Soon after, tragedy struck again. Her grandmother passed away, and it was a tough blow for her. She described her as a “really clean and decent” woman who didn’t drink or swear. Soon after hat, her grandfather took his own life.
She and her brother, Keith, became wards of the state. By age 11, she began engaging in sexual activity at school in exchange for cigarettes, drugs, and food. Alone and desperate, the teenage girl then dropped out of school and began living on the streets, surviving through petty crime and prostitution.
By her mid-20s, she had drifted to Florida, a state that would soon learn her name in the worst possible way. In 1989, a man’s body was found deep in the woods near Daytona Beach, shot multiple times. Two weeks later, police linked the murder to a woman who had recently been seen hitchhiking nearby.
When they found her, she confessed, not just to one killing, but to several. One after another, men across central Florida were turning up dead.
She claimed she was defending herself and that every man had tried to assault her, that she’d been fighting for her life.
“I’m not a man-hater,” she told the Orlando Sentinel in March 1991. “I’ve been through so many traumatic experiences that either I’m walking in shock or I’m so used to being treated like dirt that I guess it’s become a way of life.”
“Damsel of Death”
But prosecutors saw something different: a cold, calculating murderer who lured men in, killed them, and stole their belongings.
By the time her case went to trial, she was accused of killing seven men in just one year. The press called her “America’s first female serial killer.”
Her name has become infamous ever since, her story retold in books,Continue reading…
