Aileen Wuornos was one of America’s most notorious criminals and the first female serial killer to be profiled by the FBI. The sex worker who turned murderer confessed that she had killed seven men in a year. She claimed that she did it in self-defense. Wuornos was convicted of murder and sentenced to ten years in prison before being executed in 2002. Growing up, Aileen Wuornos’ family life was very troubled and included an unwanted pregnancy when she was just 14-years-old. Here’s what we know about Aileen Wuornos’ son and the serial killer’s traumatic upbringing.
Aileen Wuornos is one of the most famous female serial killers
Aileen Wuornos was a difficult child. Wuornos was born in Rochester (Michigan) on February 29, 1956. Wuornos has never seen her biological father. He was just 16 years old when Wuornos was born. He was currently serving a sentence for child molestation. In 1969, he died hanging himself.
Wuornos and her brother were four years old when their mother abandoned them and placed them in the care of their maternal grandparents. Wuornos claimed that her grandfather, an abusive alcoholic, beat Wuornos and allowed her friends to do the exact same. When she was 15 years old, Wuornos threw her out of the house and encouraged her to become a sex worker to support herself.
Wuornos began to commit criminal acts while living on the streets. Wuornos was arrested for armed robbery and forging checks, as well as car theft and other offenses. Richard Charles Mallory was her first victim. She allegedly beat and raped him. He was shot multiple times, robbed, and left in the woods not far from where police found Wuornos’ abandoned car.
Wuornos also robbed six other men in a similar manner over the course the next year. In January 1991, Wuornos was arrested on an outstanding warrant. She confessed to the seven murders over a tap phone line. Wuornos was convicted in 1992 of the first-degree murder of Richard Charles Mallory and sentenced to death. She was convicted of five more murders and sentenced to death, but she was not charged with the murder of one victim because his body was never found.
In 2002, Wuornos was executed at the hands of Florida. During her decade-long stay on death row she wiggled back and forth between claiming the murders were self defense and admitting to being cold-blooded. In a hearing a few months before her execution, Wuornos said, “I killed those men, robbed them as cold as ice. And I’d do it again, too. There’s no chance of keeping me alive or anything because I’d kill again. I have hated crawling through my system.”
In 2003, Wuornos’ story was made into the critically acclaimed crime-bio flick Monster.Charlize Theron played the role of the notorious serial killer and was awarded an Academy Award for Best Actress.
What We Know About Her Son
When Wuornos was 14, she became pregnant after being raped by one of her father’s friends. She was sent to a home of unwed mothers, which was a common practice back then. She gave birth to her son March 23, 1971. Wuornos was 15 years old at that time.
The baby was put up for a closed adoption, which means there was no interaction between Wuornos and the child’s adoptive family. As a result, any information about the identity of the serial killer’s biological child is sealed from the public. Depending on the type of arrangement that was made, the son himself—who would now be a 50-year-old man—may not even know that his biological mother was one of the nation’s most notorious serial killers.
