Aileen Wuornos: Serial Killers

Aileen Wuornos is what many call one of the most notorious serial killer in America. She was amongst one of the few female serial killers that were captured in the United States during the early 1990's. (Edwards, 2012) In total, Aileen Wuornos killed seven different men in a short time span. These violence murders happened across the state of Florida, where she had lived much of her troubled childhood. She was eventually captured by police, confessed to all seven of the murders and was executed by lethal injection in 2002. However, the story behind Aileen Wuornos is more complicated and intriguing that this. Her early life, family relationships, mental health, past crimes and career choices were all reasons why she may have made the decisions

Her brother was one year older than she was, making him 11 years old at the time. Furthermore, she began to trade sex for money, cigarettes, drugs and alcohol throughout the neighborhood. This tradeoff went on for 2 years, until she was raped by a family friend, that lived in the neighborhood. In 1970, she was pregnant with a child at 13 years old by this man. In March 1971, she deliver her son but was forced to put the son up for adoption. (Golden, 2003)

Fast forward to after giving up her baby for abortion, Aileen was kicked out of her grandparents house and also dropped out of high school. Around this time, is when her grandmother also passed away. (Macleod, 2014) She was only 15 years old, and relied on hitch hiking and prostitution to make ends meet and get where she needed to go. She spent a total of 4 years doing this, until getting arrested for sex trafficking and not showing up for required court hearings.

Once released from jail, she continued to hitchhike until she reached Orlando, Florida. She met a weathly businessman named Lewis Fell, who was a 70 year old yacht club President. It wasn't long until the couple got married, however it only lasted nine weeks. The marriage fell short because of complications involving Aileen. She became abusive towards Lewis and constantly engaging in fights with him. The arguments were because Lewis wouldn't give her money. (Golden,

This is the time when Aileen Wuornos killed and robbed a total of seven men and she claims it was for self defense. She explained that these men attempted to rape and assault her, so she shot them to protect herself. (Wuornos, 2012). Richard Mallory was the first victim of her violent murders, as he was shot three times in the chest. The weapon that she used was a .22 caliber pistol. (Office of the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney, 2012) Her capture and arrest came when Aileen and her partner left a clue after they had wrecked the car of Peter Siems. Peter Siems was a reported missing days prior, and come to find out he was one of one the victims of the serial killings. Aileen tried to cover as much evidence as possible in the car by rubbing off fingerprints and taking of license plates. However, police were able to identify the car's identification number of the car and recover fingerprints that matched Aileen's prints. Once they discovered this information, they sent out a warrant for her arrest. She was found at a local biker bar in