"Welcome to my Nightmare"

"Welcome to my Nightmare"
by Robert A. Waters

When Todd Mendyk died of cancer in February, 2002, he cheated the executioner. That’s a shame. If anyone ever deserved to die the ignominious death of a condemned man, it was Mendyk. Let me warn you – the details of his victim’s last hours are gruesome and graphic. I’ll place them in italics in case the reader wishes to skim past them.


They were losers of the worst sort who spent their days sleeping and nights smoking weed, drinking beer, and chain-smoking cigarettes.

Phillip Frantz, 20, was a follower. He lived with his parents in Spring Hill, Florida, occasionally fiddled with his bass guitar, and dreamed of making it in a rock band. He rarely worked, was easily led, and tended to hang with the wrong crowd.

Todd Mendyk, also 20, was high on Satan. He craved pornography, especially bondage flicks. His dream, which he shared with the few friends he had, was to build an underground bunker in which to keep sex slaves. He read the Satanic Bible like a Christian reads the Gospel. He’d once been arrested for a murder in South Carolina, but had been released because of a lack of evidence.

On the other hand, Lee Ann Larmon, 23, had positive dreams. Unlike Frantz and Mendyk, the attractive brunette was willing to work toward achieving those dreams. She was a night-clerk at the Presto convenience store on U. S. 19 in Brooksville and attended Pasco-Hernando Community College during the day. Her dream was to get her bachelor’s degree in business.

On the morning of April 8, 1987, Larmon worked the graveyard shift alone. A heavy fog smothered the street outside and, except for an occasional straggler, the night was dead. Shortly after 2:00 a.m., Larmon relaxed on a stool behind the counter. Her last pleasant moments were spent browsing an Avon catalog.

For Mendyk and Frantz, the night was business as usual: smoking pot, drinking beer, and fruitlessly searching for women. Driving into the Presto store parking lot, they spied Larmon. “Let’s grab this bitch,” Mendyk said. Frantz later claimed he thought his friend was joking.

Inside, Mendyk walked to the cooler and pulled out a hamburger. Unpeeling the wrapper, he placed the burger in the microwave and asked Larmon for some relish. When she walked over to get it for him, he grabbed her from behind. Mendyk forced the frightened clerk out of the store and into his truck.

While Frantz drove, Mendyk repeatedly molested Larmon. “Please let me go,” she sobbed. They drove into a swamp a few miles from the store.

Jan Glidewell of the St. Petersburg Times described what happened next: “They stripped her, bound her to a sawhorse – with wire – and bound her hands behind her. Mendyk spent more than an hour sexually assaulting her, with his body and with a [broom handle. He] took a cigarette break and then went back at it apparently for about another hour.

“He and Frantz then left her hanging by her wired wrists from a scrub oak tree and began to drive away when Mendyk’s truck got stuck. The two men decided to go back and after hearing Larmon beg tearfully for her life, strangled her with a garrote made with a bandana and a knife. Then, seeing her quiver, they wrapped a piece of heavy coaxial cable around her neck and twisted it to be sure. Then, still unsure, they cut her down from the tree, dragged her body 97 feet to a concealing stand of palmettos, and stabbed her in the throat.”

After getting stuck, the killers walked several miles to a pay phone and called Frantz’s mother.

By now it was closing in on ten o’clock and the fog was beginning to lift. Mendyk, Frantz, and his mother (who was told they’d gotten stuck while mud-bogging) were trying to pull the truck from the mud when a police helicopter suddenly swooped down above them. Even these two dope-heads could guess that a search was underway for the missing clerk. They knew the game was up when officers converged on the scene.

Searchers quickly discovered the corpse of Lee Ann Larmon. Cops arrested Mendyk and Frantz and the killers were soon confessing their roles in the crime.

Frantz agreed to testify against his friend and was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years. After Mendyk’s trial, a jury took the unprecedented step of convening for only twenty-three minutes before returning a verdict of guilty. The judge sentenced the murderer to death.

Mendyk’s notoriety should have ended there. However, the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty set up a website for the killer. Page after page of his writings, artwork, and photos now became available to anyone who wished to view it. Amid all his whining about death row and his pseudo-intellectual posturing, Lee Ann Larmon’s name was never mentioned. Online, Mendyk attempted to transform himself from pervert and rapist and torturer and murderer into “The Artist on Death Row.” He even married.

His pen pal request began: “‘Welcome to my Nightmare’ is Alice’s line so I bid you Enter my mind’s shadowy Dreamscape...” He stated that he was looking for “hedonistic” and “pagan” correspondents. Here’s a small sample of the killer’s writings: “Walk on the wild side with an American death row prisoner, confined to a 6x9 cage like an animal. Since they treat me as such I’ll be one – an unabashed, horny aries ram with fiery, dominant personality...Let your passionate, primal urges join with me for some hedonistic, erotic fun – all feisty ladies welcome and the kinkier, the better!”

In his confession to cops, at his trial, and on his website, Mendyk never showed even a shred of remorse for the murder of Lee Ann Larmon. But, according to the CCADP, the unrepentant Mendyk became “a friend” to the organization.

While Mendyk was playing the role of the horny “artiste”, Lee Ann Larmon was largely forgotten, except by family and friends. True, a small scholarship fund had been established at Pasco-Hernando Community College, and the Brooksville City Council passed an ordinance calling for at least two employees to work at convenience stores during night-time hours.

But while her killer enjoyed scamming the suckers, the innocent hard-working student faded from public view like the fog that hid her last torturous hours from the cops who were searching for her.

Sometime around Christmas, 2001, Mendyk began complaining of headaches. Doctors found that he had developed a malignant brain tumor. A few months later, on February 10, 2002, the murderer died. His wife and “friends” mourned his passing.

Lee Ann Larmon deserved better.

Todd Mendyk deserved worse. Much worse.