparents, and you've got the violence from the grandfather who would take a belt to the kids, especially Eileen, who was always in trouble with them, and you know, he'd pull down their jeans or whatever and just take the leather belt to them and actually make Eileen polish it up before she got a whipping. So it was a whole procedure and I'm sure had a bad effect on her outlook and life in general. You know, it was child abuse, certainly would be considered child abuse today.
In those days, it was not so terribly unusual, or at least it was a perhaps more violent version of what's not so terribly unusual. It wasn't unusual to hit your kids back then.
Now when you talk about effect, certainly in a negative effect in this case, as well as we will reveal in this interview that this is an exceptional case for all the factors that led to her shaping her eventual character and eventual behavior. And you talk about the parents, and were Aileen and Keith told about who their parents actually were or what anything about their actual real parents?
And when were they told? At what age were they told given this actual information the real identity of the actual parents.
Aileen was about twelve years old, and she was crushed, completely crushed. She was in disbelief, basically. And what is so interesting to me, or was you know, initially so stunningly interesting to me, Dan, was that when I began looking into Leo Pittman's background birth father, not only was he a petty criminal and stole cars and things like that, but when I eventually got his records from the FBI and learned about what he had done. A bit later on,
he had abducted a child into his car. He'd lurked outside a schoolyard and he'd taken this little girl, I think she was maybe seven, and he'd driven her across state lines and he had sexually abused her, and he then put her in the car and he drove her back across and dropped her off outside the school. Now, because she'd gone across state lines, albeit marginally, it became a federal offense. And the father of Eileen also committed
a capital crime. He too faced the death penalty like his daughter, and they never met and he didn't get the death penalty, and ultimately he hanged himself in prison. But I just find that so eerie and uncanny, a coincidence, or maybe more than a coincidence, that their lives took these turns. And the child, who was instrumental in the victim in putting Leo Pittman behind bars, had to go into court to testify that this was the man who'd
abducted and raped her. And when she was shown the fabric from the seat of his car, which was a distinctive check pattern. She broke out in hives in front of the whole courtroom so everyone could see this immediate physical reaction. She had justice seeing the car seat material from Leo Pittman's car. But Leo tried to play the system too, saying he was mentally ill. He spent time in the mental hospital, he spent time in the prison. Part tried to work the system, and he did, in fact hang himself.
It's very interesting when you talk about the environmental the effect of the environment on a future killer of this case is very I would think a textbook case in terms of what not to do.
And yes, I mean I always likened it to stacking up Domino's, you know, standing them up on their end in a long row before they all began to tip over and they suddenly reached the tipping point. It was like everything that was a part of her life was a strike against her. She had some hearing difficulties which manifested themselves as learning difficulties. In fact, she just needed a hearing aid, and the grandmother sort of refused to accept this and didn't get her.
The necessary help and kind of dismissed it.
When teachers noted this kind of thing, and one teacher actually wrote a report saying something, this girl is going to I've forgotten the wording. It's been so long, I'm sorry, but you know, more or less like this girl is going, you know, to end up in major trouble if somebody doesn't intervene. And of course nobody did. But eventually those dominoes all kind of cumulatively, the weight of them just
tipped over. And it almost feels inevitable when you look at the fact she was taking money for sex when she was age eleven or twelve. Boys who were in the neighborhood at that time and who are now men testified to testify, but they told me in interviews that they'd had sex with her. When she was eleven, she had sex with her brother. She took money for sex. She would charge thirty five cents or a packet of cigarettes. She was called the cigarette pig, the cigarette bandit.
These kids had.
A fort and they would have makeout sessions, and nobody wanted to kiss Eileen.
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Can you imagine, you know, the rejection and the pain that was building, and the rage that was building in the school through adolescens. And she would use this money that she got from sex also to party with her friends.
She's so badly.
