LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
PAST Out |
byLiz Highleyman |
Who was Aileen Wuornos?
Despite her grisly crimes, Aileen Wuornos branded by the media as a lesbian serial killer garnered sympathy from some due to her tragic life and her futile quest for love. Wuornos was born Feb. 29, 1956, in Rochester, Mich. Her father, whom she never knew, was a convicted child molester who hung himself in prison. Her teenage mother abandoned Wuornos and her older brother, leaving them in the care of their maternal grandparents. Subject to emotional and physical abuse, Wuornos became sexually active at an early age, trading sex for money, cigarettes, and drugs. At age 14, she gave birth to a baby whom she was forced to put up for adoption. Her grandmother died soon after, and Wuornos dropped out of school, left home, and began eking out a living as a prostitute. Wuornos was arrested repeatedly for violations such as drunk driving, assault, and theft, once holding up a convenience store clad only in a bikini. When her brother died of cancer in 1976, Wuornos received a $10,000 life insurance payment, which she soon squandered. She was married briefly to a wealthy elderly man, but he had the marriage annulled due to her abusive behavior. By age 20, she had settled in Florida, where she continued to commit increasingly serious crimes under a variety of aliases. In the summer of 1986, Wuornosknown as Leemet Tyria Moore at a Daytona gay bar. Moore, then 24, had left her hometown in Ohio due to friction with her family over her sexuality. Though Wuornos did not consider herself a lesbian, the two women developed a rapport and became lovers. Their sexual relationship apparently soon faded, but they remained companions for the next five years. Wuornos regarded Moore as her wife and supported her as best she could with earnings from prostitution. According to biographer Sue Russell, "The real driving force in Lee's life wasn't sex at all; it was a search for an emotional bond and love." In 1989, Wuornos found a new way to obtain money killing and robbing middle-aged men who picked her up for sex along highway I-75. She first murdered electronics-shop owner Richard Mallory in December, shooting him multiple times with a.22-caliber pistol. Over several months in 1990, she killed at least five more men, including a sausage salesman, a police officer, and a missionary. On July 4, Wuornos and Moore ran off the road in a stolen car belonging to one of the dead men; they fled on foot, but were identified by witnesses. Police traced the women through motel receipts, a bloody handprint on the abandoned car, and thumbprints Wuornos left on file when selling victims' belongings at pawnshops. Two detectives cornered Wuornos on Jan. 9, 1991, at a Port Orange biker bar called the Last Resort and arrested her on an outstanding warrant. The next day, authorities located Moore, who was visiting her sister in Pennsylvania. She agreed to cooperate, persuading Wuornos to confess to the murders during taped telephone conversations. Moore never contacted Wuornos in prison, and the last time they saw each other was when Moore testified against Wuornos in court. Wuornos' arrest set off a media circus. Within two weeks, she and her first attorney had sold movie rights to her story, while three leading investigators in the case were also negotiating with Hollywood. After hearing about Wuornos on the news, a born-again Christian woman, Arlene Pralle, said Jesus told her to contact Wuornos in prison. Pralle appeared on talk shows pleading on Wuornos' behalf, and eventually legally adopted her. Wuornos initially claimed all the killings were done in self-defense. In particular, she said Mallory had raped, sodomized, and tortured her. At her January 1992 trial, however, her testimony was inconsistent and prosecutors cast doubt on her credibility. She was found guilty and sentenced to death, despite expert testimony that she was mentally ill. In the months ahead, she pleaded guilty or no contest to five other murders. It was not until the following November that an investigative reporter revealed that Mallory had served time for violent sexual assault. After nearly a decade on death row, Wuornos sought to end her appeals. She dropped her earlier claims of self-defense, writing in a 2001 letter to the Florida Supreme Court, "I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again." She died by lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002. Though various women in the past had committed multiple murders, Wuornos was the first to fit the FBI's profile of a serial killer, having murdered strangers in a methodical manner over a period of time. She was also widely branded a man-hating lesbian killer, though most of her relationships had been with men. Some defenders maintain that Wuornos was a victim of her abusive childhood, predatory johns, exploitive media, and an unjust legal system. Others have been moved by her vain search for love. "I hate that all of this had happened," Wuornos said in an interview shortly before her execution. "The one thing that I really wanted in my life was love, and I found it in this woman and I lost her." For further information: Broomfield, Nick. 1992. Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (documentary). Broomfield, Nick. 2003. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (documentary). Jenkin, Patty. 2003. Monster (feature film). Russell, Sue. 2002. Lethal Intent (Kensington). Liz Highleyman is a freelance writer and editor who has written widely on health, sexuality, and politics. She can be reached in care of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth or at PastOut@qsyndicate.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 16, No.6 June 2, 2006 |