Aileen Wuornos: Her Life, Crimes, Trial, and Execution

Aileen Wuornos was convicted of murdering six men in Florida in 1989 and 1990. A jury convicted her of one murder, the killing of Richard Mallory, in January 1992. She pleaded no contest or guilty to the other five. A seventh man, Peter Siems, disappeared in 1990 and his body has never been found. She was never charged in his case. Florida executed her by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

She is one of the best-known female serial killers in American history, mostly because of the 2003 film Monster. This page sticks to the record: what the Florida Supreme Court found, what she said and when, and where her own accounts changed. She also had one child. Our article on Aileen Wuornos’s son covers the baby she gave birth to at 15 and was made to give up.

Investigation Discovery's three-part series Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos premieres on September 30, 2026. If you are here because of it, or because of Netflix's Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the shop has an Aileen Wuornos collection of shirts, hoodies, socks, and a mug.

Aileen Wuornos's childhood

She was born Aileen Carol Pittman on February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan. Her parents, Diane Wuornos and Leo Pittman, had split up before she was born. She never met her father. According to the Florida Supreme Court's 1994 opinion, he was in prison for rape and kidnapping when he hanged himself there, in 1969.

In 1960 her mother left Aileen and her older brother, Keith, with her own parents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos. The grandparents adopted both children and raised them in Troy, Michigan, as their own. As a child she learned that the couple raising her were her grandparents. The case summary kept by the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney's office puts her age at about 12. Biography.com says about 10.

The 1994 opinion sums up the evidence her lawyers presented at sentencing. Her grandfather was an alcoholic who later killed himself. Her grandmother died of a liver disorder. Her brother died of cancer at 21. "At about age 14, Wuornos was raped by a family friend," the opinion says, and her grandfather "later forced her to give up the child for adoption." Wuornos also said her grandfather beat her and sexually abused her. Those are her statements. No one was ever charged.

Her son was born in March 1971 at a home for unwed mothers in Detroit. Her grandmother died that July. When Aileen tried to come home, the court opinion says, her grandfather would not take her back, and she "went onto the streets and began a life of prostitution and alcohol and drug abuse." Not everyone in the family told it that way. At sentencing, the state called Barry Wuornos, her biological uncle, who was also her brother by adoption. He testified that the family had a "normal lifestyle" and that he never saw his father beat her.

Arrests, a marriage, and the move to Florida

The arrests started early. In May 1974, using the name Sandra Kretsch, she was jailed in Jefferson County, Colorado, for disorderly conduct, drunk driving, and firing a .22 pistol from a moving car, according to the Clark County case summary.

In 1976 she hitchhiked to Florida and married Lewis Gratz Fell, a wealthy yacht club president about five decades older than she was. They married in May. It was over by July. Fell got a restraining order and said she had beaten him with his own cane. Wuornos said he attacked her first. On July 13, 1976, while the marriage was falling apart, she was arrested back in Antrim County, Michigan, for throwing a cue ball at a bartender's head.

Keith died of throat cancer on July 17, 1976. She received $10,000 from his life insurance. It was gone in two months, some of it on a new car that she soon wrecked.

The next ten years were a string of small crimes in Florida. On May 20, 1981, she was arrested in Edgewater for the armed robbery of a convenience store. She was sentenced in May 1982 and released on June 30, 1983. In 1984 she was arrested in Key West for trying to pass forged checks. In 1985 she started using the name Lori Grody, borrowed from an aunt in Michigan. That alias is the one that later tied her to the murders.

Tyria Moore

In 1986 she met Tyria Moore at a gay bar in the Daytona area. The two began a romantic relationship that lasted about four and a half years, the 1994 opinion says. "Moore worked as a maid, while Wuornos worked as a prostitute along Central Florida highways." They moved between cheap motels and rented rooms around Daytona Beach.

Moore was never charged with any crime in the case. She is a private person today, and our article on her covers what she did during the investigation and what is public about her since.

The victims

Between late November 1989 and November 1990, six men who had picked up Wuornos were found shot to death in Central and North Florida, and a seventh went missing. Prosecutors said she robbed them. Wuornos first told police that each man had attacked her, and later changed that account more than once. The table below lists what happened in each case in court.