Wanted friends, and she so badly wanted to build these friendships that she saw all around her, but that seemed to elude her, and so she'd throw parties and what have you. But the trouble was she had this explosive temper, and as I write about in Lethal Intent, basically she sabotaged every friendship she had because other kids were afraid
of Eileen. She would have this extraordinary explosion from time to time, much to the embarrassment of sistersh Aunt Laurie, who really tried to do to stand up for Eileen, but at times it became impossible and unbearable.
Barrier was a bit older and.
Was out of the house, so Laurie was more in the sick of it. But it was very It was very tough because Eileen clearly longed for these connections, but just was unable to rain in this sort of these demons inside her long enough to sustains.
What I found was interesting too in continuum with just with her environment. You also, or at least did she had said and I don't know if this was corroborated. You can tell us who actually said this and if there was any any corroboration of this he'd said that. I think Alien had said that. Her father said she was wicked, evil, worthless, should never have been born, and
she was not worthy of the air that she breathed. Yeah, was that proven that those kind of statements came from her adopted father.
I think that was a mixture of what was told by close family friends, by Eileen herself. Laurie, the sister aunt, was a little reticent when it came to painting her father with this nasty, nasty brush that everybody else did. I think she was rather in denial, but she did admit that, yes we got whippings, and yes, you know he did shout at Eileen and Keith.
They were always in trouble.
So it was a combination of people, including Eileen.
Herself, who.
Talked about this verbal abuse which was ongoing for a long time and obviously very destructive.
You also talk about that Aleen Lee Wernos also developed a liking for drugs and alcohol. Yes, and how did this play into her eventual acceleration and her behavior, her behavior getting worse eventually? What was the role of alcohol and drugs in that.
Well, you know, there were several elements running concurrently. She was getting into so much trouble. I mean, she got pregnant when she was fourteen and went into a home and gave birth and the baby was taken away from her when she was just past fifteen, fifteenth birthday. So we have the drinking and the drugs. We have her being essentially ostracized from then on by Lowry, who basically kicked her out of the house more than once. She did go back, but eventually she didn't go back and
she lived in cars, in cambers, in people's driveways. She lived it rough, and needless to say, I am quite certain that drugs and alcohol played quite a role in the road she then took because she basically never really pursued any kind of jobs or she lived rough. She prostituted herself. And I've always believed Eileen always denied that she did drugs in the later part of her life.
And certainly I know that when she was with her lover Tyree More, they would, you know, knock off a forty eight pack of beer in an evening, But Eileen
always denied the drugs. Now, the drugs were very prevalent during the teenage years, and unless someone actually actively goes into AA and says I'm going to clean up my act and gives up the drugs, you know, living the life she did, the prostitution, the living on the streets, the homeless, the going from one place to another, I personally find it very hard to believe and always did that she didn't continue to do drugs. She had certain
things that to her were not acceptable. She would admit to the drinking, and I believe she did the drugs and didn't admit to them in much the same way that she had no problem admitting to having killed the men, but she had a problem saying she'd been sexually abused. In her mind, one was shameful, the other was not. And I think that the drugs were there, that would be my you know, it can only be a guest because she would never confirm it. But you know, people
pay for sex with drugs, as you know. And she was living a very rough life for a very long time.
Right now, you mentioned her lover, her lesbian lover, Tyra or Tyre and Tyra Moore. Maybe can tell us a little bit about Tyra and the event that intersected these two people's lives forever, where they met, how they met, and how they became a couple, and tell us a little bit about Tyra Moore forst well, Tira.
Was actually.
The more industrious of the two. She did have a.
Definite liking for partying and drinking beer and you know, generally getting wasted regularly. However, she did hold down jobs. She was a hotel maid and you know, various other jobs that she had. Periods of time she would go off to work and leave Iileen. Eileen would then take off up the highway with her what the police would call, and you know, I guess I would too, give them what was in it her kill bag, which was a bottle of Windex and her gun, and she would go
off hooking. And you know, there's some dispute really about how much was openly told to Tyra at what point. There's no doubt that tyrone knew she was prostituting herself, but Tira was the type who really liked the end product and didn't want to rock the boat too much. It was easier for her to turn a blind eye and.
