Aileen Wuornos: Cult Hero Or Reckless Serial Killer?

When you think of female serial killers, the first person who comes to mind is Aileen Wuornos.

Aileen Wuornos killed seven men in Florida from 1989 to 1990 while supporting herself through sex work and theft. A jury convicted her of murdering Richard Mallory, and she later entered pleas in five other murder cases. The seventh killing did not produce another murder conviction before her execution. She is one serial killer from Florida whose case remains widely discussed.

Her case has since been retold in films, documentaries, and books. Those versions often argue over whether Wuornos should be seen as a victim, a calculating killer, or both. The court record is narrower. It shows the evidence presented, the jury’s verdict, the pleas that followed, the appeals, and the competency review before her execution.

Aileen Wuornos's Childhood

Aileen Wuornos’s childhood included abandonment, violence, unstable housing, and reported sexual abuse. Those experiences help explain the setting of her early life, but they do not make murder an inevitable result.

She was born on February 29th, 1956, in Troy, Michigan to parents Diane Wuornos and Leo Pittman. Aileen was raised solely by her mother, Diane, who gave birth to Aileen when she was only 17.

At the time of her birth, Diane already had a two-year-old son, and the struggle of raising two young children while only a teenager herself proved too much for her. Diane abandoned her children in 1960, leaving them in the care of their maternal grandparents.

Aileen’s father, Leo, had a history of violence and was incarcerated for child molestation before Aileen was born, so the two never met. When Aileen was 13, Leo committed suicide in his prison cell.

Wuornos Was Sexually Abused

Aileen was unaware that she was living with her grandparents, and for many years believed that they were actually her real mother and father.

But like her real parents, her grandparents were abusive towards the young Aileen and her brother. They were both subject to regular beatings and lashings at the hands of her grandfather, who also sexually abused Aileen as she got older.

When Aileen was 14, her grandmother passed away from liver failure (less than a year after her real father committed suicide), leaving her solely in the hands of her violent grandfather.

Homeless And Pregnant At Fifteen

Aileen was naturally confused about sexual relationships, and during high school, she began to engage in prostitution. She offered sexual favors to boys around school in exchange for money, cigarettes and drugs. There were also reports that she began a sexual relationship with her own brother.

In 1970, when Aileen was only 14 years old, she was raped and impregnated by a friend of her grandfather’s. She gave birth to a baby boy when she was 15, who was immediately placed up for adoption. The identity and whereabouts of Aileen Wuornos’s son have never been discovered.

After becoming a mother, her grandfather turned excessively violent towards Aileen and eventually kicked her out of his house. She then began living rough in the woods near her home and supported herself through prostitution and theft.

Aileen's Self Destruction

As a young adult, Wuornos moved through a series of arrests, short relationships, and unstable living arrangements.

She was arrested for DUI, shooting a firearm and disorderly conduct in 1974, around which time she began hitchhiking across the United States. She ended up in Florida, where she met a retired businessman named Lewis Fell, who was 50 years her senior. The two quickly married.

Aileen could have had an easy life alongside her wealthy husband, but instead, she continued to involve herself in petty crime and bar violence around Daytona Beach, Florida.

In only a few short weeks into their marriage, Fell took out a restraining order against Aileen who had attacked him with his own walking cane. After just 9 weeks, Fell and Wuornos annulled their marriage.

Drink, drugs and violence was all Aileen knew. She was arrested in 1976 for disturbing the peace after attacking a bartender with a pool cue.

Shortly after, Aileen’s brother died of throat cancer aged just 21. She received an inheritance from him of $10,000, which she spent in two months.

Aileen Gets A Girlfriend

Wuornos continued her life of prostitution and theft for the next ten years, accruing charges for armed robbery, forgery, car theft, resisting arrest and obstruction of justice. Several times, police pulled Wuornos over to find her in the possession of a number of weapons.

She served a prison sentence of 13 months in 1982 for armed robbery of a local store, being released in June 1983 and immediately going back to her criminal ways. Things changed when she met a woman named Tyria Moore at a local gay bar in Daytona Beach.

It seemed that finally, Wuornos had found the love she’d always wanted. The two began a romantic relationship and moved around Florida together, living on the streets and out of motel rooms.

Wuornos claimed that she stayed in love with Moore right up until her last days, despite her still engaging in prostitution while the two were together. Moore warned Wuornos of the dangers of her lifestyle, but Wuornos continued her reckless ways regardless.

The Murders Begin

The first of seven known killings began in November 1989. Over the next twelve months, bodies and abandoned vehicles were found across several Florida counties.

Her first victim was Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old who had enlisted Aileen’s prostitution services. She claimed that Mallory was abusive, tying her hands to his steering wheel and attacking her.

Aileen managed to pry herself free and pull out her .22 pistol from her purse, then shot Mallory three times. She then drove him to the nearby woods and dumped his body.

Wuornos later said that each man had attacked or threatened her. Prosecutors argued that robbery was the common motive, pointing to stolen cars and belongings that were pawned. Her account changed over time, which is why the self-defense claim has to be attributed to her rather than stated as a settled finding.

Aileen Gets Arrested

Wuornos’s killing spree ended in November 1990. Four months before, both Wuornos and Moore had been seen driving one of the victim’s cars.

As Wuornos was already a known felon, her fingerprints were on file, and police were able to match them with fingerprints discovered in the abandoned cars of the victims.

It took two months for police to finally locate Wuornos after an extensive search. She was found in a bar in Volusia County on January 9^th, 1991 where she was arrested on an outstanding warrant for violent behavior.

