Wuornos, Aileen Carol
Identification American serial killer
Born February 29, 1956; Rochester, Michigan
Died October 9, 2002; Starke, Florida
Wuornos’s tortured background, mental state, and status
as a rare female serial killer escalated the debate over capital
punishment in America and the impact of traumatic child-
hood experiences on subsequent behavior.
Aileen Carol Wuornos, a victim of emotional, physi-
cal, and sexual abuse from adolescence through
adulthood, and a drifter and prostitute, murdered
seven men in a Florida crime spree in 1989-1990.
The first man to fall victim to Wuornos was Richard
Mallory, a fifty-one-year-old owner of an electronics
business who Wuornos later claimed had raped her
before she killed him.
In June, 1990, near Tampa, Florida, the nude body
of forty-three-year-old David Spears was discovered.
He had been shot several times with a low-caliber
handgun. A few days later, another dead male was dis-
covered, not far from the location of the first body.
This victim was a forty-year-old rodeo employee,
Charles Carskaddon. Wuornos and her companion,
Tyria Moore, were soon thereafter in an auto acci-
dent while in a car belonging to yet another male vic-
tim. A witness observed the two women leaving the
scene of the accident and reported the incident to
the police. Their descriptions were consequently
spread throughout Florida. The car belonged to sixty-
five-year-old Peter Siems, a retired sailor merchant.
Also murdered were Troy Burress, a fifty-year-old
truck driver; Dick Humphreys, a fifty-six-year-old re-
tired policeman; and, finally, sixty-year-old Walter An-
tonio, a truck driver.
Wuornos proved to be a clever killer. She carried
what she called her “kill bag,” with items necessary
for both the murder and the cover-up. She also stole
credit cards and other forms of identification from
other women, using this material to pawn the stolen
belongings of her victims. Pawnshops required fin-
gerprints, and it was through this Florida law that
Wuornos was put under investigation.
Aileen Wuornos was arrested for murder on Janu-
ary 9, 1991. Moore, her lover, was tracked down by
police, who pried evidence from her that was incrim-
inating to Wuornos. Moore said that Wuornos had
confessed the murder of Richard Mallory to her.
Moore cooperated with police to provide informa-
tion that would seal the fate of Wuornos. During a se-
ries of monitored phone calls, Moore told Wuornos
that if she did not confess, Moore would also be im-
plicated and possibly charged with murder. This
prompted Wuornos to confess to the murders,
claiming self-defense. The trial delighted the media.
Wuornos basked in the attention, eventually accept-
ing one of many offers to write her autobiography.
She was found guilty and sentenced to death.
After a decade on death row, Wuornos asked to
fire her attorneys and make her own decisions.
Granted her request, she immediately volunteered
to be executed, forfeiting all attempts at stays of exe-
cution. She died by lethal injection on October 9,
2002.Impact Wuornos was the tenth woman in the
United States to be executed for capital crimes. The
traumatic nature of her childhood, and the crimes944 Wuornos, Aileen Carol The Nineties in America
Aileen Carol Wuornos, held in connection with the homicides of
seven men in Florida, appears before a judge in Daytona Beach,
Florida, in January, 1991.(AP/Wide World Photos)