Serial Killers Among Us

Running head: SERIAL KILLERS AMONG US

Serial Killers Among Us
Allison Kerley
University of Phoenix

Serial Killers Among Us
Aileen Wuornos, the FBIs first female serial killer, gained worldwide notoriety with her murders of seven men, the lenghty legal trial, and her desire for her own execution. With notoriety comes the look into the life of a criminal, society has a desire to know what makes them tick, what caused these fateful days, and how can we analyze the crimes. Her crimes could be analyzed by any of the eight types of criminal theories and thinkers, Neoclassical and Psychological are just two discussed. Aileen Wuornos led a troubled life and had full comprehension of her actions, even after she asked to be executed.
Aileen Wuornos was born Aileen Pittman in Rochester, Michigan on February 29, 1956. Her mother, Diane Wuornos married Leo Pittman at 15 and gave birth to Keith and Aileen. Her parents were just a teenage couple that had divorced a few months prior to her birth. Lee Pittman ended up serving time in Kansas and Michigan mental hospitals as a deranged child-molester. (Kassab, 2002) In 1960, Diane found single parenting of two children too much and abandoned Keith and Aileen with her parents Lauri and Britta Wuornos. The grandparents adopted the two children as their own, and their name changed to Wuornos. This was something Aileen did not discover until she was twelve years old.
Lauri Wuornos, Aileen 's grandfather, drank heavily and had strict rules for the children. When Aileen knew the couple was her grandparents and not biological parents, she rebelled. Aileen became pregnant at the age of 14 and was sent to an unwed mothers ' home until the baby boy was born. The child was put up for adoption right after the birth in March 1971. In July 1971, Aileen 's grandmother Britta died. It was blamed on liver failure, and Aileen suspected her grandfather killed her. A few years later, Lauri committed suicide and her brother died of cancer and she received $10,000 in life insurance, which she spent in under two months. She became a drifter, using drugs and turning to prostitution to support herself. Lee, as she was nicknamed, left for Florida, angry at the world.
During Aileen 's arrival to Florida she met Lewis Fell, an elderly man, who had a livable income from railroad stock dividends. The couple had a short marriage. Fell received a restraining order and an annulment after Aileen was arrested for throwing a billiard ball at a bartender. Fell also claimed she displayed extremely violent behavior and misspent some of his money. This left her on her own once more and she turned to a life of crime, fueled by forgery and petty theft.
Alone, Aileen wanted something new. She wondered in to a Daytona, Florida gay bar in 1986. While at this bar she met a 24-year-old female named Tyria Moore. Their identical need for attention and love made the pair attracted to each other. Tyria, also known as "Ty", loved Aileen and followed her wherever she went. She even quit her job to be with her. Aileen continued prostitution as a mean of support for both of them. The money was not able to support two people and their existence was getting harder to maintain. As time went by, the money ran short along with their infatuation. That 's when the situation turned deadly.
Near the end of 1989, Florida police begin finding bodies, such as Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old Clearwater businessman known for disappearing on drinking and sex binges. When Richard did not show up at his business for days, no one was concerned. There was no one close to him that noticed he was missing. His 1977 Cadillac was found on December 13th 1989, outside Daytona. It was 12 more days before his body was found. Mallory 's body was found several miles from his car in a wooded area. He had been shot numerous times by a .22 caliber handgun. The body was badly decomposed and was identified through the fingerprints.
The investigation for Mallory 's killer stalled until around June 1st 1990, when the body of a nude male was found shot six times with a .22 caliber and dropped 40 miles north of Tampa Florida. On June 7th only after examining dental records, was the body identified as David Spears, a 43-year-old heavy-equipment operator from Sarasota Florida. It had been stated that he was to be on his way to Orlando to visit his ex-wife. Spear 's boss stated that he saw his truck on May 25th parked along I-75 south of Gainesville, Florida. From here, there was no trail to be followed.
By the time Spear 's was identified, a third body was found. 40 year-old, part-time rodeo worker Charles Carskadoon from Booneville, Missouri, missing since May 31st, was found only thirty miles south of David Spear 's corpse. Carskadoon 's corpse was naked and had been shot nine times with a .22 caliber weapon. His car was found on June 7th in Marion county Florida. After this third body with the same criteria was found, the pattern of a single suspect was visible.
In Orange Springs Florida, July 4th an abandoned 1988 Pontiac Sunbird was found. Christian missionary, Peter Siems, who had disappeared from his Jupiter home on June 7th, was the owner. The vehicle had some smashed windows, bloodstains, including a bloody fingerprint inside. At this point, there was no connection to any of the other unsolved murders.
One month later, just off Highway 19 in the Ocala National Forest, a family out on a picnic found the body of deliveryman, Troy Burress. Two shots from a .22 caliber had killed him. On September 12, Dick Humphreys, an employee of Florida 's Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, was found dead in Marion County.
Finally, the body of Walter Gino Antonio was discovered on November 19, 1990, on a country road in Dixie County. Not only was he nude, but he had also been shot four times with a .22 caliber pistol. Antonio would be the seventh and last victim of this killing spree finally linked to Aileen Wuornos. Through a labor intensive and cooperative police force investigation in Florida, Aileen Wuornos, was arrested and charged with murder of seven men. Along the trails of these murders, Aileen was involved with several different criminal acts, such as prostitution, robbery, disorderly conduct, and fraud.
Wuornos was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murders of Richard Mallory, only later to plead no contest or guilty to the other five similar murders throughout Florida. Meanwhile, Wuornos had been on death row for over a decade before confessing to the seventh murder of Peter Siems, whose body was never recovered. (Kassab, 2002).
