Speaker 1: Her childhood wasn't hard, it was brutal, and it left
Speaker 1: marks that not only didn't fade, they grew. Aileen Carol
Speaker 1: Warnos was born on February twenty ninth, nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 1: Leap year, leap day. Born literally on a day that
Speaker 1: barely exists. That's sort of poetic in a grim way,
Speaker 1: because for most of her life she was treated like
Speaker 1: she didn't exist either. I'm Patty Steele. Does any of
Speaker 1: that excuse her for becoming a prolific serial killer? That's
Speaker 1: next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. There's
Speaker 1: no justifying what she did, but it is interesting to
Speaker 1: hear her backstory. Aileen Warnos had a rough start in
Speaker 1: life and it never got better. Her parents were kids themselves.
Speaker 1: Her mom, Diane, was fourteen when she married Aileen's father, Leo,
Speaker 1: who was eighteen. The marriage quickly fell apart. Within two years,
Speaker 1: Diane was gone, abandoning Aileen, who was just six months old,
Speaker 1: as well as her older brother Keith. Her father was
Speaker 1: already out of the picture, doing time for the rape
Speaker 1: of a child. Aileen never got a chance to meet him.
Speaker 1: He hanged himself in prison before she turned fourteen. So
Speaker 1: who raised her Her grandparents on her mom's side, Laurie
Speaker 1: and Britta. But the word raised is kind of doing
Speaker 1: some heavy lifting here. Laurie was a heavy drinking, controlling
Speaker 1: guy with a cruel streak. Aileen said. Laurie beat her, regularly,
Speaker 1: called her vile names, and emotionally just tore her apart
Speaker 1: until she believed she was worthless. And then there's Grandma Britta,
Speaker 1: also an alcoholic, she rarely protected Aileen or even bothered
Speaker 1: to look up when she was being abused. Aileen later
Speaker 1: claimed her grandfather and some of his friends sexually abused her.
Speaker 1: The patterns clear. She learned early on that adults were
Speaker 1: not to be trusted, that love could hurt, and that
Speaker 1: home wasn't safe, and for her, the outside world was
Speaker 1: no better. By the time she was just nine years old,
Speaker 1: Eileen was trading sex for money, food and cigarettes. Kids
Speaker 1: her own age made fun of her, boys used her,
Speaker 1: her classmates called her cigarette pig, and adults they simply
Speaker 1: ignored her. From the time she was a small girl,
Speaker 1: Aileen was already surviving instead of living. This traumatized child
Speaker 1: was already adapting to a world where being exploited was
Speaker 1: part of the game. Her body was her only bargaining chip. Then,
Speaker 1: at fourteen, she got pregnant. The father was a much
Speaker 1: older family friend who had raped her. Her grandparents sent
Speaker 1: her away to a home for unwed mothers in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen seventy one she gave birth to a
Speaker 1: baby boy, but he was taken away and adopted out.
Speaker 1: She never saw him again. By the time she was fifteen,
Speaker 1: Eileen was back at home, but then her grandmother died
Speaker 1: of liver failure almost immediately, and her grandfather kicked her
Speaker 1: out of the house. Now Aileen, still fifteen, was homeless,
Speaker 1: with no education, no job, no support, and nobody to
Speaker 1: turn to. She slept in abandoned cars and in the woods.
Speaker 1: She hitchhiked from town to town doing sex work just
Speaker 1: to eat. Her childhood was nothing but trauma, and that
Speaker 1: made her tougher and meaner, simply as a way of surviving.
Speaker 1: Psychologists later diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder and antisocial
Speaker 1: personality disorder based on her inability to regulate her emotions,
Speaker 1: her rage outbursts, her constant fear of abandonment, and her
Speaker 1: black and white thinking. She didn't trust people because people
Speaker 1: had never been trustworthy. She didn't believe in safety because
Speaker 1: she had never been safe. Aileen slowly realized that the
Speaker 1: world was a predator and she was the prey until
Speaker 1: she decided to fight back. Got to say, again, none
Speaker 1: of this justifies what she did. At least seven men died,
Speaker 1: seven lives extinguished, sons, brothers, fathers. But it begs the question,
Speaker 1: how does a person become capable of killing so many people?
Speaker 1: Aileen's life tells us she was abandoned, molested, beaten, homeless, raped, institutionalized,
Speaker 1: ridiculed and forgotten. She slowly cracked and no one noticed
Speaker 1: or cared until it was too late. Aileen once said,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be loved ever since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: just someone who would love me, but it never happened.
Speaker 1: Pretty haunting. That's a line from somebody who never had
Speaker 1: a chance to be human. She was born into violence,
Speaker 1: raised in it, used by it, and ultimately she became it.
