Case #4001275
Christopher Wilder
Investigator - Madison Rodrigues
Open - 26/2/1984
Closed - 13/4/1984
His first known assault was committed in 1976 against the 16-year-old daughter of a Boca Raton family that had hired him to work on their home. Wilder lured the girl into his truck, promising to take her to someone who might offer her a job. The girl fended him off by saying she was afflicted by venereal disease, she pressed charges.
Three years later, in 1979, he was arrested and charged with assaulting a 17-year-old Tennessee girl, he told her he was a representative of the Barbizon modelling school, and was interested in giving her a try out. During the “session,” Wilder ordered her to pose for cheesecake photos holding a slice of pizza that had been laced with drugs. Afterward he forced the girl to engage in sex with him in a pickup truck. Wilder was eventually sentenced to five years’ probation and was ordered to see a sex therapist twice a month.
While in Miami for the Grand Prix, Wilder ran into 20-year-old Rosario Gonzalez, an aspiring fashion model who was handing out free samples of aspirin. She had met Wilder two years earlier in 1982, and had posed for the cover of a romance book according to her fiancé. Gonzalez was never seen after February 26, 1984. She was Wilder’s first known murder victim.
Rosairo Gonzalez
A week later, 23-year-old Elizabeth Kenyon vanished from a Coral Gables shopping centre. The former Orange Bowl queen was a finalist in the 1982 Miss Florida contest and had been dating Wilder off and on. During the Grand Prix, Kenyon spurned his offer of marriage out of respect to the wishes of her parents, who objected to the sixteen-year age difference between the two. Following Kenyon’s disappearance, a gas station attendant told the woman’s parents that he had seen Wilder in the girl’s company. The distraught father pleaded with the FBI to place Wilder under surveillance, but the agents refused on the grounds of insufficient evidence and hearsay.
Elizabeth Kenyon
Teresa Ferguson of Indian Harbor Beach, Florida, left her home on March 18, 1984, to shop at a nearby mall. Five days later the body of the dark-haired 21-year-old woman was found 70 miles west of Terry's hometown, dumped in a snake-infested canal. The body was indentified from dental charts as Teresa.
Teresa Ferguson
A day later Wilder claimed his next victim, 24-year-old Terry Diane Walden of Beaumont, Texas. When she failed to pick up her daughter at the local day-care centre, school officials phoned her husband, John David, a machine operator at the Goodyear Chemical plant. Her body was found floating face down in the canal. She had been bound, gagged, and knifed to death.
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Terry Walden
On March 26, 1984, a fisherman in Milford Lake, Kansas, found he body of Suzanne Logan, a 20-year-old woman floating in a resovior some clothes removed, face badly bruised, small cuts of back, pubic hair shaved & locks of hair cut off. Wilder had abducted from her from an Oklahoma City shopping mall. Logan was another one of Wilder’s modelling hopefuls
Suzanne Logan
18 year old Sheryl Bonaventura of Grand Junction, Colorado, became Wilder’s sixth victim on March 29, 1984. Shortly before leaving for Aspen on a pleasure trip. Before meeting with a girlfriend, Sheryl stopped at a local mall where she met Wilder, who told her that he was looking for a model. She was murdered later that day.
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Sheryl Bonaventura
Two days later Wilder turned up at the Meadows Mall in Las Vegas, Nevada, where an amateur photographer took a candid shot of Wilder as he was leaving the mall with Michelle Korfman, the 17-year-old daughter of a casino executive. She became Wilder’s eighth victim. She was found over a mont after Christopher's death in the Angeles National Forest, she was badly decomposed and it took almost a month to notify her family of the identification.
Michelle Korfman
The serial killer continued to California. On April 4, 1984, he picked up Tina Marie Riscio, a 16-year-old girl, at a dress shop in Torrance, California. For the next three days he held her hostage, torturing her with a 110-volt prod. Under the penalty of death, Wilder made the girl his unwitting accomplice. Together they drove eastward just as the FBI added Wilder’s name to its Ten Most Wanted list.
Wilder and Riscio arrived in Merrillville, Indiana, a few days later. At an area shopping mall Riscio approached 16-year-old Dawnette Sue Wilt and asked if she would like to become a fashion model. The girl followed Riscio back to Wilder’s car to sign a consent form. The killer then pulled a gun and ordered her into the car. Wilder proceeded to Barrington, New York, where he repeatedly stabbed Dawnette and left her for dead in a patch of woods on April 12, 1984 exept she wasnt really dead, she fooled Wilder into believe she was. The wounded girl, broke free of her bonds and flagged down a passing truck. In the hospital the severely wounded girl provided police with enough detail for them to identify her assailant as Wilder.
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Dawnette Wilt
In Victor, New York, Wilder again used Riscio to lure 33-year-old Beth Dodge to his car. He had told Tina he would kill her if she did anything unusual. He drove the hostage car with the hostage, and Tina followed in her car. For her to try to escape then would have been foolish. He had told her he was a race-car driver and could easily catch her. Beth Dodge was shot to death near a mal land dumped in a road side gravel pit.Wilder had murdered her for her car.
Beth Dodge
Arriving in Boston, Wilder bought Tina Riscio an airplane ticket for her return trip to Los Angeles. He handed her some "going-away-money". Tina Riscio notified police about her cross-country trek with the serial killer. During the entire time the girl was away, Tina's mother believed her 16 year old daughter was out "partying."
Wilder drove Beth Dodge's Firebird north toward the Canadian border On April 13, Wilder tried to grab another girl. He saw a 19 year old by the side of the road who's car had broken down. Wilder offered to give her a lift to get gas, but when he passed the gas station, she knew something was wrong. She insisted he stop, so he pulled out a gun. However, he had to slow down in one place, and she grabbed the opportunity to open the door and leap out. Rolling away, she managed to escape.
Wilder dumped several articles, such as his camera, suitcase and things he'd taken from the victims, and then drove into New Hampshire. At a service station in Colebrook about 12 miles from the Canadian border, he drew the attention of two state troopers. They looked at him as he stood talking to the attendant and thought he looked like the man on the FBI posters, videos on television and reports. His tan indicated he wasn't from around there. The troopers pulled in and got out of their car. They called out to him, and he dove inside the vehicle, apparently going for a gun. In the scuffle, one trooper, Leo Jellison, jumped on his back, grabbing for the .357 magnum, and two shots were fired. One went through Wilder into the troopers chest lodging his liver. The second went into Wilders heart, obliterating it. He died on the spot. It was Friday the 13th, it had been 47 days since the first reported disappearance and he had spent twenty-six days on the run. His luck had just run out.
Found in his possession, listed by both James and Gibney, were the .357 revolver, extra ammunition, hand cuffs, rolls of duct tape, rope, a sleeping bag, his business partners credit card, a specially designed electrical cord for stunning the women he picked up and a novel by British author John Fowels called The Collector.
Biblography
http://www.crimerack.com/2012/05/christopher-wilder-case-file/
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/wilder/10.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wilder
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/wilder/10.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wilder
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