Aileen Wuornos was convicted of a string of murders in Florida and was executed by the state in 2002 – and her chilling declaration of love to her now-ex-lover sealed her fate
Locked up in jail after being arrested on suspicion of a series of murders along the highway, 34 year old Aileen “Lee” Wuornos made a heartbreaking vow to her partner over the phone.
Her girlfriend, 28 year old Tyria Moore, was terrified as she confessed: “Lee, [the police] are coming after me.”
Labeled “America’s first female serial killer” by the media, Wuornos sparked true-crime television programs and even a 2003 movie called Monster. But now the case is being examined once more – with “disturbing” fresh perspective into the killer’s psyche and her troubled history, reports the Mirror.
A new Netflix documentary titled Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers has dropped on the platform this week, featuring previously unseen footage from a death row conversation with Wuornos.
The program’s director, Emily Turner, discloses: “Aileen said, ‘I’m going to talk to you about the truth of my crimes,’ and from watching this interview, a very different version of her comes through – contradictory, very human, at times quite disturbing.”
In one of her last interviews, Wuornos eerily states: “The real Aileen Wuornos isn’t a serial killer. I was so lost I turned into one.”
The ‘Drifter’ Wuornos was abandoned by her parents at the tender age of four, leading to her adoption by her grandparents in Michigan. She fell pregnant at just 13 years old and her baby was given up for adoption.
Wuornos suffered violent abuse at the hands of her grandfather and in one interview featured in the new Netflix show, she alleges that she was sexually assaulted by teenage friends, according to PEOPLE.
By the time she turned 16, Wuornos had fled from home and became a traveling sex worker. “I’m hitchhiking, and I’m hooking,” she revealed.
“I slept under viaducts, in abandoned homes, in cow pastures. I must have been raped, I’d say, about 30 times, maybe more.”
Her life took a turn when she met Moore, a motel maid, at a Florida bar in 1986 – this is where their intense four-year love affair began. “I loved her so bad,” Wuronos confessed.
“[She’s the] only reason I carried that darn gun. I wanted to make sure that I got home alive – so I’d be another day breathing with her.”
However, their romance didn’t stand the test of time. Two years later, police started investigating the horrific deaths and robberies of men found shot near Florida highways.
Six men were discovered murdered under eerily similar circumstances.
Witnesses reported seeing two women driving one of the victims’ stolen vehicles, and investigators made a breakthrough when they found Wuornos’ fingerprint on a pawnshop item that belonged to one of the deceased.
The murderer was apprehended on January 9, 1991, and her lover Moore eventually persuaded her to confess. To avoid being implicated as an accomplice, Moore was cooperating with the police, but she herself was not charged with any crime.
Wuornos pleaded not guilty at the trial for the murder of her first victim, Richard Mallory. She asserted that she killed him in self-defense after he tortured and raped her, but the jury found her guilty.
She then entered pleas of no contest or guilty to five other murders and received a death sentence.
The Netflix documentary features Wuornos’ childhood friend, Dawn Botkins, who recounts her final encounter with the murderer the night before her execution.
“She said she was definitely a serial killer. It was all the years of the abuse, and then she started drinking. Plus Ty [Moore]. Aileen kept saying that to me: ‘That was quite the love, wasn’t it? It was fatal.'”.
