STARKE, Fla. -- Serial killer Aileen Wuornos was executed Wednesday, more than a decade after she murdered six men along central Florida highways while working as a prostitute.

Timeline Of Aileen Wuornos' Crimes

Wuornos, 46, was pronounced dead from lethal injection at 9:47 a.m. in Florida State Prison near Starke, said Jill Bratina, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush.

Wuornos, one of the nation's few female serial killers, had fired her attorneys and dropped her appeals despite lingering questions over her sanity.

When the curtain in the death chamber opened at 9:29 a.m., Wuornos lifted her head and looked at the audience with a surprised expression before making her final statement.

"I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I'll be back,'' Wuornos said. The Rock is a Biblical reference to Jesus.

At 9:30 a.m., the injection was administered in her right arm. About two minutes later, she stopped moving and was pronounced dead 15 minutes later.

Wuornos, 46, spent a decade on Florida's death row. She was sentenced to death six times for killing middle-aged men in 1989 and 1990.

Wuornos' death warrant was for her first murder victim, Richard Mallory, a Clearwater electronics shop owner whose body was found in 1989 in Volusia County.

During her 1992 murder trial, Wuornos testified that Mallory raped, beat and sodomized her and that she killed him in self-defense. After standing trial for Mallory's death, Wuornos pleaded guilty to five other murders in Marion, Pasco and Dixie counties.

For years, Wuornos claimed she shot the men out of self-defense while being raped and sodomized. Later, she recanted her claims, saying she wanted to make peace with God.

"I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again,'' she told the state Supreme Court. Wuornos also claimed to have killed a seventh man.

Wuornos gave her last media interview to British producer Nick Broomfield, who did a documentary on her in 1993 and is doing another. Her life story has also spawned two movies, an opera and several books.

Broomfield said the Tuesday interview was to last an hour, but she stormed out after 35 minutes.

"My conclusion from the interview is, today we are executing someone who is mad. Here is someone who has totally lost her mind,'' Broomfield said Wednesday outside the prison, where he joined reporters, photographers and death penalty foes and proponents.

Fort Lauderdale lawyer Raag Singhal wrote a letter to the state Supreme Court last month expressing "grave doubts" about Wuornos' mental condition.

Bush issued a stay and ordered a mental exam, but lifted the stay last week after three psychiatrists who interviewed her concluded that she understood she would die and why she was being executed.

State Attorney John Tanner, who watched psychiatrists interview her for 30 minutes last week, said she was cognizant and lucid. "She knew exactly what she was doing,'' Tanner said.

Wuornos joined Judy Buenoano as the only women Florida has executed since resuming the death penalty in 1976. Fifty-one men have been executed by Florida during that span.

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected two efforts to stop the execution, one from a private attorney in Tampa who expressed "serious concerns'' about Wuornos' competency, the other from an Ohio group that wanted to file an appeal on Wuornos' behalf.

Billy Nolas, who represented Wuornos in her 1992 trial in Daytona Beach, said she suffered from borderline personality disorder as a result of neglect and sexual abuse as a child. He said she was "the most disturbed individual I have represented."