Aileen Wuornos

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Aileen Carol Wuornos was born on the 29th of February 1956, a leap day that comes around only once every four years. She became an American serial killer, and she was executed in 2002 after a long wait on Florida's death row. Her story has never settled into a single version, partly because she kept changing it herself. How does a girl abandoned in early childhood end up in a Florida death cell? What did the courts hear about the men she killed, and what were they never allowed to hear? And why do filmmakers, writers and musicians keep returning to her?

  262332

• 2. A Broken Beginning

  ›

  Rochester, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, was where Aileen was born into a family that was already coming apart. Her mother, Diane Wuornos, married 18-year-old Leo Pittman on the 3rd of June 1954, when Diane was only 14. Their son Keith arrived on the 14th of March 1955. Less than two years into the marriage, and two months before Aileen's birth, Diane filed for divorce. She was 16 when she gave birth to her daughter.

  Leo Pittman, the father Aileen never met, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1967 for kidnapping and raping a seven-year-old girl. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he hanged himself in prison on the 30th of January 1969. By then Diane was long gone. In January 1960, when Aileen was almost four, she left both children with their maternal grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos. The couple legally adopted Keith and Aileen on the 18th of March 1960. Both grandparents were alcoholics.

  A childhood friend later said she watched Aileen's grandfather beat her with a belt for a good five minutes. Aileen herself said he sexually assaulted her and made her undress before beatings. By age 11 she was trading sexual activity at school for cigarettes, drugs and food. She had also engaged in sexual activity with her brother.

  In 1970, at age 14, Aileen became pregnant after being raped by a friend of her grandfather. Her friends claimed the man was an older local pedophile in his 60s. She gave birth to a boy at a home for unwed mothers on the 23rd of March 1971, and her grandfather forced her to give the child up for adoption. A few months later she dropped out of school, around the time her grandmother died of liver failure. At 15 she was thrown out of the house, and she lived in the woods near her old home, supporting herself through prostitution. Her first arrest would come three years later, in Colorado.

  56122330

• 3. A Growing Record

  ›

  On the 27th of May 1974, at age 18, Wuornos was arrested in Jefferson County, Colorado. The charges were drunk driving, disorderly conduct, and firing a .22-caliber pistol from a moving vehicle. A failure-to-appear charge followed later.

  Two years afterward she hitchhiked to Florida, where she met Lewis Gratz Fell, a 69-year-old yacht club president. They married quickly, and the local paper printed the announcement in its society pages. Wuornos kept getting into confrontations at their local bar, and she spent a short time in jail for assault. She also struck Fell with his own cane, and within weeks of the wedding he had won a restraining order against her.

  Back in Michigan, on the 14th of July 1976, she was arrested at Bernie's Club in Mancelona, Antrim County. The charges were assault and disturbing the peace, after she threw a cue ball at a bartender's head. Three days later her brother Keith died of esophageal cancer, and she received 10,000 dollars from his life insurance. She and Fell annulled their marriage on the 21st of July, after only nine weeks. In August she was fined 105 dollars for drunk driving, paid it from her inheritance, and bought a car that she wrecked soon afterward. The rest of the money was gone within two months.

  In 1978, at age 22, she tried to end her life by shooting herself in the stomach. Between the ages of 14 and 22 she attempted suicide six times. On the 20th of May 1981 she was arrested in Edgewater, Florida, for robbing a convenience store at gunpoint. She took 35 dollars and two packs of cigarettes. She was sentenced to prison on the 4th of May 1982 and released on the 30th of June 1983.

  On the 1st of May 1984, she was arrested for trying to pass forged checks at a bank in Key West. In November 1985 she was named as a suspect in the theft of a revolver and ammunition in Pasco County. On the 4th of January 1986, Miami police arrested her for car theft, resisting arrest and obstruction of justice, after she gave them identification in her aunt's name. They found a .38 caliber revolver and a box of ammunition in the stolen car. Months later, on the 2nd of June 1986, Volusia County deputies held her for questioning after a male companion said she pulled a gun in his car and demanded 200 dollars. She was carrying spare ammunition, and a .22-caliber pistol lay under the passenger seat she had occupied.

