Christopher Wilder

What the record shows

Christopher Bernard Wilder was an Australian-born Florida contractor and amateur race-car driver whom the FBI linked to a cross-country series of abductions and killings between February 26 and April 13, 1984. He was never arrested or tried: he died on April 13, 1984, at a gas station in Colebrook, New Hampshire, after two state troopers confronted him. United Press International reported at the time that he was sought in the deaths, rapes and disappearances of 11 young women in eight states; the FBI has since put the deaths at eight or more, according to Fox News. No court ever ruled on the allegations; every attribution here comes from investigators and reporting.

The series began in Florida. Rosario Gonzalez, 20, disappeared from the Miami Grand Prix on February 26, 1984, where Wilder was competing; Elizabeth Kenyon, 23, of Coral Gables, vanished in early March. Both knew Wilder, and neither has been found. Time reported that police first sought Wilder for questioning about them. According to Time and Wikipedia, Theresa Ferguson, 21, was led away from a Merritt Island mall on March 18 and found strangled days later, and a Florida State University student abducted in Tallahassee on March 20 escaped from him in Bainbridge, Georgia.

Wilder then moved west. Time reported that Terry Walden, 23, went missing in Beaumont, Texas, on March 23 and was found bound and stabbed three days later; that Suzanne Logan, abducted in Oklahoma City on March 25, was found stabbed to death near Junction City, Kansas, where Wilder was formally charged with her murder; that Sheryl Bonaventura, 18, disappeared from a Grand Junction, Colorado, mall on March 29; and that Michelle Korfman, 17, vanished from a Las Vegas mall on April 1. Wikipedia records that Bonaventura's body was found in Utah and Korfman's in Southern California in May.

On April 4, Tina Marie Risico, 16, was abducted from a Torrance, California, mall with an offer of $100 for a photo session, UPI reported. Wilder kept her for nine days and drove east. The FBI said he used Risico to lure Dawnette Wilt, 16, into his car at a Merrillville, Indiana, mall on April 10; Wilt was stabbed and left near Penn Yan, New York, where she was found alive on April 12. Beth Dodge, 33, was then forced from her gold Pontiac at a mall in Victor, New York, and shot once in the back; Wilder took her car. He put Risico on a flight from Boston, and she reached Torrance police on April 13; the FBI regarded her as a victim.

Wilder had been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list in the second week of April. On April 13, 1984, New Hampshire State Police Detective Leo Jellison and Trooper Wayne Fortier, alerted by the FBI, recognized the gold car at a Colebrook gas station near the Canadian border. Jellison grabbed Wilder as he reached for a .357 Magnum revolver; two shots were fired, the first passing through Wilder's chest and wounding Jellison, the second striking Wilder's heart. According to UPI, pathologist Dr. Robert Christie concluded that Wilder was not attempting suicide but was killed in the struggle while trying to shoot Jellison. Jellison recovered, and in June 1984 both officers received the state police Medal of Valor.

With Wilder dead, no charge was ever tried. Victims' families filed claims against his estate, which an arbitrator divided among them in 1986, according to Wikipedia. Florida and New York investigators have since examined Wilder as a possible suspect in earlier unsolved deaths, including those of Tammy Jo Alexander and Shari Lynne Ball, but as Fox News reported in 2024, none of those links has been confirmed.

Wilder was born in Sydney on March 13, 1945. Wikipedia records a 1963 probation sentence in Australia for a gang rape before he emigrated about 1970 and settled in Boynton Beach, Florida, where he prospered in construction and real estate. Time reported that he was convicted of attempted sexual battery in Palm Beach County in 1980, and that in 1982 he was charged in Sydney with sexual offenses against two 15-year-old girls; he was out on bail awaiting that trial when the 1984 series began.