During the third week of May 1990, 41-year-old Charles ‘Chuck’ Carskaddon, a former road digger and rodeo rider, was en route from his mother’s home in Boonville, Missouri, to Tampa to pick up Peggy, his fiancée. He had packed up the hard life and found less stressful employment as a press operator in his home state of Missouri. All he had to do was drive to Florida to collect Peggy, and his life would be complete. We may safely assume that he was driving south along the Dixie Highway when he spotted Lee thumbing a ride. In fact, chilling as it may seem, it is highly likely that, having dumped David Spears’s truck close to I-75, one of the next rides Lee took was with Mr Carskaddon.
After they stopped – for sex, Lee claimed – she removed her gun from her bag and discharged no fewer than seven shots into the man’s upper body from the back seat, claiming that it was an act of self-defence. After reloading her .22 she shot two more bullets into the corpse. The reason she gave for this cold-blooded and dreadful act was that she had found his .45-calibre handgun on the hood – or bonnet – of the car and was enraged to further violence by the thought that he may have planned to kill her.
Of the murder itself, we only have Lee’s account above to inform us of the events that took place. At first she argued that the killing was in self-defence, then she changed her story, saying that she killed him just for the money. During the last few days of her life she told Nick Broomfield off-camera that she had, indeed, killed all of her victims in self-defence. Carskaddon’s naked body was found 23 miles short of his destination on Wednesday, 6 June. The corpse was covered with foliage and a green electric blanket. The autopsy showed that he had been shot nine times in the chest with a .22-calibre handgun.
The dead man’s brown 1975 Cadillac, a car he had lovingly restored, was discovered the next day around 45 miles north of where the body had been found, near I-75 and CR 484 in Marion County. Although the number plate had been ripped off, the vehicle identification number was still intact. A trace soon revealed the owner’s name.
Carskaddon’s mother, Florence, told police that when her only son left home he was carrying a blue-steel, .45-calibre pistol with a pearl handle, a Mexican blanket, a stun gun, a flip-top lighter, a watch and a tan suitcase. He was wearing a black T-shirt and grey snakeskin cowboy boots. ‘He had removed the firing pin from the gun,’ she said, ‘because he was scared to use it.’
None of these items was found in his car, and Lee – minus a firing pin – was now packing more heat than ever before.
CHAPTER SEVEN
PETER SIEMS
OH, LET ME SEE… THIRD GUY… I HAD A PROBLEM WITH… UH… LET’S SEE… I THINK THE NEXT ONE’S THE ONE… HE WAS A CHRISTIAN GUY OR SOMETHING. I… I DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS A CHRISTIAN GUY. HE WAS NUDE… THIS IS THE ONE IN GEORGIA, I THINK, AND HE HAD HIS… HE HAD… HE TOOK A SLEEPING BAG… TOOK IT OUT IN THE WOODS AND WHEN WE GOT NUDE, I HAD TAKEN MY BAG WITH ME THAT TIME BECAUSE I SAID, ‘WELL, IF WE’RE GOING TO GO OUT IN THE WOODS, I’M NOT GOING TO GIVE HIM AN OPPORTUNITY TO RAPE ME. AND THAT’S THE TIME THIS GUY GAVE ME A PROBLEM TOO. AND SO, I WHIPPED OUT MY GUN AND I SAID, ‘YOU KNOW, I… I… I DON’T WANT TO SHOOT YOU.’ HE SAID… HE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING, HE JUST LOOKED AT ME AND SAID, ‘YOU FUCKING BITCH.’ AND I SAID, ‘NO, YOU WERE GOING TO RAPE ME.’ BECAUSE HE WAS GETTING PHYSICAL WITH ME AGAIN AND I KNEW. AND HE… AND HE SAID, ‘FUCK YOU, BITCH,’ AND STARTED TO COME AT ME AND HE WAS, YOU KNOW, TRYING TO GET THE GUN FROM ME AND STUFF, WE’RE STRUGGLING ON THAT ONE. AND HE TRIED TO GET THE GUN FROM ME AND STUFF, WE’RE STRUGGLING WITH THE GUN AND EVERYTHING ELSE AND A COUPLE OF BULLETS SHOT UP IN THE AIR AND FINALLY I RIPPED IT AWAY AND I HAD THE GUN IN MY LEFT HAND AND I PUT IT BACK IN MY RIGHT HAND AND I SHOT HIM IMMEDIATELY… AND I’M POSITIVE THE ONLY ONE IN GEORGIA IS THE MISSIONARY GUY… I REMEMBER THE MISSIONARY GUY. I SHOT HIM ONCE.
Deeply religious, easy-going and considered a real gentleman in every respect, Peter Siems was a 65-year-old retired merchant seaman living on Florida’s east coast near Jupiter, Martin County. He had found the Lord many years previously; soon he was to meet the Antichrist.
Early in the morning of Thursday, 7 June 1990 – the same day Carskaddon’s car was found – neighbours saw the part-time missionary placing luggage and a stack of bibles into his 1988 silver-grey Pontiac Sunbird. They assumed, correctly, that the balding, bespectacled man was off on another of his trips to spread the word. On his travels, he intended to visit relatives in Arkansas and then drive up to New Jersey to see his sister. He promised his wife that he would phone later in the day – she never heard from him again.
The most direct route for such a mammoth drive would be to join the Florida Turnpike near his home then cut up through the centre of the state until he joined I-75 near Wildwood, which was Wuornos country.
After her arrest, Lee admitted that she was very drunk when Siems stopped on I-95, though it was more likely to have been along I-75 where it crosses the Florida Turnpike in Marion County. She vaguely recalled crossing a state line in his car, but could not remember if it was Georgia or South Carolina. It was Georgia. She claimed that Siems ‘became threatening during a sexual encounter in the woods, so I shot him’.
His body remains undiscovered. It lies rotting somewhere in the pinewoods of Georgia.
The mystery of the sudden disappearance of Mr Siems took a bizarre twist on Wednesday, 4 July when a silver-grey Pontiac Sunbird – not a red car as portrayed in the movie Monster – careered off CR 315 near Orange Springs, Florida, just ten miles east from where Lee dumped David Spears’s truck. The car shot round a bend, skidded sideways and smashed through a steel gate and a barbed-wire fence, shattering the windscreen before coming to rest in the undergrowth. For a brief second it appeared that it might roll over, but it soon righted itself. With steam hissing from the radiator, and a slowly deflating tyre, the car, like its late owner, was doomed.
Rhonda and Jim Bailey, who were sitting on their porch drinking lemonade and enjoying the sun, witnessed the spectacular accident. Somewhat bemused, the elderly couple observed two women clamber out of the car. Lee, whose arms were bleeding from the cuts sustained in the crash, started throwing beer cans into the woods and swearing at her fellow passenger, who said very little.
The Baileys noted that the women grabbed a red-and-white beer cooler from the back seat and, still arguing, staggered off along the road. At the approach of other cars, they would dash into the woods and hide, only to reappear after the vehicles had passed. When the coast was clear, they returned to the car.
When neighbourly Rhonda ambled over to offer what little assistance she could, the blonde begged her not to call the police, saying that her father lived just up the road. The two women climbed back in the car and, with some difficulty, managed to reverse it on to the road and drive off. Within moments a front tyre went flat and, with the car now disabled, Lee and Tyria had no option other than to abandon it. They pulled off the rear number plate – Lee had done the same thing with Carskaddon’s vehicle – and threw it, together with the car keys, into the woods before walking away.