Just take the.
Rewards, as it were, of what came of Aileen's lifestyle. They met in a bar and they began drinking and they went home together. At the time, Tyrie was living with Cammy Green, a friend of her, and Cammy's.
Husband and children.
And they woke up one morning and Tyria had a woman in her room, and Cammy tried to go in at some point and she was told no, no, get away. And basically they spent the weekend together, locked up together in that room, coming out just occasionally to get more alcohol or whatever. However, Dan, I must tell you that contrary to what everybody else believes. I do not believe that Eileen was a lesbian. I believe that Eileen I interviewed enough former boyfriends and people with whom she had
sex where there was no money exchanged. Men I'm talking about. I believe with Eileen Tyra, Tyrea. I call her Tyria, you call her Tira, Many people call her Tira. Taria was an emotional prop It was what Eileen so badly, badly craved, that emotional connection. Their sex life dropped off pretty quickly, and although Eileen did have one other to our knowledge, lesbian affair, basically she was often in love
with men and often had sex with men. So I've always gone against this man hating lesbian label always given to her by the press. I don't believe that was the case. I don't believe she was a lesbian. She was bisexual perhaps, but she certainly enjoyed sex with men and instigated it when she didn't have to.
Yes, she was the act of love. Somebody actually wanting her seemed to be the main compulsion and driving her life. Yeah, regardless of who it was.
Yes.
Now, when they lived in a trailer together, Eileen put.
Tinfoil. What do you call it?
Aluminum foil and they call it in the state's aluminium foil in England at the windows of the trailer. And basically she didn't want Tyria doing anything. She preferred her to be at home, waiting for her and available to her at all tims. She was quite controlling in that regard, and you know, she liked to keep very close tabs on her and overwriting the book and working a very complex,
intricate timeline. I did eventually come to my own conclusion about what the effort I would call was the precipitating event that preceded each of these murders, and it was very closely tied into her borderline personality. And the best way I can describe borderline personality is with the title of a book on the condition, which is called I
Hate you, Don't Leave me, or something like that. But in other words, it's the dichotomy between the anger and the wanting someone to stay with you, but then also telling them that you hate them, and just black and white kind of behavior. So where was I going with all that down? So I think she, you know, she had this borderline personality disorder, and I do believe that a big part of borderline personality is a massive fear of abandonment. It's just like a life ruling fear. And
she so lived in fear of abandonment. She'd been abandoned so many times, let's face it, and let down so many times. So when she found.
Tyria and Tyria.
Stuck with her, even after Tyrea knew she'd committed the first murder, of course, this was incredibly powerful for her and it meant everything to her certainly.
Now you talked about the precipitating event, Well, let's get to that. They are in Daytona Beach, they're in Florida together. At some point, Lee Aileen Warnos goes from robbing her clients or taking money from her clients to killing them. What you talked about a precipitating event. Is there a precipitating event that caused this that you found out? You discovered? Was that moment, that reason, that event that precipitated her first murder?
Well?
I believe so. And of course remember that although she confessed to seven murders and was convicted of six, we don't one hundred, so that those were her only murders. I personally think she may have witnessed another murder at a different time in her life, which you know is a bit convoluted, so I won't go into it right here and now. But Thanksgiving nineteen eighty nine, Ty had brought home a girl called Sandy for Thanksgiving dinner from
who was a coworker of hers at the hotel. And she was a very pretty blonde, straight girl, and I interviewed her, you know, and Thanksgiving dinner was an extremely awkward event, Eileen. They had basically TV dinner style Thanksgiving dinners.
