Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Beauty Queen Killer” Christopher Wilder Pt. 1

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Posing as a modeling agent in the 1980s, Wilder lured young girls and women to secluded places where he would photograph them in explicit poses before sexually assaulting them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of kidnapping, sexual assault, rape, child abuse, and murder that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Today's episode features some crimes that are still officially considered unsolved, but we've included the version of events that the evidence indicates is most likely. 38-year-old Christopher Wilder leaned against his Porsche, watching the other drivers speed around the racetrack the day before he had entered the Miami Grand Prix, but it wasn't the action on the track that drew Wilder back. It was something else.

Wilder shifted his attention to one of the promotional models working the sponsor tents. He thought 20-year-old Rosario Gonzalez had beautiful Auburn hair. Wilder got in his Porsche and checked the clock. The girls were just about to take their lunchtime break. As if on cue, Rosario waved goodbye to the other models and trotted across the parking lot towards her car. Wilder's heart beat faster. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for.

Wilder idled his car up next to Rosario and leaned out the window to chat. He said that he'd noticed her the day before and thought she was beautiful. Rosario quickly flashed her engagement ring, but Wilder assured her he wasn't propositioning her for a date. He was offering her a job. In addition to being a race card driver, he was also a photographer. As proof, he pointed to his professional camera on the back seat. With his help, Rosario could be on the cover of fashion magazines around the world.

All she had to do was get in the car. Wilder flashed a handsome grin and promised to have her back in time to see the next race. convinced Rosario opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. Wilder put the car in gear and drove out of the lot, but they didn't return after lunch, or even later that afternoon. Rosario would never be seen or heard from ever again. Hey, I'm Greg Poulson. This is serial killers, a Spotify original from Parkast.

Every episode we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we'll tour the life of Christopher Wilder, also known as the Beauty Queen Killer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other originals from Parcast for free on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today, we'll cover how Christopher Wilder went from an innocuous child to a brutal serial killer. Next time, we'll follow Wilder as you. embarks on a cross-country killing spree across the U.S.

We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify.

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on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavatheater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. We often imagine monsters lurking in the darkness,

waiting for the perfect time to strike. But the worst monsters, the real monsters, walk amongst us in the light of day. Nowhere is truly safe, not a brightly lit shopping mall or even a crowded racetrack. And real monsters will use your own ambitions against you. With friendly grins and empty promises, they'll lure you in by offering you everything you've always wanted.

FAME, fortune, a modeling career, and just when you think you're going to get it, they'll take everything from you, including your life. One of those monsters was Christopher Bernard Wilder. Born during World War II in Sydney, Australia, Wilder's first moments were traumatic. During the delivery, Wilder struggled to breathe, and doctors feared that he would die. A priest was rushed into the room to read Wilder his last rights. Miraculously, after being preyed over, the baby's vital signs began to improve. Before long, Wilder was in the clear.

Of course, Wilder doesn't remember his first brush with death, but he did claim to remember the second. When Wilder was two years old, he nearly drowned. Some accounts say that he fell into a pool, others that he was at the beach. Either way, the incident had lasting effects on Wilder's health. He suffered from convulsions and fainting spells for the next few years. The convulsions were painful and arguably affected Wilder's mental health. These were his formative years. He wanted to be strong like his father, who was a war hero, but growing up sick made him feel helpless and weak. He couldn't wait to grow up and be a strong adult.

But as he started to age, these fantasies evolved into something darker. He didn't just want to be strong. He wanted to be powerful. And perhaps in Wilder's young mind, he associated with power with dominance. Because in these new fantasies, Wilder pictured himself hurting people. Despite these disturbing thoughts, Wilder's childhood was actually a pleasant one. His parents, a U.S. naval officer and an Australian woman, were in a healthy relationship and provided Wilder a stable, middle-class life in Sydney. He was an average student who attended good schools, held dual citizenship in both America and Australia, but a Instead of using these privileges to better himself, Wilder became spoiled and entitled.

