Aileen Wuornos was a serial killer who murdered at least 7 people between 1989 and 1990. She was sentenced to death and was executed by lethal injection in 2002. Her last words became widely popular and a point of discussion relevant to her mental state when she committed the murders. “Yes, I would just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I’ll be back, I’ll be back,” she said.
Wuornos had a disturbed childhood and a teenage life. Her father was imprisoned after he was convicted of child molestation. She spent most of her time at her grandparents’ house. Things got tough after Aileen Wuornos turned to prostitution to earn a living. Before she was convicted of murder, Wuornos was charged for driving while intoxicated and for firing a gun from a moving vehicle. Other arrests were made for auto theft, armed robbery, and forgery.
The murders and conviction
In 1989, she disguised as a hitchhiking prostitute and murdered seven middle-aged motorists. She dropped the corpses alongside the highways of Florida and southern Georgia. When arrested in 1991, Aileen Wuornos claimed that they were indeed acts of self-defence. However, she was proven guilty of the murder of Richard Mallory. This was followed by her confession that she also killed six of the other men.
However, the body of the seventh victim was never found, so Aileen Wuornos was only sentenced for the killing of six men. The impact that Wuornos’ impact had on the conversations around gender and violence, increased the importance of the case in a political context.
“I killed those men, robbed them as cold as ice. And I’d do it again, too. There’s no chance in keeping me alive or anything, because I’d kill again. I have hate crawling through my system,” she expressed after her conviction. She further assured the system that not giving her a harsh enough punishment would mean putting the world at risk.
What was Aileen Wuornos’ last meal?
Aileen Wuornos was executed on October 9, 2002. She was on death row at the Florida Department of Corrections Broward Correctional Institute for a decade. Wuornos then began to practically ask for the process to be fastened. She went to the extent of promising repeated murders if left free and also appealed to the state of Florida to execute her immediately. Her last meal was a simple black coffee.
She did not ask for any kind of food, declined the offer to have a last meal and asked for one simple cup of coffee. While her last words, how she chose to speed up the execution and her threats about repeating her crimes, her last meal wasn’t very unique or much talked about. Before her execution, Wuornos is known to have expressed strong faith in Jesus Christ and believed she was going to be taken to him through the execution.
“Manhunter: Aileen Wuornos” is an episode of Catching Killers on Netflix. The 40-minute-long episode studies Wuornos’ crimes and how the aftermath impacted the world. It was released in 2021.
