Christopher Wilder was a builder and real estate owner from Boynton Beach, Florida, who raced sports cars and photographed young women. In the spring of 1984 he became the subject of a nationwide FBI manhunt. Between February and April of that year, women disappeared or were found dead in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nevada and New York, and police and the FBI connected him to the cases. Many of the women had been approached, the FBI said, by a man who claimed to be a professional photographer and offered them modeling work.
He was never tried for any of it. On April 13, 1984, two New Hampshire state troopers recognized the stolen car he was driving at a gas station in Colebrook, about 10 miles from the Canadian border. In the struggle that followed his own revolver fired twice, and he died at the scene. At the time of his death he had been charged with a federal kidnapping offense and, according to Time magazine, formally charged with the murder of one woman and with a kidnapping. Everything else in his case rests on police attribution, the accounts of women who survived, and evidence that no court ever tested.
Wilder was born in Australia and was 39 when he died in April 1984, United Press International reported. His parents were living in Sydney at the time of his death, and a brother lived in Miami.
He lived in Australia until 1969. In 2018 Australian newspapers reported, from police files obtained by the Channel 7 program Sunday Night, that he had been living on Sydney's northern beaches in the mid-1960s. He married in 1968, and his wife left him after about a week, citing his violence; she took her concerns to the police. Police were slow to act on what she told them, the reports said, and had not interviewed him by the time he left for the United States in 1969, at the age of 24. Time magazine, writing in April 1984, gave his age on arrival as 24 and the year as 1970.
He settled in Boynton Beach, in Palm Beach County, Florida. Time reported that he made a fortune in construction and owned six parcels of Palm Beach County real estate worth nearly 400,000 dollars. He skied at Vail, Colorado, took photographs as a hobby and raced cars. He had a Jacuzzi at his house and kept a speedboat at a private dock. In a 1981 video made for a dating service, he said he wanted to meet women "with depth" but was not looking to marry. Dateline NBC, drawing on investigators in New York, described him in 2023 as an IMSA sports car driver.
Behind that life was a criminal record his Florida friends did not know about. Time reported that he was convicted in 1980 of attempted sexual battery in Palm Beach County and was given probation. Police also found, Time said, that he was a fugitive from sexual-assault charges in Sydney, Australia.
Dateline NBC reported in 2023 that he had been brought back to Australia in October 1983 to stand trial and was allowed to return to the United States in November 1983 after a bond of half a million dollars was posted. Dateline described the Australian case as a murder from the 1970s; Time described the Sydney matter as sexual-assault charges. The Australian case had not been tried when he died.
His friends were stunned by what came out in 1984. Dennis DeFranceschi, a close friend and racing partner, told Time that Wilder "had no reason to subject himself to this."
Rosario Gonzalez was 20 and worked as a model. She knew Wilder, Time reported, and she watched him race in the Miami Grand Prix, a sports car race in which, Time said, he finished 17th, a result worth 400 dollars. She disappeared in February 1984. Police later sought Wilder for questioning about her disappearance, but she has never been found, and no charge was ever brought in her case.
Elizabeth Kenyon, known as Beth, was 23. Time described her as a former beauty queen whom Wilder had befriended. United Press International, in a report printed on April 4, 1984, called her a part-time Miami model and said she had reportedly been seen with Wilder just before she disappeared in early March. The UPI report gave the date as March 3; other accounts give March 5.
With two young women who knew him missing within about a week of each other, police wanted to question Wilder. By then they could not find him. Elizabeth Kenyon has never been found, and, as with Rosario Gonzalez, no charge was ever brought.
On March 20, 1984, a man approached a student at Florida State University in Tallahassee and offered her 25 dollars an hour to pose for photographs, Time reported. When she said no, he struck her, tied her up and put her in the trunk of his car. He drove her north across the state line to a motel in Bainbridge, Georgia, where, police said, he sexually assaulted and abused her. She locked herself in the motel bathroom and screamed until people came to help, and he fled.
She survived, and police withheld her name. Her case gave the FBI its legal basis to pursue Wilder. Taking a victim across a state line brought the abduction under federal law, and Wilder was charged with violating the federal kidnapping statute, UPI reported. UPI reported that this abduction was the case on which he was first wanted.