In his early teens, Wilder reportedly avoided his responsibilities at home and at school, spending most of his time hanging out with friends and drinking on the beach. Wilder was a popular presence there. No longer considered sickly, he started surfing and developed an athletic build. Girls took notice, and as his confidence grew, he learned how to be charming and funny. On the outside, Wilder had succeeded in becoming the strong person he had always wanted to be. But inside, he was still harboring dark thoughts, and his fantasies of dominance became more sexualized. He'd noticed the girls at the beach, but instead of imagining taking them on a date, he fantasized about raping them.

Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. As a note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist. but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Wilder's worrying fantasies about sexual violence were early indicators of his later killings. Criminology professor Dr. Scott Bond states that serial killers program themselves in childhood

to become murderers through a progressively intensifying loop of fantasy. That means that the more Wilder fantasized about violent sexual acts, the more he normalized them. and once those violent sexual fantasies felt natural to him, he imagined increasingly escalating violence. Potential serial killers can go through this cycle for years before ever attacking their first victim. Although Wilder's loop had just begun,

he was already having difficulty keeping his burgeoning sexual urges in check. So he started acting on them. In the early 1960s, when Wilder was 15, or 16 years old, he started sneaking out of the house. But Wilder wasn't meeting up with friends or taking joyrides. He was prowling his suburban neighborhood in search of attractive women. And when he found one, likely another teenager, Wilder would follow her home and wait. He would watch them through their windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of them naked. One night, a concerned neighbor spotted Wilder and called the police. But when the authorities arrived,

they let Wilder go with only a warning. The lack of punishment proved to Wilder that there was nothing wrong with what he was doing, so he started imagining what else he could get away with. Around 1963, when Wilder was 17, he went to the beach with a couple of his friends. There, they surfed and drank alcohol. Eventually, Wilder decided that they should find a girl to talk to.

The boys walked on the beach until they found a 13-year-old girl sitting alone. in the sand. At first, they were friendly, offering the girl alcohol and telling her she was pretty. But when Wilder sat down next to her, the young girl got nervous and tried to leave. Wilder, drunk on alcohol and entitlement, grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. He dragged the young girl behind a sand dune. Then his friends watched as Wilder raped her. When Wilder was done, he walked away as if nothing happened. The 13-year-old managed to find help and reported the incident to police.

Since Wilder was known in the area, he was quickly arrested. At the trial, Wilder's parents came to his defense and argued for leniency. They said he was a good kid with a bright future ahead of him. The judge agreed. Wilder was sentenced to a year of probation and ordered to undergo counseling. At counseling, Wilder admitted that he had violent fantasies. Concerned, a doctor reportedly ordered him to undergo a more extreme treatment, electroshock therapy.

Wilder hated the treatments. They made him feel helpless and out of control. And instead of curing him, they only fueled his dark fantasies. He started to imagine himself tying up young women and shocking them. It was obvious that the counseling had failed Wilder. Now it would only be a matter of time before his fantasies overtook him and forced him to act. The only question was, when and where. It's possible those questions were answered in 1965 at a place called Wanda Beach, about 18 miles south of Sydney. On January 11th, a pair of 15-year-old girls,

Marianne Schmidt and Christine Cherok were brutally attacked while walking together on the beach. The best friends were assaulted and stabbed to death. Their bodies were found the next day buried under a few inches of sand. The tragic crime, which was widely publicized, shocked the beachside communities around Sydney and led to one of the largest investigations in Australian history. It's important to note that the Wanda Beach murders are still unsolved,

and Christopher Wilder's involvement has never been proven. But in the late 1960s, he was listed as a suspect. By that time, life had returned to normal on the beaches around Sydney. Memories of the murders had faded. Parents, children, and young girls who lived in the area, let their guard down as they returned to the area to relax. And Wilder, now 21, also returned to his old haunt. According to Duncan McNabb, author of The Snapshot Killer, it was around this time that Wilder met a 20-year-old schoolteacher who will call Jane.

