What 'Monster' Gets Right—and Wrong—About Aileen Wuornos and Her Crimes

Aileen Wuornos remains one of the most controversial figures in American true crime. Wuornos, a prostitute turned serial killer, was arrested in 1991 and eventually convicted of murdering seven men along Florida highways between 1989 and 1990. Her crimes and volatile personality made her a tabloid fixture and a cultural lightning rod. But beneath the headlines was a life marked by trauma, abuse and abandonment.

Wuornos’s story was first widely introduced to mainstream audiences through Patty Jenkins’s 2003 film Monster, a dramatized portrayal that earned Charlize Theron an Academy Award for her transformative performance. Monster provides a harrowing look at Wuornos's life and crimes, but also it misses out on some key beats and offers a pointed perspective on her trial and final days.

One thing Monster captures is the bleakness of Wuornos’s early life. Born in 1956 in Rochester, Mich., Wuornos never knew her father, who was convicted of sex crimes against children and died by suicide in prison. Abandoned by her mother as a toddler, she and her brother were raised by their grandparents, a situation marred by allegations of physical and sexual abuse. By her teens, Wuornos was living on the streets, surviving through sex work, petty theft and hitchhiking and had given birth to a son placed up for adoption.

Theron’s portrayal reflects this background, showing a woman hardened by years of neglect, forced to navigate a world that offered her little in the way of empathy or safety. The film avoids glamorizing Wuornos’s early years, instead painting a portrait of someone whose life was shaped by desperation.

What the film doesn’t fully convey, however, is just how early and deeply entrenched Wuornos’s trauma ran. Abandoned, exploited and criminalized from a young age, Wuornos had been living on the margins of society for decades before her crimes began. By the time she committed her first murder in 1989, she was already emotionally frayed and paranoid, traits that would worsen with each killing.

In Monster, Wuornos meets Selby Wall, a young woman who becomes her lover and emotional lifeline. Selby, portrayed by Christina Ricci, is based on Tyria Moore, Wuornos’s real-life girlfriend of several years. What the movie omits is that Wournos was briefly married in the 1970s to a wealthy man much older than her. Their union was volatile and brief, and her husband had the union annulled just months later. 

Instead, the film focuses heavily on Aileen and Selby’s relationship, portraying Selby as both a comfort and source of pressure, someone who, intentionally or not, motivates Wuornos to continue sex work even after it becomes increasingly dangerous. While the film changes names and dramatizes certain aspects, the emotional dynamic between Wuornos and Moore is largely accurate. Moore was indeed the most significant person in Wuornos’s life when the murders took place. And just like the film, Moore eventually cooperated with police, helping them coax a confession from Wuornos in a series of recorded phone calls, a betrayal that Wuornos never fully forgave.

What’s more complicated is the way Monster simplifies the power balance between the two. The film depicts the couple meeting shortly before Wuornos’s killing spree, when in fact they'd met much earlier. While Selby is shown as somewhat naive and emotionally dependent, the real Moore was more active in the couple’s day-to-day decisions.

Between late 1989 and late 1990, seven men were murdered along Florida highways. All were middle-aged or older, most were traveling alone, and all had been shot at close range. Wuornos claimed that each killing was an act of self-defense, that the men had either assaulted or attempted to assault her during sex work encounters. However, investigators, and later, the courts, concluded that most, if not all of the murders, appeared to be premeditated fatal robberies.

Monster leans heavily into Wuornos’s version of events, particularly in its portrayal of her first known victim, Richard Mallory. In the film, Mallory is depicted as a sadistic rapist who violently attacks Wuornos before she kills him. In reality, Mallory had a criminal history that included sexual offenses, but whether he assaulted Wuornos remains unproven. The scene plays a critical role in shaping audience perception, painting Wuornos not as a cold-blooded killer, but as a traumatized woman pushed too far.

This framing is emotionally powerful but also controversial. Legal experts and journalists who have studied the case argue that Monster oversimplifies Wuornos’s motives. While her fear and trauma were undeniably real, the murders did not follow a consistent pattern of provocation. Several victims were killed without any known struggle or evidence of assault, and Wuornos was found in possession of their belongings, including cars, weapons and identification.

By focusing primarily on her victimhood, the film sidesteps difficult questions about her culpability, and in doing so, risks overly sympathizing with a deeply troubled woman.

In the years following her arrest, Wuornos became a fixture in the tabloid press. Her erratic behavior during trials, coupled with her often bitter and paranoid statements, made her seem unstable, a perception that wasn’t entirely inaccurate. Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, Wuornos’s mental state deteriorated rapidly as she spent years on death row.

Monster doesn’t dwell on her post-conviction years, but the docuseries Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers promises to explore the intense media scrutiny Wuornos faced, as well as the ethical gray zones surrounding her prosecution and execution. Despite questions about her mental health, and calls from human rights organizations to commute her sentence, Wuornos was executed by lethal injection in 2002. Her last words: “I’ll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus.”

What the film and the series both seem to capture is the contradiction at the heart of Wuornos’s legacy. She was both victim and perpetrator, shaped by a brutal life and capable of brutal acts. Her story doesn’t fit neatly into narratives of justice or redemption, which is why it continues to haunt the public imagination.