Aileen Wuornos

[John Thomas8]

Gonna take a bit to get through this, run time is 3:32:18, but as I only had a passing knowledge of this case it was an eye-opener to hear details. There's an extensive amount that appears to be left out of the popular culture side of the story, including police making movie deals while the investigation was active and an idiotic evangelical grifting. After watching this, I don't think an innocent was executed, but an innocent was failed by our society.

[Slim Cognito]

Thx! I love this stuff.

[RVInit]

Gonna take a bit to get through this, run time is 3:32:18, but as I only had a passing knowledge of this case it was an eye-opener to hear details. There's an extensive amount that appears to be left out of the popular culture side of the story, including police making movie deals while the investigation was active and an idiotic evangelical grifting. After watching this, I don't think an innocent was executed, but an innocent was failed by our society.

I have always believed she had a mental break after killing the first man in self defense. All the forensic evidence from that scene just happens to match her original story of what happened with that one (I forget his name). She said he had tied her to his steering wheel face down and had used several objects to rape her anally. She was able to get herself loose and used his gun to kill him, then she took off with that same gun, which she used to kill the others. Forensics showed a damaged steering wheel and other damage to the front seat and doors of the man's car.

She doesn't have any of the normal traits or the signs early in life that other serial killers have typically shown. Usually someone who eventually kills has shown cruelty to animals and other problematic traits. She was raped as a child by her own step father, then kicked out of her house because that rape caused pregnancy. She wasn't an angel by any means, but she had been turning tricks for way too long a period of time without any kind of violence against any of the johns before ever killing the first one.

Turned out that he had done time in prison for committing exactly the kind of brutal rape that she described, using objects to shove into his victims.

I also think that pride is what made her decide later to claim she had lied about the first killing being self defense. And I do think that when someone who is not truly inclined to kill ends up in a situation where they kill in self defense that it can cause serious mental breakdown. Wuornos had never experienced any time in her life where anyone took her side when she was victimized. Her life was a real tragedy.

Here is a very interesting video to go along with the others. It also talks a little about how her first lawyer (in way over his head) got in on the selling of her story. What happened to Wuornos after her arrest is also just plain wrong if not actually criminal.