Does Aileen Wuornos Haunt the Florida Bar Where She Was Arrested 35 Years Ago?

Aileen Wuornos’s story has long captivated crime buffs. The serial-killing sex worker confessed to killing seven clients between November 1989 and November 1990 and was ultimately found guilty of killing six of the men. Wuornos, the first woman to qualify as a serial killer under the FBI’s definition, claimed she murdered some of the men in self-defense after they assaulted her. In 2002, after a decade on death row, she was executed by lethal injection.

Wuornos, whose mother abandoned her and her brother as a child, had no relationship with her father. She was kicked out of her grandparents’ house at age 15, and she turned to prostitution to support herself. In the documentary Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, Wuornos claimed she’d been raped "30 times, maybe more" throughout her life. The twisty story of her troubled life has since been captured in various films, books and podcasts, including 2003’s hit film Monster, for which Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of Wuornos.

Wuornos’s lore lives on in one graffiti-laden Port Orange, Fla., dive bar called The Last Resort. Wuornos stopped into said bar somewhat regularly, and police finally captured her while she was drinking beer at that very spot on January 9, 1991. Police took Wuornos into custody on an outstanding warrant for a 1986 charge of carrying a concealed firearm, then used this warrant to detain her while building a murder case against her. (Authorities had already been looking for her in connection with multiple murders.) Afterward, police located her girlfriend, Tyria Moore, and persuaded her to help obtain a confession, which Wuornos provided several days later.

The biker bar’s link to crime history has served as a siren song for tourists. In fact, more than 20 years after Wuornos’s death, the bar still stands as both a functioning watering hole and a macabre true-crime landmark, drawing curious travelers, fans of Monster (it filmed scenes at the bar) and locals who remember the high-profile manhunt for the killer. The bar’s slogan? “Home of ice cold beer and killer women.”

The Last Resort has been known to sell Wuornos-themed T-shirts, hot sauce and other merch, and is bedecked with newspaper clippings, artwork and photos of the killer (including her mug shot). It also features a Wuornos shrine with candles, flowers, stuffed animals, an airbrushed mural—which also lists the names of her victims—and other trinkets. The mural also features Wuornos’s famously bizarre last words: “I would like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mothership and all, I’ll be back, I’ll be back.”

Wuornos was well known to The Last Resort’s owner, Al Bulling, who has run the bar for decades. Bulling told the Miami New Times that when Wuornos used to visit the bar, she “kept to herself. She was quiet, and never messed with anyone.” She reportedly hung her bra from the ceiling of the venue on the night before her arrest.

“Aileen Wuornos is more sympathetic than most serial killers, but it’s a little disconcerting that we have shrines to them [like the Last Resort’s],” Renée Williams, CEO of the National Center for Victims of Crime, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “True crime tourism is absolutely exploitative. Once a story is in the true crime sphere, we forget these victims are humans with stories, and they just become entertainment.”

Since Wuornos’s execution, The Last Resort has reported strange happenings—in fact, some workers told the New Times they believe the watering hole is haunted by the killer’s spirit. “Pretty girls at the bar will feel her brush their hair,” Ted E. Bear told the publication, noting that “Aileen lets you know she’s here all right.”

Bulling, who reportedly owns an array of Wuornos’s belongings, also told the New Times that a teaspoon of Wuornos’s ashes had been scattered outside the bar after her execution. “She comes here,” Bulling told the outlet, “because she never left.”

The ethics of making a true-crime pilgrimage to sites like The Last Resort has raised questions among experts.

“Crime tourism has bred this new type of voyeur that I have strong feelings about,” Dr. Michelle Ward, criminal psychologist and host of the podcast Mind of a Monster, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “There’s an absence of understanding that this is real life, because I think it is cinematic in so many ways. People forget it’s real. It’s [almost like] trying to get close to a celebrity. [Visitors] are not stopping to think about what it means to victims’ families to have a bar celebrating the person who killed their loved one.”

Bulling told The Daytona Beach News-Journal that visitors “come from all over the world,” to see The Last Resort. “They just come, ordinary people, because they know it’s all here,” he said. “Everything’s the same. Same pool table, everything.”

One tourist, Michelle Forbes, told The Associated Press that Wuornos “was always a character that really fascinated me.” “I do think they were trying to keep things in her spirit,” she said of The Last Resort. “I think they were honoring her, and not just making a spectacle.”

Some tourists visit other local Wuornos-linked sites, too, like the last motel the killer stayed in with Moore—the former Fairview Motel, which has since been renamed the Scoot Inn (some guests even ask to stay in the last room she slept in, room No. 8, per the Times Colonist). The motel’s owners Mike and Dawn Bock told the Times Colonist that countless cars have pulled up to photograph the location over the years.

"I personally don't broadcast anything about it," Mike said. "But I'm certainly not ashamed of it. If somebody brings it up and says, 'Hey, is this the Aileen Wuornos motel?' Then sure, then I'll talk about it."