Aileen Wuornos was a mother and a wife before she became a serial killer.

Aileen was born to teenage parents, Diane Wuornos and Leo Pittman, in Michigan in February 1956, but they split shortly after her birth, according to Britannica. From a young age, Aileen faced turbulence and volatility in her life.

Her mother, Diane, left her and her older brother, Keith, when they were young children, so Diane’s parents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos, adopted them. Meanwhile, her father died by suicide in prison in 1969 after he was convicted of raping a 7-year-old girl, per a May 2005 review in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

Aileen became pregnant with her first child when she was a young teenager, so she was sent to a home for unwed mothers, according to the 2003 documentary Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. Aileen vehemently claimed that she had been raped by one of her grandfather’s friends.

Aileen eventually made her way to Florida, where she met and married 69-year-old Lewis Gratz Fell in 1976. However, the pair’s union was short-lived, and her life took an even darker turn.

In 1991, Aileen admitted to killing seven men in Florida over the course of 1989 and 1990, claiming the attacks were in self-defense because the men had raped or tried to rape her while she was working as a prosтιтute. She was ultimately convicted of murdering six of the men and received six death sentences. After 10 years on death row, Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002.

Here’s everything to know about Aileen Wuornos’ early years, including the birth of her son and her marriage.

Aileen Wuornos welcomed a son in 1971

Around the age of 14, Aileen became pregnant, per Britannica. The idenтιтy of the father is unknown, but she claimed that a friend of her grandfather raped her, information that was seemingly corroborated by childhood friend Dawn Botkins in Netflix’s 2025 doc Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers.