WhatzUp

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
by Derek Neff

In Nick Broomfield’s gripping documentary, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, we are shown the real Aileen Wuornos, unvarnished and un-fictionalized by Hollywood.

Aileen was shot in the days leading up to Wuornos’ execution at the hands of the Florida State Penitentiary system in 2001 for her murder of seven men. Wuornos likes Broomfield, and trusts him, so much so that she grants him two interviews in her final days. The purpose of one interview is to recant her earlier testimony that she was acting in self-defense when she murdered her first victim. Wuornos is clearly doing this to speed up her execution. She doesn’t like the fact that all these people are coming out of the woodwork to testify to how sad, violent, and tragic her life has been, because at this point she just wants it to end.

Broomfield’s intent, however, is quite different from Wuornos’, and it’s this conflict between the filmmaker’s agenda and his subject’s agenda that makes this film as engrossing as it is.

Broomfield isn’t suffering under any illusion that the state of Florida - led by its vociferously pro-death penalty governor Jeb Bush -is going to stay the execution due to his efforts or those of anyone else. But he does seem to want to show that Aileen has been misused by the judicial system, that her undeniable guilt is mitigated somewhat by her horrible past, her acting in self-defense and her own madness. (By extension, he wants to expose the fundamental flaws of capital punishment as a means of punishment.)

We later see Wuornos on the eve of her execution, raving about radio signals being sent to her through the walls of her cell. (This, just hours after state-hired psychologists had already ruled her mentally competent to be executed.) The final interview ends abruptly, with Aileen flipping off Broomfield (and by extension the media) on her way out the door.

But the most disturbing interview, for me, was the one with Wuornos’ mother who basically abandoned Aileen when she was just a few months old. Did her mother realize that at one point Aileen was living out in the Michigan woods, homeless, turning tricks to buy herself food and an occasional motel room? The mother claims that, no, she wasn’t aware, but then, in a statement that’s more self-incriminating than she realizes, she says she’ll rest easier once Aileen is executed. I bet she will.

Virtually everyone in her life exploited or betrayed Wuornos, and one questions even Broomfield’s use of her. At one point, Wuornos confesses to Broomfield in a whisper that she did indeed act in self-defense when she killed her first victim, only because she thinks the camera has been turned off. We see only Broomfield’s face in this scene, which feigns casualness and friendliness as he wheedles this important detail from her. It doesn’t seem entirely above-board, but on the other hand Broomfield’s intentions are good, and perhaps even Aileen might have approved of the end product, had she lived to see it.