A Florida couple adopted a 35-year-old serial killer after failing to conceive a child of their own. Arlene Pralle and her husband, Robert, made the controversial move that evoked significant backlash. The murderer’s adoptive mother shared how she came to the decision of adopting her after “getting butterflies” when she saw a picture of her.
Arlene and Robert tried for years to have a child. At some point, they accepted that their only way to parenthood would be through adoption. “I saw her picture in the newspaper and I got butterflies,” Arlene recalled how she felt after seeing a story written about a serial killer in an Ocala newspaper.
The serial killer in question was none other than Aileen Wuornos, more famously known as the ‘Damsel of Death.’ The woman was a lesbian prostitute responsible for killing 7 men over the span of three years.
When news of Wuornos’s trial made it to the local newspapers, Arlene first came across her case. The woman, who was a “born-again Christian,” believed that the murderer’s soul could find salvation. “Then, when I was out on the lawnmower like 10 days later, Jesus asked me to reach out to her,” the Florida woman shared in Netflix’s new documentary.
The woman claims that god urged her to write to the killer and tell her about him. Arlene revealed that God entrusted her to “help” Wuornos. She pointed out how she had always wanted to be a mom when this opportunity presented itself. “It was awesome. I mean, just unbelievable,” she added.
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In 1991, Aileen Wuornos was brought in as the prime suspect of the killing of 7 men who were shot and killed. The link that connected all these murders was the fact that they all happened in an area where prostitution was prominent.
Steve Binegar, who was a chief police officer, appears in the documentary to recall the details of the case. “There were used rubbers and a blonde hair found at the crime scene,” the former chief explains. A confession taped by the murderer’s then-girlfriend, Tyria Moore, is what helped the police bring her in.
Soon after her arrest, Aileen confessed to her crimes and refused to even get a lawyer to represent her. She asked what an attorney could even do to help her case when she admitted to what she had done. “I know what I did. I’m confessing to what I did. Go ahead and put the electric chair to me,” she said during the questioning, according to Tyla.
During her trial, Wuornos claimed that she was not a serial killer. She claimed that the first of seven murders she committed was out of self-defense. The 35-year-old claimed that her first victim, Richard Mallory, sexually assaulted her. In her testimony, she alleged that she had been beaten and sexually assaulted while Mallory threatened to end her life.
Right before she was punished for her crimes before being put on the electric chair, Aileen shared that she had to “come clean” in order to “make it right with God.”
“The real Aileen Wournos is not a serial killer, I was so drunk and so lost, so [expletive language] up in the head, man, I turned into one, but my real self is not one,” she confessed. She also added how telling the truth was the “hardest thing.”
