Woman Guilty in First of Seven Road Slayings

A prostitute was found guilty Monday in the slaying of the first of seven men authorities say she killed on Florida highways.

The jury today was to begin considering whether to recommend execution or a 25-year prison sentence without parole for Aileen Wuornos, 35.

Wuornos on Monday called the departing jurors “scumbags of America.”

She was convicted of first-degree murder and felony murder in the death of businessman Richard Mallory in 1989. The 12-member Circuit Court jury returned the verdict after deliberating for an hour and 35 minutes.

Wuornos, who maintained that she killed the men in self-defense, looked straight ahead as the jurors were being polled. She calmly said, “I am innocent,” as the jury began to file out of the courtroom.

Then, as defense attorneys tried to restrain her, she said: “I was raped!”

At the end of the two-week trial, State Atty. John Tanner told the jury: “She has left you no reasonable choice except to find her guilty.”

Tanner said Wuornos fatally shot a would-be client as part of a “deadly pattern” of behavior that cost the lives of seven men. He depicted her as a cunning, calculating killer motivated by greed.

Defense attorney William Miller urged the jury to disregard testimony and evidence of the other six slayings in central and northern Florida in 1990, and to judge Wuornos only in the Mallory case.

He also appealed to jurors to disregard Wuornos’ videotaped jail confessions in deciding whether she was justified in shooting Mallory.