On this day, Oct. 9, in 2002, serial killer Aileen Wuornos was executed by lethal injection in Florida.

Wuornos is sometimes called the first female serial killer. Robert K. Ressler, the FBI profiler who coined the term “serial killer,” said female predatory killers tend to know their victims, use poison and murder as a submissive partnership to a man. Wuornos, he said, was the exception. She worked alone, used a gun and victimized strangers.