Serial Murders by Aileen Wuornos

Aileen Carol Wuornos (née Pittman, born February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan) was convicted of killing seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. She was raised by her maternal grandparents after her mother abandoned her and her brother in 1960; Wuornos later described extensive childhood physical and sexual abuse and became involved in sex work as a teenager. She had a lengthy record of prior arrests in Colorado, Michigan, and Florida before the killings, including convictions for armed robbery and various weapons and assault-related charges.

The seven victims, all men between the ages of 40 and 65 encountered while Wuornos was engaged in street prostitution, were: Richard Charles Mallory (killed November 30, 1989, body found December 13, 1989); David Andrew Spears (found dead June 1, 1990); Charles Edmund Carskaddon (killed May 31, 1990, found June 6, 1990); Peter Abraham Siems (missing after June 1990; his body was never recovered); Troy Eugene Burress (missing July 31, 1990, found August 4, 1990); Charles Richard "Dick" Humphreys (killed September 11, 1990, found September 12, 1990); and Walter Gino Antonio (found dead November 19, 1990). Victims were shot multiple times, generally with a .22-caliber weapon, and several of their vehicles or belongings were later recovered or pawned.

Wuornos was arrested on January 9, 1991, on an outstanding warrant for carrying a concealed weapon, having by then become a suspect based on witness descriptions from a car crash involving Siems' vehicle and fingerprint evidence linking her to a pawned item belonging to one of the victims. Her partner, Tyria Moore, cooperated with police and helped elicit a confession; Wuornos confessed to the killings on January 16, 1991, initially claiming the men had raped or attempted to rape her and that she acted in self-defense.

At trial beginning January 14, 1992, for the murder of Richard Mallory, prosecutors were permitted under Florida's Williams Rule to introduce evidence of her other killings. She was convicted of Mallory's murder on January 27, 1992, and sentenced to death four days later. She subsequently pleaded no contest to the murders of Humphreys, Burress, and Spears in March 1992, pleaded guilty to the Carskaddon murder in June 1992, and pleaded guilty to the Antonio murder in February 1993, receiving death sentences in each case for a total of six death sentences. No charges were brought in the death of Peter Siems because his body was never found.

Wuornos was held on death row at Broward Correctional Institution before being transferred to Florida State Prison, where she was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. In the years before her execution she gave a series of interviews to documentarian Nick Broomfield in which she made conflicting statements about whether the killings were committed in self-defense.