By her mid-20s, she had drifted to Florida, a state that would soon learn her name in the worst possible way. In 1989, a man’s body was found deep in the woods near Daytona Beach, shot multiple times. Two weeks later, police linked the murder to a woman who had recently been seen hitchhiking nearby.

When they found her, she confessed, not just to one killing, but to several. One after another, men across central Florida were turning up dead.

She claimed she was defending herself and that every man had tried to assault her, that she’d been fighting for her life.

“I’m not a man-hater,” she told the Orlando Sentinel in March 1991. “I’ve been through so many traumatic experiences that either I’m walking in shock or I’m so used to being treated like dirt that I guess it’s become a way of life.”