By this point, Moore had already fled to Pennsylvania, having ended her relationship with Wuornos. Police apprehended her on January 10^th.

Now with both Wuornos and Moore in custody, police devised a plan to elicit a confession out of Wuornos for the murders. In exchange for her cooperation, Moore received immunity from any kind of prosecution (which Wuornos was unaware of).

Tyria Moore's Betrayal

While Wuornos was in custody, Moore made recorded calls at investigators’ direction. She told Wuornos that she feared being blamed for the murders. Wuornos responded by taking responsibility for several killings.

Under the guise of ‘getting their story straight,’ Moore managed to get Wuornos to confess to some of the murders, and she also revealed that there were several other killings that Moore was unaware of.

The calls became part of the prosecution’s case. Moore continued to cooperate and testified at trial. A jury convicted Wuornos of Richard Mallory’s murder, then recommended a death sentence.

Throughout the whole trial, it was reported that Moore never once made eye contact with Wuornos.

Trial Of A Serial Killer

For each murder, Wuornos claimed that she acted in self-defense when her clients tried to attack and rape her. However, her conversations with Moore painted a different story.

Mallory had a prior conviction for sexual violence, a fact the defense argued supported Wuornos’s account. The jury still rejected self-defense in his killing. The later pleas resolved other cases without separate jury trials on the same claim.

On some occasions, she claimed that she was trying to rob her victims, but ended up shooting them to avoid leaving witnesses. This is further backed up by the fact that Wuornos stole some of her victims’ possessions and pawned them off. She later recanted her self-defense claims, stating:

“I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I've told you; but these others did not. [They] only began to start to.”

You can read more Aileen Wuornos quotes here.

What the court record says about the Wuornos case

A Florida case-file illustration. The verdict and appeals provide a firmer timeline than later screen portrayals.

Wuornos gave several accounts of the killings. She initially told investigators that the men had attacked her and that she shot in self-defense. Prosecutors argued that she killed to rob them, then used their cars and sold or pawned their belongings. In the Mallory case, jurors heard both versions and convicted her of first-degree murder in January 1992.

The distinction between that verdict and the other cases is easy to lose. After the Mallory trial, Wuornos entered no-contest or guilty pleas in five more murders. Those pleas produced additional death sentences without five more full jury trials. A seventh victim, Peter Siems, disappeared and his car was recovered, but his body was never found. Wuornos was not separately convicted of his murder.

Her appeals raised questions about evidence, pretrial publicity, counsel, and the death sentence. In 1994, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the Mallory conviction and sentence. Later opinions addressed the other cases and post-conviction claims. Whatever view a reader takes of Wuornos’s life, the legal result is clear: the Florida courts left six murder convictions and six death sentences in place.

The final competency review asked a different question. It did not retry the murders or decide whether every statement Wuornos made was reliable. It asked whether she understood that she was going to be executed and why. The state concluded that she met the legal standard for competency. Wuornos ended further appeals and was executed on October 9, 2002.

This is also why her changing statements cannot all be treated as a single confession. At different times she described self-defense, robbery, and a desire to be executed. Some statements came during police calls, some in court, and some during documentary interviews years later. The source and timing matter.

For a plain explanation of how verdicts, pleas, appeals, and sentencing fit together, see our guide to the criminal justice process. Our article on what happens after a criminal charge covers the earlier steps.

Aileen Wuornos Is Sentenced To Death

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to absolve her of her crimes, and on January 31^st, 1992, Aileen Wuornos was given the death penalty. She was convicted on six counts of first-degree murder, resulting in a total of six death sentences.

During her incarceration, Wuornos’s mental state began to deteriorate. She believed that prison staff were tampering with her food, filing it with spit and urine. She believed they were trying to coerce her into committing suicide by making her cell conditions worse than other inmates’.

On October 9^th, 2002, Aileen Wuornos was executed. She declined her last meal, instead opting for a cup of coffee. Her last words to the world were a promise that she’d return after death.

“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.”

The True Story Of 'Monster' Movie

The incredible story of Aileen Wuornos’s life has been told many times, in movies, books, TV shows, documentaries and even an opera.

The most popular adaptation of her story is the film Monster starring Charlize Theron. Her life has also been chronicled in two popular documentaries.

Wanting To Die

During filming the above documentaries, filmmaker Nick Broomfield was told some interesting things by Wuornos in relation to her murders.

Wuornos claimed during her trial:

“I killed those men. Robbed them as cold as ice. And I'd do it again, too. There's no chance in keeping me alive or anything, because I'd kill again. I have hate crawling through my system...I am so sick of hearing this 'she's crazy' stuff. I've been evaluated so many times. I'm competent, sane, and I'm trying to tell the truth. I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again.”

But during a moment when Wuornos thought the cameras were off, she told Broomfield that every murder was an act of self-defense, but she told the court a different story because she couldn’t stand the idea of being on death row for so long. She hated the prison system and just wanted to be executed.

Aileen's Last Words

Just one day before her execution, Wuornos was interviewed by Broomfield for a final interview. She spends 22-minutes criticizing the police, the prison system and the media.

Her final murder took place on November 19, 1990, when Walter Antonio, a 62-year-old truck driver was shot four times and abandoned on a barren country road.

Sources

• Florida Supreme Court opinion in Wuornos v. State, 1994
• Florida Supreme Court opinion in Wuornos v. State, 1996
• Florida filing on competency and execution review

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