Aileen Wuornos: Queen of the Serial Killers

[EPISODE 136] Aileen Wuornos: Queen of the Serial Killers

Adam Cox: [00:00:00] Eileen is in her thirties. Her looks have started to fade and her sex work has become harder to sustain. she's spending long hours on the roadside trying to get work. And finally, a car, pulls over,

she made her way to the passenger side and climbed into the car of Richard Mallory, and they drove until they found a place where no one would disturb them.

Then

he tied her hands to the steering wheel and said, you're going to do whatever I want.

And if you don't, I'll kill you.

Kyle Risi: So this is like flight or fight in this moment, right?

Adam Cox: Eileen said that he raped her, and when , she broke free. She reached into her bag, wrapped her fingers around her pistol, and fired,

Kyle Risi: Wow.

Adam Cox: This story is steeped in tragedy. We're talking about someone where the word victim well it applies to both sides.

Kyle Risi: This is a wild, because what do you believe here, right?

Adam Cox: It Doesn't sound like it was premeditated, but Eileen warn us was a woman who the press the later dubbed the damsel of death, So what might have started out as survival, later, she would go on to become known as the most notorious female serial killer [00:01:00] in American history.

Kyle Risi: Ooh, I just got goosebumps.

Adam Cox: Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of Fascinating things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

Kyle Risi: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

Adam Cox: I'm your ring master for this episode, Adam Cox,

Kyle Risi: and I am the Senior Sausage Roll Temperature auditor at the Compendium Circus.

Adam Cox: I don't think that's a thing.

Kyle Risi: , Basically. I monitor the sausage rolls, leaving the concession tent to [00:02:00] ensure that they're all within the optimal warm but not litigious range temperature of 43 to 47 degrees Celsius.

It's a very important role.

Adam Cox: I've never heard sausage rolls being described at at litigious temperature. Oh,

Kyle Risi: especially after the sausage or toddler incident of 2021 when a child basically weaponized a warm pastry because his mom wouldn't buy him candy floss. The incident resulted in a blinded clown, and now we call him, sightless Sam e, yeah. He mostly now just wanders into the audience looking for his juggling balls. But legend has it that he's actually looking for his eyes. But it's, that's just speculation, him.

Adam Cox: I thought I was doing the story this week.

Kyle Risi: It's a nice story.

Adam Cox: That's great. What did you say again? What's your role? I am Adam. Okay. Moving on guys. If you are new to the show and if you want to support us, then the absolute best way to support our show and enjoy exclusive perks is to join our Patreon. You can sign up for free and get next week's episode seven days early.

Kyle Risi: Yes, for as little as [00:03:00] $1 a week, you can become a fellow freak of the show and that will unlock our entire backlog, including our classic episodes and like I said, it's exclusive to

Adam Cox: Patreon and as a special thank you, our Certified Freaks Tier members receive an exclusive compendium key chain. You just need to DM us your address, and we'll send one straight to your door so we can always be there dangling near your crotch.

Kyle Risi: And lastly, guys, please follow us on your favorite podcast app and leave us a review. Remember, your support is so crucial in helping others find us and keeps these amazing stories coming.

Adam Cox: Okay. Enough of the housekeeping. It's time to get straight to the story. But before we do that, as you know, we've recently started taking story suggestions from our Patreon members.

Ooh. On the freaky register. Freaky register, where you can drop in your ideas for topics you'd like us to cover. And the best part is if choose your suggestion,

Then we will credit you in the show notes.

Kyle Risi: So this week's story comes from Shannon [00:04:00] Pearce.

She's real.

Hi Shannon.

Adam Cox: So Shannon, you have a credit coming to you in the show notes.

Kyle Risi: Ooh,

Adam Cox: okay, so Kyle, today on the compendium, we are diving into the twisted, tragic tale of a woman who walked the fine line between victim and villain.

And that sum would say is a broken soul pushed past the brink.

Kyle Risi: Ooh. It sounds like she has an excuse for what she's done.

Adam Cox: everyone has a reason whether it's an excuse. There is a reason and logic. there's a, a motivation behind what they do.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. But the thing is though, is it justified?

Is it a justified excuse? I guess that's what we're gonna find out today.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Tell me more. you may not recognize her name straight away. Mm-hmm. But you've seen her face weathered by the sun, ravaged by time poverty and alcohol. She's had a hard life. Yeah. She got wispy, blonde hair, crooked teeth, and behind her deep brown eyes, a wild unmistakable rage.

Oh no. Oh God. She got rabies. No, she hasn't got rabies. Her name is Eileen Warns. And she entered the public consciousness when Charli's the on [00:05:00] won an Oscar portraying her in the film Monster. So does this ring a bell? No, it doesn't. But she is the

Kyle Risi: South African actress. Right,

Adam Cox: sure. What do you mean?

Sure. I can't remember. But the thing is, I think it was such a, um, such an iconic role. 'cause I guess Charli, she's quite, stereotypically beautiful. And the roles that she did before up until this point, it was quite a career changer for her.

Okay.

Kyle Risi: Are you saying it's because Eileen is not a, she's not pretty Well, it's just, it's a very, oh, she's weathered, you said Weathered.

Adam Cox: She's a very different, person to Charli's Theron. So I think it, you could tell that Charlene could act.

Kyle Risi: Okay. So she's pushing the boundaries of what she's capable of.

Adam Cox: Yeah. And so long before Hollywood took notice, Eileen was having, well, she was living a pretty tough life. so you don't really know much about her really then?

Kyle Risi: no. I don't, I've never heard of the story before.

Adam Cox: Okay. do you know what, I'm gonna dive straight into it. I'm not gonna give you too many clues,

Kyle Risi: bit like what you do with the Ed goin episode, where like, bam. He killed someone. Yeah. And I was like, are we starting at the beginning or at the end?

Adam Cox: Okay. Well that's what, [00:06:00]

Kyle Risi: oh, someone's got a format

Adam Cox: that they favor. If it works, it works. Okay. Okay. So it's November the 30th, 1989. Mm-hmm.

So Eileen, she stands on the shoulder of Highway 75, which runs from Florida to Michigan. She's making herself available to passing cars, but I hope is fading. What does

Kyle Risi: that mean, making her available? Is she a prostitute?

Adam Cox: you'll see, sorry,

Kyle Risi: I beg your pardon. The correct term is sex worker

Adam Cox: Uhhuh.

She is. Okay. So back home, her partner made it quite clear, don't return home unless she can pay her share of the rent.

Kyle Risi: Wow.

Adam Cox: And at this point in her life, Eileen is in her thirties. Her looks have started to fade and years of hard living have accelerated that catching up with her, her appearance has changed and her sex work has become harder to sustain.

When the Gulf War broke out, many of her regulars were deployed. And with fewer clients, Eileen was bringing home less and less.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: So now, rather than being at home with her partner, she's spending long hours on the roadside trying to get work. And finally, [00:07:00] now that sun has set a car, pulls over, Eileen doesn't recognize a vehicle.

she has her regulars, I guess. , So that's a good thing for her. 'cause it means a new client means, more regular income. This

Kyle Risi: is Jesus. What a weird

Adam Cox: way to frame this. She made her way to the passenger side and climbed into the car of Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old electronic store owner. And they drove until they found a secluded patch of Woods, a place where no one would disturb them.

And at first, it seemed like any other job, but Richard Mallory had a history. He'd recently been released from prison after serving 10 years for sexual assault. Okay. She says they started drinking and once drunk Richard change, he told her he was a sadist, that he could only feel pleasure if she was in pain.

Then he beat her. He tied her hands to the steering wheel and said, you're going to do whatever I want.

and if you don't, I'll kill you.

Kyle Risi: Oh, shit. Okay. So this is like flight or fight in this moment, right? she can't, she can't flee because her hands are tied to the steering wheel.

Adam Cox: Exactly. So Eileen said that he raped and sodomized her, and [00:08:00] when he stepped outta the car heading towards the trunk, she broke free. She reached into her bag, wrapped her fingers around her pistol, and as Richard opened the passenger door, she fired, he stumbled backwards into the dirt and Eileen stood over him, weighing out her options if she helped him.

and he survived. He had tell the police she'd be arrested, tried, convicted, send a prison.

Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

Adam Cox: so her only option to her right then was to carry on shooting. Three more bullets are fired into his chest and one of them pierces his lung. She drags his body back into the car, takes his wallet, counts the cash, and then a kind of sigh of relief washes over her.

'cause now she has enough money to pay half of her rent.

Kyle Risi: This is a wild, because what do you believe here, right? this is a woman who is saying that she's been attacked. We know, of course this is a whole episode about this woman. So , I don't know, has she been attacked or has she done this in cold blood to rob him because she needs to go home with money.

Adam Cox: we're gonna try and unpick this Kyle. Okay. And find out, because this is Eileen's first murder. And from the [00:09:00] sound of it, 'cause we only have Eileen's version of events to go off. Mm-hmm. This is her trying to survive this horrible ordeal. It doesn't sound like it was premeditated, but Eileen warn us was a woman who the press later dubbed everything from America's boogey woman to the damsel of death, To the more callous highway hooker. So what might have started out as survival, because she was raped later, would go on to become known as the most notorious female serial killer in American history. And that all started on that night in November in 1989.

Kyle Risi: Wow. You don't get many female serial killers, do you?

Adam Cox: No, absolutely not. Mm-hmm. Which is why I think, when Charlene's Theron played out was a big deal. there's been dozens of documentaries on, Eileen, some call her herthrill killer, a Predator. But Eileen warn us, always insisted that it wasn't about the thrill, it was always about survival.