Eileen would not eat in front of the other two and she clearly was very very jealous of Sandy, and within when Thanksgiving I don't know, but you know, within two days after this event, which I think rocked her world because she really thought TI was in love with Sandy, and although she knew Sandy had a husband, I believe it was at that point or certainly you know, living boyfriend, this didn't cut it with Eileen. She was terribly badly affected by the presence of this pretty young blonde thing,
you know, and felt very very threatened. So I believe that was the trigger for the first one, and the fact that she knew she also somehow established that these men had a certain amount of cash on them. You know, I e more than twenty dollars, because with one exception, the seven men had several hundred dollars on them in cash, which in her world was quite a lot of money.
And I think that she somehow established that through conversation with them, and there that played into her targeting certain men. But to reinforce what I was saying about, you know why she killed? And when when Ty's sister came down from Ohio for a vacation with them, Eileen killed. I think it was three men in six weeks.
I believe I have that right.
It was.
Three weeks.
I don't know because the sister went home early. But anyway, there was a terrible clash. The sister wanted Ty to move back up to Ohio, and during that period of time, three men died in very short order, and Eileen would come home waving the dollar bills, you.
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Undred dollar bills or whatever, and would say, look what I have. You know I've got all this money. We can party. We can go to sea World. Wee can this week and that, and she was desperately afraid that the tie was going to go home to Ohio with a sister. Again, the abandonment issue kicked in, and I believe that she robbed to get the money, which she felt, as it had done all her life, she would be able to
avoid being abandoned. By having money, she'd be able to buy herself company, which is really what she did with those kids as a teenager with all the money in the parties, and again with Tye by coming home with this money, which Tye frankly was drawn in by, and so it went on. But that's the most dramatic example.
Is you know why three men were killed in such a short space of time and when the sister was visiting, And I really believe it was all tied into that fear of abandonment, and she was very methodical about it. And this is why I took issue with the film Monster.
Great issue. In fact, I wrote a.
Piece for the Washington Post about the film because in the film, which I don't know if you've seen it, Dan, but she's brutally raped and she kills her attacker to save her own life. Well, that's actually not what happened, and it's a very different story, and it's the wrong story, and you're not learning anything about Eileen Warnos by believing that to be the story, because she wasn't a woman who killed to save her own life during a rape.
That first victim, Richard Mallory, was found sitting behind the wheel of his car fully closed. Something had set her off, for sure, but you know, and it wasn't. When Aileen was first arrested, she didn't come out with a lot of the stuff that came out at her trial later about how Richard.
Mallory had.
Raped her in every which way possible, anally raped her and what have you, tied her to the steering wheel with electrical cables, inserted rubbing alcohol into her bodily orifices. When the murder had taken place, Eileen took the car, as you know. But the other thing is before she left, she took Mallory and she wrapped him in a bit of old carpet that was lying out there in the woods and hid his body. Now on his pockets were turned inside out, so she'd gone through his pockets to
see what else he had on him. Now, to me, if you're being brutally raped and you are trying to save your own life, do you really stop to, you know, go through the man's pockets and once you've killed him and cover his body with a rug, you'd run, you'd run. She did run eventually, when she'd taken care of all this, you know, hiding the body, she took the car and then she also separately hid what else was in the car, which was vodka and orange juice glasses, what have you.
But there was no rubbing our alcohol, there were no electrical ties. The other evidence was never there, and she didn't come out with this story until she got on the witness stand. You know, she'd had a long time to think about what her story.
Was going to be.
But in actual fact, the evidence is that the first bullet went into Richard Mallory from the passenger seat. He was fully dressed behind the steering wheel. You will admit that paints a very different picture from Monster and it's a very different Eileen's if you're trying to understand her and why she committed her crimes, it's a very different Eileen.
If the first murder was triggered by her trying to save her own life during a rape that's a very different Eileen from an Eileen who robbed and killed men. So there would be no witnesses, which she admitted with the case.
So your issue with the movie is as well, that there would be no possible way of misinterpreting the information and the evidence that they came out at trial, and that was published in books like yourself, your book.
What they did Dan was to say it was based on the true story.
A true story.
