Aileen Wuornos | First Predatory Female Serial Killer

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can take a look at the mental health and personality characteristics of Aileen warned us so she's been referred to as the first predatory female serial killer now she was a real person of course so just a reminder that I'm not diagnosing anybody only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this so whenever we see a case like this that's exceedingly popular this case has inspired books and movies we have to be particularly careful because a lot of artistic licenses apply to those products and often people who write them really don't understand the important concepts or days of the case like in this case psychopathy and narcissism which is one of the many reasons I focus on the research literature when looking information for these videos and of course I'll put the references to the articles I used in the description for this video so when I first got the request for this video it was probably around nine months ago and I read some of the research literature on the case I took a break from this case for a while came back and looked at it again so I've probably sat down and worked on this particular video maybe 10 to 12 times over the last nine months and one of the reasons I did that kind of worked in small amounts of time and then kind of put it all together here at the end was because I really wanted to reflect on the nature of this case it's a case unlike any other that we see again a predatory female serial killer and there's such an extensive history available at this case I really wanted to make sure I reflected on every component and added all the value I could in terms of understanding this particular case so with that in mind I'm gonna have a quick overview here of the typical understanding of female killers I'm gonna look at the timeline for this case again it's a huge case a lot of history so try to compress this in a way that kind of makes sense for this video and then I'm going to analyze the case in terms of mental health and personality so first the overview on female killers usually when we hear about a woman who commits murder it's in the context of an abusive relationship perhaps she was a victim of domestic violence and was fighting back perhaps her actions are justified maybe not but either way that's a popular situation in which we see female killers being discussed or sometimes we see them being discussed in the context of a conspiracy with a man so for example a man the woman said in a romantic relationship and maybe they robbed banks together or robbed stores together and in the commission of one of those robberies the man commits a murder or if the woman does but either way the theory would be but not for that relationship with the man the woman would not be a killer rarely do we hear about female killers who are predatory where there's no self-defense reason given no defense can be argued on that basis so again predatory means that somebody's seeking out other people and killing them also we seldom hear about serial homicide perpetrated by women so the research literature on this topic really doesn't tell us enough there are a few women who fit this category predatory serial killing and the articles that we do have tend to emphasize victimization aspects like that intimate partner violence aspect I talked about and not some of the other personality constructs that may be at work no matter which aspects they look at they almost never talk about women killing for material reasons so that's what really I think makes this case unique not only do you have somebody who's predatory a serial killer but after the killings Aileen Wuornos took money right so there was a material gain as part of these murders so now moving to the timeline we see that Aileen Wuornos was born on February 29th 1956 in Michigan until the age of eleven she believed that her maternal grandparents were her parents Eileen and her older brother Keith he was 11 months older were brutally victimized by her grandfather for many years Eileen was often beaten and sometimes was beaten for consecutive days so she didn't really even have a chance to heal physically before being beaten again right so a particularly cruel grandfather in addition to the physical abuse there was also verbal abuse later Eileen would allege that there was sexual abuse as well but some of those claims particularly the ones against the grandfather were never substantiated now the grandmother really wasn't an active part of Eileen's life she appeared to have an alcohol use disorder she didn't do anything to stop the abuse caused by the grandfather Eileen described her grandmother as frail and nervous now I talked about how Eileen thought that her grandparents were her parents until age 11 at that age she was told that Diane warned us who Eileen thought was her sister was actually her mother Eileen's real father was Leo Dale Pitman she never met him he was in prison when she was born he had a long history of violence and an explosive temper he was eventually convicted of kidnapping and sex offenses and committed suicide in prison when Leo went to prison Diane again Eileen's mother tried to be a single mother she was 15 years old when Eileen and Keith were at the house of one of Diane's friends Diane went out for dinner and never came back she returned when she was 18 when Diane was 18 but the relationship between Diane and her parents was too unstable it was too much arguing and contentiousness there when Eileen was 2 years old and Keith was 3 Diane left them with a babysitter and never returned during Eileen's pre-adolescent and adolescent years she was described as being combative incorrigible