The First Female Serial Killer: Why Aileen Wuornos's Case Still Matters

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Between 1989 and 1990, seven men picked up a hitchhiker along Florida's highways. None of them made it home.

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Eileen Wernos said she killed them in self-defense. The state said she was a monster.

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A movie later said she was a monster too. But what if the truth is somewhere in between?

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What if the evidence that could have saved her life was hidden from her jury? Let's get into it.

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[Music]

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So you know how society loves to put people in these neat little boxes. Good guys over here, bad guys over there.

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Eileen Wernos absolutely destroyed that box. Her story is one of those cases where the more you learn,

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the less certain you become about anything. Between 1989 and 1990,

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Eileen Wernos killed seven men across central Florida. She became known as America's first

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female serial killer profiled by the FBI. But calling her a serial killer and leaving it at that,

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that's like reading the last page of a book and thinking you know the whole story. So let's back up.

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Eileen Carol Wernos was born in 1956 into a situation that was already a disaster. Her biological father

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was locked up for child molestation when she was still a baby. And he later died by suicide in prison.

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When she was four years old, she and her brother got shipped off to live with their maternal grandparents.

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You think that might be a fresh start, right? It wasn't. Her grandfather was an alcoholic who

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beat her with a belt for the smallest things. We're not talking about regular discipline. I know

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I was hit with a belt occasionally as a child. You listening to me right now, many of you were hit

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with a belt as a child. And I wouldn't technically call that abuse. What we're talking about is the

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severity of this physical abuse. And it gets worse. There's evidence that he sexually abused her as

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well. Her grandmother knew what was happening the whole time and did nothing to stop it. At 14 years

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old, Eileen was raped by a family friend. She waited six months before revealing that she was pregnant

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and her grandparents blamed her for her own pregnancy. 14-year-old gets raped, becomes pregnant,

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and the adults in her life blame her. She was forced to give the baby up for adoption and then her

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grandfather kicked her out of the house. At that time, she was 15 years old. So what do you do when

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you're 15, homeless, and have been failed by every adult who was supposed to protect you? Eileen

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started working as a prostitute along the highways of central Florida. She carried a gun because,

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well, sex work is dangerous, and it's Florida. Especially when you're doing it on the side of

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highways with complete strangers. Psychologists who studied her case later diagnosed her with

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anti-social personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. They pointed to her history of

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severe attachment disruptions and trauma as major contributing factors to what happened next.

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From late 1989 through late 1990, the bodies of seven middle-aged white men were discovered in

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central Florida. The killer had robbed all five victims before shooting them to death and stealing

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their cars. The first victim was Richard Mallory. He was 51 years old, a shop owner who picked up

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by Leighne along Interstate 75. His body was found several miles from his abandoned car in December 1989.

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He'd been shot multiple times in the chest. Then came David Spears, a 43-year-old construction

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worker shot six times. Charles Carr's Cadden, 40, part-time rodeo worker shot nine times. Peter

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Sims, 65, who was heading to New Jersey. His body was never found, but his car turned up abandoned

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on July 4th, 1990. Troy Burris, 50-year-old car salesman, Charles Humphreys, a retired

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Air Force major who'd worked as a child abuse investigator. And Walter Antonio, 62, shot four times

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in the back and head. Leighne was living with her partner Tyra Moore during all of this. After the

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first killing, she told Tyra what she had done. Tyra wasn't scared. And when the police eventually

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came knocking, Tyra cooperated. She helped them record a confession from Leighne that led to her

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arrest in January 1991. Here's where things get kind of messy. Leighne claimed from the beginning that

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she killed these men in self-defense. She said they either raped her or tried to rape her,

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and she believed she was going to be beaten or killed if she didn't act first. The prosecution,

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they painted her as a cold-blooded murderer, who killed for money and to eliminate witnesses.

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But let's talk about what the jury never heard. One example of poor representation revealed in

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subsequent appeals was trial counts was failure to uncover Richard Mallory's prior rape conviction,

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which could have cooperated Eileen's argument of self-defense. He later became known that Mallory had

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previously been convicted of attempted rape in Maryland and had served time in prison. So the

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first man that she killed was a prior offender, a convicted rapist. That information existed. The

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prosecution knew about it, and it was never presented to the defense team. After the trial, when this

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came to light, the judge refused to allow it in as evidence and post trial proceedings. But wait,

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there's more. When Eileen gave her videotaped confession, she insisted at least 16 times that she

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killed in self-defense. That part of the video was edited out before the jury saw it.

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And I don't mean that she killed 16 people. I mean 16 times during the recorded confession.

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She said she killed in self-defense. I know I said that weird. And then there's the prosecutor,

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John Tanner. This guy had previously written articles calling prostitutes "pure evil."

