The Haunting Truth of Aileen Wuornos: Inside Netflix’s Queen of the Serial Killers

Aileen Wuornos—the Florida sex worker who shot and killed seven men between late 1989 and 1990, then died by lethal injection in 2002—has never really left the cultural spotlight. Charlize Theron won an Oscar playing her in Monster, and now Netflix is back with a fresh take: Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, streaming since October 30.

At 35, Wuornos was convicted for just one of those murders, even though she’d confessed to all seven. More than 30 years later, nobody can quite pin down why she did it.

The heart of this new documentary is a prison interview from 1997, shot by artist-filmmaker Jasmine Hirst. The two had been pen pals, and Hirst managed to get a camera inside. What Wuornos says there—raw, unfiltered, sometimes contradictory—drives the whole film. Director Emily Turner weaves in fresh audio from cops who worked the case, plus Wuornos’s old friends and family.

Aileen, Talking for Herself

Wuornos spends a lot of the interview insisting she’s the real victim. She grew up with her grandparents—strict, church-every-Sunday types—and says she bolted at 15. For the next five years she hitchhiked, crashed under bridges, slept in fields. “I got tough,” she tells Hirst, matter-of-fact. She claims she was raped more than once on the road.

Her childhood friend Dawn Botkins thinks Aileen turned tricks just to put food on the table for her brother, who’d been living with the grandparents too.

About the first guy she was convicted of killing—Richard Mallory in 1989—Wuornos always swore he raped her. But in the Hirst tape she admits she made up the part about sodomy. “That’s the only thing I lied about,” she says, sounding almost annoyed. “I slipped with the cops, then I just kept running my mouth.” She hated having to “keep up that stupid lie” in court.

She pushes back hard on the “serial killer” label. Says the booze turned her into someone she wasn’t. “My real self isn’t one,” she insists.

Why Did She Do It?

Even while denying the label, Wuornos clearly enjoys the spotlight. At one point she leans in, fixes her hair, and whispers to Hirst, “You guys are gonna make millions off this.”

Director Turner finds that moment heartbreaking: “The first time Aileen ever felt seen or heard was when she became infamous.”

One theory: after a lifetime of brutal men, she snapped and lashed out. She was living with her girlfriend, Tyria Moore, when she killed Mallory—she even confessed to Moore. Turner says Aileen told her she “tried lesbianism” after too many violent guys. Sex work was just survival.

But Turner keeps reminding us: Wuornos isn’t a reliable narrator. The truth probably isn’t tidy. “Watch the film,” she says, “and decide for yourself.”