A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

any plans she might have had that would have kept her away from her apartment all night. Frightened, they notified the Metro Dade County police.
    Three days passed with no word from Beth Kenyon. On Thursday, March 11, Beth’s Chrysler convertible, the car she had driven away from the high school in Coral Cables, was found parked at the Miami International Airport. But Beth’s name wasn’t listed on any flights going out of Miami during the previous three days.
    The Kenyons hired Ken Whittaker, Jr., a private investigator and the son of a retired FBI agent, to search for Beth, even though the Miami Dade County police were doing everything they could to find her. It was a daunting task for everyone; there was
nothing
in Beth Kenyon’s past that might explain her sudden disappearance. As a beautiful woman, she certainly had had a number of boyfriends but, as far as her parents knew, she had never had an acrimonious breakup. She had no enemies. Like Rosario Gonzalez eight days before, Beth Kenyon had seemingly stepped into another dimension.
    Beth’s photograph became familiar to people who lived in southern Florida. One man who learned she was missing worked at the service station in Coral Gables where she usually bought her gas. He remembered the last time he had seen her—on Monday, March 8, shortly before his shift ended at three o’clock. She had been driving her convertible, but she was talking with a man who drove a Cadillac Eldorado.
    The attendant recalled their conversation to investigators, “She was asking, ‘Am I dressed all right?’ and ‘Who will be taking my picture?’ When I went to clean her windshield, she told me, ‘Don’t worry about that—I’m late for the airport.’ ”
    The man in the Cadillac had paid for her gas, and she had followed his car out of the gas station.
    This was the last reported sighting of Beth Kenyon. Who was the man with Beth on Monday afternoon?
    Beth Kenyon’s mother went through the photo albums her daughter had kept updated so meticulously. Dolores Kenyon slipped all of the pictures of men out of their transparent envelopes. It was a difficult task because she had to look at photo after photo of her daughter smiling into the camera, and it heightened the terrible sense of loss and anxiety she had fought for days. She knew some of Beth’s boyfriends, some of her platonic friends, but a few of the photographs were of men she didn’t recognize.
    Dolores Kenyon gathered up the pictures and took them to the gas station where Beth had last been seen. The attendant thumbed through the photos, and paused as he stared at a picture of Beth with a balding man at the Florida Derby Horse Race.
    “That’s him. The man in the Eldorado.”
    Dolores looked at the picture. It was Chris Wilder. She shook her head slightly in disbelief. Chris Wilder was the most polite man she’d ever met. She remembered the flowers, the lovely French dinner, how deferential he was to all women. She recalled how he had confessed his love to Beth, and then been so understanding when Beth gently refused his unexpected proposal. It was difficult to picture him as an abductor.
    Investigator Whittaker and his dad called the number after Chris Wilder’s name in Beth’s address book. He answered, and said that he
did
know Beth, but that he hadn’t seen her for awhile. Told that he had been placed with Beth on the previous Monday, he said that wasn’t possible. He said he’d been working in the Boynton Beach area and hadn’t been anywhere near Miami or Coral Cables. He did, however, agree to call Beth’s parents to “reassure” them. And he said he would be happy to talk to the investigators.
    Ken Whittaker, Jr. and an associate drove to Wilder’s home on the canal in Boynton Beach. No one answered their knocks and all the window blinds were tightly drawn. They left and visited the offices of his construction company, restaurants where he was known, and, finally, the Boynton Beach Police Department. There they found someone who was not disbelieving when they suggested that Christopher Wilder might be connected to Beth Kenyon’s disappearance. The local police department knew that Wilder had a criminal record, which included three charges of sexual assault and abduction, and that he had left Australia under a cloud, after his last visit.
    Even while he was dating Beth Kenyon, Chris had been on probation after he pleaded guilty in 1980 to charges of attempted sexual battery brought by a