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Hi there, 2020 podcast listeners. This is Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of 2020. We're bringing another brand new true crime series from ABC News Studios into your feed. It's called The Beauty Queen Killer, Nine Days of Terror, an extraordinary story about a 16-year-old girl who was abducted in 1984 by a serial killer on a cross-country murder spree. She says she was held for nine days and forced to help her captor abduct another girl.
Forty years later, she's ready to share her story for the first time. Here's episode one, Don't Talk to Strangers. The early 80s in Southern California were actually pretty innocent. We didn't have cell phones, so we'd just go out and have fun, you know, watch the sunsets, roller skating, dancing. The mall was a big part of our life. We would just cruise around. One day at the mall, it just changed like that.
The authorities took notice when pretty girls suddenly began disappearing. His method of operating is to approach young women in shopping malls. Young women have disappeared along a trail from coast to coast. You have a man who's on the run, going from state to state and killing as he goes. Kidnapping, aggravated murder and rape.
A coast-to-coast manhunt, a trail of tragic mysteries. The intense search for Christopher Wilder... Christopher Wilder... Christopher Wilder... ...is now nationwide. A man the FBI calls extremely active and very dangerous.
The latest to be abducted, 16-year-old Tina Risico. Is she going to make it? Was she still alive? And if this guy does have her, so help me God, he better not cross my path. The poor girl spent nine days. Nine days. Nine days. With a serial sex predator. She apparently is still with him for whatever reason, and he is using her for whatever reason. Then the word accomplice came up.
When you're 16 and you're with a monster, you have to survive. Tina never really said her piece of it. Nearly 40 years later, it's still not clear. Speeding. Two and a take one. Combo mark. Soft sticks. How are you feeling? I'm OK. This headache's just swimming in my head, that's all. I'm stressed out, I guess. All right. I'm feeling all right. Thank you. I was 16 at the time, and I am 56 years old now. A lot hasn't been opened in 40 years.
I think it's time. I want to share my side of the story, my truth. Why did Tina survive? Being tortured and controlled. If nobody has ever been in that situation of captivity, it's difficult for people to grasp the concept. But I lived it. Tina had a way where just when you meet her, you connect. She was warm and friendly.
funny. She was a people person. Tina and I started dating in early '82. I was a junior in high school and Tina was a freshman. She was really attractive and she was a friendly girl. I met Tina in high school. I was walking down the hallway of the school between classes and this
Beautiful, sparkly-eyed, bright, big smile comes walking to me like she's known me forever. She goes, "Hey, Jackie Sumner, you gonna come to my party?" And I'm like, "Sure." - Did you party a lot? - Um, yeah. - '80s was like happening. I don't know how to explain it. It was the best time ever. - Tina and her friends, they were in the thick of '80s fashion.
Big hairdos, bright colors, you know, white pumps. It was everything you would see in a Go-Go's video. Southern California was the place to be. South Torrance was my home. South High School rocked, you know, Spartans rule. We ditched school. We hung at the beach. We were in the water all the time, just standing on our toes and standing on our hair. That's what it was all about down there. All my girls, we were all beach bunnies.
You go swimming, you lay out, you flirt with the boys. Like the beach was the scene. We'd come back from skating from Marina Del Rey and then we would like do our lip gloss and our mascara and we'd go back out and watch the sunset and just hope we got invited to the parties from the, you know, the older guys. It was, I wouldn't say innocent. I mean, you know, of course we drank and we got stoned and you know, but we just had so much fun.
I got to know Tina when she started dating my good friend Billy Waddles. They became quite an item together. They were pretty much in love with each other, you could tell. I was really into Billy and became really, really attached to one another in love. Like, you know that extreme love that two people are one? That's how intense we got between each other.
All of our tight group, we were not only close, but we had each other's back. South Bay is called the bubble. There just wasn't a lot of criminality in this area. It was a very safe, WASPy type of place to grow up. Tina was a latchkey kid. She came home to an empty house quite often. Compared to her friends, she was a bit more mature.
She just seemed older, you know, than she was. She was already like looking for jobs and she just had it together. I would ride my bike down to her house and you got to understand that because she was attractive, men followed her. She had to deal with men, lecherous men. So she had a tough time dealing with some of those folks. Well on April 4th, 1984, I went to school.
You know, usually took the bus home the number seven, and the bus always went through the loop of the, to the mall. On my way home, I stopped off, didn't tell anybody that I was gonna go look for a job. There was a sales clerk job at the Hickory Farms store, and I applied. I had noticed that there was a guy with cameras around his neck hanging around the store watching me. He approached me, told me how beautiful I was,
gave me information that he was working for a modeling agency and I was aware of where it was and what the name was. He claimed that he could make me a model, you know, a superstar, and he wanted to know if it would be okay for him to take some photos of me. Here I'm all excited to be told that I could be model worthy. I was 16 years old. I was a child. This is the one point that I regret every second of my life, every day.
