Who was Aileen Wuornos? The real story behind her role in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story

Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story doesn’t just stick to 19th-century Fall River. The series jumps forward almost 100 years to tell the story of another serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, played by Sarah Paulson.

Via Netflix

Wuornos has no real-life connection to Lizzie Borden, the woman accused of killing her father and stepmother with an axe in 1892. Instead, Monster uses Wuornos to explore the idea that Borden’s story could echo through generations of women.

So, who was Aileen Wuornos, what did she actually do, and why has Ryan Murphy brought her into the Lizzie Borden story?

Who was Aileen Wuornos?

Aileen Wuornos was a sex worker in Florida who became one of America’s most notorious female serial killers. Between 1989 and 1990, she killed seven men across central Florida. She was eventually convicted of six of those murders and was sentenced to death.

Wuornos was arrested in January 1991 and initially told police that the killings had happened in self-defence. She claimed the men had raped or attempted to rape her. Her accounts later changed, however, and she ultimately pleaded guilty or no contest to multiple murder charges. Her motives have remained the subject of debate around the case.

She received six death sentences and spent years on death row before being executed by lethal injection in Florida on October 9, 2002.

Via Netflix

What was Aileen Wuornos’ childhood like?

Wuornos gave different accounts of her childhood at different points in her life.

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In recorded interviews featured in the Netflix documentary Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, she described her grandmother as a “really clean and decent” woman who didn’t drink or swear. She also said her grandfather was “not nasty”.

However, in other accounts, Wuornos alleged that her grandfather sexually abused her. Her childhood was deeply troubled, and accounts of her early life include abandonment, abuse and periods of living on the streets. After her grandparents died, she became a ward of the state and later turned to sex work.

Why is Aileen Wuornos in Monster: Lizzie Borden?

The series deliberately links the two women. Lizzie’s story becomes something that Wuornos encounters and identifies with, allowing the show to jump from the 1890s into Wuornos’ story in the late 1980s.

Netflix describes Wuornos as an “inheritor” of Lizzie’s bloody legacy, while the show uses both women to explore female violence, rage and the circumstances surrounding women who commit violent crimes.

And Ella Beatty, who plays Lizzie, explained to Tudum why the two stories were brought together.

Via Netflix

“The show is exploring a legacy of female rage and reaction to the set of circumstances that they are presented with,” she says. “I think there’s a connection [between Borden and Wuornos] that Ryan and Ian were interested in mapping and exploring.”

So while Wuornos really did exist, and her crimes really did happen, her apparent connection to Lizzie Borden is part of the show’s fictionalised version of events.

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Featured image via Netflix