Episode 15: DADDY'S GIRL
- Apr 21
- 6 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Every Girl At The Pageant Had Someone With Her. Except Michelle.
She Was Shy, She Was Beautiful, and She Was Alone. That Was All He Needed.
She was seventeen years old, shy, smart, and standing alone at her very first beauty pageant when a serial killer walked up to her and told her she had a big future in modelling.
Michelle Korfman didn't hesitate. Why would she?
He was well-dressed, charming, and professional. He had a business card. He had a story. And he had spent two decades perfecting the art of making young women trust him completely in just a few minutes.
What Michelle couldn't have known — what nobody in that crowded Las Vegas shopping mall seemed to know — was that Christopher Wilder was the most wanted man in America. The FBI had been hunting him across thousands of miles of highway. His photograph had been distributed to law enforcement agencies across the country. And yet there he sat, front row at a teen beauty pageant hosted by Seventeen magazine, bold as brass in white slacks and a brown jacket, watching the girls on the runway and waiting for his moment.
Nobody stopped him. Nobody recognised him. Nobody saved her.
Michelle was the kind of daughter every parent dreams of. An accomplished piano player. A school volleyball team member. A photography enthusiast who had recently told her mother, with complete sincerity, that she planned on being President of the United States by the time she was thirty-five. She was popular, grounded, and quietly determined — a girl who had submitted professional photographs with her pageant entry because she wanted to give herself the best possible chance. Of the hundreds of girls who applied, she was one of only fifteen invited to compete in the finals.
Her father Tony, a casino manager and accomplished poker player, had given her a 1982 chocolate brown Chevrolet Camaro as a gift for her consistently high grades and good behaviour. The personalised number plate read TOMISH — To Michelle — set inside a black frame that said simply: Daddy's Girl.
She drove herself to the Meadows Mall that Sunday morning in March 1984. She didn't tell anyone she was entering. She was going to surprise them.
Wilder was at the pageant before Michelle arrived. A teenager named Vince Garcia, there to support his girlfriend, who was also competing, found a spare seat beside him near the stage. In Episode 15 of Catching Evil, Vince recalls a man who seemed perfectly at ease — friendly, professional, someone who looked like he belonged there. The only moment that unsettled him was when Wilder turned caustic and cruel about one of the winners, a girl he felt didn't look feminine enough. His whole demeanour changed in an instant, Vince recalls. It was enough to make him quietly move his seat.
Wilder approached eight girls that day with the same offer — fake business cards, promises of a modelling portfolio, the suggestion of a magazine assignment that needed a blue-eyed model. Seven of them turned him down. Most had family with them, boyfriends, friends — people who anchored them to the room.
Michelle was alone. And when Wilder told her she had a real future in modelling and that he was looking for someone with exactly her look, she said yes.
Witnesses — including two of her fellow contestants — saw her leave the mall with him at 4:15pm in the afternoon. Sunset in Las Vegas was twenty-four minutes later.
What followed over the next forty-eight hours is tragic. Wilder checked into the Gold Key Motel on the Las Vegas Strip, parking his Mercury Cougar — with Michelle almost certainly locked in the boot — directly outside his room. He crossed the road to the Flame Steakhouse and ate dinner alone by the window, watching his car, watching the neon lights of Vegas move around it, watching the world go by as if nothing had happened.
The FBI, by this point, was closing in. A bank fraud investigator named Gary Rutledge had set up a direct hotline to track Wilder through his stolen credit card, sleeping with a phone beside his bed, forbidden from being more than ten feet from it. There were moments — agonising, heartbreaking moments — when agents arrived at motels and restaurants just minutes after Wilder had left. Minutes. Every single time.
Michelle's family didn't wait for the authorities to act. Tony Korfman spent more than $100,000 on the search for his daughter — hiring helicopters, organising search parties, printing 25,000 posters. The family reward poster, remarkable in its detail, even listed Wilder's method of disposing of victims, urging the public to check areas near water, near enclosed shrubbery, no more than 500 feet from a road. They described what Michelle was wearing — white boots, Levi's, a light blouse — and noted that she was wearing a class ring with her name in the band and two thin gold chains, one with a lightning bolt charm, one with a charm that read I love you, Dad.
They were desperate. They were heartbroken. And they were doing the job that should have been done for them. Two days after Michelle vanished, her chocolate brown Camaro surfaced in the rear car park of Caesars Palace Hotel, locked, boot empty. On the dashboard, placed there deliberately and carefully, was a single dried flower — the same flowers that had been handed to every contestant at the pageant.
Wilder had driven her car away, brought it back, and left that flower. Was he taunting the FBI? Did he leave the flower as a message? A signature?
Michelle's body was found forty days later by two cyclists in the Angeles National Forest, on the approach road to Los Angeles. She had lain unclaimed in the county morgue for another month, listed as Jane Doe #39, before dental records finally gave her back her name.
The medical examiner determined that Christopher Wilder had killed her with his bare hands, forcing her face into the ground until the dirt and soil blocked her airway and she could no longer breathe. There were no knife wounds. No gunshot wounds. Just his hands, and his rage, and a forest floor.
Tony Korfman spoke to the media two days later, on Father's Day.
"I think the worst image I probably have to deal with," he said, "is the last five minutes of her life. I know in my mind she was yelling for me. And that was the time I couldn't be there."
Michelle Korfman was a piano player, a volleyball player, a photographer, a daughter, and a girl who believed she could be President. She drove herself to a beauty pageant on a Sunday morning and never came home.
She was Jane Doe #39 for a month.
She deserves to be so much more than that.
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Join the Hunt and Help Us
Contact us here if you know something about Christopher Wilder. If you had an encounter with him, are you are a friend or a family member of someone who never made it home, we want to hear your story:
Email: info@catchingevil.com
Record a voice message: https://www.speakpipe.com/catchingevil
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Catching Evil is committed to making a meaningful impact in the lives of those affected by violent crime, particularly in light of the chilling legacy of serial killer Christopher Wilder, who left behind a still-growing number of victims. In our pledge to honour these individuals and support their families, we donate to not-for-profit groups in both America and Australia.
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
Catching Evil, proudly a part of the Acast Creator Network, is an Original Voices presentation for Sticky Toffee Media
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