# Everything Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers Left Out
“And I was fighting, fighting the demons within me that kept saying, ‘Don’t tell the truth. I want you to go to hell with me.’ And I said, ‘No way, man.
I’m going to Lord Jesus Christ. I’m going to tell the truth. The whole truth, nothing but the truth.'”
Welcome to Ms. Mojo. Although Queen of the Serial Killers provides a captivating glimpse into Aileen Wuornos’s life and crimes, there’s a lot the Netflix documentary didn’t tell you.
“You tell me your story and I will write it. That was our deal.”
So here are the gruesome, unair details about one of the most complex and tragic true crime cases of the century. From incestuous relationships to systemic 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, these are the stories that remained in the shadows. “You can believe it or you don’t have to believe it.
That’s up to you, man. Put a big question mark on your film.”
## Aileen Had an Atypical Upbringing
In Queen of the Serial Killers, Aileen briefly recaps her earliest memories of her family. She describes a normal, loving relationship with the grandparents who took her in. “So when I was little, I was adopted by my grandmother and grandfather.”
She attributes her grandmother’s passing when she was 14 to the beginning of her rebellious streak. “At around 15, I ran away from home. I got caught, went to Adrian’s training school for 6 months.
When I got out, I hit that road and I split from the state.”
However, the documentary glosses over a truly harrowing element of her story that was detailed in an autobiography. “There is a lot of people that’s had bad lives, but not from day get-go.”
Before being adopted, Aileen was raised by a single mother, Diane, who was only 16 years old. “My mother Diane, let me tell you something. She plopped me out of her belly, left me with my grandparents, and we never knew her.”
Aileen never met her father, as he’d been incarcerated for numerous crimes and eventually took his own life in prison. Diane later stated she regretted giving Aileen up to her parents because they’d been abusive during her own upbringing.
Michelle Chauan recalled an incident with Aileen’s grandfather. “I don’t know how much you want me to say. He was a bastard.”
Although there’s no mention of it in the Netflix documentary, Aileen’s claims about the man who raised her were not unlike her mother’s. Aileen claims she was abused by her grandfather.
Aileen was led to believe that her grandfather, Lauri, was her own father. She asserts that after she discovered the truth, Lauri, who family described as “an alcoholic,” began to 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 her.
The documentary does air a clip where she acknowledges that she was sexually assaulted by boys in her school. “Twice when I was a kid by my high school friends. My high school friends, man.”
But Aileen had also accused Lauri of the same crime in other interviews. According to a 1991 Tampa Bay Times article, she was impregnated young, and if the rumors are true, this was at the hands of her grandfather’s friend. This child was given up for adoption.
After the baby, Aileen became the local untouchable. She spent two years living in the woods at the end of her street.
Oddly, Aileen’s soundbite in the documentary makes it sound as if her adolescence before running away was nothing but bliss. “Not any impurities or perversion or battery or any of that jazz.”
However, these accounts of 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, which were corroborated by childhood friends, more clearly explain what she was running from. “I was on the road from 16 to 20. I’m hitchhiking and I’m hooking, running into a lot of situations ’cause I never had a place to live.
I slept under viaducts, abandoned homes, cow pastures.”
##
Aileen Claims She Slept With Her Brother
Aileen wasn’t an only child. Her brother Keith suffered the same turbulent childhood. However, one morbid detail that was left out of the documentary entirely is Aileen’s claim that she had a brief incestuous relationship with him.
“Keith had Keith and Mark had Aileen in there. What do you mean that they had Aileen in there? Well, they had her in there and, you know, she was naked.”
The details are murky, though. A Los Angeles Times piece written in 1991 asserts she’d made this claim during correspondences with reporters. According to unsealed Florida court records, those who grew up near Aileen testified that they’d heard the rumors of this taboo relationship.
“Do you know whether she was having sexual relations with anyone else at this time? Yes, I did. And who was that?
Um, her brother Keith.”
On the other hand, one friend describes Keith as sweet, affirming that Aileen loved her brother and this misconduct hadn’t been made known. Keith passed away when they were still young, so the truth will likely never come out.
“I just wanted to remark that I need to take a polygraph on what they’re saying because there’s too much surgery.”
## Aileen Hated Media Coverage of Her Case
When the bodies began piling up, police and media were hot on the trail. “We’re looking at similarities again of these two girls. Hopefully, we’ll find some new evidence.
We just extended our search about another square mile that we’re trying to look into.”
“My mother called me up and said, ‘I think I just saw this female serial killer.'”
Female serial killers make up less than 15% of cases. So to learn a woman was responsible was sensational. Hence the title of the documentary, Queen of the Serial Killers.
“The news media made her the queen of serial killers.”
Aileen’s trial was covered widely, and there have been a number of high-profile films, books, and shows based on her life. “You know what you do when all you know is people taking? You start to give.
Give it away before they can take it from you. Give it all away for free. And that way you can pretend that it doesn’t hurt.”
A few moments in the documentary would lead viewers to believe she reveled in this exposure. “She recognized, ‘I’m the topic, the top topic of conversation. I’m a star.’
And she ordered everybody around like Faye Dunaway on steroids.”
Like this account from movie producer Jackie Jaru: “And she said, ‘Well, first of all, do you do movies or books?’ I thought, ‘Okay, she’s auditioning me, right?’ I said, ‘Mostly movies.’
She goes, ‘Great. My story is unbelievable.'”
