Yeah, cheery title for a thread I know, but anyone else catch this excellent doccumentary on Channel 4 tonight? Very stark and harrowing piece of work by Nick Broomfield about Aileen Wuornos, "America's first female serial killer", a prostitute who murdered seven men in 1990 and was executed by the State of Florida in October 2002.

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer left me feeling ambivilent: here's a woman who murdered seven people, yet she's also, to quote Robert Ebert, been trashed by life. Abused constantly from an early age, she was clearly insane, but was put to death by Jeb Bush just before he stood for re-election on a pro-capital punishment ticket.
Aileen herself was darkly captivating, a woman of absolute conviction (excuse the pun) in whatever insanity she currently believed, and whose jet-black, unblinking eyes filled the screen like fathomless pools. You got the feeling she was an enigma to herself as much as she was to others.

Whatever your views on the death penalty, the doccumentary showed a justice system in tatters, with cops flogging movie rights to Hollywood studios before Aileen's trial was even complete and a patently unfit woman being sacrificed on the alter of an election campaign. The only sureity of the film is that something is rotten in the state of Florida.

(Edited by Byron 12/05/2004 00:53)