Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: TV and Film, US Food
Ella Scott
The subject of Netflix’s new true crime documentary, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, had a peculiar request for her last meal before she was executed on death row.
This week, the streaming giant released filmmaker Emily Turner’s re-examination of Wuornos, an American woman convicted of killing seven men across central Florida between 1989 and 1990.
Produced by the BBC Studios Documentary Unit in collaboration with NBC News Studios, the documentary features audio recordings with people who knew the serial killer well, as well as historic prison-based interviews with the woman herself, promising viewers a ‘new insight into her crimes’, as per Netflix's Tudum site.
Born in Michigan in 1956, Wuornos was a sex worker and petty criminal who was arrested for a series of murders, eventually leading to her incarceration at the Florida Department of Corrections, Broward Correctional Institution (BCI).
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On 9 October 2002, she was executed by lethal injection after more than a decade on Florida’s death row.
She was only the 10th woman in America to be executed since the 1976 United States Supreme Court decision to restore capital punishment.
In many places, criminals who are sentenced to die are allowed a ‘death row meal’.
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The idea is that inmates can choose a special last meal, as long as they comply with budget constraints and other legislation.
These meals have ranged from KFC, as requested by John Wayne Gacy, to the two pints of mint chocolate ice cream that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh wanted, and the soup, meat, and toast platter eaten by Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Sometimes, inmates are known to reject the idea of a last meal, such as notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, according to CBS News.
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Instead of eating a unique dish, he was reportedly served steak cooked medium-rare, eggs over easy, hash browns, toast with butter and jelly, milk, and juice before his death in January 1989.
Angel Nieves Diaz, who was sentenced to death for murder, kidnapping, and armed robbery, declined a last meal and declined eating the standard steak meal, too.
Before Diaz died in 2006, Wuornos also refused a last meal.
The Florida Department of Corrections recorded that, ‘Wuornos declined the traditional last meal, which could have been anything she wanted for under $20’.
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Instead, she was given a cup of coffee.
It’s not known whether she had it black or with milk.
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Before she was pronounced dead at 9.47pm and her body cremated, Wuornos issued a chilling final phrase.
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“Yes, I would just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus,” she claimed, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.
“June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I'll be back, I'll be back.”
Turner, whose previous directorial credits include two episodes of the 2021 TV series 24 Hours in Police Custody, and Netflix’s Accused: The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax, has spoken about why Wuornos’ story fascinated her so much.
“It’s so much easier to write off someone who's done such heinous acts as a cold-blooded murderer [rather than] a deeply damaged human.
“Actually, she was made, and that's chilling,” she told Tudum, referring to the woman’s abusive past.
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers is available to stream now on Netflix.