The seven men and what happened in court

Victim	Where he was found	Court outcome
Richard Mallory, 51, Clearwater electronics shop owner	Car found December 1, 1989. Body found December 13, 1989, in woods in Volusia County.	Jury verdict of guilty, January 27, 1992. Death sentence, January 31, 1992.
David Spears, 43, Winter Garden construction worker	June 1, 1990, along Highway 19 in Citrus County.	No contest plea, March 31, 1992. Death sentence, May 15, 1992.
Charles Carskaddon, 40, part-time rodeo worker	June 6, 1990, in Pasco County.	Guilty plea, June 1992. Death sentence, November 1992.
Peter Siems, 65, retired merchant seaman	Left his home in Jupiter in June 1990. His car was found July 4, 1990, in Orange Springs. His body has never been found.	Never charged.
Troy Burress, 50, Ocala sausage salesman	August 4, 1990, in woods along State Road 19 in Marion County.	No contest plea, March 31, 1992. Death sentence, May 15, 1992.
Dick Humphreys, 56, retired Air Force major and former police chief	September 12, 1990, in Marion County.	No contest plea, March 31, 1992. Death sentence, May 15, 1992.
Walter Antonio, 62, trucker and reserve police officer	November 19, 1990, near a logging road in Dixie County.	Guilty plea, February 1993. Death sentence.

Ages are from the Clark County case summary. Some sources give Spears's age as 47 and Antonio's as 61. The plea and sentence dates are from Wikipedia's account of the case, which cites the same summary and the Gainesville Sun.

How police found her

On July 4, 1990, two women crashed Peter Siems's car in Orange Springs and walked away from it. A witness described the two women to police, which led to a media campaign to find them. Wuornos's palm print was found on the inside door handle, according to the 1994 opinion.

The break came from pawn shops. Items belonging to Mallory and Antonio were pawned near Daytona Beach under false names. A fingerprint examiner matched a thumbprint on one of those cards to the prints on file for "Lori Grody," who was wanted on a weapons charge. The Clark County summary says the bloody palm print in Siems's car matched the same prints.

On January 9, 1991, officers arrested her at the Last Resort, a biker bar in Port Orange. They arrested her on the old Lori Grody warrant and did not mention the murders. The next day, detectives found Moore at her sister's home in Pennsylvania. The 1994 opinion says Moore "agreed to return to Florida in an attempt to clear herself of any wrongdoing."

Back in Florida, police put Moore in a Daytona Beach motel and recorded 10 phone calls between the two women, the Los Angeles Times reported in December 1991. Moore told Wuornos she was afraid she would be blamed. On January 16, 1991, Wuornos confessed. A lawyer from the public defender's office "strongly advised Wuornos against confessing both before and during her comments to law officers," the court wrote. She confessed anyway.

The court later described what those calls were worth. Moore "encouraged Wuornos to confess and did so in part because of Moore's own fears of being prosecuted as an accomplice," the opinion says, and the calls "may have contained misstatements and exaggerations by both parties." But "viewed as a whole," the court wrote, "we cannot agree that Wuornos' will was overborne by any official misconduct. She freely waived her rights and confessed." The same opinion says that more than a year after the Mallory killing, Wuornos threw the gun into Rose Bay, south of the motel where she was staying.

The Mallory trial

The trial for Richard Mallory's murder started on January 14, 1992, in Volusia County. Under Florida's Williams rule, the judge let prosecutors present evidence about the other killings to rebut her claim that she acted in self-defense. The Florida Supreme Court later upheld that decision. Moore testified for the prosecution.

Wuornos testified that Mallory raped, beat, and sodomized her and that she shot him in self-defense. The defense had a taped statement from Mallory's girlfriend, Jacqueline Davis, but chose not to call her after she said that, to her knowledge, Mallory had always been gentle toward women. The jury did not accept Wuornos's account. On January 27, 1992, it found her guilty of first-degree murder and armed robbery with a firearm. As the verdict came in, she shouted at the jurors, according to the Associated Press: "I'm innocent. I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scumbags of America!"

