Criminological Analysis of a Female Serial Killer

Criminological Analysis of a Female Serial Killer
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Criminological Analysis of a Female Serial Killer
Introduction
Serial killing constitutes a phenomenon that both scares and fascinates people. Aileen Wuornos remains one of the deadliest and most notorious serial killers to have ever existed in the United States (U.S.). Aileen had murdered seven men between 1989 and 1990 across Florida before she was captured and sentenced to death. A criminological analysis of the female serial killer is fundamental to understanding their psychology and delinquencies. This essay constitutes a criminological analysis of Aileen Wuornos to understand her biography and early life, committed crimes and their contributing factors, capture and arrest, mental disorders and death sentence.
Biography and Early Life
Aileen was born in Rochester, Michigan, on the 29th of February, 1956, to Diane Wuornos (mother) and Leo Dale Pittman (father). She had an increasingly fragile childhood. Her mother married Pittman during her teenage years, thus implying that she was not mature enough to take responsibility for the upbringing of Aileen (Booth, 2021). She ultimately abandoned her children – Aileen and her brother Keith – leaving them under the care of their grandparents, Britta and Lauri. Leo was a convicted child molester who committed suicide in the correctional facility in 1967. In this way, both parents were absent during their childhood. Her grandfather, Lauri, was sexually and physically abusive, while her grandmother was an abusive heavy drinker (Booth, 2021). She had an incestuous relationship with her brother (Keith) and grandfather (Rose, 2019). Her biography and early life indicate that Aileen had a troubled past, which could have contributed to her delinquency and unruly behaviors.
Criminal History
Aileen was imprisoned in Jefferson County for drunk driving, disorderly conduct, and firing a gun from an automobile in 1974. Two years later, Aileen was arrested and charged with disturbing social order and assault after she attacked a bartender in Michigan. Police arrested Aileen in Florida in connection to a convenience store robbery in 1981, leading to her imprisonment till June 1983, when she was released. In 1985, Aileen was jailed for resisting arrest and car theft in Miami (Booth, 2021). In this context, it can be derived that Aileen was a repeat offender as the courts constantly found her guilty of robbery, theft, and assault.
Despite her previous convictions, Aileen went ahead and killed at least six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. She would later claim that she committed the offences in self-defense. Richard Mallory emerged as the first victim in Aileen’s serial killing spree. She stated that Mallory tried to rape her after declining to pay for commercial sex services. Aileen killed Mallory, fearing that she might be caught if the victim survived. These thoughts inspire her to shoot Mallory in the chest multiple times at t...