Why Did Aileen Wuornos Become A Serial Killer?

In 2002, the state of Florida executed the 10th woman to ever get the death penalty in the United States since the 1976 reinstatement of capital punishment. That woman’s name was Aileen Wuornos, a former s*x worker who had killed seven men she picked up while working the highways of Florida in 1989 and 1990.

Her life later became the subject of screenplays, stage productions, and multiple documentaries and the basis for the 2003 movie Monster.

These takes on the story of Aileen Wuornos revealed a woman who proved capable of murder again and again while also showing just how tragic her own life was.

Childhood Trauma Made Aileen Wuornos A Serial Killer

Wuornos’ father, a convicted sex offender, was out of the picture before she was born and hung himself in his prison cell when she was 13 years old. Her mother, a Finnish immigrant, had already abandoned her by that point, leaving her in the care of her paternal grandparents.

Less than a year after her father committed suicide, Wuornos’ grandmother died of liver failure. Meanwhile, according to her later account, her grandfather had been beating and raping her for several years.

When Wuornos was 15 years old, she dropped out of school to have her grandfather’s friend’s baby at home for unwed mothers.

However, after having the child, she and her grandfather finally had it out in a domestic incident, and Wuornos was left to live in the woods outside of Troy, Mich. She then gave up her son for adoption. She got by on prostitution and petty theft.

At 20, Wuornos tried to escape her life by hitchhiking to Florida and marrying a 69-year-old man named Lewis Fell.

Fell was a successful businessman who had settled into semi-retirement as the president of a yacht club. Wuornos moved in with him and instantly started getting into trouble with local law enforcement.

She frequently left home, she shared with Fell to carouse in a local bar where she often got into fights. She also abused Fell, who later claimed she beat him with his cane.

Eventually, her elderly husband got a restraining order against her, forcing Wuornos to return to Michigan to file for an annulment after just nine weeks of marriage.

Around this time, Wuornos’ brother (with whom she had had an incestuous relationship) suddenly died of esophageal cancer.

Wuornos collected his $10,000 life insurance policy, used some of the money to cover the fine for a DUI, and bought a luxury car that she then crashed while driving under the influence.

When the money ran out, Wuornos returned to Florida and started getting arrested for theft again. She briefly did time for an armed robbery in which she stole $35 and some cigarettes.

Working as a prostitute again, Wuornos was arrested in 1986 when one of her customers told police she had pulled a gun on him in the car and demanded money.

In 1987, she moved in with a hotel maid named Tyria Moore, a woman who would become her lover and partner in crime.

Wuornos Subsisted on a Vagabond Existence as an Adult

Having previously been a ward of the state, Wuornos subsisted on a vagabond existence as an adult, hitchhiking and engaging in sex work to survive.

She was arrested during the mid-1970s for assault and disorderly conduct charges and eventually settled in Florida, where she met wealthy yachtsman Lewis Fell. The two were married in 1976, but Fell annulled the union shortly after that, upon Wuornos being arrested in another altercation.

A decade later, having been involved in numerous additional crimes, Wuornos met 24-year-old Tyria Moore in Daytona, Florida, and the two embarked on a romantic relationship.

Series of Murders

It would later be revealed that from late 1989 into the fall of 1990, Wuornos had murdered at least six men along Florida highways. In mid-December 1989, the body of Richard Mallory was found in a junkyard, with five more men’s bodies to be discovered over subsequent months.

Authorities were eventually able to track down Wuornos (who had used various aliases) and Moore from fingerprints and palm prints left in the crashed vehicle of another missing man, Peter Siems.

Wuornos was arrested in a bar in Port Orange, Florida, while police tracked down Moore in Pennsylvania. To avoid prosecution, Moore made a deal, and in mid-January 1991, she elicited a phone confession from Wuornos, who took complete and sole responsibility for the murders.

Trial and Execution

During the trial, Wuornos asserted that she had been raped and assaulted by Mallory and had killed him in self-defense.

Mallory had previously served a decade-long prison sentence for sexual assault, though not revealed in court. She stated that her killing of the five other men had been in self-defense, though she would later retract these statements.

On January 27, 1992, a jury found Wuornos guilty of first-degree murder in the Mallory case, and she received the death penalty.

Over the ensuing months, Wuornos pleaded guilty to the murders of the five other men whose murders she was charged with and received a death sentence for each plea. Outside of court, she later admitted to the killing of Siems, whose body was

Aileen Wuornos Last Words

Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. Her reported last words were, “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 mother ship and all. I’ll be back.”

Wuronos’ remains were cremated and spread by a tree in her hometown.