The story of Aileen Wuornos hides one of the most complex and disturbing pages of American news. Prostitute, vagrant, victim and executioner at the same time, her story has gone through decades of debates and interpretations. After inspiring the film “Monster” (2003) – with Charlize Theron, awarded an Oscar for her performance – her life now returns to Netflix in the docufilm “Aileen: the story of a serial killer”. This time the narrative voice is not that of the cinema, but hers: through unpublished interviews, archive materials and direct testimonies, the documentary gives Aileen back the power to tell her story and, perhaps, to explain why her life has fallen so low.
Aileen Wuornos: the true story
Aileen Carol Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956 in Rochester, Michigan into an already broken family. His father Leo Pittman, a child molester suffering from serious psychiatric disorders, took his own life in prison. Her mother Diane abandoned Aileen and her brother Keith when they were still children and the two were adopted by their grandparents, but the new home offered no salvation: her grandfather, according to Aileen’s story, regularly molested her, while her grandmother was an alcoholic. At twelve years old the girl was already living by her wits, selling small sexual favors in exchange for cigarettes or food. At fifteen she became pregnant and gave birth to a son in a maternity hospital in Detroit, the son – it was suspected – of her brother himself. From there the descent was rapid: expelled from school, she became a vagabond surviving on prostitution, theft and petty crimes which often landed her in prison. In the 70s and 80s she was arrested several times for robberies, scams and assaults. But it was in Florida that he found the definitive setting for his tragedy. Here he met Tyria Moore, a waitress from Ohio with whom he established a deep and tormented relationship. Tyria became the only stable affection in her life, the only person Aileen truly trusted.
Between 1989 and 1990, Wuornos killed at least seven men, nearly all found in isolated areas of north and central Florida. The first victim, Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old electrician, was found with three gunshot wounds to the chest. The others followed in an increasingly disorderly sequence of violence, with a ritual that seemed to repeat itself: the chance encounter, the sexual intercourse, then the shooting. When arrested, the woman confessed to six murders, but claimed she acted in self-defense, claiming that all the men had attempted to rape her. Only years later was it discovered that Mallory had served time for sexual assault, a detail that made her story more credible (at least in part). During the trial, the public saw an angry, unstable woman, trapped between the desire for justice and hatred towards the world. Sentenced to death by lethal injection in 1992, she spent ten years on death row, maintaining until the end the belief that she had been a victim rather than a murderer. He died on October 9, 2002 in Starke Prison, Florida.
“Aileen: Story of a Serial Killer”: when it comes out on Netflix
“Aileen: The Story of a Serial Killer” debuts worldwide on Netflix on Thursday, October 30.
“Aileen: story of a serial killer”: the Italian trailer
undefined
