What Monster Gets Right — and Wrong — About the Real-Life Serial Killer Aileen Wuornos By Christina Coulter

Aileen Wuornos was convicted in Florida of six murders committed between 1989 and 1990 — and later confessed to a seventh before she was executed by lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002. Her story was told on-screen the following year in the movie Monster, starring Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron as the sex worker who claimed she killed violent customers in self-defense.

Now, a new Netflix documentary, Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, is revisiting the case through court records, footage from the NBC Dateline archives and a 1997 death-row interview that Wuornos did with artist Jasmine Hirst. In significant ways, the two films about Wuornos’ life mirror one another — but in other ways they differ. Read what Monster gets right about what the media has called America’s first female serial killer — and what was added for dramatic effect.

The Girlfriend: Played by Christina Ricci vs. Tyria Moore In Real life

Monster features Christina Ricci playing a fictional character named Selby Wall as a tentative young woman who was facing pushback about her sexuality from her family as she was caught in a whirlwind romance with Wuornos.

In real life, Selby is based on Wuornos’ longtime girlfriend, Tyria Moore, who was openly gay and worked as a motel maid, whereas Monster’s Selby Wall was financially dependent on Wuornos.

In Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, Moore and Wuornos are described as “living together as lovers” for roughly four and half years — reflecting a longer, more settled partnership than the film suggests.

Monster also frames Selby as Wuornos’ first same-sex relationship — in early scenes, the film’s Wuornos even balks at labeling herself gay. But in reality, by her late 20s, Wuornos had already dated women.

In Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, Wuornos recalls living in the Florida Keys and “meeting Toni, the first lesbian,” saying the relationship lasted about a year before she returned to Daytona and later met Tyria Moore. By then, Wuornos identified as a lesbian.

Moore’s Cooperation with Authorities: The Recorded Calls — and What Wuornos Said

After detectives arrested Wuornos in Florida, they located Moore out of state and persuaded her to make police-monitored phone calls to Wuornos in jail. The recorded call between Wuornos and Christina Ricci’s character in Monster echoes the substance of those calls, but not their extent.

On one of the 10 real-life calls that can be heard in the Netflix documentary, Moore said she feared being arrested, to which Wuornos replied, “If I have to confess everything just to keep you from getting in trouble, I will.”

In another recorded call, Wuornos explained her mindset about money and housing: “Because I fell so f— in love with you … I was so worried about us not having an apartment and s— … I was scared that we were going to lose our place … I know it sounds crazy but it’s the truth.”

Wuornos soon confessed to the killings to police and Moore went on to testify against her in court. Court filings also state Moore led law officers to a .22-caliber revolver recovered near Florida’s Rose Bay that ballistics linked to multiple shootings.

Why Wuornos Carried a Gun — and How the Movie Reframes It

In the Netflix documentary’s 1997 interview, Wuornos said she carried the gun to stay safe and make it home to Tyria: “The only reason I carried that darn gun is because I loved her so much … I wanted to make sure that I got home alive … to be another day breathing with her.”

Monster presents her as already armed and, early on, toying with suicide before meeting Selby. The documentary also includes Wuornos describing prior suicide attempts, including a self-inflicted gunshot wound she survived after a relationship crisis before meeting Moore.

The Car Crash and Composite Sketch of Two Women

Monster’s sequence in which two women crash and abandon a victim’s car — and a police sketch that then circulates — tracks with the record and is detailed in Netflix’s documentary.

After Peter Siems disappeared, witnesses in July 1990 reported that they saw two women wreck his Pontiac and wipe it down. A palm print inside the car matched Wuornos, but she was never tried in his presumed death — Siems’ body was never found.

A composite sketch seemingly depicting Wuornos and Moore was also drafted and broadcast statewide, according to court documents and contemporaneous television coverage cited in the Netflix documentary.

The Invented Confidant at the Bar

Monster introduces a kind regular named Thomas, played by actor Bruce Dern, at The Last Resort — a biker’s bar that Wuornos frequents. He becomes Wuornos’ confidant and urges her to leave the establishment before undercover officers arrest her. But he appears to be a narrative invention; neither court records nor the Netflix documentary identify a real person like Thomas.

Wuornos was arrested at The Last Resort in January 1991 — and footage of that arrest is shown in the new Netflix documentary — but whether she had close friends among the patrons is unclear, per a WKMG ClickOrlando article about the bar’s role in the case.

She did have close friends elsewhere, though — notably childhood friend Dawn Botkins, who appears extensively in the Netflix doc and was among the last people to speak with Wuornos before her execution.

Victims With Law-Enforcement Ties

Monster includes a victim with a background in law enforcement. In real life, Charles “Dick” Humphreys, 56 — a retired Air Force major, former police chief and child-abuse investigator — was among the men Wuornos killed.

Another victim, Walter Gino Antonio, 61, had served as a Brevard County reserve deputy, according to court records and reporting referenced in the documentary.

The Netflix documentary, however, skims over the life stories of Wuornos’ victims, focusing instead on telling the story from her perspective.

Motive On Screen vs. In Court Records

Both Monster and the Netflix documentary explore Wuornos’ claims of self-defense — particularly in the killing of Richard Mallory, her first victim — but the truth is murkier. Florida courts admitted similar-fact evidence and rejected self-defense because her own statements shifted.

In a 2001 Volusia County hearing shown in the Netflix film, Wuornos said, “I killed those men … and robbed them as cold as ice.” And in the documentary’s closing moments, Dawn Botkins recalls Wuornos telling her, “She said she was definitely a serial killer. She killed to rob, she robbed to kill, period.”

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