Kyle Risi: But how many people did she kill or will we go through that

Adam Cox: will, we'll go through that.

Kyle Risi: So she's a serial killer, so she's definitely killed more than two people as the that amazing [00:10:00] guide that took us on the jack the repertoire of London told us. Yes. So if she's killed more than two people, let's assume she's killed five people.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: There's five instances where she had to fight for her life and they all started after this date. How long has she been a prostitute for? Let's assume she's been a prostitute for let's say decades. And only up until this point

All of a sudden she's having to start to fight for her life. I'm a little bit dubious. I'm dubious Adam. Okay. She's a cold blood killer. Let's get into it.

Adam Cox: this story is steeped in tragedy. We're talking about someone where the word victim well it applies both sides.

Mm-hmm. She's a victim herself as well as a villain. And as I mentioned, a lot of this information does come from Eileen herself. 'cause after all we can't speak for her victims. And, some of the stuff we can't easily corroborate with her family because they've died at this point. Sure.

Kyle Risi: And this could also easily be just used as her defense.

So it's difficult to understand whether or not to believe her as being a victim or whether or not she is a cold blood killer. So this is an interesting thing for us to try and unpack during this episode,

Adam Cox: [00:11:00] Yeah. It's one of the things that, some of the information you might have to take with a grain of salt, but if you watch Eileen in some of her interviews, 'cause she does do quite a few of them, She doesn't hide the fact who she is. she does lie of course, but usually there's another reason behind that lie.

Kyle Risi: Like what?

Adam Cox: we'll cover that as we go through the story, but, yeah, she does change her motivation a few times.

Kyle Risi: But that's the issue though. If your story keeps changing, it's difficult to maintain credibility around these things.

Mm-hmm. , It's gonna just work against you in those instances,. So I'm really fascinated by this already. Yeah.

Adam Cox: Okay. So why was Richard Mallory the catalyst that turned her into a serial killer?

Well, we have to start at the very beginning. Here we go. That we like to do. Eileen Carol Pittman was born on February the 29th, 1956. She got the name Pittman from her father, but she dropped that and took her mother's maiden name later on,

her birthplace was Rochester, Michigan. but she was raised in the nearby city of Troy. Now Troy ranks, as one of the best suburbs in Michigan right now. But back in the [00:12:00] 1950s and sixties, it was pretty unsafe. Eileen, grew up in one of the tougher neighborhoods, a place marked by hardship, judgment, and heavy handed moral expectations.

So this community was deeply religious. Mm-hmm.and it played a key part in her upbringing. Her mother, Diane was just 16. When Eileen was born. Her father Leo was 20 and they had married as teenagers. So they were just 14 and 18, but their relationship quickly dissolved.

Kyle Risi: Wow, that's young. Eh?

Adam Cox: It is. I didn't realize 14 was even an age you could get married.

Kyle Risi: I think at different times now, right? there was a time when that was completely acceptable, but it's just so weird to think now that you can be a functioning adult legally, capable of fornicating and having a child and getting married. But it's weird.

I look at my nephew who's 15 and I'm like, you behave like an buil. Yeah.

I wouldn't trust him with

Adam Cox: a child. I think like you perhaps grew up faster then like you had to get a job and stuff like that. So people or kids these days are allowed to be kids for longer. [00:13:00] Yeah. but even still, I think back then you'd have to have

Parental consent, but still very young. and I think one of the reasons why their parents might have allowed Diane and Leo to marry so young is the fact that Diane was pregnant. So it was a shotgun wedding,

Oh, okay. So Diane married at 14. She had a son called Keith at 15 and then had Eileen at 16.

Kyle Risi: Wow. God, all those kids in such a short space of times. Mental.

Adam Cox: Yeah. But Diane and Leo's marriage was short-lived. They filed for divorce just two months before Eileen's birth. Eileen never met her biological father, Leo, and at the time of her birth, Leo was in prison serving time for kidnapping and raping a 7-year-old child.

Kyle Risi: Shit.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Not a nice man.

Kyle Risi: No God. But

Adam Cox: he was also diagnosed with schizophrenia, so potentially some mental health issues there. But either way, that doesn't excuse what he did.

Kyle Risi: No

Adam Cox: reports say he was physically violent towards Diane, Eileen's mom, and was also abusive towards Keith as [00:14:00] well. So, yeah, a violent, not nice man.

this left Diane to raise her two kids by herself. But having two young children and only being 18 perhaps at this point, it took its toll. she was a young mother by herself and so by the time Eileen was three, her mother, who often turned to alcohol, abandoned her children, leaving them in the care of her parents, Lowry and Britta.

Kyle Risi: Wow. Do you know what the fact that these two, Diana and Leo have all these problems and they're not even 20, is just wild to me. Wild. Yeah. One is really violence and a convicted sex offender. The other one turned to alcoholism. She's got two kids. She can't cope. No. Good start. We are so lucky to be 30 and still getting handouts from my parents.

Are we all still 30?

Adam Cox: I

Kyle Risi: am.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Okay. So in later interviews, it's clear Eileen carried this deep resentment towards her mother, Diane. She spoke about her biological mother with anger, [00:15:00] sometimes even disgust, and never once with affection. Eileen would never really see her again except at family funerals.

Kyle Risi: Wow. And is that purely because she feels like her mother abandoned her, but her mom's got all these problems?

Adam Cox: Yeah, she has her own reasons, but I dunno whether she made any effort after that or whether it was easier just to leave it to the grandparents to raise Keith and Eileen. instead Eileen refers to her grandparents Lowry and Britta as her real parents.

But as complicated as that sounds, there were longstanding rumors that Lowry may have been more than just her grandfather, that he could have been her biological father. No, , that's just rumors. But it is often, uh, repeated.

Kyle Risi: Wow. Okay. God. And it, it could go. To some degree at explaining why Diane was so messed up, if true being abused by her father.

Adam Cox: so Diane left her children in the custody of her parents due to her alcoholism. But that didn't mean Eileen and her brothers were safe. They were not these cuddly, warm grandparents that you might [00:16:00] come to expect.

Mm-hmm. Lowry and Brita were also heavy drinkers. part of the family was marked by this addiction, violence, and control. They officially adopted Eileen and her brother Keith. but the home was strict. It was cold, sometimes quite brutal. Lowry in particular, was known to be verbally and physically abusive.

Both children grew up believing their grandparents were actually their real parents as well.

Kyle Risi: Really?

Oh

Wow.

Adam Cox: And, they also endured quite frequent and cruel beatings behind closed doors as well. My god,

Kyle Risi: I feel awful for these kids. what a mess.

these are your grandparents. They should be buying you toys and giving you money and spoiling you. But yeah, it's just awful. The fact that they even got their shit together. To file the paperwork to officially adopt them. Is amazing to me based on what you've just described.

Adam Cox: Yeah. And there's supposed to be this Christian household, oh god, here we go.

and that's obviously not criticizing Christians, but I guess, Eileen and Keith grew up in this kind of unsupervised household , running wild, they were getting hurt and all this chaos, even though they're [00:17:00] supposed to be in this kind of religious household.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So you painted a good picture there because you've set the scene for history, basically repeating itself, generational trauma affecting you as you go off into the world.

Adam Cox: Got it. And so around this time, Eileen was also struggling to fit into school. She had few friends often kept to herself and spent most of her time with Keith.

He was the only person she really trusted and their bond was forged through this shared trauma. Outside the home. She was desperate for belonging, for any kind of acceptance. And soon that search would lead her somewhere dangerous. A place the local kids called the Pits. Ooh. And it's where the cool kids would go on a Friday night.

teenagers would take beers, they'd smoke, they'd hang out. And Eileen decided that she was gonna go over there to see what it was all about and try and make some friends. So she went down there and she asked for a beer from one of the boys. He said, oh, you have to do something for that.

And so in exchange, she would do something sexual with these boys in exchange for cigarettes and beer, and that just became a regular [00:18:00] occurrence. Wow. She just saw it as a bit of a means to an end in order to get these things. It was quite transactional and it helped her obtain a kind of notoriety within that group as well.

Kyle Risi: she got a bit of a reputation, I'm assuming.

Adam Cox: Did I mention she was 11 at this point?

Kyle Risi: Fuck what I mean, her mom was 14 when she had her first kid. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, I was doing weird shit at 11, but not that.

Adam Cox: it's horrific when you, yeah. It's just terrific.

Kyle Risi: Oh,

Adam Cox: so at first, Eileen thought she'd finally found a way to fit in. she was getting attention, people were noticing her. And so for a brief moment, she felt wanted. But it didn't take long for that word to spread around the school and around the town, that everyone knew what she was doing to get those beer, those cigarettes, et cetera.

And from that point, Eileen became an outcast. The other kids mocked her. They bullied her relentlessly, calling her cruel names, whispering behind her back. And at school she was humiliated. And at home she was abused. There was nowhere for her to [00:19:00] really feel safe.

Kyle Risi: No respite. For her, it is just constant.

going from one abusive environment to the next.

Adam Cox: Exactly. And so every time she went back down to the pits, she was rewarded, not with kindness, but with this kind of illusion of acceptance. And the boys would laugh, they'd flirt, they pretended to care. And Eileen was desperate for that sort of attention.

Whilst, at first she felt like she was being noticed that attention came at the cost of her self-worth. And it began to strip away piece by piece until she started to believe what others were saying about her, that she was worthless.

Kyle Risi: This is horrible.

What an awful setup. So we can't laugh at this episode. Basically, this is gonna be serious, hard hitting. It's gonna really get me in the feels.

