Aileen Wuornos - Monster

The study of many serial killers shows that, apart from being loners and having been physically and psychologically abused as children, they move into the early teens holding a deep-seated grudge against those who have hurt them the most.

Of some interest is the fact that these people, with a few exceptions, rarely hurt the abuser; instead they transfer and vent their frustrations and anger on others cast from a similar mould. Ted Bundy, for example, who never knew his natural father, had a disruptive childhood, and carried with him to the end of his days the social stigma of being illegitimate. As a young man, he was withdrawn and a loner, unable to find meaningful work or true love. When he found this love, the woman soon abandoned him and, although he didn’t lay a finger on her, he went on to slaughter up to 50 other women as punishment. This transference of frustration and hatred can be seen in many cases: Dennis Nilsen, Kenneth Bianchi, Henry Lee Lucas, Ottis Toole and Harvey Carignan are a few. Aileen Wuornos was to be no exception.

Aged 11, Lee’s world completely collapsed when Lauri Wuornos told her in the heat of the moment that he and Britta were not her real parents, and they wanted rid of her for good. Her heart must have been shattered. This news turned her mind completely. She hated her grandfather with a passion that knew no bounds.

We know that Lee’s teachers noted that something was seriously amiss with her for some time. Tutors of the young are, or at least should be, trained to flag up a child who has learning problems or poorly developing social skills. In Lee’s case, the school recommended counselling for the 14-year-old girl, but the Wuornoses were not interested. Had the young Lee received counselling at this stage in her life, had the Wuornoses paid heed to their adopted daughter’s tutors, there might have been a different outcome. But no help was forthcoming; instead, another shockwave hit home hard.

Lee learned, for the first time, the true identity of her natural father. He had been a sex pervert and rapist. Lauri Wuornos gloated when he told her that Leo Pittman had just hanged himself while serving a life sentence in a maximum-security mental institution.

Lee flipped, and sought the friendship of Mr Portlock, a man who lived in her neighbourhood. Now totally disowned by her adoptive parents, she gave birth in a home for single mothers. On her release, Lauri told her that if she came back he would kill her. The baby was adopted and the wheel that had become Lee’s first 15 years on this planet had turned a full circle. Then Britta died and Lauri died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. Lee says she found the body.

Out of the 13 ‘family-background characteristics’ the FBI have found adversely affect a child’s later behaviour, among their study group of serial killers, Aileen experienced 11 of them: alcohol abuse, drug abuse, psychiatric history, criminal history, sexual problems, physical abuse, psychological abuse, dominant father figure, negative relationship with her male caretaker figures, negative relationships with both her natural mother and her adoptive mother, and she had been treated unfairly. A staggering 85 per cent. By FBI calculations, that would have placed her at the top of their high-risk register. When one considers that even Henry Lee Lucas, one of the most notorious serial murderers in criminal history, had a score of 77 per cent, with Ted Bundy further down the high-risk register at a mere 38 per cent, Lee was not off to a good start.

Towards the end of her days, and teetering on the black abyss of insanity, Lee would change her story, saying that she had come from a ‘clean and decent family’; her adoptive brother would have people believe that that is correct. However, there are too many witnesses who testified to the contrary, so there is no doubt that during her early years she was damaged beyond repair.

Lee’s early years are documented within these pages. However, all of her accounts are embroidered versions of her life mixed with impenetrable fantasies. To say that she was a pathological liar right to the very end would be an understatement. I will be emphatic in saying that getting to the truth is, and always was, an impossible task, even for Lee herself. She, like scores of other murderers, has cried wolf and lied so many times, we would not recognise the truth if it stared us straight in the face. Indeed, even Lee, herself a sociopath, would no longer know the truth if she were alive today. Such is the nature of a psychopathic personality.

We must ask ourselves why Lee killed for the first time. She had been with scores of men before she shot Richard Mallory. The truth of the matter – again whitewashed and glossed over by most writers, the media, the trial judge, the prosecutor, police and for the convenience of justice – is that Mr Mallory was an extremely dangerous and perverted individual indeed. One would have to stretch coincidence a very long way in thinking that this played no part in him becoming her first victim. Lee had taken many rides during the day prior to meeting Mallory. She had all the money she needed in her purse to pay the deposit on a new apartment for her and Tyria. The simple truth is that Mallory met his nemesis.

Billy Nolas, Lee’s attorney at her trial, tried to prepare the jury for the mitigating factors which the defence team planned to present, and he made a telling point. ‘You have observed Lee’s behaviour,’ he said. ‘Why is Lee the way she is… she did not simply fall out of the sky. There are things that she was born with and things that happened to her along the way… a world which has made her what she is.’

Three other defence psychologists claimed, using phrases that would enliven any Stephen King novel, that the world of Lee Wuornos is a ‘chilling place, a malevolent place, an angry, out-to-get-her place, a threatening place full of perceived terrors’. She perceived the world as having evil spirits, ghosts, things that are beyond our control. She distanced people by seeing them as angels or demons. And she functioned, they all agreed, on the level of a very small child.

Dr Elizabeth McMahon had performed the necessary neurological, psychological and intelligence tests on Lee. She examined her for a total of 22 hours. Dr McMahon testified that the structure of Lee’s brain was normal, ‘but it does not function properly, like sand in a gas tank… the condition is chronic, static, doesn’t change and interacts with other problems.’

Lee was a borderline personality, which is defined by eight classic symptoms. Dr McMahon claimed that Lee evidenced them all: a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relations; impulsiveness; unstable moods; inappropriate, intense anger; recurrent suicidal threats; marked and present identity disturbance; feelings of emptiness or boredom; frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.

‘This, combined with the dysfunctional background, produced an unhappy, discontented woman who cannot cope with the world. Lee is always in a state of living on the edge. There is a sense of danger, striving just to get her physical needs met,’ said Dr McMahon. ‘She has some sense that other people are doing it OK, but she’s not… Miss Wuornos is probably one of the most primitive people I’ve seen out of the institution. By that I mean that she functions at the level of a very basic… a small child. Always making an attempt at some sense of security, some sense of contentment.’

When cross-examined, however, Dr McMahon was forced to agree that Lee was sane, and that she knew the difference between right and wrong. Any chance of rehabilitation was remote, if not impossible.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘monster’ as ‘an inhumanely cruel or wicked person’. Aileen Wuornos certainly had a dysfunctional start in life, and we cannot blame her for that. However, she became hooked on murder for murder’s sake. Aileen Wuornos chose her own fate. She knew that if she committed aggravated murder in Florida she could face the ultimate penalty. She decided to kill not once, not twice, but many times, and for this we are obliged to label her a monster.