AILEEN CAROL WUORNOS: STORY OF A 7-MAN KILLER - BIOGRAPHIES - 2024

Aileen Carol Wuornos (1956-2002) was an American serial killer, accused of killing seven men in isolated events. The woman argued in her defense that she committed the crimes in self-defense. At her trial, she claimed that all her victims had raped her or tried to do so.

Researchers say that Wuornos did not have an easy life and from a very young age she was forced to resort to prostitution to survive. She was abandoned by her parents and suffered all kinds of abuse and violence. Thus, an aggressive personality developed and dragged a series of crimes that in the end turned her into a symbol of horror.

Her story was made into a movie in 2003. She and her lawyer sold the film rights to her life before the trial ended and she was convicted. The film was called Monster and starred Charlize Theron. For her role in the film, the actress won the Oscar for best actress.

His childhood and adolescence

Aileen Carol Wuornos, whose first name was Aileen Carol Pitman, was born on February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan, United States. Her parents were Diane Wuornos Melini and Leo Arthur Pittman, two teenagers who married at 15. Their marriage lasted less than two years and they separated before Aileen was born.

Tragedy came to Aileen's life at a very young age. Pittman was an alcoholic pedophile who also spent time confined in psychiatric hospitals in Kansas and Michigan. He hanged himself in 1969 while serving a prison sentence.

Following the divorce, her mother was unable to care for her and her brother Keith, who was only a year older. So in 1960 she left them in the care of her parents, Lauri and Britta Wuomos, who adopted the children legally.

At just 4 years old, Aileen had been abandoned by her mother. That would be the beginning of a life full of abuse, violence and mistreatment. Her grandmother was an alcoholic and she was also very violent. The grandfather, for his part, began to physically and sexually abuse her since she was little.

When she was only 12 years old, Aileen and her brother discovered that Lauri and Britta were not her biological parents, as they had believed, but her grandparents. Later, the murderer would confess that by that age, she had already had sexual relations with various people, including her own brother.

Pregnancy

At the young age of 14, she became pregnant. The baby's father was unknown. On March 23, 1971, the young woman gave birth in a Detroit maternity home and gave the child up for adoption. She was kicked out of her home and disowned by the community.

Aileen and her brother finally left their grandparents' house. And that would be the beginning of a life as a tramp, which would later lead to the worst stage of her life. She first began living in an abandoned car and was later taken to a shelter for single mothers.

That same year, in 1971, his grandmother died. The reason was liver failure as a result of alcohol abuse. It was learned that Diane, Aileen's mother, accused Lauri (the grandfather) of having murdered her. While they were still minors, custody of the adolescents passed to the Court.

His first crimes

While still attending school, the young woman began working as a prostitute. Soon she began using the name Sandra Kretsch on the street; having an alias is quite common among prostitutes, who generally do not reveal their true details to their clients.

Aileen began traveling the country and in 1974 was arrested in Colorado for disorderly conduct, drunk driving and shooting a pistol from a moving car. An additional charge was also filed for failure to appear in court. This would be the first of many arrests she would have in her life.

After returning to Michigan in 1976, she was arrested in Antrim County for hitting a bartender on the head with a billiard ball. A few days later, her brother Keith passed away from throat cancer, for which she got $ 10,000 from his life insurance. After collecting the money, he paid the multiple fines he owed, bought a car and paid for other luxuries until he finally ran out of financial resources.

Wedding

Aileen with Lewis Fell. Source:

At the end of 1976, he traveled to Florida and there he met an important businessman. It was Lewis Fell, president of the Nautical Club, who was 76 years old. Regardless of the 50-year difference between them, the couple married in 1976. Aileen's life could have changed at that time.

But even so, the young woman was constantly involved in confrontations. Not only was she imprisoned for assault, but she even beat her husband. Because of this, Fell requested a restraining order against her, in addition to the annulment of the marriage. The union lasted only six weeks.

Other arrests

From that moment on his crimes became much more serious. In 1981 she was arrested for armed robbery at a convenience store in Edgewater, Florida. She was released in June 1983. Her next arrest occurred in 1984, this time for check forgery.

In subsequent years, the criminal was arrested for various reasons: driving without a license, car theft, resisting arrest, obstruction of justice and threatening a man with a weapon to steal it.