Wilder noticed Jane and her 15-year-old sister walking on the beach. Wilder struck up a conversation with them and asked the sisters to join him the next day. Charmed by the handsome man with the American accent, they agreed. The following day, Wilder was a gentleman. He showed Jane and her sister his favorite surf spots and the best places to swim.

After they stayed in touch, eventually becoming good friends. Wilder and Jane grew closer and started to date, but she noticed that Wilder's eyes never strayed far from her teenage sister. As time passed, the girl's father noticed too. When he confronted Wilder about eyeing Jane's sister, Wilder assured him that he was only interested in Jane. But other incidents followed. At a dinner party at Jane's house, Wilder got angry and punched through a window.

Another time, he flirted with Jane's mother when they were alone. But Wilder's disturbing behavior didn't dissuade Jane from continuing the relationship. Then, in February 1968, against the wishes of her parents, Jane and Wilder got married, but they would not live happily ever after. In fact, according to most accounts, the union wouldn't even last a week. As soon as Jane moved in with Wilder, he started acting out his repressed fantasies. Wilder forced Jane to have sex multiple times a day, often in painful positions. And if she refused, he beat her.

But the misery didn't end there. Jane believed Wilder wanted her dead. On two occasions, Jane lost control of her car because it had been drained of brake fluid. Another time, she woke up to the smell of gas. When she got up and found the stove turned on, she saw Wilder waiting outside. It didn't end there. On multiple occasions, Wilder called Jane's sister and offered to take pictures of her. Suspicious, Jane started going through his belongings.

Jane reportedly found a briefcase hidden in a dresser drawer. Inside were photos of women posing nude for him. After a year of dating and a week of marriage, Jane had finally reached her limit. She packed a bag and left for good. But when Jane arrived at her parents' house, she did. didn't want to talk about her failed marriage. Instead, she told her mother that, based on Wilder's violent behavior, she believed he was responsible for the Wanda Beach murders. The next morning, Jane and her mother called the police and told them about their suspicions.

It was a long shot, but they figured any information would help. Police promised to question Wilder, but when they arrived at Wilder's apartment, they found it empty. After hearing that police wanted to talk to him about the Wanda Beach murders, Wilder panicked. Like a man desperate to keep a secret, Wilder packed his bags and disappeared into the night. Coming up, Wilder flees Australia. Listeners, looking for something a little spooky to dig into? Then check out the Spotify Original from Parcast, superstitions. Every Wednesday, explore the varying beliefs people are

around the world fear and follow in this eerie news series. Each week step inside stories that illustrate the horror, weirdness, and truth behind humanity's strangest codes of conduct. Why do black cats represent witchcraft? What's the point of carrying a rabbit's foot around with you? And how come certain films seem cursed and others don't? Each new episode of superstitions presents a story that unlocks the mysteries of unorthodox traditions and surreal phenomena.

They may seem mystical or illogical or completely insane, but then again, do they? Follow the podcast series superstitions free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity,

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Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbounce.lily.com. Now back to the story. In 1969, 24-year-old Christopher Bernard Wilder went on the run. His wife, Jane, told police that she believed Wilder was responsible for the Wanda Beach murders. She didn't have any hard evidence involving the murders. However, due to Wilder's prior rape charge, they listed him as a suspect. When Wilder learned that he was a suspect, he panicked.

Before police could question him, he packed up his camera, boarded a plane, and left the country. When the plane touched down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Wilder stepped off. and looked around. In a way, it was a lot like his old home, sunshine and beaches, but Wilder didn't want to make the same mistakes here that he had in Australia. He genuinely wanted to start over. Skilled in construction, Wilder found plenty of work. At the time, Florida was going through a building boom, and opportunities were abundant. So much so that a few years later, Wilder was able to start his own contracting business. Almost immediately, it was successful. and the money allowed Wilder to live lavishly.

