Aileen Wuornos

In February 2020, the series “Very Scary People” was shown on the Crime and Investigation channel: episodes 3 and 4 describes how the investigation into Aileen was conducted.

The poet, Olivia Gatwood, refers to Wuornos throughout the book Life of the Party (2019).

In 2019, rapper Cardi B recreated Wuornos’ famous mugshot for her single "Press".

On December 14, 2019, award-winning folk musician, J. Jeffrey Messerole, released the song "Henrietta, Queen of the Highway" as one of the tracks on the album Crossroads Motel. He has publicly stated several times that this song is based on the life of Aileen Wuornos.

An episode of Murder Made Me Famous on the Reelz Television Network, airing December 1, 2018, chronicled the case.

A parody cover version of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" called "Aileen", inspired by Wuornos, is featured on Willam Belli's third solo album. The music video, featuring Gigi Gorgeous portraying Wuornos, was released on November 1, 2018.

In 2015, Lily Rabe portrayed a fictionalised version of Wuornos as part of a Halloween storyline in American Horror Story: Hotel in the fourth episode of the show's fifth season, and later in the season finale.

The song "Poor Aileen", which is the final track from the 2015 album Ours Is Chrome by Superheaven is written about the female serial killer.

Wuornos told several inconsistent stories about the killings. She claimed initially that all seven men had raped her while she was working as a prostitute but later recanted the claim of self-defense, citing robbery and a desire to leave no witnesses as the reason for murder. During an interview with filmmaker Nick Broomfield, when she thought the cameras were off, she told him that it was, in fact, self-defense, but she could not stand being on death row—where she had been for ten years at that point—and wanted to die.

In 2014, on Saturday Night Live, Charlize Theron made a self-reference to her role as Aileen Wournos in the film Monster. In the sketch Pet Rescue Commercial Kate McKinnon asked her to play a cat lady in the style of Aileen Wournos.

In 2012, Lisa Kester and Daphne Gottlieb edited and published a collection of letters written over a 10-year span from Wuornos to Botkins. The book is titled: Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words.

A song by Dolly's Circus named "Aileen's song" was written and published in 2012.

Samples of interviews with Wuornos feature prominently throughout Dragged Into Sunlight's 2009 album Hatred for Mankind, and Lingua Ignota's 2017 album All Bitches Die at the beginning of the songs "For I Am the Light (and Mine is the Only Way)" and "Holy is the Name (Of My Ruthless Axe)".

The poem "Sugar Zero" by Rima Banerji is dedicated to Wuornos and appears in the 2005 Arsenal Pulp Press publication, Red Light: Superheroes, Saints, and Sluts. The poet Doron Braunshtein dedicated a poem to her, called "Aileen Wuornos", that appears in his 2011 spoken word CD The Obsessive Poet.

The 2003 film Monster chronicles Wuornos' story from childhood until her first murder conviction. It stars Charlize Theron as Wuornos, a performance that earned Theron an Academy Award for Best Actress.

The theatrical film Monster (2003), starred Charlize Theron as Wuornos. It chronicles Wuornos' story from childhood until her first murder conviction. The film earned Theron an Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 2002, Wuornos began accusing prison matrons of tainting her food with dirt, saliva, and urine. She said she had overheard conversations among prison personnel "trying to get me so pushed over the brink by them I'd wind up committing suicide before the execution" and "wishing to rape me before execution". She also complained of strip searches, tight handcuffing, door kicking, frequent window checks, low water pressure, mildew on her mattress, and "cat calling ... in distaste and a pure hatred towards me". Wuornos threatened to boycott showers and food trays when certain officers were on duty. "In the meantime, my stomach's growling away and I'm taking showers through the sink of my cell." Her attorney stated that "Ms. Wuornos really just wants to have proper treatment, humane treatment until the day she's executed." He added, "She believes what she's written."

Wuornos's execution took place on October 9, 2002. She died at 9:47 a.m. EDT. She declined her last meal which could have been anything under $20 and opted for a cup of coffee instead. 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." She was the tenth woman in the United States and the second in Florida to be executed since the 1976 United States Supreme Court decision restoring capital punishment.

In 2002, journalist Sue Russell wrote a book about Wuornos called Lethal Intent.

The antagonist of the 2002 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode “Chameleon” - Maggie Peterson (Sharon Lawrence), a prostitute who murders her johns - is based on Wuornos.

