A woman stalks Florida`s highways, promising love to road-weary drivers but delivering death.
The chilling accounts of Aileen Wuornos` killing spree in 1989 and 1990 had the ring of high drama, not only to a riveted public, but to producers in Hollywood.
Even before Wuornos was arrested in a bikers` bar in January 1991, officers in the Marion County Sheriff`s Department, which had become the focal point of the statewide investigation of her crimes, were receiving dozens of phone calls a day from producers competing to win the rights to the story.
So in February 1991, three of those officials-Maj. Dan Henry, Capt. Steve Binegar and Investigator Bruce Munster-hired a lawyer to negotiate a contract for them.
It didn`t turn out well. Because the officers were also making available the story of Tyria Moore-Wuornos` ex-lover, whom they had tracked down in Scranton, Pa.-they were accused by the public defender`s office and by colleagues of obstructing justice.
The officers decided not to sell their stories. The state attorney`s office in Ocala, Fla., launched an investigation into the allegations of wrongdoing, and most of the Hollywood producers stopped talking about their strategies for turning the Wuornos murder case into a TV movie.
The movie negotiations for the story may have been messier than most, but producers involved in making fact-based TV dramas say there was nothing unusual about the furious competition to make a deal.
”Fact-based dramas are what the networks want right now,” said Michael O`Hara of O`Hara-Horowitz Productions in Sherman Oaks, Calif. ”It`s a chicken-and-egg thing. I don`t know if the network conditioned the audience for these or the audience has conditioned the network.”
O`Hara was the writer and executive producer of ”Switched at Birth,”
the 1991 NBC mini-series about two infants who went home from a Florida hospital with the wrong parents. O`Hara competed with about 30 other producers for the rights to the story.
Eventually, he signed an agreement with Bob Mays, whose daughter Kimberly Mays was the subject of a custody battle between him and a Pennsylvania family, the Twiggs. O`Hara then co-produced ”Switched at Birth” with the company that had secured the Twiggs` story.
Today, production companies have staff members whose sole job is to ferret through the news for stories that would make good TV dramas. Because a sensational news event generates national headlines, producers and networks believe a dramatization will have a ready-made audience when it is aired.
Why do average people faced with extraordinary circumstances agree to have their private affairs revealed by the most public of media? Some tell their stories for catharsis, but most do it for the money, O`Hara said.
The rights for these stories range from $35,000 to $200,000, O`Hara said. (No one gets paid, however, unless the movie project is developed and aired.)
But it isn`t always necessary to get the rights from the principals. Some scripts of fact-based dramas, such as ABC`s 1988 movie ”Baby M,” are written from public records. Some are based on books. (Joe McGinnis` ”Fatal Vision,” which aired on NBC in 1986, is an example.) Still others are written after producers win the rights to journalistic accounts.
NBC`s 1986 movie about serial killer Ted Bundy, ”The Deliberate Stranger,” was written from an account of the case by Richard Larsen, a Seattle Times political reporter who got to know Bundy in the early 1970s. ”A Woman Scorned,” the CBS movie about San Diego socialite and killer Betty Broderick that will air March 1, was based mainly on a Los Angeles Times magazine article. The Times reporter had developed a personal relationship with Broderick, who murdered her ex-husband and his new wife in 1989. Producers then bought the rights from the newspaper.
”It is critical to find someone who has been involved in the story from Day 1,” said ”A Woman Scorned” producer Ken Kaufman of Patchett-Kaufman Entertainment in Los Angeles.
That`s why producers besieged the Polk County Sheriff`s Department in Bartow, Fla., last year with offers to buy the rights to the Peggy Carr poisoning case.
Carr, an unassuming, church-going woman, died in 1989 of thallium nitrate poisoning. Last year, Carr`s seemingly mild-mannered neighbor, George Trepal, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to die. Trepal, the husband of an orthopedic surgeon and a member of Mensa, the social club for people with high intelligence, was nailed by a vigilant group of Polk County investigators, one of whom went undercover to gain evidence.
Polk County sold the rights to its story to Burt Reynolds` Mozark Productions in Burbank, Calif., after negotiating with several other producers, said the county`s public-information officer, Lynne Breidenbach. If the TV movie is produced and aired, the department will get $50,000, which it will use to bolster its drug abuse-prevention education programs.
The officers and members of the Carr family who provided the rights to their stories as part of the Polk County pact will get separate compensation, Breidenbach said.
To ward off criticism of the deal, Polk County officials refused to talk with any producers until after the trial ended last year.
Perhaps the Wuornos investigators` error was in becoming involved with the producers too early in the investigation. The state attorney in Ocala, in a report issued in December, found no evidence that the three had signed any contracts or obstructed justice in their pursuit of one.
Will a TV movie based on the Wuornos murders ever be made?
A script about the case, written last summer by Hollywood writer Fred Mills and based on leaked Wuornos confessions, has turned up, said Assistant State Atty. Rick Ridgway.
Officials at CBS and Republic Pictures, who Ridgway said were close to an agreement with the Marion County officers at one point, were unavailable for comment.
Officers Binegar, Munster and Henry declined to comment.
And one producer whose company had pursued the story has changed his mind based on recent ”sordid” trial testimony.
”This is a pathetic situation, and it is not in my judgment food for drama, especially given political and economic conditions of our time.” said Edgar Scherick of Saban/Scherick Productions in Burbank, whose TV movies include ”The Kennedys of Massachusetts.”
Los Angeles independent producer Jackelyn Giroux disagrees. Giroux spent more than 100 hours early last year interviewing Wuornos and family members and friends across the U.S. for a movie based on the killer`s life. (Under state law, Wuornos cannot receive any profits made from a movie.)
Giroux`s company, Twisted Productions, has received international financing for a feature film she hopes to produce within the next year.
