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Published 15:09 01 Jul 2026 GMT
The girl in this photograph would grow up to become one of the world's most notorious female serial killers. Looking at her sweet, smiling face, it's almost impossible to imagine the unimaginable horrors that lay ahead.
Any chance of an ordinary life was shattered at a young age, as violence and trauma set her on a dark and dangerous path. She would later be branded one of the most evil women in history, sparking a long-running debate over whether she was born that way or whether her brutal upbringing created the monster she became.
Few criminals have captured public attention quite like Aileen Wuornos. Decades after her crimes shocked the United States, her story continues to fascinate audiences through documentaries, books, films, and true crime series.
While she is often described as one of the most recognizable female serial killers in history, it is the extraordinary circumstances surrounding her life, crimes, and trial that turned her into a global figure.
Wuornos' case stood out because female serial killers are exceptionally rare. Her background, personality, and repeated interviews also made her one of the most discussed figures in modern criminal history, ensuring her name remained in the public eye long after her death.
Born in 1956 in Michigan, Wuornos experienced an unstable and traumatic childhood. She endured abuse, homelessness, and poverty from a young age, factors that were frequently examined during her criminal proceedings and in later media coverage.
Between 1989 and 1990, Wuornos killed seven men in Florida. She claimed she acted in self-defense while working as a sex worker, insisting the men had attempted to assault her. Prosecutors argued the killings were premeditated robberies, and the evidence ultimately led to multiple murder convictions.
Her case attracted enormous media attention because it challenged stereotypes about serial killers. At the time, the idea of a woman committing a series of murders on such a scale was almost unprecedented, making headlines around the world.
Wuornos' notoriety only grew after her convictions. She gave numerous interviews from prison, often making emotional and sometimes contradictory statements that fueled public debate about her mental health and motivations.
Her story later inspired the 2003 film Monster, in which actress Charlize Theron delivered an Academy Award-winning performance portraying Wuornos. The film introduced her story to a new generation, while documentaries and television specials continued to explore the complexities of her life.
Interest in Wuornos also reflects the enduring popularity of the true crime genre. Viewers remain fascinated by cases that raise difficult questions about trauma, violence, mental illness, and the criminal justice system.
Wuornos was executed by lethal injection in Florida on October 9, 2002. Although remembered primarily for her crimes, discussions about her life often extend beyond the murders themselves, examining the events that shaped her and the wider social issues her case highlighted.
Aileen Wuornos became one of the world's most infamous criminals, and her story remains one of the most analyzed and debated cases in modern true crime history.
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Published 15:27 14 Mar 2018 GMT
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Published 12:22 26 Sep 2025 GMT
A female serial killer gave a chilling interview before her execution in which she explained why she killed seven people.
Aileen Wuornos was executed in Florida State Prison in 2002 after she was convicted of six counts of first-degree murder - only six because one body was never found.
She received six death sentences for her crimes, and before she was administered the lethal injection she gave one final chilling interview.
Wuornos killed seven men between 1989 and 1990.
All of the men were motorists, and all aged between 40 and 65.
Wuornos was working as a sex worker in Florida at the time of the murders, and claimed that her victims had either raped her, attempted to rape her, or that she was acting in self-defence.
The law didn’t see it that way.
She was sentenced to death and spent 10 years on death row before she was finally executed by lethal injection in 2002.
Before she died, she gave a final set of chilling interviews to UK-based documentary maker Nick Broomfield.
Those interviews were released as a film, and show Wuornos becoming increasingly erratic and offering some reasoning behind her crimes.
In one shocking clip, Broomfield says to the killer: “You killed seven men!”
She responds: “Yeah, sure did!”
The filmmaker asks her: “I’m asking you what got you…”
She cuts him off: “I’m telling you [it was] because the cops let me keep killing them, Nick!
“Don’t you get it?”
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Nick responds: “Not everyone has killed seven people, so there must have been something in you that was going to continue to do that?”
Aileen hit back: “You are lost Nick!
“I was a hitchhiking hooker, running into trouble, [I] shot a guy if I ran into trouble, the cops knew it.”
She alleges that the cops took the attitude ‘let her clean the streets’ and adds: “That’s why.”
When confronted with her record of seven murders in one year, she adds: “Oh well.”
The interviews are wide-ranging and provide a shocking insight into the mind of a killer, as well as providing some human context to life on death row as a convicted murderer awaiting execution.
