A former prostitute convicted of killing six men was executed by lethal injection in Florida this morning, after dropping all efforts to appeal, Governor Jeb Bush's office said.
Forty-six-year-old Aileen Wuornos - arrested in 1991 and considered to be one of the first female serial killers in the United States - confessed to killing at least six men she met along the Florida highways and was given six death sentences.
"There's no point in sparing me. It is a waste of taxpayers' money," Wuornos said recently.
"I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again... I have hate crawling through my system," she wrote to the Florida Supreme Court.
Wuornos is the 56th person to be executed in the United States since the beginning of the year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and the 805th person executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Wuornos was declared dead at 9.47 a.m. (2.47 p.m. Irish time) today in a state prison in Starke, Florida. She was the second woman executed in the southeastern US state since 1976.
AFP