Adam Cox: Yeah, I mean, I'm trying until she starts killing, until she starts killing. yeah, this is the thing. She's a serial killer. We haven't, denied that fact and so should we sympathize with her?

I don't

Kyle Risi: why I haven't heard the whole story yet. Do you know what I mean? But it is really interesting how you talked about how she was in the [00:20:00] situation where she was going down to the pits to get this acceptance and she probably found this acceptance. I've been in that situation where I was young. And what, like a teenager, and I got involved with a

lot older people who were very kind to me, who were very good.

Like I felt like I could be myself around them. They were like it, it felt good. I felt like they were mentors to me, but it was only until years and years later where I looked back onto that and I realize, shit, I was being groomed by them. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So while she's probably in that moment, she's probably not feeling like she is a victim.

this is only on re reflection. Mm-hmm. Where you look back and you go, damn, I was really abused.

Adam Cox: Absolutely.

Kyle Risi: But the fact that she's now been taunted and bullied for it, I guess that probably realization sets in way quicker. You know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. And people are saying horrible things to her face.

They're calling her a sick pig, essentially, and she is just 11, or not much older than 11.

Kyle Risi: that's crazy. Every time you've said that now it's just like, wow, [00:21:00] that puts a whole new spin on it. God.

Adam Cox: so where was Eileen, learning this kind of behavior, this sexual behavior from, at that, just that age, right?

Kyle Risi: probably from her grandfather

Adam Cox: was, yeah. One of them. she has said that she was abused as a child from her grandfather. She was also having sexual relations with her brother Keith.

Kyle Risi: No.

Adam Cox: But we know that Keith was one of the people that she trusted. they hate each other's back.

And so from what I understand, even though it was incestuous, it wasn't violent, but this kind of behavior is not something that kids just do. It's learnt behavior and possibly from their grandfather

Kyle Risi: or possibly not even talked about boundaries. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like void of these boundaries.

So they are growing up unsupervised, un nurtured. They don't know that fornicating with your brother is the wrong thing to do. 'cause it, from what you said, it doesn't sound like Keith is molesting her. 'Cause he is a little bit older, right? But only by a couple years.

Yeah. So even still he's a minor then as well. It's what an awful situation to

Adam Cox: be. And we've seen this [00:22:00] case, I guess before with, these actions being copied from what's being done to them. We know that from the Menendez brothers, if they are to believed, that Lyle Menendez had abused his own brother as a result of what his father did to him.

So it's not exclusive to them, it's just this, I guess this is what happens to victims in that sort of situation.

Kyle Risi: It's learned behavior, right? Mm-hmm.

Adam Cox: So, despite the chaos in the household, IEN always felt a special bond with her grandmother, Britta, yes, Britta drank, and yes, the home was volatile.

But even with that, I guess it gave her some stability. she often felt safe around her grandmother, who at this point she believed to be her mother. and it's also unclear how much Britta truly knew about Lowry's behavior, the abuse and the cruelty.

Kyle Risi: Do you know what? When it comes to abuse within a family, normally the partner knows.

And they normally turn a blind eye to it. At the same time, they're also in this weird system of abuse as well. So speaking out or trying to do anything about it is probably not something that she [00:23:00] can do or is even equipped to do. So I wouldn't be surprised if she knows, and the fact that she's kinder to Eileen and probably Keith is her way of saying it's okay.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I guess maybe making her feel better about herself by not doing anything about it.

Kyle Risi: Awful situation. What do you do?

Adam Cox: and as I mentioned, Eileen and her brother, Keith believed that Lowry and Britta were their real parents, but that illusion was shattered when Eileen turns 12. She and Keith learned the truth, that their biological father, Leo, had taken his own life while serving time in prison.

they never got a chance to meet him. and after discovering this truth, everything begins to unravel even more. The lies, the trauma, the broken trust. And from that point on, Eileen and Keith began to rebel. They would land themselves in more trouble and more abuse from their grandfather.

there's reports of school friends seeing her getting whipped by leather belt, by her grandfather. And there are times when Lowry would even make her strip her clothes off to be completely naked, to whip her.

Kyle Risi: Oh, Adam, this is really [00:24:00] difficult to hear.

Adam Cox: And just going back to Britta, Eileen does comment in interviews later that she would just sit there drunk, pretending not to see what's happening. Mm. So I think she does allude that she wasn't protected from her grandfather. Yeah. And Brita did know, and

At age 15, Eileen becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son. And that baby boy was immediately put up for adoption. Oh really? And some have speculated was that child the result of incest, either between her brother or her father or grandfather.

and whilst the father is never confirmed, it's widely speculated that it was one of her grandfather's friends, a 60-year-old pedophile. Oh. , this is just kind of building the kind of person that Eileen was.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. I right now, I mean, I don't what these victims of hers were like, but they're out there looking for these women on the side of the road.

they're preying on these women. Maybe this is her way of getting vengeance. I dunno. Oh, you just gotta keep going. [00:25:00]

Adam Cox: So not long after this, Eileen drops school. Her grandmother dies of liver failure from all the alcohol. abuse.

Yeah. That will do it. And her grandfather throws Eileen out of the house. he believes she's responsible for Brit's death. What? And even tells neighbors that Eileen had poisoned her. Oh God.

Kyle Risi: What?

Adam Cox: So she goes off and lives in the woods, close to her home. In the woods. Yeah. Uh, she would spend nights in the snow with just a pillow and a blanket.

if she was lucky enough, she would spend a night in a car. she would hook up with men so she could have a bed and a shower for the night. so this is really where her life as a sex worker begins. And she's barely 16 at this point. so this is all of her foundational years formed under loss, loneliness, and this abuse.

God still, she's, very close with her brother Keith. She never really made friends at school, but there was one friend, she did make friends with a girl called Dawn Botkins. And unlike the others, Dawn didn't mock Eileen, she didn't whisper behind her back. She saw the pain behind that bravado. It's

Kyle Risi: because she can relate.

Dawn would, take Eileen under her wing. she [00:26:00] would treat her like a good friend and they'd get drunk together. They would hang out. And so Eileen and her. Would just get on. And Dawn really believed in her and wanted to lift her up.

Adam Cox: And so seeing the impact, she was having on Dawn, I think Eileen started to realize, actually maybe others could see me like this as well. So she makes a plan. She scrapes together every dollar she has, she buys some cigarettes, some beers, and she throws a party and she invites all these kids from the pits, the cool ones over to this party.

Okay. And to Eileen, this is a moment that she could start to be accepted. The house fills up quickly. People are laughing, music's playing,

Kyle Risi: but

what is she doing differently than the other times as she's just gone down to the pits? She's just got cigarettes and she's hoping to win them over with cigarettes.

Adam Cox: I think she, she's trying to, yeah, try and show off a little bit, I guess. Try and like host, try and make friendships. But that didn't work out because these boys, they grab her, they push her out the door and she's locked outside of her own house. Her own house, whilst the others like trash the place.

Kyle Risi: Oh God.

Adam Cox: yeah, no hope left, really. so [00:27:00] Eileen gave up on her family, her classmates, and , she's fed up of living outside in the cold, and so she wants to go somewhere warmer basically, and find a new life for herself. so she begins to hitchhike across the country, hoping to find this new life.

and often the way she'd pay for those rides would she'd, do sexual favors. Eventually Eileen makes her way to Florida. she wanted somewhere warmer, so she arrives at Daytona Beach and this Oh, very nice. Is, yeah, it's a popular tourist hub. and she, that's where Joey

Kyle Risi: lost his virginity Really?

From friends, you remember? He was like 13. He went to summer break. Was it Daytona Beach? Oh, I dunno. And he was like, oh, you went to summer break? Yeah, I was 13.

Adam Cox: I can't remember that, but that, yeah, it sounds about right. and , she becomes quickly known in the sex work circles, over two years.

that's a badge of honor,

I guess. I mean, if you're new to town and you make your mark, then yeah, I guess

Kyle Risi: there's some new meat in town. Yeah. Her name's Eileen. You check her out.

Adam Cox: Exactly. 'cause over those two years, she claimed to have, seen more than like a thousand male clients.

Whoa. Her rates were really low [00:28:00] though. that'll do it. Yeah. She'd often see seven to eight, men a night. Wow. Walking away with like $200, which I dunno how much that would equate to back then, but even still this a lot of money. Yeah. But apparently this is even still quite low for that kind of thing back then.

Yeah.

And she's probably what, 18, 19 at this point. So stamina is boding well for her at this point. Yeah. You could say that when you're young. Speed. Speed is an impressive thing. So she had these regulars, she'd wait near highway exits and she never really knew who might pick her up next. It was dangerous. Degrading, exhausting. And then in 1976, a strange blip in her story, Eileen met 16 year Eileen met. 16 E.

Kyle Risi: 16 E. 16 E.

Adam Cox: Eileen met. You're

Kyle Risi: 16. Adam

Adam Cox: Eileen met 69-year-old Louis. Oh, 69.

No, I was gonna say,

Kyle Risi: damn, that is young to be hiring a prostitute. And then you finally got it out. I was like, oh, 69. Yeah, it's a good age. Yeah. Good age. 69.

Adam Cox: He's a former president of the Florida Yacht Club, and [00:29:00] what happened next is quite unexpected because against all odds, he seems charmed by her. And in mid-May, just a few months after they met, he marries her.

Kyle Risi: Wow. okay, so she's doing well. Does she remain a prostitute? Does he expect her to give all that up?

Adam Cox: I don't know if she does give it up. but, Possibly. Okay. Okay. The wedding announcement is made, uh, even makes the local society pages, and there's a photo of them smiling, and Eileen's in a floral blouses.