Teresa Ferguson, known as Terry, was kidnapped from a shopping mall on Merritt Island, Florida, on March 18, 1984, Time reported. Her body was found in a swamp afterward; she had been strangled. Time put the discovery two days after she vanished.
She had been born on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and went to Teaticket Elementary School before her family moved to Florida, according to a 2023 profile in Cape News. Her grandparents lived in Falmouth Heights, and she visited the Cape as a teenager and once had a summer job at a mall in Hyannis. On the day she disappeared she left her mother a note asking to be woken at 10 o'clock and went to the mall to meet friends. Her mother, Frances Ferguson, later wrote a memoir drawn from the journals she kept after her daughter's death. It was published in 2022 under the title of that last note, Wake Me Up At 10:00, Love Terry.
Police attributed Terry Ferguson's death to Wilder. He was never charged in it.
Terry Dianne Walden was 23 and a student at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. She was reported missing in Beaumont on March 23, 1984, Time reported, and her body was found in a drainage canal three days later. She had been bound and stabbed. By early April the FBI listed her case among those it was investigating in connection with Wilder. He was never charged with it.
Suzanne Logan was 20 and married. She was abducted from a shopping center in Oklahoma City in the spring of 1984 and was found dead near a lake by Junction City, Kansas, Time reported. She had been stabbed.
Her case is the one killing for which Wilder was formally charged. Time reported in its April 16, 1984 issue that he had been charged the previous Friday with the stabbing murder of Suzanne Logan, and also with a kidnapping. He died before he could be arrested on that charge, so it was never tried.
Sheryl Bonaventura, 18, was reported missing from a shopping mall in Grand Junction, Colorado, on March 29, 1984, Time reported. Three days later Michelle Korfman, 17, disappeared from a shopping mall in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she had been taking part in a beauty contest. UPI reported that a man matching Wilder's description had been seen at the mall where she was last seen. Three other women told police that a man they believed was Wilder had approached them at the same Las Vegas mall, and that they had turned him away.
When Wilder died in mid-April, both young women were still missing. United Press International reported on April 22 that four women connected to the case remained unaccounted for, two of them from south Florida. What was later established about Sheryl Bonaventura and Michelle Korfman was not reported.
By the beginning of April the FBI had named Wilder a suspect in the disappearances of seven young women in Florida, Texas, Colorado and Nevada, and wanted to question him about two women whose bodies had been found, UPI reported on April 4. Joseph Corless, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami office, told a news conference that agents had tracked Wilder to the Las Vegas area and that the search was intensifying on the West Coast. "There seems to be a progressive move westward," he said.
The FBI added Wilder to its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. He was the 385th person placed on it. An FBI spokesman, Chris Mazzella, told Time that it was "the top fugitive investigation at this time." The bureau described how the man it was looking for worked: in every known incident, it said, a man matching Wilder's description had approached an attractive young woman, claimed to be a professional photographer, and offered her photo sessions for national magazines. If she resisted, he took her by force.
On April 4, 1984, Wilder approached a teenage girl at a shopping mall in Torrance, in the Los Angeles area, and promised to make her a model, UPI later reported. He took her with him and kept her for nine days as he drove east across the country. She later said he abused her during that time. She survived.
In April 1984 a 16-year-old girl was abducted from a shopping mall in Indiana, according to Dateline NBC and a 2017 Fox News report that drew on the Buffalo News. She was taken into New York State and left in woods near Penn Yan, in the Finger Lakes, after being attacked. She survived, escaped, and identified Wilder as the man who had attacked her.
Beth Dodge, whose full name was given as Mary Beth Dodge, was 33 and lived in Phelps, New York. She was divorced, the mother of a four-year-old daughter, and managed data processing for Mobil Chemical Company in a suburb of Rochester, UPI reported. She was abducted from a shopping mall in Victor, New York, in April 1984, after the attack on the Indiana girl, and was found shot to death by a roadside in Victor. Police believed Wilder had shot her and taken her gold Pontiac Firebird. He was never charged in her death.
Wilder then drove to Boston. There he took the Torrance teenager to Logan International Airport, bought her a plane ticket home and let her go, UPI reported. She spoke publicly for the first time that August, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that UPI summarized.
