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 just go out and have fun, watch the sun pets, 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 not take one. Comma mark.

Soft sticks.

How are you feeling?

I'm okay. This headache is just swimming in my head. That's all. I'm stressed out, I guess. Okay. 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 open in 40 years. I think it's time. I want to share my side of the story, my truth, and why a teen had survived. 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're going to come to my party? And I'm like, Sure.

Did you party a lot?

Yeah.

'80s was 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 hair dus, bright colors, white pumps.

It was everything you would see in a gogo's video.

Southern California was the place to be. South Torrance was my home. South High School rocked. Spartans roll.

We ditch school. We hung at the beach.

We were in the water all the time, just standing our toes and standing 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. The beach was the scene.

We'd come back from skating from Marina Del Rey, and then we would 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 older guys. It was, I wouldn't say innocent. I mean, of course, we drank and we got stoned, but we just had so much fun.

I 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. 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 than she was. She was already 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. She had a tough time dealing with some of those folks.

Well, on April fourth, 1984, I went to school. Usually, I took the bus home, the number 7, and the bus always went through the loop to the mall. On my way home, I stopped off. I didn't tell anybody that I was going to go look for a job. There was a sales clerk job at the Hickeyry 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, 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. To feel about making me a model was very convincing. He drove me by the actual modeling agency. Do you want 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.

He was telling me, Turn around, 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, give him this look like, Are you for real? I don't think so. What is this? What does this have to do with what we're doing type attitude?

And then his demeanor changed immensely.

I just clicked. He's going to 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 got to prepare yourself to take it. And so from that point on, I obeyed everything he said to me in every way what to do. I had to strip down, take the bra off, so I was topless. And he was taking nudy photos. He take my face, put glasses on me, and put a hat on me. And at this time, he was escorting me to the car. Now I feel captive. I was feeling fear, desperation, anxiety. I had no idea what monster this person was.

At authorities say Tina wasn't the first victim. The rampage had begun weeks earlier, 2,745 miles away.

People who disappear without a trace. Where is she? The most notorious murder cases in New York. Pure evil.

And the most devious killers. There's a Hannibal lector feel to him.

For chilling true crime stories, follow the True Crime, NYC podcast wherever you listen.

When it comes to winning elections, Is it really the economy, stupid? Are soccer moms the quintessential swing voter?

And does it matter which candidate you'd rather share a beer with?

Every election cycle clichés come easy. But are they right?

In a new series on the 538 Politics podcast, we're taking a look back at conventional wisdom from past elections.

Where did that wisdom come from? And does it hold up today? Find the campaign throwback series in the 538 Politics feed wherever wherever you get your podcasts. The 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, 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. 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, get with an agency, be part of the pageant world.

Ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome all of our participants, Fine for the Crown of Florida, Miss USA, 1983.

I entered the pageant on a fluke. My sister saw an ad somewhere and said, Julie, you need to do this. I think this would be great for you.

Julie Diane Chauberca.

I was the first runner off that year at the Miss Florida USA Pageant.

My first pageant was the Miss Florida USA Pageant. More areas, Miami. I did enjoy it very I met a lot of great girls.

Grande Yellow, Miami.

Tracey Deft, Miami.

Beth Kenyan, Pompino Beach.

Beth Kenyan 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? Well, there's so many beautiful girls in this contest. It's just hard to believe. I mean, it's this far, and last night-She had the sweetest, best attitude.

I mean, some girls 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 thought, Check that out. She had a fairly successful modeling career. This is the one that a lot of people recognize, the Lawn Brow 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, I think says a lot about a person.

Beth loved everybody. Helping people, that was who she was. It just hard to look back at it because she just was here one day, and then she was completely missing.

March fourth, 1984, 32 two days before Tina is kidnapped.

Sunday, March fourth, 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. We thought that she'd be there by 4:00, 4:30. When she didn't show up, we were a little bit surprised. We contacted the school, and 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 person's list, but the police believe she took off, literally.

The problem with missing persons cases is that there's often an assumption, well, 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, 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. Okay.