At the penalty phase, three defense psychologists said she had borderline personality disorder. The state's expert agreed and added antisocial personality disorder. Her IQ was measured at 81. The jury recommended death by a vote of 12 to 0. On January 31, 1992, the judge sentenced her to death for the murder and to 10 years for the armed robbery.

What the jury never heard about Mallory

After the trial, her lawyers found records about Mallory's past. According to the brief her appeals lawyers filed with the Florida Supreme Court in 2001, Mallory had served four years in the Maryland Penitentiary on a 1957 charge of "housebreaking with intent to rape," and in 1958 he was committed to the Patuxent Institution in Maryland, which held men the state classed as "defective delinquents." The brief says the trial jury "heard or knew nothing" of this, because her trial lawyers did not get the records in time.

Her lawyers argued this was new evidence that supported her self-defense claim. She never got a new trial. The record does not prove what happened in Mallory's car. It does mean the jury decided the case without knowing about his history.

The pleas in the other cases

Wuornos never stood trial again. On March 31, 1992, she pleaded no contest to the murders of Dick Humphreys, Troy Burress, and David Spears, saying she wanted to "get right with God." In her statement to the court she said: "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." She ended by telling the prosecutor she hoped his wife and children would be raped. You can read more Aileen Wuornos quotes here, each with its date and source.

She pleaded guilty to the murder of Charles Carskaddon in June 1992 and to the murder of Walter Antonio in February 1993. With the Mallory case, that made six murder convictions and six death sentences.

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.

Appeals and death row

On September 22, 1994, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the Mallory conviction and death sentence. It rejected her arguments about the Williams rule evidence, the recorded calls, and the choice of jurors. The court also heard appeals in the other cases in the mid-1990s, and all six death sentences stood.

In 2001, after about ten years on death row, she asked the Florida Supreme Court to let her fire her lawyers and drop her appeals. CNN reported what she wrote: "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." Older versions of this page said she said this during her trial. She said it nearly a decade later.

At a hearing on dropping her appeals, she testified: "I am a serial killer. I would kill again," the AP reported on October 5, 2002.

In July 2002, in a 25-page handwritten court filing, she accused prison staff of tainting her food, spitting on it, and serving her potatoes cooked in dirt. Her attorney told the AP that she also complained her meals arrived with urine in them. A judge set a hearing, and the state said it would investigate.

Governor Jeb Bush briefly stayed the execution in 2002 and ordered a mental exam. He lifted the stay after three psychiatrists concluded that she understood she would be executed and why. That is the legal test for competency to be executed. It does not ask whether a person is mentally ill. It asks whether they understand what is happening to them. The Florida filing on competency and execution review listed in our sources is one of the documents from that stage.

The execution

Florida executed Wuornos by lethal injection at Florida State Prison, near Starke, on October 9, 2002. She was pronounced dead at 9:47 a.m. She was the first woman executed in Florida since Judy Buenoano in 1998, the AP reported. She declined her last meal, which could have been anything she wanted for under $20, and had a cup of coffee.

Her last words, as the AP recorded them: "I'd 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 mothership and all. I'll be back." The AP explained that the Rock is a Biblical reference to Jesus. Independence Day is the 1996 alien invasion film.

The last interview

The day before, the British filmmaker Nick Broomfield interviewed her for the last time. The AP reported that she cut the interview short after about 35 minutes, said police were controlling her mind, and stormed out. The footage is in his 2003 film, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.

The film's own summary describes another moment. After she told the court she had killed the men in cold blood, she said something different in an interview. The summary says she "admits in an unguarded moment when she thinks the camera is turned off that she did kill in self defense but that she can no longer stand being on death row (12 years) and has to die." So her accounts ran in both directions, right up to the end. That is why each quote on this page comes with a date and a source.

Documentaries and dramas about Aileen Wuornos

Her case has been retold many times on screen and once on stage. These are the main versions, oldest first.