I got in the car with this perfect stranger. When all bells and whistles were going off in my head, why didn't I listen to my instincts? Why didn't I listen to the voice in my head? Don't get in the car with a stranger. He took me in the car, and it had a funny smell in it. But I overlooked that. He just was such a charming person. His spiel about making me a model was very convincing.
He drove me by the actual modeling agency. He wanted to suggest that we go take some photos to present to the people. And so I agreed to that. He pulled off the side of the road and we walked up on a wooded area. And he was telling me, like, you know, turn around, you know, pose this way, that way. I happened to have my back to him. I turned around.
And he pulled a gun out on me and I'm like, you know, giving this look like, "Are you for reals? I don't think so. What is this? What does this have to do with what we're doing?" type attitude, you know? And then his demeanor changed immensely and I just clicked. He's gonna harm me. I was trying every which way in a matter of seconds, split seconds, to figure out how to get out of this. It went through my mind to scream.
but realizing no one's going to hear me. What do you do? How do you get out of it? You've got to prepare yourself to take it. And so from that point on, I obeyed everything he said to me and every way what to do. I had a strip down, take the bra off, so I was topless. And he was taking nudie photos.
You know, he taped my face, put sunglasses on me and put a hat on me. And at this time, you know, he was escorting me to the car. Like, now I feel captive. I was feeling fear, desperation, anxiety. I had no idea what kind of monster this person was. Authorities say Tina wasn't the first victim. The rampage had begun weeks earlier, 2,745 miles away.
Go to your happy place for a happy price. Go to your happy price, Priceline.
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The South is alive in Miami and Miami Beach. Join the fun. Back in the early 80s, Miami was really exploding.
Miami was exciting and I wanted to be a part of it. I always dreamed about being a model and being on magazine covers and, you know, as I'm sure a lot of girls do.
The girls who are models, they go to Paris, they go to New York, they come to Miami, because a lot of it happens from Miami. And I went to school in Miami and I modeled, I did print, I did runway, and I did some TV commercials. All of us took all the steps that you did back then to be a model, you know, get
get with an agency, be part of the pageant world. Ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome all of our contestants flying for the crown of Florida Miss USA 1983. I entered the pageant on a fluke. My sister saw an ad somewhere and said, you know, Julie, you need to do this. I think this would be great for you. Julie Ann Joberka. Thank you.
I was the first runner-up that year at the Miss Florida USA pageant. My first pageant was the Miss Florida USA pageant. I did enjoy it very much. I met a lot of great girls. Beth Kenyon was in the pageant with me and she and I connected and became friends. How do you feel, Beth? Not as nervous as I was last night. Why?
Wow, there's so many beautiful girls in this contest. It's just hard to believe I made it this far. She had the sweetest, best attitude. I mean, some girls would just be quiet and not talk, where Beth was always like, how are you? Are you okay, Julie? Do you need something? She was one of those girls that reached out to others. The Miss Florida pageant, I remember being like, that's my sister. I need to check that out. So...
She had a fairly successful modeling career. This is the one that a lot of people recognize, the Lau and Brau beer. I think she always felt very confident and strong. My sister Beth was closest in age to me, so we spent a lot of time together, Beth and I. She was my best friend, really, growing up. She ended up at the University of Miami.
She prospered down in Florida. She really liked it. The field that she went into, special education, right, I think says a lot about a person. Beth loved everybody. You know, helping people, that was who she was. It's just hard to look back at it because she just was here one day and then she was completely missing. March 4th, 1984, 32 days before Tina is kidnapped.
Sunday, March 4th, my wife and I, with my daughter Andrea, flew down to Fort Lauderdale. We were going to stay for a week. And Beth met us at the airport. And then we went to the house and Beth, she left saying that I'm coming here right after school. So we were expecting to see a visit from Beth on Monday. You know, we thought that she'd be there by 4, 4:30.
When she didn't show up, we were a little bit surprised. We contacted the school. She hadn't been at school. When that happened and they knew that she didn't touch base, something was wrong. We're close-knit. That was not like Beth. The Miami police put Beth on the missing persons list, but the police believe she took off, literally.
The problem with missing persons cases is that there's often an assumption, well, you know, she's met somebody, she's having a great time, come back in a couple of days. Thus you miss that important initial window of an investigation. Back in those days, Florida police forces had a very busy investigative portfolio with murders, drug deals, armed robberies, which were very fashionable in those days. Missing persons tend to get to the bottom of the pile.