She's beaming beside the man that's old enough to be her father or grandfather. But in the picture, she actually looks happy.

Kyle Risi: Good.

Adam Cox: But beneath the smile, Eileen was battling deep instability, suffering from borderline personality disorder, and her emotions swung from adoration to rage in an instant.

And just nine weeks after the wedding, Lewis files for a restraining order against her claiming that Eileen had beaten him with his own cane. on another occasion held a Q ball at a bartender's head.

Yeah. that [00:30:00] will cause some damage. Jeez. So the marriage collapsed almost as fast as it began, which is a real shame. 'cause it seemed like despite the age gap, this was someone that could be a bit of a rock or a constant for her.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, a bit of stability. Get assorted. He was a big deal. He was like president of the rotary Club or whatever that is. The yacht club. Oh, the yacht club. So he's got a yacht. I assume that he's a nice man. I mean he's 69. He's hired a prostitute and he's got a yacht. My point is, I dunno how nice you can be if you're going out there exploiting women, but it's such a vicious cycle because these women depend on their income.

So I don't know. I've got no opinion on that. Yeah,

Adam Cox: I dunno if that's how they met. I mean it's likely, but I dunno if that is how they met. I think the thing is like he wasn't probably equipped to deal with or reason with her be, try and get some rational response from Eileen. If this is, if her sense of, or her personality is flipping between Sure. Rage and everything else, then

Kyle Risi: not many people are equipped for that.

And she probably wasn't taking [00:31:00] medication at the time. Mm-hmm. She probably wasn't diagnosed until probably after, I'm assuming everything happened.

Adam Cox: So soon enough, Eileen is back on the streets, at least full time. Now back to the sex work, the bar fights and drifting from one bad night to the next. We're still, just days after her marriage ended, she receives even worse news. Her brother, Keith, the only person she ever really truly loved growing up, has now died of throat cancer.

He was just 21 years old.

Kyle Risi: What, what is this guy smoking?

Adam Cox: Who knows? She hadn't even known he was sick. Really? And yeah, the loss kind of crushed her.

Kyle Risi: Really? Mm-hmm. She's got pretty much no one now, right? She lost her mom, she lost her dad, her brother. All she's got left is this abuse of grandfather somewhere out in, back in Michigan.

Adam Cox: Yeah, that's right. 'cause she returns to the funeral back in Michigan. and her brother's death had broken something inside of her. Even though he hadn't left her on purpose, she felt abandoned. And for someone already carrying these deep emotional wounds, that kind of loss was [00:32:00] enough to send her into a full downward spiral. And for the next five years, Eileen drifted through life, angry, isolated, and numb.

By 1981, at just 25 years old, she was drinking heavily and losing touch with reality. And then came the turning point. 'cause one hot Florida afternoon wearing nothing but a bikini. Eileen robbed a convenience store at gunpoint. She didn't have a getaway car, and when police found her, she was barefoot a gun in one hand $35 in the other.

Kyle Risi: Okay. Do you know, for some reason this is so classically classic. I was gonna say, Florida behavior, this is how I imagine everyone in Florida is just from all the stories. If you ever type in, like in Google, Florida it comes up with just the craziest shit. This is what I imagine Florida's like, I'm sure I know it's got Disneyland and all those kind of theme parks, but Florida's crazy man.

Adam Cox: everyone's in bikinis with a gun and $35

Kyle Risi: Sniffing bath

Adam Cox: salts. that's what you take out on a day shoot gun and $35

Kyle Risi: my sister-in-law lives in Daytona Beach, actually [00:33:00] not very far away. And she does have some crazy stories.

It's a nice place. But people there

Adam Cox: are

Kyle Risi: crazy.

Adam Cox: Eileen now spends the next three years in prison behind bars. She developed a reputation for being volatile and quick to anger, but for the first time, she also found, a bit of a community.

among the woman inside. Eileen began to feel something new, a connection. It was during this time that she started to explore her sexuality.

Kyle Risi: Oh, God. Okay, so first of all, this is what she's always wanted. Not the sexuality bit, not the scissoring, but the community. Mm-hmm but this is the thing though.

She connects. Like that connection with people with sexual favors based on going down to the pits. So I wonder if oh, this person's been nice to me. What do they want? ,

Adam Cox: yeah. we don't know the details exactly.

Ah, but,after prison she went by the name Lee, . She went back to hustling, back to crime, but this time she sought companionship with women. and that doesn't mean prison has necessarily turned her gay, but perhaps it's always

Kyle Risi: let it come out.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Perhaps give her the opportunity to explore her sexuality and find that actually sex isn't always transactional. [00:34:00] It can be, to have an intimate moment with someone.

Kyle Risi: Yes. Putting out does not always get you love what? Oh, Adam.

Adam Cox: So by the spring of 1986, Eileen had fallen deeply in love, and her name was Ty Moore.

a 24-year-old hotel made with a warm smile and a sense of humor that made Eileen light up. Oh,

So for the first time in Eileen's life, things seemed to be going pretty well, or as well as they could do for Eileen. they move in together at Fairview Motel in Daytona. Tyra cleaned rooms and Eileen continued to work the highways.

And for a brief moment, life felt stable, but stability never lasted long for Eileen.

Kyle Risi: No.

Adam Cox: As the decade drew to her close, her looks began to fade. Her drinking worsened and her clients grew scarce, especially as soldiers were deployed to the Gulf. And this is where we come full circle back to the beginning of the episode where Eileen is struggling to pay rent with money drying up and Tyra laying down an ultimatum that if she doesn't come home and pay her share of the [00:35:00] rent.

Oh.

Kyle Risi: So the partner that gave her the ultimatum that she better come home with money was Tyra? Yeah, it was. Oh. Ugh.

Adam Cox: she knew about Eileen's prostitution and supposedly she, obviously she

Kyle Risi: sent her out to get money.

Adam Cox: The thing is, I think she,

Kyle Risi: what does she think she would go, you go down to that kitty shelter and you hustle down some kitties for any change they've got.

No, obviously she knew.

Adam Cox: yeah, but I think supposedly, okay. She wanted Eileen to give it up. but she wants the money. Exactly. She seemed to be okay with it whilst the money was coming in.

Kyle Risi: she probably wanted her to just get a better job.

Adam Cox: And maybe that was difficult for Eileen 'cause she didn't really have those kind of career prospects.

No skills. Yeah. And so maybe that's why it was kinda like, fine, carry on doing that until you can get a job. But even still like it was, it doesn't to me paint Tyra in the best possible light, put it that way.

Kyle Risi: No, it doesn't paint anyone in the best possible light. They're forcing you out on the streets.

Adam Cox: Yeah. And happy for you to put your life at risk by being a sex worker. That's true. And she's working in a hotel [00:36:00] so she could perhaps call her job at a hotel.

Kyle Risi: That's true. .

Adam Cox: So maybe Eileen wasn't,easy to get on with at that time and she's probably quite stubborn as well. So we're gonna come back to Tyra's, response to Eileen's work and what she does a little bit later. What the killing. Yeah. So she knows about it.

Like I said, we're gonna come back to it a little bit. Okay. Because I think also the other thing is with Eileen, she probably has this fear of rejection. Oh yeah,

Kyle Risi: for sure.

Adam Cox: And it's, if she thinks to herself that, okay, if I can't pay the rent, I'm gonna lose Tyra then. , She felt like she had to go and out and do all this stuff.

So again, it's not really quite clear what the truth is.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I get it 100%.

Adam Cox: So in her mind, there's only one solution. She just needs to get money and do whatever it took to, to get it. And that is when, on November the 30th, 1989, standing on the shoulder of Highway 75,

That Eileen would kill

Richard Mallory

And also understandably, because as she said, she was tied to the steering wheel. She was attacked, she was raped, and it's all [00:37:00] pretty horrific.

Kyle Risi: Allegedly.

Adam Cox: Allegedly. and but I don't think she really deserved any of this. Not as a child or the abuse, not as an adult, not the hands of these other men. So something in her perhaps snapped that night. perhaps in genuine defense to protect herself. Perhaps something else just flipped a switch to say no more.

Yeah. But for now, with Richard dead, she has enough money to pay her rent and to keep Tyra happy.

But first there's a body to move and so she's shaking with rage. She's got adrenaline flowing through her. And a weird sense of joy.

Eileen drives Richard Mallory out to a nearby junkyard,

so she drags him outta sight, covers him with a carpet, and then drives his Cadillac back to Fairview Motel.

She burst through the door. She's got a wad of cash in her hand. She calls Tyra outside and on the hood of the car, she lays out Richard's valuables, a watch, a wallet, a camera, as if they're these kind of trophies. And when Tyra asks, oh, what's happened?

Eileen confesses that she killed a client in self-defense.

Kyle Risi: and [00:38:00] that she's showing off all the stuff and look what I got. Yeah.

So what does Tyrus say?

Adam Cox: Tyrus says that she was terrified of her and she didn't know what to do. So she asks Eileen just to never speak of it any again.

Kyle Risi: We'll keep the money, we'll keep the valuables, we'll keep the car, but let's never speak of this again.

Adam Cox: but that is the thing, whether that's true or a story that Tyra tells later as a way for her to seem innocent.

Kyle Risi: Oh yeah, of course. Like plausible deniability.