Now to me, if you're going to change the core of who Eileen Warnoff is, because she is quite an important figure in terms of the crime world and what we learn about the criminal mind, how these crimes are committed, and why then why not change her name in the film too. There was another critical difference, which was that Tyria was very much aware of what was going on. She was in the sharing in the spoils of these robberies.
She was taking the men's watches and jackets and things that Eileen would bring home and wearing.
Them and what have you.
In the movie, they painted her the Christina Ricci character as this little innocent who.
Knew nothing about what was going on.
Well, that wasn't true. There was also a lot made of Tye trying to get away from Aileen once she became afraid of her. But right before the last murder, that you know, before the arrest, Tie had gone to Ohio for Thanksgiving to the family and she'd come back. Now, if she was afraid for her life, why did she get on the bus and come back?
Certainly? Certainly?
Yeah, So these are core differences, don't.
You see those?
Those are Yeah, Like you say, there is the truth and then there's there's fiction. And so the movie is fiction.
It's not alone, of course, in being based on a true story and then taking massive liberties.
With the real story.
The trouble is the public at large. You know, see the movie, and I've done it myself, God knows many times, you know, whether it was you know, a film about Nixon or Kennedy or whatever. You take it at its face value. And that's what many people have done with Eileen. But what has been the fallout from all this down is that the press, and by that I mean the newspapers from day one began referring to her victims as her John's and painting them as you.
Know, rapists who brutalized her.
Now, in actual fact, you know, man two men I think had closing off and that of course does indicate a sexual transaction. But we also know because of men who testified and wo and men I interviewed, that Eileen traveled with a photograph of children and she would flag down cars and she would say, I need to get back to my hotel. My children are there, they're hungry. You know, I've got to get back. Can you give
me a ride? And I think it's fair to say that some of these men actually were good Samaritans and gave her a ride. You know, it's not fair to blanketly attack the victims. Imagine if the boot were on the other foot. Imagine if these victims were women killed by a male serial killer, and if the press were to you know, bad mouth them without a firm evidence to the contrary. I think we have to give the men the benefit of the doubt. Okay, if they were nude, yes,
you know sex was happening. That much we can assume. But we know from other witnesses that she had this and she'd get in the car and then she'd try to rob men. We have men who you know, kind of parked at a gas station to get gas center in to buy some cigarettes or whatever and drove off because they found her so scary. And those men survived the encounter, as most did, of course, but also testified to the fact that she'd scared the living Jesus out
of them, and that's what she'd done. She'd asked for a ride to get back to her children. So you imagine the pain of these families. Not only is they loved one murdered, you know, assuming that probably you know, at least three or four of the seven were nice guys, but he's labeled as a sort of rapist monster.
I find it incredible to I agree with you because I've seen the same thing where a fair amount of information concerning the victims comes from the only last living witness, which is the killer. It's in her self interest to demonize the victim, and so, like you say, the family gets to hear an account of their loved one which is based on, you know, the self interest of the killer trying to demonize the victim to their own benefit.
And then the media again is irresponsible, I think, or ignorant, or a combination of both, putting too much credence in a defense lawyer's assertions, which again come from the killer themselves.
I think that.
They're inexperienced, otherwise they wouldn't put that much credence to what a defense lawyer says on behalf of their client.
Well, as you know, and I mean, we're all guilty of this to some extent as journalists, you know, you look up what's been printed before, and you're in a rush, you're on a deadline, and things get repeated. But she became these men became her John's and that was a shorthand were way of saying something that would fit in a.
Very brief number of.
Words, which is often a challenge as a journalist. But I think that it would be more accurate to say the men who picked her up as a hitchhike. So the other thing is that you don't very often read about the fact that she went out with this bottle of windecks and the gun in the bag every day. Now, Okay, I can see the gun self protection, but why would you carry windecks? Now the cars were wiped clean of fingerprints. You know, this was not a sudden thing out of
the blue. There was some pre planning here and self protection on her part, but not against the men against being identified.
Now, you talked about if she was careful to wipe off her fingerprints to not be detected for these murders. How did Aileen eventually get caught by police.
