Aileen 'lee' Wuornos

Florida -- October 2002 -- If Aileen 'Lee' Wuornos isn't strapped to a gurney next Wednesday morning in Starke prison, Florida, a lethal cocktail of heartstopping chemicals flowing into her veins, she will be disappointed. Lawyers have long fought to save her from execution, yet Lee, the hitchhiking prostitute with six death sentences who confessed to killing seven men, has battled equally hard to speed things up and go to meet her maker.

Last summer, the Florida Supreme Court found her competent, allowing her to drop all further appeals, fire her appellate lawyers and get on the fast track to execution. Execution "volunteers" are a rarity. Then, as a female serial killer, Lee is also a rarity.

That was clear when police slapped on the handcuffs in 1991 and multiple murder charges followed. Then 35, with a 29-year old lesbian lover, she killed like a man. Predator-style, she systematically shot to death and robbed men after flagging them down for lifts on the Florida highways and once in their cars, offering sex.

Lee, now 46, certainly fit the FBI's serial killer criteria, having murdered strangers at least three times in separate locations, with a cooling-off period inbetween. Generally women, even multiple murderers, target intimates. So-called 'Black Widows' kill spouses and lovers for monetary gain; 'Angels of Death' murder babies, the elderly or the infirm. (By contrast, mass murderers or 'spree killers' murder several people in one fell swoop as in the school massacres).

Poison is often the favoured weapon. Again, gun-toting Lee was different. Previously, the serial killers the FBI profilers studied were all men whose crimes shared a common underlying sexual motivation. Usually, they killed to fulfill their fatally entwined sexual and violent fantasies.

Despite her overt rageвЂ"she screamed obscenities at jurors in courtвЂ"we don't know if Lee got a sexual thrill from murder although as a prostitute, her crimes have a sexual element. Apparently, she did share male serial killers' enjoyment of power and control. But she was primarily a robber who killed. She carried Windex along with her gun in her "kill bag," ready to remove fingerprints and carefully cover her tracks.

She claimed self-defense but pumped nine bullets into Charles Carskaddon alone. And she ruthlessly fired into the backs of fleeing victims. I began investigating Lee's life in 1991 and learned that she fantasised about being a hero to women. She expected her self-defense claims to be accepted and "almost fell over," she said, when she heard she was labelled a serial killer.

A few months ago she finally confessed what police, prosecutors, jurors and I deduced long agoвЂ"there was no self-defense, her victims did not hurt her, she killed in cold blood.

She says she seriously hates human life, "and would kill again." Since 1848 just one woman has been executed in Florida. Three were executed in Oklahoma in 2001; the most in the US in any year since l953. There are now 52 women in a total US death row population of approximately 3,600.

Governor Jeb Bush signed Lee's death warrant as America is embroiled in massive debate about capital punishment. Illinois Governor Ryan declared a total moratorium on executions there after the state released its 13th wrongly convicted death row prisoner. Abraham Bonowitz of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty says that 24 Florida death row prisoners have been exonerated and released from death sentences since 1973.

Earlier this year, Gov. Bush did stay some executions but by volunteering to die, Lee put herself in a different realm. A rationale Abraham Bonowitz insists should be inconsequential. "We don't believe prisoners in any way, shape or form should dictate what's happening to them," he explains.

Two decades of rough, transient living, massive alcohol consumption and harrowing prostitution preceded Lee's murderous rampage in Florida. But how did the innocent blonde child smiling out from her Michigan highschool yearbook pictures turn into one of the most vicious women of modern times?

Her doomed life path began in suburban Troy, Michigan and resembles a precariously stacked pile of dominoes, each domino upping the odds of catastrophe.

First there's the controversial nature v. nurture issue. Uncannily, Leo Pittman, the career criminal father she never met, also committed a capital offense, kidnapping and raping a 7-year old girl. He didn't get the death penalty but hanged himself in prison.

Lee's teenage mother Diane abandoned her twice before she was two years oldвЂ"what experts deem the crucial bonding period. Lee and her brother Keith were raised by their alcoholic grandparents as siblings of their aunt Lori and uncle Barry. Lee was around eleven when she found out the truth. Her disciplinarian grandfather was emotionally and physically abusive, whipping her with a leather belt, repeatedly saying that she didn't deserve to be alive. Peers saw bruises. There was unspoken recognition that she had a miserable home life. Growing up, Lee's uncontrollably explosive temper alienated friends. She was the ultimate outsider. When local kids gathered in hideaways, pairing up to see who could smooch the longest, noone ever wanted to kiss her. But they would have sex with her.

Clearly Lee was sexually abused although she's variously said different men victimized her. Curiously, although she was a victim, she found the sexual abuse far more shameful to admit to than the murders.

Aileen claims she began prostitution at age sixteen but several male peers insists she was just eleven or twelve when she took their virginities and was having sex with other neighbourhood boys for cigarettes. She was nicknamed 'Cigarette Pig' and 'The Cigarette Bandit' and ridiculed. "I guess it was a double standard," one concedes, "but nobody cared about feelings then." She gave birth to a baby son at age fifteen who was adopted (father unknownвЂ"she named several different people).

Serial killers commonly set fires as children and Aileen started a few in fields and set fire to the loo paper in the school bathroom. She had some artistic talent but was a poor student. She had a hearing problem. Teachers sat her near the front of the class but her grandmother was so defensive about it, she wasn't properly evaluated.

When she was 14, a school diagnostician noted, "It is vital for this girl's welfare that