Aileen Wuornos is considered America’s first female serial killer. She was responsible for the murder of seven men within twelve months, all of which were her clients when she was engaging in street prostitution.
Wuornos was born on February 29th, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan. Her parents, Diane Wuornos and Leo Pittman, married when Diane was only 14 years old, Leo being 18. They divorced before Aileen was born, so she never knew her father. In 1967, her father was sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl and committed suicide by hanging in custody. When Wuornos was 4 years old, her mother abandoned her, leaving it to Aileen’s alcoholic grandparents to raise her. She grew up believing that her grandparents were her parents before finding out the truth later on, an interesting parallel between another infamous serial killer, Ted Bundy. Throughout Aileen’s childhood, she endured physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather and had sexual relations with her own brother. She also began engaging in sexual activities with boys at her school in exchange for money and cigarettes at the age of eleven. In 1971 on March 23rd, Wuurnos gave birth to a boy who was put up for adoption as a result of sexual assault from her family’s friend. When Wuronos was 15, she began to live in the woods and support herself through sex work, after being kicked out of the house. Between the ages of 14 and 22, Wuornes attempted suicide six separate times.
Aileen Wuornos had an extensive criminal history prior to the murders and was arrested a multitude of times. These crimes were often involving prostitution, assault, robbery, drunk driving, and illegal activities with guns. She committed the murders from late 1989 to 1990, where she shot, robbed, and stole the vehicles of her seven middle-aged motorist clients. Wuornos was arrested at The Last Resort bar in Port Orange, Florida in 1991 on January 9th. During her trial in 1992, Wuronos contested that her crimes were an act of self-defense, as the men were attempting to sexually assault her. She redacted these testimonies later, however. Wuornos chose to plead no contest to the murders of David Andrew Spears, Troy Eugene Burress, and Charles Richard Humphreys. She pleaded guilty to the murders of Charles Edmund Carskaddon and Walter Gino Antonio and was not charged with the murder of Peter Abraham Siems, since his body was never recovered. At her sentencing, specialists on the defense believed she was mentally unstable, observing her to have many behavioral problems and deep traumatic mental scarring. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder along with antisocial personality disorder.
In the end, Wuornos received six death sentences. She was imprisoned at the Florida Department of Corrections Broward Correctional Institution where she served ten years on death row before being transferred to the Florida State Prison for her inedible execution. During this time she complained of her unfair treatment in prison, accusing prison matrons of poisoning her food and prison personnel of improper, inhumane treatment. On October 9th, 2002, Aileen Wuornos was executed by lethal injection.
