Aileen Carol Wuronos Case Study. Maegan Fitzgerald, Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky. Psychology 565: Neuroscience of Violent Behavior. Dr. Akins. March 20, 2024. There have been very few female serial killers in the United States in the 21st century, and Aileen Wuornos was one of the few female serial killers that were captured and trialed in the United States between the late 20th century and early 21st century (Edwards, 2012; Silvio, McCloskey, & Ramos-Grenier, 2006). Aileen Wuornos claimed to have killed a total of 7 men between the years of 1989 and 1990 across the state of Florida before being captured by the police and later executed in 2002 by lethal injection in the Florida State Prison (Office of the Clark …show more content…
At 11, Wuornos began trading sexual favors for money, beer, and cigarettes, developing the ability to “disassociate herself from her body; to blank off emotions” (Russell, 1992, p. 13). According to family and friends, she was rumored to have had sexual relations with her brother, and was raped by one of her grandfather’s friends when she was 14, which resulted in a child (Palassis, 2015). She then had the child and the child was given up for adoption. Soon after she was forced to put her child up for adoption, she began spending more time away from home, either living in the woods or hitchhiking around the country, often under assumed names. She was 14 when her family kicked her out of her house (Palassis, 2015). By age 20 Wuornos was living in Florida, and shortly after arriving there she married a 69-year-old man named Lewis Gratz, the marriage ended after 9 weeks because she claimed he was abusive (Palassis, 2015). In this same year, 1976, her brother Keith died from cancer and in this same period her grandfather committed suicide. At one point, she attempted suicide by shooting herself in the stomach after being rejected by a lover. She was hospitalized for two weeks, and a week after discharge she overdosed on tranquilizers (Palassis, 2015).