The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (99 page)

lured a teenage girl into his car with promises of a mod-Wilder fled after his captive managed to lock herself in eling job and then drove her to a rural area where she the bathroom, screaming and pounding on the walls to was raped. Another plea bargain to charges of

draw attention from the other motel guests.

attempted sexual battery earned him five years’ proba-The killer touched down next in Beaumont, Texas.

tion, with further therapy ordered by the court. Follow-Terry Walden, 24, informed her husband on March 21

ing his last arrest in Florida, the self-made man that a bearded man had approached her between classes complained of suffering from blackouts.

at the local university, soliciting her for a modeling job.

Visiting his parents in Australia, Wilder was accused She thanked him and declined the offer, but the conver-of kidnapping two 15-year-old girls from a beach in sation struck a chord of memory when Terry disap-New South Wales on December 28, 1982, and forcing peared two days later. Her body, torn by multiple stab them to pose for pornographic snapshots. Traced wounds, was dragged from a canal on March 26.

through the license number of his rented car, Wilder One day earlier, 21-year-old Suzanne Logan disap-was arrested on December 29, charged with kidnapping peared from a shopping mall in Oklahoma City. Her and indecent assault. His family posted $350,000 bond, body was found on March 26, floating in Milford and Wilder was permitted to return to the United Reservoir near Manhattan, Kansas. Raped and stabbed, States, his trial scheduled for May 7, 1983. Legal delays she had apparently been tortured prior to death.

postponed the case, but Wilder was scheduled to appear Sheryl Bonaventura was the next to die, abducted in court for a hearing on April 3, 1984.

from a mall in Grand Junction, Colorado, on March He never made it.

29. Another shopper placed Wilder in the mall, solicit-On February 6 Rosario Gonzalez, 20, disappeared ing women for modeling jobs, and he had been seen from her job at the Miami Grand Prix. Chris Wilder with Sheryl at a nearby restaurant that afternoon. She was driving as a contestant that day, and witnesses joined the missing list as Wilder worked his way across recall her leaving with a man who fit Wilder’s descrip-the country, killing when he paused to rest.

tion. Her body has never been found.

On April 1, 17-year-old Michelle Korfman vanished On March 4, 23-year-old Elizabeth Kenyon vanished from a fashion show at the Meadows Mall in Las after work from the school where she taught in Coral Vegas, Nevada. Snapshots taken at the time show Gables. She was seen that afternoon with Wilder at a Wilder smiling from the sidelines, watching as the local gas station, and his name was found in her teenage girls paraded past him in their miniskirts.

address book. Kenyon’s parents remembered her speak-At last, it was enough. Linked to three murders, one ing of Wilder as “a real gentleman,” unlike the various kidnapping, and four disappearances, Wilder was photographers who asked if she would model in the described by FBI spokesmen as “a significant danger”

nude. As in the February case, no trace of Kenyon has to the public at large. His name was added to the been found.

Bureau’s “Ten Most Wanted” list on April 3, 1984.

Wilder celebrated his 39th birthday on March 13, The following day, he abducted 16-year-old Tina treating himself to the peculiar gift of a 1973 Chrysler.

Marie Risico in Torrance, California, raping her that Three days later, the
Miami Herald
reported that a night and through successive evenings as they stayed in Boynton Beach race driver was wanted for questioning various motels, working their way eastward. Subjected in the disappearance of two local women. Wilder was to threats and abuse, living constantly in the shadow of not named in the story, but he got the point. Missing his death, Risico agreed to help Wilder find other victims as scheduled therapy session on March 17, he met with his he continued his long flight to nowhere.

business partner the following night. “I am not going to On April 10, Dawnette Wilt was lured away from a jail,’ he vowed, tearfully. “I’m not going to do it.” Pack-shopping mall in Merrillville, Indiana, raped and toring his car, Wilder dropped off his dogs at a kennel and tured through the course of that day and the next.

drove out of town, heading north.

Wilder tried to murder her on April 12, stabbing Indian Harbour lies two hours north of Boynton Dawnette and leaving her for dead outside Rochester, Beach. On March 19, 21-year-old Terry Ferguson dis-New York, but she managed to survive and staggered to appeared from a local shopping mall where witnesses the nearest highway, where a passing motorist discov-remembered seeing Wilder. Her body was recovered ered her and drove her to a hospital.

four days later from a Polk County canal.

