Aileen Wuornos: The Female Serial Killer Who Said It Was Self Defense

Aileen Wuornos stood on the shoulder of a Florida highway with a pistol in her bag and a partner at home demanding rent money. Within a year, seven men were dead. She said it started as self defense, that her first client raped her and she fought back. The press called her the Damsel of Death and America's first female serial killer. But was she a victim striking back after a lifetime of abuse, or a killer who got a taste for it and did the rest for money?

This is the story of Aileen Wuornos, told from a childhood of abandonment, beatings, and exploitation through to the Florida killings, her relationship with Tyria Moore, the thumbprint that gave her away, and the trial that sent her to death row. We follow the murder of Richard Mallory, the confession Moore was paid to draw out of her, and the question that has never gone away: how much of Aileen's story is true, and how much was survival, performance, or both? A hard, sad, genuinely complicated true crime story where the word victim applies to more than one side.

Topics Included

• who aileen wuornos was and how she became a killer
• her childhood of abuse, abandonment, and the people who raised her
• the murder of richard mallory and the self defense claim
• how her years of sex work on florida's highways shaped the case
• her relationship with tyria moore and the immunity deal
• the thumbprint and pawned camera that led to her arrest
• the trial, the withheld evidence, and the death sentence
• the victim or villain debate at the heart of the case
• her final years on death row and her 2002 execution

Resources and Further Reading

• Aileen Wuornos – Wikipedia
• Monster (2003) – directed by Patty Jenkins
• Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003) – directed by Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill
• Monster: My True Story - by Aileen Wuornos & Christopher Berry-Dee

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

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• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
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