Wuornos was a prostitute and hitchhiked across central Florida to find customers. She was in a loving lesbian relationship with her girlfriend. She confessed to killing and robbing seven men along Florida's highways. Considered one of the nation's few female serial killers, Wuornos was just the third woman to die by execution in Florida.

Sentenced to the death penalty in 1992, she was executed by lethal injection ten years later. Her story was the subject of several books, two documentaries, a television movie and an opera.