Aileen Wournos shot dead six men at close range during her hitchhiking days as a sex worker. Her lover tricked her into confessing to her crimes.
Sitting in jail after being arrested on suspicion of a series of murders along the highway, Aileen “Lee” Wuornos, 34, made a touching promise to her lover over the phone.
His girlfriend, Tyria Moore, 28, panicked when he admitted: “Lee, [the police] They’re coming after me.” Wuornos struggled to contain his emotions as he responded, “I’m not going to let you go to jail. Ty, I love you. If I have to confess everything just to keep you out of trouble, I will.”
That chilling declaration of love sealed Wuornos’s fate, leading to her being convicted of six murders. In 2002 she was executed by the state of Florida.
Dubbed “America’s first serial killer” by the press, Wuornos inspired true crime television shows and even a 2003 film called Monster. But now the case is being revisited, with a “disturbing” new insight into the murderer’s mind and her dark past.
A new Netflix documentary titled Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers was released on the platform this week, featuring new footage from an interview with Wuornos on death row.
The show’s director, Emily Turner, reveals: “Aileen said, ‘I’m going to talk to you about the truth of my crimes,’ and watching this interview, a very different version of her emerges: contradictory, very human, sometimes quite disturbing.”
In one of her last interviews, Wuornos chillingly says: “The real Aileen Wuornos is not a serial killer. I was so lost that I became one.”
‘Drifter’ Wuornos was abandoned by her parents when she was just four years old, which led to her being adopted by her grandparents in Michigan. She became pregnant at age 13 and her baby was adopted.
The murderer was violently abused by her grandfather and in an interview, seen on the new Neflix show, Wuornos claims she was sexually assaulted by teenage friends, PEOPLE reports.
By the time she turned 16, Wuornos had run away from home and become a traveling sex worker. “I’m hitchhiking and I’m hitching,” he said. “I slept under viaducts, in abandoned houses, in cow pastures. I must have been raped, I would say, about 30 times, maybe more.”
His luck changed when he met Moore, a motel employee, at a Florida bar in 1986; It was there where the couple’s intense love story began, which lasted four years. “I loved her so much,” Wuronos said. “[She’s the] only reason he carried that damn gun. “I wanted to make sure I got home alive, so I would be breathing with her another day.”
However, their romance did not last. Two years later, police began investigating the gruesome deaths and robberies of men found shot near Florida highways. Six men were found murdered in eerily similar circumstances.
Witnesses claimed they saw two women driving one of the victims’ stolen vehicles, and investigators found a breakthrough when they removed Wuornos’ fingerprint from a pawn shop item that belonged to one of the deceased.
The killer was arrested on January 9, 1991, and her lover Moore eventually convinced her to make a confession. His girlfriend was working with police to avoid being charged as an accessory, but Moore was not charged with any crime.
Wuornos pleaded not guilty at trial for the murder of his first victim, Richard Mallory. She claimed she killed him in self-defense after he tortured and raped her, but the jury found her guilty.
She later pleaded not guilty and guilty to five other murders and was sentenced to death.
The Netflix documentary hears from Wuornos’ childhood friend, Dawn Botkins, who recalls her last encounter with the killer the night before his execution.
“She said she was definitely a serial killer. It was all the years of abuse and then she started drinking. Also, Ty [Moore]. Aileen kept telling me that: ‘That was quite a love, wasn’t it? “It was fatal.”
Aileen: The Queen of Serial Killers is now on Netflix
