Aileen Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan. Wuornos grew up in the nearby Troy area to the South. The young Wuornos experienced a horrifying trauma during her childhood. Her father ended up committing suicide while serving prison time for child molestation.

Meanwhile, her mother abandoned Wuornos and her older brother Keith, leaving them to be raised by their grandparents. Aileen’s grandmother was alleged to be an alcoholic and her grandfather a terrifying, violent force. Wuornos would later state that she was sexually abused by her grandfather. 

She ended up becoming pregnant in her early teens, and the infant boy was put up for adoption. During her youth, Wuornos was also forced out of her home and lived in the woods. Due to previously being forced out of her home, Wuornos survived on a vagabond existence as an adult, hitchhiking and engaging in other forms of work.

She was arrested in the mid-1970s for charges related to assault and disorderly conduct. She eventually settled in Florida, where she met wealthy yachtsman Lewis Fell. The two were married in 1976, but Fell annulled the union shortly after due to Wuornos being arrested in another altercation.

A decade later, having been involved in numerous additional crimes, Wuornos met 24-year-old Tyria Moore in Daytona, Florida, and the two engaged in a romantic relationship. It would later be revealed that from late 1989 into the fall of 1990, Wuornos had murdered at least six men along the Flordia highways.

In mid-December of 1989, the body of Richard Mallory was found in a junkyard, with five more men’s bodies discovered over subsequent months. Authorities were eventually able to track down Wuornos and Moore from fingerprints and palm prints left in the crashed vehicle of another missing man named Peter Siena. Wuornos was arrested in a bar in Port Orange, Florida, while police tracked down Moore in Pennsylvania.

To avoid prosecution, Moore made a deal, and in mid-January 1991, she elicited a phone confession from Wuornos, who took full and sole responsibility for the murders. On January 27, 1992, a jury found Wuornos guilty of first-degree murder in the Mallory case, and she received the death penalty.