The narrative of Aileen Wuornos—who committed the murders of seven men between 1989 and 1990 and was put to death by lethal injection in 2002—has long been a popular topic in popular culture. It has been adapted into TV fiction and brought to life dramatically for film, notably with Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the serial killer.
Wuornos worked as a sex worker in Florida and admitted to fatally shooting seven middle-aged men over a one-year span in 1989 and 1990. She was found guilty of only one of these murders in 1992 at the age of 35. Over two decades later, her precise motivations remain ambiguous.
Now, a new Netflix documentary titled Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, set to premiere on Oct. 30, explores her criminal acts and includes a rare interview with Wuornos herself from 1997. This interview was conducted by artist and filmmaker Jasmine Hirst, who developed a pen pal relationship with Wuornos during her incarceration.
The conversation, filmed while Wuornos was in prison, offers insight into her mental state at the time the killings occurred and serves as the primary framework for the documentary. The film also intersperses audio snippets from interviews that director Emily Turner conducted last summer with law enforcement personnel involved in the case, as well as with Wuornos’s family and acquaintances.
Presented here are the key revelations from this interview and the prominent theories surrounding Wuornos’s motives.
Aileen Wuornos, recounted by her own words
Throughout her discussion with Hirst, Wuornos presents herself as a victim, describing a challenging upbringing under her strict, devout Christian grandparents.
She fled home at 15 and spent the subsequent five years hitchhiking, finding shelter under bridges and in agricultural fields. “I’m resilient,” she informs Hirst. She alleges that she was sexually assaulted multiple times during this period.
Her childhood friend, Dawn Botkins, believes Wuornos turned to sex work to earn money to support her brother, who was also living with their grandparents. While Wuornos consistently maintained that Richard Mallory, the man for whose 1989 murder she was convicted, had raped and sodomized her, she admits in her interview with Hirst that she fabricated the sodomy claim.
“There’s only one thing I wasn’t truthful about; there was no sodomy,” she states, explaining that she misspoke to the police and then was simply “talking carelessly” and “thinking about women who had been raped, their struggles, and my own.” She expressed frustration about having to “maintain that absurd falsehood throughout court.”
She states that she does not identify with the label “serial killer,” contending that she became a murderer after alcohol abuse. As she puts it, “I transformed into one, but my true self is not one.”
Aileen Wuornos’s motivations
Despite her assertions of not associating with the “serial killer” designation, Wuornos appeared to enjoy the publicity that came with being linked to horrific crimes. “You all are going to profit millions from this,” she whispers to Hirst, preparing herself for their on-camera interview.
“It’s a truly sorrowful situation, that the first instance in her life she felt acknowledged or important was when she became a serial killer,” Turner comments.
According to Turner, one theory regarding what compelled Wuornos to kill is that she had endured such severe violence throughout her life that she reacted with vengeance. Her sexuality played a role in this; she was in a long-term relationship with a woman named Tyria Moore when she killed Mallory, even confiding the crime to Moore. “After experiencing so many genuinely violent encounters with men, she decided to try lesbianism,” Turner explains. Sex work with men was merely a means to earn money and sustain a “modest existence.”
However, she cautions that Wuornos is “an incredibly untrustworthy” narrator.
Wuornos’s actual motive may never be fully comprehended. “There’s likely not one simple explanation,” Turner says. “I want viewers to watch the film and draw their own conclusions.”