On the way north, Wilder tried to abduct another woman. The Boston Globe reported in 2020 that hours before his death he attempted to kidnap a woman on Route 128 in Wenham, Massachusetts. She was not taken. Days after his death, police in Danvers, Massachusetts, found Beth Dodge's purse and her car's license plates partly hidden behind a business on Route 1, UPI reported on April 22.
On Friday, April 13, 1984, two New Hampshire State Police officers, Detective Leo C. Jellison and Trooper Wayne Fortier, saw a gold car at a gas station in Colebrook, a New Hampshire town about 10 miles from the Canadian border. A nationwide alert had gone out for Beth Dodge's Pontiac, and the car matched it. Jellison later said he recognized Wilder from the gold car, his tan, and a face that looked recently shaved, UPI reported in June 1984.
When the officers approached, Wilder drew his .357 Magnum revolver. Jellison struggled with him. During the struggle the gun fired twice. Both bullets passed through Wilder's heart, and one of them also hit Jellison. Wilder died. Jellison was treated at Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital and survived.
The FBI's historical record of its Ten Most Wanted list states the outcome briefly: state police attempted to arrest Wilder in April 1984, a gun battle followed, and he died of gunshot wounds.
Whether Wilder meant to shoot himself or the trooper was disputed from the start. The New Hampshire Attorney General's office described the autopsy findings in a UPI report dated April 14. Assistant Attorney General Andrew Isaac said the pathologist, Dr. Robert Christie, had concluded that Wilder "was killed in a struggle while he tried to kill" Jellison. Christie believed both shots were fired almost at the same moment, since the two bullets followed nearly the same path through Wilder's heart. The death certificate gave the cause of death as "cardiac obliteration," UPI reported.
The two officers' accounts did not match on one point. Trooper Fortier told investigators he saw Wilder fire a second shot about 15 seconds after the first. Neil Couture, an emergency medical technician, said Jellison had told him both shots were meant for him, and Couture said he did not believe Wilder had been trying to kill himself. Later reports have described the death in different ways: some UPI accounts in April 1984 called it accidental, while Australian newspapers in 2018 and Dateline NBC in 2023 said he shot himself in the heart. The autopsy findings, as reported in 1984, are that he died from two shots from his own gun fired during a struggle in which he was trying to shoot the trooper.
Searching the car after his death, investigators found tape, glue, color photographs of women, some of them unidentified, receipts, an address book, a large knife, and 49 hundred-dollar bills, UPI reported. FBI Special Agent James Greenleaf said the bureau would test whether the tape matched tape used to bind victims and whether glue in the car matched evidence from one of the attacks he was suspected of. Dateline NBC reported in 2023 that investigators had described the car's contents as a kit that included the knife and a device that used electricity.
UPI called him "the most wanted man in America," in the FBI's words. His body was held at the Newman Funeral Home in Colebrook while the FBI tried to reach his brother in Miami and his parents in Sydney.
Because he died before any arrest, Wilder never appeared in a courtroom on any 1984 charge. The charges reported against him were these:
A federal charge of violating the kidnapping law, for the March 20 abduction of the Florida State University student taken from Tallahassee to Bainbridge, Georgia (UPI, April 1984).
A charge of murder in the stabbing death of Suzanne Logan, filed in April 1984, together with a kidnapping charge (Time, April 16, 1984). Time does not say which court filed these charges.
Earlier, the attempted sexual battery conviction in Palm Beach County in 1980, for which he received probation, and the untried sexual-assault charges in Sydney (Time).
No charge was filed against him in the cases of Rosario Gonzalez, Elizabeth Kenyon, Terry Ferguson, Terry Walden or Beth Dodge was reported. Those deaths and disappearances were attributed to him by police and the FBI.
Tallies differed from the start. In its reports after his death, UPI described him as suspected of killing, assaulting or kidnapping at least 11 women in eight states. On April 22 UPI said the FBI hoped the new evidence would help find some of the 11 other people he was suspected of killing or abducting. In June 1984 UPI described an "8,000-mile rampage" in which 11 women had been abducted and at least four killed. Time, in April, wrote of about six attacks and killings in Florida, Texas, Colorado and Nevada. Later accounts have used larger figures: the Boston Globe in 2020 described him as suspected of kidnapping, abusing and killing eight women and teenagers and kidnapping three others, and Australian newspapers in 2018 said he had abducted at least 12 women and killed nine. None of these figures was tested in a court.
