**Trigger Warning: The case contains mention of child abuse, rape, and prostitution. **
There is a movie made about Aileen called Monster. I have been warned about how disturbing the movie is and I have been advised since it came out not to watch it. I really did try to sit down and watch it, but I just could not bring myself to hit play. It could be triggering for me in multiple ways, so I decided to invest my research in articles, Snapped, and other resources.
Aileen Carol Pittman was born in Michigan on 02/29/1956. Aileen's mother Diane Wuornos was only 14 years old when she met and married Leo Pittman, Aileen's dad. He was 18. That alone should tell you how fucked up Aileen's life was as a child. Her mom and dad ended up getting a divorce after only 2 years of marriage and two kids. Keith, Aileen's older brother, and Aileen herself. Her mom was on 16 when she had her. Aileen never got a chance to meet her dad as he was a Schizophrenic and was in kail when she was born. Later in life, he was convicted for raping a 7 year old little girl. I don't know about you, but I am not surprised. On January 30th, 1969, Aileen's father committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell. Aileen's mother abandoned her children and left them to be raised by their grandparents. This environment was very toxic as her grandmother was a raging alcoholic and her grandfather was a perverted, angry, violent man.
Starting at the age of 11, Aileen began exchanging sexual favors for cigarettes, food, and drugs. As we know, a lot of early sexual behaviors tend to come from being abused at an early age. Aileen would later confess that her grandfather would make her strip naked and would beat and sexually assault her. At the age of 14, after being raped by one of her grandfather's friends, she became pregnant. On March 23, 1971, she gave birth to a baby boy in an unwed mother's home and gave the baby up for adoption. Aileen quit school a few months after the baby arrived and about the same time her grandmother died. Her grandfather threw her out of the house when she was 15. She lived in the woods and began sex work to support herself.
Having previously been a ward of the state, Wuornos subsisted on a vagabond existence as an adult, hitchhiking and engaging in sex work to survive. She was arrested during the mid-1970s for charges related to assault and disorderly conduct and eventually settled in Florida, where she met wealthy yachtsman Lewis Fell. The two were married in 1976, but Fell annulled the union shortly thereafter, when Wuornos was arrested in another altercation. A decade later, having been involved in numerous additional crimes, Wuornos met 24-year-old Tyria Moore in Daytona, Florida, and the two embarked on a romantic relationship. Even up to the day of her execution, Aileen stated that she was in love with Tyria.
From 1989-1990, Aileen murdered 7 men. All of them being drivers and in the age range of 65. Here is a list of the following men tat died by her hand:
Richard Charles Mallory, age 51, electronics store owner in Clearwater (date of murder: November 30, 1989). Wuornos claimed that Mallory beat, raped, and sodomized her after he drove her to an abandoned area for sexual services. Mallory was Wuornos' first victim and she claimed to have killed him in self-defense. Later, it became known that Mallory had previously been convicted for attempted rape in Maryland. Two days after the murder, a Volusia County deputy sheriff found Mallory's abandoned vehicle. On December 13, his body was found several miles away in a wooded area; he had been shot several times, and two bullets to the left lung were found to have been the cause of death.
David Andrew Spears, age 47, construction worker in Winter Garden. He was declared missing as of May 19, 1990. On June 1, 1990, his naked body was found along U.S. Route 19 in Florida in Citrus County. He had been shot six times by a .22 pistol.
Charles Edmund Carskaddon, age 40, part-time rodeo worker (date of murder: May 31, 1990). On June 6, 1990, his body was found in Pasco County. He had been shot nine times with a .22 caliber weapon. The body had been wrapped in an electric blanket and was badly decomposing when found. Witnesses saw Wuornos in possession of Carskaddon's car, and Wuornos had also pawned a gun identified as belonging to the victim.
Peter Abraham Siems, age 65, retired merchant seaman. In June 1990, Siems left Jupiter, Florida, for Arkansas. On July 4, 1990, his car was found in Orange Springs, Florida. Moore and Wuornos were seen abandoning the car, and Wuornos' palm print was found on the interior door handle. His body was never found.
Troy Eugene Burress, age 50, sausage salesman from Ocala, Florida. On July 31, 1990, he was reported missing. On August 4, 1990, his body was found in a wooded area along State Road 19 in Marion County. He had been shot twice.
Charles Richard "Dick" Humphreys, age 56, retired U.S. Air Force Major, former state child abuse investigator, and former Chief of Police (date of murder: September 11, 1990). On September 12, 1990, his body was found in Marion County. He was fully clothed and had been shot seven times in the head and torso. His car was found in Suwannee County.
