Aileen Wuornos

What the record shows

Aileen Carol Wuornos shot and killed seven men along the highways of central and north Florida between November 1989 and November 1990. According to the Florida Commission on Capital Cases, a Volusia County jury convicted her of the first-degree murder of Richard Mallory in January 1992, and she then pleaded no contest or guilty to five further murders in Marion, Citrus, Dixie and Pasco counties, for six death sentences in all. She also confessed to killing a seventh man, Peter Siems, whose body was never found; no charge was brought in that case. Wuornos said she shot the men in self-defence after they attacked her. The courts rejected that account, and Florida executed her on October 9, 2002.

Mallory, 51, a Clearwater electronics store owner, was last seen on November 30, 1989; his body was found in Volusia County on December 13, shot with a .22-caliber pistol. Over the following year the bodies of David Spears (Citrus County, June 1, 1990), Charles Carskaddon (Pasco County, June 6), Troy Burress (Marion County, August 4), Charles "Dick" Humphreys (Marion County, September 12) and Walter Gino Antonio (Dixie County, November 19) were found near roads, each shot several times, their wallets and vehicles missing. Siems' car was found wrecked near Orange Springs on July 4, 1990.

Witnesses to the crash described two women leaving the car. According to Wikipedia's summary of the investigation, victims' belongings surfaced in pawnshops and a fingerprint on a receipt signed under an alias was matched to prints on file for Wuornos. On January 9, 1991, officers arrested her at The Last Resort bar in Volusia County on an outstanding concealed-weapon warrant under the name Lori Grody. Her companion, Tyria Moore, agreed to cooperate, and on January 16 Wuornos confessed, saying each man had tried to rape or assault her.

A Volusia County grand jury indicted Wuornos on January 28, 1991, according to her later postconviction brief. At trial from January 13 to 27, 1992, the state was allowed under Florida's Williams rule to present evidence of the other killings. The jury found her guilty and recommended death 12 to 0; on January 31, 1992, she was sentenced to death plus 10 years for armed robbery. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed on September 22, 1994, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied review in April 1995.

On March 31, 1992, Wuornos pleaded no contest to the murders of Humphreys, Burress and Spears. In Wuornos v. State, 644 So. 2d 1012 (Fla. 1994), the Florida Supreme Court recorded that she continued to assert self-defence at the plea colloquy and that her confessions "differed in substantial ways"; it upheld the pleas and the three death sentences imposed on May 15, 1992. She pleaded guilty in Dixie County to the Antonio murder and was sentenced to death on February 4, 1993; the Pasco County court imposed a sixth death sentence for Carskaddon the next day after she waived a penalty hearing.

Her postconviction lawyers argued that trial counsel should have uncovered Mallory's Maryland record, which the brief says included a 1958 plea to assault with intent to rape. The circuit court denied relief in 2000. In April 2001 Wuornos asked the Florida Supreme Court to dismiss her lawyers and end her appeals; a judge found her competent on July 20, 2001, and the court dismissed the appeals on April 1, 2002. ABC News reported that in a 2001 interview she said she needed to die for the killings, and Knight Ridder noted she had withdrawn the self-defence claim.

Governor Jeb Bush signed a death warrant on September 5, 2002. According to Capital Punishment in Context, he granted a brief stay on September 30 for a psychiatric examination, and three state-appointed psychiatrists found her competent. Wuornos was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 9:47 a.m. on October 9, 2002, at Florida State Prison near Starke, the second woman executed by Florida since 1976.

Wuornos was born Aileen Carol Pittman on February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan, and was raised by her grandparents. According to Wikipedia and witnesses at her postconviction hearing, she described an abusive childhood and gave birth at 15. Her record before 1989 included a 1982 armed robbery sentence.