My parents, they were living it not day by day, but minute by minute. My mom was crying 23 hours a day. They wanted some response. They wanted some action. One of the officers took our number and was going to call us back. Well, we didn't get no phone call. So now we sat the whole weekend just worrying, petrified. There has to be a clue out there somewhere. And we won't stop until we find it.
They were willing to spend the money to hire a private investigator right away. Whitaker, take one. When we got the call on the Beth Kenyon case, I knew that it was an urgent case. I said, I want to go meet with the roommate. And that's when I was able to get Beth's phone directory and one of her photo albums. I went down with one of my investigators down to Coral Gables High School.
She was a teacher there, and she was also the cheerleading coach. I talked to the cheerleaders. Everybody was in agreement that Beth was having issues with the car and that she had gone to the Shell station the day she went missing. The gas station attendant, Ricky, he told me that someone was with her at the gas station. So I said, "Well, Rick, would you look at a photo album of guys that she had dated and had been friends with?" Nick went in and said, "That's the guy."
I called the Kenyans and I said, "I have someone that IDs this individual. He's short, he's got the beard." The backdrop of that photo, it looked like it was at the racetrack.
And they said, "Well, that sounds like Christopher Wilder." Christopher Wilder is originally from Sydney, Australia. He arrived in Florida in 1969. He's working as a contractor in Miami and he's quite an astute businessman. He dresses well, lots of gold jewellery, always very smartly attired, has a Porsche.
And Wilder was a reasonably competent race car driver. He's got part of a Porsche racing team, and he also happens to be a fashion photographer. I met Christopher Wilder at the Miss Florida USA pageant backstage. Beth met him at the Miss Florida USA pageant as well. He was around the pageant as photographer. Christopher was everywhere. You saw him next to the pageant director, so you knew that he was a legitimate person.
There was one day where we were out on Fort Lauderdale Beach and all the girls were standing to take pictures in their bathing suits. And one of the photographers was Christopher Wilder. He had his credentials on, very professional. He approached me with his business card and said that he was very interested in photographing me later on after the pageant.
But he did that with many other girls. Same story, you know, "You're beautiful. We'll get together after the pageant." He became very friendly with a lot of the girls that were in the pageant. He would almost like be dating these girls or trying to say, "I'm gonna-- you're my girl. I'm gonna make you, you know, a model." Beth and I talked a lot about it because she was going to model for Christopher. He was so persistent with her.
And Beth was so nice that I think that she just didn't have the heart to say no, and that's how she would end up dating him. Supposedly he loved Beth, right? He had a deep infatuation certainly with her. He knew and liked us. He knew and liked my daughter. I wanted to like him because she liked him so much. She was happy and she thought he was a good person.
He was well-dressed and, you know, well-mannered and everything. But the reality is he was having a whole double life. This episode is brought to you by Progressive. Are you driving your car or doing laundry right now? Podcasts go best when they're bundled with another activity, like Progressive Home and Auto Policies. They're best when bundled, too. Having these two policies together makes insurance easier and could help you save. Customers who save by switching their home and car insurance to Progressive save over $775 on average.
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Hi all, Kate Gibson here of The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson. This week we talked to Whoopi Goldberg about lots of things. But one of the things we talked to her about is how as a science fiction and graphic novel fan, she never saw herself on those screens or on those pages growing up. I mean, I didn't realize that part of me until I watched Star Trek. And I saw it because I love sci-fi.
And for some reason, it never occurred to me that I was missing until I was present. You're not going to want to miss this episode of The Bookcase from ABC News. April 4th, 1984, Tina's first day in captivity. After the Anaheim Woods, he drove to the first hotel room. Yes.
And that's when the first encounter of rape happened. Just being demanded to do sexual acts, touch him, follow him, kiss his neck. His knife caressing my body. He started electrocuting me.
He used wire from a lamp. He'd take the socket out there, cut it, split it, and he'd, you know, zap me everywhere in my ears, in my nose, and just... I have like criss-crosses on my nipples. Just all torture. I felt helpless, very helpless. Helplessness is an awful feeling.
And all of a sudden you realize your civil rights and your whole morality is being taken and controlled by someone else. And in order to survive, you have to obey. And I didn't like it, but I had to deal with it. April 5th, 1984, Tina's second day in captivity. Days on the road were very long. We'd drive from 6 a.m. to dark.
and finding the next McDonald's stop and gas up and go. That was just a routine. He would tell me in the car to turn my head like this way, and I guess the window was here. I lost a lot of sense of direction. You know, I don't know, I got my eyes taped shut. He would put sunglasses on me, these dark aviator sunglasses, so no one would see the tape.