On June 22, 1984, Jellison and Fortier were honored at the State House in Concord. They received awards from Governor John Sununu, from the FBI and from the State Police, including the Medal of Valor, the State Police's highest award. The officers credited training, experience and instinct for the stop.
In the weeks after his death, investigators in other states looked again at unsolved cases. In Daytona Beach, Florida, police and FBI agents examined remains found in the Ocala National Forest to see whether they were those of Colleen Orsborn, a teenager who had disappeared on March 15, 1984, the same day Wilder registered at a Daytona Beach hotel, UPI reported. Detective Larry Lewis said only, "It's possible." The Boston Globe reported in 2020 that DNA testing had confirmed in 2011 that remains found in 1984 were hers, and that she was 15. Wilder remains a possible suspect in her death, but a letter written in 2001 claimed that a different man was responsible, the Globe said, and no one has been charged.
In western New York, investigators have looked at Wilder in three unsolved deaths from before 1984. Shari Lynne Ball, 20, of Boca Raton, Florida, told her family in June 1983 that she was going to New York State with a friend to pursue a modeling career. A hunter found her body on October 29, 1983, in the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge in the town of Shelby, Orleans County. She was not identified until DNA testing in 2013, the New York State Police said. In 2017 a State Police cold case investigator, Christopher Weber, told the Buffalo News that a link to Wilder "absolutely cannot be ruled out," Fox News reported. A Lockport woman told the paper that a man had come to her yard sale on July 1, 1983, offered to help her get modeling work and left a business card; she threw the card away but remembered the name on it as Christopher Wilder.
Tammy Jo Alexander, an aspiring model from Florida, was killed in October 1979, and her body was found the next month in Caledonia, New York, Dateline NBC reported. She too was identified decades later.
The third case is a woman known as Ellery Jane Doe. Two utility linemen found her body beside a highway in the town of Ellery, Chautauqua County, on December 6, 1983. She had been shot and had been dead for 24 to 36 hours. Investigators believe she was a traveler from outside the area, possibly from Europe, and she has never been identified. Tom Di Zinno, a senior investigator with the Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office, told Dateline NBC in 2023 that Wilder may have chosen her soon after returning from Australia in November 1983, and that he knew the roads of western New York. Investigators were testing the revolver from Colebrook against bullets from the Ellery scene, and comparing a DNA profile of Wilder held by Palm Beach police with evidence from the Ellery, Ball and Alexander cases. No result had been reported.
In May 2026 the sheriff's office released new information. It had received a report of a possible sighting of Wilder in New York City on December 4, 1983, two days before the Ellery body was found, in which a man used the kind of ruse Wilder was known for to try to get a woman into his vehicle. She did not go with him. The office asked anyone who may have met Wilder in western New York between December 4 and December 6, 1983, to come forward, The Post-Journal reported.
Dateline NBC also reported that two Florida teenagers, Mary Hare and Mary Opitz, who vanished in 1981 after being last seen at malls, were named by authorities as possible victims. Mary Hare's body was found later that year; Mary Opitz is still missing.
In January 1965 two 15-year-old girls, Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock, disappeared on a summer day at Wanda Beach in Sydney. Their bodies were found in a shallow grave in the dunes. The case has never been solved.
In June 2018 Sunday Night reported that 1960s police files named Wilder as an official suspect, and that his file was marked "Suspended" after investigators lost track of him. Ian Waterson, a retired detective inspector who led a cold-case review, said Wilder was his leading suspect because of his record, his violence and his presence near Sydney's beaches at the time. "In my mind, it would have to be Christopher Wilder," he said. The Schmidt family said they had never been told about the Wilder lead. One of Marianne's brothers asked what police had done with it; another said he doubted anyone would ever be caught. NSW Police said they were using new scientific techniques and continued to appeal for information. Wilder was never charged in the case.
Proven in court: one conviction in Florida in 1980, for attempted sexual battery, with a sentence of probation (Time). No court ever found that Wilder killed anyone.
Charged, never tried because of his death: the federal kidnapping of the Florida State University student; the murder of Suzanne Logan and a kidnapping (Time); the sexual-assault charges in Sydney.
