Aileen Wuornos: Story of One Killer

A serial killer is a person normally known to murder three or more individuals for no apparent motive due to their abnormal psychological satisfaction. As learned, a serial killer is an individual who puts “special efforts to elude detection” and “may continue to kill for weeks, months, or years before being stopped”. When trying to comprehend a serial killer’s actions, many steps need to be taken in order to fully understand why the person behaved the way he or she did. For example, a person’s childhood history and experiences can play a major role in the development of violent behavior.

Aileen Wuornos born in Rochester, Michigan on February 29, 1956, was an American serial killer who experienced a tough childhood as she was sexually abused and was even kicked out of her home when she was just a teenager. As Wuornos’s father was serving his time in prison for child molestation he later committed suicide and having her mother left for parental guidance she decided to abandon her kids- Aileen and Keith Wuornos, who was her older brother. Left to be brought up by their grandparents, the grandmother was an alcoholic and the grandfather was extremely violent as he was the one who sexually abused Aileen. At 14 years old Aileen got pregnant by her older brother and the baby was given to an adoption home.

As an abused child, Wuornos “later earned her living as a sex worker on Florida’s highways and was found guilty of killing seven men”. According to chapter three’s PowerPoint and based on psychopathology, female serial killers demonstrate similar characteristics to male serial killers. Women are found to be “insincere, amoral, impulsive, prone to exercise manipulative charisma and superficial charm, without conscience, and with little insight because they failed to learn from their mistakes”.

Typologies are used to motivate in creating an understanding and explanation for classifying a serial killer. In Aileen Wuornos’s case, she would classify as a hedonistic typology under the comfort subtype because she involved herself in sex as a source of survival and work/income. She also robbed her victims after killing them as she scoured off the highways with their vehicles. “The subgroup comfort is the fulfillment of the personal gain or profit”. So, her motive to kill men who picked her up off of Florida’s highways qualifies her to fall under this subtype-comfort of the typology hedonistic due to her dominance over her victims.

Aileen Wuornos’s crimes were solved between 1989 and 1990 when seven bodies of white middle-aged men were uncovered throughout Florida. In 1989, Richard Mallory was the first victim who picked up a prostitute, Aileen Wuornos, off Interstate 75 in Florida. A police officer found his dead body with multiple gunshots to his chest miles away from his abandoned car. In the coming year, 1990, David Spears was Wuornos’s second victim who was found nude with six gunshots in his torso in Citrus Country. Charles Carskaddon followed a few days after Spears and has found dead in Pasco County after being shot nine times in the chest and stomach. The fourth victim discovered in 1990 was named Troy Burress who was found by law enforcement in Marion County and was medically examined where he was found with two gunshots to his torsos. With three victims left, Charles Humphrey was the fifth victim in Wuornos’s case found dead on September 12, 1990. He was found fully clothed in Marion County, yet he had gunshots to his head and torso and his car was found in Suwannee County. The “partially disrobed body” of the sixth victim, Walter Antonio, was left on November 19, 1990, in Dixie County. Antonio suffered four shots to his back and head and five days later county officials discovered his car in Brevard County. Finally, the final victim, Peter Siems was never found, however, his car was found on July 4, 1990, in Orange Springs, and “witnesses described two women near the car”.

It was on January 27, 1992, that the jury did not find Aileen Wuornos’s judgment of killing these men due to self-defense. She was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to the death penalty, “but a court-appointed attorney was concerned about comments made by Wuornos that suggested she was profoundly disconnected from reality”. Florida’s governor at the time, Jeb Bush, decided to lift a provisional stay on Wuornos’s case and “three psychiatrists deemed her mentally competent to understand the death penalty and the reasons for its implementation” in 2002. Aileen Wuornos finally died on October 9th of 2002 as she was executed by lethal injection. 

Works Cited

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