How Aileen Wuornos was tricked into confessing to murders after her girlfriend secretly helped police

One phone call from Aileen Wuornos' girlfriend secretly taped by police set in motion a series of events which eventually saw her executed.

Wuornos is infamous for her conviction of six murders of the seven she was accused of between 1989 and 1990, and was steadfast in her commitment to her own innocence.

But the authorities quickly convinced Wuornos' girlfriend Tyria Moore to work alongside them to secure a confession - with the promise that Moore would not be charged as an accomplice to Wuornos' crimes.

In 1991, while Wuornos was in jail, the police taped a phone call in which Moore tells Wuornos in a frightened manner: "Lee, [the police] are coming after me," to which Wuornos responded: “I’m not gonna let you go to jail. Ty, I love you. If I have to confess everything just to keep you from getting in trouble, I will.”

Moore later testified against Wuornos in court during her 1992 trial.

Aileen Wuornos in Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers (Netflix)

She told the jury that while the pair were 'sitting around watching TV, drinking a few beers', Wuornos said 'she had shot and killed a man that day' and 'put the body in the woods under a rug', The Tampa Bay Times reported at the time.

Wuornos was eventually convicted and executed in 2002 after living for 10 years on death row.

Wuornos often spoke extremely highly of Moore, after the pair met in a bar in 1986.

“I loved her so bad,” Wuornos said. “[She’s the] only reason I carried that darn gun. I wanted to make sure that I got home alive - so I’d be another day breathing with her.”

Their romantic bliss was not to last, however, after police started investigating a string of highway murders in Florida: Richard Mallory, 51; David Spears, 47; Charles Carskaddon, 40; Troy Burress, 50; Charles Humphreys, 56; and Walter Antonio, 62.

Following this, it was reported that two women were seen driving one of the men's stolen cars. Once authorities lifted fingerprints of Wuornos off a pawned item belonging to one of the deceased, she was arrested in 1991.

Aileen Wuornos in Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers

The troubled life of Wuornos and her relationship with Moore has been widely publicised and documented across the years, famously in the 2003 film Monster where Charlize Theron won the Academy Award for her portrayal of Wuornos.

Netflix released the documentary Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers in 2025, which featured rare interviews with those closest to Wuornos.

In one of the rare interviews, Wuornos can be heard saying in her death row interview: “The real Aileen Wuornos isn’t a serial killer. I was so lost I turned into one.”