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A chilling breakthrough has emerged in one of Australia’s most enduring cold cases: the brutal Wanda Beach murders.
After an exhaustive eight-year investigation spanning two continents, researchers believe they have not only identified the killer but also unearthed a clandestine US killing ground where the same perpetrator abducted, tortured, and murdered numerous other victims.
At the centre of this shocking discovery is Christopher Wilder, infamously known as the “Beauty Queen Killer.”
Veteran journalists and now dedicated true crime investigators, Mark Llewellyn and Andy Byrne, are convinced they possess irrefutable proof that Wilder was responsible for the deaths of 15-year-olds Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock.
Their relentless pursuit of truth has led them across Australia and America, meticulously retracing Wilder’s steps, interviewing survivors, and connecting with the families of over a dozen victims. Their groundbreaking work culminates in the gripping podcast, “Catching Evil.”
This revelation positions Wilder as far more cunning and prolific than even US serial killer Ted Bundy, who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of young women and girls.
“We will reveal Wilder is on a par with Ted Bundy in the number of women he murdered, and was even more cunning and manipulative,” Byrne told news.com.au.
“During the series we reveal new victims and new killing grounds. This is not a telling of an historical crime – we’ve made it a live investigation.”
The Wanda murders
It was Jan. 12, 1965 when the idyllic sands of Wanda Beach in the Sydney suburb of Cronulla, became a scene of unspeakable horror. The bodies of the best friends were discovered, brutally murdered the day prior.
What followed was Australia’s largest-ever police investigation, with 7,000 people interviewed within 18 months, yet the “Wanda Beach Murders” remain a chilling mystery.
Byrne said that to understand the “grim truth” behind the Wanda Beach murders, you have to ask a critical question: “What are the chances that a second, unknown killer, possessing the confidence and blood lust to single-handedly manipulate and lure two 15-year-old girls into the dunes, then brutally bash and sexually assault them, was present on that remote beach that day?”
“The probability approaches zero.”
Wilder resided in the same suburb as the victims and frequented their local shops.
As an avid surfer, Cronulla and Wanda Beaches were among his favorites, where he spent much of his time when not working.
The girls travelled by train to Cronulla that day; “Wilder, then 19, could have easily done the same, or driven his Sprite sports car, purchased with his father’s help around that time,” Byrne said.
Critically, Marianne Schmidt’s brother Wolfgang described a “surfie” type, around 17, deeply tanned, long light hair, zinc on nose, grey trousers, blue towel. Wilder was 19 and a known surfer.
Wilder’s predatory patterns were already established.
“Three years prior, he lured a girl from Manly Beach, plied her with alcohol, and threatened her into sex,” Byrne said.
“Significantly, Christine also had alcohol in her system, having disappeared earlier that day for lunch after speaking with Wilder at Cronulla.
“The only witness to see the killer with the two girls, Marianne’s seven-year-old brother Wolfgang, provided a description that matches Wilder from that period.”
The charm of Wilder
Byrne said several factors could also explain why the girls would willingly go to Wanda Beach and into the dunes with Wilder.
“Obsessed with Elvis Presley, they had just seen his latest movie, ‘Viva Las Vegas,’” Byrne said.
“Wilder’s father, like the Presley’s, hailed from Alabama, and Wilder was adept at putting on the same accent, a charm that would have undoubtedly amused the girls.”
Byrne said Wilder’s father was a drunken, charming bully, with Wilder inheriting this manipulative duality.
One of Wilder’s survivors, interviewed for the podcast, described her experience as: “It was like being hypnotized. I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t stop doing what he said”.
Byrne said the ability to “coerce young girls was a defining, terrifying trait”.
After the murders, the suspicions surrounding Wilder were immediate and persistent.
For years Wilder’s wife – of less than twelve months – his sister-in-law, and mother-in-law all approached the police, urging detectives to investigate him for the Wanda Beach murders.
Yet, it took eight months for police to even knock on his parents’ door – by which time Wilder had already moved to America.
As the podcast reveals, Wilder’s return to Australia in late 1982 offered a chilling echo of Wanda Beach.
“The day before his flight back to the US, he lured two 15-year-old schoolgirls from Manly Beach, took them to his hotel, and sexually assaulted them,” Byrne reveals.
Wilder’s modus operandi in America further solidifies the case.
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“He had a documented history of targeting two girls together. Six years after Wanda Beach, in Pompano Beach, Florida, he lured away two teenage girls and coerced them into posing naked.
“Later, he lured two 16-year-olds from the Palm Beach Mall (in Palm Beach, Florida), isolated one, fed her friend LSD-laced pizza, and then raped her.”
Despite being arrested and charged, he received only a $15 fine and five years’ probation, never spending a single day in jail.
His escalating violence culminated when he abducted two young sisters, aged 10 and 12, from Boynton Beach, Florida by gunpoint, drove them to an isolated spot, and sexually assaulted them.
Forensic scientists later tied him to this crime posthumously, with DNA from the scene providing a definitive match.
“We have interviewed the sister who was actually only 11 years old at the time. It is an incredible and emotional interview and an amazing episode to come,” Byrne said.
Missed chances
Byrne said crucially, the New South Wales Police’s elite Justice Project, initiated in 2007, made Wanda Beach its very first case.
“The officer who headed the unit unequivocally stated that Wilder is their ‘red-hot number one suspect,’” Byrne said.
“He confirmed that using all available modern technology and methods, every other suspect in the case has been definitively ruled out, leaving Wilder as the sole, compelling focus.
“He concurred with the view of the original detectives: Wilder was their man.”
Byrne said the final “infuriating element” is that Marianne Schmidt’s bathing costume bore semen stains from where the killer had masturbated over her – arguably the most critical piece of forensic evidence in New South Wales modern criminal history.
“Though signed into the Glebe lab (in Sydney’s inner west) with other collected items, there is no record of it ever being signed out, and it cannot now be found,” he said.
“This sample would definitively prove Wilder was the killer, yet two comprehensive searches have failed to locate it. We intend to launch a campaign to fund another, exhaustive search to finally bring this proof to light.”
English (US)