The specter of Aileen Wuornos, America’s first female serial killer, refuses to fade. On October 30, 2025, Netflix unleashes Aileen Wuornos: Queen of Killers, a gripping two-hour documentary that peels back the layers of one of the darkest true crime tales in modern history. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Lisa Kalikow and featuring never-before-seen interviews with Wuornos’s family, prosecutors, and a surviving victim, the film revisits her twisted path—from a childhood marred by trauma to her chilling final confessions on death row. This isn’t sensationalism; it’s a unflinching mirror to the monsters society creates, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

Wuornos’s story begins in the rust-belt decay of Rochester, Michigan, in 1956. Born to a teenage mother and absent father—a schizophrenic schizophrenic who later committed suicide—Wuornos endured a childhood of neglect and alleged abuse. By 15, she was homeless, turning to prostitution on Florida’s highways to survive. “I was trash from the start,” she once said in a taped confession, her voice a gravelly drawl laced with defiance. The documentary opens with grainy Super 8 footage of her early life, narrated by a psychologist who unpacks the cycle of trauma that forged her rage. “Aileen wasn’t born evil,” Kalikow notes. “She was broken by a world that discarded her.”

The killings began in 1989. Over 13 months, Wuornos and her lover Tyria Moore murdered seven men along Interstate 75, luring them with promises of sex before robbing and shooting them. Victims like Richard Mallory, a convicted rapist, and David Spears, a truck driver, were dumped in swamps and woods. Wuornos claimed self-defense—”they tried to kill me first”—but prosecutors painted her as a cold-blooded predator, dubbing her “America’s first female serial killer.” Her 1992 trial, dubbed the “trial of the century,” drew crowds to Daytona Beach, where she was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder. “I killed those men,” she admitted in court, her words flat, eyes vacant. Sentenced to death, she spent 12 years on Florida’s Death Row, executing six times before her own in 2002 by lethal injection.

Kalikow’s film, drawing from over 100 hours of archival footage including Wuornos’s prison letters and Moore’s 1992 testimony, humanizes without excusing. “She was a product of her pain,” says criminologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland, featured prominently. The documentary dissects the media frenzy—Wuornos as “Damsel of Death,” her Charlize Theron portrayal in 2003’s Monster winning Oscars but sparking backlash for “glamorizing” her. Surviving victim Ty McVey, now 60, breaks his silence: “She was a monster, but monsters are made.”

Critical acclaim has been fervent. The New York Times calls it “a chilling masterpiece, unflinching yet empathetic,” earning a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score. Fans on X hail it as “the true crime doc of the year,” with #QueenOfKillers sparking debates on gender and violence. “Wuornos wasn’t a villain—she was a victim of circumstance,” tweets one, while another counters, “No excuses for seven murders.”

Aileen Wuornos: Queen of Killers isn’t voyeurism—it’s a reckoning, forcing us to confront how broken systems birth broken souls. As Wuornos’s final words echo—”I’ll be back”—the film reminds us: Some ghosts never rest. Stream October 30; the queen’s court is in session.