You can see the whole video here.
Published 16:07 30 Jul 2025 GMT
Aileen Wuornos, one of America’s most infamous female serial killers, left the world with a chilling message before she was executed by lethal injection in Florida in 2002.
Wuornos had been sentenced to death six times for the murders of seven men between 1989 and 1990.
A former sex worker, she claimed the killings were acts of self-defense, saying the men either raped her or attempted to. Despite this, she was found guilty of the murder of Richard Mallory and later confessed to six more, per Biography.
Her seventh victim, Peter Siems, was never officially confirmed due to the absence of a body, but her palm print was found inside his car.
During a recorded confession, Wuornos showed no sign of remorse. “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,” she said.
After a decade behind bars at the Broward Correctional Institute in Florida, Wuornos was reportedly eager for the state to carry out her sentence.
In 2001, she pleaded with officials to end what she described as a costly and unnecessary delay, insisting she was a danger to society and would reoffend if released.
Facing witnesses in the execution chamber, Wuornos reportedly smiled before making her last statement, per the Mirror.
“Yes, I would just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I'll be back, I'll be back,” she said.
Her words sent a shiver down the spine of those present, sealing her legacy as one of the most unsettling figures in true crime history.
Her disturbing story became the subject of two documentaries by director Nick Broomfield — Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. In them, Wuornos discusses her crimes in increasingly erratic and intense interviews.
In one moment, Broomfield asks her directly why she committed the murders. Clearly agitated, Wuornos yells that the police allowed her to kill and snaps at the filmmaker: “You’re so lost.”
It was also the inspiration for the 2003 movie, Monster, starring Charlize Theron.
Wuornos declined a final meal and instead asked for a simple black coffee.
Published 16:10 17 Sep 2018 GMT
The daughter of serial killers Fred and Rose West has revealed what it was like to grow up in the "house of horrors" where numerous women were murdered and buried in the backyard.
In an emotional interview, Mae West (not her real name) revealed that she fears her murderer parents may have killed up to 30 people, as well as alleging that her father had sexually assaulted her when she was a child.
Fred West was an English serial killer who committed at least 12 murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, the majority with his second wife, Rosemary West. All of the victims were women and their deaths included rape, bondage, torture and mutilation.
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Rosemary is currently serving a life sentence in prison, convicted for her part in 10 murders, while her former husband was found hanged in his jail cell in 1995.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain's Susanna Reid, Mae West spoke about the strange happenings that would often go on in the home dubbed "the house of horrors", claiming she assumed her parents were "doing things".
"[They would be in] the basement, locking us in. That was obviously times they were doing things," West's daughter said, adding that she was given a pot to keep next to her bed, the lightbulbs would be taken out and the door would be locked.
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She said: "I don’t know (how many)– they do say they never stopped. I was really young, it was the Seventies, we had tenants it was normal to see people coming in and out. With Heather [her 17-year-old sister who was the couple's final known murder victim], we thought she ran away. I used to think everything they did was strange. That must have been when they were doing things. We didn’t see any evidence of that at all. People ask me do you think he stopped and I don’t think he did. I think he stopped using the house."
Mae West continued to admit that she believes there are many more victims of the horrifying killings which took place between 1967 and 1987, the majority at the couple's home, 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester. When asked if it was likely her parents killed more than thirty – Mae said "yeah".
In addition, the unidentified daughter spoke of her father's treatment of her, naming it "sometimes funny, but definitely strange".
"Definitely sexual abuse," she said. "If you knew he was coming, you’d make sure you had jeans on, go to bed fully dressed or get up early in the morning and get dressed before because he’d try to come into the room as you were dressing."
On TV, Mae confessed she and her siblings would have been better left on the street than in the house, as she believed they could have all been killed by their father.
"I think so, any of us, really. If we’d seen anything, maybe," she said. "I don’t tend to think too much about it. I do think [home is] the place where you’re meant to be safest, I feel we’d be better if we were left on the street. We weren’t safe in that house."
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Nowadays, Mae is happily married with two children, but, of course, her family history still haunts her to this day. Telling Good Morning Britain that her 23-year-old daughter was once at a Halloween party in the past where two partygoers were dressed as Fred and Rose West, she said: [My daughter] has never really talked about it.... she just said 'oh you'll never guess what, they came as your mum and dad' and got on with it."
