A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

Lee Simms walked into the Torrance Police Department, the man who had released her was prowling once more. A nineteen-year- old girl in Wenham, Massachusetts, well north of Boston on state highway 1A, was sitting in her stalled car beside the road. The starter ground ineffectively until the battery gave out, and she was relieved when a friendly-looking man in a gold Pontiac slowed down and asked if she needed help. She accepted the ride he offered, as he said he’d take her on up into town to a service station.
    She knew the area well and began to give him directions to the closest garage. But it didn’t take long for her to realize he wasn’t turning where she told him. In fact, he was heading
away
from town. She glanced at the man, and felt the skin at the back of her neck tighten. She’d seen the papers and the television news bulletins asking people in the Boston area to be on the lookout for a killer. Now, to her dread, she realized that she was sitting beside Christopher Wilder.
    They came to a stop sign. As Wilder slowed down, the girl pushed the door handle and tumbled out. She hit the ground running and never looked back until she was on the front porch of a nearby house. The Pontiac had picked up speed and was disappearing down the road. Frightened that he might only be turning around, she pounded frantically on the door, and was vastly relieved when it opened. She had escaped from horrors she could never have imagined.
    The police knew where he was. In a sense, Wilder had boxed himself into the northeast corner of the U.S. He didn’t have the wide prairies of Colorado and Texas to hide himself in now. Like all serial and spree killers who play their killing games too long, he was making mistakes, grabbing victims without planning his escape, leaving a trail. Like any
addict,
he was taking too many chances to get the substance that he lived for. Addicted to murder, he had lost control.
    Sometime that Friday morning, Chris Wilder crossed over into New Hampshire, and he made good time as he headed north and then veered slightly west to Colebrook. There, he was only eight miles from the Canadian border. He may have figured that he would find shelter there; Canada often hesitates to return prisoners to the U.S. if they are going to face execution. He may only have been blindly running, putting miles between himself and the dead and kidnapped women he’d left behind. He probably didn’t know that Carrie McDonald was still alive; she had feigned death perfectly when he walked out of the woods in Penn Yan. He had to know that Beth Dodge was dead. He knew he’d be identified by the young woman in Wenham. The world was closing in on Chris Wilder when he pulled into a gas station in Colebrook.
    It was 1:30 P.M. on Friday, April 13, 1984. Chris Wilder, the master at putting on a friendly mask, got out of the gold Firebird and walked around as casually as any ordinary tourist might. He pumped his gas and then strolled into the cashier to pay. There, he asked how to get to the Canadian border.
    In a moment of synchronicity, two New Hampshire state troopers were paying their tab for lunch in a little restaurant just down the street. Colebrook only had 1,200 people and the only strangers in town were people headed for the border, and there weren’t that many of those. The troopers, Leo “Chuck” Jellison and Wayne Fortier, got into their unmarked station wagon and headed down the main street of Colebrook. Their trained eyes spotted the gold Pontiac Firebird sitting at the gas pumps. It had Massachusetts plates while the bulletin had listed a New York plate—but that didn’t mean anything. If Wilder could shoot a woman and steal her car, he could easily have stolen license plates.
    Jellison and Fortier pulled into a business parking lot just next to the gas station, their eyes never leaving the Pontiac. They saw the man walking casually from the cashier’s booth. He looked right. Age. Height. He did, however, seem awfully laid back for a man who had to know that he was one of America’s Ten Most Wanted felons.
    Chuck Jellison, thirty-three, eased his huge frame out of the station wagon and Fortier moved their vehicle onto the gas station apron.
    “Hold on a minute,” Jellison said easily, “Wanted to ask you something—”
    The man turned to look at him for an instant and Jellison saw the blue eyes, the familiar face. And then he sprinted for the Pontiac, with Jellison right behind him. Fortier leapt out