Aileen Wuornos Aileen Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan. As a child, Wuornos experienced profound psychosocial trauma within her family system. Her father, a convicted child molester, killed himself while serving prison time; her mother, overwhelmed by the responsibilities of motherhood, abandoned Wuornos and her older brother, Keith, who were ultimately raised by their grandparents. This meant going from one dysfunctional domestic situation to another. Wuornos's grandmother suffered from alcoholism, while her grandfather was prone to outward displays of extreme neglectful and violent behavior, which included occasionally forcing the Wuornos children out of the home to live in the woods. Wuornos and her brother first discovered their true identities in later adolescence, which significantly exacerbated the psychosocial challenges they faced. Wuornos claimed that her grandfather engaged in sexual contact with her and Keith from a very early age. In addition, Wuornos became pregnant at age 14, claiming that Keith was the father, and was subsequently sent to a home for unwed mothers. In March 1971, Wuornos gave birth to a boy, who was given up for immediate adoption. As an adult in the mid-1970s, Wuornos barely subsisted, often hitchhiking and engaging in sex work as a means of survival. After an arrest for charges related to assault and disorderly conduct, Wuornos' luck took an unexpected turn for the better: upon arriving in Florida, she met a wealthy yacht club president named Lewis Fell. The two were married in 1976; however, after Wuornos was arrested for her involvement in a bar fight, Fell quickly annulled the union. In the late 1970s, Wuornos's life steadily spiraled. Following the death of her brother, Wuornos was the beneficiary of a $10,000 life insurance policymoney that she immediately spent on a luxury car, which she subsequently wrecked in an accident. Over the next decade, Wuornos continued on her destructive path, working as a prostitute and committing various crimes that ranged from forgery and theft to armed robbery and assault. In 1986, Wuornos met 24-year-old Tyria Moore at a bar in Daytona, Florida, and the two began an intense yet volatile romantic relationship that continued for several years. The unsuspecting Moore was gradually drawn into Wuornos's cycle of vandalism, violence, and harassment. While Wuornos continued her work as a prostitute during the late 1980s, her violent tendencies took a psychopathic turn. From late 1989 into the fall of 1990, Wuornos had shot and murdered seven men along various Florida highways. In mid-December 1989, the body of Richard Mallory was found in a junkyard, with five more men's bodies discovered over the following months. Despite their frequent use of aliases, Wuornos and Moore were eventually tracked down by authorities from fingerprints and palm prints left in the crashed vehicle of one of the missing men, Peter Siems. Wuornos was eventually arrested in a bar in Port Orange, Florida, while police tracked down Moore in Pennsylvania. To avoid prosecution, Moore made adeal; in mid-January 1991, she elicited a phone confession from Wuornos, who accepted sole responsibility for the murders. Given the sensational nature of the crimes, the case caused a media frenzy. During the trial, Wuornos argued that she had been raped and assaulted by Mallory (who had previously served a decade-long prison sentence for sexual assault) and had killed him in self-defense. Although she would later retract this assertion, Wuornos stated that her killing of the six other men had also been in self-defense. On January 27, 1992, a jury found Wuornos guilty of first-degree murder for the Mallory casea conviction for which she received the death penalty. In the following months, Wuornos pleaded guilty to the murders of five other men, which resulted in a death sentence for each plea. While serving her prison sentence, Wuornos eventually admitted to the killing of Siems, whose body was never recovered; therefore, no charges were brought against her. In an unexpected turn of events, after spending a decade on death row, a court-appointed attorney raised concerns about comments made by Wuornos that suggested she was profoundly disconnected from reality. However, in 2002, Florida governor Jeb Bush lifted a temporary stay of execution after three psychiatrists deemed her mentally competent enough to comprehend the death penalty and the rationale for its implementation. Despite repeated efforts to avoid execution, Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. Her reported final words were, "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." A. Compare data and evidence of similar crimes. B. Identify patterns found in similar crimes. C. Make inferences about motivation of the identified individual based on case evidence and comparison to similar crimes.