Well, at the pawn shop. By law, you have to give a fingerprint, and unlike some of the criminals were out there today who had the fingerprints sanded off or chemically altered, Aileen's fingerprints were Aileen's fingerprints. And in those days, fingerprints were hand sorted, you know, they were on cards. There was no computerized whatever. But eventually, by good old police work, good old fashioned police work, items at a pawn shop where she had left her honest to god
fingerprint on the card tied together. And she had a record, she had a criminal record, and so once that fingerprint was found with the pawned items that tied with missing items from the men who died, then the gig was up. And at that point the police went after Tyreea because they felt she was the less culpable. They had no real evidence that Rea was present at any of the murders.
She had alibis for a couple of the days, for example, So they got hold of Tyrea first, and basically she gave her Cooperation and War hidden wire and telephoned Eileen, who'd been picked up on an outstanding gun. Warrington was in jail and said, you know they're on to us. They know what you've done. I'm not going down for what you've done. And a series of you know, very poignant phone calls were taped, and I say poignant because
Eileen said, you know, I love you. You know I'm not going to let you go down for something you didn't do. And ultimately Eileen did confess, and you might say she confessed to save Tyree.
And that was the gist of those phone calls as well.
Yeah, it took a while to build up to that, but Eileen was suspicious. She said, are you sure there's nobody else there in the room with you, et cetera. But briefed by the police, I think I'm going to say there were seven, nine or eleven. Sorry, but it has been a long time taped telephone calls, and they accelerated the you know, the police were saying, come on, put more pressure on her, say that what You're going to be arrested and tiede was sort of more emotional
with her on the phone. They think I did it. You know, they know who we are. There was a composite sketch done by an artist. They know it's us, you know, this sort of thing. And she convinced Eileen that she was going to be arrested, and Eileen said, look, I won't let that happen, and basically, you know, said I want to talk to a detective or whatever, and out came the three hour original confession.
Now, at trial, did Ira testify against alien warnos?
Yes, she did.
Was that the testimony effective? And was there anything revealed at the trial that she didn't reveal? And say those phone calls? What you attended the trial? Tell us a little bit about that testimony.
Yeah, you know, for me, we are talking about nineteen ninety one here, So I don't want everyone to think I'm an amnesiac. But it's a long time since I first wrote this book and since I attended the troll. But what I remember most was.
Ty came in.
She'd been very cleaned up. She was wearing a sort of I mean she always dressed very butcher and T shirt and jeans and what have you. She was wearing an outfit and it was a patterned, you know, outfit and with a skirt I think, and maybe it was a pantsuit but anywhere print and had her haircuft and everything. And Eileen's eyes did not leave her as she walked to the stand and as she took the stand, but
Tye did not once make eye contact back. And Eileen was obviously waiting for this, you know, for them to make eye contact. And she was devastated that Tye testified against her, absolutely devastated. And I think only then did it really hit her that tie was as instrumental as she was in what was going down for Eileen right now.
In the book, it's another fascinating aspect of the story that Eileen Wernos's life and her need for celebrity and notoriety don't end. And there are some other people that come into her circle of influence there we'll say and tell us about Arlene Prell.
Probably yes, Arlene pro It was a Christian woman who claimed that she saw Eileen on television and felt this calling, looked into her eyes and knew that she was innocent, and felt this calling to go and see her, and eventually, in order to facilitate the visits, she did adopt Eileen. Arlene adopted Eileen because that gave her more access to her in jail.
So there was this adoption.
For a time they were incredibly close. But by the time Eileen was executed, I rang Arleene Probaly, who by them was no longer living in Florida and was I'm not living on an island somewhere. And I rang her and she didn't know about the execution. I sort of broke that news to her. She had not even heard. But that's how their relationship was at that point.
They were no longer talking.
Now. Another figure is a Jacqueline Garrow. Maybe you can tell us who she was and what her Jackie position was.
