ID releases first look at Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos
- Carla Davis
- 15 hours ago
- 2 min read
True crime network Investigation Discovery( ID) has released a first look trailer for a new docuseries called Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos. The multi-part series will take a look at Wuornos’s life, the murders and crimes she committed, and the riveting story of her eventual capture.
Aileen Wuornos is one of the best known serial killers in America, largely due to the fact that she was somewhat of an anomaly; the vast majority of serial killers are men. It’s estimated that only 8% - 16% of serial killers in the United States are female. What also seemed to capture everyone’s attention was that Aileen’s life story was genuinely tragic, and seems to have led to trauma-induced psychosis. When she was psychologically evaluated after her capture, she did exhibit psychopathic traits.
Her mother Diane was only 14 years old when she gave birth to Aileen’s brother Keith, and only 16 when Aileen was born in 1956. Her father was never in her life, and was a schizophrenic who died by suicide while in prison for raping a seven-year-old girl.
Diane left her two children with their maternal grandparents when Aileen was only three years old, and that didn’t go well either. Both were alcoholics, and people witnessed the grandfather beating Aileen with a belt many times. Aileen always claimed that he had also sexually assaulted her, and she began to exchange sex for money, cigarettes and food when she was only 11. By 14, she was pregnant, and gave her child up for adoption.
The happiest time in her life seems to be after she met a 24-year-old motel maid named Tyria Moore, but her volatile behavior did not stop.
Aileen’s rage and psychosis led to many violent episodes that continued to escalate. In 1989, she murdered 51-year-old Richard Charles Mallory in Clearwater, Florida, and thus began her life as a serial killer. Over a one year period, she is known to have killed at least 7 men in Florida.
While Aileen initially claimed that each of her victims had sexually assaulted or attempted to assault her, and that she had killed in self defense, she later backed down on that claim, but would often go back and forth on it. At least one of her victims did indeed have a history of sexual assault.
ID’s Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos will premiere this month
The series three hour debut will be on Wednesday, September 30 at 8:00 p.m. on ID, and will also be available to stream on HBO Max. It uses “advanced digital replication and VFX techniques to revisit the life, crimes, and eventual capture of Aileen Wuornos. Presenting next generation visualizations of documented first-person accounts that previously only existed in verified transcripts, including testimony from Wuornos, those closest to her, and the investigators who worked the case.”
Using first person accounts, the words of law enforcement who took part in the case, and Wuornos’s own testimony, advanced digital replication and visual effects will present the events that led to her death by lethal injection in 2002.
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