and unpredictable she had frequent unprovoked anger outburst and she also engaged in sex acts with boys at school in exchange for loose change and cigarettes evidently Eileen and Keith had a relationship in which they were protective of one another but they frequently fought with each other and some witnesses reported that Keith sexually abused Eileen so just like the allegations against the grandfather these were never substantiated when Eileen was a tea she had frequent encounters with law enforcement she shoplifted was frequently intoxicated was thrown out of parties for starting fights she was nearly universally disliked at her school and other social settings and she had no friends shortly after she turned 15 she gave birth a number of rumors were out there about who the father was there was this idea that it was a neighbor that it was Keith her brother a grandfather or an older man lived in the community but we never really find out for sure that the grandfather's request the baby was immediately given up for adoption shortly after this Aileen was displaced from her grandparents home and she dropped out of school Eileen's grandmother died of liver failure not long after this likely due to alcohol consumption at age 16 Eileen started a cross-country trip that eventually would take her to Florida at age 18 while in Colorado she was arrested for disorderly conduct DUI and firing a 22 caliber pistol at a moving vehicle at age 20 so now we're in 1976 and in Florida Ilene married a man who was 69 years old about a month later the man filed for divorce and he filed a restraining order he accused Aileen of beating him with his own cane Eileen went back to Michigan was arrested for assault and disturbing the peace three days after this arrest her brother Keith died of throat cancer Aileen received $10,000 from the life-insurance policy from Keith it was gone within two months she bought a number of things including a new car that she totaled shortly thereafter now after this she moved frequently and sometimes she lived with her aunt Lori and her husband of course she thought of Lori as her sister because she believed she was a sister until age 11 until Aileen was 11 when she did live with Lori she really never helped out around the house she didn't do any of the chores she didn't have regular employment and she was threatening and aggressive mostly to men including Lori's husband in 1981 when Eileen was 25 she robbed a convenience store in Edgewater Florida she took two packs of cigarettes and $35 in cash she was charged with robbery with a deadly weapon and sentenced to three years in prison she was released in 1983 she didn't serve all three years shortly thereafter she was arrested for forging two checks with values totaling over $5,500 in 1986 she was charged with obstruction of justice stealing a car and resisting arrest about six months later she was accused of pointing a gun at a man and demanding money from him Aileen was extremely active in prostitution sometimes engaging in acts of prostitution between 25 and 30 times a day it was during this time that shariah met Tyree amor she referred to her as timer the two formed a romantic relationship that lasted for four and a half years they moved from hotel to hotel engaged in a lot of alcohol consumption they were violent and the relationship was characterized by jealousy and grandiosity in 1987 the two were questioned about an assault and battery at a bar Mylene referred to her partnership with Thai as being similar to bonnie-and-clyde predicting they would be famous someday and probably have a book written about them now moving into her 30s Mylene was starting to look Haggard she was extremely overweight and she reported that she wasn't able to attract the same type of man that she was able to attract in the past and she found this to be demoralizing now in 1989 she started murdering her victims and these victims were individuals who were soliciting Aileen as a prostitute so they were Eileen's customers in effect she murdered seven in total by the year 1990 the circumstances of each murder were actually fairly similar Eileen would linger on a road in Florida until a man would stop and offer her a ride while in the car Aileen would tell the man that she was a prostitute and that she needed money the victim would drive to an area that was more or less secluded Aileen would start getting undressed there would be some physical contact while the men were taking their clothes off Aileen would exit out of the passenger side of the vehicle with her belongings she would yell at the victim saying that she knew the victim was trying to rape her and then she would shoot the victim with a 22 caliber revolver as many times it took for them to die in July of 1990 Eileen and time--or were in an accent while driving one of the murder victims cars the police eventually tracked them down in January of 1991 they offered more a deal in which she would be immune from prosecution if she could get Eileen to confess after a few telephone calls which were recorded eileen confessed to the killings but she claimed that all the killings were in self-defense after she was arrested she told the police a number of different versions about her crimes including saying that she was defending herself she said that she didn't want to leave any witnesses to a robbery and their versions where she said she murdered them because she was angry when they refused to have sex with her so in terms of her defense in terms of her criminal defense she really didn't do herself any favors with all these different versions again that she was telling to the police now I won't go through all the detail of what happened in the court proceedings they're actually