Jackie Drew is a film producer and actually I'd known her. I lived in Hollywood and I'd known Jackie for a long time casually, you know, and Jackie, well, it was a bit of a convoluted story. But she had a HouseGuest who was a friend of her both of us, and I rang the house that day and asked to speak to the HouseGuest and she said, Sue, it's me, you know, And I said, what are you doing? And she said, I'm going to make a movie about this woman, Eileen Warnoff, And so why don't you write a book
about her? And so that's really how that came about. So Jackie Drew was hot on the trail of this from the minute of the arrest. Flew to Florida and signed up movie rights with Eileen through a lawyer, and of course it then all got much more complicated, and you know, the basically Eileen was very much wanting money. She always wanted money. It's funny this morning I read on pointer that ABC News I believe it's ABC News, I can check while we're talking, had paid two hundred
thousand dollars to the Casey Anthony family for video and pictures. Well, similarly, news organizations were paying Eileen money ten thousand here, ten thousand. There wasn't the big bucks that ABC paid to the Ksey Anthony family. But she was getting this money and she lauded it over her team outside the prison basically said, Okay, this much goes to this one and this much goes to that one. And she's exercised control from behind bars over these people. And Arlene Prowley was you know, this
was top of the list. Because of course Eileen couldn't receive the money herself or at least only a limited amount for her touch shop purchases or whatever they're allowed in the prison accounts.
Did Jackie Guru end up making the movie?
Jackie Drew did make a movie, but she had a lot of troubles with it, because, first of all, while I was writing the book, CBS rushed out at TV movie starring Gene Smart, which was as inaccurate as you could wish in terms of painting Tyria again as unaware of the crimes, and you know, what have you. And then of course, you know, along came Monster and I don't you'd have to ask Jackie Duru herself about her
movie journey, but it was. It was quite a journey, and all kinds of ins and outs with people trying to stop and make the movie. And then you know, there were issues of three police officers having an agreement with CBS where they would cooperate in the making of that first movie, and although ultimately it was not proven that they had taken money, and this was pre trial,
by the way, so this was pretty bad stuff. I do have a copy of the draft letter of the agreement that the police officers were supposedly going to sign from that time, but it does not bear signatures, and I do believe that they backed out, you know, but at the time they were being offered quite a chunk
of change. And then there was somebody running around trying to sell transcripts of the confession, the three hour confession before before that was made put in the public domain and was accessible to journalists like myself, and you know, asking ten thousand dollars for that. So it was a zoo, Dan, It was a zoo. It's the kind of zoo that we now see more commonly, you know, with cases like Casey Anthony, But back then it was a sort of standout zoo, if you will.
And her greed for.
The money essentially cut off my contact with her because I wasn't going to pay her, and you know, people like the news organizations and Montell Williams ended up getting much more access to her. Nick Broomfield, the documentarian, because they did pay money.
I saw a program are concerning Lee Warren else on American Justice, and I thought it was a fair program as a very reputable program as well, not as well, but it is a reputable program, I should say, right handle the cases in a very respectful and truthful way. I find so yes, now you said that she was ultimately sentenced to sixth death sentences. Was she executed? When was she executed?
Yes, she was executed. She was, indeed, and totally coincidentally.
You know, within.
A month or or so of my book coming out in America, and you know that was just looking to see who I could find the date here. But anyway, it was two thousand and two. It was the fall of two thousand and two. And yeah, I mean she was executed and the last high profile woman to have been executed. And I don't think any woman's been executed in Florida since I lean, but I would have to check that. Ultimately, she gave up her appeals. She wanted to die, She wanted to go and be with God.
And she had at the time a lawyer, Stephen Glazier, who honored and respected that wish of hers, which caused outrage in the legal community, who believed that, you know, if a client says they want to die, certainly don't help them on their way. Perhaps, you know, after when she I talked to her, iilean very but briefly the night before she got her first death sentence by telephone and we spoke and it was very apparent to me that.
She expected to get off. She did.
