Biography -- Biograpy Aileen Wuornos Review

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(More customer reviews)Aileen Wuornos was the rarest of all criminals: a female serial killer. Between 1989 and 1990, she robbed and killed seven men across five Florida counties. Her claims of self-defense were undone by a preponderance of evidence and her own temper tantrums inside the courtroom, all but guaranteeing her a death sentence, one that would finally be carried out on October 9, 2002. Obviously, as a female serial killer, her life and crimes attracted plenty of media attention; besides the requisite documentaries (which - unlike this A&E Biography presentation - devote more time and attention to the strange woman, Arlene Pralle, who adopted her following her arrest), the film Monster was based on her story.
For the most part, I think this particular documentary is an excellent one. There were some aspects of her story that I would have liked to see discussed in more detail, but you can only do so much in 43 minutes. This isn't like watching a similar documentary of John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or any other male serial killer, though. There is a level of sympathy here that is not generated with monsters like Ted Bundy - it's not necessarily because she's a woman, though; I think it has more to do with the fact that Wuornos grew up in tragic circumstances. Born to a petty criminal and future child rapist she would never meet and abandoned by a teenaged mother, she was having consensual sex with her brother at 10; at 14, she got pregnant (claiming to have been raped by an older man) and had a child she immediately put up for adoption; and, at 15, she was basically thrown out of the house after her grandmother died. She had already started prostituting herself to local boys, so it was only natural that she now turned to prostitution in order to survive.
Following a 9-week marriage with a 70-year-old customer, a suicide attempt, and a three-year prison stint for armed robbery, Wuornos returned to her old prostitute ways - but she also found the companionship she had been craving with Tyria Moore. They quickly moved in together, but Aileen kept working the roads in order to get money. Then, in late 1989, she murdered and robbed one of her clients - and actually told Moore what she had done when she arrived home. Moore says she didn't believe her at the time. Six months later, Wuornos began a string of six more murders. Tyria stayed with her until a sketch of the two women hit the papers, leaving a down and out Aileen to face the music all alone when cops finally picked her up and charged her with first-degree murder. Aileen would do her best to protect Tyria Moore from suspicion, even as Moore made a deal with prosecutors to try to get a confession out of their murder suspect and, when the first trial came about, to testify against her.
Featuring interviews with childhood friends and an adopted sister, this presentation does a really good job of detailing Aileen's troubled childhood and youth. Prosecutors and defense attorneys do an equally good job of detailing the nature and modus operandi of Aileen's crimes. I do have a problem, though, with the extensive interviews with Tyria Moore. Here, Moore is presented as an innocent woman who knew of only one of the murders and stayed with Aileen because she was afraid to leave. There's little or no information on the suspicions many have voiced about Moore being complicit in Aileen's crimes. For her part, Wuornos never wavered in trying to protect her friend, even after Moore betrayed her in court. I think there is a lot more to this part of the story, and I wish this documentary would have dug a little deeper into both women's lives together. Still, as an introduction to the life and crimes of Aileen Wuornos, this A&E Biography presentation is excellent.

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