Investigation Discovery’s new docuseries Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos not only sheds new insight into the serial killer’s murders, but reveals what ultimately made her “self-defense” argument fall apart.
“This guy gave me a problem and so I whipped out my gun and I said, ‘Hey, you know, I don’t want to shoot you,’” Aileen Wournos claimed in an exclusive clip share with Us, describing the deadly interaction with one of her victims, Peter Siems. She went on to allege that he tried to take her gun away, so she “ripped it away” and shot him “immediately.”
Wuornos then admitted to “rifling through his things” and said she found religious items. A detective featured in the clip informed her that Siems was a missionary, which upset Wuornos.
“I think that’s a very telling moment from her mindset if you want to look at the deep, dark crevices of her mind,” Detective David Taylor, who worked on the case and is featured in the new docuseries, said of Wuornos. “Killing someone that was a man of God, that I think struck a chord with her. Her story that she killed in self-defense is not credible.”
Taylor went on to say that Siems had been “a man of God for many decades,” and his family said that he was the type of person to go out of his way to help someone in their time of need.
“To this day, we have never found Peter Siems. We have never recovered his body,” Taylor concluded.
Wuornos was a sex worker at the time of the killings. After her arrest, she claimed the murders were all committed in self-defense after the victims attacked or sexually assaulted her.
She committed her first murder in November 1989, when she killed Richard Mallory. Wuornos went on to kill David Spears, Charles Carskaddon, Siems, Troy Burress, Charles Richard “Dick” Humphreys and Walter Jeno Antonio.
Wuornos was sentenced to death on January 31, 1992, after she was convicted for the first-degree murder of Mallory. She went on to plead no contest and guilty to the additional murders, and was subsequently sentenced to death for all of them except Siems’ murder, as his body was never found.
She was ultimately executed on October 9, 2002, at the age of 46.
Unmasking a Monster: Aileen Wuornos will premiere on ID on Wednesday, September 30, from 8-11 p.m. ET. It will also be available to stream on HBO Max.
