Why Aileen Wuornos' girlfriend stayed with killer despite being key witness that led to death sentence

Aileen Wuornos killed seven men in a spree that ended up leading to her death, but her crimes have hit the headlines again 24 years after her passing due to Netflix’s latest true crime drama.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story doesn’t just tell the story of one killer this time round, combining the lives of Lizzie Borden and Aileen Wuornos into one.

The Netflix show implies similarities between the two, with Monster suggesting that Borden had a secret girlfriend who supported her throughout her crimes, something we know is actually partially true of Wuornos.

While Wuornos' girlfriend, Tyria Moore, stayed with her throughout her killing spree, she ended up becoming a key witness for the prosecution in the trial that led to her death sentence, even working with police to call her girlfriend while recorded.

Tyria Moore has spoken about why she stayed with Aileen Wuornos after she confessed to first murder

Wuornos provided for both her and Moore financially through her sex work, working as a prostitute and murdering seven of her clients. The pair met at a gay bar, Zodiac, in Florida in 1986.

She claimed this had been self-defence after they had sexually assaulted her, but prior to her death she admitted she had killed her victims as part of a string of robberies.

Her first victim was 51-year-old Richard Mallory, a local shop owner, and she shot him multiple times in the chest after he picked her up on the motorway.

Moore has stated that Wuornos came home and admitted to killing someone, but she didn’t believe her. She explained: “I didn’t believe it. I know I didn’t like to hear about her work. So I’m sure I didn’t want to hear something like that.

“She didn’t appear to be hurt or upset in any way.”

Ultimately, she was spooked when she saw a wanted poster for Wuornos, moving home to Ohio and later aiding the police as a key witness.

Tyria worked with police to help elicit a confession from Aileen, who said she ‘still loved her’ before her death

Moore was contacted by police while Wuornos was arrested for an outstanding warrant to try and convince her to work with them to get a conviction.

She eventually agreed, not wanting to be linked to her girlfriend’s crimes, managing to get Wuornos' confession in return for immunity.

Speaking about the killer in a police interview included in Netflix’s documentary Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, she said: “She knows how to work around things. She could lie her way out of anything. And that’s mainly why I wanted her to confess to the murders. It’s because I knew she could lie her way out of it.”

Wuornos confessed in a jail phone call, telling Moore: “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.”

In footage from the doc, the serial killer admitted that Moore hadn’t contacted her since the year of her trial in 1992, with her being executed by lethal injection in 2002.

She said: “I always miss her, and I’ll always love her. I’ll be thinking about her the day I’m executed. I loved her so bad.”

Since then, Moore appears to have vanished from the public eye.

Actress Jessie Lee plays a fictionalised version of Moore in the new Monsters series.