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Florida Executes Aileen Wuornos, Who Killed Six Men Along Central Florida Highways

After a decade on death row, Wuornos had given up her appeals and asked to die, saying she would kill again. Her last words promised she would "be back."

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Aileen Wuornos in a blue prison shirt, leaning forward in a room with a pink door

Aileen Wuornos asked to be put to death, telling Florida that sparing her was a waste of taxpayers' money. On October 9, 2002, the state executed her.

Wuornos, 46, was pronounced dead at 9:47 a.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke after a lethal injection, a Department of Corrections spokesman said. Her final statement mixed religion and science fiction: "I'd 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." As the execution approached, a defense lawyer questioned whether she was competent to demand her own death, but a panel of three psychiatrists found her competent and Gov. Jeb Bush agreed.

Wuornos admitted killing six middle-aged men in 1989 and 1990, luring some of them by posing as a stranded motorist on central Florida highways. She shot them, robbed them and left their bodies. She stood trial only for the murder of Richard Mallory, whose body was found in December 1989, and the Florida Supreme Court upheld that conviction and her death sentence in 1994. She did not contest five other killings, of David Spears, Charles Carskaddon, Troy Burress, Charles Richard Humphreys and Walter Jeno Antonio. Police believed she also killed a seventh man, Peter Siems, but his body was never found and she was not charged.

At first Wuornos said she had acted in self-defense. In July 2001, after a decade on death row, she abandoned that claim. "I killed those men, robbed them as cold as ice. And I'd do it again, too," she said. The prosecutor, John Tanner, watched her die. "This is a tough business," he said. "But I think it's necessary."

CNN reported that Wuornos pleaded no contest to five of the killings, while the Volusia County detective who investigated the Mallory case said she pleaded guilty to them.

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