In late 1986 Aileen met Tyria Moore at a bar. Moore, who was 28, quit her job as a motel maid and let her new lover support her. The relationship between the two women was stormy from the beginning, but it was a codependent relationship.

More arrests and complaints

Some time later, the passion between them faded, but they continued to be inseparable friends. The adventures of the criminal couple multiplied and Aileen came to use various false names.

In 1987 they were arrested in Daytona Beach for attacking a man with a beer bottle. In December of that same year, she was reported by traffic police for driving with an expired license on the interstate highway.

His victims

Source: Florida Department of Corrections

Aileen Wuornos carried within her a hatred and aggressiveness that would soon become a lethal weapon. The criminal combined her penchant for crime, her love for Tyria and her hatred of men to take it out on the world.

On one occasion Aileen came to confess her plans to take it out on the men to the owner of a motorcycle and gang bar that the criminal used to visit. The man did not give it much importance, since she was used to her drunkenness.

At that time they began to call her "The Spider Woman", this because of her taste for dressing in black leather clothes. Wuornos worked sporadically at bars and truck stops. And she used to travel with a gun in her bag.

First victim

On December 13, 1989, the first victim appeared. It was about a 51-year-old electrician named Richard Mallory. He was fond of alcohol and women. But Mallory also had a criminal record.

He was an ex-con and a serial rapist. Later, Aileen claimed to have killed him in self-defense. Mallory's body had three shots to the chest and was found in the woods near Daytona Bech. At the time, the leads did not lead to any suspects and the case was closed.

Second and third bodies

Six months later, on June 1, 1990, a second body was found. A naked man had been found dead near Tampa. The victim had six shots fired with a 22 caliber pistol, as in the case of Richard Mallory.

Police identified the man as David Spears, 43. At that time another body was found in the same circumstances. This time the victim, identified as Charles Carskaddo, had nine shots fired with the same pistol.

Fourth-seventh victim

A month later Wuornos took the life of another person. The fourth victim was Peter Siems, 65. Some witnesses told police that they saw two women aboard Siems' car.

By November of that year, the number of men killed similarly rose to seven.

Imprisonment and death

Source:

The police were pressured to solve the case, so spoken portraits of the two murderers were published. Three weeks later, multiple calls alerted police to the suspects, who were identified as Tyria Moore and Lee Blahovec (who was an alias for Aileen Wuornos).

To get money, Aileen sold belongings of her victims. Thus, in early December 1990, she sold a camera and radar detector owned by Richard Mallory. And later she sold a toolbox from another of her victims.

Arrest and trial

In January 1991, she was finally arrested. Tyria Moore reached an agreement with the police, in which she agreed to testify against Aileen in exchange for immunity. Moore was not charged with any crime and became a key player in the trial that would later face her ex-lover.

On January 16, 1991 Aileen pleaded guilty to the murders. But she alleged that they were all in self-defense because those men had tried to rape her. At the trial she also explained her modus operandi.

Modus operandi

He indicated that he passed for hitchhikers. He then convinced the victim to have sex and had them drive to a remote place. Once there he killed her, took all her belongings and fled in the victim's car. Sometimes she pretended to have problems with her own car and when she got help from someone she did the same. He offered them sex and then killed them.

Death penalty

On February 27, 1992, Aileen Wuornos was found guilty of first degree murder and the jury recommended the death penalty. On January 30, the murderer was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Although she was prosecuted only once for the murder of Richard Mallor, she was found guilty of six more murders. In total, the murderer was sentenced to six death sentences.

In 2001, he announced that he would not request another appeal against his death sentence. He subsequently filed a petition to exercise his right to fire his lawyer and thus stop the ongoing appeals. He claimed that he killed those men and robbed them in cold blood. And that he would also be able to do it again.

Aileen was evaluated by three psychiatrists and all judged her mentally fit to be executed. The prisoner understood that she was going to die and the crimes for which she would be executed. And this was proof that she was not mentally ill.

Execution

She was finally executed on October 9, 2002 at 9:47 in the morning. The lethal injection he was given included sodium pentothal, potassium bromide and chloride. The procedure took place at the Florida State Prison.

Wuornos became the second woman to be executed in the state of Florida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The first is known to have been a woman named Judy Buenano. The execution occurred in 1998 and the reason for the sentence was the poisoning of her husband.

In the following video you can see the last interview with Wuornos: