Biography

Wuornos became pregnant at 14-years-old after being raped by a friend of her grandfather's and was sent to a home for unwed mothers. She gave birth to a baby boy on March 23, 1971. The child was put up for adoption.

After her execution, she was cremated with her bible and her ashes were taken to her native Michigan and spread around a tree by her friend Dawn Botkins.

In January 1960, when Wuornos was almost four years old, her mother Diane Wuornos abandoned her and her brother Keith, leaving them with their maternal grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos. They legally adopted Keith and Aileen on March 18, 1960. The children were chronic runaways and had several brushes with the law and were eventually kicked out of the house by Lauri after Britta's death.

Wuornos never met her father, as he was incarcerated at the time of her birth. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, later convicted of sex crimes against children, and eventually hanged himself in prison on January 30, 1969, when she was just thirteen years old.

Widely considered America's first female serial killer. While not the first, she was one of only a few female serial killers who used a gun as their weapon.