Monster (6 page)

Bisexual Lee, who had never killed a man in her life, had been drinking way down in Fort Myers. For a few nights she hustled for money, then she had an argument with Tyria over the phone. She had been on the road since 6am and her mood, right now, was not good. However, she had the better part of $250 in her purse to put down as a deposit on a new rented apartment in Burleigh Avenue. Now, after six rides north, she was about to climb into a car with a sexual predator.

Lee was happy with the chance of a ride and drawled that if he was on his way to Daytona that was just fine. As they moved off, Mallory asked her if she minded him smoking the reefer. She laughed and told him he could do what he liked, but she didn’t touch drugs herself. She did, however, accept his offer of a drink. He always kept booze in his car, so they began to get friendly and drunk.

‘I thought he was kind of funny. Don’t often take a ride and have a joint pushed your way,’ Lee said to me. ‘To start with, the fucker was kind of cute.’

With shifty sidelong glances at his passenger, Mallory, who was not averse to paying for sex, almost immediately weighed her up as a hooker who had hit hard times. She had a mottled complexion, straggly blonde hair, thin, somewhat cruel lips, a cute nose, great legs and the wet
T-shirt
accentuated her firm breasts. She had a manly way about her and was a tad on the heavily built side, but the more he knocked back the booze, the better she looked.

Although a little abrasive, Lee was a chatty, forthright lass, so he was not surprised when she asked him if he would like to ‘have some fun and help her make some money’. Mallory replied saying he might be interested. Lee would later confirm that this was her usual modus operandi. She always brought up the issue of sex, and several witnesses who had given her rides would testify to this.

Mallory told her he knew girls in topless bars and bragged he would pay $2,000 per photo session. He talked about politics, religion and that his electronics store was going through troubled times. Just past Orlando he stopped for petrol. He bought a six-pack of beer and went to the bathroom. Upon returning to the car he talked about his ex-wife and having problems with a lady. Lee could identify with his troubles and, at that moment, murder was the furthest thing from her mind. All she needed to do was get back to Tyria, pay the deposit on the new apartment, shift their personal belongings and move in.

We have no reason to doubt Lee when she claims that they turned into a stopping point just off US Highway 1 and continued to drink and talk until nearly 5am. The place was too wide open for sex, so they drove on towards Daytona and Mallory asked the woman who gave her name as Lee if she wanted to make her money now.

‘My rates were easy to understand, even for a drunk,’ she explained to me. ‘Head for $30; $35 straight; $40 for 50/50 [half oral/half vaginal penetration]; $100 an hour.’ According to Lee, she agreed to $30. Evidence at autopsy that Mallory may have only opened his zip, yet had his pants belted at the waist, testifies to Lee’s claim that he just wanted a $30 blowjob.

They swung off Interstate 95 and drove up a track which she knew as the Quail Run, which ended in deserted woodland. Leaving the headlights ablaze and switching on the interior light, Mallory and Lee swung open their car doors. Shortly after her arrest she stated that Mallory gave her the money she wanted and she began to strip off her few clothes. Usually she would ask the men to strip too, and certainly to remove their pants. Mallory didn’t.

At first, she said she provided him with the service he required then he attacked her. At trial, she changed the story by saying that he had refused to pay her anything, tied her up, beat her and forced a blunt object into her anus. She was sure he was going to kill her, so she broke free and shot him. ‘It was just another trick,’ she told me during our interview. ‘It was cool and royal before it went sour.’

When she was naked, she asked him if he wasn’t going to do the same. But it seems that Mallory had no intention of undressing. Merely unzipping his trousers, he rolled drunkenly on top of the woman, smothering her face in kisses. Even through his alcoholic haze, Mallory would have seen that a sudden change had come over her. One minute she had been just another good-time girl hoping to make a fast buck. Now she looked like an avenging fury, her face a distorted mask of hatred. ‘You son of a bitch,’ she hissed. ‘You were going to rape me.’