He always had his gun right here, his big 38 Special and the knife right beside it. A big long knife. One hand here, one hand on the gun. You know, he always had it in hands reach. My hair was really long at the time, down to my butt. I loved it. And he cut it off. Why is he cutting my hair? You know, why is he trying to disguise me? And that's when I realized he's keeping me. Yeah, this is pictures of just me.
This is the picture of me when I came back. This is how my hair looked. He cut all my hair off. My mom had my friend Anita give me a perm on the top. Yeah, this picture's of my mama. Look at her hair and her makeup. She's hot, huh? She had me when she was 16 years old. My father was never in the picture at all. But isn't that cute? I'm all, "Huh!" Growing up with her was just hard.
She wasn't very responsible. I knew her mom. Her mom was a wild child with, you know, motorcycle riders and parties. She was going with one of our buddies that was in our group. And Carol was quite a character. I mean, she was one of the party people and enjoyed herself. There was drugs always around me from a very young age. I mean, I knew what drugs were when I was, you know, seven, eight years old.
Her mom was in a lifestyle that you don't understand for one as a kid because your mom's always gone. I didn't want to be with my mom because she subjected me to too much stuff. So that's when my grandmother took me and raised me my entire life. My grandma, she was a very sweet woman. Ooh, but strong-willed. I got a lot of that from my grandma. I'm a strong-willed woman. Go figure. And that's what...
prepared me, I suppose, to survive Christopher Wilder. March 10, 1984, 25 days before Tina is kidnapped, the search for Beth Kenyon continues in Florida. We put together a flyer with the help of the Kenyons, missing person, and we circulated all the way from Boynton Beach all the way down to Miami. Nothing was moving fast enough. We were not getting answers.
My dad was smoking six packs of cigarettes a day and my mom was crying 18, 19 hours a day. It was crazy. It was like an emotional fog. And I said, "We're going to hound Wilder until either he cracks or we can get law enforcement involved." He looked at Death's phone book and it had his number.
And I called Crystal Wilder and I said, "We would like to meet with you about Beth Canyon. You were the last one seen with her." What I remember most is that his cavalier attitude. He seemed to not really care about the whereabouts of Beth. He was more anxious to clear his name with his alibi than to actually locate Beth. I went up there the next morning. He wasn't there.
but the door was open. I looked in the garage and I noticed that he had a racing Porsche. And one of the bedrooms was a reflector umbrella that you would use in a photo shoot. I had a photo session with Christopher Wilder twice at his home. It was a very beautiful house in Boynton Beach on the lake. He had a pool, he had his jacuzzi.
And then all I remember is this room with a wooden closet. And then that was what you would stand up against when he would take pictures. On the dresser was like over 200 photos of girls that he had taken pictures of. I'm telling you, there was a stack of-- had to be four inches high. And then I called a contact of mine that was with the Boyan Beach PD. And I said, do you know anything about this Chris O'Waller?
And all of a sudden, bells and whistles went off. He was a rampant sex offender. Predator of absolutely staggering dimensions with sexual offense after sexual offense after sexual offense. So, you know, of course, the hair on my neck stood up. I know I'm dealing with some sexual deviant that had, you know, had a really bad past. We had him, but we didn't have him, you know?
It was a lot of pressure, but it was one of those things, your adrenaline's flowing. You come home after developing these leads, and your mind is just racing. It's like a kaleidoscope. You can't sleep because you're thinking, what more can I do? What am I missing? While I'm sleeping, it could be I'm trying to scope his next victim. Police are also conducting... I'm sitting there watching the late news at 11 o'clock.
20-year-old Rosario Gonzalez is a computer science student at Miami Dade Community College and a part-time model. Her parents haven't heard from their daughter since Sunday morning when she went to work at the Grand Prix. And I said to my wife, come here, take a look at this. It's a story about a missing girl, and she looked exactly like Beth. Rosario Gonzalez disappeared on February 26, 1984, one week before Beth Kenyon.
She was last seen working at the Grand Prix on Sunday. Ms. Gonzalez was one of a dozen young models dressed in red shorts and a white T-shirt. And I said, this is a major story. What's going on in South Florida? Miami police admit they are baffled by the case. Today, they released a sketch of a man seen walking with Rosario near the Miami Arena. At this time, he's not wanted. We just want to identify who he is, and we'd like to talk to him. Wilder had participated in the Miami Grand Prix. There's a problem with Chris Wilder.