Speaker 1: Aileen Warnos's childhood was the blueprint for her violence. When
Speaker 1: we talk about true crime, we focus so much on
Speaker 1: what they did, but sometimes the why is even more
Speaker 1: terrifying and a bit more interesting, because honestly, the why
Speaker 1: can be traced back to failures in parenting, in protection,
Speaker 1: in institutions, and in a society that should have seen
Speaker 1: her and helped her. By the time she was in
Speaker 1: her early twenties, Aileen had drifted to Florida, moving from
Speaker 1: town to town and again supporting herself through sex work.
Speaker 1: It was here that she met Tyrea Moore, a maide,
Speaker 1: at a motel. They got into a romantic relationship, and
Speaker 1: Aileen was smitten. Somebody finally cared for her, and she
Speaker 1: was determined to provide for them both. So around the
Speaker 1: same time, between nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety, the
Speaker 1: bodies of seven middle aged men were found scattered along
Speaker 1: highways in central Florida. Each had been shot multiple times,
Speaker 1: and their cars or trucks, as well as their belongings
Speaker 1: were missing. The victims included Richard Mallory, David Spears, Charles Carskadden,
Speaker 1: Troy Burris, Dick Humphreys, Peter Siemes, and Walter Antonio. The
Speaker 1: investigation kicked into high gear and then really gained momentum
Speaker 1: when Aileen and her girlfriend Tyrea were seen abandoning Peter
Speaker 1: Seem's carr after an accident. Witnesses gave descriptions and then
Speaker 1: fingerprints found on stuff that had been pawned linked Aileen
Speaker 1: to the crimes. Eventually, cops found Tyrea in Pennsylvania and
Speaker 1: convinced her to get a confession from Aileen in exchange
Speaker 1: for immunity. Tyrea made a number of phone calls to Aileen,
Speaker 1: pleading with her to confess to clear Tyrea's name. On
Speaker 1: January sixteenth, nineteen ninety one, Aileen confess to the murders,
Speaker 1: claiming self defense. She claimed that each of these men
Speaker 1: had either raped or attempted to rape her while she
Speaker 1: was working as a prostitute, and that she killed them
Speaker 1: in self defense. On the other hand, the prosecution argued
Speaker 1: the murderers were committed during robberies, pointing to the theft
Speaker 1: of the victim's belongings and the sale of their stuff
Speaker 1: at pawnshops. The trial of Aileen Ornos began on January five, thirteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, in Vlusha County, Florida. She was charged
Speaker 1: with the first degree murder of Richard Mallory, a fifty
Speaker 1: one year old electronics store owner. Although Aileen would eventually
Speaker 1: confess to killing the other six men, this was the
Speaker 1: only case that actually went to trial. She pleaded guilty
Speaker 1: or no contest. In the other cases, The prosecution painted
Speaker 1: the picture of a cold blooded killer who murdered her
Speaker 1: victims during robberies. They were able to introduce evidence from
Speaker 1: her other crimes under Florida's William's Rule, which allowed the
Speaker 1: prosecution to establish a pattern, and that crumbled her claim
Speaker 1: of self defense. For their part, Aileen's defense team argued
Speaker 1: that she suffered from borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder,
Speaker 1: which impaired her judgment. They claimed she killed Mallory in
Speaker 1: self defense after he violently raped her, but the judge
Speaker 1: denied the defense's request to introduce Mallory's prior conviction for
Speaker 1: attempted rape as evidence. On January twenty seventh, nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: the jury found Aileen guilty of first degree murder. Four
Speaker 1: days later, she was sentenced to death. Since the murder
Speaker 1: was committed during a robbery and it was what they
Speaker 1: called especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, Aileen waived her right
Speaker 1: to provide more evidence during sentencing. In the months following
Speaker 1: her conviction, she pleaded no contest to three of the
Speaker 1: other murders, saying she wanted to get right with God.
Speaker 1: She later pleaded guilty to two more murders and got
Speaker 1: two more death sentences. In the seventh case, no charges
Speaker 1: were filed because the body was never found. Aileen Warnos
Speaker 1: was executed by lethal injection on October ninth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, at the age of forty six. Her last
Speaker 1: words were a little bit puzzling. I'm sailing with the
Speaker 1: rock and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus
Speaker 1: June sixth, like the movie Big Mothership and all I'll
Speaker 1: be back. Her trial and convictions sparked debates of the
Speaker 1: treatment of women in the criminal justice system and the
Speaker 1: impact of childhood trauma. The life and crimes of Alien
Speaker 1: Warnos were later depicted in the two thousand and three
Speaker 1: film Monster. Charlie's theren won an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Speaker 1: Hope you're enjoying the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave
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Speaker 1: if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
Speaker 1: On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty
Speaker 1: Steele I'm Patty steel The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,
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Speaker 1: Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We
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Speaker 1: Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele,
Speaker 1: the pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.