Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers

Aileen Wuornos was taken advantage of and abused by just about every single person in her life. That includes the justice system in this case. She did murder people though. Her story is just about one of the saddest things I've ever heard about. For her, her victims, and the families. This documentary is very well done. It really does underline the documentaries Nick Broomfield did as well. I think it's clear she killed the first time in self defense. We could have found out for sure if the prosecution and state weren't so happy to get tv shows, movies, and books made. John Tanner should be brought up on charges for hiding and ignoring evidence. The media and the justice system wanted that "female serial killer" angle so badly that they ignored all else. Does any of that mean Aileen didn't murder people... no. She did, and the families and victims deserved justice. None of these things are exclusionary. You can have empathy for the victims and the murderer, and in this case it's difficult not to.

I dislike docs that have zero creative input. No current interviews from detectives, attorneys, family members, or whoever was involved with the murder cases. No crime scene analysis. No reenactments. Not even adding a timeline of events!? It's literally just old footage mashed together into a film. That's it. So lazy. I kept thinking when is it going to get good, it doesn't. I wanted to know more about the details of crimes she committed and opinions from experts.

This is an art project. It has some great old footage but so disjointed it's hard to follow at times. Doesn't distinguish between actual footage and just filler. For example there's videos of a child whilst talking about Aileen but doesn't say if her but didn't look like child in photo that was her. Half of this is about the film maker. Just came across as very pretentious insertion of themselves. It's an important aspect of Aileen that gets lost but it's so one sided it ends up doing her a disservice. It's not objective, it is one woman's subjective view and experience with Aileen. Maybe if marketed differently this wouldn't have bugged so much.

The film opens with the Australian pen pal, Jasmine Hirst, saying that Aileen was only brought to justice because she killed 'white men'. It ends with her justifying the murders because most of victims resembled people who had sexually assaulted Aileen in the past.

This is the focus of much of the film - and it doesn't make for a compelling crime documentary.

I do feel sorry for Aileen on a personal level, given her traumatic upbringing and sexual assaults. But that doesn't mean she shouldn't be held accountable for her crimes (something this film actively tries to avoid).

It focuses heavily on the first murder and Aileen's claims of self-defence - which given the evidence, is plausible. But the film then tries to skip over the other 6 murders to paint Aileen as some sort of hero - despite her own admissions later on that she committed some of the murders due to financial problems, relationship problems and notoriety.

There was only one 10 second clip from a victim's relative. The filmmakers didn't want you to hear the other side of the story or the impact it had on the victim's families.

This would have been a much better film had it been more balanced and less apologetic. At least explain the 6 other murders.

As far as I'm aware, there's no other documentaries trying to justify serial killings due to the perpetrator's trauma. And nor should there be.

So why try to justify all of Aileen's killings?

Concerning the sad story of Aileen, what perplexes me the most is how people can just jump past the horrific and violent upbringing she had... As if it had nothing to do with who she became.

These people, who can't see the cause and effect of abuse to Aileen(from her parents...to actually everyone in her youth)...these are the people who confound me.