  Later in 1986-30-year-old Wuornos met 24-year-old Tyria Moore, a motel maid, at a Daytona Beach gay bar called Zodiac. The two moved in together, and Wuornos paid for their life with her earnings as a prostitute. On the 4th of July 1987, Daytona Beach police questioned both women over an accusation of assault and battery with a beer bottle. On the 12th of March 1988, Wuornos accused a Daytona Beach bus driver of assault, saying he pushed her off the bus after an argument, and Moore was listed as a witness. At her trial, Wuornos said of Moore, "It was love beyond imaginable. Earthly words cannot describe how I felt about Tyria." Even before her execution she claimed she was still in love with Moore. Less than two years after the bus complaint, the first of seven men would be killed.

  520233036

• 4. Seven Men

  ›

  Richard Charles Mallory, a 51-year-old electronics store owner from Clearwater, was the first to die, on the 30th of November 1989. Wuornos claimed he drove her to an abandoned area for sexual services, then beat, raped and sodomized her. It later emerged that Mallory had a prior conviction for attempted rape in Maryland. Wuornos said nothing about this until she stood trial, and Moore never claimed Wuornos had mentioned it to her. A Volusia County deputy sheriff found his abandoned vehicle two days after the killing. His body turned up on the 13th of December in a wooded area several miles away. He had been shot several times, and two bullets in the left lung caused his death.

  David Andrew Spears, a 47-year-old construction worker from Winter Garden, was declared missing as of the 19th of May 1990. On the 1st of June his naked body was found along US 19 in Citrus County. He had been shot six times with a .22 pistol.

  Charles Edmund Carskaddon, a 40-year-old part-time rodeo worker, was killed on the 31st of May 1990. His naked body was found in Pasco County on the 6th of June, shot nine times with a .22 caliber weapon. It had been wrapped in an electric blanket and was badly decomposed. Witnesses saw Wuornos with Carskaddon's car, and she had pawned a gun identified as his.

  Peter Abraham Siems, a 65-year-old retired merchant seaman, left Jupiter, Florida, for Arkansas in June 1990. His car was found in Orange Springs on the 4th of July, and witnesses saw Moore and Wuornos abandoning it. His body was never found.

  Troy Eugene Burress, a 50-year-old sausage salesman from Ocala, was reported missing on the 31st of July 1990. His body was discovered on the 4th of August in a wooded area along State Road 19 in Marion County. He had been shot twice.

  Charles Richard "Dick" Humphreys, 56, had been a United States Air Force major, a state child abuse investigator and a chief of police. He was killed on the 11th of September 1990, and his body was found in Marion County the next day. He was fully clothed and had been shot seven times in the head and torso. His car turned up in Suwannee County.

  Walter Gino Antonio, a 61-year-old trucker, security guard and reserve police officer, was the last. His nearly naked body lay near a remote logging road in Dixie County on the 19th of November 1990, and he had been shot four times. His car appeared in Brevard County five days later, adding one more abandoned vehicle to a trail that was about to lead police toward two women.

  2363898100

• 5. Arrest and Trials

  ›

  Rhonda Bailey, a witness to the crash of Siems' car, gave police a description of two women. That description fed a media campaign to find them. Investigators also located some of the victims' belongings in pawnshops. A fingerprint on a receipt at one pawnshop matched a print left inside Siems' car, and Wuornos's prints were already in a database because of her Florida criminal record.

  On the 9th of January 1991, Wuornos was arrested at The Last Resort, a biker bar in Volusia County. According to The New York Times, the arrest rested on an outstanding warrant for carrying a concealed weapon, issued under the name Lori Grody. By then, witness accounts and the pawnshop fingerprint had already made her a suspect in the killings. Police found Moore the next day in Pittston, Pennsylvania. She agreed to draw out a confession in exchange for immunity, and she returned with officers to Florida and stayed in a motel. Under police guidance she phoned Wuornos repeatedly, begging for help in clearing her own name. On the 16th of January 1991, Wuornos confessed, saying the men had tried to rape her and she had killed in self-defense.