Adam Cox: Yeah. she covers up the murder, but she's happy to keep the money and the valuables.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: But she does refuse the car. She says That's too risky and likely to lead to the police knocking on their door. Sure. Smart. So they drive the Cadillac up the coast to Ormond Beach. They abandon it in a remote patch of woods and hike back to the motel. The next morning a deputy finds the abandoned car, searches it and reports an empty wallet, unused condoms, and an empty vodka bottle.

Kyle Risi: Oh, that's unused condoms. That's suspicious.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: We need to get homicide here stat.

Adam Cox: There hasn't been any

Kyle Risi: sex. Yeah, but the vodka's been [00:39:00] drunk.

Adam Cox: He files a report about the abandoned vehicle, but no one expects any murder. For now, Richard Malloy is a missing ex-con who could be sleeping off a hangover somewhere.

Meanwhile, Eileen and Tyra, they're doing okay. Eileen visited a porn shop getting what she could for Richard Malloy's valuables. the big ticket item was his camera, which she hoped would fetch a decent sum.

The porn shop owner tells Eileen that, yeah, he'll take it, but he needs to see some ID and take her thumbprint, which is pretty standard in porn shops because it helps police track stolen

Kyle Risi: goods.

Adam Cox: Eileen agrees and she gets her money and the rent is paid.

But Eileen, it feels like a victory. But to me it feels like a rookie mistake. You're stolen something, you're given your thumbprint. Oh, and you killed a guy.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's just given the police everything they need. That deputy. Once he goes, okay guys, the most suspicious part of this is the unused condoms.

We really need to look into this. Get the thumbprints. There's a man [00:40:00] out there who is not there in his car and he is not had sex. Yeah. we need to look into this. And now porn shop ID and also thumbprint.

Adam Cox: Just two weeks later, scavengers in the junkyard where Richard was dumped, notices a bird circling, near an old carpet. So curious. They pull it back and they discover Richard Maori, oh God, half, oh God. Bloodstained, partially decomposed. Pockets that have been emptied, hands picked apart by vultures, and police identified the body and could tell the, the body was moved after death and so therefore assumed a male, killer.

because he's, it's a big guy. They didn't expect a woman to be able to do this. So that's all their clues at this point.

Kyle Risi: So how does she move him in the carpet?

God, she must be quite strong. But looking at the picture of her online, she looks very frail.

Adam Cox: probably when she was in prison. This is when she's still a young woman. She can move a giant man. I couldn't even do that. but this is when all the clues dry up. Apart from that, the police don't really have much to go on across town.

Eileen's money is now starting to dry up. [00:41:00] She's back on the highway looking for work, but something in her has changed.

Before she took men's money, she accepted their insults, and she survived. Now after what she calls justice, she sees them differently. Her clients are no longer merely customers. She tells herself she'd rid the streets of an abuser,

yeah.

Kyle Risi: So basically what's happening is she's gained a lot of confidence from this kill. Mm-hmm. Right. , No one goes into prostitution willingly. But she's been doing this with a fear at the back of her mind. She's possibly now with this kill, claimed back a bit of power that's given her a certain degree of confidence, but now her justification that she's ridding the world of an abuser is her way of justifying what she's done.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Crazy. I get it. I get it. Adam.

Adam Cox: So fast forward to May the 19th, 19 90, 40 3-year-old construction worker, David Spears goes missing in Florida. Then just 12 days later on the 31st of May, Charles Cork, [00:42:00] Gaden disappears along in state 75. Yeah, he is actually Cork Skadden. He was traveling from Booneville, a Kansas to Tampa.

Where was that? Arkansas. I can never say that. It's Arkansas. Yeah, Arkansas. Where he planned to meet his fiance, but neither men would basically make it home. On June the first, David Spears the second guy is discovered, he's found naked except for a baseball cap.

He's been shot six times in the torso and left, in a remote area. Police first suspect, the man who found the body, a land surveyor named Matthew Caulking. 'cause he's known for carrying a gun.

He's known for his temper, but

he gets defensive and angry, but investigators believe his emotional response is consistent with someone telling the truth.

Then on June the sixth, another body turns up. This time John Doe in Pasco County.

Kyle Risi: So like John Doe is a unidentified man. That's not his real name.

Adam Cox: Oh, I thought that was his real name.

Kyle Risi: No, that's, they, if they, if the victim is unidentified, they just give [00:43:00] them the name John Doe. If it's a woman, it's Jane Doe. Oh, you're a stupid bitch.

Adam Cox: Hang on. Oh yeah, no, John Doe is not on that. Ah,

Kyle Risi: okay. Have to

Adam Cox: date.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's fine. it's a, it's a plausible mistake to make Adam. It's fine.

Aren't you supposed to be like a true crime podcaster? Shouldn't you know, isn't that like 1 0 1? I've true crime podcasting.

Adam Cox: Okay, I'll cut to the gist. Basically, this guy's dead, they find him , he's been shot with a 22 caliber pistol and they're like, oh, that's the same one that shot Richard Malloy back in November.

Right. So there's the connection.

Kyle Risi: Okay, I see. Great. And I, we think his name's John Doe. No, this guy's actually called John Doe.

Oh.

Adam Cox: So now the police have multiple bodies that are piling up all, within a similar distance, all shot with the same weapon. So they're starting to see a pattern emerging. Serial killer. Yeah. And then David Spears' truck is soon found. it's abandoned along [00:44:00] the interstate doors are unlocked.

License plate is missing. And so giving the physical size of the victim and where, he's been dumped and the car's been dumped and everything else, the police are still assuming at this point that the killer must be a man.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: And so what they're trying to think of is why these men, , how are they all connected?

and so for Eileen, we know she was a survivor of rape, not just from Richard, Maori, but possibly from her grandfather so are we thinking that all the men that she's been killing , they've got a history of sexual violence and as she getting back at them, is that the motive?

Kyle Risi: But the thing is though, at this point, they still believe it is a male that's killing these people. Yeah. if they just discarded that for a second and left an open mind, they would realize that the thing that they all have in common is that they potentially frequent sex workers.

And that would then potentially lead them to a female. But the fact that they're convinced it's a male it leaves that question open. what's the thing that connects them all?

Adam Cox: Yeah. At the moment, they [00:45:00] can't find the motive.

The other thing that's quite interesting is that most victims of assault, wouldn't necessarily go back to where they were assaulted. but Eileen, she went back to the highways almost immediately after Richard's death.

Kyle Risi: Well, that's because that's how she gets work, right? That's her place of work she has to clock in.

Adam Cox: True. Yeah. She perhaps doesn't have much, choice.

Kyle Risi: There's, there's not that many other highway intersections where she can stop off.

Adam Cox: But I guess it's an interesting thing for someone that's, typically attacked that, they would avoid that trauma, but she goes straight back into it because I guess she needs the money or she's now got this kind of, something in her head to go I'm going after these men now.

Sure.

Kyle Risi: I think it would be possible that. As you said, her looks are dwindling. All of her regular clients have been deployed or whatever to the Gulf War. This is her way of essentially upping her rates.

Adam Cox: Make sure she gets paid for

Kyle Risi: dirt cheap, attract them in. And then kill them.

Rob them.

I reckon that's a possible motive for why [00:46:00] she's doing this. I think, yeah, she's had a real tough life, but I think ultimately she's using that potentially as an excuse. She wants the

Adam Cox: money. She wants the money and yeah. This is something that people keep coming back to. Is it the money or is she trying to strike people before they could hurt her?

I guess there's a very twisted form of survival, but it's a bit of a blurred area at the moment. People can't quite work it out. But the thing is she's a sloppy killer, which she does admit that she hasn't hidden her tracks that well. On July the fourth in, Florida, a woman named Rhonda Bailey sat on her porch and she spots a gray car barreling down the street and it crashes. and two women jump out mid argument. And it's Eileen and Tyra.

Kyle Risi: Oh,

Adam Cox: Eileen's arm is bleeding. they're both holding beers, which they then chug and then toss and throw into the woods.

Kyle Risi: Classic Florida

Adam Cox: behavior. They then pushed the wrecked car back onto the road as if nothing had happened. And the car is in such bad shape. The windshield is shattered so much that you can't even see out of it.

Kyle Risi: [00:47:00] That's why they crashed.

Adam Cox: Yeah. but Eileen, she doesn't care. She and Tyra, they jump back in, they floor it and they only make it maybe a hundred yards before the car breaks down completely.

And so on her porch, Rhonda's This seems a bit odd. I should call the police. And that's exactly what she does.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. This seems different. It seems more severe than the last car that came barreling down.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm gonna let them know. So she calls the police, Hubert Hewitt, which is an interesting name, Hewitt.

a member of the Orange Springs Volunteer Fire Department responds to the call, which is weird 'cause I thought she called the police. But anyway, on the way to the crash site, he spots two women walking alongside the roadside and he rolls down the window and asks, are you the ones from the accident?

Arlene. No, we're

Kyle Risi: just a couple of lesbians. Oh, okay, then

Adam Cox: have a good day. See you later. Eileen snarls at him. In response, he rolls up the window and drives on. And a few moments later, they reach the abandoned car and he inspects for damage there. Smashed glass. There's a dented [00:48:00] frame. But what he didn't expect were the bloodstains inside that car.

Kyle Risi: Because Eileen's hand was

Adam Cox: bleeding. Possibly that

or other bloodstains. 'cause he calls, yeah, because he tries to find out who the car was registered to. And it's to a guy called Peter Seas, a 65-year-old retiree who worked with a Christian outreach ministry he'd been missing for nearly a month.

And so the scene made it clear something terrible had happened. Hewitt now realized the women who cursed at him were very likely behind what's happened. but by then Eileen and Tyra were gone. So forensic teams combed through the wreck, and on the driver's side door, they lifted a clean palm print, but it didn't match anyone in the system.