Or what she whispered in the ear of Jasmine Hirst, who filmed a series of interviews with her. “You guys are going to make millions off this.”
However, by the time Aileen was nearing execution, she had come to despise the attention. “I’m not giving you book and movie info. I’m giving you info for investigations and stuff, and that’s it.”
She realized that those who had entered her circle had ulterior motives and couldn’t actually help her case. “We could get this money if I gave an interview. I’m not doing it.”
“Why do you think she was so mad at both of you at the end of the last trial? Because we lost, because she has three death sentences.”
She went on numerous tirades about how society had “railroaded her ass.” “Taking my life like this and getting rich off it all these years.”
Aileen turned to the only one she believed could have her back in this life: Jesus. “I’ve come real close to God and I think it’s the right thing to do.”
And so she retreated from accountability, mentally turning herself into a victim perhaps greater than the men she’d killed. “Aileen Wuornos, the real Aileen Wuornos, is not a serial killer. I was so drunk and so lost that I turned into one, but my real self is not one.”
“And I said, ‘You ain’t going to take me to prison, spend the rest of my life in prison over these creeps. I’m going to take a bunch of you creeps with me before I go.’ And that’s what happened.”
## Aileen Peddled Conspiracy Theories About Police
Aileen gave an infamous interview from prison just one day before execution during which she claimed to have been tortured by police while sitting on death row.
“Hey, I was tortured at BCI. They had the intercom on in the room and they kept lying that it wasn’t on and they were using sonic pressure on my head since 1997.”
Brief excerpts were included in the documentary, but most were left on the cutting room floor. She mentioned spy cameras set up in her cell and uncomfortable frequencies that had been pumped in to cause a lingering sense of discomfort.
“Did that affect your mind in some way? The sonic. It was crushing my head and they were using sonic pressure.”
Aileen also insisted that every issue which led to a grievance was amplified rather than fixed. “Increase the harassment on the floor.”
And her logic for why they did this: “They’re trying to make it look like I was crazy at all times. Rig up the room with torture if I said anything about their whole plan. I think their whole plan was to try to make it look like I was totally crazy and so nobody would believe anything I had to say about anything.”
She implies that her food had been poisoned, naming numerous attempts to assassinate her. “Then one day I didn’t wash my food off and I was sick for 3 weeks, almost died.”
Because of her deteriorating mental state, the legality of putting her to death was called into question. “Whatever’s on the beyond, I think it’s going to be more like Star Trek beaming me up into a space vehicle, man. Then I move on, recolonize to another planet or whatever.”
She even mentions that police had been aware of her killings and allowed her to continue because she was cleaning up the streets. “Did you know that they were surveilling me before I killed and then I knew it.”
This ultimately allows her to shift the blame off of herself and onto a wider systemic issue. “I didn’t do anything as wrong as they said. I did the right thing.”
## Aileen’s Gender Factored Into Her Treatment
From the very opening of Queen of the Serial Killers, we’re offered two very different perspectives on Aileen Wuornos.
First, a police captain describes how repulsive Aileen is, reprimanding her more for her appearance than her crimes. “Well, I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley. So, kind of baffles me how she got any customers at all.”
Then filmmaker Jasmine Hirst offers a nuanced perspective on how Aileen was treated by the public. “She’s like the trifecta. Gay, female, 𝒔𝒆𝒙 worker, and killing white men.”
This establishes a sense of duality that ultimately played a part in how Aileen was received by the judge and jury. “John Tanner just didn’t care. She’s a woman and a prostitute.
And he had a problem with that.”
Some of the psychological torture Aileen references was denied and never proven. “They had come into her room one time and opened up the light. And they cut the wires in front of her to prove that they weren’t trying to take over her mind and brainwash her and whatever she was thinking.”
But it was documented that she’d experienced an incredibly harsh imprisonment. According to a hefty court-filed complaint, Aileen describes how she’d been left naked and freezing in solitary confinement. She was also denied hearing aids, glasses, and doctor visits, losing an unsettling amount of weight behind bars.
“Sad society didn’t care, did they? They framed me for a movie.”
According to a 1990 study by the Florida Supreme Court Gender Bias Study Commission, because female offenders account for such a small percentage of violent crime, the reaction to their deeds is often extreme.
“I saw her up there and she was really, really scared. She knew that the tide of public opinion was totally against her.”
As a result, they’d been treated more harshly for their felonies. “Aileen Carol Wuornos, be electrocuted until you are dead, and may God have mercy upon your soul.”
## Aileen Was Once Married
Many know Aileen as a lesbian whose lover Tyria Moore ultimately betrayed her and turned her in. “And this is my first encounter with lesbianism and she turns me onto it for the first time in my life.”
However, most don’t realize she’d married 69-year-old Lewis Gratz Fell in 1976. “I was going out with guys and all that stuff and trying to fall in love with. I didn’t know.”
This was over a decade before her killing spree started, but it was very short-lived. He quickly filed a restraining order against her, claiming she had “a violent and ungovernable temper.”
He also asserted that she’d attacked him with his cane, but like in her later cases of murder, Aileen responded that this was in self-defense. “I still have to say to myself, I still say that it was in self-defense.”
Their marriage was annulled just 9 weeks after it was made official.
“Do you think that there’s any chance you would get a new trial? I don’t think that nobody cares.”
Which detail of Aileen Wuornos’s case did you find the most 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔? Comment below.