Aileen Wuornos: America's Deadliest Female Serial Killer

Between late November 1989 and November 19, 1990, Aileen Carol Wuornos systematically hunted, shot, robbed, and murdered at least seven middle-aged men along Florida highways. Her execution on October 9, 2002, at age 46, marked the end of one of America's most shocking serial killer cases—and the story of a woman whose childhood trauma and violence would define her lethal adult years.

Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan. Her early life was marked by severe dysfunction and exploitation. By age 11, she was already offering sexual favors for payment or cigarettes. At 14, she became pregnant after an assault she initially claimed was rape; she gave birth to a boy in March 1971 who was given up for adoption. Her explanations for the pregnancy would later shift, complicating her own narrative about victimhood.

By the time she reached adulthood, Wuornos had accumulated an extensive criminal record including DUIs, assault, illegal firearm possession, forgery, and disorderly conduct. In 1976, she married 69-year-old Lewis Fell in what would become a cautionary tale: the marriage lasted weeks before he filed a restraining order, alleging she had beaten him with a cane. That same year, she was accused of assault after throwing a cue ball at a bartender's head.

In the late 1980s, Wuornos worked as a street prostitute soliciting clients along Florida's highways. Her hunting ground became the roadsides where vulnerable men picked up women they assumed were sex workers. Her first confirmed victim was Richard Charles Mallory, a 51-year-old electronics store owner from Clearwater, Florida, murdered on November 30 or December 1, 1989. Wuornos would later claim Mallory beat, raped, and sodomized her in an abandoned area—a self-defense justification that would evolve considerably during her arrest and trials.