Wilder’s final victim was Beth Dodge, abducted near On March 20 Wilder abducted a university coed

Victor, New York, on April 12 and shot to death in a from a shopping mall in Tallahassee, driving her across nearby gravel pit. Following the murder, Wilder drove
285

WILLIAMS, Wayne Bertram

his teenage captive to Boston’s Logan Airport, purchas-County, Florida, on March 7, 1984, her body pulled ing a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and seeing her off from a rural canal three days later; Colleen Osborne, at the gate.

15, missing from her bedroom in Daytona Beach, Wilder’s sudden attack of compassion remains

March 15, 1984. Chris Wilder was seen in Daytona unexplained, but he wasted no time in searching out that day, propositioning “models.”

another victim. On April 13 he brandished his gun at a There was a final ghoulish twist to Wilder’s story.

woman near Beverly, Massachusetts, but she fled on Following an autopsy on April 13, 1984, New Hamp-foot, unharmed. Continuing his aimless hunt, the shire pathologist Dr. Robert Christie received a tele-killer stopped for gas that afternoon in Colebrook, phone call from a man claiming to represent Harvard New Hampshire, unaware that he had reached the end University. Wilder’s brain was wanted for study, the of his run.

caller explained, in order to determine whether defect Passing by the service station, state troopers Wayne or disease had sparked his killing spree. Dr. Christie Fortier and Leo Jellison recognized Wilder’s car from agreed to deliver the brain on receipt of a written FBI descriptions. Approaching the vehicle, they called request. Two weeks later he was still waiting, and out to Wilder and saw him break for the car, diving spokesmen for Harvard’s medical school denied making inside as he went for his pistol. Jellison leaped on the any such request.

fugitive’s back, struggling for the .357 magnum, and two shots rang out. The first passed through Wilder and pierced Jellison’s chest, lodging in his liver; the second
WILLIAMS, Wayne Bertram

See
ATLANTA “CHILD

snuffed out Wilder’s life, resulting in what a pathologist MURDERS”

termed “cardiac obliteration.”

Wilder’s death, ironically, did not resolve the tangled case. Sheryl Bonaventura’s body was discovered in Utah
WOMEN as Serial Killers

on May 3, the victim of a point-blank gunshot wound.

It is often said—or was, until very recently—that “serial Michelle Korfman was found in the Angeles National killers are always men.” So entrenched was that belief Forest on May 11, but another month would pass by 1990 that the arrest of man-killer AILEEN WUORNOS

before she was identified, her family’s worst fears con-in Florida prompted journalists to report the earth-firmed. No trace has yet been found of Wilder’s early shaking discovery of “the first female serial killer.”

victims in Miami and environs.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

With his death, Chris Wilder was inevitably linked to Indeed, the earliest recorded serial killer was a other unsolved crimes. A pair of girls, aged 10 and 12, woman, identified in the history of ancient Rome sim-identified his mug shot as the likeness of a man who ply as Locusta the Poisoner. Contemporary accounts snatched them from a park in Boynton Beach in June of describe her as “notorious” in first-century Rome, but 1983 and forced them to fellate him in the nearby little is known of her handiwork today, except that she woods. His name was likewise linked with other deaths murdered both Emperor Claudius and his heir before and disappearances across two decades in Australia and her luck ran out and she was publicly executed in A.D.

America.

69.

In 1965, Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock Female offenders
do
represent a minority in serial accompanied a young man matching Wilder’s descrip-murder as in all other forms of homicide, with women tion into the beachfront dunes near Sydney; strangled, charged in some 12 percent of cases where serial killers raped, and stabbed, their bodies were discovered in a are identified. (Overall, female killers account for 10

shallow grave, but no one has been charged to date. In percent of American murders in any given year.) In 1981, teenagers Mary Hare and Mary Optiz were

terms of MODUS OPERANDI, women typically reverse the abducted from a mall in Lee County, Florida; Hare was trends of male serial killers: while
stationary
killers later found stabbed to death, while Optiz remains average barely 8 percent of the American total, a signif-among the missing. During 1982, skeletal remains of icant 29 percent of female slayers fall into that category, unidentified women were unearthed on two separate including the bulk of “BLACK WIDOWS” and nurses or occasions near property owned by Wilder in Loxa-nurse’s aides involved in MEDICAL MURDERS. In terms of hatchee; one victim had been dead for several years, the MOTIVE, although only 14 percent of American serial other for a period of months.

