When a killer prowled the northern beaches

THIRTY-TWO years ago an Australian-born American appeared in Manly Court to answer charges that he had sexually assaulted two girls.

Thirty-two years ago an Australian-born American appeared in Manly Court to answer charges that he had sexually assaulted two girls.

The court heard that on December 28, 1982, the two 15-year-old girls were approached by a man who talked to them about a career as models.

He asked them to pose for photos in Manly and later at Dee Why and Balmoral, and then in bushland at Middle Head, where he photographed them topless.

He then took the girls to Mosman, where he photographed them naked, and then drove them to Kings Cross, where he indecently assaulted them.

Despite their traumatic experience, the two girls got off comparatively lightly — the man was Christopher Wilder and after returning to the US, he murdered at least eight young women and tried to kill several more.

Christopher Bernard Wilder was born at Sawtell on the NSW north coast in 1945. His mother was Australian and his father was a former American naval officer.

In the early 1960s he pleaded guilty to his part in the gang-rape of a girl in Sydney and underwent electroshock therapy.

Christopher Wilder as a boy.

Wilder married in 1968 but left his wife a week later and the following year moved to the US and became an American citizen.

He eventually moved to Florida, and became a successful real estate agent and building contractor, and a playboy with a penchant for racing cars.

Between 1971 and 1975, Wilder was charged several times with various sexual misconduct charges and in 1980 he was charged with raping a woman after convincing her he could help her establish a career as a model. He was convicted and placed on a five-year good-behaviour bond.

In early December 1982, Wilder arrived back in Australia to visit his parents at Sawtell.

Mass murderers who killed in the US: Christopher Wilder, Charles Whitman, who killed 16 people including his wife and mother and Richard Ramirez a serial rapist and killer.

A few days later Manly police asked the Manly Daily to publicise their concerns about a man stopping young girls on The Corso and offering to help them become models.

The man was described as being aged in his 30s, about 180cm tall, of medium build, with fair hair and a reddish beard. It was Wilder.

On December 28, he met two 15-year-old girls outside the Manly Information Centre on the beachfront, talked them into modelling for him at various locations and then assaulted them.

Unfortunately the girls were from Blacktown and had not seen the police warning published in the Manly Daily.

Wilder was caught a few days later but he posted bail of $400,000 — including $350,000 from his family — and was released.

Vicki Smith was believed murdered by Christopher Wilder

He appeared before Manly Court again in August 1983, when the case was adjourned to April 1984.

But it was a court date Wilder would never make — in a fateful decision that would have ramifications in two countries he was allowed to return to the US.

On February 26, 1984, a model disappeared from the Miami Grand Prix, where Wilder was racing his Porsche, and on March 5, one of his former girlfriends, a former Miss Florida contestant, also disappeared.

Rosario Gonzales was believed murdered by Christopher Wilder.

Sheryl Bonaventura was murdered by Christopher Wilder.

Neither woman was ever found but a private investigator uncovered the links between Wilder and the women and confronted him, forcing him to go on the run.

Over the next two months — March and April 1984 — Wilder murdered at least six other women in Florida, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Nevada and New York, and tried to murder several others.

It took the authorities a few weeks to realise they had a mass killer on their hands but on April 6, the FBI finally announced that Wilder was on its 10 Most-Wanted list and broadcast his description to law-enforcement agencies in all states.

Suzanne Logan was a victim of Wilder’s killing spree.

Terri Ferguson was another of Wilder’s victims.

Wilder’s downfall followed his abduction of Tina Riscio, 16, who he assaulted but didn’t kill, and who he either released or who escaped and was able to tell the police where he was, what car he was driving and where he was heading — Canada.

But Wilder didn’t make it to Canada — on April 13, 1984, state troopers in New Hampshire spotted Wilder’s car at a service station and confronted him.

Versions of what happened next vary but it appears one of the troopers grabbed Wilder from behind and in the scuffle Wilder’s weapon discharged, firing a bullet that passed through his body and into that of the trooper, seriously injuring both of them.

Wilder is then said to have fired another bullet into his own chest, ending his life and his two-month rampage of murder across the length and breadth of America. The trooper recovered and eventually returned to his post.

A wanted poster for Christopher Wilder.

Because Wilder had failed to return to Australia to face Manly Court, his family risked losing the $350,000 surety it had posted in 1983 but in late April 1984, the Sydney Estreats Court ruled that all but the $50,000 posted by Wilder himself should be returned, sparing Wilder’s family financial ruin on top of the emotional despair its members must have felt.

Following his death, Wilder was cremated in Florida, leaving an estate worth nearly $2 million, although he owed money to the Inland Revenue Service.

A chilling postscript to the horrendous events in the US emerged four days after Wilder’s death when a woman who would only allow herself to be known as Wendy F. told the Manly Daily that she had been his girlfriend in 1964 — 20 years before his killing spree.

“I was living at Collaroy Plateau and, although our relationship was never serious, we went out together for about six months,” she said.

“My parents, whom he met, thought very highly of him.”

Wendy F. said that when her mother sent her clippings from the Manly Daily about Wilder’s indecent assault of the two young girls in December 1982, she believed he had been overtaken by “some terrible mental degeneration” that had caused him to indulge in the orgy of kidnapping, rape and murder that marked the last months of his life.

It was later revealed that Wilder was one of three main suspects for the unsolved murders of 15-year-old schoolgirls Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock at Wanda Beach, Cronulla, on January 11, 1965.

The Wanda Beach Murders remains one of the most infamous unsolved murder cases of the 1960s.

Originally published as When a killer prowled the northern beaches