The killer of the queens of beauty

The photographer lured the girls a proposal to remove them for his modeling agency. And then tortured, raped and killed

In the mid-1980s, 11 girls disappeared in the United States for 47 days. Eight of them were found dead, and on their bodies there were traces of sexual violence. The FBI began the investigation and reached the trace of a serial killer, who for years raped and killed - and not only in the United States. "Cold" tells the story of one of the most high-profile investigations in the new material of the weekly trigo-coil of the heading .

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On April 4, 1984, Tina Risico, a 16-year-old resident of Torrans, California, came to the Hickry Farms store to get there to work.

While Risico was waiting for her turn, an unfamiliar man with several cameras around her neck approached her and made a compliment of her appearance. Upon learning that Risico was looking for a job, the stranger introduced himself as Christopher Wilder, said that he had his own modeling agency, and invited her to take part in the filming. Risico later recalled that intuition told her that it was not clear with whom to get into the car is dangerous. But she decided to trust a new acquaintance and soon regretted it.

To suspect that something was going wrong, Risico began after the car turned off the road towards the forest. Once far from people, Wilder forced her to undress, threatening her pistol. He sealed his mouth Risico with tape, put it on her sunglasses and hat and took him to the hotel.

There, Wilder raped Tina Risico and tortured her with an electric shock. And then he forced to become his accomplice.

“Helplessness is a terrible feeling,” Risico recalled later. “Suddenly you understand that you are completely in the power of another person.” And in order to survive, you need to obey. I didn’t like it, but I was forced to come to terms. ”

He and Wilder moved from state to staff and abducted two more girls. Risico had to lure them into the Widler’s car under the pretext of traveling to “shooting”, and he took them to a deserted place and raped them.

By that time, the police and the FBI were already looking for Wilder. The investigation found out that he was a serial maniac who raped and killed women in different states for several months.

The first crimes

Christopher Wilder was born in 1945 in Australian Sydney and was the eldest of four sons in the family of an American naval officer. June Wilder, the mother of Christopher, was Australian.

January 4, 1963, when Wilder was 17 years old, he raped a 13-year-old girl along with his two friends. The crime occurred in a career in the town of Freshwater north of Sydney. The involvement of his friends could not prove, Wilder pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to conditionally and, according to one version, was prescribed electric shock therapy.

In 1968, at the age of 23, Wilder married Christine Papam, whom they met on the Palm Beach Beach in Sydney. However, their marriage broke up shortly after Wilder was charged with new accusations: he became a suspect of the murder of two schoolgirls - Marianne Schmidt and Critin Shark, whose bodies were found back in 1965. The Australian police tried to find the guilty for several years. By April 1966, investigators interviewed about seven thousand people - this investigation became the largest in the history of Australia. The police learned that Wilder lived near the crime scene and visited the store where she was earned by Shark.

After the divorce, the investigators interviewed Christine Pacel and her family, who testified that Wilder was aggressively and, according to Pacel, even tried to kill her twice.

The police went to Wilder’s house to interrogate him, but was late: he had already left Australia, escaping to the USA. By that time, the detectives could not reveal two more murders of young girls and suspected Wilder of this.

New hobby

In 1969, 24-year-old Christopher Wilder arrived in the city of Boynton-Beach in Florida. There he founded his business - he became a contractor for the construction of houses. He quickly got rich and was in parallel with a photograph and, with the help of this “hobby”, lured young girls to his home.

Wilder was a charming person and quickly rubbed his confidence in the girls, but many of them, after meeting, reported sexual harassment. In the period from 1971 to 1975, Wilder was accused of sexual harassment many times. The court decided to conduct a psychiatric examination by Wilder, and the doctors recorded a mental disorder and appointed him observation by a psychiatrist.

Wilder did not suffer any punishment for his attacks: the jury recognized him innocent due to insufficient evidence.

In December 1982, Wilder returned to Australia to visit his parents. In Sydney, he was accused of sexual crimes committed against two more 15-year-old girls. He met them on the beach of Manley, and then invited him to the hotel and forced to pose with naked. Wilder's parents brought a bail for him. The consideration of the case was postponed several times. By the time he was finally summoned to court, Wilder again left for the United States.

In 1983, in Florida, he stole two girls 10 and 12 years old. He threatened them with a pistol and forced them to have oral sex in a deserted place, and then disappeared.

Real gentleman

On February 26, 1984, Wilder's seven -heaps began to different states, during which he killed at least eight girls, many of whom were novice models.

Wilder's first victim was 20-year-old Rosario Gonzalez, who worked as a promoter from a pharmaceutical company on Miami Grand Prix races. The last time Gonzalez was seen at the exit from the Avtodrome: she left for the company of a man who, according to the description, looked like Wilder.