slayers kill strictly for cash, a whopping 41 percent of And the list goes on: Tammi Leppert, teenage model, female practitioners murder for money. The rest share kidnapped from her job at a convenience store on Mer-other motives with their male counterparts, including ritt Island, July 6, 1983; Melody Gay, 19, abducted on

“mercy” or “hero” homicides, murder for revenge, and the graveyard shift at an all-night store in Collier the occasional case of sexual sadism.

286

WUORNOS, Aileen Carol

When women emerge as TEAM KILLERS, they most

death. The first six deaths were listed as “natural,”

often murder in conjunction with a male accomplice though symptoms were consistent with deliberate suffo-and are frequently assumed (sometimes in rank defiance cation.

of the evidence) to be the willing tools of dominant Aside from her penchant for smothering infants, males. That attitude, redolent of sexism, has prompted Woods also displayed the typical Munchausen’s trait of several female team killers to defend themselves in court pathological lying. Following the adoption of daughter with pleas of “battered wife syndrome,” but juries dis-Judy, she complained of threats from the girl’s real par-gusted with spiraling crime rates are increasingly prone ents. They had turned up on her doorstep, Martha to discount such arguments, meting out long prison claimed, demanding their daughter back, threatening terms—or capital sentences—without regard to gender.

her life when she refused. Faceless strangers were cir-Condemned female killers
do
benefit, it would seem, cling her home in a car at odd hours, and someone had from chivalry or simple squeamishness as they

tried to burn the house. In fact, army investigators approach an execution date. While 49 American

found flammable liquid splashed on one wall of women stood sentenced to die in January 2005—

Martha’s home, but they suspected her of staging the including six serial killers among them—only 10

scene herself. Judy’s biological parents were far away, in females (versus 906 men) have been executed since CAP-another state, and officers finally dismissed the whole ITAL PUNISHMENT was restored in 1976. Significantly, story as a hoax.

three of the 10 were convicted “black widows” (Velma Time ran out for Woods in Baltimore when authori-Barfield, Betty Beets, and Judias Buenoaño). A fourth ties finally turned up evidence of murder in the death of was Florida “Damsel of Death” AILEEN WUORNOS, and her adopted son, seven-month-old Paul. Intensive psy-a fifth was two-time lesbian killer Wanda Jean Allen.

chiatric testing found her sane and fit for trial. The
See also
WEAPONS

judge admitted evidence from other deaths to prove the case on Paul, and Martha was convicted after five months of testimony and sentenced to life imprison-WOOD, Catherine

See
GRAHAM, GWENDOLYN

ment on one count of first-degree murder.

WOODS, Martha

WUORNOS, Aileen Carol

An army wife who followed her husband around the She has been heralded in tabloid headlines and on tele-country from one military base to the next, Martha vision talk shows as America’s “first female serial Woods also suffered from the bizarre mental illness killer.” In fact, Aileen Wuornos was neither the first dubbed “MUNCHAUSEN’S SYNDROME BY PROXY.” Vic-nor the worst, although she did display a curiously tims of this rare condition are driven to seek attention

“masculine” approach to homicide. Suspected of at or sympathy by fabricating ailments for their loved least seven murders, sentenced to die in four of the six ones, sometimes inflicting deliberate harm to support cases she confessed to police, Wuornos insisted that their claims of mysterious illness. In this case, the quirk some or all of her admitted killings were performed in cost seven children their lives.

self-defense, resisting violent assaults by men whom Martha’s victims included three of her own children, she solicited while working as a prostitute. Ironically, a nephew, a niece, a neighbor’s child, and the son she information uncovered by journalists in November adopted when targets grew scarce. The cross-country 1992 suggests that in one case, at least, her story may killing spree lasted most of a quarter-century from 1946