Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

Nonfiction filmmaker Nick Broomfield and his frequent collaborator Joan Churchill return to the subject of an earlier film, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, for Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. Twelve years after the first film was made, Wuornos was still in contact with Broomfield from her cell on death row, and he was called as a witness in her final death penalty appeal before the state. Clips of the earlier film were used by defense lawyers to help make the case that Wuornos' lawyer during sentencing, Steven Glaser, was incompetent. Footage used in court shows Glaser smoking pot on his way to the prison to confer with his client. Broomfield uses the opportunity to interview Wuornos several more times and to examine the horrific details of her childhood, interviewing her acquaintances and surviving members of her family. While making the new film, Broomfield learns that Wuornos, increasingly unstable and paranoid, is unwilling to continue to fight for her life. Desperate to escape death row, she has abandoned her convincing claim that she committed murder in self-defense, and she now wants to be executed as soon as possible. In Jeb Bush's Florida, it's clear, this isn't difficult to accomplish. Broomfield talks to the mentally deteriorated Wuornos one last time before her execution. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer had its New York premiere at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival.