Colleen Emily Orsborn

Christopher Bernard Wilder (March 13, 1945 – April 13, 1984), also known as the Beauty Queen Killer and the Snapshot Killer, was an Australian-American serial killer who abducted at least twelve young women and girls, killing eight of them during a six-week, cross-country crime spree in the United States in early-1984.

Christopher Wilder was born on March 13, 1945, in Sydney, New South Wales, the oldest of four sons to an American father, Coley Chapman Wilder (August 27, 1919 – January 29, 1992), a naval officer, and an Australian mother, June Wilder (née Decker; June 18, 1925 – April 26, 1986).

Wilder nearly died at birth, and reportedly almost drowned in a swimming pool at the age of 2.

On January 4, 1963, at age 17, Wilder raped a 13-year-old girl in the company of two other young men in a Freshwater quarry, both of whom denied being involved in the assault.

Wilder was sentenced to probation, and claimed later in life that he also received electroshock therapy.

It has been suggested that this therapy aggravated Wilder's violent sexual tendencies.

However, journalist Duncan McNab claims that there is no evidence that Wilder underwent electroshock therapy, and that the story of his near-drowning was an invention of Wilder himself.

Since his death, Wilder has been suspected in the additional rapes, murders and disappearances of many other women, including the unsolved 1965 Wanda Beach Murders in his native Sydney as well as the suspected murder of missing 18-year-old beauty queen Tammy Lynn Leppert.

Wilder married in 1968, but his wife left him after one week when Wilder was taken in for questioning over a series of sexual assaults at Manly Beach.

After their divorce, Wilder's ex-wife told law enforcement that he had attempted to seduce both his mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and that she had found pictures of young women in their underwear in a briefcase inside his car.

She also admitted to the police that he had twice attempted to kill her.

In November 1969, Wilder used nude photographs to extort sex from an Australian student nurse; she complained to police, but charges were ultimately dropped when she refused to testify in court.

Wilder emigrated to the United States in 1969 and lived in Boynton Beach, in an upscale waterfront home twenty-five miles south of affluent Palm Beach, becoming successful in the real estate business.

He frequently travelled to Hawaii and the Bahamas and also developed an interest in photography which resulted in his converting a bedroom of his home into a darkroom.

Between 1971 and 1975, Wilder faced various charges related to sexual misconduct.

He raped a young woman he had lured into his truck on the pretense of photographing her for a modelling contract.

This was to become part of his modus operandi during his later crime spree.

Despite several convictions, Wilder was never jailed for any of these offenses.

In 1977, a psychologist deemed Wilder a "mentally disordered sex offender" and "not safe except in a structured environment and should be in a resident program" and also noted his need to dominate women and turn them into slaves for his pleasure.

He had expressed interest in white slavery and spoke of his sexual fantasies which involved twisting a woman's nipples during sex and slapping and kicking sexual partners.

Her blue 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass was found parked near Dupont Plaza.

Wilder was a race car driver who frequented the Miami Grand Prix racetrack and was also at the race, where he raced in the IMSA GTU class in a Porsche 911.

On March 5, Wilder's former girlfriend, Miss Florida finalist Elizabeth Ann Kenyon, 23, went missing.

She dated Wilder for a period of time, and was proposed to by him, but she declined due to their age difference; she is believed to have been last seen with him at a gas station near Miami.

Her car was found six days later abandoned at the Miami Airport.

Gonzales was an aspiring model at the time of her disappearance and had participated in the Miss Florida beauty contest along with Kenyon.

Neither woman's remains have ever been found.

On March 18, Wilder led 21-year-old Theresa Anne Ferguson away from the Merritt Square Mall in Merritt Island, Florida.

While visiting his parents in Australia in 1982, Wilder was charged with sexual offenses against two 15-year-old girls whom he had forced to pose nude after luring them from Manly Beach.

Two other young girls, aged 10 and 12, later identified Wilder from mugshots as the man who had abducted them in Boynton Beach in 1983 and forced them to perform oral sex on him.

Wilder's series of murders began in Florida on February 26, 1984, and continued across the country through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada and California, with attempted abductions in Washington and New York.

Wilder victimised attractive young women, most of whom he would entice by promising to take their pictures.

After subduing them, he would torture and rape them before shooting, stabbing with a knife, or strangling them to death.

Two or more of his victims were electrocuted using a makeshift electrical cord.

After being named a suspect in the disappearances of his first two victims, both of whom were women he knew and whose bodies were never found, Wilder began to target random women; many of whom were abducted from shopping malls.

Wilder accidentally killed himself during a struggle with police in New Hampshire on April 13, 1984.

His parents posted bail and he was allowed to return to Florida to await trial, but court delays prevented his case from ever being heard, as the eventual initial hearing date of April 1984 came after his death.

The first murder attributed to Wilder was that of 20-year-old Rosario Teresa Gonzalez, who was last seen on February 26, 1984, at the Miami Grand Prix, where she was employed as a spokesmodel at a temporary job distributing samples of aspirin for a pharmaceutical company.

Witnesses stated that she left the Grand Prix track between noon and 1:00 p.m. with a Caucasian man in his thirties.

The 1986 made-for-television movie Easy Prey dramatises Wilder's crimes.