pretty complicated in part because there are so many charges here and so many hearings and I think it doesn't add a lot of value in terms of understanding the mental health and the personality side of this case essentially evidence that could have helped Eileen with her case was not allowed to be used in court and evidence that probably should have been suppressed was used like her extensive criminal history the one part of the court proceedings I think that really is related to mental health is that Eileen was diagnosed with borderline personality and antisocial person I sought her but that didn't seem to make any difference in terms of her sense eventually Eileen was convicted of all seven murders and she received seven death sentences while she was in prison awaiting execution she said a number of things that could be indicative of psychosis she also became involved with a few people and these people are really beyond the scope of the video but there are a few people that appeared to exploit Eileen they appeared to be selling her story to the highest bidder so there were some bad situations there la she was awaiting execution now Eileen petition the soup in court to end all her Appeals so she wanted to be executed she didn't want to go through the appeals process anymore and delay the execution she said that she was guilty and that she would do it again right so toward the end she admitted to the killings but there's this idea that maybe she only admitted to them because she wanted to speed up the execution she was executed in 2002 she was 46 years old so we see a lot of media products produced because of this case the movie monster we see two fairly popular documentaries the selling of a serial killer in 1992 and aileen life and death of a serial killer 2003 so in terms of the mental health and personality aspects of this case there's really so much to cover here it's an incredibly complex case the question a lot of people have is what contributed to Aileen becoming a killer it's such a rare event for a woman to become a serial killer in the first place right and of course we see with Eileen seven killings so she more than qualified for this title serial killer and she had an extensive criminal history before that so a lot of people look at the abuse I think of course this makes sense now a lot of females are abused when they are children this unfortunately is not unusual but was there something different in the case of Eileen was her trauma worse than what we typically see now looking at her trauma history I would say it is among the worst I've ever heard of alright this is a particularly disturbing traumatic history now of course it's kind of morbid to compare one trauma history against another because everybody's experience of trauma is different but I think really by any measure her history was so awful that there could be really any number of things in it that could have led to her behavior was there a genetic component here probably if we look at the behavior of her father Leo we see that there may be some psychopathic and antisocial characteristics there but there's no way to know exactly what that contribution was the obvious ideology the cause I mentioned here would be the repeated physical emotional and sexual trauma I endur'd these type of traumatic experiences for years and this of course would include her experiences with prostitution what did she have in terms of mental health disorders and personality well remember she was diagnosed with borderline and antisocial personality if we look at antisocial personalities order this seems fairly clear she really has all of the symptoms of the disorder repeated unlawful behaviors lying impulsivity aggressiveness disregard for safety irresponsibility and a lack remorse so all seven of the symptom criteria for antisocial personality sorter now with borderline personality it's hard to know certainly the anger was there but we don't have a lot of information about idealization and evaluation that may have been there the frantic efforts to avoid abandonment we have a little bit supporting that paranoia maybe a little bit so it's not really perfectly clear from the information we have but she was diagnosed with it so I imagine whoever diagnosed her did believe she met enough of a symptom criteria to have the disorder now it's interesting to me that narcissistic personality was never diagnosed in this case there are a number of symptoms that appear to be present grandiosity sense of entitlement tends to be manipulative lack of empathy jealousy and fantasies of success and power so maybe because she already had to cluster B personality whoever was treating her didn't want to add a third I don't know but that seems like a fairly clear omission right the narcissistic personality sorter diagnosis that certainly should have at least been considered I'm surprised we don't see much mention of post-traumatic stress disorder as a possibility certainly she would have met the qualifying trauma symptom criterion but again we don't have much information about some of the other possible symptoms I mentioned before that she had signs of psychosis while awaiting execution specifically paranoid delusions about what some people in the prison may be doing to her this appeared to be a departure from her behavior before her incarceration but we really can't be sure so this could have been caused by all the stress of being incarcerated on death row now Eileen was mistreated from the very beginning she never bonded in a healthy way with her caregivers now going back to her childhood so she had some attachment problems like the development of an avoidant dismissive attachment style we see this is related to having hostility social