  In November 1991-44-year-old Arlene Pralle legally adopted Wuornos. The two had never met or been related. Pralle had simply seen Wuornos's photo in a newspaper.

  Wuornos went on trial on the 14th of January 1992 for Mallory's murder. Florida's Williams Rule normally bars evidence of other crimes, but it let prosecutors present her other offenses to show a pattern of illegal activity. On the 27th of January she was convicted, with help from Moore's testimony. Defense psychiatrists told the sentencing hearing she was mentally unstable and diagnosed borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. Four days later she was sentenced to death.

  The defense had tried to put Mallory's past before the jury. Records from a maximum-security facility for sexual offenders showed he was committed from 1958 to 1962 after a charge of assault with intent to rape. They showed eight years of overall treatment, and a 1961 observation that he "possessed strong sociopathic trends". The judge refused to admit the records and denied her request for a retrial.

  On the 31st of March 1992, Wuornos pleaded no contest to the murders of Humphreys, Burress and Spears, saying she wanted to "get right with God". She told the court, in part, "I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I've told you; but these others did not." On the 15th of May 1992 she received three more death sentences. In June 1992 she pleaded guilty to killing Carskaddon, and in November she received her fifth sentence of death. In February 1993 she pleaded guilty to Antonio's murder and was sentenced to death a sixth time. Siems' death brought no charge, because his body was never found.

  Her accounts never stayed consistent. At first she said all seven men had raped or tried to rape her. Later she withdrew the self-defense claim and pointed to robbery and a wish to leave no witnesses. Yet when she believed the cameras were off during an interview with documentarian Nick Broomfield, she told him it had been self-defense after all. She added that she could no longer bear death row, where she had spent ten years, and wanted to die.

  213293898

• 6. Death Row

  ›

  The Broward Correctional Institution housed Florida's death row for women, and Wuornos was held there until she was moved to Florida State Prison for her execution. Her appeal to the United States Supreme Court was denied in 1996. In a 2001 petition to the Florida Supreme Court, she said she wanted to dismiss her lawyers and end all pending appeals. "I killed those men", she wrote, "robbed them as cold as ice. And I'd do it again, too." She insisted, "I'm competent, sane, and I'm trying to tell the truth." Her attorneys argued she was not mentally competent to make the request, but a court-appointed panel of psychiatrists disagreed with them.

  In 2002 the complaints changed. Wuornos accused prison matrons of contaminating her food with dirt, saliva and urine. She said she had overheard staff trying to push her toward suicide before the execution, and she described guards wishing to rape her. She also protested strip searches, tight handcuffing, door kicking, frequent window checks, low water pressure and mildew on her mattress. She threatened to boycott showers and meal trays when certain officers were on duty, and she said she was washing at the sink in her cell. Her attorney said she simply wanted humane treatment until the day she died, and that she believed what she had written.

  In the weeks before her death, Wuornos gave Broomfield a series of interviews. She spoke of being taken away to meet God, Jesus and the angels. In the last interview she said her mind was tortured and her head crushed by "sonic pressure", and that each complaint made the abuse worse. Then she turned on the man filming her. "You sabotaged my ass! Society, and the cops, and the system! A raped woman got executed, and was used for books and movies and shit!" Her final on-camera words were "Thanks a lot, society, for railroading my ass". Her childhood friend Dawn Botkins later told Broomfield that the abuse was aimed at society and the media in general, not at him personally.

  The execution took place on the 9th of October 2002, by lethal injection of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. She turned down a last meal that could have cost up to 20 dollars and took a cup of coffee instead. Her last words were, "Yes, I would just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I'll be back, I'll be back". She died at 9:47 a.m. She was the second woman executed in Florida and the tenth in the United States since the Supreme Court restored capital punishment in 1976.