Not yet, at least Uhhuh, still a nationwide teletype bulletin has put out. Police now had a composite sketch put together and a physical description of Eileen and Tyra, that they were officially now wanted.

Kyle Risi: if it's never. Really lead anywhere.

I wanna see what Tyra looks like, if that's all right. [00:49:00] What's her surname?

Adam Cox: Moore. M-O-O-R-E.

Kyle Risi: Oh, she's beautiful. That's not her. Tyra Moore. yeah. Oh. Oh, Yeah. She is, she's a handsome woman. Tyra Moore. she's missing a tooth. I would be scared of her. She has got such thick hair around such a tiny little face

Adam Cox: yeah. I think it's the teeth that stood out to me that's not the best teeth. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Okay. So this is good to know. I now have, and Eileen, she's not unattractive.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Eileen was a good looking woman. Yeah. Back in her day.

So Eileen and Tyra were officially wanted, but at first only in connection with Peter Sea's disappearance. But very soon they'd have to answer for something else. On the morning of July the 30th, 50-year-old Troy Burris sets out as a delivery driver. He was expected back that same afternoon, but he did not return.

His manager began calling around, fearing he'd been in a car accident, and they quickly discovered [00:50:00] that Troy never made it to his final few delivery stops.

Kyle Risi: So he stopped for a prostitute on the way to a delivery stop.

can you

Adam Cox: I assume so. Oh, God.

Kyle Risi: where's the Amazon delivery driver?

Adam Cox: Maybe they weren't, they didn't have such strict times back then.

Kyle Risi: No. Yeah. You can't even stop for a pee break or anything. Yeah.

Adam Cox: They pee in bottles, don't they? Some of them, yeah. a few days later on August the fourth, a group of people having a picnic near a lake, find Troy's decomposing body.

He's been shot twice in the torso left in a wooden clearing off a highway eight miles from his abandoned truck. And what they can see is that he was shot with the same weapon and the same disposal method.

Kyle Risi: So again, that pattern is forming, right?

Adam Cox: then the next month on September the 11th, Florida Police Chief Charles Humphreys is reported missing. The next day, the body is found fully clothed and Had suffered six gunshots to the head and torso. Humphrey's car was later found, several counties north of where his body was.

So they had clearly stolen his car again [00:51:00] until now. people had argued that Eileen's victims were perhaps aggressive clients, men who might have tried to hurt her first, but Charles Humphrey's family have firmly denied any suggestion that he would've picked up a sex worker.

Which I guess, you're gonna deny that your father or whatever would've done this, but I think even then, if he had hired a prostitute, what they're trying to say is he's not a violent man. Sure. Yeah.

So the thing is, was this particular attack about self-defense or was something else happening? Was there trouble in the relationship between Eileen and Tyra and was this fueling Eileen's decline?

Kyle Risi: So what are you saying that Tyra was forcing her down this avenue,

Adam Cox: or just that maybe the relationship was breaking down under the stress of what was going on?

And that is, was that the reason she perhaps acted out and killed this other man? Because Yeah, if he isn't a violent man, then why would Eileen have killed Him

Kyle Risi: we know it's for the money, right? They've gotten addicted to it.

Adam Cox: Yeah, [00:52:00] on November the 18th, 1990, Eileen found herself three hours northwest of Daytona. And early that evening, she and Tyra had a major argument. Tyra was going to leave her, and Eileen could feel it. The thought terrified her. Oh, so she left in a rage trying to clear her head, but before long she was back to her old habits.

She waved down a man for what was supposed to be a quick encounter, but a few hours later, hang on,

Kyle Risi: let's stop. So she's having a fight with her partner. It's blown up. she's really freaking out. And she's I don't, please don't leave me. Please don't leave me. And she goes to run after her and she's oh, lemme just quickly stop real quick.

Adam Cox: No, she heads up because she's like, I need to get outta the house. So she goes to work. She gets, yeah, she flags a mound down. They're just gonna do a thing. But then a few hours later, this man is now dead. Yeah. Okay. And it's 60-year-old Walter Antonio.

he's found partly naked and shot four times in the back. so now there's been seven murders, seven dead men in the [00:53:00] space of a year. Wow,

Kyle Risi: okay. She's got a bit of a history on her. She's probably what, thirties now. So it can't be the trauma, because it's just come outta nowhere.

She's gotten the buzz for something and she's continuing with it, and I'm sure it's the money.

Adam Cox: police had at this point connected those murders. It was the same 22 caliber weapon, same dumping style, same region. This wasn't a standalone incident.

This was the work of a serial killer.

Kyle Risi: And do they know if it's a woman at this point?

Adam Cox: still at this point, I think they thought it was a man. Because of the strength it would take to move the bodies into these remote locations.

Kyle Risi: men underestimating women, and less people could have died if men just didn't underestimate women.

Adam Cox: That's, yeah, that's definitely one way of looking at it. But yeah, I don't think anyone would've, perhaps suspected, because some people say that Eileen was. I dunno if she's the first, female serial killer, but she's definitely one of the most notorious now. Yeah, for sure. And the thing is, yeah, something didn't sit right with some of the police [00:54:00] looking into this.

They were like, ah, is it a man? They're not quite sure. After all, nobody really stopped for hitchhikers anymore. They were considered dangerous, which meant whoever was thumbing for a ride must have come across as non-threatening. That's when the detective on the case remembered about the two women spotted fleeing the crash of Peter Seams car.

Kyle Risi: Ah,

Adam Cox: yeah. Now he was still missing, but he had a strong feeling that the two women, had more to do with the whole sort of, killing spree that happened. So he got to work and made a few calls to the press, and by the end of November, police sketches of Eileen and Tyra were printed in newspapers across the state, urging the public to come forward with any tips.

And when Eileen saw the sketch, she felt physically ill because it looked,

Kyle Risi: just like me. What are the chances? I don't

Adam Cox: look

Kyle Risi: anything like

Adam Cox: that. She didn't know what to do except get rid of the murder weapon. So she drove out to a bridge and tossed her, 22 caliber pistol into the water.

By mid-December, police were flooded with tips. the most promising, came from a [00:55:00] man in Hersa Springs who had rented a trailer to Eileen and Tyra, a year earlier. He remembered Tyra's full name, but only record Eileen as Lee. And they had been staying at the Fairview Motel, or rather, where they used to stay. ' cause once the police sketches had hit the papers, Tyra snapped.

She packed up, left Eileen behind and fled to her sister's home in Pennsylvania.

Kyle Risi: so she broken up with Eileen, essentially?

Adam Cox: Yeah. Eileen is heartbroken and so she leaves the Fairview Hotel the same day and just like that, she vanishes again and the task force were back at square one, but not for long because the detective had another idea.

Since all the victims had been robbed, He started checking porn shops around the Daytona area. Smart. Exactly. And it paid off. He found Richard Malloy's camera, same one that Eileen had pawned almost a year earlier. And even better, the shop still had her thumbprint on file

Kyle Risi: but you say even better because like he's not gonna [00:56:00] get rid of that. Oh, I'll keep this for a couple weeks and then chuck it. I dunno, you probably keep it on file for

Adam Cox: ages. Yeah. I dunno how long they have to keep it. But the fact is they've got this thumbprint and then later the print is matched to the palm print lifted from the door of Peter Seams car.

Kyle Risi: Ah.

Adam Cox: So now they had a name, and it was Eileen Carol Warners. Wow.

Kyle Risi: Okay. So now they're gonna go after her.

Adam Cox: Yeah, they just had to track her down.



Kyle Risi: where is she though? She's left the Fairview Hotel. Is she gone back to Michigan?

Adam Cox: Now she's still in Florida. She's at a port orange pub. it's January the eighth, 1991. She's 34 years old at this point. She's not doing well since Tyra's left. She was alone homeless again and too depressed to work. She's been sleeping in an abandoned car seat outside. The last resort bar

Kyle Risi: was, she just found a random car and she's been sleeping in it.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah. And they've just

Kyle Risi: left the door unlocked, or she doing like a Phoebe buffet and like she's got her little car unlocked little thing that she puts through the windscreen.

Adam Cox: I read it as she, slept in [00:57:00] or on an abandoned car seat. Not in abandoned car.

Kyle Risi: So she's just like in the woods again.

she's got experience. She knows how to deal with the cold, .

Adam Cox: That night in this bar, two men walked in introducing themselves as Bucket and Drums. Oh

Kyle Risi: God.

Adam Cox: Great names again. They were posing as drug dealers, but they were undercover cops. They bought Eileen a beer, chatted with her for about an hour.

They played along. She liked them, and they just left before midnight confident that they'd found their target. The next morning, on January the ninth, Eileen woke up and made her way back to the same pub where she ordered a beer, and started patrons for quarters to play her favorite songs on the jukebox.

So all she's doing at the moment is just spending her time in a pub.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, she's just mulling around.

Adam Cox: At around 11:30 AM she spots bucket and drums walking in. And she's surprised but really happy to see them because she thought she found new friends the night before. she

Kyle Risi: connected with them the night before.

But little does she know this is a sting operation.

Adam Cox: they buy her a drink. They put on some music for her. And as far as [00:58:00] Eileen's concerned, they were friends now. She had no clue what was about to happen after a while. Drum steps outside to make calls signaling that it was time. And 20 minutes later the pair invites Eileen outside for a cigarette.

She chugs her beer before stepping outside right into the arms of six waiting officers. they swarm and they cuff her. And just like that, Eileen Warners was in custody,

Kyle Risi: Trusted the wrong person again. Should have killed these while I had the chance. Bloody

Adam Cox: bucket and drums.

