0:00 Aileen Carol Pittman was born on February 29, 1956.0:05 Last week, we walked through the shadows of Spahn Ranch, watching Susan Atkins trade her will for a twisted kind of faith.0:19 This week, we find a woman who had nothing left to trade… whose faith was shattered before she even learned the word.0:32 She was a leap year baby.0:35 A cosmic joke from the very beginning.0:39 An extra day, an extra life, that nobody seemed to want.0:46 Imagine the heat.0:47 Not the gentle kind.0:50 The wet, heavy, Florida kind that sticks to your skin like a second layer of clothing.0:59 The air smells like hot asphalt, diesel fumes, and swamp water.1:06 You’re standing on the shoulder of I-75.1:11 Cars scream past, a blur of metal and judgment.1:16 Each one is a possibility.1:19 A meal.1:20 A ride.1:21 Or the end of you.1:23 Your thumb is out, but your eyes are scanning.1:28 Not for a friendly face.1:31 There are no friendly faces out here.1:35 You’re looking for the tells.1:38 The way a man slows down just a little too much.1:43 The way his eyes linger.1:46 You’ve learned to read the predators because you’ve been prey your whole life.1:55 Tonight, you’re tired of running.1:59 Tonight, you have a gun in your purse.2:03 This wasn't a choice she made one day.2:07 It was a destination she’d been walking toward since birth.2:14 Her mother abandoned her.2:17 The grandparents who took her in weren't saviors.2:22 They were her first monsters.2:25 Her grandfather, she would later say, used her body for his own pleasure.2:34 Her own brother, too.2:36 By thirteen, she was pregnant, the father a mystery wrapped in family shame.2:44 They sent the baby away.2:47 Just another piece of her carved out and discarded.2:53 She was a ghost in her own home.2:57 So she ran.2:58 She ran to the streets.3:00 The only place that doesn’t ask for a background check.3:07 She learned the currency of her body early.3:11 Sex for a hot meal.3:14 For a place to sleep.3:16 For a pack of cigarettes.3:19 It wasn't a career.3:21 It was survival.3:23 Her rap sheet grew with her desperation.3:27 Drunk driving.3:29 Armed robbery.3:30 Forged checks.3:32 Little flares sent up from a life spiraling out of control.3:38 She was diagnosed later, by men in sterile rooms, with Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD.3:49 Fancy words for a simple truth: her mind was a battlefield.3:56 The past was a minefield she had to walk through every single day.4:03 The core symptom of BPD is a frantic fear of abandonment.4:10 For Aileen, abandonment wasn't a fear.4:14 It was the bedrock of her entire existence.4:19 She was impulsive, emotionally unstable, and saw threats in every shadow because, for her, the shadows had ALWAYS held monsters.4:33 Then, she met Tyria Moore.4:36 In a bar.4:37 A small moment of light in a lifetime of gray.4:42 For the first time, Aileen had someone.4:47 A lover.4:48 A friend.4:49 Someone to come home to.4:51 It was a desperate, clinging kind of love.4:56 The kind that says, please don’t leave me, I will do anything, please don’t be like all the others.5:07 She wanted a normal life.5:10 A white picket fence.5:12 A nine-to-five job.5:15 But the world only saw the dirt under her fingernails.5:21 It only saw the highway hooker.5:24 Not the scared kid still hiding inside.5:28 The first man was Richard Mallory.5:32 A fifty-one-year-old electronics store owner.5:37 He picked her up.5:39 Drove her into a secluded, wooded area.5:44 And, she said, he tried to rape her.5:48 But this time was different.5:51 This time, she didn't just endure it.5:55 The years of being a punching bag, of being used and discarded… all that pressure found a release valve.6:07 The gun in her purse.6:09 She shot him.6:11 Not once.6:12 But four times.6:13 It wasn't clean.6:15 It wasn't premeditated.6:18 It was an explosion.6:20 The terror of the moment mixed with a lifetime of rage.6:26 She got back in her car, heart hammering in her chest.6:32 She had survived.6:34 More than that… she had WON.6:37 For the first time in her life, she had fought back against a man who wanted to hurt her, and she had walked away.6:50 He hadn't.6:51 And in that moment, something inside her broke.6:56 Or maybe… it finally snapped into place.7:01 The world had taught her one lesson, over and over: it is a place where you either eat, or you are eaten.7:13 For twenty-four years, she had been the meal.7:18 Now, she had teeth.7:20 Six more men followed Richard Mallory to their graves.7:26 Six more times, she stood on the side of a Florida highway.7:33 Six more times, a man pulled over.7:36 And six more times, it ended in blood.7:41 She took their money.7:43 She took their cars.7:45 She took their lives.7:48 Was it self-defense every single time?7:52 She claimed it was.7:54 Then she took it back.7:57 Then she claimed it again.7:59 The truth is probably somewhere in the messy, violent middle.8:06 Her PTSD made her hypervigilant, seeing mortal threats everywhere.8:14 Her personality disorder made her lash out with uncontrollable rage.8:21 She wasn't a cold, calculating hunter like Ted Bundy.8:27 She was a wounded animal, biting every hand that came near.8:34 The justice system saw a monster.8:38 A cold-blooded killer who murdered men for a few dollars and a ride.8:45 They gave her six death sentences.8:49 Psychologists saw something else.8:53 They saw a child who was never protected.8:58 A woman shattered by trauma.9:01 A human being whose every cry for help came out as a scream of rage.9:08 On October 9, 2002, the state of Florida strapped her to a gurney and filled her veins with poison.9:19 Her last words were, "I'll be back." They called her a monster.9:27 Maybe she was.9:28 But no one is born a monster.9:31 They are made.9:33 Forged in the fires of abuse, hammered into shape by neglect, and cooled in the icy waters of indifference.9:45 Aileen Wuornos was not an aberration.9:49 She was a mirror.9:51 Reflecting the violence the world had shown her, right back into its horrified face.
