Who Did Aileen Wuornos Kill? What to Know About Her Seven Victims By Caroline Blair

Aileen Wuornos was working as a prostitute in Florida when she killed seven men from 1989 to 1990.

She committed her first known murder in November 1989 when Richard Mallory approached her in Clearwater, Fla. The store owner was later found shot to death. After she was convicted of Mallory’s murder years later, she alleged that he had raped and beaten her and that she had acted in self-defense, per the Associated Press.

For the 12 months following Mallory’s murder, Wuornos continued her killing spree, getting picked up by clients and shooting them along the Florida highways. Similar to her first victim, Wuornos claimed that she killed all of the men in self-defense.

She was eventually caught after police found her palm print in one of the victim’s cars, and she subsequently confessed to fatally shooting the seven men. She was found guilty of killing Mallory and pleaded no contest or guilty to the additional five murders (one man’s body was never found, so she was never officially charged in his death).

After her 1992 trial, Wuornos received six death sentences and was executed by lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002. Although her crimes gained nationwide attention at the time, they were resurfaced in the Netflix documentary Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers on Oct. 30.

Here’s everything to know about the seven men Aileen Wuornos killed.

What did Aileen Wuornos do?

When Wuornos was working as a prostitute along the Florida state highways, she shot and killed at least seven men from 1989 to 1990.

Wuornos, who allegedly had an abusive childhood, later claimed that she acted in self-defense, saying the men had either raped or attempted to rape her.

Evidence that surfaced in the trial later contradicted these allegations, although her first victim, Mallory, was found to have a record: he had been convicted of sexual assault when he was 19 years old, according to The Washington Post.

Who was Wuornos’ first victim?

Wuornos’ first known victim was Mallory, a 51-year-old electronics shop owner in Clearwater. He picked her up on Nov. 30, 1989, and his body was found two weeks later in a wooded area in Volusia County, Fla., according to the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney.

Wuornos later stood trial for his murder and alleged that he had raped, beaten and sodomized her, the Associated Press reported at the time. She claimed that she fatally shot him in self-defense.

However, prosecutors argued that she killed him out of greed and alleged that there was no evidence that Mallory had raped her.

Who were the following six men she confessed to killing?

Wuornos went on to shoot and kill six more men after Mallory. Her second known victim was David Spears, a 47-year-old construction worker, whom she shot six times after he picked her up in May 1990. His body was found in Citrus County.

Later that same month, Wuornos killed her third victim, Charles Carskaddon, a 40-year-old rodeo worker. Similar to the previous two victims, his body was found shot several times in June 1990.

That same month, 65-year-old retiree Peter Siems disappeared from Jupiter, but his body was never found, so Wuornos was never officially charged with his murder. She was connected to the crime, though, after her palm print was found in the door handle of his abandoned car and an eyewitness placed her with the vehicle. Although she was never charged with the murder, she later confessed to killing him.

Wuornos murdered her fifth client in July 1990 when 50-year-old sausage salesman Troy Burress picked her up. He was reported missing later that month, and his body was found shot to death in Marion County the following month.

Her sixth known victim was 56-year-old Charles Richard “Dick” Humphreys, a former police chief and retired Air Force major. He was found shot in the head and torso in Marion County in September 1990.

Wuornos committed her final known murder in November 1990 when she fatally shot 62-year-old security guard Walter Jeno Antonio.

What was Wuornos’ sentence?

Wuornos was caught and arrested after her ex-girlfriend, Tyria Moore, got her to confess over the phone in January 1991. At the time, Moore was working with the police after they agreed to grant her immunity in exchange for Wuornos’ confession.

“I’m not gonna let you go to jail. Ty, I love you. If I have to confess everything just to keep you from getting in trouble, I will,” Wuornos said in the confession.

She was officially charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Mallory, Spears, Carskaddon, Burress, Humphreys and Antonio. In January 1992, she stood trial for Mallory’s murder and was found guilty. She was later sentenced to death.

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After her first trial, Wuornos pleaded no contest or guilty to the murders of the final five men. She was never charged in connection with Siems’ death, as his body was never found.

By February 1993, Wuornos had been sentenced to death six times over. While she awaited her execution at Florida State Prison for nearly a decade, she told different versions about why she killed the men.

“I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me as I’ve told you. But these others did not. [They] only began to start to,” she said in March 1992, per the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney.

She later said, per CNN, “I killed those men, robbed them as cold as ice. And I’d do it again, too. There’s no chance in keeping me alive or anything, because I’d kill again. I have hate crawling through my system.”

However, in footage from Nick Broomfield’s 2003 documentary Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Wuornos was caught speaking about her motives off-camera while still wearing her microphone. In the hot mic moment, she went back to her original claim that she acted in self-defense and alleged she only wrote the former statement because she wanted to hasten her execution.

Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002.