Aileen Wuornos – America's Female Serial Killer

A Look at Aileen’s Life through Jail Interviews

Sep 13, 2009

Aileen wanted the public to see her as an innocent victim, but the escalating mind presented in her final interviews show a psychotic woman, quite capable of killing.

Aileen Wuornos, the first female serial killer in the US, was executed in October 2002, due to her inhumane killings of seven innocent men. Her life, both before being convicted and after is chronicled in this documentary. The story is told mostly by Aileen herself, based on interviews conducted in jail. The documentary, Aileen: the Life and Death of a Serial Killer, not only describes her troubled childhood as a motive for her murderous ways, but also shows her escalating psychological unravelling as her execution approaches.

The interviews, conducted by Nick Broomfield, take place after Aileen’s conviction. She was convicted in 2002 for seven counts of murder, even though she had longed claimed that she acted in self defence. She claims she was forced to kill the victims - that they attacked her when she was a working prostitute.

The story of Aileen’s childhood is told by her best friend Dawn, the neighbourhood children and herself, and it is not a pleasant one. Her mother left her six months after she was born and Aileen was raised by her older brother Keith and her father. According to Dawn, Aileen was subject to both mental and physical abuse by both her father and brother. Keith would also rape her on occasion, - in the community, Aileen became known as the incest-girl.

At the age of 13, Aileen got pregnant with a baby boy and many speculate that the father was the town pedophile, whose name is not mentioned. After giving the child up for adoption, Aileen left her childhood home to live in the woods at the end of her street. She lived there for years at a time with other abandoned children of the neighbourhood. After a few years in her cold hometown in Michigan, Aileen hitchhiked to Florida.

In her adult life, she was briefly married to a gentleman but he ended the marriage after Aileen attacked him and beat him with his walker. After the failed marriage, she began dating women as she had experienced nothing but violent failures with men. She began dating Tye, her love and companion before and during the murders. Tye was unaware of the murders until Aileen confessed to her.

A Changing Story

After her conviction, Aileen’s only method of telling her story is through the interviews that Nick conducts with her. She does, however, change her story quite a few times, which makes it difficult to tell whether or not she is a guilty murder or simply a victim of violent and aggressive men. Her mission, at first, is to tell her story and to gain her innocence back.

During her first couple of interviews, she claims that she is an innocent and helpless woman, convicted of crimes she did not commit. She claims that the men had attacked her and wanted to rape her anally, but she refused. Killing them, she says, was her only method of self-defense. As her interviews continue over the two year period, it is not only her mind that unravels - her story does, too. In one interview, she apologizes to the victims’ families and claims that killing them was simply to steal their money and cars. Her reasoning for this is because she knows she will not be let off death row and she needs to “come clean before God and Jesus”.

In her final interview, she tells one story on the camera and quite another when she thinks the camera is off. She explains to Nick on camera, that she killed the men because that is what the public wanted and saying sorry was what they wanted to hear. She also claims that she changed her story, only because she felt the pressure from the public and the police. Off camera, she claims her innocence. She believes that the police let her kill, even though they knew who was responsible. They did this, she says, so she could become a serial killer, letting them earn money on movie and book deals. She feels her story is one of system failure, corruption and she wants to die as soon as possible.

During her last interview, she looks directly at the camera, stating “you need to kill Aileen Wuornos, because she will kill again”. This is her response to the public who did not believe her story of innocence. With that statement, she contradicts her stories of innocence in a clear display of her increasing psychosis.

The copyright of the article Aileen Wuornos – America's Female Serial Killer in Biographical Documentaries is owned by Malene Jorgensen. Permission to republish Aileen Wuornos – America's Female Serial Killer in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.