The Mystery of Tina Risico
- May 12
- 6 min read
Episode 18
He Was Killing Every Two or Three Days. Then He Took Tina — And Stopped.
Christopher Wilder was murdering women at a relentless pace — every two to three days. Then he abducted a 16-year-old girl from a Los Angeles shopping mall, and the killing suddenly stopped. What was it about Tina Risico that paused a serial killer mid-rampage?
That's the question at the heart of Episode 18 of Catching Evil, and it's one that investigators, psychologists, and true crime researchers have wrestled with for four decades. Not how Tina Risico was taken — but how she survived.
By April 1984, Wilder had perfected his method. The Australian-born racing car driver had spent 20 years learning how to charm, manipulate, and control young women. He posed as a photographer, a modelling agent, a man who could make dreams come true. He was handsome, well-dressed, wore expensive jewellery, and drove nice cars. He didn't look like a monster. That was the whole point.
When he approached Tina outside the Del Amo Fashion Center near Hermosa Beach — the biggest shopping mall in America at the time — he was already 20 days and 3,000 miles into a killing spree that had claimed victims across Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Nevada. Nine women taken. Most of them dead. He was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. And his technique was "flawless."
Tina was 16. She'd gone to the mall to fill out a job application at a gourmet deli. She noticed a man with cameras around his neck watching her. He told her she was beautiful, that he ran a modelling agency, that he could make her a star. He handed her a brand-new $100 bill. "You're now officially being paid as a model," he told her, "and there is a lot more where that came from."
She got in the car. It's the moment she says she regrets every single day. But it's critical to understand: Wilder didn't succeed because his victims were naive. He succeeded because he was a predator operating at the very pinnacle of his craft. As the hosts put it, this was "prime predator Wilder at the very pinnacle of his evilness." He read people. He exploited vulnerability. He offered things that felt too good to refuse — and by the time you realised the truth, it was too late.
Within an hour, Tina was staring down the barrel of a gun on a remote dirt trail. "I've killed before," he told her, "and I won't hesitate to kill you." He shoved the gun into her mouth. He pulled a hunting knife from his boot and ran the blade from her chin to her stomach. And then he laid out what he called "the rules of my game."
Surviving the Unsurvivable
What followed were nine days of captivity that rank among the most horrifying in American criminal history. Wilder raped Tina repeatedly. He electrocuted her nightly with a split lamp cord — pressing live wires to her ears, nose, neck, and breasts. He bit a chunk of flesh from her nipple. He forced her to dance naked. He cut off her waist-length hair to disguise her. And every day, he reminded her that he could kill her at any moment — or sell her to a sex trafficking ring across the Mexican border.
But here's what makes Tina's story extraordinary: she didn't break. And she didn't die.
Every other woman Wilder abducted, he killed within two or three days. Tina lasted nine. Not only that — within days, Wilder stopped tying her up. He gave her the car keys. He let her drive him 1,800 miles across eight states while the FBI searched in the wrong direction entirely. He sat in the passenger seat with a baseball cap pulled low, a loaded revolver under the seat, and trusted a brutalised 16-year-old girl to be his camouflage.
Why?
What Tina Did Differently
Tina Risico didn't have any of the advantages you might expect of a survivor. She wasn't from a wealthy family. She didn't have powerful connections or a safety net waiting for her. Her father had abandoned her as a baby. Her mother had fallen in with a motorcycle gang. There were drugs. There was abuse. By 16, Tina had already learned lessons about suffering that no child should ever have to learn.
And those lessons may have saved her life.
"In order to survive you have to obey," she said in later testimony. Tina understood — instinctively, immediately — that resistance would get her killed. So she obeyed. She smiled when told to smile. She acted natural when told to act natural. She didn't cry. She didn't plead. She didn't try to run. She gave Wilder no reason to escalate — and in doing so, she became something none of his other victims had been: useful to him alive.
Was it purely tactical on Wilder's part? A teenage girl driving made him less visible to the police hunting him. Was it something about the way Tina responded — her quiet compliance, her refusal to provoke him? Was it, as some psychologists suggest, the beginnings of a twisted dynamic where Wilder saw her as something to collect rather than destroy — echoing the obsessive captor in John Fowles' novel The Collector, a book that looms large over this case?
The podcast doesn't pretend to have a single, clean answer. Because the truth is more complicated than that — and it gets darker still.
The Moment Everything Changed Again
By April 10th, Tina had been Wilder's captive for six days. She was showing signs of Stockholm syndrome. She was driving him, eating with him, sitting beside him in diners while he held a gun on her under the table. And then, in a shopping mall in Gary, Indiana, Wilder pointed to a girl and gave Tina an instruction:
"The boss wants to see you."
Tina approached the girl — a young woman named Dawnette Wilt — and brought her back to the car. Wilder pulled his gun. Dawnette got in the back seat. Tape over her hands and eyes.
The survivor had been turned into the lure.
How Tina carried that burden, what happened to Dawnette, and the final days of Wilder's rampage are all coming in Part Two. But the question that will keep you awake is the one this episode poses from its opening moments:
He killed every woman he took. So why not Tina?
Episode 18 of Catching Evil — The Mystery of Tina Risico — is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.
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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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