Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Going inside the mind of a female serial killer with Phyllis Chesler

HALLIE EPHRON: Phyllis Chesler--yes that Phyllis Chesler, feminist icon, provocative and brash--has never shied away from controversy or been afraid to upend stereotypes. Her new book (nonfiction) dares to ask: Are women always victims? Even female serial killers?

Today I'm happy to welcome her to Jungle Red, talking about her  psychological true crime thriller REQUIEM FOR A FEMALE SERIAL KILLER.

The eponymous serial killer is Aileen Carol Wuornos who murdered seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990, shooting them at point-blank range. If this sounds familiar, it's probably because Charlize Theron won an Academy Award for portraying her in the 2003 film "Monster."

Welcome, Phyllis!


PHYLLIS CHESLER: Like the great, late Ann Rule, I, too, am haunted by my time with a high profile serial killer.

I am talking about Aileen Carol Wuornos. There has never been a female serial quite like her, not before or since.

If you think that you already know all about her—prepare to be learn otherwise. Wuornos is not exactly the woman who has been portrayed in books and films. The fact that her working uniform was to pass as a “normal” housewife with car troubles is brilliant.

Feminist ideals, feminist dreams, drew me to her case. I wanted the jury to know that most of the corpses strewn along Florida’s highways were female prostitutes murdered by male serial killers. This time, a whore had flipped the script, turned the tables, and had begun murdering Johns.

After Aileen was arrested, I flew down to Florida, not as a journalist, but as a feminist organizer and courtroom witness.

I wanted a jury to understand what a prostitute’s life was like, how she had to endure a toxic level of contempt and the most extraordinary violence. I wanted jurors to consider the fact that Aileen may indeed have killed in self-defense, at least that first time.

As a psychologist, I believed that the thousands of violent rapes and gang-rapes that she experienced could easily have led to the kind of paranoia and rage that could account for (but not justify) her murder spree. She killed seven men, all strangers to her. At least three, perhaps four of them were Johns, because they were found naked or with their pants in disarray.

I assembled a team of pro bono experts for her first trial. We wanted to conduct a public forum on what prostitution is and what it does to the prostitutes. We wanted to ensure that Aileen, no matter how foul her language, no matter how explosively angry she could get—that, she, too, deserved a fair trial.

I envisioned the political trial of the decade, rife with burning questions. Did a prostitute have the right to kill in self-defense? Could she be raped if she was selling her body anyway? Was Aileen even competent to stand trial? Did it even matter? Did she hate men? Are John ever innocent?

The answers may surprise you.

Although Wuornos was seen as a “monster,” no one understood how unique she was. Although I had many phone conversations, exchanged letters with her, and visited her on Death Row, it still took me many years to figure it all out. To date, no one else really has.

She was not like male serial killers—nor was she like other female serial killers. (There are many.) Aileen was also unlike other women who had been severely abused in childhood. I explain all this in REQUIEM FOR A FEMALE SERIAL KILLER.

Take a walk on the wild side with me. The ghost of Aileen Wuornos beckons.

HALLIE:
Okay, I'm hooked. In the world of crime fiction, the villain is the hero of their own story. I wonder of what "story" did Aileen Wuornos see herself the hero of?



REQUIEM FOR A FEMALE SERIAL KILLER follows the tragic story of Aileen Wuornos, the protagonist of the film Monster, which won Charlize Theron an Academy Award for Best Actress. The book takes us inside the mind of a female serial killer, a prostitute who murdered seven adult men.

Women, even prostitutes, have the right to self-defense in theory, but the reality is far more complicated. This book challenges everything anyone has ever thought about prostitutes, serial killers, and justice in America. Aileen Wuornos was a damaged soul, a symbol of what can happen to severely abused children, a genuine American outlaw, a symbol of women's rage and of how our justice system fails women. Chesler was intimately involved in this high-profile criminal case and its issues remain unresolved to this day. Her involvement continues to haunt her. In the book, she speaks in Aileen Wuornos' voice, as well as in her own, and delivers an incisive, original, and dramatic portrait of a cognitively impaired, traumatized, and alcoholic woman who endured so much pain in her short life. When Wuornos had had enough, the results were deadly.

This is a poignant, sometimes humorous, never-before-told behind-the-scenes tale. Wuornos' story is handled with great sensitivity, but also with realistic detachment by Chesler as she probes the telling moment, the telling phrase. Was Wuornos suffering from post-traumatic stress after a life lived on a "killing field?" Was she "born evil?" So many prostitutes have been tortured and murdered by serial killers—how did Wuornos, once prey, become a predator?

