Police and investigators were already in pursuit of someone they believed was responsible for the killings, but no tangible leads were within view for some time. It wasn’t until they discovered the abandoned vehicle of a missing man, Peter Siems, that contained fingerprints and palm prints belonging to Wuornos that they finally had a suspect and sufficient means to identify her and track her down (she’d been using a number of aliases). Authorities apprehended her at a local bar in Port Orange, Florida and took her into custody. While evidence was still too weak to draw a connection between her and the victims, Wuornos’ girlfriend and accomplice, Tyria Moore, had been arrested in Pennsylvania around the same time Wuornos was taken by police in Florida. After agreeing to a plea deal from legal entities, Moore extracted a confession from her girlfriend over the phone and Wuornos was officially charged (per Biography).
Despite several pleas on the basis of insanity, Aileen Wuornos was convicted of first degree murder and received the death penalty. She died by lethal injection on October 9, 2002 in a Florida prison.
