Stern & Wild client helms major true crime doc for Netflix

Netflix is set to revisit the life and crimes of one of America’s most notorious female serial killers in a new feature documentary directed by Stern & Wild filmmaker Emily Turner.

AILEEN: QUEEN OF THE SERIAL KILLERS takes a fresh look at the story of Aileen Wournos who killed seven men across Central Florida between 1989 and 1990 and was eventually executed for the deaths in 2002. The case continues to divide opinion. Was Wournos a cold-blooded killer or acting in self-defence?

The production describes a history of terrible abuse. Wuornos was a prostitute and claimed that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her. Her mother was 14 when she married her father, 18-year-old Leo Pittman, whom Wuornos never knew and killed himself after being sentenced to life in prison for raping a seven-year-old. Her mother abandoned her when Wuornos was four, and she was adopted by her grandparents, who were alcoholics. She said that her grandfather sexually assaulted her and at 14 she became pregnant after being raped by a family friend.

The film uses a modern lense to investigate Wuornos’s story as it looks at what happened, and why. It features powerful audio interviews with those who knew her best, and includes prison interviews with Wuornos herself, offering new insights into her crimes.

AILEEN: QUEEN OF THE SERIAL KILLERS is produced by the BBC Studios Documentary Unit in collaboration with NBC News Studios. Exec Producers are Kirsty Cunningham, Liz Cole, Elizabeth Fischer and Andy Berg; Archive Producers are Sam Dwyer and Christina Falk, Ella Jackson is Assistant Producer and Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira are Editors. It is set to premiere on Netflix on 30 October.

Aileen Wournos