He bought a large house with an indoor swimming pool, a luxurious boat, and flashy cars. But what Wilder couldn't buy was peace of mind. Desperate to suppress his violent urges, Wilder tried hard to distract himself. He entered his sports cars into racing tournaments, surfed, and hosted dinner parties at his home. Considered a playboy,

Wilder went on dates to fill his knights. But the more Wilder tried to hide his violent side, the stronger it got. Eventually, Wilder's fantasies overwhelmed him. Against his better judgment, he got out his old camera and started taking pictures of women again. Dr. Fred Berlin, a psychiatrist specializing in sex offenses, studies the overwhelming urges felt by some serial killers. He states that in these particular cases, the intensity of the craving is too painful not to satisfy it.

Berlin explains that the urges felt by killers like Christopher Wilder are more of an obsession. They wake up, fixated on them, and go to sleep the same way. In these cases, it's only a matter of time before those obsessions become reality. Killers experiencing these obsessions will move incrementally. For instance, they may imagine themselves stabbing someone, Then, unable to shake the thought, they'll buy a knife. Next, they'll carry it without intending to use it until one day they do.

But instead of a knife, Wilder wielded a camera. Back in Australia, Wilder's favorite place to approach teenage girls was on the beach. In Florida, 26-year-old Wilder discovered a better place to go, the local mall. In the 1970s, the mall was considered a safe enough place for teenagers. to hang out without their parents. It was these innocent, naive teenage girls that Wilder targeted. As they searched for the perfect outfit, Wilder stalked them. Using his camera as a prop, Wilder pretended that he was a modeling agent.

He told the unsuspecting teens that they were perfect for an upcoming job he was casting. Although most of the girls were wary of Wilder, some of the more impressionable young women agreed to let him photograph them. they found themselves in a frightening situation. Wilder lured young women away from the mall to a more scenic and isolated setting. There his tone changed. As he photographed the girls, he demanded they take off their clothes. Most of them suddenly realizing they were alone, were too afraid to say no. When some of the teenagers complained to police, Wilder was arrested.

But while he'd been arrested for sexual assault in Australia, his criminal record in the U.S. was relatively clean. Instead of jail time or even probation, Wilder was ordered to pay a small fine for disorderly conduct. Once again, Wilder had been led off the hook. There was nothing left to dissuade him from acting on his powerful urges. In the late 1970s, a family hired Wilder to help up with their home renovations. While on the job, he found that they had a teenage daughter. The 31-year-old Wilder managed to lure her into his truck. Then he forced her to perform oral sex on him. After Wilder released her, the student told her parents what he had done.

They called the police, and Wilder was arrested for sexual battery. It appeared that the law had finally caught up with Wilder. During questioning, Wilder reportedly admitted to frequently masturbating to the thought of raping young girls. But Wilder defended his actions. He blamed his crime on his underlying anxiety problems, while alleging that the encounter had been consensual. Despite all the evidence, for reasons unknown, the jury acquitted Wilder. Wilder left the courtroom feeling relieved, but the close call had rattled him.

Something about being locked up in a jail cell scared him. Perhaps it reminded him of how he felt during electroshock therapy, powerless and weak. Regardless, it may have been at that moment that Wilder decided he would never go to prison no matter what. That didn't mean he would stop attacking young women. It only meant that over the next four years, he would perfect his methods. In 1980, 35-year-old Wilder drove his pickup truck to the Palm Beach Mall, grabbed his camera, and walked inside. Wilder took his time, skulking around the mall, waiting for an opportunity. He noticed two teenage girls shopping in the back of a store.

With a charming grin, Wilder approached the girls. He flashed a fake business card that said he was a modeling agent and told them it was their lucky day. Wilder claimed that he was shooting a magazine ad for a pizza restaurant. He told the two girls that he wanted them to be in it. To sweeten the deal, Wilder told them he'd pay them $75 each. Excited by the prospect of becoming real ones, models, the teenage girls readily agreed.

Wilder and the girls drove to another mall nearby. There, he snapped a couple of photos of them standing next to a pizza place. After they finished the shoot, Wilder bought each girl a slice of pizza and offered to drive them back to the other mall. But when they got back to his pickup truck, Wilder suddenly remembered something. He sent one girl back into the mall on a fake errand, leaving him all alone with the other teenager. When Wilder bought the girl's pizza, he sprinkled drugs over one girl's slice. Now as she sat in the truck, she felt dizzy and laid down on the bench seat. While she was drugged, Wilder raped her.

