True Crime Conversations · Mamamia Podcasts

The Beauty Queen Killer’s Unknown Victims

·1 hr 6 min·4 clips

Christopher Wilder used a camera, a business card, and an Australian accent to lure Terri Ferguson at 2.30pm in Florida.

1. True Crime Conversations covers The Beauty Queen Killer’s Unknown Victims, a Christopher Wilder investigation that begins with Terri Ferguson in Florida on Sunday, March 18th, 1984. 2. Gemma Bath hosts the episode, while Andy Byrne and Mark Llewellyn are the guests because they made the Hatching Evil podcast and pursued the Wilder case. 3. The episode asks whether Christopher Wilder killed far more than the confirmed 9 to 11 victims and whether the Wanda Beach murders belong in that pattern. 4. Terri Ferguson is approached at 2.30pm by a well-dressed man with an Australian accent, a camera, and a business card. 5. The man tells the 21-year-old, 'I can make you a star,' and suggests a quick beach shoot for a local surfing store. 6. Bath says Wilder became known as the Beauty Queen Killer after murdering multiple young women who were often in their late teens or early 20s. 7. Byrne says the case changed from focusing on Wilder to focusing on families and survivors who had not been heard. 8. Llewellyn says the team has spoken to families for the first time and found new victims through Hatching Evil. 9. They describe Wilder as a serial killer who became a spree killer between February and April 1984. 10. They say Wilder grew up in Australia, then took his crimes to America, and that he operated in broad daylight rather than hiding in bushes. 11. Byrne says a death-row prisoner in California claims Wilder confessed to killing 11 women before the later rampage. 12. The guests say experts now see Wilder as the prime suspect in the Wanda Beach murders. 13. They also say one woman’s daughter was a Jane Doe for 27 years because a pathologist made a mistake. 14. Byrne says her sisters were finally able to bury her and remember her once the identification was made. 15. Llewellyn describes two brothers in Pensacola, both veterans with 50 years in the U.S. Navy between them, who had never spoken together about their sister in 40 years. 16. He says the brothers wept in the same room after the first shared conversation about her. 17. Byrne and Llewellyn speak in an interview style that mixes forensic detail, family testimony, and retrospective reporting. 18. The tone is investigative and grave, with recurring references to police failure, missing records, and unanswered questions. 19. Listeners interested in Australian true crime, cold cases, and victim-centered investigations would likely stay with it. 20. Listeners wanting a tidy solved-case recap or light banter may skip it.

As heard by us

A careful reconstruction that turns one predator's approach into a much larger missing-victims picture.

True Crime Conversations opens in Florida in 1984 with Terri Ferguson at a shopping centre, where a charming man with an Australian accent draws her toward Christopher Wilder, the Beauty Queen Killer.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a cold, carefully built look at Christopher Wilder's trail, starting with a single unsettling encounter in a Florida shopping centre.

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