PHYLLIS CHESLER, Ph.D. is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at City University of New York. She is a best-selling author, a legendary feminist leader, a retired psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. She has lectured and organized political, legal, religious, and human rights campaigns in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, and the Far East. Her work has been translated into many European languages and into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Hebrew. She is the author of 20 books, including the landmark feminist classic Women and Madness, as well as many other notable books including With Child: A Diary of Motherhood; Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody; Sacred Bond: The Legacy of Baby M; Woman's Inhumanity to Woman; and Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism's Holy Site. After publishing The New Anti-Semitism, she published The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom and An American Bride in Kabul, which won a National Jewish Book Award, Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews 2003-2015, Islamic Gender Apartheid: Exposing A Veiled War Against Women, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killings and a Memoir: A Politically Incorrect Feminist. She has been profiled in encyclopedias, including Feminists Who Have Changed America, Jewish Women in America, and Encyclopedia Judaica. Dr. Chesler has published widely in mainstream media (New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Times of London, London Guardian, Globe and Mail, Huffington Post, Jerusalem Post, etc.), as well as at FOX, Front Page Mag, Israel National News, Jewish Press, Middle East Quarterly, New York Post, PJ Media, Tablet Magazine, Times of Israel, etc. For more about her visit: www.phyllis-chesler.com.

44 comments:

  1. I’m not sure what story Aileen saw herself as the hero of, Hallie, but I’d venture a guess that she believed she was claiming some justice for herself. How sad that, throughout Aileen’s tortured life, both compassion and abetment seem to have been in such short supply.
    Phyllis, I’m looking forward to reading your book . . . .

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    1. Hi Joan! Eventually, like most serial killers, she was proud that she had, in her words, "made history." She would never discuss the details of the murders (except for the first one) but she was obsessed with the corruption of the authorities--she knew that she did not get a fair trial. And she was angry about it. No one rescued her from cruelty and disaster when she was a child. There was no "adult in the room" back in her Michigan childhood.

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    2. That makes sense to me ... there’d have to be a powerful back story in her personal narrative

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  2. Wow! This is fascinating subject matter, and Aileen Wuornos is someone about whom I’m sure I have much to learn. On the surface, she’s a prostitute who snapped from a lifetime of abuse and starting killing her johns. But, I know your book, Phyllis, will astound me with the layers of her story and who she was.

    I need to go back and pick up your Women and Madness book, too. Such a twisted history of that subject, with women once being treated and committed as mad for simply disobeying their fathers or husbands. A fiction book I read on just those circumstances was The Vanishing of Esme Lennox by Maggie Farrell, one of my favorite books.

    Thanks for visiting the Jungle Reds today, Phyllis.

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    1. Hi Kathy. Wuornos, (Lee), could easily have mounted an Insanity Defense but she refused to do so. Certainly by the time they executed her she was legally insane—isolation on Death Row can do that to you. She should not have been executed. She also should have received a fair trial which did not happen. Lee was savagely abused in childhood and then battered, raped, gang-raped and death-threatened so many times that she had to be suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. She drank—she drank a lot of beer. The questions we must wrestle with: Was she really in a fight for her life all seven times? Did she only flash back to previous times and kill six innocent men? In the larger scheme of things, did she have the right to kill men who were not physically attacking her because OTHER men had done just that?

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  3. Phyllis, I vaguely remember hearing about the Monster movie with Charlize Theron. I never see the movie but I knew that the story was based on the real-life Aileen Wuornos, but not much more about her motivations for going on her serial killing spree.

    It must have been fascinating to have so many communications with Aileen remotely and in-person to be able to slowly figure out her unique story. Thanks for sharing this with the Reds and readers.

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    1. I remember reading Ann Rule’s book on Ted Bundy ... it was as much about her as him - feels as if the same would be true of Requiem - research unearths the unexpected

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    2. Good morning Grace. It was fascinating, mind-blowing, gut-wrenching, frustrating, and exhilarating to think that we could put prostitution on trial in that courtroom. It was also a privilege to try and rescue this severely damaged child-woman who had, as she said, over and over again, “never caught a break.”

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  4. I don't think I'd heard about Wuornos before. I certainly owned and read Women and Madness, and what a treat to have you on the blog today. Thank you for your years of activism, bringing you all the way to Aileen's trial.