withdrawal impulsivity and attachment symptoms that it seems like she did have just looking at the relationship with the grandfather if we consider attachment theory what did Eileen learn from her grandfather she learned that she was despised by people who were supposed to love and care for her she learned the people who were supposed to love her would reject her hurt her and terrorized her she learned not to trust anybody trusting wasn't a smart move for her if she wanted to survive and she learned that someone who is physically aggressive had the power in a relationship if we think about how attachment problems can lead to certain characteristics like anger Ilena's behavior really starts to make a lot of sense furthermore because she developed anger at such a young age that prevented her from forming other relationships that could have been helpful she was alienated by others in part because she was so angry now there's a lot out there specifically about psychopathy and Eileen warned us so psychopathy has a relationship with antisocial personality disorder and one could really argue that antisocial personality sort of correlates with factor to psychopathy and of course Eileen appeared to have both factor 1 and factor 2 trace from factor 1 psychopathy she appeared to have cows on emotional traits again she was manipulative a pathological liar she had fearless dominance and she lacked remorse from factor 2 she was impulsive irresponsible neurotic emotionally reactive criminal and sensation-seeking sometimes factor to psychopathy is called sociopathy there were some interesting things about our criminal history like so many people that we see who have severe psychopathic traits we see here in terms of crime Eileen started out with lower-level crimes and moved up she worked her way up to more severe crimes including murder so often I hear people say about serial killers this person just started killing out of no and I guess that could happen but usually there's a pattern of increasingly violent offenses and of course again that's exactly what we see in the case of Ilene warned us so to sum up what we understand here in this case what happened to Ilene well it appears there was a genetic component work you see the horrible repeated trauma the attachment issues with everybody that she met she really didn't even have one person that she could trust and we see a system that despite all these charges and convictions didn't appear to be alarmed I mean the criminal justice system here perhaps it was because she was a female and the people in the justice system thought that a female couldn't become a serious offender but either way it seems fairly clear she was never taken seriously and never received any effective mental health treatment in a sense all these components came together and create a situation that led to Eileen's first murder her whole life she had been abused and mistreated with his first murder she was taking control she wasn't going to be harmed she had been on the defensive for so long and that wasn't working and of course she wanted the money she did after all kill for material gain she rationalized that this victim had it coming her schema her cognitive distortions her way of seeing the world made it easy for her to see the first victim as a potential aggressor someone whose life did not have any value once she killed him and was able to take his money and other property she had no experience of empathy remorse or guilt so from her way of thinking it made sense to keep manifesting the same behavior she wanted more money so she continued to kill and take the money she did know right from wrong she attempted to evade the police she realized that what she was doing was not acceptable to society but without any empathy knowing right from wrong was really not enough there are a number of areas that we can learn about here from the case of Aileen Wuornos we learned how much damage can be done early on like a somebody's childhood we learned about the importance of effective parenting to prevent that something of course Eileen never had we learn about how horrible people can treat one another Eileen was treated horribly and of course she murdered seven people they were victims as with this in mind we learn about how the abuse that Eileen endured eventually extended to affect the lives of other people her mistreatment combined with other factors resulted in seven people being murdered and of course after this Eileen lost her own life as well we can learn about how criminal behavior tends to escalate over time this means that we do often have warnings before somebody engages in this type of behavior although unfortunately often these warnings are ignored we also learn about the dangers of having somebody with both extreme psychopathy and extreme narcissism so regardless of what causes these traits it's an extremely destructive combination so I know whenever I talk about cases that involve zakapa Thiet narcissism like the case of Eileen warned us there'll be a variety of opinions people who agree with me and disagree with me and have other thoughts about this case please put those opinions and thoughts in the comment section it's sure to generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this analysis of the case of Eileen were nuts to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 531,475

Keywords: Aileen Wuornos, female serial killer, borderline, psychopath, narcissism, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, Tyria Moore, Diane Wuornos, Keith Wuornos, impulsive, murder, homicide, sociopath, psychopathic, sociopathic, narcissistic, predatory, mental health

Id: Ka1PWzZ8wF4

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 15 2019