So it just kind of clicked again. You know, here's a girl at the Grand Prix missing, model, my girl, Beth Kenyon, model. I knew at that time we had the right guy. - Both these disappearances, Beth Kenyon and Rosario, were getting a lot of publicity. Pop said, "New Buchanan, famous Miami crime reporter, writing for the Miami Herald."
Edna had been following the news of the disappearances closely for weeks. She's the first person who publicly links Rosario and Beth's disappearance as possibly to the same person. And then over the next couple of days she builds on that. Until she finally gets around to noting the suspect in this case is a race car driver and a fashion photographer. I think that just got to him. I gotta flee.
Did you wonder if people back home were looking for you? Oh, yes. Yeah, I wondered if people knew I was missing, you know? I wondered if my mom realized I was gone. Working swing shift, I answer my phone, and it's Billy. As brother and sister, Billy was about 14 months older than me. You know, Tina and Billy got together, and then Tina just became part of our life.
Billy was very, very worried because she hadn't touched the base with him. She just disappeared. You can't report people missing for 24 hours. She's 16. They're going to look at her like maybe she's a runaway. And I said, if you can't find her, you need to let Tina's grandma know right away and tell her to contact Horne's police department as soon as possible. I was working the swing shift.
And the report came in. We were going all over the place trying to find where she was. We talked to the mother. She was concerned because Tina didn't usually not come home. The father had no idea where she was. So, you know, we were lost.
I got called out of class and I went into the office and there was a couple of police officers there. I walked in and they're like, "Hi, we want to know when you spoke to Tina last, when have you seen her? Do you know who her boyfriend is? Do you know who she has any other boyfriends?" They were trying to find an answer where she could be, but I felt almost immediately that they already suspected foul play. April 5th, 1984.
Tina's second day in captivity. We stopped in some desolate areas off Flatland, and there was a restaurant there that serves steaks and stuff. He held the gun on me in the restaurant, underneath my shirt, with my arm close to him. No one had any idea. Here's a man with a gun in your restaurant.
I wasn't allowed to look around, so I didn't really look in people's eyes and stuff. I went to him and down, keep my head down and just eat. If I were to try to signal anybody, he'd shoot me right in the head, right on the spot. He allowed me to go to the bathroom on my own because he had a bird's eye view of it and looked inside first. He can see that I had nowhere to get out.
I sat on that toilet all by myself in that bathroom trying to figure out how to notify these people that who I am and I need help. I had no writing instrument, you know. I didn't have my purse with me. He kept it. You know, I didn't have no lipstick or anything either in my purse. You know, I was a young kid. But I thought about it and I tried to figure it out. There was just nothing for me to show, to signify. Those couple of moments alone in the bathroom were very...
helpful for me, help me continue on, gather my thoughts and cry for Billy, you know, cry for my family. I could never let him show that I was crying. God, if I were to show him how emotionally upset I was, I would have gotten killed. In order to survive, I had to become this shell of a person and take what he was giving to me, whether I liked it or not. And I did not like it, but I couldn't show him that.
My brain did kick into survival mode. It's really difficult to explain. You just need to try to put yourself in that point in time that I was in and see what you think. What would you do? I felt like there was no way you can escape. He didn't talk much. He would say only that this is what we're going to eat or we're going to go here, get gas. This is what I want you to do. Turn your head this way. Don't move. Stay still.
There was no thinking for myself. He controlled me. But I never let my guard down, ever. The threat of violence was constantly there at all times. The threat and unknowing if I'm going to die that day was always a constant for me. This is the day he's going to kill me. Why am I still with him? What's he using me for? But when we got to Gary, Indiana,
That's when he kind of, that's like one of the only times that he'd like described, this is what you're going to do for me. According to the FBI today, Christopher Wilder, wanted for a series of murders and sexual assaults, appears to be on a cross-country crime spree now with the help of a young woman. Wilder allegedly sent in a female accomplice to lure a victim out to his car. Police suspect that the accomplice may be a Tina Marie Reciclo.
This is Deborah Roberts. You can catch episode two of The Beauty Queen Killer, Nine Days of Terror from Ample Entertainment and 101 in the feed or find the series on Hulu. And you can also find more from 2020. Tune in on Friday nights at nine for all new broadcast episodes of 2020.
Hi all, Kate Gibson here of The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson. This week we talked to Whoopi Goldberg about lots of things. But one of the things we talked to her about is how as a science fiction and graphic novel fan, she never saw herself on those screens or on those pages growing up. I mean, I didn't realize that part of me until I watched Star Trek. And I saw it because I love sci-fi.
And for some reason, it never occurred to me that I was missing until I was present. You're not going to want to miss this episode of The Bookcase from ABC News.
