Aileen Wuornos’ Grandparents: How Did They Die?

When Aileen Carol Wuornos Pittman was arrested in early January 1991 for being a serial killer, the entire world was left shaken to the core owing to the heinousness of her offenses. As explored in Netflix’s ‘Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers,’ she was the first female ever to hold this terrible title, with it being clear that, despite all her childhood trauma, she had no right to take lives. The then-street prostitute was eventually convicted of six homicides, but a lot of focus throughout her court proceedings was placed on the alleged abuse she endured at the hands of her grandparents.

Aileen Wuornos’ Grandparents Became Her Adopted Parents When She Was 4

It was around the 1930s when Aileen Britta Moilanen and Lauri Jacob Wuornos tied the knot in a beautiful ceremony before choosing to settle down in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, for good. That’s where they started their family, welcoming three children into their deeply devout/religious as well as “stringent” home – Diane Kathleen Wuornos, Barry Wuornos, and Lori Wuornos. According to records, the matriarch was a proud homemaker who always prided herself on being “clean and decent,” whereas the patriarch was an army man who served in the World War II.

Britta and Lauri’s daughter, Diane, reportedly became rather rebellious by the time she was a teen, even going as far as to tie the knot with 18-year-old Leo Pittman when she was just 14. The newly married couple subsequently decided to start their own family, resulting in them welcoming their first child on March 14, 1955 – they named him Keith Edward Wuornos Pittman. They fell pregnant again not long after, but around two months before then-16-year-old Diane gave birth to Aileen Carol Wuornos Pittman on February 29, 1956, she filed for divorce.

As a result, Aileen never even met her biological father, a diagnosed alcoholic as well as schizophrenic, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1967 for abducting and raping a 7-year-old. By this point, though, the young girl and her elder brother had both already been adopted by their maternal grandparents after their mother chose to abandon them at their doorstep. Diane had left her kids in January 1960, shortly after getting married for the second time, because she believed it would be best for them all, so her parents made it official within 2 months.

Aileen Wuornos’ Grandparents Were Reportedly Abusive

According to records, both Aileen’s biological parents and adoptive parents were alcoholics, but the latter are the ones she spent the majority of her childhood with after turning 4 years old. Therefore, their alleged rules as well as abusive patterns are what stayed with her in the long run, especially as they reportedly spanned not only emotional but also physical and sexual. As per reports, Barry Wuornos has always vehemently maintained that his family was a “straight and narrow” one with a “normal lifestyle,” but Aileen herself has claimed that there was abuse.

Even a 2005 report in the Journal of Forensic Science alleges that Aileen endured trauma at the hands of her grandparents, with Britta’s extent of it being her decision to remain passive. In other words, while Lauri allegedly beat his granddaughter, called her derogatory names, and sexually assaulted her, his wife reportedly looked the other way to maintain harmony at home. As if that’s not enough, Aileen once claimed he blamed her when she fell pregnant at 14 after allegedly being raped by a family friend, following which he even forced her to give the child up for adoption.

Both of Aileen Wuornos’ Grandparents Passed Away in the 1970s

It was mere months after Aileen had welcomed her son and then lost him to a closed adoption that her grandmother, Britta, sadly died of liver failure/cirrhosis of the liver on July 7, 1971. She was 54 at the time. Little did anybody know these losses would result in the then-teenager accelerating her already prominent behavioral issues, soon culminating in her dropping out of school in exchange for street life. According to records, she ran away from home and began drinking alcohol, doing drugs, as well as engaging in prostitution to make ends meet to the best of her abilities.

Aileen was arrested and sent to a training school for a few months, following which she returned home but was kicked out by Lauri within weeks owing to continued issues between them. The teenager thus ended up completely immersing herself in street life, hitchhiking across the country while also selling her body for money in order to make a good living for herself. It was in 1976 that she made it to Florida, unaware she would lose both her grandfather and her elder brother within months of one another in arguably the worst of ways. As per records, Lauri died by suicide at the age of 65 on March 12, 1976, whereas Keith died at the age of 21 after losing his battle to esophageal cancer on July 17, 1976.

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