By Aileen Wuornos was an American serial killer who robbed her victims, all men, whom she eventually killed with a gun. Remembered for her hostile, surly and intimidating character, she was executed by lethal injection in 2002.
Aileen Wournos became America’s most famous serial killer. Her fame was, without a doubt, well deserved.
She never showed remorse for the murders she had committed, claiming self-defense. The reality is that Aileen’s life was never easy from the very beginning.
Childhood and adolescence
Aileen Carol Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956 in Rochester, Michigan, United States, as Aileen Carol Pittman, her real name.
Her mother Diane abandoned her six months after giving birth and her father Leo was imprisoned for child abuse. Aileen, her sister Laurie and her brother Keith were sent to live with their grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos, who adopted the children in 1960.
A horrible childhood
Her lifelong friend Dawn Botkins would later say in a documentary that she witnessed Aileen being severely beaten by her grandfather , even though she knew there were witnesses. She was also rumored to be the biological daughter of her grandfather, who was said to have abused her as well as her mother.
Arguments, fights and beatings were a constant in that family. One of the many episodes would leave marks on her skin for life: her grandmother burned her skin with flammable liquid.
When she was nine, Aileen Wuornos began working as a prostitute . At fourteen, she gave birth to a baby who was to be given up for adoption and, after being kicked out of her home, she went to live in the woods.
The hope of a better life
Some time later, Aileen would embark on a period of travel throughout the country in search of work. Finally, she would end up working as a prostitute. Little Aileen had become a woman, but she was wild, uneducated and had a violent character that intimidated everyone .
She married the president of the sailing club, Lewis Gratz Fell, and divorced him shortly after. She was in and out of prison on a regular basis for car theft, resisting arrest, obstructing justice, threatening with a firearm, and so on.
He would eventually begin a relationship with Tyria Moore , a woman he met at a local gay bar and fell in love with. The couple would embark on a series of criminal ventures under false names.
The spider woman
Aileen Wuornos was dubbed Spider Woman by authorities for her aversion to men and her fondness for wearing black leather clothing.
Her best friend was a .22 caliber pistol , which she carried for protection, she claimed, but which she used for another purpose when one day she pulled the trigger and could not turn back.
Sowing corpses
It all began when her life crossed paths with Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old truck driver who spent hours driving on the highway and who had been accused of sexual assault. According to Aileen’s version, that encounter was not like the previous ones with other clients , and she accused Richard Mallory of sexually assaulting her anally.
Aileen shot him three times in the chest with the gun , then wrapped his body in a rug and abandoned him. She left no clues, so the investigation did not go very far either.
A year later, the remains of David Spears , 43, were found, shot six times. While the identification was being carried out, just five days later, a third body was found with nine wounds; specifically, that of Charles Carskaddon, 40.
Regarding the fourth body, identified as Peter Siems, 65, several witnesses claimed that he had taken two women who were hitchhiking into his car. Aileen Wuornos’ fingerprints were found on his door handle.
Two identikits of Aileen Wuornos and Tyria Moore were released. Their subsequent arrest was also helped by the fact that both were selling various valuable items belonging to the victims in different pawnshops.
A serial killer
More bodies would appear. Everything would stop when, after being arrested, Tyria pointed to Aileen Wuornos as the sole author of the murders . In this way, they found Aileen, who was found drunk inside a car.
The reality is that Aileen Wuornos had become a serial killer. She had no regrets about it, as she detailed in the documentary Aileen Wuornos: The selling of a Serial Killer (1992) , regarding one of the murders: “She deserved it, I feel sorry for her family, but what I did was defend myself.”
During interrogation he admitted to having killed seven men , and claimed that he had done so in self-defense.
In 1992 she appeared in court, and on June 30 of that year she was sentenced to death for the proven murder of three men.
“I will be in heaven while you all rot in hell. I know I was raped and you are nothing but trash. You sentence a woman to death who was raped?” Aileen Wuornos said after being sentenced to death.
Conviction
During her time in prison, she would give several controversial interviews . At times, her story may give us the impression of being a fictional account; however, it is terrifyingly real. What remains of Aileen Wuornos are all her statements where truth and lies are probably intertwined.
There are those who, far from defending her actions, do point out that perhaps Aileen was the victim of a dysfunctional and horrible past, and the accumulated rage led her to act in the worst possible way . The reality is that Aileen Wuornos met her end at 9:45 a.m. on October 9, 2002, executed by lethal injection at the age of 46, after 12 years on Florida’s death row.
If there is a film related to the life of a serial killer, it was Monster (2003), marked by the great performance of Charlize Theron , winner of an Oscar for best actress for this film. Based on the true story of Aileen Wournos, it is without a doubt a highly recommended feature film.