On March 5, 23-year-old Elizabeth Kenion, a school teacher and finalist of the Miss Florida contest, disappeared.

Father Kenion Bill turned to a private detective to help in the investigation of this case. The detective learned that two years before the loss of Kenion, I went on a date with a man named Christopher Wilder several times. She told her father that Christopher behaved as a “real gentleman” on their first date, and only a few meetings later made her an offer.

Wilder was 16 years older than her. She refused him, but they remained friends and supported communication. Wilder even offered her a job with a good payment. The detective contacted Wilder, but he said that he had not seen Kenon for more than a month.

The investigation was on the verge of failure, until the other ex-boyfriend Kenion decided to show a photo of the girl’s personnel refueling at Coral Gibe. Two refueling employees confirmed that Kenon really was there a few days before the loss. She was about to pay for gasoline when a man drove up to her on a gray Cadillac and paid her account.

The refueling employees seemed to be familiar: Kenion mentioned that they were going to the airport together. When the photographs were shown to the attendants, they immediately recognized Christopher Wilder. Soon the Elizabeth car was found in the parking lot of Miami International Airport.

Elizabeth’s parents recalled that they saw on TV a report on the missing Rosario Gonzalez, which was so similar to Elizabeth that they were struck by this similarity. They believed that Wilder could be involved in the disappearance of their daughter, and even thought that he could steal both girls.

The killings continue

On March 20, Christopher Wilder made another attack. He lured a 19-year-old student at the University of Florida Lindu Grover, who wanted to become a model. He offered her work, but then he tied her and took her to the motel in the state of Georgia.

There he raped and tortured it for several hours. He sealed her eyes with a superglue and beat her electric shock. However, Grover managed to break out, lock up in the bathroom and scream so loudly that Wilder escaped. Grover managed to escape, and she was able to identify the attacker in the photograph that the police showed her.

By the time the police began his search, Wilder withdrew about 50 thousand dollars from his bank accounts and disappeared.

He did not stop, even despite the persecution.

On March 18, 1984, 21-year-old Teresa Ferguson disappeared. Her body was found in the channel five days later. It was so well disfigured that for identification I had to use dental records.

On March 23, Wilder showed up in Bomont, Texas, where 24-year-old Terry Walden became his new victim. Her body was also found in the channel.

On April 1, Christopher Wilder was accidentally photographed at the models for novice models in Las Vegas, where he went as a photographer. In the picture, Wilder looked at the 17-year-old model Michelle Corfman. This was the last time Corfman was seen alive. Her strongly decomposed body was found in more than a month in the National Reserve Angeles in California. The autopsy showed that she died from strangulation due to land entering the larynx and trachea.

By this moment, the police were able to connect Wilder and with other murders committed throughout the country. On April 3, the FBI included him in the list of the 10 most wanted criminals of the United States, and the journalists called him the "killer of the beauty queens."

Wilder's last hunt

Tina, Tina Risico, helped in California, helped Wilder with two crimes. In Indiana, with her help, Wilder abducted the 16-year-old Donnett Wilt, which he raped for two days, and then hit with a knife and quitting in the forest in the north of the state of New York.

But Wilt miraculously survived and managed to crawl to the highway, where she was picked up and taken to the nearest hospital.

While Wilt testified and recovered in the hospital, Wilder abducted and raped his last victim-Beth Dodge, a 33-year-old resident of New York.

“She got out of the car with him, he told her to go forward and just shot her right in the back,” Risiko later said, then still remaining hostage by Wilder. According to her memoirs, Wilder felt that he was about to be detained. Soon he took Risico to the airport and bought her a ticket for a flight to Los Angeles.

“He asked me to kiss him on the cheek and said:“ All you need to do, baby is to write a book, ”Risico recalled.

Nine days after the abduction, Risico returned home and went to the police to report what had happened. And only a few days later Wilder was still caught.

On April 13, two policemen at a refueling in Cowlbruck, New Hampshire, identified Christopher Wilder. When he was called out, he tried to hide, and then took out a revolver to commit suicide.

Wilder managed to shoot twice: the first bullet went through and wounded the police officer who tried to detain him. Wilder made a second shot in his chest and died on the spot.

Wilder's body was cremated in Florida. After himself, he left property worth more than seven million dollars. In June 1986, the court ruled that this money should be divided between the families of victims.

Wilder was suspected of at least 10 undisclosed murders of young girls.

Giving an interview 40 years after the abduction, Tina Risico said that she was still sleeping, putting her hands over her head. So she had to sleep hostage by Wilder - he fastened her handcuffs to the bed.