Happy Birthday Audrey Rose!

"What happens to a dream deferred? ... Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?" -- Langston Hughes

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Every once in a while a story comes along that gets under my skin and the true story of Aileen Wuornos is one of those. Being overly involved in true crime stories ever since college, I have known the story of Aileen Carol Wuornos for many years. She was a prostitute in Orlando, Florida that murdered seven johns starting in the late 1980s, the first most likely in self-defense. I recently saw the documentary about her life, "Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer" (2003) by Nick Broomfield and am captivated by his interviews with Wuornos throughout her time on death row. I certainly don't advocate serial murder, but something about Wuornos makes me feel sympathetic and sorry that her life began and ended in such harsh sadness.

The documentary digs deep into Wuornos' past to reveal a childhood where her teenaged mother and father abandoned her and left her to her maternal grandparents. Her abusive grandfather killed himself after her grandmother died under mysterious circumstances and Aileen, at age 13 was thrown to the wolves. She, after having a baby that was the product of rape, was forced to sleep outside in the snow in Troy, Michigan. Prostitution was the only way she knew to survive and that led her to Florida where she ran into legal trouble early on that ranged from assault, theft, drunk driving to various traffic violations like driving with a suspended license.

Supposedly when she met Tyria Moore one night at bar, she had five dollars in her pocket and was planning to kill herself unless God intervened and she thought meeting Tyria was that intervention. As tragedy and abandonment had played a recurring major role in Aileen's life, this relationship was also ill-fated. Aileen could never find someone to truly, faithfully and unconditionally love her and the sexual torture she reportedly suffered at the hands of one john didn't kill her, but broke something inside of her that could never be fixed as she shot and killed him and realized that for once, the fate of someone's life was now in her hands instead of the other way around. I think the repeated abuses she suffered throughout her life combined with mental illness, that was most likely genetic in nature, was what began the killing spree that ended in Wuornos's arrest, convictions and ultimate execution.

Like Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and other serial killers before her, Aileen Wuornos as a cult figure stirs up anger and heated debate and for good reason. Sure other people have terrible childhoods and rise above their circumstances, but does that mean that because Wuornos didn't that she deserved death? Again, I don't advocate her actions, but think that by the end of her killing spree that she had lost all touch with reality. Clearly a woman with deep mental disturbances, especially after she was jailed on death row, Wuornos continued to not get any breaks with her lawyer or the legal system. Another cowboy governor named Bush made sure she was not granted criminal insanity status and on October 9, 2004 she was put to death by lethal injection.

Her legend has been preserved in the amazing film "Monster" with an Oscar-winning performance of a lifetime by Charlize Theron and an excellent supporting role performance by Christina Ricci. Theron acts so much like Wuornos down to facial ticks, stature and gate as well as her gruff voice. It is like the ghost of Wuornos possesses Theron in this role and it is hard to believe that this is same blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty that, up until this movie, was playing supporting roles to Keanu Reeves and Will Smith. This role took her from tee-ball to the World Series and ironically her oscar was won on the birthday of Aileen Wournos on February 29, 2004. Theron might have been able to channel some of Wuornos's pain from her own life experience as her mother killed her father in self-defense after she was brutally attacked by him when Theron was just 15.

More than taking sides on the issue of her guilt, the movie simply tells the story of her life and how she came to such desperate measures. I had a bought of insomnia last night and watched it, hanging on to every moment and wishing that it wouldn't turn out so bad for either character even though I knew what was coming. Like the movies "Boy's Don't Cry" and "Leaving Las Vegas" and the book "Bastard of out Carolina", it is the story of the dregs of America -- the people forgotten, marginalized and cast away to live the only lives they know how to, desperate ones.

These are the types of movies I can only watch once because of how upsetting the subject matter is. As tragic as the murders were, it was the way Wuornos was treated when she tried to clean up her act and get a legit day job that were the most upsetting to me. Sometimes, when a person gets kicked down by life starting in their early childhood, at some point they break and either kill themselves or break with reality like Wuornos did. I know some people also get it together and straighten out, but that was not to be for Wuornos as she kept trying to hold her head above water while slowly sinking and it sure isn't hard to see why this became her fate.

I know many families suffered when these johns were murdered and I don't take that away from them. but what I can't let go of is the little girl that was thrown out to fend for herself after she had a baby at 13. It was the adults in her life that were responsible for that situation and it would have taken an adult to step in and fix it, but no one did. Aileen Wuornos never found eternal love on this earth and I can only hope that she found some salvation and respite from the cruelty she suffered in her short life after her execution.