Walter Jeno Antonio, age 62, trucker, security guard, and reserve police officer. On November 19, 1990, Antonio's nearly naked body was found near a remote logging road in Dixie County. He had been shot four times. Five days later, his car was found in Brevard County.
On July 4th, 1990, Aileen and her girlfriend Tyria, wrecked the car that had been stolen from murdered victim, Peter Seims. A woman name Rhonda Bailey witnessed the accident and called the police with details, which started a manhunt. Some of the victims' belongings had been found in pawnshops and on one of the receipts, police found Aileen's fingerprint. Due to prior crimes, her information and prints were in the system. On January 9, 1991, Aileen was arrested on an outstanding warrant at The Last Resort biker bar in Volusia County. Police located Moore the next day in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She agreed to elicit a confession from Wuornos in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Moore returned with the police to Florida, where she was put up in a motel. Under police guidance, she made numerous telephone calls to Wuornos, pleading for help in clearing her name. Three days later, on January 16, 1991, Wuornos confessed to the murders. She claimed the men had tried to rape her and she killed them in self-defense. In November 1991, Wuornos was legally adopted by 44-year-old Arlene Pralle who saw her photo in a newspaper. It's funny how someone can "love" you but will turn and run your ass over to save themselves.
On January 14, 1992, Wuornos went to trial for the murder of Richard Charles Mallory. Although previous convictions are normally inadmissible in criminal trials, under Florida's Williams Rule, the prosecution was allowed to introduce evidence related to her other crimes to show a pattern of illegal activity. On January 27, 1992, Wuornos was convicted of Mallory's murder with help from Moore's testimony. At her sentencing, psychiatrists for the defense testified that Wuornos was mentally unstable and diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. Four days later, she was sentenced to death. Now let me jump on my soapbox. I am a very firm believer in the death penalty. I have written about very few cases where I thought death was not the right choice. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. She obviously had childhood trauma and she was diagnosed with multiple mental disorders. Life in prison would have been a more appropriate sentence in this case. Only my humble opinion.
Wuornos' defense made efforts during the trial to introduce evidence that Mallory was previously convicted for attempted rape in Maryland and served a sentence in a maximum-security correctional facility providing remediation to sexual offenders. Records obtained from the correctional institution showed that from 1958 to 1962, Mallory was committed for treatment and observation resulting from a criminal charge of assault with intent to rape and received an overall eight years of treatment from the facility. In 1961, "it was observed of Mr. Mallory that he possessed strong sociopathic trends". However, the judge refused to allow the records to be admitted in court as evidence and denied Wuornos' request for a retrial.
On March 31, 1992, Wuornos pleaded no contest to the murders of Charles Richard Humphreys, Troy Eugene Burress, and David Andrew Spears, saying she wanted to "get right with God".In her statement to the court, she said, in part, "I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I've told you; but these others did not. They only began to start to." On May 15, 1992, Wuornos was given three more death sentences. In June 1992, Wuornos pleaded guilty to the murder of Charles Edmund Carskaddon. In November 1992, she received her fifth death sentence. In February 1993, Wuornos pleaded guilty to the murder of Walter Jeno Antonio and was sentenced to death again. No charges were brought against her for the murder of Peter Abraham Siems, as his body was never found. In all, Wuornos received six death sentences.
Wuornos's execution by lethal injection took place on October 9, 2002. She declined her last meal which could have been anything under $20 and chose a cup of coffee instead. 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." She died at 9:47 a.m. EST. She was the second woman in Florida and the tenth in the United States to be executed since the 1976 United States Supreme Court decision restoring capital punishment.
After her death, Wuornos' body was cremated. Wuornos' ashes were scattered beneath a tree in her native Michigan by Wuornos' childhood friend Dawn Botkins. At Wuornos' request, Natalie Merchant's song "Carnival" from her album Tigerlily was played at her funeral: Wuornos spent many hours listening to this album on death row. When Merchant found out about this, she gave permission to use the song in the closing credits of Nick Broomfield's documentary Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.
I have to honestly say, I do not believe she received a fair trial. No one took anything from her past nor her mental illness into consideration. I am not saying she is not guilty, but I do believe she should not have received the death penalty. It is very easy for a court to convict you, but not give out the correct punishment.
Sources:
Snapped Notorious: Aileen Wuornos
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