Aileen Wuornos, The Female Serial Killer

Aileen was born on February 29, 1956 in Rochester, Michigan. Her parents were Leo Dale and Diane. When Wuornos was young she experienced horrible and violent things during her childhood. Wuornos' “…father was a psychopathic pedophile who was in jail at the time of her birth” (The Famous People). Her father later killed himself while he was serving prison time for child molestation and her mother abandoned her. Wuornos, and her older brother were being raised by their grandparents, but Wuornos’ grandmother was an alcoholic and her grandfather was a violent person. Warns later stated that she was abused by her grandfather and had sexual relations with her brother. Wuornos was “Exposed to sexual activities at a very tender age [and so] she began providing sexual favors in exchange for food, drugs, and cigarettes when she was nine years old” (The Famous People). Wuornos became pregnant in her early teens and the infant was put up for adoption. Later, she was thrown out of her home and she lived in the woods. This led her to into her life as a murder. As an adult, she started engaging in sex work to survive. She was arrested during the mid-1970s. She faced charges related to assault. She ended up hitchhiking across the country and she eventually made her way to Florida. After Wuornos’ violent days as a child, she decided to go to Michigan. Once she arrived in the Sunshine State, Warns met Lewis Fell, a 69-year-old affluent man who ran a yacht club. Fell and Wuornos got married in 1976 due to the crime that she had committed. Fell annulled their marriage in late November of 1989.

Wuornos worked as a prostitute where she met her first victim, a customer named Richard Mallory. According to Wuornos, Mallory tried to rape her, this caused her to shoot him three times in self-defense, killing him. “Her story may have held water as Mallory was a convicted rapist, eventually she confessed she waved down his car and offered him sex for money” (Ranker). The second victim was David Spears, a 43-year-old construction worker. He was found on June 1, 1990, in Citrus County. He had been shot six times in the torso. The third victim was Charles Carskaddon, A few days after Spears’ body was discovered, Carskaddon’s body was discovered in Pasco County. He was a part-time rodeo worker and had been shot nine times in the chest and stomach. The fourth victim was Marion County law enforcement found Troy Burress a 50-year-old salesman, on August 4, 1990, less than a week after he was reported missing. Though the body was pretty decomposed, the medical examiner was able to figure out that the cause of death was two gunshots to the torso. The fifth victim was Charles Humphreys, he was a retired Air Force major, police chief and Florida child-abuse investigator. Humphreys was found dead in Marion County on September 12, 1990. The body was fully clothed and had suffered multiple gunshots to the head and torso. Humphreys car was later found in Suwannee County. The sixth victim was Peter Siems, 65-year-old Siems left central Florida and went to New Jersey on June of 1990. His car was found in Orange Springs on July 4, 1990. But Siems’ body has never been found, some witnesses characterized two women near the car in Orange Springs. The last victim was Walter Antonio a 62-year-old man was found November 19, 1990, in a distant part of Dixie County. He had been shot four times in the back and head. Antonio’s car was found five days later in Brevard County. ”Wuornos confessed to killing six men in total, all of them in a familiar pattern” (Ranker). Wuornos was executed by Lethal Injection in 2002. The community may have felt sorry for the victims and that Wuornos made a horrible act towards the victims and to their families. According to Wuornos, her victims had either raped or tried to rape her while she was working as a prostitute, and that all of the killings she commit were in self-defense.

On January 27, 1992, a jury found Wuornos guilty of first-degree murder for the Mallory case and she received the death penalty. Over the coming months, Wuornos plead guilty to the murders of the five other men she committed. She was charged with and received a death sentence for each appeal. Wuornos told many non-consistent stories about the killings. She claimed originally that all seven men had raped her while she was working as a prostitute but later backed off the claim of self-defense. Wuornos was executed in Florida. Wuornos was brought into the death chamber on October 9, 2002. She received KFC as her last meal. The budget was $20. Before the execution her last words were ""Yes, I would 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, I'll be back” (Ranker). she said this At 9:47 A.M. EDT.”The jury found Wuornos guilty on all counts, including first-degree murder and armed robbery, after less than two hours of deliberation” (Capital Punishment in Context). She was the tenth woman in the United States to be executed since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment in 1976, and the second woman ever executed in Florida.