After being abused and abandoned at her childhood, Wuornos went on a killing rampage which made her the most notorious female serial killer in the United States. Wuornos targeted truck drivers in Florida and killed seven men from 1989 to 1990 across Florida before the police apprehended her and later executed her in by lethal injection in 2002 ( Reynolds, 2004). Wuornos became the tenth woman to get a death penalty in the United States since it was reinstated in 1976. Wuornos was born in Rochester, Michigan in 1956 to Leo Dale Pittman and teen mother, Diane Wuornos. Her parents divorced and her mother deserted her together with her brother Keith soon afterward. Her father died in prison after being charged with child molestation ( Arrigo & Griffin, 2004 ). When her mother abandoned them, they were adopted by their paternal grandparents who raised them. While under the care of her grandparents, Wuornos was brought up in an abusive and cruel environment, since her grandfather an alcohol addict who sexually and physically molested her. Wuornos began engaging in sexual activities when she was only ten years old, by first experimenting with her brother. When she was aged eleven years, she began trading sex with the teenage schoolboys in the neighborhood in exchange for drugs, cigarettes, and cash. However, when she was aged fourteen, she got pregnant and she was subsequently taken to a single mothers home ( Reynolds, 2004). Wuornos gave birth to a boy and immediately put him up for adoption. She thereafter left school and it is at this point that she turned into hitchhiking prostitution.
When Wuornos' grandfather committed suicide and she lost her brother to throat cancer, she relocated to Florida, where she got wedded to a rich and old man called Lewis Fell. Nevertheless, soon her husband canceled the marriage and put a restrictive order against her after beating him with his walking stick and wasted his money ( Arrigo & Griffin, 2004 ). Wuornos met Tyria Moore on 1986 at a gay bar in Daytona, which led to the two becoming a couple. Later, in 1989, Wuornos started murdering as well as robbing males who picked her up on the highway, which eventually resulted in the serial murder of seven men between 1989 and 1990. Wuornos was a prostitute who feared being abandoned by her girlfriend Tyria Moore and had been sexually abused at childhood. She was a disorganized, visionary murderer who killed and robbed her victims and used her illicit money to fend for herself as well as her girlfriend. When the police caught her, Wuornos asserted that she killed the victims in self-defense, that she had murdered all the seven men because they hurt her or attempted to rape her ( Reynolds, 2004). Nevertheless, possessing a "kill bag" which contained Windex that she used to clean up crime scenes was proof of her intention to kill. It was determined that she never selected any of her victims ahead of time and all of them were opportunity kills. Wuornos was famous for carrying a "kill bag" that had her gun as well as a bottle of Windex, along with pretending to be a prostitute who sought for clienteles ( Reynolds, 2004). All of Wuornos' victims were white men who were aged 40-65, and she used a handgun as her murder weapon in all cases. If there was an experiment for a psychologist to design a childhood which could predictably create a serial killer, the life of Wuornos could be included to the final detail. Wuornos started practicing prostitution at an early age of eleven and traded sexual favors at her rudimentary school for drug, money and various luxuries ( Arrigo & Griffin, 2004 ). However, Wuornos did not develop the behavior on her own. Wuornos' father, a sentenced sex offender, was not in her life even before she was born, and he later hanged himself in his prison cell while she only thirteen years old. Her mother had already abandoned her at that time, which left her under the care of her maternal grandparents. Within the same year her father took his own life, Wuornos' grandmother succumbed to liver failure. In the meantime, her grandfather, based on Wuornos’ later explanation, had been raping and beating her for several years. When she was fifteen years old, she left school to give birth to a baby who was sired by her grandfather's friend ( Arrigo & Griffin, 2004 ). Nevertheless, after giving birth to the child, they separated from her grandfather, eventually giving up her baby for adoption and indulging herself in petty theft and prostitution. Based on Wuornos' biography, it is clear that her teenage delinquencies coupled with violent behaviors might have been as a result of developmental factors like the abusive environment which she grew in, and the neglectful parenting which her grandparents used after adopting her and her brother. According to Knutson, DeGarmo & Reid (2004), deficient parents, especially neglectful parents who offer minimum supervision and engage in punitive disciplinary actions, significantly triggered the growth of disruptive conduct in kids and youths during their later