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    1. Hello Edith. And thank YOU for your kind words. Yes, I’ve been at this since 1967, or for 53, going on 54 years. Wuornos had hearing and visual impairments that were never corrected. I believe she also had Organic Brain Syndrome or a Traumatic Brain Injury. I write about how dangerous, how violent her life was—prostitution is the most extreme form of violence against women—and can understand why she drank so much. While she may not be a feminist role model, she sure symbolized “fighting back,” she embodied forbidden fantasies about being able to shoot down pedophile fathers or wife beaters, something that most women rarely do.

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  5. I haven't heard about Wuornos before toda. What a road to get from here to there. And yes, you have to wonder, Hallie, what her story is.

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    1. Hi Liz. I tell her life story in REQUIEM and it is both a dramatic and tragic tale. The book is part fiction and very factual, it is a genre-blended work. I could only do this because I was able to interview so many of the people in her life including her biological mother and the lover who took then stand against her. Everyone had important things to tell me.

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  6. I remember WOMEN AND MADNESS as well. Welcome to JRW Phyllis, this sounds like a fascinating read. I would love to hear more about how you decided to get involved with Aileen.

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    1. Morning Lucy. When I first heard that the police were hunting for two women in the murder of seven men, I thought it was a joke, something like Orson Welles’s fake “The Martians have landed.” When she was captured, I thought that she just might be a prostitute—what other woman would have such good grounds for freaking out, or taking revenge, or for having to fight for her very life. Women's corpses litter the Florida landscape, mainly prostituted girls and women—murdered and mutilated by male serial killers. Was a woman, were two women, finally fighting back?

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  7. Fascinating! I remember Women and Madness and look forward to reading your new release.

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    1. Hello Margaret. This was new psychological territory for me. I’d never written about a female serial killer before. At first, I refused to believe that Wuornos was just that. In fact, I totally believed (and still do) that she killed in self-defense that first time. After that—things changed. It took me many years to craft a psychological profile of her. I do so in the last chapter.

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  8. The name Aileen Wournos sounds so familiar, even though I've never seen the movie Monster. Maybe the name is pinging because of late night interviews with Charlize Theron. I used to watch a lot of them, back in the Letterman/Leno day. But I did not remember that she had been a prostitute, or that she had killed seven men.

    Phyllis, can you speak to being in the proximity of someone who clearly had enormous rage? I wonder about the fallout of this for you, personally. It's has obviously had an effect or you would not have written this book, nearly 30 years later.

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    1. Ah Karen, what a good question. Anger is frightening. We do not expect women to be as angry as men and when they are we experience them as far more dangerous than men. It’s that old double standard. Lee had a trigger temper and she was permanently in a rage about the “crooked cops.” She had some reason to be. Nevertheless, she remained consumed with that, less interested in saving her own life. When I visited her on Death Row, I left the door a crack open. I really did not know what I’d be dealing with.

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    2. Oh, you left the door a crack open. That is such a telling detail…

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    3. How interesting, that she was consumed with rage, still, even after killing seven human beings. Nothing slaked that impulse.

      It's really bizarre to think of women more dangerous than men, considering how much stronger and full of testosterone most men are.

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  9. I was living in Florida when Wuornos was active and remember the news stories. This sounds like fascinating read.

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    1. Kait—I hope this book meets your every expectation. I think it will and I would welcome hearing from you after you read it.

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  10. Phyllis I wonder if you saw Unbelievable on Netflix and what your take on it was...

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    1. Yes, so interesting to know! That was such a compelling story…

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    2. Hallie! I must admit. I have not seen it. Are you recommending it? Lately, I’ve watched police procedurals, cold case files, British murder mysteries, some costume dramas, ballets, operas, and am about to watch the new documentary about some particularly gruesome male serial killers.

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  11. Phyllis, welcome to JRW. I do know something about Aileen Wuornos because of the controversy surrounding the movie, which I, too, did not see. Personally, I would be extremely uncomfortable trying to get inside the mind of a serial killer, even if it is a woman. It will be very interesting to read your conclusions after pondering Aileen's story for a number of years.

    From some of the topics which you have tackled, I'd have to say that you are very brave, indeed. Your books about your work with Women of the Wall and about Honor Killings fascinate me and I am off to look for them.

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    1. Judy: Oh, be still my heart! You are really “into” my work and I deeply appreciate that. I will give you a hint. Wuornos is not like other FEMALE serial killers who tend to kill husband after husband for money. They are known as “black widows.” Nor is she like female nurses who kill patient after patient, also for money, and because they can. She is a UNIQUE female serial killer but she is not the only kind of female serial killer on the block.

