The mother later remarked that it was likely “the biggest mistake” she had ever made in her life.
Almost simultaneously, her 23-year-old father, already incarcerated for the kidnapping and assault of a young girl, took his own life in prison.
Her grandmother battled alcoholism, while her grandfather was reported to be violent, even predatory.
“I should have . . . given them up for adoption to strangers. We, in our family, endured a form of child abuse. My father was verbally abusive. My mother was verbally abusive, and we were constantly told we were worthless,” the girl’s mother later shared with The Tampa Bay Times.
Became wards of the state
By the age of 13, she found herself pregnant after a terrible assault. There were even rumors suggesting that her own brother could have been the father. However, many others claimed that a friend of her grandfather was the one who assaulted her.
Family members later shared with The Tampa Bay Times that no one believed her back then. No police report was ever made.
She chose to give the baby up for adoption, wishing to provide him with a better life than the one she had experienced.
Tragedy struck again shortly after. Her grandmother passed away, which hit her hard. She described her grandmother as a “really clean and decent” woman who never drank or swore. Not long after that, her grandfather took his own life.
She and her brother, Keith, became wards of the state. By the time she was 11, she started engaging in sexual activities at school in exchange for cigarettes, drugs, and food. Feeling alone and desperate, the teenage girl eventually dropped out of school and began living on the streets, surviving through petty crime and prostitution.
Over the next ten years, she accumulated arrests for theft, assault, and disorderly conduct — a criminal record that seemed to grow longer with each year.
When she was discovered, she admitted not only to one murder but to multiple ones. One by one, men throughout central Florida were found dead.
She asserted that she was acting in self-defense and that each man had attempted to assault her, claiming she was fighting for her survival.
“I’m not a man-hater,” she expressed to the Orlando Sentinel in March 1991. “I’ve endured so many traumatic events that I’m either in shock or I’ve become so accustomed to being treated poorly that it feels like a normal existence.”