Yeah. Was names. If that's your real name,

Kyle Risi: can you imagine being in the sting operation room and going, So we need some identities. We're gonna call ourselves bucket and drum. I like it. I, I like it as well, but it's just what is the thinking behind those names? It feels

Adam Cox: very nineties. they should have a, cop show

Kyle Risi: bugging a drum,

Adam Cox: undercover cops

Kyle Risi: hunting down prostitutes.

Adam Cox: The next day, two detectives from the task force flew to Pennsylvania to locate question Tyra, who's now 27, Tyra confesses that she knew the murders had happened, but claimed she didn't know any of the details. She had always said [00:59:00] to Eileen never to tell her about them. and so anytime Eileen would ever hint at anything, Tyra would just cut her off.

Kyle Risi: It's not a defense. You still knew about them.

Adam Cox: I know. It's, it's a pretty weak defense.

Kyle Risi: I knew about them, but I didn't know any of the dl. Can I go?

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Like, uh, no.

Adam Cox: You knew about them.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: Of course this version of events conveniently ignored Tyra's role in helping to cover up Richard Malloy's murder. But police didn't really care. Tyra didn't have a record, and they knew she never committed these crimes on her own. So they said to her, if you agree to testify against Eileen and convince her to confess, they would give her full immunity.

She accepts the deal.

Kyle Risi: Another betrayal for, poor little Eileen here.

Adam Cox: They fly Tyra back to Daytona. They put her up in a motel and from there she picks up the phone and she calls Eileen. At that point, Eileen didn't expect to hear from Tyra again.

so she's pretty happy to hear Tyra. Mm-hmm. On the phone. Of course, Tyra sounds panicked, said the police were after her [01:00:00] and she didn't know what to do. Eileen started to comfort her then stop short and then said, Hey, Is there somebody else in the room with you and Ty denies it? But Eileen kind of knew better.

She said quietly just go ahead and tell them what they want to know. Okay. I'll cover for you because you are innocent. I'm not gonna let you go to jail. if I have to converse, I will.

Kyle Risi: Eileen. So as she quite intuitive, she knew that this was a sting operation. Mm-hmm. And she was like, don't worry, you are innocent.

I'm gonna take the fall for you.

Adam Cox: She loved this chick. She did. And the next day Eileen did a, she said she would, she confessed to all seven murders, including that of Peter Sims, who's body was never found. At times Eileen Warner showed deep remorse for what she'd done.

she once whispered in an interview, I wish to God I wasn't a hooker. And in her original confession, she genuinely believed she was acting in self-defense, reminding herself she never provoked these men.

Kyle Risi: I don't believe it. 'cause it's seven within a [01:01:00] year. Do you know what I mean? And she didn't have any need to feel like she needed to protect herself before this.

And she had a lot of years on it. But also really interestingly though, her saying, don't worry too, Tyra on the phone, I will take the fall, makes me suggest that within that, even though she confessed that Tyra was more involved than she was, and it is bizarre that all these murders only started happening after she got involved with Tyra.

So to what degree did Tyra influence her behavior or her decision to murder these men?

Adam Cox: It's interesting. I dunno if we actually really know that because Tyra, we can

Kyle Risi: only go by her confession at this point.

Adam Cox: exactly that. And we know that Tyra was seen crashing Peter's car. So was she involved in disposing of the body and other things?

Kyle Risi: It must have been. Listen, Eileen is a tiny little woman. We've said this before. I think [01:02:00] Tyra helped move these bodies. It's the only explanation if the police were that convinced that this had to have been a man for a long time. The second you throw in, well, actually, what if it was two women doing this?

Then straight away this becomes more plausible and all the other puzzle pieces fit together. I think Tyra was involved more than anyone is letting on.

Adam Cox: I don't disagree. I don't think we know.

Kyle Risi: No, we don't know. But we can speculate. We can speculate, and that's what we're doing.

Adam Cox: So over the next year, as prosecutors prepared for the trial, Eileen became a National Sensation , producers and journalists came knocking.

She tried to sell the rights to her story, hoping to make money only to learn that Florida law prohibits prisoners from profiting off their own crimes. Ah,

Kyle Risi: yeah. A bit like OJ Simpson. But the thing is, and I guess the reason the story is so intriguing is a, it's a female.

Mm-hmm. She's a serial killer and also the MO is just so different to [01:03:00] what we do know of other serial killers. A good example would be nanny dos. The grandma killer and she was famous for obviously poisoning people, but so are so many other female serial killers that are out there. They typically go for those types of moss where they would poison you.

This is someone that's going out killing people on the side of the road with a gun. Yeah. sure, I get it. It's the first proper male aligned, serial killer

Adam Cox: so whilst Eileen couldn't make any money from her crimes, that didn't stop the people from around her because apparently Florida police officers that were involved in her arrest, entered movie deals, or started giving interviews and all this sort of stuff, some reportedly received $25,000, for interviews or these life rights.

All about Eileen.

Kyle Risi: They are capitalizing on Another woman's crimes, it's sick,

Adam Cox: I mean, one they're trying to profit, offer, offer a crime. A serial killer and two. Yeah. It's a woman that's done the job.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's not your work [01:04:00] mate.

Adam Cox: there's even speculation that this misconduct could overturn her sentence or kind of blur what was going on. . Mm-hmm. But no investigations was ever launched. Eileen called these men crooked cops.

She believed they knew who she was after the first murder Really? And let her keep killing so they could cash in later. No, it does seem far fetched, but I guess was based on some truth of what was going on, that people were taking advantage of her story for their own gain.

Kyle Risi: Sure. In the end they were, but not initially.

No one goes, do you know what? There's a man dead. There's gonna be another. And you know what? We know exactly who it is. There's a juicy story behind it. It is a woman, blah, blah, blah. This is gonna be huge. Let's buy that time. No, no one's speaking like that.

Adam Cox: I agree. But I think because she felt wronged by these men, it almost fueled her paranoia.

And obviously we know that perhaps she has some mental health, schizophrenia, things like that. Yeah. this was what happened with these policemen, I think fueled her paranoia. [01:05:00] And this would only just increase while she was in prison.

Kyle Risi: Sure.

Adam Cox: When her trial began on January the 14th, 1992, Eileen was already a household name.

The damsel of death is what she'd been called, across the press. The trial lasted two weeks and each day more devastating than the last. the prosecution painted her as a coldblooded killer.

What the jury was never told was that Richard Maori, her first victim, was a convicted sex offender, and without that context, her plea of self-defense fell flat.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, because I guess they can't admit that into evidence because of course it means that she doesn't then get a fair trial.

But then actually that's quite an important thing. For her defense, if she's claiming self-defense, then surely they should have been. That should have been admitted into the evidence.

Adam Cox: And whilst that might have just been the first murder, we don't really necessarily know the motivations behind the others.

Either way, that was played down. What happened next though was Tyra Moore was brought in and she takes the stand, she avoids [01:06:00] eye contact with Eileen, claiming she lived in fear of Eileen, that Eileen never said Mallory had hurt her, and that she recounted the killing calmly as they drank beers and watched tv.

And that was the last time that they would ever see each other. Eileen sat still staring at her hands. The one person that she thought loved her had just betrayed her in open court. and I still find it hard to fully believe Ty's story. I just don't know if she's telling the truth completely.

she tolerated Eileen for years. Was she really scared? 'cause she did run for it eventually.

Kyle Risi: because she was afraid that they were gonna get caught. And I believe that phone call where she was like, who's in the room with you? Don't worry, I will take the fall for this.

What's happened now is in court, she's gone, obviously taken the fall for, she understands that she's gonna take the fall because she loves this woman, Tyra. But then to have her come into court and almost rub it in her face [01:07:00] by recounts probably a lie or kind of misrepresenting events that actually happened, and her sitting down looking at her hands while she's listening to that must feel awful.

But at the same time, she's accepted that she's gonna take the fall for it. But it just makes it even more sour.

Adam Cox: It does, yeah. It's rubbing salt in the wounds, you know? And I think she's doing this to get her full immunity, so yeah. Is she exaggerating the truth? I don't know.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: By the time Eileen took the stand, she was emotionally spent and the jury convicted her and the judge sentenced her to death.

There were many appeals over the years for her defense. but as the time went on, her story flipped back and forth. She later, said that those self-defense claims saying the murders were actually intentional, that she had selected these men and that she had killed them to rob them.

Not for the thrill, but because she just wanted their money.

Kyle Risi: Okay, so she's confessed that, but you say she keeps flipping it, so she then [01:08:00] flips again. Do we know the reasons why she keeps flipping or is this just something that we don't know why?

Adam Cox: we're gonna try and find out why she's. Said this now, because when she first described the attack and rape of Richard Mallory, she did it in this graphic and emotional detail at her first trial.

She breaks down when she speaks and it feels genuine, not a performance. And so when asked why she changed her story, she said she gave the reason of self-defense so she could try and beat the system to survive.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. She's not smart enough for that.

Adam Cox: I don't think so either.

Kyle Risi: No.

Adam Cox: So now that she was saying that she committed all seven murders for money, she waived all appeals, she just wants to die and maybe she simply had enough.

Kyle Risi: Oh my God. do you think?

Adam Cox: it's years on death row, no hope of release. And so all she's doing is waiting for her death. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: just take me now, I'm gonna change my plea. I actually did this in cold blood just to make it all go away. this chick has had. [01:09:00] Horrendous life.

