Vanessa Richardson (4:22)
October 9, 2002 was set to be Aileen Wuornos last day on Earth. That morning, under Florida State prison policy, Eileen was allowed to have anything she wanted for her last meal as long as it cost $20 or less. Eileen skipped the meal and just asked for a cup of black coffee. Just after 9am Eileen was escorted into the death chamber, where she would become the second woman to ever be executed in a Florida prison. Once she'd been strapped into the chair to receive her lethal injection, Eileen was asked if she had last words and did she ever Eileen said, quote, I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the rock and I'll be back. Like Independence day with Jesus, June 6th. Like the movie Big Mothership and all, I'll be back. End quote. This nonsense statement was pretty typical for the hard drinking troublemaker, drifter, sex worker, and eventual serial killer. Her long, rambling journey along America's highways came to an end that day in the Florida death chamber. But it started 46 years earlier in an unhappy home in northern Michigan. Eileen Wuornos was born Eileen Carol Pittman on February 29, 1956 to a pair of teenagers in Rochester, Michigan. Eileen never met her father. By the time she was born, he was already in prison for rape and attempted murder. Murder and Eileen's mother, Diane Warnose, wasn't a model parent either. Diane often left Eileen and her brother Keith, who was just a year older, to fend for themselves for long stretches at a time. This neglect ended when Diane abandoned 4 year old Eileen and her brother with their grandparents in nearby Troy, Michigan, and never returned. Eileen's grandparents, Lowry and Brita Wuornos, adopted her and Keith, raising them along with their two other children. Up until Eileen was 12, she and Keith believed that their grandparents were their actual parents. Despite the secrecy, it was a more stable home, but still far from a happy one. Their grandfather Lowry was a heavy drinker and a strict disciplinarian. He would beat Eileen with a belt for even the slightest infractions. Eileen also claimed he sexually abused her, although that was never proven. Either way, it was a cruel household, physically and emotionally. Eileen's grandparents never allowed her to receive Christmas gifts, even though their biological children did. Growing up in this abusive environment took a major toll on Eileen's development. She fell behind in school and developed a fierce temper before she was even a teenager. She started trading sexual favors to local boys for cigarettes, earning her the unfortunate nickname Cigarette Pig. It all culminated with a family friend sexually assaulting Eileen when she was 14 years old in 1970, which resulted in pregnancy. Eileen's grandparents weren't supportive. They sent her away to a home for unwed mothers. For the duration of her pregnancy, she gave birth to a son, then gave him up for adoption. After that, she returned to her grandparents home in Michigan, where more bad news was awaiting her. Her grandparents were kicking her out of the house. At 15 years old, Aileen Wuornos was homeless. With a few brief exceptions, she'd remain that way for the rest of her life. Until she went to prison. After getting kicked out, Eileen dropped out of high school and started living in the woods near her grandparents house, sleeping in abandoned cars for shelter. Eventually she began hitchhiking around the US Engaging in sex work to pay for food, drugs and shelter. As she was crisscrossing the country. Both of her grandparents died. Her grandmother Britta from cirrhosis of the liver, and then her grandfather Lowry from suicide. But then In May of 1976, 20 year old Eileen finally had some good luck for a change. She became a wife. Her husband's name was Lewis Fell and He was the 69 year old President of a Florida yacht club. They'd met through her sex work, although they didn't mention that when they announced their marriage in the local society pages. For the first time in her life, Eileen had real stability. A roof over her head, a partner who cared about her, and access to a lot of money. For a second, it looked like her story might have a happy ending. But despite her glamorous new surroundings, Eileen hadn't dropped the habits she'd learned on the road. She liked to drink a lot. She liked to start trouble. And she didn't like being told no. Just weeks into her marriage, these qualities all boiled over into a fight that ended with Eileen giving Lewis a severe beating with his own cane. His lawyers got involved and they were divorced by July. And things kept getting worse from there. Within a week or two of her divorce, Eileen received tragic news from back in Michigan. Her 21 year old brother Keith was dying of throat cancer. She went to see him on his deathbed, but hospital staff kicked her out of his room after just a few minutes because she was blackout drunk. When he died a few days later, Eileen had almost no family left. No parents, no grandparents and no siblings. The one thing she did have was the payout from her brother's life insurance policy. $10,000. The equivalent of just over $55,000 in 2025. In the wake of her disastrous marriage to Louis Fell. This amount of money was a miraculous second chance for Eileen to get her life on track. It was an opportunity to find stable housing, go to school, get a job. There were so many ways for her to change her circumstances. Instead, she spent most of the money on a luxury car, which she totaled within months. Once the money was gone, she went back to what she knew knew best. Hitchhiking, sex work, and looking for a good time. The rest of the 1970s and the early 1980s were a blur of drunken misadventures and arrests for petty crimes. Eileen picked fights, forged checks and got busted driving drunk. She was briefly locked up for throwing a cue ball at a bartender's head. In 1981, she did more time for drunkenly attempting to rob a convenience store at gunpoint. And in 1986, 30 year old Eileen's aimless and chaotic wanderings brought her to a gay bar in Daytona Beach, Florida. There, she met someone who would change her life forever. Her name was Tyra Moore. She was a 24 year old hotel housekeeper who'd moved to Florida from Ohio after her family shunned her from being a lesbian. We don't know if Eileen had ever been with a woman before, but when she met Tyra, she never wanted to be with anyone else. That night was the beginning of an intense four and a half year romance that lasted until Eileen's arrest. Eileen and Tyra were inseparable. They lived together in cheap motels and seedy apartments all over the state, going wherever Tyra could find housekeeping work. In their spare time, they drank and shot Eileen's.22 caliber pistol in the woods. Eileen tried to help support them by doing sex work along Florida's highways. But in typical Eileen fashion, she did it in her own way. Instead of dressing provocatively, Eileen often walked along the side of the road in jean shorts and sleeveless T shirts. Many of the drivers who stopped to pick her up didn't even realize she was a sex worker. They assumed she was just down on her luck and needed a ride. She Once she was in the car, Eileen would chat with the driver and show them a picture of some kids she claimed were hers, talking about how she needed help making some money, and then she'd start offering sexual favors in exchange for cash. Eileen had made a decent living from this method of sex work since she was a teenager, but by the late 1980s, she'd spent more than half her life on the road. The hard drinking and drug use was catching up with her, and she was having a harder time finding men who were willing to pay her like they used to. Eileen could also tell that Tyra was getting tired of living hand to mouth. She was afraid that sooner or later Tyra would leave if their financial situation didn't change, and that what little stability and happiness she'd found would go with her. So in the summer of 1989, Aileen Wuornos found a new, new way to get money from lonely men in cars. Murder.