Killer conclusions: in his second film on serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Nick Broomfield argues that the label "lesbian" was used to dehumanize her.

Nick Broomfield hadn't planned to make another documentary about serial killer Aileen Wuornos. She was executed in October 2002 for killing six men, all johns picked up on Florida highways over 12 months in 1989 and 1990. Broomfield's first film about her, 1992's Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, focused on how Wuornos's lawyer, her born-again Christian adoptive mother, several local police officers, and, purportedly, ex-girlfriend Tyria Moore attempted to sell Wuornos's story to Hollywood.

Then, in 2001, Broomfield was subpoenaed to testify at Wuornos's latest appeal. (His new film shows a clip from the first--of Wuornos's lawyer smoking pot before giving her legal advice.) Collaborator Joan Churchill went along to film the appeal, but neither she nor Broomfield knew that Wuornos would sabotage her own defense before their eyes, firing her lawyers and volunteering to be executed because she could not stand death row any longer.

"It became a story that one couldn't not follow," says Churchill. So they did, and the result is Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer, coproduced by HBO and Cinemax and set to open theatrically in January in selected markets before it hits cable.

The documentary stands to gain visibility from Charlize Theron's gripping performance as Wuornos in Monster; an independent film that comes out in limited release December 24.

Broomfield and Churchill dug further into Wuornos's warped childhood, traveling to the Michigan neighborhood where witnesses say that her grandfather beat her and that many local boys, including her brother, had sex with her--an before she became pregnant at 14, was turned out on the street, and even slept in the snow in a nearby forest. To Broomfield, it is all indicative of how easily society turns its back on those it doesn't want.

"I think Aileen represents an awful lot of people," he says with equal parts anger and sorrow. "There are so many people who have had similar life experiences [to Aileen's, who] are totally rejected and nonbelonging and don't have any money mid don't know how to survive. I think that's part of why [her story] means something, you know?"

Indeed, one of the most striking figures in Aileen is Dennis Allen, a fragile man who knew Wuornos when they both lived in the Michigan forest as young teenagers. Broomfield shows an old picture of Allen in full drag, which he proudly displays in his modest apartment.

"He told us stories about how he'd be picking people up on the highway as well," says Churchill. "One time he'd basically been reamed out by some monster with a screwdriver--left on the side of the road, punctured, dying, rushed to the hospital. Terrible, terrible stories. And then [he] felt so guilty because he hadn't stayed in touch with [Wuornos]."

If the film avoids any explicit discussion of Wuornos's sexuality, it's by design. "The important thing is that people deal with Aileen," Broomfield says. "The thing I saw when I first came to the story was 'lesbian man-hating prostitute blah blah blah.' I think those labels prevented one from actually looking at what her life was, who she was. It stopped people from identifying with Aileen in a kind of human way.... It let them off the hook, made it easy for them to dismiss her."

In fact, Broomfield says, Wuornos never really identified as gay. But in the film he calls Tyria Moore her "great love." When he asks in an interview if they were very close, Wuornos practically beams with joy, saying, "And I still miss her and I still love her."

Vary has also written for Entertainment Weekly.