Trivia

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.

Despite prostituting herself to men, she had a female lover, Tyria Moore, who testified against her at her first murder trial.

Shared birthday with fellow serial killer Richard Ramirez.

Charlize Theron won an Oscar for portraying Wuornos in Monster (2003) on February 29, 2004, what would have been Wuornos' 48th birthday, less than a year and a half after Wuornos was executed.

She was the tenth woman in the U.S. to be executed since the re-introduction of the death penalty in 1976, and the second woman in Florida to be executed.

After her trial, it was revealed that Tyria Moore made several book and movie deals selling her story. As did three detectives on the case, who later resigned. Though Moore was implicated in several of the killings, she was never charged because she agreed to elicit a confession from Wuornos in exchange for immunity from prosecution. There is also evidence that Volusia County sheriff deputies negotiated contracts for book and movie deals about Wuornos' case before she was even arrested.

Convicted of murdering seven men in Florida from 1990-1992, and after receiving six death sentences, was executed (9 October 2002).

The biker bar in Port Orange, Florida, where Wuornos was arrested on January 9, 1991, has become a tourist spot with the slogan: "Cold Beer and Killer Women".

During her career as a prostitute, she claimed to have had sex with 250,000 men.

Requested that Natalie Merchant's song "Carnival" be played at her funeral.

Her case spawned two movies (1992 and 2003), two documentaries (1993 and 2003), several books, an opera (2001), and a "True Crime" comic book pairing her with mobster John Gotti. There have also been may songs and poems written about her, dedicated to her, and as a tribute to her.

Her execution took place on October 9, 2002. She died at 9:47 AM that morning. She had Kentucky Fried Chicken and french fries as her last meal. Her last words were, "Yes, I would 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 mother ship and all, I'll be back, I'll be back".

Her ancestry was English and Finnish.

Parents' names were Diane Wuornos and Leo Dale Pittman. They divorced a couple of months before she was born.

Was adopted by Arlene Pralle, a 44-year-old "born-again Christian" and her husband (November 22, 1991).