What Aileen Wuornos' Prison Life Was Really Like
The story of Aileen Wuornos, a serial killer who murdered seven men in 1989 and 1990, is deeply disturbing. The Michigan native had a brutal childhood characterized by sexual abuse, neglect, and alcohol use. Wuornos wound up involved in sex work and theft at a young age, and she was jailed for armed robbery at the age of 24. She began killing a decade later. Each of the men had picked Wuornos up on a Florida highway, with Wuornos presenting herself as a hitchhiker or sex worker before shooting them dead and robbing them of their valuables. When Wuornos was finally caught and charged — with the help of her partner Tyria Moore, who testified against her — she claimed that the men had attempted to rape her and she had acted in self-defense.
On January 27, 1992, Wuornos was found guilty of the murder of her first victim and sentenced to death, with five further convictions coming after. She remained on death row until she was finally executed in 2002. Here is what her time behind bars was like.
She claimed she was kept in brutal conditions
Aileen Wuornos spent the majority of her life on death row at the Florida Department of Corrections Broward Correctional Institute, where she was largely kept in solitary confinement. It was a continuation of the brutal punishment that had reportedly been meted out against her even before a verdict had been reached. Wuornos claimed that before her trial, when she was held in Volusia County Branch Jail in Daytona Beach, she was left naked in a freezing cold cell and lost 40 pounds. She also said that she was denied basics including a hearing aid, glasses, and access to a gynecologist.
At Broward, she was at least afforded a black-and-white television and basics including a stainless steel toilet, a single shelf, a metal footlocker, a chair, cupboard, and a metal bed. The cell measured 9-feet-by-6-feet and had a metal door with a hatch instead of bars. Her confinement lasted at least 22 hours a day, and she was allowed time in the prison yard only twice a week. During her time in solitary, Wuornos would write letters and read spiritual texts, reportedly becoming a born-again Christian during her years of incarceration. However, her legal team also claimed that her years on death row caused her to experience mental health issues.
She claimed she was abused by prison guards
Much of the brutal conditions Aileen Wuornos experienced during her last decade behind bars was typical of how Florida has treated death row inmates over the years. Those who are sentenced to death have been found guilty of terrible crimes, and the conditions in which they live provide further suffering before their execution. But Wuornos claimed that she was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment during her time on death row. And as she continued to experience mental health issues and grow increasingly paranoid, she came to suggest there was an intentional conspiracy against her.
In a court filing, she claimed that prison guards were intentionally harassing her, contaminating her meals with saliva, dirt, and urine, and intentionally mishandling her, strip searching her, cat-calling her, and bruising her wrists with overly-tight handcuffs. She also suggested that low water pressure in the prison, mildew on her mattress, door-kicking, and frequent window checks by the guards were deliberate. As reported by Polk Online, Wuornos believed that the officers were "trying to get me so pushed over the brink by them I'd wind up committing suicide before the [execution]." However, there has been no evidence to substantiate her claims.
She made bizarre claims about her time behind bars
As the years wore on, Aileen Wuornos' claims regarding her treatment by law enforcement and prison guards became even more outlandish. In her last interview before her execution, she stated that the police were aware of her identity immediately after she murdered her first victim, Richard Mallory. According to Wuornos, she had left enough evidence at the scene for them to trace her, but they had purposefully chosen not to. "They let me kill the rest of those guys to turn me into a serial killer," she claimed (via YouTube).
The claim was made in a documentary made by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield, who secured the final footage of Aileen Wuornos before her execution for his 2003's "Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer." In the film, she makes other strange claims, including that she had been tortured with the use of "sonic pressure."
Wuornos' final interview with Broomfield, conducted the day before her execution, began calmly, with her claiming that she was ready to die. But just a few minutes later, she was in a rage, railing against society and prophesying that earth was due to be hit by a "rock," presumably a meteorite. "You're all gonna get nuked," Wuornos threatened.
She dropped her appeals and rejected a final meal
Aileen Wuornos' readiness for death was evident during her final months on death row. Even though she sporadically maintained her story that she had murdered in self-defense, she dropped her appeals against her sentence in 2001. Eventually, she admitted to Nick Broomfield that she was lying.
Famously, prisoners on death row have the right to a final meal of their choice before their execution. In Wuornos' case, she reportedly had the possibility of ordering anything up to the value of $20. She chose to reject a meal in place of a cup of coffee. The state of Florida executed Aileen Wuornos on October 9, 2002, when she was 46. She was convinced that she would meet God and Jesus after her death. Her final words were: "Yes, I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock, and I'll be back. Like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I'll be back," per the Tampa Bay Times. Until the end, she maintained that she was sane and had been in control of her actions.