Aileen Wuornos Case Study

Introduction:

Aileen Wuornos was a Caucasian female born 2-29-1956 and was executed by the State of Florida, on 10-09-2002. She was convicted of killing 2 men but confessed to killing 7 total. The first conviction was Wuornos v. State of Florida, 19 Fla. Law W. S 455 (September 22, 1994), In which she was convicted of killing Richard Mallory, whom she claimed was in self-defense, after he beat her and raped her. “Richard Mallory, 51, Clearwater electronics shop owner. On December 1, 1989, a deputy in Volusia County discovered an abandoned vehicle belonging to Richard Mallory. His body was found December 13, several miles away in a wooded area. Mallory had been shot several times, but two bullets to the left lung were found to have

A study by Mitchell and Aamodt from the Radford University in Virginia in 2005 looked at the rate of childhood abuse among known serial killers against that of the general population. The study found that although the rate of serial killers among the general population is low, meaning that this is rare, the rate of abuse suffered in those serial killers childhood is significantly higher than the general populations the rate of serial killers abuse as children was six times that of the general population for certain non sexual types of abuse and nine times higher in sexual abuse. (Mitchell & Aamodt, 2005) This significantly disproportionate finding suggests that there is a link between childhood abuse and serial killers. Wuornos fits into this theory well. Wuornos had an extremely traumatic childhood which one could surmise led her into her life of prostitution and poverty. There are of course many people who have traumatic childhoods that do not later engage in criminal activity and certainly not in serial murder, but it is reasonable to suggest that a childhood riddled with trauma increases the likelihood of one engaging in criminal activity including murder and serial murder by means of being exposed to activities considered not mainstream and could lead to an adoption of criminal behavior and lifestyle. Aileen’s grandfather was a sexual

In an analysis of the study John Wright exerts that the self-control describes an individual’s is used to explain an individual's tendency to commit or abstain from criminal behavior and activity this was an evolution from Hirschi’s original theory of social control, in which he hypothesized that “Offending could arise from the ‘natural consequences of freedom from moral restraints’: impulsivity and aggressiveness.” Gottfredson and Hirschi ascertained that persons engaging in criminal actions asserted would also engage in behaviors that supplied short term satisfaction, such as smoking, promiscuous sexual activity and drinking. They also recognized that evident life events could predict the predication towards criminal action and behavior over time including later attachments to work or significant other that would disable those with a lower self-esteem to continue engaging in criminal behavior. (Wright,