Real life 'Monster'

 Aileen Carol Wuornos (born Pittman, February 29, 1956 – October 9, 2002) was an American serial killer. In 1989–1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, she shot dead and robbed seven of her male clients. Wuornos claimed that her clients had either raped or attempted to rape her, and that all of the homicides were committed in self-defense. Wuornos was sentenced to death for six of the murders and on October 9, 2002, after 12 years on Florida's death row, was executed by lethal injection.

In January 1960, when Wuornos was almost four years old, Diane Wuornos  (Aileen's mother) abandoned her children, leaving them with their maternal grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos, both alcoholics, who legally adopted Aileen on March 18, 1960.
 By the age of 11, Wuornos began engaging in sexual activities in school in exchange for cigarettes, drugs, and food. She had also engaged in sexual activities with her brother, Keith. Wuornos said that her alcoholic grandfather had sexually assaulted and beaten her when she was a child. In 1970, at age 14, she became pregnant having been raped by a friend of her grandfather.

Wuornos gave birth to a boy at a home for unwed mothers on March 23, 1971, and the child was placed for adoption. A few months after her son was born, she dropped out of school and at about the same time her grandmother died of liver failure. When Wuornos was 15, her grandfather threw her out of the house, and she began supporting herself through prostitution and living in the woods near her old home.

We can't pinpoint one single trigger or stressor that led to her becoming a serial killer but a few of those stressors are - her father's incarceration and suicide, her mother's abandonment, her grandfather's abuse, her teen pregnancy and losing her child to adoption, her failed marriage with Lewis Gratz Fell, her brother Keith's untimely death, her doomed love affair with the younger Tyria Moore. It does sound like she didn't stand a chance with such traumatic experiences- tallying up more than one can actually bear.

Wuornos murdered seven men within a period of 12 months. All the men were drivers between the ages of 40 to 65. 

I know some of you wanted me to post about Indian Serial Killers (which I will), but I wanted my first serial killer post to be on a female serial killer. 

What do you think is the role of environment, experiences and trauma in shaping of one's personality and life?

PS: Use of the term 'Monster' in the title is in reference to Wuornos' biographical film starring Charlize Theron who received an Academy award for her performance as Aileen Wuornos. Please check out the movie.