There’s a typical profile people expect when they think about serial killers: cunning, cold-blooded, and most importantly, male. So when Aileen Wuornos was first arrested in January 1991 as the prime suspect in a series of shooting murders in Florida, national attention wasn’t far behind. Wuornos was a transient sex worker when the murders took place, and she confessed almost immediately to shooting seven male clients to death: Richard Mallory, 51; David Spears, 47; Charles Carskaddon, 40; Troy Burress, 50; Charles Humphreys, 56; and Walter Antonio, 62. She was immediately dubbed the “hooker from hell” in the media, her story sparking hundreds of news reports, books, television episodes, and films. (Charlize Theron took home the Academy Award for best actress after portraying Wuornos in the 2003 film Monster, a fictionalized version of Wuornos’ life and crimes.)
Since Wuornos’ execution by lethal injection in 2002, her story has become so heavily trafficked that she is less a person and more a national archetype. But in Netflix’s new documentary Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, director Ellen Turner uses archival footage, audio files, and in-prison interviews with Wuornos and others involved in her case to paint a more detailed picture of Wuornos’ history and experiences that led her to those Florida murders. “Aileen said, ‘I’m going to talk to you about the truth of my crimes,’ and from watching this interview, a very different version of her comes through,” Turner told People. “Contradictory, very human, at times quite disturbing.”
Here are four things we learned from Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers.
Wuornos confessed to the murders to protect her girlfriend — a confession she later said was coerced
According to several interviews given to multiple national news outlets, Wuornos spent her life constantly exposed to poverty and abuse. At a young age, she was forced to scavenge for food and warmth. She was also a teen mother — giving birth at 13 years old before putting the baby up for adoption. She was later adopted by her grandparents but said that her early life experiences, including sexual assault, led her to act out and eventually run away from home.
Editor’s picks
Wuornos said that she was in several relationships with men, at least one of which was abusive, before she fell in love with her girlfriend, Tyria Moore. The two were involved for several months, but after Aileen pawned a belonging from one of her victims, police began to investigate both Wuornos and Moore in the murders. After Wuornos’ arrest, police used Moore to pull a confession from Wuornos. On a phone call, which was recorded by police and played at Wuornos’ trial, Moore sobbed and said she was afraid of the police arresting her for a crime she didn’t commit.
“I’m not gonna let you go to jail. Ty, I love you,” Wuornos said in the clip, which plays in the documentary. “If I have to confess everything just to keep you from getting in trouble, I will.”
However, after her imprisonment, Wuornos noted that she would not have confessed if she wasn’t so concerned for Moore — a situation she says police coerced her into.
At her first trial, Wuornos claimed she was raped and tortured
Much of the public knowledge about Wuornos and her case was focused on Wuornos’ history as a vagrant and sex worker. At the time of her trial in 1992, many national news outlets claimed she murdered her victims out of a sense of hate for men. But Wuornos said she only ever bought a gun in the first place because so many men who paid her for sex also threatened her life.
“I was hooking all over in the Keys. Then I started on the highways. I had double barrel shotguns to my head, .357 Magnums to my head,” she says in the documentary. “So when a cop friend of mine told me to go ahead and get a gun, it was purely for protection. I had to do what I had to do.”
Related Content
Her first and only trial was in the shooting death of Richard Mallory, her first victim. Wuornos entered a not guilty plea and took the stand — testifying that she was assaulted, raped, and tortured by Malloy during their encounter and only shot him to get away. “Now this is the only thing I said to myself, and I don’t believe this is premeditated whatsoever,” Wuornos says in another prison interview. “I said if anyone ever comes up to me and ever tries to rape me like that, he will definitely wish he had not met this prostitute.”
At the time of Aileen’s trial, the state attorney had a known dislike for sex work
Wuornos was prosecuted by Florida State Attorney John Tanner, who was appointed after publicly promoting an anti-pornography agenda. According to Wuornos and her supporters, Tanner’s case relied heavily on Wuornos’ work and interactions with other men who paid her for sex. “You offered to have sex, and you’re laying there naked on your back. And the man paid you,” Tanner said to Wuornos during the trial. “And you say it’s rape when he’s kissing and getting on you?” After being found guilty of Tanner’s murder, Wuronos pleaded no contest to the rest of the first-degree murder charges for her other six victims.
Even after journalists uncovered that Mallory — Wuornos’ first victim — had an record of sexual assault, Tanner still believed Wuornos was guilty.
When Aileen died, other death row prisoners thought she was mentally unwell
After her arrest, Wuornos became a Christian, a religious conversion she underwent after meeting born-again Florida woman Arlene Pralle. After reading Wuoronos’ story, Pralle began conversing with her through letters, eventually persuading Wuornos to let Pralle adopt her. Throughout their relationship, Pralle maintained how much Wuornos’ experiences earlier in life had damaged her mentally and emotionally. Attorneys for Wuornos attempted to argue emotional distress in her first trial, but the plea was not accepted.
Trending Stories
However, both interviewers and fellow death row prisoners who spoke to Wuornos in the months before her execution noted she was clearly suffering from mental health issues. Wuornos was paranoid, convinced people were listening to her, and constantly anxious, they said. But according to an archival interview from former death row inmate Deirdre Hunt, Wuornos asked her fellow prisoners to keep their suspicions to themselves. Wuornos maintained that she was ready to die. “Aileen, she was not mentally well from my experience,” Hunt says in the documentary. “It was very emotional. It’s hard to imagine killing somebody that’s innocent or killing somebody that was not really fully there. She was not there.”
Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002, making her the third woman to be executed in Florida. As her last words, she said she was going to be with Jesus. “The real Aileen Wuornos is not a serial killer,” Wuornos says in the documentary. “I was so drunk and so lost, so fucked up in the head, man, that I turned into one. But my real self is not one.”