The FBI 's first female serial killer was killed by lethal injection at 9:47 a.m., Wednesday October 9th, 2002. The execution took place at the Florida Prison near Starke FL. Wuornos, 46, was the tenth woman in the U.S. and the second woman in Florida to be executed since the death penalty resumed in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. (Macleod).
Many have tried to look deeper into the background, activities and overall life of this famous serial killer. There are eight theories of crime dated back to 1700 's. These theories look at everything from society to the inner self of the criminal. There could be a lot said about Aileen Wuornos. Between the different schools of theories, here are what Neoclassical and Psychological theories would say about her.
The Neoclassical school involves crimes committed by the individual exercising free will. One of the central perspectives is the rational choice theory. Criminal activities are not fully rational or thought through, and variety of individual or environmental factors affect choices made. Offenders still commit the crime with fully understanding of the consequences when the benefits of doing so appear to outweigh the costs. (Schmalleger, 2005)
Neoclassical thinkers would look at Wuronos ' actions of are free will, we willingly got into her victims car, and she had a plan after the first victim of attack except for the first victim. She had an understanding of the law, and what was right and wrong. Aileen 's actions of burglary the victims were for personal gain to get her to the next point and support herself.
Two thinkers, Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson, narrowed the rational choice theory into a narrower theory of Routine Activities. This theory states that "lifestyle contribute significantly to both the volume and type of crime found in any society." (Schmalleger, 2005). This theory encompasses for life as a prostitute and her use of that to pick up her victims or she used her lifestyle in her types of crime.
The psychological thinkers of crime have several theories that would look at Aileen Wuornos ' dysfunctional personality, her subconscious and several other factors of environment and human condition. This type of thinking can be best associated with Sigmund Freud with his psychoanalysis, and Ivan Pavlov 's behavioral conditioning.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), a Russian physiologist, studied digestion in animals and examined the processes involved in behavioral learning. He discovered that dogs could be conditioned to salivate upon various environmental cues. This experiment has found that conditioning is a psychological principle that shows that the amount of times a behavior both criminal and deviant can be increased or decreased by reward, punishment and other stimuli. (Schmallege, 2005).
This school of thinkers would have drooled over the crimes and life of Aileen. Her disruptive behavior, parental abandonment, heredity of criminal family, verbal abuse and her killings. The events that lead up to her killings, the action of killing, and then reward at the end conveys that there was an action reward system set in her mind. They could say that she was conditioned to have angry behavior from her upbringing. She also could have learned from her first murder that the reward of the persons belongs and vehicles are for her actions.
Freud would have had a field day with analyzing her relationships with her family, and her personality. He was the founder of psychoanalysis that believed that crime could result from at least three conditions. First is a weak superego, or a weak guiding principle, this cannot control the drive from the id. In criminal behavior they consider sex crimes, murder and other violent crimes the lack of a strong superego. Wuornos fits in to this with her murders.
Next is sublimation it explains the process of one item being symbolically substituted for another. Sublimation was required when the direct pursuit of one 's desires was not possible. All Aileen wanted was the affection and attention for the beginning, the exact reason her mother could not handle being a single mother and two children. This extended into her life until the end with unfulfilled relationships. This could also be a reason for prostitution quick fix of attention and possible appreciation. Freud said that this was mainly men and crimes against women from the hatred of their mothers, but this can work in reverse for Aileen. She had such hatred for her father/grandfather and all the men in her life that she hated all men. All seven victims were male and there was never a mention of a crime against a female. (Schmalleger, 2005).
Lastly, Freud states that criminality is based a death wish, or Thanatos. He believed that everyone carries this in them. Potentially self-destructive activities, such as smoking, speeding, bad diets. Criminals can be aroused to commit even more self- destructive acts like murder, burglary, prostitution, and drug use. Again Aileen fits this death wish theory like a key. (Schmalleger, 2005).
Gaining worldwide notoriety Aileen Wuornos murdered seven men, stood a long legal trial and her ask for execution. During her trials and appeals people wanted to know more about her life history, and her behaviors. What made her tick? What caused these fateful days? And how can we analysis different aspects of crimes? The neoclassical and psychological theories of crime would have been able to fit her in their categories and further explore her deviant behaviors. With her tragic life, came a wanted death, Aileen Wuornos was recognized as the FBI 's first female serial killer.

References
Kassab, B. (2002). Wuornos Attracts Interest Until End. Orlando Sentinel
Kassab, B. (2002) Serial killer Wuornos Executed. Orlando Sentinel
MacLeod, M. (2002). Aileen Wuornos: Killer Who Preyed on Truck Drivers. Crime Library retrieved from www.crimelibary.com on July 31, 2009
Russell, S. (2002) Lethal Intent Sue, Pinnacle books.
Schmallege, F. (2003). Criminology Today 3rd ed. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Schmallege, F. (2005) Criminal Justice today 8th ed. Prentice- Hall, Inc.

References: Kassab, B. (2002). Wuornos Attracts Interest Until End. Orlando Sentinel Kassab, B. (2002) Serial killer Wuornos Executed. Orlando Sentinel MacLeod, M. (2002). Aileen Wuornos: Killer Who Preyed on Truck Drivers. Crime Library retrieved from www.crimelibary.com on July 31, 2009 Russell, S. (2002) Lethal Intent Sue, Pinnacle books. Schmallege, F. (2003). Criminology Today 3rd ed. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Schmallege, F. (2005) Criminal Justice today 8th ed. Prentice- Hall, Inc.