Aileen Wuornos was America's first female serial killer. Netflix's harrowing new doco tells her story.

For decades, the profile of a serial killer was almost exclusively male.

The idea of a woman committing multiple, violent roadside murders was unthinkable. Then came Aileen Wuornos. 

Between 1989 and 1990, Wuornos, who was a sex worker in Florida, shot and killed six men along major highways, shattering every comfortable assumption about female criminality. 

She was dubbed America's "first female serial killer."

Her complex and horrific crimes, and the tragic life that preceded them, became the foundation for the 2003 film Monster, which earned Charlize Theron an Academy Award for her transformative portrayal. 

Watch the trailer for Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers. Article continues after video.

Now, Netflix's new documentary, Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, revisits her brutal case through a trove of archival interviews, giving us an unsettling look at her crimes and her life, in her own words.

By presenting her unvarnished and often contradictory accounts, the film forces us to confront the messy, painful reality behind the 'monster' narrative.

While her crimes are undeniably horrific, the documentary raises uncomfortable questions about her trial and the public sentiment surrounding a female serial killer who was also a prostitute and a gay woman.

What did Aileen Wuornos do?

Aileen Wuornos turned to sex work after running away from home.

It was during her time as a prostitute — between 1989 to 1990 — that she killed six men in Florida.

Her first known murder was Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old shop owner, in November 1989. He had approached her to engage her for sex work and was found dead two weeks later, shot in the chest multiple times.

Wuornos would later be convicted of his murder and sentenced to death — but she alleged that Mallory had raped and beaten her and that she acted in self-defence.

Her killing spree began with Mallory, and her next victims were also clients.

Next was David Spears, a 47-year-old construction worker that she shot six times in May 1990. Also in May, she killed Charles Carskaddon, a 40-year-old rodeo worker.

Police alleged she killed 65-year-old retiree Peter Siems in the same month, although Siems' body was never found, and she was never formally charged.

Her palm print was found on the door handle of Siems' car, which police said linked her to him.

Her fifth murder victim was 50-year-old sausage salesman Troy Burress in July 1990, followed by 56-year-old Charles Richard "Dick" Humphreys, a former police chief in September 1990.

Her final murder was in November 1990, when she shot 62-year-old security guard Walter Jeno Antonio.

Wuronos was eventually arrested, found guilty, and by February 1993 she had been sentenced to death six times over.

Aileen Wuornos shares her 'truth'.

The strength of Netflix's new documentary lies in hearing from Wuornos directly. Through interviews conducted while she was on death row, she paints a portrait of a childhood marked by abandonment and trauma.

In her own words, Wuornos describes a tough upbringing, raised by strict, devout Christian grandparents after being abandoned by her mother.

It was a life devoid of stability, and she quickly learnt to fend for herself. 

"I'm tough," she asserted in one interview.

Image: Netflix

Born in 1956, in Rochester, Michigan, her mother Diane left her when she was just four years old. Her father, Leo Pitman, was in jail for sexually abusing a 7-year-old girl. He took his own life in prison.

Raised by her maternal grandparents, Aileen alleges she was sexually abused during her youth. Although, in the Netflix documentary interviews, she also says that her grandfather was 'not nasty'.

Around the age of 14, Aileen became pregnant, according to a 2003 documentary Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. She was sent to a home for unwed mothers for a time.

While the identity of the father isn't known, People reports she claimed it was a friend of her grandfathers who had raped her. This was also what her childhood friend Dawn Botkins claimed in Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers.

After her grandmother and grandfather's death, Aileen and her brother were turned over to state care, but she ran away.

Aileen spent the next five years surviving on the road, hitchhiking, and sleeping rough in places like under viaducts and in cow pastures.

She claims she was sexually assaulted multiple times during this period, turning her to sex work out of desperation.

An unreliable narrator.

A key theme in the documentary is the shifting nature of Wuornos' claims.

When she was arrested, she initially insisted she had acted in self-defence, specifically in the case of her first victim, Richard Mallory, arguing he had assaulted her, vaginally and anally.

But the story kept changing, and police didn't know what to believe. She addresses this in the documentary.

"There's only one thing I lied about; there was no sodomy," she says in one recorded conversation.

Wuornos says she "slipped with the cops" and started "running [her] mouth" by adding the claim of sodomy, which she said was based on "thinking about raped women, their problems, and my problems."

She later expressed frustration at having to "keep up that stupid lie throughout court," demonstrating a confused, yet deliberate, attempt to mould her story.

Her need to define herself also extended to the label the media had slapped on her.

In her own words, Wuornos rejected the idea she was a natural-born monster. She denied the term "serial killer," arguing instead that her actions were a product of her circumstances and her addiction. 

"I turned into one, but my real self is not one," she claimed.

Image: Netflix

Perhaps the most devastating moment of the narrative is her confession to the police, which was largely orchestrated by her live-in lover, Tyria Moore.

The police, having tracked down Moore, convinced her to cooperate and help secure evidence against Wuornos.

Desperate to protect Moore — the only person she truly loved — Wuornos confessed to the murders over the phone and then on videotape.

The woman who had experienced a lifetime of being betrayed and abandoned made the ultimate sacrifice, effectively turning herself in to save her partner.

After being convicted of six murders and spending over a decade on Florida's death row, Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002, at the age of 46.

Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers paints a very complicated picture.

By allowing the story to be told largely in her own words, it presents Aileen Wuornos not as a simple villain, but as a deeply traumatised, contradictory figure who became the unwilling face of female psychopathy.

Even today, the true motives behind her killing spree remain elusive.

Feature Image: Netflix.