So it's, that sounds plausible to me.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Otherwise she would, she's not gonna get released. She would spend her whole life in prison, so it might feel better for her to just die.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. But at the same time, she could just kill herself.

Adam Cox: It's maybe not as easy as you think to do that in prison.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's what I'm questioning.

Is it not that easy? Do you like, oh, you just get to sleep on a tin can? No bedsheets or anything?

Adam Cox: considering she's on death row, I she's in herself for 22 hours a day. Yeah. Barely getting any exercise or anything. . So I don't think she probably has the opportunity to smuggle something in or whatever.

She's under strict security.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: Over the next decade on death row, Eileen's mind begins to unravel. She writes letters accusing prison staff of shrinking her head and poisoning her food.

Kyle Risi: What? Okay. So she's clearly got some psychological issues going on, which is the schizophrenia that you were talking about.

Adam Cox: Yeah. She says, police were torturing her through sonic waves coming from a cell mirror or [01:10:00] something like that. Oh, okay. One of those. and despite these disturbing delusions, three psychiatrists find her fit for execution.

these exams reportedly last about 15 minutes, which seems hardly long enough when you hear, the life of this, what this woman had.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: So to go, oh no, it's just fine. Nah, I don't think they did that. Couple check

Kyle Risi: boxes in there. She's fine. She can count three. It's fine.

Adam Cox: Yeah. So many believe she suffered from this borderline personality disorder, not officially diagnosed.

but that's a condition often rooted in childhood trauma. Victims of this disorder struggle with emotional regulation, fear, abandonment, and often sabotage their relationships just to feel in control, which all sounds possible and plausible given what's happened to Eileen.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure.

Adam Cox: At her final appeal, which sounds like it was pushed more by her defense team than it was by her. Eileen seems to self-destruct when witnesses are called from her past.

People who have known her since she was a child. She denies even knowing them. She even seemed happy when the judge ruled out testimony from [01:11:00] anyone suspected of perjury. Those who did testify described years of horror. Her grandfather beating her with a and her brother sexually abusing her.

So all corroborating what happened to her.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: Classmates admitted to mocking her in public, but were happy to accept sexual favors behind closed doors from her.

Kyle Risi: people came into court to admit that

Adam Cox: Mm, maybe to relieve some kind of guilt that they had a part in. How, she went on to be The person she became, geez.

There was one guy who said that she wanted to have a relationship with him, but he wanted to keep whatever they did. A secret. A secret secret. And he was happy to publicly humiliate her. So he confessed this in court.

Kyle Risi: This is horrible. The world, even the ones that aren't around killing people are just awful.

Adam Cox: But Eileen, she didn't want their pity, she didn't wanna be seen as a victim. And yet when she received her first death sentence for the murder of Richard Maori all those years ago. You could tell she was shattered. She left the courtroom shouting that she had been raped, pointing to the scratches on the [01:12:00] steering wheel as proof she had been tied up and fought to break free, which again, just didn't add up.

And so cause people to follow her story on death row, trying to find out what was the actual truth. And in the final moments of her life, Eileen gave several interviews. She reiterated that none of the murders were self-defense and that they were all for money. But when the camera kept rolling,

She whispered that she couldn't handle a life sentence. Said Richard Maori was self-defense.

Kyle Risi: Wow. So again, as you just said, when she was screaming at the core to look at the scratch marks on the steering wheel, I believe that first one probably was right. That was the first one. But when she realized that actually I took control in that situation and I came out the other end victorious, that's when maybe she was like, this is easier than I thought. And then she's gone down the stock path. I believe it. I think that Richard Malloy was self-defense, but the others were probably for money.

Adam Cox: Yeah. maybe the others were too, she couldn't [01:13:00] say more or not on the record. I think she does allude to the fact that maybe there were others which were self-defense. But the thing is she never says that they were all self-defense. I, we just dunno which ones, but I agree that she either got a taste for it, it was money.

She managed to deal with that. At

Kyle Risi: the end of the day, it sounds like it's very apparent that some of them were about the money and she did kill them in cold blood. And so she probably still deserves her conviction. Not necessarily on death row. I don't really believe in death row, but still she has killed some people in cold blood.

Adam Cox: Agree. We've had a lot of sympathy for her upbringing, but let's not forget she is a serial killer.

Kyle Risi: Sure.

Adam Cox: and I think some of the kills were in cold blood.

Kyle Risi: Sure. And I think and again, like rather than putting her to death, maybe she could be put into some kind of institution where they can help her.

Yeah. Potentially give her a little bit of dignity and allow her to maybe rehabilitate herself. Potentially, maybe not necessarily be [01:14:00] freed again, but it's very clear that this is a very damaged woman and she's not killing from a place that many other serial killers have killed or committed their crimes.

When you think about, like Ted Bundy, right? That's sadistic. This is a behavior based on trauma that she's experienced in the past and potentially a lack of understanding of how to deal with emotions and the psychological disorders that she's got.

This is how she learns to navigate the world. just so happens to be the wrong path.

Adam Cox: I I completely agree. And that she played up the fact that these were cold-blooded killings because for her, she didn't want to just spend her life in prison.

To her. She said that the justice system was broken. That she was treated badly or inhumanely. she suspected her food was poisoned, that she had seen too much behind closed doors, that dying was better than living inside the prison. All she wanted was to die.

And I think that's why she probably really pushed that narrative in later [01:15:00] years.

Kyle Risi: That's so sad. And I know we're dealing with a serial killer here, but this is all really sad. And she just sees herself as broken. And this is the easy way out. What do you do when something is broken? She's probably resolved to the fact that it'd be better if she did go through with the execution.

Adam Cox: Yeah, it's a tough one. 'cause should we feel sympathy for a serial killer who's mistreated in prison? Should they have basic human rights? But I think in Eileen's case, after years of mistreatment, knowing how she became a serial killer. It just feels unfair that no one won in this story. Not that anyone should have won.

Yeah. But it's just not good news for anyone.

Kyle Risi: Both can be true at the same time. We can sympathize with the victims and we can be angry that someone has killed them, but I think we can also be sympathetic to her situation and her past, the killings were of course her choice, but what drove her to make those decisions mm-hmm. Was not down to her. It was down to a cycle of abuse. Yeah. That seems to have lasted [01:16:00] generations. It is a very tricky one, and there's a lot of kind of feelings to navigate around it, but yeah, at this moment in time, I feel that I can sympathize with her victims, but I can also really sympathize with her as well, because I don't feel like she was.

A coldblooded killer in the sense that she was getting gratification from this.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I think had she had a better upbringing, she could have gone on a different path. Totally.

Yeah. On October the ninth, 2002 at 9:47 AM Eileen Carroll warns was executed by lethal injection. She was 46 years old, and her final words were bizarre.

She says, I'm sailing with the rock. I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, big mothership and all. Aw. So she found Jesus in her final months then, I'm assuming

She did. She did turn to the Bible and she did say that, she looked towards God and she looked forward to going, I dunno if she ever said she went, she was gonna go to heaven, but she looked forward to meeting God and Jesus and everything.

Kyle Risi: Depends what kind of, [01:17:00] Christian she was, right? If she's Protestant, she just needs to, accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, and then boom, she'll be in heaven.

Adam Cox: Done. So after her death, her ashes were sent to Troy, Michigan to her childhood friend, Dawn Botkins.

Kyle Risi: So what did Botkins do with her ashes?

Adam Cox: Dawn wrote to her every day in prison, and she Really? Yeah. And she scattered Eileen's ashes beneath the walnut tree in her backyard.

There was no ceremony, no mourners. Just one woman saying goodbye to a friend who never really had a chance.

Kyle Risi: Ooh, I just got goosebumps.

Adam Cox: Eileen warns left the world the same way she lived in it alone.

Kyle Risi: What an awful, awful story. And beautifully told really a lot of complex emotions that you've brought out in us. This isn't a cut and dry. She's a serial killer. Good. She's dead. This is a traumatized woman who's got a very complicated history and probably killed for very complicated reasons.

Wow.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Thanks

Kyle Risi: Shannon

Adam Cox: Pierce. And [01:18:00] that is the story of Eileen Warnoff, the Damsel of death.

Kyle Risi: Wow.

Adam Cox: I dunno what to say. I think we've covered it all, to be honest. Yeah, that was a bit of a whirlwind, that one.

Kyle Risi: really sad. And I stick by it. I feel that you can be sympathetic in this situation, all round.

Sympathetic towards the people she killed and sympathetic towards Eileen.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: I dunno how I feel about Tyra.

Adam Cox: I don't,I think she's remarried and she's gone to live a normal life afterwards

maybe she feels guilt. I don't know. I'm not saying that she was guilty and that she killed these men. I just feel like she had a light sentencing really? Or, Yeah, crazy.

Kyle Risi: very good episode, Adam. I really appreciate that one. Shall we run the outro then for this week?

Adam Cox: and that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things.

Kyle Risi: If today's episode sparked your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcasting app or sign up for free on our Patreon. It truly makes a [01:19:00] world of difference and really helps more people discover the show

Adam Cox: and for our dedicated freaks out there. Don't forget, next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon.

Kyle Risi: completely free of charge one week early if you cannot wait. There it is. Sign up please. And If you want even more, then join our certified Freaks Tier and unlock our entire archive, delve into our exclusive content and get a sneak peek of what's coming next. You can even have your name in lights by suggesting a topic we should cover. We'd really love you to be part of this growing community.

Adam Cox: We drop new episodes every Tuesday, and until then, remember, not every victim stays one, and not every villain starts out as one.

Kyle Risi: Adam,

Adam Cox: see you next week.

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