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.
