PSY 310 Milestone one Jessica Overesch 3-23-2024 Stephanie Backer-Krisel For my final project, I choose the serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Alieen was born in Rochester, Michigan on February 29,1956. Her mother Diane was only sixteen when she had Aileen. Her mother divorced Aileen's father before she was born, and she had never met her father because he was in prison for most of her life for kidnapping and raping a 7-year-old girl before committing suicide in his prison cell. Most of Aileen's younger years were nothing less than tragic. She had gone through so much sexual abuse and trauma. She became sexually active at the age of eleven and gave sexual favors in turn for drugs, cigarettes, and food. Aileen and her older brother were stuck growing up in their grandparents' home after their mother abandoned them when they were little kids. Alieen goes on to say that she and her brother had a sexual relationship too. She endured years of abuse from her grandfather, and he always invited his friends over to partake in it. She became pregnant at the age of 14 after she was raped by a friend of her grandfathers and later put her son up for adoption. At fifteen, their grandfather kicked them out, and Aileen became homeless, living in the woods for a while until she figured out what she would do. That is when she started working as a sex worker at night to support herself. She was first arrested when she was 18 for driving under the influence and firing a pistol from a moving vehicle. She later gained notoriety as an American serial killer who committed a series of murders
in Florida during 1989-1990 while she was prostituting herself along the highways. She shot and robbed seven of her male clients. She claimed these men raped or tried to rape her committed the homicides in self-defense. Wuornos was convicted and sentenced to death for six of the murders. After spending more than a decade on Florida's death row, she was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. I have a few theories as to what her motives were for her murders. I believe her biggest motive was her will to survive. While she was prostituting, her goal was to rob the men of his money or whatever she could use that they had on them and then killed then to prevent any witnesses. In some small way, i think she felt some type of gratification by killing these men because of all the sexual abuse she endured her whole life made her feel like she was now the one in control. The types of crimes she committed here are armed robbery and first-degree murder. Another serial killer who crimes and motivations are similar to Aileen Wuornos' is Jane Toppan. Her early life was marked by tragedy and instability. Placed in an orphanage, she later became an indentured servant. After training as a nurse, she gained a reputation as "Jolly Jane."