3. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)
Aileen Wuornos killed seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. She claimed the men were trying to rape her and she killed them in self defence. She was convicted, sentenced to death and executed by the State of Florida by lethal injection on October 9th, 2002. Nick Broomfield's documentary is a follow up to a documentary he made in 1992 about Wuornos. In this documentary, he captures Aileen's declining mental state and the questionable decision over whether she should have been executed due to this. Having watched the film, I think that Wuornos was stark raving bonkers and she should have been locked away for life in an institute for the criminally insane, not executed. By the end of her life, she descends into monstrous paranoia which is hard to listen to in her interviews. Broomfield chronicles her vicious childhood. Listening to it is sobering and you can imagine how such a childhood and adolescence would spit out a creation like Aileen Wuornos. Broomfield is clearly anti death penalty. I am neutral on the subject except when it comes to the mentally ill or deficient. I know that Aileen wanted to die and I can't forget that her crimes were terrible but executing a mentally ill woman is just wrong.