***Please read in Sequence of (1), (2), (3), and so on.****
This is a picture of Aileen Wuornos's girlfriend, Tyria Moore. This picture was taken from a documentary she willingly chose to speak in. If you want to watch the documentary here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyTUxuDqFlQ
Although most people do not know this, Richard Mallory was a convicted sex offender. At trial, Aileen Wuornos stated that Mallory had tried to hurt her and that she killed him out of self-defense. Do you think Wuornos was telling the truth?
Criminal Career (2)
Alone, without any family or formal education, Wuornos migrated to Florida where she became a hitchhiker and prostitute. A shed of bright light came into Wuornos's life when she met successful yachtsmen, Lewis Fell. The two married in 1976, but the relationship did not last long due to Aileen's destructive tendencies and criminal habits. She was arrested multiple times before and during the marriage for assault, domestic issues, and theft. Eventually, Fell had enough and ended the marriage. Homeless again, Wuornos continued making a living off of prostitution. A decade after her marriage had ended, 33 year old Wuornos met the love of her life, Tyria Moore, at a gay bar in Daytona, Florida. Although the two embarked on a romantic relationship, it came with financial trouble. Tyria was a motel cleaner, making barely enough money to skate by. The companionship became stressed due to the lack of money being brought into the relationship. Week after week, the couple struggled to find permanent living. Often times, the two found themselves sleeping in the woods. Out of fear of losing Tyria due to financial failure, Wuornos embarked on an unthinkable mission:
On the night of November 30th, 1989, Wuornos shot and killed client Richard Mallory with a .22 caliber pistol. After shooting Mallory four times in the chest and back, Wuornos rifled through his pockets and took all of his money. To dispose of Mallory's body, she dumped it in a nearby junkyard and covered it with carpet. She then took the victims car and returned home to her girlfriend, Tyria Moore. Upon returning, Wuornos told Tyria that she had just killed one of her clients. Dumbfounded by the news, Tyria did not originally believe Wuornos, not believing that she was not capable of committing such acts. However, the next morning Wuornos convinced Tyria to pack up her belongings and move somewhere else where they would be safe from any criminal suspicion. Wuornos abandoned Richard Mallory's car and wiped down all of the items within the vehicle to eliminate fingerprints. With the belief that robbing could afford her and Tyria a successful life, Wuornos sparked a new journey as a serial killer. From the time span of 1989-1990, it is confirmed that Aileen Wuornos killed at least five more men who thought they were simply paying for a night of sex. After each kill, Wuornos robbed her victims, taking all the money and valuable belongings she could carry.
Although Tyria Moore was aware that her lover was murdering her clients, she never asked questions out of fear for her own life. As their relationship continued, Wuornos became more on edge and acted as a “ticking time bomb." In an interview, Moore admits that she wanted to leave, but was scared that if she did, Wuornos would try to hurt her.
On July 4, 1990 Wuornos had a close call when she and Tyria got into a bad car accident on a Florida highway. Panicked that the police might realize that the car was a stolen vehicle that belonged to her fourth victim, Peter Siems, Wuornos stripped off the license plate and fled the scene with Tyria. This was the last straw that forced Wuornos's girlfriend, Tyria, to leave the relationship. To escape the dangers of being associated with Wuornos, Tyria left for Pennsylvania to go live with a family member.
Early Life (1)
Aileen Wuornos was born February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan. From birth, Wuornos's life was far from ordinary. Her mother abandoned her at the age of four and her father, Leo Dale Pittman, was a psychopathic child molester who hung himself in prison in 1969. With both parents gone, Wuornos and her elder brother, Keith, were adopted by their grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos. Together the grandparents raised Aileen and Keith as their own children in Troy, Michigan. They did not reveal that they were, in fact, the children’s grandparents. Aileen discovered the truth at around age twelve, information which did not help an already troublesome situation. Lauri Wuornos was an abusive parent, both physically and sexually, while his wife Britta was an abusive alcoholic. Throughout her childhood, Aileen Wuornos was physically and sexually abused by both her adoptive grandfather and her older brother, Keith. When she was just 14 years old, Wuornos was impregnated by her brother and placed in a home for unwanted mothers. When she gave birth to her baby boy in 1971, he was immediately put up for adoption and Wuornos was then forced to return home. At home, Wuornos continued to be victimized until the deaths of Aileen's entire family occurred: Britta had died of liver failure, associated from drinking, Lauri killed himself, and Keith died from throat cancer at age 21.
The Arrest, Trial, and Conviction (3)
After the July 4th car crash, Tyria Moore was afraid that police would find out that the car they crashed belonged to one of the “Johns" that Wuornos had murdered. Moore knew that if Wuornos was caught, she would be associated with her and could be charged as an accomplice to murder, so she fled to Pennsylvania. After Tyria left, Wuornos was tired, heartbroken, and still low on cash. She began pawning items that belonged to her victims at local pawn shops, which eventually led police to start closing in on her. With other leads coupled with evidence that Wuornos was pawning off her murder victims' property, police eventually arrested Wuornos at a bar located in Port Orange, Florida. Police also arrested girlfriend, Tyria Moore because her fingerprints were in the car that Wuornos crashed on July 4th. To avoid prosecution, Tyria Moore made a deal with the state and in mid-January 1991 she elicited a phone confession from Wuornos, who took full and sole responsibility for the murders.
At trial, Wuornos asserted that she had been raped and assaulted by Richard Mallory and had killed him in self-defense. (Though not revealed in court, Mallory had previously served a decade-long prison sentence for sexual assault.) She stated that her killing of the five other men had been in self-defense as well, though she would later retract these statements. On January 27, 1992, a jury found Wuornos guilty of first degree murder for the Mallory case and she received the death penalty. Over the ensuing months, Wuornos plead guilty to the murders of five other men and received a death sentence for each plea. Aileen Wuornos spent a decade on death row and was eventually executed by lethal injection on the morning of October 9, 2002. Her cremated remains were buried in her hometown.
Aileen Wuornos and the Battered Woman Typology (4)
Aileen Wuornos fits under the female killer typology, “Battered Woman," because of the the extreme trauma she faced early in her childhood. From a young age, Wuornos underwent extreme physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather and older brother, Keith. The horrors she had to deal with as a young girl are likely to have caused her to be a victim of Battered Woman Syndrome, which is a mental disorder that develops among victims of serious long term domestic abuse. Battered Woman Syndrome can cause a series of mental health and psychological issues, as well as violent actions if triggered under some circumstances. It is historically known that the streetwalker, the least expensive type of prostitute, subjects herself to the possibility of being raped or assaulted from the clients she has sex with. Usually streetwalkers, such as Aileen Wuornos, pick up random strangers who many times have intentions to not only have sex with them, but to also victimize them through rape and assault. Although it was never fully proven, due to the fact that Aileen Wuornos served as a prostitute for over a decade, it is likely that she was often times victimized by her customers. In fact, Wuornos stated in court that she was often times the victim of assault and rape from customers. Perhaps this triggered her to go on the killing rampage of six men in Florida. What do you think?
When Aileen Wuornos was young, she suffered extreme sexual and physical abuse at the hands of both her adopted grandfather and older brother. At just 14 years old, she was impregnated by her older brother, Keith.
Aileen was sentenced to death and was killed by lethal injection on October 9th, 2002.
Wuornos gave a stunning interview the day before she was executed. The video of that interview can be found near the top of this page.