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The First Kill and the Question That Never Closed
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Aileen Wuornos shot Richard Mallory on a Florida highway in November 1989 — but was it murder or self-defense? This chapter traces her abusive Michigan childhood, her relationship with Tyria Moore, and the contested first killing that launched one of the most debated cases in female serial killer history.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Here's what nobody could fully agree on. When Aileen Wuornos pulled the trigger the first time, was she a killer?
To understand what happened in Florida, you have to go back to Michigan. All the way back.
Florida didn't fix anything. It just gave her geography.
Richard Mallory was fifty-one years old. He owned an electronics store in Clearwater, Florida.
Mallory's death was not the end. It was, as the episode title suggests, the first.
Wuornos was arrested in January of nineteen ninety-one. Police had been building the case for weeks, and they had a strategy.
The trial moved quickly. Wuornos was convicted.
Richard Mallory was the pivot point. Before him, Wuornos was a woman in desperate circumstances doing what she'd been doing since childhood to survive.
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