Aileen Wuornos murdered seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. The horrifying murders sent a shockwave through the States, but they also brought up a lot of questions about the impact of an abusive background. Wournos was sentenced to death in 2002. But shortly before that, she appeared in an interview sharing a chilling theory about why she did it. This is not for the faint-hearted.
Aileen Wournos was working as a prostitute in Florida. During 12 months in 1989 and 1990, she had killed and also robbed seven men. Wournos confessed to all killings, but when she said that self-defense against sexual aggression was one of the reasons, people had mixed emotions.
Her killings sparked a debate about violence and the impact of abusive backgrounds, especially regarding crimes committed by women.
In a true-crime documentary called Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, directed by Nick Broomfield, Aileen appeared. It was shortly before she was to be executed in Florida State Prison in Bradford County, Florida, and she gave an eerie theory about what police actually had done.
When Broomfield asked the woman why she had killed seven men in those 12 months, Aileen said, “Because the cops let me keep killing them, Nick, don’t you get it?”
Aileen Wuornos’ chilling theory before getting executed
Moreover, the killer claimed that police had been following her for some time and even allowed her to kill her victims.
As Nick Broomfield asked her that most people do not commit murder, she got angry, saying, “Oh, you are lost Nick, I was a hitchhiking hooker, running into trouble. I shoot the guy if I ran into trouble, physical trouble, the cops knew it.”
She added, “When the physical trouble lot came around, they thought ‘let em clean the streets, then we’ll pull her in’, that is why.”
This was all the world got to hear about Wournos’ chilling theory about police letting her continue to take those men’s lives before she was executed at the prison in October of 2022 at age 46. Some years later, the filmmaker Nick Broomfield appeared in an interview with CNN, talking about how she acted and how her mental state was.
“I think this anger developed inside her. And she was working as a prostitute. I think she had a lot of awful encounters on the roads. And I think this anger just spilled out from inside her. And finally exploded. Into incredible violence. That was her way of surviving,” he said.
Filmmaker: “I think that’s what had caused these things to happen”
“I think Aileen really believed that she had killed in self-defense, I think someone who’s deeply psychotic can’t really tell the difference between something that is life threatening and something that is a minor disagreement, that you could say something that she didn’t agree with.”
He concluded, “She would get into a screaming black temper about it. And I think that’s what had caused these things to happen. And at the same time, when she wasn’t in those extreme moods, there was an incredible humanity to her.”
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