Crime Beat

may have taken a business card and then had copies made that identified him as a Blackthorn photographer.
    Silvernail said his agency began getting calls from parents checking on a photographer who had approached their daughters. The name of the photographer was often different but the description was always the same: blond, balding and bearded—a description similar to Wilder.
    At the Barbizon School of Modeling in Broward County, talent director Dorothy Girard said Wilder also used the name of her agency to approach young women and girls. In those cases, Mrs. Girard said Wilder was often wearing a Barbizon T-shirt.
    “And, at that time, we didn’t even have Barbizon T-shirts,” she said. “When he was using our name, our students called up to check on him and we said, ‘Forget it, he is not with us.’”
    Some of the girls Wilder approached apparently didn’t bother to check him out. He was arrested in 1980 for raping a 16-year-old girl after luring her from a West Palm Beach shopping mall with promises of appearing in a pizza advertisement as a Barbizon model.
    According to court records, Wilder first told the girl to strike poses for him at different stores in the mall. “My eyes are the camera,” he told the girl, according to court records. “Don’t pay attention to me.”
    Sheriff’s Detective Arthur Newcomb, who arrested Wilder for the rape, later said in a court deposition that Wilder was believed to have continually used the photographer-agent ruse to seduce young women.
    “[Wilder] stated this was a common operation, posing as this modeling agent, and that this is something he has done often,” Newcomb said in a deposition. “He tries to get girls in order to have relations with them. I have non-crime reports that show this man has done this frequently. It is nothing he denies.”
    In that case, Wilder pleaded guilty to attempted sexual battery and was placed on five years’ probation. He began receiving psychiatric counseling but never ended his life as self-styled fashion photographer.
    Detectives said that in the early 1980s he built a studio in his home on Mission Hill Road. The room was complete with developing, printing and lighting equipment, backdrops and cosmetic supplies. A friend said Wilder even had fans “for blowing a model’s hair back.”
    In December 1982, two months after he had bluffed his way into the Miss Florida Pageant, Wilder was arrested in Australia and charged with the abduction and indecent assault on two teen-agers he had lured from the beach with a promise of modeling jobs. Wilder had first taken the girls to a zoo where he took their pictures as they posed on a rock sculpture.
    Police said there was no film in the camera he was using. On April 4, he failed to show for a court hearing on the case in Australia.
    According to records in Australia and with Interpol, Wilder showed the girls a card identifying himself as a photographer for Tide International, a talent agency located on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach.
    Detective Neighbors said Wilder was associated with Tide as a freelance photographer in the early ’80s. According to the detective, models were referred to Wilder’s home studio for photo sessions.
    “He used [Tide] as a source for models,” said Neighbors. “He would call and say I need a model and they would send one over. He legitimately hired them. What he did with the pictures, I don’t know.”
    Neighbors said the sheriff’s office has received no complaints from any Tide models that posed for Wilder. He said several that were interviewed said Wilder had acted very professionally and they expressed shock that he was suspected in several abductions or murders.
    Tom Davis, owner of Tide, said Wilder was not associated with the business. While Davis acknowledged that he had met Wilder through Grand Prix racing, he said Wilder was not one of about 40 freelance photographers associated with Tide.
    “We never sent him models, no way on that,” said Davis.
    Though Neighbors said Wilder may have had arrangements with other agencies throughout the area in the early ’80s, he said Wilder removed the studio and photographic equipment from his home after his arrest in Australia. The self-styled fashion photographer then began dropping off his film at a local Kmart store to be developed.
    Sun-Sentinel staff writers Ott Cefkin and Patricia Sullivan, along with correspondent Nick Yardley in Australia, contributed to this report.
WILDER VICTIMS STILL