However, she also claimed her younger son is not aware of his family history, saying: "He has never really asked me... I definitely want to wait until he is older."
While it seems like a pretty ridiculous thing to say, there's something about color photos that create a more vivid picture of reality than their black and white counterparts.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the colored portrait of a 14-year-old girl murdered in Auschwitz has gone viral. The images were uploaded to Twitter and lay bare the heartbreaking reality of the Holocaust.
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The photos were re-touched by artist Marina Amaral, who has managed to breathe life into a black and white image from one of the most disturbing and inhumane periods of modern history.
It took Amaral months of work on photoshop as well as extensive research, but the finished result manages to bring life and personality to the innocent young victim of the Nazi regime.
Czestawa Kowka was deported by the Nazis from Poland as part of their plan to create a "living space" in the east. She arrived at Auschwitz alongside her mother on December 13, 1942, on a train with 318 other innocent women. She was given the number 26947 and died in the camp just 67 days later on February 18, 1943. Czestawa was murdered with a phenol injection to the heart - a common method of execution for Polish children who were not deemed racially suitable to be "Germanised."
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The girl seems to have suffered multiple wounds to her face, especially on her lip; and according to Wilhelm Brasse, a survivor of the holocaust and the man behind the registration picture, the girl was beaten by one of the guards.She was one of approximately 230,000 children and 1,300,000 people who were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945.
According to Marina, as she began to transform Czestawa's photo into color, she realized that she was wearing a red triangle with a black "P" in the center. This means that the young girl had been taken in as a political prisoner.
"When we see the photos in black and white, we get the feeling that those events happened only in the history books," she said.
"According to the photographer’s account, Czeslawa had just been beaten by a guard before the photo was taken.
"By restoring the colors on her face, I was able to show the colors of the blood and the bruises, which made everything even more real."
Marina says that the color makes it easier for people to relate to those in the photos.
"These people were human beings who had dreams, ambitions, fears, friends, family, and had all this taken from them," she added.
"Unfortunately, Czeslawa was just one among millions of others, but the expression on her face – so much fear, and at the same time so much courage, will stay with me forever."
The images of Czeslawa are horrifying both in color and in black and white. But, as Marina says, the addition of color simply makes everything more real.
Published 11:24 15 Dec 2020 GMT
Photos of Angelina Jolie's infamous "zombie" lookalike have emerged online revealing what the teenager looked like before her striking transformation.
According to the New York Post, the transformation photos were shared to her own Instagram account, which has now been deactivated.
Nineteen-year-old Sahar Tabar made headlines over the weekend after reportedly been sentenced to 10 years in prison in her native country Iran over her social media presence, which involved her sharing photos of her distorted face online.
Related - Tabar speaks out during an interview on Iranian TV:
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The alleged sentencing comes a year after Tabar, whose real name is Fatemeh Khishvand, was arrested.
According to The Guardian, she was charged with corruption of young people and disrespect for the Islamic Republic.
Tabar became known as the "zombie Angeline Jolie" back in 2017 when she claimed, per the New York Post, that she had undergone 50 surgeries to look like Tomb Raider actress Angeline Jolie.
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Soon enough, she built up a following of nearly half a million people on her Instagram due to her ghoul-like appearance.
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A number of Tabar's followers began to suspect that her face had been made to look the way it did after a great deal of makeup, prosthetics, and digital editing. The teenager's often distorted backgrounds in her pics were seen as proof of this.
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Tabar appeared to confirm that she had used digital editing tools and makeup to enhance her bizarre appearance in a post captioned:
"People are probably living in the 18th century and they haven’t seen or heard of technology or make-up and they are really surprised."
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While online tools certainly helped alter her appearance, the Iranian teen reportedly admitted to getting surgery on her nose, mouth, and liposuction. In addition, Tabar was believed to weigh as little as 85 pounds at the time of the now-infamous pictures first going viral.
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Her recent reported charges come a year after her initial charges of blasphemy and inciting violence, of which she had been acquitted.
Tabar's attorneys had tried to secure her release after she became ill with coronavirus while in jail, the BBC reports.
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Furthermore, Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad even asked actress Angelina Jolie herself to help the young incarcerated woman.
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"Islamic Republic has a history of tormenting women," she said. "We need to be united against this gender apartheid."
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