We're not sure exactly what happened next, but what we do know is that Wilder eventually let the teenager go, and his plan to go undetected backfired because afterwards she reported the rape to police. Once again, Wilder was arrested. As the police cuffed him, the fear of ending up behind bars returned. At the trial, Wilder was convicted of sexual assault, but shockingly, the judge declined to issue him any jail time. Instead, Wilder received five years of probation and sex therapy. The failures of justice didn't end there.

Wilder manipulated a sex therapist into believing he was making progress. He managed to obtain a travel permit from the courts, claiming that seeing his parents would help his treatment. The courts agreed, and on December 6, 1982, Wilder packed his camera into a bag and boarded a plane to Sydney, Australia. But when he landed, he didn't go see his parents. Instead, he rented a car and drove to a place called Manly Beach, seven miles north of Sydney. There, 37-year-old Wilder took his camera and walked through the crowd, searching for the right girl to meet his needs. He didn't have to wait long. Wilder noticed a 16-year-old girl named Fiona Parsons getting out of her father's car. As her dad drove away, Wilder approached her with a friendly smile.

Using the same spiel he had in America, Wilder told Fiona that she had the perfect body for modeling. He bragged that he could make her famous. To show that he was serious, he offered her $100. Fiona believed every word. As she imagined herself becoming a famous model, Wilder led her to a secluded part of the beach. There, he told her to lay down on the sand and smile for the camera. It didn't take long for Wilder to get aggressive.

He demanded that Fiona take off her clothes and pose in a variety of sexual positions. Fiona complied. Eventually, Wilder realized that Fiona wasn't doing what he said because she feared him. She was doing it to please him. He wanted to see what else she could do for him, so he asked her to help him find another model to photograph. Fiona agreed, and together they walked down the beach. Eventually, a beautiful teen girl sitting in the sand caught Wilder's eye.

He told Fiona exactly what to say and sent her over. Following Wilder's orders, Fiona told the girl that she was a model and that Wilder was her agent. Fiona explained to the girl that she could be a model too. All she had to do was let Wilder take some photos of her. Put at ease by someone her own age, the teenager agreed. Wilder, eager to be alone with the girl, told Fiona to wait for them to get back. While they were gone, Fiona thought about her. leaving, but something inside made her stay.

A short time later, Fiona saw the other girl walking down the beach, crying. When Fiona asked her why, the girl said that Wilder had forced her to take off her clothes. He had photographed her, and then abruptly left. Fiona's heart raced in her chest as she ran down the beach looking for Wilder. When she realized he was gone, Fiona didn't feel relieved. She felt abandoned. Fiona was proof that with the right approach, Wilder was capable of manipulating young girls into doing whatever he wanted. But while Fiona may have been an extreme example, she wouldn't be the last.

Three weeks later, on December 28, 1982, Wilder returned to Manly Beach. As he walked in the sun, he saw two 15-year-old girls hanging out with their friends. Wilder approached them, and using the same methods that he had with Fiona, tried to lure them away from the group. He wanted to take the two girls to a more isolated spot to photograph them. The girl's friends pleaded with them not to go, but like Fiona, they were blinded by Wilder's tactics. After he offered each girl $75, they agreed.

But as Wilder and the two girls drove away, the group of friends got a description of his car. Wilder drove the girls to a secluded part of the beach, where his demeanor quickly changed. Like Fiona, he ordered them to take off their clothes and pose in sexual positions. Frightened by the sudden shift in Wilder's personality, the two girls did as they were told. As Wilder continued to take photos of the two girls, he worked himself into a frenzy, feeding off their fears. Unable to control himself any longer, Wilder told the girls to get to. get into the car. Wilder drove the terrified girls back to his hotel room. There he tied them to the

bed and threatened to hurt them if they screamed. Then he sexually assaulted them for hours. Meanwhile, back on the beach, the girl's friends waited for their return, worried that something bad had happened. They found a police officer. A perceptive officer must have remembered a report three weeks prior of a man taking photos of a teenager on the beach. They radioed for the other units to be on the lookout for Wilder's car. A patrol officer driving by a hotel spotted the car in the parking lot. Cautiously, they approached Wilder's room and knocked on the door. A dishevelled Wilder answered.

