Aileen Wuornos had already established a deadly pattern along Florida’s highways, targeting men she encountered while working as a sex worker and hitchhiking around the state. Her fifth known victim was a 56-year-old retired police chief. After disappearing, his body was found on September 12 in an isolated area of Marion County. He had been shot seven times in the head and torso with Wuornos’s .22-calibre revolver.
By this stage, Wuornos’s killings had moved well beyond the disputed circumstances surrounding her first victim, Richard Mallory, whose death she maintained had been in self-defence. This latest killing formed part of an escalating pattern that would claim one more victim before police arrested her in January 1991, bringing to an end one of America’s most notorious female serial killing sprees.
