Florida bar still haunted by Aileen Wuornos as Netflix documentary sheds new light on ‘Monster’s seven-man murder spree
The ghost of Aileen Wuornos still lingers at The Last Resort – the Florida biker bar where the serial killer drank her final beer before her arrest more than three decades ago.
Her framed mugshot hangs behind the bar. Her face appears on T-shirts and bottles of hot sauce. A makeshift shrine of her painted portrait lists the men she murdered and the bar’s slogan: “Home of ice cold beer and killer women.”
The story of Aileen Wuornos has long been the stuff of pulp lore, fictionalized and dramatized for TV and film multiple times, most famously by Charlize Theron, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of the killer in the 2003 movie Monster.
And it’s a fascination with Wuornos, America’s most notorious female serial killer, that continues to attract people to the Port Orange bar from all over the world.
Owner Al Bulling, who’s run the bar for 33 years, knew her well.
“She wanted to be remembered and keep the memory going,” Bulling told the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “Well, we’ll keep it going for her.”
Wuornos was a sex worker in Florida who carried out the fatal shootings of at least seven men between 1989 and 1990, dumping their bodies in remote wooded areas and stealing their possessions. She claimed she killed her victims in self-defense when the men became violent towards her.
In 1991, she was arrested at the biker bar and convicted of murder the following year at the age of 35. After a decade on death row, she was executed by lethal injection.
Nearly four decades later, Wuornos’ name is back in the headlines with the release of a new Netflix documentary.
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, now streaming, reexamines the woman behind the murders. Directed by Emily Turner, the film blends never-before-heard audio, archival footage and rare prison interviews with Wuornos herself.
Her story, equal parts tragedy and terror, captivated the nation and redefined what a “female serial killer” could look like.
“The real Aileen Wuornos is not a serial killer,” she says in the Netflix documentary.
“I was so drunk and so lost, so f***** up in the head, man, that I turned into one. But my real self is not one.”
From sex work to murder
Born in Michigan in 1956, Wuornos’ childhood was a cascade of trauma: abandonment, rape and early exposure to violence.
Her father, Leo Wuornos, was jailed for raping a minor and hanged himself while behind bars. Her mother, who was only 16 years old when she gave birth to her, later abandoned her children, leaving them in the care of her own parents.
After becoming pregnant as a teenager, she was forced to give the child up for adoption and was kicked out of her grandparents’ home. Homeless by age 15, Wuornos then turned to sex work to earn money for food as she hitchhiked across the country before landing in Florida.
Throughout the 1980s, she was regularly in trouble with the law, engaging in armed robbery, car theft and disorderly conduct, as she drifted between bars and motels along Florida’s highways, surviving off sex work.
In 1986, she met Tyria Moore, a 24-year-old Daytona Beach motel maid, at a gay bar. They fell in love and Wuornos tried to support Moore.
But then her sex work took a dark turn.
The murders
Between 1989 and 1990, Wuornos shot and killed seven men — Richard Mallory, David Spears, Charles Carskaddon, Troy Burress, Charles Humphreys, Peter Siems, and Walter Antonio — claiming at least one was in self-defense.
All of the victims were motorists who had approached her as sex-work clients.
The first was Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old electronics store owner, who she shot dead on November 30, 1989. His body was found in a wooded area two weeks later, riddled with bullets.
Wuornos claimed that Mallory had beaten and raped her after he picked her up. It later emerged that Mallory had a prior conviction for attempted rape in Maryland, adding credibility to Wuornos’ account.
The bodies of five other missing men were discovered between June 1 and Nov. 19, 1990, all traced back to Wuornos.
The victims were construction worker David Andrew Spears, 47; rodeo rider Charles Edmund Carskaddon, 40; salesman Troy Eugene Burress, 50; retired US Air Force major and police chief Charles Richard Humphreys, 56; and trucker and security guard Walter Jeno Antonio, 62.
Wuornos is also believed to have killed and robbed a seventh man — retired merchant seaman Peter Abraham Siems, 67 — during the same period. He was reported missing but his body has never been found.
A killer’s last stop
On Jan. 9, 1991, undercover detectives walked into The Last Resort bar and quietly placed Wuornos under arrest.
Police had finally caught up with Wuornos when Siems’ car was found crashed along a roadside and her palm print was discovered on an interior door handle.
Her girlfriend was arrested the next day. But she was persuaded to turn on her lover and elicit a confession from her.
During a taped phone call, Wuornos admitted to Moore that she had carried out the murders. That recording was played in court, shocking Wuornos who had no idea Moore had been recording her.
On Jan. 27, 1992, Wuornos was convicted of Mallory’s murder.
During her trial, psychiatrists for the defense argued that she was mentally unstable and suggested that she may be suffering from borderline personality disorder. Despite this, Wuornos was sentenced to death for the murder.
On March 31, 1992, she pleaded no contest to the killings of Spears, Burress and Humphreys, receiving three more death sentences. She later pleaded guilty to the murders of Carskaddon and Antonio and was again sentenced to death.
Siems’ murder is the only one she was not compelled to answer to, due to the fact that there was no body.
‘Home of ice cold beer and killer women’
Nearly 24 years after Wuornos was executed, The Last Resort bar where she drank her final beer still draws visitors from around the world — bikers, supporters, true-crime fans and the just-plain curious.
“They come from all over the world,” Bulling said. “They just come, ordinary people, because they know it’s all here. Everything’s the same. Same pool table, everything.”
He said business has dropped some over the years, but some patrons believe it could spike again with the release of the Netflix documentary.
Alan Campbell, of Iowa, who visited the bar in 2023, told The Independent he didn’t know there was a new documentary but said he is now eager to see it.
“Best. Stop. Ever,” he wrote on Facebook following his visit, with a post of photos from the bar.
Campbell told The Independent that he had been traveling in Florida and had researched the area and when he saw information about the bar and the story behind it, it piqued his interest.
“I’d never seen the movie (Monster), but did remember it, and thought the bar would be an interesting place to visit.”
Michelle Forbes, however, did see Monster and traveled from New Orleans to Florida to check out the bar — which is featured in the movie.
She told the New York Daily News that she remembers hesitating in the parking lot.
“It’s not the kind of place I would go under most circumstances,” she said. “But once inside, they were really happy to talk about it. They made me feel bad for cowering in the car! I think they were honoring her, and not just making a spectacle.”
Just down South Ridgewood Avenue, another piece of Wuornos history still stands. The former Fairview Motel, now renamed the Scoot Inn, was where she stayed before her arrest.
The fascination with Wuornos continues to shape how people talk about women who kill. For some, she’s a symbol of rage born from abuse — for others, she’s simply a cold-blooded murderer.
A killer’s last words
After spending a decade on Florida’s death row, Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002. She was 46 years old.
For her final meal, Wuornos skipped the normal prison food and chose to have just a cup of coffee.
Just before she was put to death, she uttered her final words.
“Yes, I would just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mothership and all, I’ll be back, I’ll be back.”
The words are etched on the wall under her picture at The Last Resort Bar — where her memory lives on.
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers is now streaming on Netflix.