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  12. This is so fascinating! And of course, I’ve been curious about her… What level of judgment allowed her or compelled her to decide to do what she did? How did she look at you, though?

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    1. Hank: Your curiosity is about to be satisfied! She was in a desperate fight for her life that first time. What happened thereafter is another story and I discuss it in REQUIEM. She thought I was a little crazy to be doing something for nothing. But she did want what she called “the testifying witnesses,” and none of us were ever called.

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    2. Above all, her life and unexpiated pain and rejection produced perhaps what many fight against, as a way to "get back' at all the unfair forces trying to demean or demolish our selves, our standing as independent, worthy beings.

      marion d s dreyfus

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    3. How very tragic, that she did not get her witnesses.

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    4. Karen: How’s the weather in Ohio right now? But on a more serious note: You are 100% right. Wuornos should have gotten our experts in prostitution, battered women (prostituted women are battered by thousands of men, maybe a hundred thousand men), and a woman’s right to kill in self-defense. In my opinion, Wuornos was very credible when she took the stand in her own defense. But there were so many other reasons that she did not receive a fair trial—and yes, that is “tragic” but alas, not uncommon in courtrooms where poor or impoverished people are on trial.

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    5. Southwest Ohio, where I live, is pretty nice at the moment! Partly cloudy and in the mid 40s.

      So sad.

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  13. Hi, Phyllis, and welcome to JRW. I did know a little bit about Wournos, but not much detail. Her story sounds both fascinating and heart-rending, and I applaud you for telling it. It sounds as if after a lifetime of being powerless, she found power addictive. And now I'm wondering how many of the jurors were men...

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    1. Hello Deborah. The women in Florida increasingly joined their husbands when they were on the road in order to “protect” them from a possible female killer (or from temptation in terms of lust of Good Samaritanship.) Some of the men on her jury believed that prostitution should be legal—which means, they did not view it as Killing Field work but as something that men needed and should have. Like women in general, women in north central Florida did not see prostituted women as victims but as aggressors who chose their lifestyles for money, filthy lucre. Perhaps you have a point. Once she killed, maybe she no longer believed she had to take any Sh-t from a man whose money really belonged to her. The prosecutor had been Ted Bundy’s spiritual advisor and he viewed prostitutes as pure evil—he did not view Johns or pimps in this way. It’s bigger than the jurors.

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  14. Did your interviews with Wuornos have an effect on you? Did you feel any blowback of her rage or sorrow or despair that colored your personal life?

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    1. Pat D: Hello. I was a bit haunted by the entire experience and by finally understanding that not all women can be saved; not everyone can get a fair trial—even when they have enormous potential or well-meaning support. I actually got quite ill with undiagnosed Lyme’s disease which had life-long repercussions. I cannot blame that on her or or her case. The stress was very stressful...it took me many years to weigh and judge whether she was or was not a serial killer and whether she was a rather unique serial killer. The fact that she had suffered so very much and that the cops, prosecutor, judge, jury, and legal system showed her no mercy has weighed on my mind very heavily.

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  15. Phyllis, congratulations on the release of your book. This sounds like an absolutely absorbing read and perfect for writers of mysteries as it's so hard to get into the antagonist's head sometimes. Looking forward to picking it up - especially for my true crime loving husband.

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    1. Hi Jenn. It is a tale that can almost tell itself and I hope that I’ve done it justice, much as Truman Capote did in IN COLD BLOOD. I tried to make it dramatic and wherever possible, from her point of view, as well as from my own. It’s a fast rock n’roll kinda read. You’ll see.

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  16. I have to admit that I'm surprised the Aileen Wuornos story isn't known to everyone here, especially with Charlize Theron winning the Oscar for Monster. There was a lot of talk about how Charlize so drastically changed her appearance for the role, gaining weight and, really, just a complete transformation. It was such a highly publicized case and movie. I wonder if it was just better known in southern states.

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    1. I love Theron but she merely did a great impersonation of her body language. I am more concerned with what's in her head, how Wuornos saw things. Wuornos has become notorious and many see her as a genuine American Badass outlaw, someone who was meant to die anonymously but who "got even" and who also got famous. Quite extraordinary really--she has fans.

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    2. Kathy, this may have been a highly publicized case in the USA, but living in Canada, I can't say that I saw or remember any mention of Aileen Wuornos' notorious killing spree in our newscasts or newspapers. As I mentioned in my original post, I only vaguely remember Monster coming out, and only because of photos showing Charlize Theron's dramatic physical changes made to take on the role of Wuornos. Nothing really about the serial killer case itself.

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