She said they began to hurl abuse at each other, Lee repeatedly accusing Mallory of attempted rape. Ignoring her, he rolled on top again, this time more forcefully. But Lee succeeded in wriggling away from him and out of the car, taking her shoulder bag with her. We will never know the exact truth of the sordid scenario, but something happened in that car which sparked a monstrous fury in Lee – she had never been so enraged before in her life. She had been with scores of johns; countless men had paid her for sex, yet, up until that moment in time, Lee had not shot anyone. Why was Richard Mallory so different?

When Mallory looked up, it was to see her standing naked with a small-calibre pistol aimed straight at him.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Get out of the car,’ Lee ordered.

He hesitated before starting to sidle over to the passenger seat. When he was in the doorway, she backed away. He made to lunge at her but she squeezed the trigger of the .22-calibre, nine-shot pistol. The gun jumped in her
hand, the sharp crack of the report shattering the stillness of the early-morning air. Mallory moaned as the round struck him in the upper part of his left arm, passed clean through it and lodged in his rib cage. Bewildered, he managed to stand up outside the car. Lee backed still further away from him, holding the weapon in a police grip for deadly accuracy. She pulled off two more rounds in quick succession. He was now mortally wounded.

The copper-covered, hollow-nose bullets tore into the right and left of Mallory’s chest. As he jerked under the impact of the third shot, the frenzied Lee let off a series of rounds, one of which struck Mallory in the side of the neck above the collarbone. He fell to the ground. Both of his lungs had collapsed; blood was pouring into his body. He wheezed in a futile fight for air.

Meanwhile, his killer coolly got dressed and chose what she liked among his belongings, then squatted down on her haunches and watched. After just over ten minutes, Mallory’s wheezing stopped.

The next day, Mallory’s Cadillac was found suspiciously abandoned near John Anderson Drive in Ormond Beach, a short distance from where Lee and Tyria were staying. Deputy John Bonnevier and County Deputy Sheriff John Bondi were out on routine patrol when they stopped to examine the vehicle parked up in a sunny clearing. Two doors were open, the interior light was on. Peering inside, they noticed what appeared to be bloodstains behind the steering wheel, but there were no signs of either the driver
or, for that matter, any passengers. John Bondi would later testify at trial: ‘On 1 December 1989, in the course of routine patrol, at or about 3.20pm, I discovered an abandoned vehicle in a wooded area on John Anderson Drive … I conducted an enquiry around the vehicle looking for a driver … failed to find anyone in the area.’

Officer Bondi added that the vehicle’s ignition keys were not in the switch, but numerous items were found a short distance from the car. Partially buried in the sandy soil was a blue nylon wallet containing Richard Mallory’s Florida driving licence, miscellaneous papers and two long-expired credit cards. There were also two plastic tumbler glasses, a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff vodka, an empty bottle of Budweiser and a red car caddy, along with several other items, all of which suggested that Mallory had not been alone. An examination of the driver’s seat revealed that it had been pulled as far forward as it would go, into a driving position which would have been extremely uncomfortable for a man of Mallory’s size. There was a trail of items leading down the track to the main road.

Further examination of the vehicle revealed a pair of prescription spectacles under the front seat and, in the boot, the impression left by a toolbox which had apparently been removed. The car was dusted unsuccessfully for fingerprints by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and then towed into the Volusia Country Sheriff’s Office compound for safekeeping before it was removed to the Orlando Regional Crime Laboratory where it was analysed by Daniel Radcliffe.

The next find came on Wednesday, 13 December. Jimmy Bonchi and James Davis, who were out scavenging for scrap metal along a dirt road off Interstate 95, made a gruesome discovery. They had found Richard Mallory’s corpse at a spot roughly five miles across the river from where his car had been discovered.

Volusia County deputies who responded to the 911 call saw a body that was skeletonised from the collarbone to the top of the head. Wild animals and insects had enjoyed a feast. The bulk of the putrefying corpse lay under a piece of cardboard with only the fingers showing. It was fully dressed in jeans and a pullover, the belt slightly askew. Detective James Malady, who arrived shortly after the body was called in, noted that the pockets of the jeans had been turned inside out. A set of dentures lay on the ground next to the corpse.