An operatic adaptation of Wuornos' life premiered at San Francisco, California's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on June 22, 2001. Entitled Wuornos, the opera was written by composer/librettist Carla Lucero, conducted by Mary Chun, and produced by the Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts.

Wuornos was incarcerated at the Florida Department of Corrections Broward Correctional Institution (BCI) death row for women, then transferred to the Florida State Prison for execution. Her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied in 1996. In a 2001 petition to the Florida Supreme Court, she stated her intention to dismiss her legal counsel and terminate all pending appeals. "I killed those men," she wrote, "robbed them as cold as ice. And I'd do it again, too. There's no chance in keeping me alive or anything, because I'd kill again. I have hate crawling through my system...I am so sick of hearing this 'she's crazy' stuff. I've been evaluated so many times. I'm competent, sane, and I'm trying to tell the truth. I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again." While her attorneys argued that she was not mentally competent to make such a request, Wuornos insisted that she knew what she was doing, and a court-appointed panel of psychiatrists agreed.

A year later, on January 14, 1992, Wuornos went to trial for the murder of Mallory; although previous convictions are normally inadmissible in criminal trials, under Florida's Williams Rule the prosecution was allowed to introduce evidence related to her other crimes to show a pattern of illegal activity. On January 27, 1992, Wuornos was convicted of Mallory's murder with help from Moore's testimony. At her sentencing, psychiatrists for the defense testified that Wuornos was mentally unstable and had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. Four days later, she was sentenced to death.

On March 31, 1992, Wuornos pleaded no contest to the murders of Humphreys, Burress, and Spears, saying she wanted to "get right with God". In her statement to the court, she said, in part: "I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I've told you; but these others did not. [They] only began to start to." On May 15, 1992, Wuornos was given three more death sentences.

In June 1992, Wuornos pleaded guilty to the murder of Carskaddon. In November 1992, she received her fifth death sentence. The defense made efforts during the trial to introduce evidence that Mallory had been tried for intent to commit rape in Maryland and that he had been committed to a maximum security correctional facility that provided remediation to sexual offenders.

FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler only mentioned Wuornos briefly in his autobiographical history of his 20 years with the FBI. Writing in 1992, he said he often does not discuss female serial killers because they tend to kill in sprees instead of in a sequential fashion. He noted Wuornos as the sole exception. Ressler, who allegedly coined the phrase “serial killer” to describe murderers seeking personal gratification, does not apply it to women killing in postpartum psychosis or to any murderer acting solely for financial gain, such as women who have killed a series of boarders or spouses.

The TV movie Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story (1992) starred Jean Smart as Aileen.

On January 9, 1991, Wuornos was arrested on an outstanding warrant at The Last Resort, a biker bar in Volusia County. Police located Moore the next day in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She agreed to elicit a confession from Wuornos in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Moore returned with the police to Florida, where she was put up in a motel. Under police guidance, she made numerous telephone calls to Wuornos, pleading for help in clearing her name. Three days later, on January 16, 1991, Wuornos confessed to the murders. She claimed the men had tried to rape her and she killed them in self-defense.

On July 4, 1990, Wuornos and Moore abandoned Siems' car after they were involved in an accident. Witnesses who had seen the women driving the victims' cars provided police with their names and descriptions, resulting in a media campaign to locate them. Police also found some of the victims' belongings in pawn shops and retrieved fingerprints matching those found in the victims' cars. Wuornos had a criminal record in Florida, and her fingerprints were on file.

On March 12, 1988, Wuornos accused a Daytona Beach bus driver of assault. She claimed that he pushed her off the bus following a confrontation. Moore was listed as a witness to the incident. Up until her execution, Wuornos claimed to still be in love with Moore.

Around this time, Wuornos met Tyria Moore, a hotel maid, at a Daytona Beach lesbian bar. They moved in together, and Wuornos supported them with her earnings as a prostitute. On July 4, 1987, Daytona Beach police detained Wuornos and Moore at a bar for questioning regarding an incident in which they were accused of assault and battery with a beer bottle.

