Episode 13: HOW I SURVIVED THE SERIAL KILLER CHRISTOPHER WILDER
- Apr 10
- 5 min read
She Asked One Question That Changed Everything. Now She's Coming For Justice.
Two years ago, Kristine was sitting on a porch reading a newspaper article when her world quietly fell apart.
It wasn't the abduction that did it. She'd lived with that for thirty years. It was the moment she read about unidentified bodies found near land in western Palm Beach County and recognised a name attached to it. Christopher Wilder. Her Christopher Wilder.
She went to bed that night and threw up.
The Mathematics of Survival
The realisation that hit her wasn't just about geography or timelines. It was something far more destabilising. While Wilder had her and her sister in that car, he was killing other women. Before. After. All around her. And when she read about a girl in Boca Raton, murdered just days after her own abduction, a question formed that she hasn't been able to shake since.
Did he kill her because he couldn't kill me?
That question is not self-pity. It is the unbearable mathematics of surviving a serial killer. And it is the question that set Kristine on a path that has led her here — to this episode, to this fight, and to a determination to find justice for every woman whose name we still don't know.
This week's episode of Catching Evil is unlike anything we've produced before. It's not just a crime story. It's the story of what happens after — after the headlines fade, after everyone else moves on and you're left standing in the wreckage of a life that was cracked open before it even properly began.
Thirty Years of the Wrong Narrative
Here's what doesn't get talked about enough. Surviving isn't the end of the story. For Kristine, in many ways, it was where the hardest part began.
For three decades she did what she was told. Buried it. Got on with life. Accepted the narrative handed to her by a system that had already failed her once — a narrative with the word "victim" woven so deeply into it that she stopped being able to see herself any other way. She moved through the world without boundaries, without a clear sense of her own power, wondering why she seemed to absorb other people's damage more easily than most.
It took her until fifty to realise she'd been living someone else's story.
The turning point wasn't a single moment of revelation. It was a slow accumulation — reading, writing, talking, and finally giving herself permission to look directly at what happened to her and what it actually meant. And when she did, something shifted. The shame started to lift. The narrative started to change. The woman who had spent decades apologising for her own existence started to understand that the girl in that car — the one who stayed calm, memorised every turn, and kept her little sister alive through sheer force of will — was not a victim.
She was extraordinary.
Meeting Her In Person
When Catching Evil first spoke to Kristine it was over the phone from Sydney. She was remarkable then. But nothing quite prepared us for meeting her face-to-face.
She and her husband Michael drove two hours to see us. They were warm, funny and generous — and she insisted we teach them Australian slang before we got started. But when the recording began the room shifted. What followed was one of the most powerful interviews this podcast has produced.
Her husband sat to the side throughout. By the end he had tears running down his face. He's heard this story many times. It still does that to him.
Kristine talked about what she would say to teenage girls in a school assembly. About raising four boys and teaching them about consent. About the Me Too movement and the women it left behind. About privilege, and how a charming, wealthy, well-connected man was able to abuse and kill for years because the system was designed to protect men like him. About the moment she finally stopped seeing herself as someone things happened to, and started seeing herself as someone with something powerful to say.
The Fight That Lies Ahead
But the most important thing Kristine said — the thing that has stayed with us — is this. She believes Christopher Wilder had far more victims than the official record shows. Women taken in Florida throughout the eighties. Jane Does found near his property. Girls who vanished and were never connected to his name.
She wants every one of them identified. Every name spoken. Every family given the answer they've waited decades for. Because she knows better than anyone what it costs to carry something unresolved. To live with a question that has no answer. To be told the kindest thing you can do for yourself is move on and forget.
She is also doing it for her granddaughter. A little girl who is two years old, who will grow up watching her grandmother refuse to be quiet.
That, says Kristine, is the most powerful legacy she can leave.
At eleven, she survived Christopher Wilder. At fifty, she is taking her power back — and she is taking it back for all of them.
Listen now. Be inspired __________________________________
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Survivors of Homicide Inc, based in Connecticut, provides assistance to anyone who has lost a loved one to violent crime.
All services are offered to members free of charge, including one-on-one counselling, support groups, court support throughout the judicial process and personal advocacy in working with law enforcement and other community agencies.
It was founded in 1983, just before Christopher Wilder went on his rampage, by a group of families trying to cope with the murder of a loved one that shattered their lives.
When you donate to Yesterday Today Tomorrow Women, you are investing in the empowerment of women across generations. This Florida based nonprofit was founded by Kris Conyers, who was abducted off the street at gunpoint by Christopher Wilder when she was 11 years old.
YTT Women is dedicated to advancing women’s mental health and social wellbeing and contributions directly support community-based initiatives that raise awareness, provide resources, and foster safe, supportive spaces for women to grow and heal.
Mary’s House Services was founded in 2015 by a dedicated group of concerned citizens from Sydney’s northern suburbs, close to where Christopher Wilder was born and lived wth his family. Members of the local clergy, health authorities, philanthropists and community and business leaders came together to help provide safety for women and their children, victim-survivors of violence and abuse.
The Mary’s House refuge was established to address the significant gap in government funded services and to save lives in the region by providing critical support and a safe space to cope with their trauma and begin to rebuild their lives.
How to donate: https://mhs-summer-appeal-2025.raiselysite.com/#donate
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