Charles James Lau, an investigator with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department, oversaw an immediate autopsy of the unidentified body and recovered four bullets from its torso. The hands of the victim were removed and transported to the crime laboratory for latent-print examination because, as Lau explained, ‘When we have an unidentified body, you can’t roll the fingerprints because of the decomposition.’

At Lee’s trial, James Downing, the Daytona Beach medical examiner, described the removal of the body to a local funeral home on the night of 13 December. ‘Ordinarily, bodies were sent to Halifax Hospital, but the decomposition of this body was too severe,’ he said.

On the following day, the clothing was removed and sealed in a bag. ‘I don’t believe he had any underwear on,’ Downing told the jury. ‘I did not notice the zipper,’ he added when questioned as to whether or not Richard Mallory’s zip was closed or fastened. Dr Arthur Botting certified his death.

Several months of investigation into Mallory’s sordid lifestyle and somewhat shady acquaintances produced no real leads. Police learned that he had last been seen at his shop on 30 November by Jeffrey Davis, the son of Jackie Davis, Mallory’s last girlfriend. Officers were also able to locate a customer to whom Mallory confided his plan to visit Daytona Beach for a couple of days. Notes and phone numbers in the dead man’s apartment led investigators to two dancers at local strip clubs, Chastity Marcus and Kimberly Guy, and Doug Lambert, Chastity’s boyfriend.

Initial suspicion revolved around Chastity who was described as ‘as hot as a firecracker’ by the manager of the strip joint where she worked. She told the cops all about Mallory and his sick perversions. She introduced them to other girls who had been abused by this sexual pervert. Even Mallory’s former girlfriend Jackie Davis told officers that he had been incarcerated for sex offences for ten years. But the cops slammed them all down and the case went cold.

By the middle of May 1990, the murder of Richard Mallory had been all but forgotten by the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department. There was, seemingly, no reason to believe it was anything other than an isolated homicide.

Mallory’s sister in Texas and his brother in New Jersey
wanted nothing to do with Richard’s business. A Mr Townley took over the repair equipment that had been dumped, moved the shop several doors from the original site, and Mallory Electronics became Johnny’s TV & VCR of Palm Harbor. Jackie Davis took charge of Mallory’s cremation and scattered his ashes in nearby woodland.

But did anyone other than Lee know about the killing of Richard Mallory? In various quarters, it has always been accepted that Lee’s lesbian lover had no knowledge at all of Mallory’s murder. Indeed, after Lee’s arrest for murder, Tyria initially told investigators that she had no inkling that Lee had been involved with any murder until they crashed murder victim Peter Siems’s car on Wednesday, 4 July 1990 – almost a full seven months after Mallory was killed. She then watered down her story when pressed, saying that Lee had told her about the murder of Mallory but she didn’t believe her.

Now, however, we can learn the shocking truth. Tyria knew about the murder of Richard Mallory because Lee had told her. In fact, she told her the very same day Lee had killed the man. Lee gave Tyria a scarf and jacket belonging to Mallory – it had ‘Richard’ printed inside the jacket collar – and she showed her a camera, a radar detector and toolbox which had mysteriously come into her possession. And, if all of this was not sufficient to raise Tyria’s suspicions from non-belief to that of shock, she could have hardly failed to notice the blood-spattered car seat while she was driving round in Mallory’s car for an hour.

Tyria would later say:

Richard Charles Mallory was shot to death very close to Ormond-by-the-Sea at around 5am on the morning of Friday, 1 December 1989, but now, for the first time, we can follow the sequence of events thereafter.

After blasting Mallory to death, Lee then drove his car to the Ocean Shores Motel in Holly Hill where she met up with Tyria. Using Mallory’s Cadillac, together they moved their possessions to a low-budget or ‘efficiency’ apartment on Burleigh Avenue. They went back to their old apartment in the car, collected up their two pets – a dog and a cat – and returned to the new apartment. Tyria rode off on her moped, while Lee threw a 12-speed cycle into the back of the car and dumped the vehicle within a
short distance of Burleigh Avenue where it was later found by police. She cycled back to the new apartment where she gave Mallory’s grey jacket and scarf to Tyria, explaining in the same breath that she had ‘shot and killed a guy that day’.