AILEEN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A SERIAL KILLER
Directed by: Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill.
Produced by: Jo Human.
Director of Photography: Joan Churchill.
Edited by: Claire Ferguson.
Music by: Rob Lane.
Released by: Lantern Lane Entertainment in assoc. with HBO/Cinemax Films.
Country of Origin: USA. 89 min. Not Rated.
With: Aileen Wuornos & Nick Broomfield.

In her last interview before her 2002 execution in Florida, convicted murderer Aileen Wuornos calls into question not only her sanity but also the use of capital punishment. She claims her mind is controlled by radio waves and that she will be taken away with angels on a space ship. And when she angrily blames the police for the seven killings and then framing her, her wide eyes have a blank, vacant stare. Clearly she is unhinged. Incredibly, she is judged mentally competent by the state to be executed.

Director Nick Broomfield plays an important role in the film. Not only does Wuornos view him as a friend, but he is also subpoenaed to provide evidence against her former attorney during an appeals hearing. There, footage from his Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1993) features the lawyer, “an ex-hippie out of his depth,” smoking a joint. As in the earlier film, there is also an interview of whistle blower cop Brian Jarvis. Officers who had investigated the murders that Wuornos had been found guilty of had also colluded with Wuornos’s lover, Tyria Moore, to sell their story to Hollywood. The officers were reprimanded; Jarvis and his family received death threats.

Broomfield forthrightly lays out the facts of her life and focuses on her motivation for changing her plea of self-defense. He journeys to Troy, MI, Wuornos’s home town, where at 13 she had a baby, became homeless, and a prostitute. Also interviewed is her estranged biological mother.

This compassionate documentary should be of strong interest to viewers of the previous Wuornos film or the current Monster. However, it is much more successful in detailing the horrific and incredible circumstances of her life than the latter. This truly is a case of truth being stranger than fiction. KT
January 7, 2003