He immediately confessed to having taken the photos and claimed to have thrown them away. After searching his room, the police found his cat. but no film. Once he'd admitted to each of the girls' allegations, the officers arrested Wilder. Finally, he'd get the punishment he deserved. Up next, Wilder returns to Florida and begins his road trip of death. Now back to the story. In 1982, 37-year-old Christopher Bernard Wilder was arrested in Australia for kidnapping and sexually assaulting two teenage girls. Less than a month after his arrest, Wilder arrived at court for his committal hearing. As he listened to the charges, he appeared calm and extremely confident.

So much so that Wilder insisted on returning to the U.S. Astonishingly, the judge sided with him and granted Wilder release with a bond of $400,000. Wilder's father, who had always supported his son no matter the charges, paid for his release. Wilder's passport was returned. He immediately boarded a plane to leave the country. Once again, the judicial system had failed to put Wilder behind bars, but instead of feeling invincible, as he had when he was younger, Wilder realized the walls were closing in.

Not only did he have a court date set in Australia that he couldn't miss, but his urges were becoming less controllable. As his plane took off, Wilder realized that the only way to stay out of trouble was to stop getting caught. That meant keeping his victims quiet permanently. In 1983, shortly after Wilder arrived back home in Florida, he went for a drive in his white El Camino. On a quiet neighborhood road, he noticed two sisters, aged 10 and 12,

walking down the sidewalk. Wilder stopped his car next to the girls and waved them over. When the sisters got close, Wilder pulled out a gun and ordered them to get in the back seat. Too scared to run, the two girls did as they were told. Wilder then drove the girls west a little outside of the city to an uninhabited part of the county. There, he pulled over and told the sisters to get out. Wilder threw a tarp down on the marshy grass and told the girls to lay down. Then, amidst the swarming mosquitoes, he beat and raped them.

Though Wilder was never tried for this crime, available evidence has made detectives close to the case, certain of his involvement. Obviously, Wilder's violent urges were out of control, and as time passed, they only got worse. Criminology professor, Dr. Scott Bonn, has spent years studying the... uncontrollable urges. He states that a serial killer may not even understand his compulsion to kill, but it is both undeniable and uncontrollable when the urge arises. So when Wilder stopped his car next to the two sisters walking on the sidewalk, he felt that he had no choice but to abduct them. A year later, Wilder's urges became so strong that he started acting on them much more frequently. In 1984, when Wilder was 38, he entered his Porsche into the Miami Grand Prix.

There, he saw a 20-year-old woman named Rosario Gonzalez working as a promotional model. Knowing she would be there the next day, Wilder returned to the racetrack with his camera. When Rosario went on break, he reportedly approached her and asked her if she was serious about becoming a model. Wilder allegedly convinced Rosario that he was not only a race car, driver, but he was also an entertainment agent. Rosario couldn't believe her luck and believed this was her big break. Wilder told Rosario that they needed to go somewhere scenic to take the photos. He opened the door and told her to get in. That night, Rosario's parents demanded to file a missing person's report on their daughter. It was so out of character for Rosario not to call them that

they were certain something had happened to her. Surprisingly, the police started their investigation right away, questioning people who were at the track that day. But it was too late. While Rosario's body has never been found, it's widely believed that Wilder killed her shortly after leaving the track. A week later, on March 5th, Wilder saw a woman he'd once dated, 23-year-old Elizabeth Kenyon, filling up her car at a gas station.

