Aileen Wuornos

‘When I was a little girl, I always wanted to be a nun’

Aileen Wournos, born Aileen Carol Pittman, was an American woman who was born in Detroit, Michigan to a 14 year old mother and 19 year old father who was in fact a child molester, later imprisoned for the rape and kidnap of a 7 year old girl.  Though her parents married it was not too last with her father leaving before her birth.  Aileen never knew her father who eventually hanged himself at a prison in Michigan in 1971.  She was adopted by her grandparents in March 1961 along with her elder brother Keith a fact she did not discover until she was 11 years old.  A harsh upbringing followed with many beatings whose marks were observed by others while it was believed that she had a sexual relationship with her brother.  To say she had a troubled childhood is an extreme understatement and like her mother she gave birth to a child, boy, that was adopted in 1971.  Aileen went on to have tumultuous relationships with many men eventually leading to the murder of seven men in Florida.  Wournos is the first American woman to match the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)’s profile of a serial killer. 

‘Sometimes society and circumstance throw up a female killer who, because of the nature of her crimes and, indeed, because she is a woman, stuns and sickens us all.  Lee Wuornos was that very rare specimen’