  2543444549

• 7. Ashes and Explanations

  ›

  Dawn Botkins scattered Wuornos's cremated ashes beneath a tree in Michigan, the state where she was born. At Wuornos's request, the song "Carnival" by Natalie Merchant, from the 1995 album Tigerlily, was played at her funeral. She had spent many hours listening to that album on death row. Merchant learned of this only after Broomfield sent her a working edit of his film, which disturbed her so much that she could not watch it. She then allowed the song into the closing credits of Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, released in 2003. Of Wuornos she wrote, "If it gave her some solace, I have to be grateful."

  Broomfield offered his own reading of her mind. He believed anger built up inside her, that she met terrible encounters on the roads as a prostitute, and that the anger finally exploded into violence. "That was her way of surviving", he said, and he thought she truly believed she had killed in self-defense. He described a woman who flew into screaming rages over minor disagreements. Yet he also said that outside those moods "there was an incredible humanity to her".

  Clinicians have offered other readings. Scored on the Psychopathy Checklist, Wuornos reached 32 out of 40, against a cutoff of 30 for psychopathy. Brice Arrigo argued that childhood sexual abuse and her years in sex work damaged her permanently. He pointed to her biological mother's departure and to her grandmother's refusal to confront the abuse, which left her without a mother-daughter bond. Wuornos and her brother had also believed their grandparents were their parents, and they learned the truth at age 11. She had an explosive temper from an early age, which made friendships and relationships hard to keep. Her upbringing has been partly linked to her borderline personality disorder.

  Robert Ressler, the FBI profiler credited with coining the term serial killer, mentioned her briefly in a 1992 account of his career. He said he rarely discusses female serial killers because women tend to kill in sprees rather than in sequence. Wuornos was his only exception. He did not apply the term to women who kill in postpartum psychosis, or to killers motivated purely by money, such as women who poison a string of boarders or spouses.

  4550515357

• 8. On Screen and Stage

  ›

  Charlize Theron won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Wuornos in the 2003 film Monster. Christina Ricci played Tyria Moore, renamed Selby Wall in the film, and the story follows Wuornos from her first killing to her execution. Later screen versions include the 2021 horror thriller Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman, with Peyton List, which invents a fictional version of her 1976 marriage to Fell. Jean Smart had earlier starred in the 1992 television movie Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story. Lily Rabe played a fictionalized Wuornos in the fifth season of American Horror Story: Hotel, in 2015. A 2002 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, titled "Chameleon", based its antagonist, Maggie Peterson, on her.

  Broomfield directed two documentaries about her, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer in 1992 and the 2003 film that carries Merchant's song. Her case also fills episodes of American Justice, Biography and Deadly Women. A 2021 Catching Killers episode on Netflix, titled "Manhunter: Aileen Wuornos", runs 40 minutes. Emily Turner directed the 2025 Netflix documentary Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers.

  Books began early. Michael Reynolds published Dead Ends in 1992, and Sue Russell published Lethal Intent in 2002. Monster: My True Story, credited to Wuornos and Christopher Berry-Dee, followed in 2004. Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words, edited by Lisa Kester and Daphne Gottlieb, appeared in 2012. Phyllis Chesler's Requiem for a Female Serial Killer came out in 2020. Poets have written about her too, and Olivia Gatwood refers to Wuornos throughout her 2019 book Life of the Party.

  An opera titled Wuornos premiered at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on the 22nd of June 2001, written by Carla Lucero and conducted by Mary Chun. Musicians in very different genres have followed. Jewel wrote "Nicotine Love", and the band Superheaven closed its 2015 album Ours Is Chrome with "Poor Aileen". Lingua Ignota built songs on her interviews, and in 2019 the rapper Cardi B recreated Wuornos's famous mugshot for her single "Press". Sarah Paulson was set to play her in the fourth season of the series Monster, which would carry the story to yet another audience.

  6371737688