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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
The prostitute and murderer Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in Florida in October, 2002, is difficult to look at without flinching. She appears in Nick Broomfield's documentary "Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer," which was filmed just before she died. Broomfield caught her in high redemption mode. "I cannot go into that chamber as a liar," she says. "I have to clear my conscience and leave my spirit in the name of Jesus Christ." Speaking directly to Broomfield, Wuornos takes back the testimony she offered at her 1992 trial. She now says that when she shot seven men she was not, as she had earlier claimed, acting in self-defense. She killed the men--johns who picked her up on the road--in order to rob them. "I was into the robbin' biz," she says. Broomfield, who made an earlier documentary, in 1992, that was sympathetic to Wuornos's case, wonders, Is she coming clean, or is she suffering from death-row fatigue--the desire to get it over with? Wuornos has large, circular nostrils, jagged front teeth, patchy, mottled skin, a heavy jaw, and she bears all the marks of a spectacularly awful life as an abused kid, an itinerant prostitute, and a longtime convict. Unhappy people in documentaries often come off as affectless, distant, without focus. Aileen Wuornos is just the opposite. She's overfocussed: her eyes pop out of...
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