Whitaker, take one.

When we got the When I got a call on the Beth Kenyan 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 Cor 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 her 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 Wayne 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 jewelry, always very smartly attired, has a Porsche, and Wilder is a reasonably competent a race car driver. He's got a 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 a 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'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 going to, you're my girl. I'm going to make you 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-tressed and well-mannered and everything. But the reality is he was having a whole double life.

April fourth, 1984, Tina's first day in captivity.

After the Anaham woods, he drove to the first hotel room. 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 zap me everywhere, in my ears, in my nose, and 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 fifth, 1984, Tina's second day in captivity.

Days on the road were very long. We drive from 6:00 AM 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 this way, and I guess the window was here. I lost a lot of sense of direction. 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 He 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. He always had it in hand's reach. My hair was really long at the time, down on my butt. I loved it. And he cut it off. Why is he cutting my hair? Why is he trying to disguise me. And that's when I realized he's keeping me. Okay. 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 is pictures 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? Come on. Growing up with her was just hard. She wasn't very responsible. I knew her mom. Her mom was a wild child with, motorcycle riders and parties She was gone with one of our buddies that was in our group, and Carol was quite a character.

She was one of the party people and enjoyed herself.

There was drugs always me from a very young age. I mean, I knew what drugs were when I was 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's a A very sweet woman, 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 10th, 1984, 25 days before Tina is kidnapped, the search for Beth Kenyan continues in Florida.

We put together a flyer with the help of the Kenyans, Missing Person, and we circulated all the way from Boyton 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. You looked at best phone book, and it had his number. And I called Crystal Wilder, and I said, We would like to meet with you about Beth Kenyan. We would have asked her on scene 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. In one of the bedrooms was a reflector umbrella that you would use in a photoshoot.

I had a photo session with Christopher Wilder twice at his home. It was a very beautiful house in Boyton 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 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 boy in Beach PD. And I said, You know anything about this Chris O'Wilder? 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, of course, I hear my neck stood up. I know I'm dealing with some sexual deviant that had a really bad past. We had them, but we didn't have them. It was a lot of pressure, but it was one of those things your adrenaline is 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, you could be trying to scope his next victim.

Police are also conducting-I'm sitting there watching the late news at 11:00. 20-year-old Rosario Gonzales 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 scene. 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 Gonzales disappeared on February 26, 1984, one week before Beth Kenyan.

She was last seen working at the Grand Prix on Sunday. Ms. Gonzales 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. To date, 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.

Chris Wilder.

So it just clicked again. Here's a girl at the Grand Prix, missing model, my girl, Beth Kenyan, model. I knew at that time we had the right guy.

Both these disappearances, Beth Kenyan and Rosario, were getting a lot of publicity. Up pops Edna Buchana, famous Miami crime report and 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 got to flee.

Did you wonder if people back home were looking for you?

Oh, yes. I wondered if people knew I was missing. I wonder if my mom I don't realize 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. 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. When I said, If you can't find her, you need to let Tina's grandma know right away and tell her to contact her and Police Department as soon as possible.

I was working the swing shift, and the report came in. We were gone 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 we were lost.

I got called out of class. 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 boyfriend? They were trying to find an answer where she could be. But I felt almost immediately that they already suspected foul play.

April fifth, 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 wanted 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 when I need help. I had no writing instrument. I didn't have my purse with me. He kept it. I didn't have no lipstick or anything either in my purse. I was a young kid. But I thought about it, and I tried to figure it out.

But there was just nothing for me to show, to signify. Those couple of moments alone in the bathroom were very helpful for me. Helped me continue on, gather my thoughts, and cry for Billy, cry for my family. I had never let him show that I was crying. God, if I were to show him how emotionally upset I would, I would have gotten killed. In order to survive, I had to become this shell of a person and take what he was given 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 of 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 And that's one of the only times that he'd describe, 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 assault, 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 Recico.

This is Deborah Roberts. You can catch episode 2 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 9 for all new broadcast episodes of 2020.