Serial killer Aileen Wuornos haunts this Daytona Beach dive bar. Photo Credit: Undereal. All rights reserved.
“Oh, Aileen lets you know she’s here alright. You can feel her presence,” local barfly Ted E. Bear was almost wistful.
The owners of a Florida dive claim a serial killer haunts their bar. The Last Resort is located in Port Orange, six miles due south from the postcard vistas of Daytona Beach. A sketchy biker bar that only deals in cash. A bar where the beer is cheap and cold. The same bar where after a last cigarette, Aileen Wuornos was arrested for the murder of six men.
Wuornos Last Day at The Last Resort
Before Aileen Wuornos was arrested, she was just another regular at The Last Resort. Wuornos spent her time shooting pool and playing country songs on the jukebox. One of her favorites were Randy Travis’ Digging Up Bones. “She kept to herself. She was quiet, and never messed with anyone,” bar owner Al Bulling said.
According to the Miami New Times , on Jan. 8, 1991, Wuornos — a 34-year-old sex worker — had just been dumped by her girlfriend and was too broke to afford a $15 flop at a hotsheet motel. However, she did have enough for a few bottles of Bud and a pack of Marlboros.
In the early hours of the morning, Wuornos was arrested at the bar by two undercover officers.
‘I killed Those Men Robbed Them as Cold as Ice.’
Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003). Photo Credit: Newmarket Films.
Wuornos spent a decade on death row at the now-shuttered Broward Correctional Institution. Wuornos said that she killed the men in self-defense. However, in 2001 she sent a petition to the Florida Supreme Court and terminated her appeals.
“I killed those men robbed them as cold as ice. And I’d do it again, too. There’s no chance in keeping me alive or anything, because I’d kill again.”
Wuornos was executed by the state of Florida via lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002. Some of Wuornos’ ashes were scattered under a tree behind the bar.
The Legend Lives On
After Aileen Wuornos’ execution, staff and patrons at The Last Resort began to experience the paranormal.
Longtime regular Ted E. Bear told the New Times, “Around Oktoberfest, there was a Dollar Tree skeleton and the arm would always be missing — it kept falling off and we’d find it in weird places. It was always the left arm. I’d ask, ‘Why the left arm?’ That’s where they put the lethal injection — into her left arm.”
The bar whose slogan is “Home of ice cold beer and killer women” was also featured in the Wuornos biopic, Monster, starring Charlize Theron. █
