At first glance, she looked like any other little girl — bright eyes, blonde hair, a shy smile.

But behind that innocent face was a childhood filled with pain, neglect, and secrets dark enough to twist anyone’s soul.

Her mother disappeared
Born in 1956 in a quiet Michigan town, her life began with chaos. When she was just four years old, her 20-year-old mother packed up and disappeared, leaving her and her brother behind.

The mother later said that it was probably “the biggest mistake” she have ever made in her life.

Almost at the same time, her 23-year-old father, already behind bars for the kidnapping and assault of a young girl, took his own life in prison.

From that moment, the children were left in the care of their grandparents. But instead of safety, their new home became another nightmare.

Her grandmother struggled with alcoholism, and her grandfather was said to be violent, even predatory.

”I should have . . . adopted them to strangers. We, in our family, suffered a form of child abuse. My father was verbally abusive. My mother was verbally abusive, and we were always told we were no good,” the girl’s mother later told The Tampa Bay Times.

Became wards of the state
By the age of 13, she was pregnant after being assaulted. Some even whispered that her own brother might have been the father. But according to many others, she was allegedly assaulted by a friend of her grandfather.

Family members later told The Tampa Bay Times that no one believed her at the time. No police report was ever filed.

She gave the baby up for adoption, hoping to give him a better life than the one she’d been handed.

Soon after, tragedy struck again. Her grandmother passed away, and it was a tough blow for her. She described her as a “really clean and decent” woman who didn’t drink or swear. Soon after hat, her grandfather took his own life.

She and her brother, Keith, became wards of the state. By age 11, she began engaging in sexual activity at school in exchange for cigarettes, drugs, and food. Alone and desperate, the teenage girl then dropped out of school and began living on the streets, surviving through petty crime and prostitution.

Over the next decade, she racked up arrests for theft, assault, and disorderly conduct — the kind of rap sheet that seemed to grow longer with each passing year.

By her mid-20s, she had drifted to Florida, a state that would soon learn her name in the worst possible way. In 1989, a man’s body was found deep in the woods near Daytona Beach, shot multiple times. Two weeks later, police linked the murder to a woman who had recently been seen hitchhiking nearby.

Acey Harper/Getty Images
When they found her, she confessed, not just to one killing, but to several. One after another, men across central Florida were turning up dead.

She claimed she was defending herself and that every man had tried to assault her, that she’d been fighting for her life.

“I’m not a man-hater,” she told the Orlando Sentinel in March 1991. “I’ve been through so many traumatic experiences that either I’m walking in shock or I’m so used to being treated like dirt that I guess it’s become a way of life.”

“Damsel of Death”
But prosecutors saw something different: a cold, calculating murderer who lured men in, killed them, and stole their belongings.

By the time her case went to trial, she was accused of killing seven men in just one year. The press called her “America’s first female serial killer.”

Her name has become infamous ever since, her story retold in books, documentaries, and even Hollywood films.

She was Aileen Wuornos — the “Damsel of Death.

A media circus
“Wuornos is a killer who robs, not a robber who kills. She indeed appears to be very much a serial killer,” said chief investigator Steve Binegar in 1991.

Wuornos’ trial quickly became a media circus. She maintained that every killing was an act of self-defense against men who had tried to harm her. But the jury didn’t believe her. In January 1992, she was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Having been handed six death sentences upon being found guilty, Wuornos said in court: “I am as guilty as can be. I want the world to know I killed these men, as cold as ice. I’ve hated humans for a long time. I am a serial killer. I killed them in cold blood, real nasty.”

Florida Department of Corrections
Confined to death row at Broward Correctional Institution in Florida while she awaited her execution, she regularly complained about the decision to delay her fate.

“There is no point in sparing me,” Wuornos said in July 2001. “It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. I killed those men, robbed them. And I’d do it again, too.

“There’s no chance in keeping me alive or anything, because I’d kill again. I have hate crawling through my system.”

Last words
Wuornos’ execution was eventually carried out via lethal injection on October 9, 2002. Prior to the sentence being carried out, the 46-year-old muttered her final statement, which was as follows:

“I would just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I’ll be back, I’ll be back.”

While her crimes horrified the world, her tragic past still leaves one haunting question: Was Aileen born a monster — or made into one?