US: More than 12 years after she lured six men to their death in the woodlands of central Florida, America's most notorious female serial killer was executed by lethal injection yesterday, having said she looked forward to meeting God so that she could punish those who had mistreated her.
It was the death that Aileen Wuornos had said she wanted.
"I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again," she wrote earlier this year. "I have hate crawling through my system." Keeping her alive, she added, would be "a waste of taxpayers' money".
But her willingness to die only exacerbated her former lawyers' fear that she was not mentally competent to decide to sack them and abandon objections to her execution. Psychiatrists ruled otherwise last week after questioning her for 30 minutes.
Asked if she had any last words, Wuornos (46) said: "I'd 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, on the big mothership and all. I'll be back, I'll be back." Apparently "the rock" referred to Jesus.
Opponents of the death penalty say the execution was timed to boost the popularity of Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida and the president's brother, just weeks before he stands for re-election.
Wuornos was a prostitute using a roadside cafe near Daytona Beach when she murdered six middle-aged businessmen who approached her for sex between 1989 and 1990, accompanying them into the woods and shooting them.
In 1992, on trial for killing Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old electrician, she said she had been defending herself against assault.
When they convicted her she shouted at the jury: "I'm innocent! I was raped! I hope you get raped!" But she then pleaded guilty to a further five murders, saying she had killed in cold blood, robbing the men to buy a flat for herself and her lesbian partner. She also claimed to have murdered a seventh man.
The case obsessed the media, generating three books, hours of television and a production by the San Francisco Opera.
Her most recent lawyer, Mr Raag Singhal, said he saw "clear evidence of mental illness", and although the half-hour psychiatric assessment was legal, it was "an extraordinarily brief undertaking". - (Guardian Service)