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On March 18, Teresa Ferguson was kidnaped from a shopping mall in Merritt Island, Fla. Two days later her strangled body was found in a swamp. Terry Dianne Walden, 23, a Lamar University student, was reported missing in Beaumont, Texas, on March 23. Police discovered her body in a drainage canal three days later; she had been bound and stabbed to death. Sheryl Bonaventura, 18, was reported missing from a Grand Junction, Colo., shopping mall on March 29. Three days later, in Las Vegas,, Michele Korfman, 17, disappeared from a shopping mall where she had been appearing in a beauty contest. Three other women have told police they were approached at that mall by a man who police suspect was Wilder, but successfully rebuffed his advances.
Wilder was convicted in 1980 of attempted sexual battery in a Palm Beach County case, but placed on probation. Police have discovered that he is a fugitive from sexual-assault charges in Sydney, Australia. He concealed these earlier crimes from his fast-lane friends in Florida; most were shocked by his recent notoriety. Dennis DeFranceschi, a close friend and racing partner of Wilder's, failed to see any logic in his sex crimes. Said he: "If you want to act out a pornographic scene, you just go out and hire a bunch of hookers." Contemplating Wilder's alleged spree, DeFranceschi added, "He had no reason to subject himself to this.'' —By Jacob V. Lamar Jr. Reported by Kim Eisler/Tallahassee