How This Child Turned Into One of History’s Most Notorious Figures

The Murders

Florida became the stage for her violent turn. Working as a prostitute along highways, she met Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old electronics store owner. They ended up in a wooded area outside Daytona. Wuornos shot him three times.

She first claimed they argued over money. Later, she testified Mallory had beaten and raped her, and she killed him in self-defense. Mallory’s own history of sexual violence only came to light after her conviction, but by then the narrative was fixed: a dangerous drifter had murdered a man.

What no one yet realized was that Mallory was only the beginning.

Between December 1989 and November 1990, Wuornos killed seven men across Florida—construction workers, a rodeo hand, a retired police chief, a truck driver. Each time, she claimed they tried to assault her. Each time, she shot them.

But the sheer number of victims overwhelmed her defense. Ballistics and stolen property tied the murders together. Her confessions—emotional, contradictory, and erratic—sealed her fate.

She was charged with six counts of first-degree murder. One victim’s body was never found, though she admitted to killing him. Ultimately, she received six death sentences.

The “Damsel of Death”

Her name became infamous: Aileen Wuornos.

Dubbed the “Damsel of Death,” she became a media obsession. Her life story—abuse, homelessness, violence—was dissected, sensationalized, and endlessly debated. Was she a predator? A victim of lifelong trauma who snapped? Psychologists pointed to severe mental illness and untreated wounds. Prosecutors painted her as a cold-blooded killer.

On October 9, 2002, at age forty-six, Wuornos was executed by lethal injection. In her final years, she swung between insisting on self-defense and spiraling into paranoia and rage. To some, she was a monster. To others, a tragic product of abuse and neglect. To most, she remained an unsettling reminder of what can emerge from a childhood steeped in pain.