Screen and stage versions of the Wuornos story

Title	Year	What it is
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer	1992	Nick Broomfield's first documentary about her, about the people around her who were trying to sell her story.
Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story	1992	TV movie with Jean Smart as Wuornos. Variety reviewed it on November 16, 1992.
Wuornos	2001	An opera by Carla Lucero. It premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on June 22, 2001.
Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer	2003	Broomfield's second documentary, with his final interview with her.
Monster	2003	Feature film. Charlize Theron won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Wuornos. Christina Ricci plays Selby Wall, a character based on Tyria Moore.
American Horror Story: Hotel	2015	Lily Rabe plays a fictional version of Wuornos in the Halloween episode.
Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman	2021	Horror film with Peyton List, loosely based on her 1976 marriage to Lewis Fell.
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers	2025	Netflix documentary directed by Emily Turner, released October 30, 2025.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story	2026	Netflix drama series, premiered September 17, 2026. Sarah Paulson plays Wuornos in a recurring role.
Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos	2026	Three-part Investigation Discovery series, premieres September 30, 2026, on ID and HBO Max. Morag Peacock plays Wuornos in recreations.

Monster is a drama, not a documentary. It changes names, including Tyria Moore's, who appears as Selby Wall. If you want to hear Wuornos in her own words, the two Broomfield films are the place to start.

For other cases from the same state, see our guide to every notorious serial killer from Florida.

Aileen Wuornos FAQ

How many people did Aileen Wuornos kill?

She was convicted of six murders: Richard Mallory by a jury, and five more by her own pleas. She was suspected in a seventh death, that of Peter Siems, but was never charged because his body was never found.

Was Aileen Wuornos the first female serial killer?

No. Women were accused of killing many people long before her. Jane Toppan, a Massachusetts nurse, confessed to 31 killings and was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1902. Wuornos is often described as the first woman who fit the FBI's profile of a serial killer. ABC News used that phrase in its report on her execution.

Did Aileen Wuornos kill in self-defense?

She said so at her trial and in her first confession, and later said the opposite. The jury rejected self-defense in the Mallory case. Records found after the trial showed Mallory had served time in Maryland on a 1957 charge of housebreaking with intent to rape. The jury never heard that.

Is Monster a true story?

It is based on a true story. The killings, the arrest, and the execution are real. Many scenes and the character Selby Wall are invented or changed.

Did Aileen Wuornos have a child?

Yes, one son, born in March 1971 when she was 15. He was adopted, and his name has never been made public.

What were Aileen Wuornos's last words?

"I'd 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 mothership and all. I'll be back."

Browse our true crime products, read about these 9 currently active serial killers, or see the Aileen Wuornos shirt collection.

Sources

• Florida Supreme Court opinion in Wuornos v. State, 1994, 644 So. 2d 1000, filed September 22, 1994.
• Florida Supreme Court opinion in Wuornos v. State, 1996.
• Florida filing on competency and execution review.
• Capital Collateral Regional Counsel. Initial brief, Aileen C. Wuornos v. State of Florida, case SC00-1199, served March 30, 2001. supremecourt.flcourts.gov.
• Clark County Prosecuting Attorney. "Aileen Carol Wuornos," death penalty case summary number 805, which reproduces AP, UPI, and Orlando Sentinel reports from 2002 and Florida Department of Corrections records. Accessed September 28, 2026. clarkprosecutor.org.
• Word, Ron. "Fla. Executes Female Serial Killer." Associated Press, October 9, 2002. apnews.com.
• Zarrella, John. "Wuornos' last words: 'I'll be back.'" CNN, October 9, 2002. cnn.com.
• Clary, Mike. "A Mother's Love." Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1991. latimes.com.
• Official site for Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. "Film Summary," archived January 16, 2010. web.archive.org.
• Hilsman, Hoyt. "Review: Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story." Variety, November 16, 1992. variety.com.
• Realscreen. "ID slates Aileen Wuornos docuseries featuring VFX recreations." July 22, 2026. realscreen.com.
• Netflix Tudum. "Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story cast guide." Accessed September 28, 2026. netflix.com.
• Wikipedia. "Aileen Wuornos," including its plea dates and "In media" section. Accessed September 28, 2026. en.wikipedia.org.