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He was also friends with the presiding judge. Legal experts have pointed out that gender bias

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likely played a significant role in how this case was handled. Studies show that women in Florida

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were sometimes treated more harshly than men who committed similar crimes. After her conviction

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for killing Mallory and her death sentence in 1992, Eileen's story changed. She pleaded guilty

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or no contest to the other murders and said she'd killed for robbery, not self-defense. But here's

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the thing about that. In a private interview with Documentary in Nick Brumfield, she suggested that

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the killings were actually self-defense. She said she couldn't take being on death row anymore

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and just wanted the whole thing to be over with. She knew that whatever she said wasn't going to

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change the fact that she was on death row. So she just wanted it to be done. Eileen spent over a

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decade on Florida's death row and her mental state fell apart during that time. She fired multiple

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attorneys. She wrote rambling motions claiming she was being abused. In 2001, she dropped all of her

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appeals. She said she wanted to die because, quote, "She seriously hates human life and would kill

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again if they kept her alive." Some of her former lawyers raised concerns that she wasn't mentally

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competent to give up her appeals. But state appointed psychiatrist to examine her and said that she

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was competent enough to make that decision. On October 9, 2002, Eileen Wernos was executed by

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lethal injection. Her final words were honestly pretty disturbing. She said, "I just like to say

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I'm sailing with the rock and I'll be back like Independence Day, like Jesus, June 6,

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like the movie, big mother ship and all. I'll be back." A lot of experts saw those final words as

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confirmation that her mental state had completely deteriorated. All right, look, I'm not here to say

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that Eileen Wernos was innocent. Seven men are dead. That's a fact. You can't do that. You can't kill

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other people. But what I am saying is that her case raises some seriously uncomfortable questions

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about how our justice system handles people who have been victimized their entire lives

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and then become perpetrators themselves. And again, I'm not saying had she not be put on death

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row, she should just be released into the wild, not at all. What I am saying is when you're sexually

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abused as a child, kicked out at 15, forced into sex work to survive, and then you kill someone who

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you claim tried to rape you. And it turns out that person was actually a convicted rapist. But

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nobody tells your jury that information. That is not justice. It's a broken system.

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Eileen Wernos's story is a dark reminder of what happens when childhood trauma goes unaddressed.

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When society fails the most vulnerable people and when the legal system cares more about getting

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a conviction and getting the truth, was Eileen a victim? Absolutely. Was she also a killer?

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Yes, both things can be true at the same time. And maybe that's the most important lesson here.

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People aren't always one thing or the other. Sometimes they're both. And our justice system needs

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to be able to handle that complexity instead of ignoring it.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime Stories. I am Joe, I'm your host,

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and sometimes I feel it's weird to introduce myself after the story's over.

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Normally, introductions are done at the beginning, but that's not what we do here.

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And to be honest, I switched it to this way because I thought it's important to jump right into

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the story because all of our attention spans are shorter. If I were to do this rambling bit

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toward the beginning, most of you would tune out. Although there is a big group of you that say that

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this part of the episode is your favorite part of the episode where I just ramble about nonsense and

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different things. And I read a weird email from one of you that listens to my weird podcast

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because we're all weird here. Except for this one, I got an email that I'm going to read right now

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and it's not weird. It's just like a straight up one of the most one of the most normal emails I've

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gotten in a while, by the way. Here it is. Subjects, hold on, I can't see it. Subject cold cases and chaos.

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Hey, Joe, I've noticed that some of the cold cases you cover are way messier than the solved ones.

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It's like they were written by someone who lost the plot halfway through. Do you have any case that

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stands out as the most unnecessarily complicated? Or like, how do they even allow this to happen?

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Levels of messy. That's from Trina in Houston. And Trina, let me tell you, yes. And I just covered the

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case and I've covered it twice now in this podcast and I can't stop talking about it. It's the

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Ellen Greenberg case. You haven't heard about that. Look it up. There's been some recent news

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dealing with her case. And when you do look it up, you're going to see, oh, that's a suicide. Why

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is Joe talked about this twice? Because there's no possible way, in my opinion, that that's a suicide.

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That lady was attacked and murdered in her own home. And instead of me explaining this whole thing

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right now, just go back and listen to the Ellen Greenberg story on my podcast. And you'll see exactly

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what I'm talking about. It's so frustrating. But Trina, thank you for the email. It's a great question.

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If you've got a question, you can go to 10minutemerder.com and email me there. There's also on the website,

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all kinds of information about the podcast, where to listen, where to follow on social media,

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all that cool stuff. Before I forget, if you're a new listener, make sure you hit subscribe.

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If you're an OG listener, I love you with my whole heart. And that's going to do it.

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That's your episode for today. Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder. See you next time.