Crime Beat

was found in a picnic area at Milford Lake in Geary County, Kans., the next day.
• March 29; Sheryl Bonaventura, 18, vanished from a Grand Junction, Colo., shopping mall. Still missing.
• April 1; Michelle Korfman, 17, an aspiring model, disappeared from a Las Vegas, Nev., shopping mall after appearing in a fashion show. Still missing.
    Sun-Sentinel staff writers contributed to this report.
WILDER LED DOUBLE LIFE IN SOUTH FLORIDA
    April 15, 1984
    Long before Christopher Bernard Wilder became the most wanted fugitive in America, he haunted the fringes of South Florida’s modeling and fashion circles.
    Investigators said Wilder was able to enter these circles through his cunning charm, smooth talk, money and most of all, his camera.
    Armed with these credentials, Wilder bluffed his way into top beauty pageants and fashion shows and stalked shopping centers and beaches as a self-styled photographer and talent agent. At least one modeling agency sent him models for photo sessions.
    “Wilder lurked in the shadows,” said Ken Whittaker, Jr., a 28-year-old private detective who first brought Wilder’s name to authorities. “He was cunning and smooth, very manipulative with women.”
    “He was active for quite a while,” said Tom Neighbors, a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s detective. “He had a nice scam he used to get close to the type of women he liked.”
    A massive search for Wilder across 8,000 miles of the country ended Friday when the Australian-born electrical contractor and race car driver accidentally shot himself to death while struggling with a police officer at a small town gas station in New Hampshire.
    Wilder, whose journey was grimly charted by the abductions or murders of at least 11 women, appears to have led a double life: one opulent, marked by financial success, fast cars and attractive women; the other sinister, tainted by arrests, investigations and suspicions.
    That is the assessment of court records and those who came to know the 39-year-old Wilder.
    “As far as I knew he was a real photographer,” said a woman who met Wilder through car racing and once went to his home for a photo session. She asked not to be identified.
    “I’m flabbergasted by this whole thing,” she said. ”He must have been flipped out to be doing all these things and hiding so much. He seemed like a normal, nice guy.”
    The startling chain of events has had a greater impact on Wilder’s family in Australia. His mother and American-born father have gone into seclusion while a 41-year-old brother Stephen has been in the United States aiding the FBI.
    “The family has been completely broken up,” said Valerie Wilder, a sister-in-law. “Life has not been easy. We are trying to live one day at a time.”
    She said Christopher Wilder first came to the United States when he was one year old. He spent much of the next several years on the road, as his father, who was in the U.S. Navy, was transferred about the nation. The Wilders did not permanently return to Australia until 1959. Christopher Wilder, the second oldest of four brothers, moved back to the United States when he was 25.
    “Chris was always a perfect gentleman in the way he treated me,” his shaken sister-in-law said. “My kids adored him.”
    But detectives said their investigations suggest Wilder’s gentle and friendly demeanor shrouded a darker side.
    “I felt he was a Jekyll and Hyde character from the beginning,” said attorney and investigator Ken Whittaker, Sr., former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami office.
    Early last month, Whittaker and his son repeatedly questioned Wilder and began to suspect him in the disappearances of two Miami models. They had been hired by one of the models’ family to find her.
    A week later, Wilder checked his three dogs into a kennel and embarked on an odyssey that took him from Florida to California and then back across the nation to the tiny town of Colebrook, N.H., five minutes from the Canadian border.
    FBI agents suspect the macabre trek included stop-offs in at least nine cities where women were abducted or murdered.
    Wilder’s neighbors on Mission Hill Road in Boynton Beach told of occasional parties, several female visitors and a racing Porsche parked atop a trailer. Lately, the car and property have been the focus of police detectives and newspaper reporters.
    “It’s become a historical monument,” resident Ken Bankowski said of the Porsche.
    Though investigators said the