There wasn't a corner of her mind that thought she was going to be found guilty. She cried on the witness stand. She told this horror story, but it didn't match the evidence, and of course she was found guilty. She was devastated, Dan, she was doubtless in a state
of depression. She got three more death sentences, which were what's the word she pled out basically, And so therefore there were sentencing hearings and I attended those as well, and so she basically sort of caved in and said, look, okay, I did it. She didn't even fight. There wasn't another trial after the first trial. It was a no contest issue. And she did reach a point when she just wanted
to give up the appeals. She had disintegrated emotionally. She was never the most stable person, as we've said, but on death row she'd definitely gone downhill. But that said, she'd also embraced the Bible, embraced God, embraced her religion, believed she was going to a better place and that.
Was what she wanted.
She'd had ten years shut in a cell on her own and it was like, you know enough already, I don't want any more of this. And so at that point she dropped her appeals and there were various hearings in front of judges to be sure that that was what she wanted, and eventually all was cleared and nothing further stood in the way of her execution and it went ahead.
Now do you think you talk in your book extensively about the psychopathic mind of the serial killers that crave celebrity. They want the notoriety above almost anything else. You talked about her late embrace of Christianity or later embrace before she died. Do you really believe that she enjoyed this entire again moment in the sun her attention.
Yeah, well, you know you.
Have to look at it this way. She talked to Cammy Green about, you know, do you want to get involved in something with me? And Ty were going to be like Bonnie and Clyde. She kept talking about Bonnie and Clyde, when before she had committed any of the murders we know about. She got hold of this chap who was a writer slash coach driver and had him come over to the motel that they were living in.
One evening because.
She wanted him to write her life story, and he was so freaked out that he kind of fled from the motel and never to be seen again. When she was in jail, she talked about being I'm Eileen Warnos of television. You know, wait till Heraldo hears about this. There was definitely some grandiosity, and yes, I do believe she wanted to be famous.
I just don't think she.
Believed it would end up the way it ended up. You know, it's arguable, I guess how conscious all of this was played into her thinking. I still believe that she was a robber who killed, but definitely she wanted fame. And back then, you know, when she was a little more of sound mind, she pursued come to you know,
think about it. Before she'd done anything, she said, I'm going to tell you to this author slash coach driver, I'm going to tell you things that you know will make your hair stand on end, that you've you know, things you've.
Never heard before. I don't know, I don't know it was there.
More to tell I don't know, But this was before the first murder. What did she think this book was going to be about? What was she going to write a book about I have no idea, but she wanted a book written about her. She wanted fame, She wanted, you know, to be famous for sure, and the Bonnie and Clyde fantasy was big with her and long lasting.
Well, Sue, we just have about a minute left. I'd like to let people know that you've been talking about the book of Lethal Intent, the most shocking, shocking two story of one America's most notorious female serial killers, Eileen Warren. Else, maybe you can tell us what you're working on now and your website contact for anybody that's interested, please.
Yes, absolutely, Well, my website is www dot Sue s U E. Russell r U S S E L L Rights w R I T E S dot com, Sue Russellwrights dot com. What I'm working on now?
Ha ha ha ha.
Wouldn't you like to know? Actually, I am working on another crime book proposal, and hopefully we'll be able to talk about that soon, but it's a bit premature right now. But I've been writing about wildfire technology for a wonderful website called Miller mckewne dot com. Just had a five part series with them on extreme wildfire fighting and the advances in computer imaging and mapping and what have you.
And I've written about fingerprints and bias and all kinds of forensic stuff, you know, for non books, for magazines and websites. So that's really been the most recent stuff.
Well, very interesting stuff. I want to thank you very much, su Russell, and I want you to have a great day. And I want to thank you very much for this fascinating interview.
Thank you, Dan.
I appreciated it and I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it very much myself. You have a great day. Take care, take care, bye bye bye. I've been listening to the program True Murder, The most shocking Killers in true crime History, with your host Dan Supaski. Good night.