Aileen Wuornos

Aileen Wuornos
Aileen Wuornos mug shot
Born	Aileen Carol Pittman (1956-02-29)February 29, 1956 Rochester, Michigan, United States
Died	October 9, 2002(2002-10-09) (aged 46) Florida State Prison, Bradford County, Florida, United States
Cause of death	Lethal injection
Other names	Sandra Kretsch Susan Lynn Blahovec Lee Blahovec Cammie Marsh Greene Lori Kristine Grody
Criminal penalty	Death
Spouse(s)	Lewis Gratz Fell (m. 1976; div. 1976)
Conviction(s)	6 counts of 1st degree murder
Killings
Victims	7
Span of killings	November 30, 1989–November 19, 1990
Country	United States
State(s)	Florida
Weapons	High Standard .22-caliber revolver
Date apprehended	January 9, 1991

Aileen Carol Wuornos (February 29, 1956 – October 9, 2002) was an American serial killer who killed seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990 by shooting them at point-blank range. Wuornos claimed that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her while she was working as a prostitute, and that all of the homicides were committed in self-defense. She was convicted and sentenced to death six times for the murders and was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

Wuornos was born Aileen Carol Pittman in Rochester, Michigan, on February 29, 1956. Her Finnish-American mother, Diane Wuornos (born 1939), was 14 years old when she married Aileen's father, Leo Dale Pittman (1937–1969), on June 3, 1954. Less than two years later, and two months before Aileen was born, Diane filed for divorce. Aileen's older brother Keith was born on March 14, 1955.

Wuornos never met her father; he was incarcerated at the time of her birth. Leo Dale Pittman was diagnosed with schizophrenia, later convicted of sex crimes against children, and eventually hanged himself in prison on January 30, 1969. In January 1960, when Wuornos was almost four years old, Diane abandoned her children, leaving them with their maternal grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos, who legally adopted Keith and Aileen on March 18, 1960.

By the age of 11, Wuornos began engaging in sexual activities in school in exchange for cigarettes, drugs, and food. She had also engaged in sexual activities with her brother. Wuornos claimed that her alcoholic grandfather had sexually assaulted and beaten her when she was a child; before beating her, he would force her to strip out of her clothes. In 1970, at age 14, she became pregnant, having been raped by an accomplice of her grandfather. Wuornos gave birth to a boy at a home for unwed mothers on March 23, 1971, and the child was placed for adoption. A few months after her baby was born, she dropped out of school at about the time that her grandmother died of liver failure. When Wuornos was 15, her grandfather threw her out of the house, and she began supporting herself as a prostitute and living in the woods near her old home.