Attributed by police or the FBI, never charged: the deaths of Terry Ferguson, Terry Walden and Beth Dodge; the disappearances of Rosario Gonzalez and Elizabeth Kenyon, who have never been found; the disappearances of Sheryl Bonaventura and Michelle Korfman; the abductions of the Torrance and Indiana teenagers, both of whom survived and identified him.
Named as a possible suspect, never charged: Colleen Orsborn (1984); Shari Lynne Ball (1983); Ellery Jane Doe (1983); Tammy Jo Alexander (1979); Mary Hare and Mary Opitz (1981); and, in Australia, Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock (1965).
Points on which sources differ: whether he reached the United States in 1969 (Australian press) or 1970 (Time); the date of Elizabeth Kenyon's disappearance (March 3 in UPI's April report, March 5 elsewhere); the nature of the Australian case he returned to face in 1983 (sexual-assault charges in Time; a 1970s murder in Dateline NBC); whether he shot himself, as later reports say, or was killed by his own gun while trying to shoot a trooper, as the autopsy findings were described in 1984; whether the two shots were simultaneous (the pathologist) or about 15 seconds apart (Trooper Fortier); and the number of women involved, given at different times as 11, at least four killed, eight killed, and nine killed.
January 1965: Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock are killed at Wanda Beach, Sydney; Wilder is later named in police files as a suspect.
1968: Wilder marries in Sydney; his wife leaves after about a week.
1969: emigrates to the United States aged 24 (Time gives 1970) and settles in Boynton Beach, Florida.
October 1979: Tammy Jo Alexander is killed; her body is found in Caledonia, New York, the next month.
1980: Wilder is convicted of attempted sexual battery in Palm Beach County and given probation.
1981: records a dating-service video; Mary Hare and Mary Opitz disappear in Florida.
June 1983: Shari Lynne Ball leaves Boca Raton for New York; her body is found in Shelby, New York, on October 29, 1983.
October to November 1983: Wilder is in Australia to face a trial and returns to the United States on bond.
December 6, 1983: Ellery Jane Doe is found in Chautauqua County, New York.
February 1984: Rosario Gonzalez disappears after the Miami Grand Prix.
Early March 1984: Elizabeth Kenyon disappears in Miami.
March 15, 1984: Colleen Orsborn disappears; Wilder registers at a Daytona Beach hotel the same day.
March 18, 1984: Terry Ferguson is kidnapped from a Merritt Island mall; she is later found dead.
March 20, 1984: a Florida State University student is abducted in Tallahassee and taken to Bainbridge, Georgia; she escapes. Wilder is charged under the federal kidnapping law.
March 23, 1984: Terry Walden is reported missing in Beaumont, Texas; her body is found three days later.
March 29, 1984: Sheryl Bonaventura is reported missing in Grand Junction, Colorado.
April 1, 1984: Michelle Korfman disappears in Las Vegas.
Spring 1984: Suzanne Logan is abducted in Oklahoma City and found dead in Kansas.
Early April 1984: the FBI tracks Wilder to the Las Vegas area; he is placed on the Ten Most Wanted list as number 385.
April 4, 1984: a teenage girl is abducted in Torrance, California.
April 1984: a 16-year-old girl is abducted in Indiana; she is later attacked and left near Penn Yan, New York, and survives.
April 1984: Wilder is charged with the murder of Suzanne Logan and with a kidnapping.
April 1984: Beth Dodge is abducted in Victor, New York, and shot; her car is taken.
April 1984: Wilder releases the Torrance teenager at Logan Airport in Boston.
April 13, 1984: hours before his death he tries to abduct a woman in Wenham, Massachusetts; he dies in a struggle with New Hampshire state troopers at Colebrook, and Detective Leo Jellison is wounded.
April 14, 1984: autopsy findings reported.
By April 22, 1984: Beth Dodge's purse and plates are found in Danvers, Massachusetts.
June 22, 1984: Jellison and Fortier receive the Medal of Valor in Concord.
August 1984: the Torrance teenager speaks publicly for the first time.
2011: DNA identifies Colleen Orsborn's remains.
2013: DNA identifies Shari Lynne Ball.
June 2018: Australian reports name Wilder as a suspect in the Wanda Beach killings.
2022: Frances Ferguson publishes her memoir.
December 2023: Chautauqua County investigators discuss Wilder as a possible suspect in the Ellery Jane Doe case.
May 2026: the Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office releases a reported 1983 sighting and appeals for information.