Monster: The Story of Aileen Wuornos

Monster: The Story of Aileen Wuornos

By: Andrea Salina

MONSTER

Aileen Wuornos didn't stand a chance from the very early years of her life. Her family background lays the groundwork for her emotional instability that would deem her one of the most notorious female serial killers of all time.

Aileen was born February 29, 1956 in Rochester, Michigan as Aileen Carol Pittman. Her biological father, whom she never knew, was a crazed child molester that hanged himself in prison in 1969. Her mother Diane Wuornos, married Pittman when she was just 15. She had two children, Aileen and Keith who was born in 1955. They divorced a few months before Aileen was born after only two years of marriage (Manners, 121.)

In 1960, motherhood became unbearable for Diane and she abandoned Aileen and Keith. They were then adopted by their maternal grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos in Troy, Michigan, where they would call home for the next several years (Manners, 122).

Sue Russell in Lethal Intent writes that Aileen was whipped with a belt by Lauri.

"When she was made to pull down her shorts and bend over the wooden table in the middle of the kitchen, when the doubled-over belt flew down onto her bare buttocks, little Aileen railed against her father, petrified and crying noisily. Sometimes she lay face down, spread-eagled naked on the bed, for her whippings." (216).

Lauri and Britta did not reveal that they were, in fact, the children's grandparents. Aileen discovered the truth at around age twelve, information which did not help an already troublesome situation. Lauri Wuornos drank heavily and was strict with the

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children; when Aileen and Keith discovered their true parentage they rebelled (Manners, 122).

Aileen later told police that she had sex with Keith at an early age, but acquaintances doubt the story and Keith is unable to speak for himself, having died of throat cancer in 1976. At any rate, Aileen was clearly having sex with someone, for she turned up pregnant in her fourteenth year, delivering her son at a Detroit maternity home on March 23, 1971. The son would later be adopted (Manners, 125).

In July of the same year Britta Wuornos died, supposedly of liver failure. Diane, Aileen's biological mother, believed that Lauri killed her. However, Terry Manners points out that another of Britta's daughters believed that after the stress that Aileen and Keith put Britta through with truancy, pregnancy, etc. that she had started to drink heavily again. The night of Britta's death, she was having convulsions. If there was culpability on the part of Lauri, it was in not calling an ambulance in time because he didn't have the money for it (130).

According to Michael Reynolds in Dead Ends, Aileen, known to friends as Lee, dropped out of school, left home and took up hitchhiking and prostitution.

For the next decade, Aileen lurched from one failed relationship to another, engaging in prostitution, forgery, theft and armed robbery. Along the way, she tried to commit suicide. Emotionally and physically, she was a mess from the drinking and doping and self-destructive lifestyle. When she met 24-year-old Tyria Moore at a Daytona gay bar in 1986, Aileen was lonely and angry and ready for something new.

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For a while it was great. Ty loved her and didn't leave her; she even quit her job as a motel maid for a while and allowed "Lee" to support her with her prostitution earnings. Their ardor cooled, though, and money ran short--still, Ty stayed with Lee, following her from cheap motel to cheap motel, with stints in old barns or in the woods in between (Reynolds, 1992).

A storeowner in Palm Harbor, Florida named Richard Mallory took a ride with Wuornos on November 30, 1989, and became her first victim. Five subsequent victims were found; one other is still missing. Wuornos was eventually identified when she and her girlfriend Tyria Moore had an accident while driving a victim's car. She was apprehended a few months later. Wuornos cited self defense for Mallory's murder, maintaining that he had attempted to rape her. She was convicted for this first murder in January of 1992. In November of the same year, Dateline NBC reporter Michele Gillens uncovered that Mallory had served 10 years for violent rape in another state (Kennedy, 24).

During the trial, she was adopted by Arlene Pralle and her husband, after Pralle had a dream in which she was told to take care of Ms. Wuornos. Despite Pralle's help her appeal to the United States Supreme Court was denied in 1996 (Ditzler, 1998).

Within weeks of her arrest, Wuornos had engaged agents to sell the rights to her story, and so had three of the law enforcement agents who had been tracking her down. Wuornos's life has been documented in numerous books, and portrayed in several films and television shows (Boedeker, 1992).

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After her first death sentence, Wuornos often said she wanted it all to be over. In 2001 she began fighting to be executed as soon as possible. She petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for the right to fire her legal counsel and stop all appeals, wording her request so as to forestall any objection: "I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again."

Wuornos was executed by lethal injection (which she requested instead of the electric chair) at 9:47 a.m., Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2002. After her execution, she was cremated and her ashes were taken to her native Michigan, and spread around a tree (Long, 2002).

She had requested that Natalie Merchant's song "Carnival" be played at her funeral. Natalie Merchant commented on this when asked why her song was run during the credits of the documentary "Aileen Wuornos: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer".

"When director Nick Broomfield sent a working edit of the film, I was so disturbed by the subject matter that I couldn't even watch it. Aileen Wuornos led a tortured, torturing life that is beyond my worst nightmares. It wasn't until I was told that Aileen spent many hours listening to my album 'Tigerlily' while on death row and requested 'Carnival' be played at her funeral that I gave permission for the