On January 4, 1986, Wuornos was arrested in Miami and charged with car theft, resisting arrest, and obstruction of justice for providing identification bearing her aunt's name. Miami police officers found a .38-caliber revolver and a box of ammunition in the stolen car. On June 2, 1986, Volusia County deputy sheriffs detained Wuornos for questioning after a male companion accused her of pulling a gun in his car and demanding $200. Wuornos was found to be carrying spare ammunition, and police discovered a .22 pistol under the passenger seat she had occupied.

On May 20, 1981, Wuornos was arrested in Edgewater, Florida, for the armed robbery of a convenience store, where she stole $35 and two packs of cigarettes. She was sentenced to prison on May 4, 1982, and released on June 30, 1983. On May 1, 1984, Wuornos was arrested for attempting to pass forged checks at a bank in Key West. On November 30, 1985, she was named as a suspect in the theft of a revolver and ammunition in Pasco County.

In 1976, Wuornos hitchhiked to Florida, where she met 69-year-old yacht club president, Lewis Gratz Fell. They married quickly; and the announcement of their nuptials was printed in the local newspaper's society pages. However, Wuornos continually involved herself in confrontations at their local bar and went to jail briefly for assault. She also hit Fell with his own cane, leading him to gain a restraining order against her within weeks of the marriage. She returned to Michigan where, on July 14, 1976, she was arrested in Antrim County and charged with assault and disturbing the peace for throwing a cue ball at a bartender's head.

On July 17, her brother Keith died of esophageal cancer and Wuornos received $10,000 from his life insurance. Wuornos and Fell annulled their marriage on July 21 after only nine weeks. In August 1976, Wuornos was given a $105 fine for drunk driving. She used the money inherited from her brother to pay the fine and spent the rest within two months buying luxuries including a new car, which she wrecked shortly afterwards.

On May 27, 1974, at age 18, Wuornos was arrested in Jefferson County, Colorado, for driving under the influence (DUI), disorderly conduct, and firing a .22-caliber pistol from a moving vehicle. She was later charged with failure to appear.

Wuornos gave birth to a boy at a home for unwed mothers on March 23, 1971, and the child was placed for adoption. A few months after her son was born, she dropped out of school at about the same time that her grandmother died of liver failure. When Wuornos was 15, her grandfather threw her out of the house, and she began supporting herself as a prostitute and living in the woods near her old home.

Wuornos never met her father, as he was incarcerated at the time of her birth. Leo Dale Pittman was diagnosed with schizophrenia and later convicted of sex crimes against children, and eventually died by suicide by hanging in prison on January 30, 1969. In January 1960, when Wuornos was almost four years old, Diane abandoned her children, leaving them with their maternal grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos (née Moilanen), both alcoholics, who legally adopted Keith and Aileen on March 18, 1960. By the age of 11, Wuornos began engaging in sexual activities in school in exchange for cigarettes, drugs, and food. She had also engaged in sexual activities with her brother. Wuornos said that her alcoholic grandfather had sexually assaulted and beaten her when she was a child. Before beating her, he would force her to strip out of her clothes. In 1970, at age 14, she became pregnant, having been raped by an accomplice of her grandfather.

Records obtained from that institution reflected that, from 1958 to 1962, Mallory was committed for treatment and observation resulting from a criminal charge of assault with intent to rape and received an overall eight years of treatment from the facility. In 1961, "it was observed of Mr. Mallory that he possessed strong sociopathic trends". The judge refused to allow this to be admitted in court as evidence and denied Wuornos' request for a retrial. In February 1993, Wuornos pleaded guilty to the murder of Antonio and was sentenced to death again. No charges were brought against her for the murder of Siems, as his body was never found. In all, she received six death sentences.

Aileen Carol "Lee" Wuornos Pralle (/ˈ w ɔːr n oʊ s / ; born Aileen Carol Pittman; February 29, 1956 – October 9, 2002) was an American serial killer and prostitute who murdered seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990 by shooting them at point-blank range. Wuornos claimed that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her while she was servicing them, and that all of the homicides were committed in self-defense. She was sentenced to death for six of the murders and was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

Wuornos was born Aileen Carol Pittman in Rochester, Michigan, on February 29, 1956. Her Finnish-American mother, Diane Wuornos (born 1939), was fourteen years old when she married Aileen's English American father, 16-year-old Leo Dale Pittman (1937–1969), on June 3, 1954. Aileen's older brother Keith was born on March 14, 1955. After less than two years of marriage, and two months before Aileen was born, Diane filed for divorce.