While many serial murderers have childhood traumas that are never overcome, it can be said that what Wuornos had to endure during her youth makes that of her contemporaries pale in comparison. She grew up in a poor household in the suburban Detroit community of Troy, Michigan. Her father was incarcerated for child molestation when she was a small child. He later killed himself in prison (via Biography). Unable to care for Wuornos or her brother, her mother sent them to live with their grandparents. The grandmother was a reported alcoholic, who turned a blind eye to her husband raping the young Wuornos. According to the Daily Mail, her grandfather began letting his friends solicit Wuornos for sex.

Wuornos became pregnant in her early teens but gave the child up for adoption. She claims that soon after, she was forced out of her grandparent’s home and resorted to living in the woods. She began to provide for herself by hitching rides around the country while soliciting herself as a sex worker. She eventually settled in Florida in the mid-1970s, where she began to amass quite the record for both petty offenses and minor assaults. The list of crimes grew more violent as Wuornos got older, earning her convictions for felony assault and robbery in the early 1980s. It wasn’t until the end of that decade that she committed her first murder.