Elizabeth was a Miss Florida finalist and former Orange Bowl princess. She worked as a teacher for emotionally disturbed students and had hopes of returning to modeling. Shortly before, Wilder had proposed marriage, but she turned him down, partly over their 15-year age difference. The rejection stung Wilder, so when he saw her at the gas station, he likely became enraged. Elizabeth would have been surprised to see Wilder pull up in his gray Cadillac, but she would have wouldn't have been scared. The two must have remained friends after their breakup, because according to a clerk at the station, they appeared cordial and relaxed. But soon after, Elizabeth was reported missing.

After weeks with no progress in the case, Elizabeth's family hired a private detective. He tracked down the gas station clerk who remembered seeing Elizabeth talking to Wilder. The investigator was surprised. Wilder had claimed that he hadn't seen Elizabeth for weeks. The investigator went to the police station and looked up Wilder's arrest record. The long list of sexual assaults on Wilder's rap sheet sent a shiver down the investigator's spine. From then on, Wilder was the main suspect. But the police insisted that they still did not have enough evidence to act.

Possibly fearing Wilder would flee for Australia, one officer leaked what information he had to the press. And on March 16th, three days after his 39th birthday, Wilder opened up a copy of the Miami Herald. Although the article didn't name him personally, it did report that a wealthy Australian sports car fan was suspected in the disappearances of Rosario Gonzalez and Elizabeth Kenyon. There was no doubt about it. They were talking about him. Wilder felt the walls closing in.

Back in Australia, his court date for kidnapping and sexual assault was quickly approaching, and now in Florida he had been connected with two disappearances. It was time to get out of town. But first, Wilder had to get rid of any evidence that might be in his house. For two solid days, he scrubbed it from top to bottom, disposing of anything that could link him to a crime, even his precious photographs. Then he packed his best camera equipment into the trunk of his Chrysler New Yorker and sped away. Wilder had finally admitted to himself he was a monster.

He had also given up on the idea that he would ever return home. Understanding that this was a one-way ticket, Wilder decided to go on a cross-country killing spree, one that would allegedly start that very same day. March 18, 1984. Wilder drove two hours north to Merritt Island. He eased his Chrysler into the back parking lot of the Merritt Square Mall. He grabbed a camera from his trunk, calmly walked inside, and started hunting.

He saw a 21-year-old girl named Teresa Ferguson shopping. As Wilder approached her, he likely pulled out a wad of cash. Like he'd done so many times before, Wilder offered some of it to Teresa in exchange for some modeling work. Teresa agreed to step out to Wilder's car to look at his portfolio. As they walked across the parking lot, Wilder's heart beat fast in his chest. He kept talking to Teresa, hoping she wouldn't notice how secluded they were. Wilder opened the trunk of his car. As Teresa looked inside at all the camera equipment, Wilder forced her inside.

Wilder drove Teresa to an empty, marshy area known as Canaveral Groves. he pulled over next to some tall grass. Then Wilder wrapped his hands around Teresa's throat and strangled her. When he was sure she was dead, he rolled her body into the swamp. Meanwhile, Teresa's stepfather was frantically searching the mall for her. He found her car in the parking lot, but there was no sign of Teresa. As he called police for help, Wilder was also making his own call for help to a tow truck company. Wilder's car was stuck in the soft sand near the marsh.

A tow truck arrived not long after Teresa had gone missing from the mall. The driver pulled Wilder's car back to the road. Wilder thanked him and continued on his deadly cross-country trip. The last trip of a monster in search of as many victims as he could get. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with part two of Christopher Wilder's story. We'll follow his bloody trek across America and see how the law finally caught up to him. For more information on Christopher Wilder, among the many sources we used,

we found the books The Snapshot Killer by Duncan McNabb and Christopher Wilder, The True Story of the Beauty Queen Killer by Jack Rosewood, particularly useful to our research. You can find more episodes of serial killers and all other original from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler,

sound designed by Michael Motion, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Bruce Kitovich. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Adam Boland, with writing assistance by Abigail Cannon, fact-checking by Anya Bayerly, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial killers stars Greg Polson and Vanessa Richardson.

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