Deadly Prostitute Aileen Wuornos

By James Donahue

Aileen Carol Wuornos is identified as a serial killer who murdered at least seven Florida men while working as a prostitute between 1989 and 1990. She was convicted of first degree murder by the court and sentenced to death for six of the murders. She was executed by lethal injection in Florida State Prison, Bradford County, on October 9, 2002.

Wuornos was born Aileen Carol Pittman in Rochester, Michigan, in 1956. Thus began a sordid childhood and life. Her father, a psychopath and convicted child molester, hung himself in prison and her mother abandoned the children in 1960. Aileen and her brother, Keith, were adopted by their grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos. Records show that she was sexually abused by the grandfather and brother and eventually impregnated by a friend of the grandfather. She gave the child up for adoption.

After the grandmother died of liver failure, Aileen was kicked out of the home by her grandfather. Thus she hitch hiked on the road, existing as a prostitute.

There was a string of encounters with the police. She was arrested in Colorado in 1974 for drunken driving, disorderly conduct and firing a pistol from a moving vehicle. A warrant was issued when she failed to appear in court. She wandered to Florida where she married 69-year-old Lewis Fell. While in Florida she was arrested on assault charges and disturbing the peace. After assaulting Fell the marriage was annulled and Wuornos returned to Michigan where she was arrested for drunk driving.

Wuornos went back to Florida where she was arrested in 1981 for the armed robbery of a convenience store in Edgewater. After serving a short prison term, she was arrested again for passing forged checks at a Key West bank. In 1985 she was named as a suspect in the theft of a revolver and bullets in Pasco County. She was charged with car theft and resisting arrested in 1986. She was accused of attempting an armed robbery of a man later that year in Volusia County.

That same year Wuornos hooked up with Tyria Moore at a Daytona gay bar. They moved in together and lived on the money she made from prostitution.

All this time, men allegedly involved with Wuornos’ prostitution began showing up dead in and around Florida.

Richard Mallory, 51, was found dead in a wood near Daytona Beach in December, 1989. He had been shot multiple times. Six months later the body of David Spears, 43, was found along Highway 19 in Citrus County. He had been shot six times. Next, Charles Carskaddon, 40, turned up dead from bullet wounds in Pasco County. After this it was Peter Siems, 65, who disappeared at Orange Springs. His body was never found.

Both Wuornos and Moore were implicated by witnesses in the Siems case. Wuornos’ palm print was found on the door handle of the Siems vehicle.

Finally Charles Humphreys, 56, a retired police chief and U.S. Air Force Major, was found shot in the head in Suwannee County and Walter Antonio, 62, was found shot to death on a logging road in Dixie County.

Police received several reports linking Wuornos and Moore to the killings. The police closed in on Wuornos at a biker bar in Volusia County on January 9, 1991. Tyria Moore turned state’s evidence against Wuornos, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Wuornos claimed the men had tried to rape her and that she killed them in self-defense. An insanity argument also was attempted without success.

On March 31, 1992, Wuornos pleaded no contest to the murders. She told the court she wanted to "get right with God." She spent the next ten years awaiting her death sentence reading the Bible and getting in various conflicts with the prison guards.

For her last meal, Wuornos asked only for a cup of black coffee. Her last words were: "Yes, I would just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I’ll be back. I’ll be back."