life. Further, the combination of her aggressive nature and abusive parents made Wuornos even more predisposed to the development of antisocial conduct. Her relatives affirmed that she experiences various behavioral problems from her childhood, she was hot-tempered and this made her to often get into a fight with other children in the neighborhood and at school. Besides, she engaged in petty crimes as a teenager, stealing from her friends and family ( Arrigo & Griffin, 2004 ). Moreover, she had as well engaged in property damage actions, in which she lit her home on fire as well as the girls' lavatory at school. Because of her hot temper along with aggressive behavior, Wuornos did not have many friends, as her peers rejected her. Furthermore, the crimes Wuornos committed were also driven by biological factors. According to her biography and early life, Wuornos' biological father was a sociopathic child killer who committed suicide in prison. Thus, she may have inherited certain psychopathic attributes from her father including absence of empathy and regret and poor behavior control, which could have indirectly influenced her to commit the murder crimes. Wournos scored a 32/40 on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised Test and as well had an antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder (Myers, Gooch & Meloy, 2005). All these made her unstable and prone to criminal behavior. The abuse and instability in Wuornos' childhood life inspired many of her destructive decisions as a grown-up. Her mother had abandoned her twice, and her grandfather physical abused her, and this made Wuornos have low self-esteem and extremely insecure ( Reynolds, 2004). Further, Wuornos and her brother Keith engaged in sexual intercourse numerous time as early as when she was ten years old. Also, she practiced sex with other children in return for food, cigarettes, drugs, and money, which made her learn that she could make money through prostitution. Following the death of her brother from throat cancer, Wuornos was yet again abandoned, leaving her distraught and causing her to even try to kill herself. Later in life, after being triggered by fear of being abandoned by her girlfriend, she went on to kill seven people. At the age of thirties, Wuornos found some sort of stability in her girlfriend, who she regarded the love of her life. Wuornos became closer to Tyria than any other person had ever wanted to, and she used the money she earned from prostitution to take care of and support Tyria ( Reynolds, 2004). Fear of abandonment, jealousy, and financial instability forced Wuornos to rob and kill her first victim. Wuornos' subsequent victims were murdered months later after her girlfriend's sister visited them, shattering her impression of stability and threatening her relationship with Tyria. Distressed, Wuornos killed for her victims' cars and money to show her girlfriend that she could provide for her everything she needed.
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Conclusion
Wuornos is without any doubt one of the most infamous female serial killers, not only in the US but also across the world. Her life was filled with many challenges, and she had a very difficult time growing up as a child. Just like any other child, the environment which Wuornos grew up in greatly influenced her later life, and her criminal activities. She grew up in an abusive environment where she was first abandoned by her parents and later experienced both physical and sexual assault from her grandfather. The experiences of her early life pushed her into prostitution and petty crimes, and later on to serial killing of seven men. Wuornos' murder crimes were never pre-planned, and she killed her victims whenever the opportunity presented itself. In her confession, she justified her killings by saying that it was a kind of self-defense from her clienteles who wanted to hurt and rape her. Nonetheless, it has been proven that abuse and instability played a major role in her criminal behavior since she robbed and killed to get money to take care of and support her girlfriend. Overall, Wuornos' life history and criminal activities prove that the environment in which one grows up in is highly imperative as it highly determines the later life of an individual.
References
Arrigo, B. A., & Griffin, A. (2004). Serial murder and the case of Aileen Wuornos: Attachment theory, psychopathy, and predatory aggression. Behavioral Sciences & the Law , 22 (3), 375-393.
Knutson, J. F., DeGarmo, D. S., & Reid, J. B. (2004). Social disadvantage and neglectful parenting as precursors to the development of antisocial and aggressive child behavior: Testing a theoretical model. Aggressive behavior, 30(3), 187-205.
Myers, W. C., Gooch, E., & Meloy, J. R. (2005). The role of psychopathy and sexuality in a female serial killer. Journal of Forensic Science, 50(3), 1-6.
Reynolds, M. (2004). Dead ends: The pursuit, conviction and execution of female serial killer Aileen Wuornos, the damsel of death. New York: St. Martins .
