Fight Like Your Life Depends On It
- May 6
- 8 min read
Episode 17
She Was 16. He Was a Serial Killer. She Thought She Was Going to Be a Model.
Inside the Catching Evil episode that every woman needs to hear.
LeAnne was 16 years old, enjoying a day at a crowded Florida beach with friends, when two attractive young women in matching Barbizon modelling T-shirts approached the group.
They were friendly, outgoing, and they had a message: their boss — a talent scout and chief photographer — was looking for a fresh face. A girl-next-door type. He thought LeAnne had what it took.
She didn't take it seriously at first. "I was a cute girl. I was attractive, but I was not Farrah Fawcett," she says. "For these women out of nowhere to come over and say, hey, do you wanna be a fashion model, was just the most ridiculous, random thing I could have ever conceived."
But she went along with it. The man was well-dressed, polite, professional. He coached her on her walk. He asked to see her facial expressions. He told her she had talent.
His name was Christopher Wilder. He was 32 years old. He was a serial killer.
What happened next is one of the most chilling survivor accounts you will hear — and it forms the emotional core of Episode 17 of Catching Evil, titled Fight Like Your Life Depends On It.
"It was as if Santa Claus had turned into a sexual deviant."
Wilder asked LeAnne to do a "trust activity" with a blindfold. She agreed. He led her to a vehicle — she thinks a van — and they drove away from the beach. He was pleasant. Chatty. He asked her to sing for him. She sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic, blindfolded, in a serial killer's car.
"Had you woken me up that morning and said you're gonna be doing this in a few hours, I would've laughed my head off," she says.
Then everything changed. Wilder reached across the console, took her hand, and placed it in his lap. He had exposed himself.
"To my utter shock, he had pulled his member out of his shorts," LeAnne recalls. "It was as if Santa Claus had turned into a sexual deviant. That's how surprised I was."
She pulled her hand back. She didn't scream. She didn't fight. She wept — quietly, tears streaming down both cheeks from underneath the blindfold. Wilder tried to justify himself. He told her she'd heard of the casting couch. That this was how it worked in Hollywood. That he wasn't a bad guy.
"I didn't say anything to him. I just quietly wept because I did not have an ounce of fear in me. All I felt was sad. I was so disappointed because I really believed that here was an adult who saw a capability in me that I hadn't seen before."
She pauses.
"I just came to the realisation that it doesn't matter how well read, a good scholar, a good person, hardworking a young woman can be. All that matters in the world is — is she gonna sexually gratify some guy?"
Wilder told her she did great. She thanked him for the opportunity, got out of the vehicle with no shoes and no contact lenses, and walked a mile home.
She was 16.
"I feel really angry after listening to that."
In the studio, the reaction from Catching Evil's two guest experts is immediate and visceral.
Gemma Bath — host of Mamamia's True Crime Conversations, one of Australia's most respected true crime podcasts — doesn't hold back.
"I obviously feel really sad for young LeAnne, but the anger I feel towards that man," she says. "You could hear — as a young girl, she thought, oh, he sees me as a person. I could have a career out of this. And then it turns to, oh no, he sees me as a sexual object. And that is why I'm so angry — because men like Wilder are just looking at these women as objects, not people."
Two-time Emmy winner Olivia LaVoice — journalist, cold case specialist, and host of The Bakersfield Three and The Man with a Thousand Faces — makes a point that will resonate with every woman listening.
"The story is so relatable to any woman," she says. "Of course it's quite rare to come into contact with a serial killer, but that experience of feeling special, and then that disappointment when she realises — oh, this really isn't real. I'm really not going to be a model, am I?"
Then Olivia says the thing that stops you cold: "There's also something horrific about listening to a survivor's account and thinking about all the women who didn't survive. You have to wonder — if she had started to scream and try to open the car door, would that have been more appealing to him than her just being quiet?"
"We are conditioned to comply."
It's Gemma who names the thing that sits at the heart of this episode — and gives it its title.
"LeAnne's reaction is not unique," she says. "We are taught as women from a very young age — if someone does something like this, do not fight them. Comply, comply, comply, and then run. And we shouldn't have to do that."
She asks a question that lands like a punch: "Would you as a young man have just sat there and silently cried and then said thank you for the opportunity and left? Would you?"
The silence speaks for itself.
Gemma then shares advice from a self-defence expert she interviewed that she says has stayed with her ever since:
"Never let them take you to another location. Fight, scream, make as much noise as possible. Kick and do everything you can — because suddenly you're not compliant and you're no longer a good victim."
Her voice is steady and direct: "You might think freeze, but fight. Fight like your life depends on it."
An FBI profiler interviewed for the series puts it even more bluntly: "You never get in the car. He pulls out a gun and points it at you — you don't get in the car. He's not gonna shoot you. He wants you to get in the car. If you get in the car, you're dead."
The monster who didn't look like one
Part of what makes this episode so unsettling is how it dismantles every assumption about what a predator looks like. Wilder wasn't lurking in the shadows. He was well-dressed, articulate, successful — a businessman, a racing car driver, a man with connections and charm. He befriended the local homicide detective. He recruited young women to help him lure his victims.
"He knew how irresistible this ploy was," says Olivia. "It was more powerful than his money, than his cars. The camera. He knew that was the best tool."
Gemma and Olivia both explore the psychology behind predators like Wilder — the childhood abuse, the enabling parents, the systems that let him walk free again and again. But they keep returning to the same point: the system doesn't just fail to catch these men. It fails the women they target — before, during and after.
Olivia is blunt about what she's seen in her career: "The average person has no idea how many victims' families have to take things into their own hands to get some sense of justice. Not every family is capable of pushing and fighting — because grief resonates differently with different people. The mother who truly cannot find it within her to get out of bed is so much less likely to get answers than the mother who is beating down the detective's door."
Gemma agrees: "Decades go past. And when you talk to these people, the grief sits on the surface. It feels so raw and yet it's decades old."
The ripple effect
Mindy Walden was four years old when Wilder took her mother. Every Mother's Day at school, while other children made cards and presents, she was the sad little girl in the corner.
An excerpt of her interview is played:"When I'm having a happy time, she's not there," Mindy says. "It kind of drags me down. I always felt like a weird, left-out weirdo kid."
She never went to college — because it was a college car park where Wilder abducted her mother.
"When you look at it like that," co-host Andy Byrne says, "it's not just two dozen or thirty young girls. We're talking hundreds of people affected. And it just happens for generations."
Why this episode matters
Fight Like Your Life Depends On It is not an easy listen. It's not supposed to be. It's a teenage girl's account of the day she came face-to-face with a serial killer and survived — and a raw, honest conversation between women who are tired of a system that conditions girls to comply, fails to protect them, and then abandons their families when the worst happens.
Gemma Bath says it plainly: "Sometimes families know they're not going to get answers through the justice system. Telling their story is their way of getting justice — having their person remembered by a wide audience. Justice can look different."
LeAnne's story is proof of that. She was 16. She was brave without knowing it. And forty-seven years later, she is finally being heard.
🎧 Listen to Episode 17 of Catching Evil — Fight Like Your Life Depends On It — wherever you get your podcasts.
If this story resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Because this conversation is long overdue.
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If you knew Christopher Wilder or had an encounter with him we want to hear from you.
Email us at info@catchingevil.com
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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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