The Mystery of Tina Risico & The Stunning Courage of Dawnette Wilt
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
Episode 19
She Was Told She Could Live — If She Brought Him Another Victim To Take Her Place
Episode 19 of Catching Evil answers the question the previous episode left hanging — and tells the story of a couragous teenager who ought to be a household name.
For seven days, Christopher Wilder had kept abducted schoolgirl Tina Risico alive.
And then, on the morning of the eighth day, he told her she could go home.
On one condition.
She had to find him another girl to take her place.
He drove her to South Lake Mall in Indiana. He gave her money for perfume. He told her to walk the floor and look for someone pretty. Someone young. Someone alone. When he pointed out who he wanted, she was to say her boss was a photographer — and that he was looking for a model.
Tina knew exactly what Christopher Wilder was. She had been raped, tortured and electrocuted for seven days to make sure of it.
She brought him Dawnette Wilt anyway.
The Girl at the Mall
Dawnette was sixteen years old. A cheerleader at Lake Central High School. She played in the band. Her mother worked at South Lake Mall, which made it — in Dawnette's own words — a safe space.
She had spent the afternoon filling out job applications. She was the only one in her friend group without a summer job, and she wanted to fix it.
Then a friendly girl her own age walked up to her. Smiled. Said her boss wanted to meet her.
"He gave a very convincing spiel," Tina would later remember. "All that was going through my head was, how can I save her? How can I tell her to go away, run? But I just did what he said."
Forty minutes later, Dawnette was in the back of Christopher Wilder's stolen Mercury Cougar with a handgun in her mouth and duct tape over her eyes. Her wrists and ankles were bound. Wilder was telling her, in a flat voice, that she was his now — and if she did not comply, he would kill her.
She did not know who Wilder was.
She did not know the friendly girl who had introduced them was, at that moment, driving the car at gunpoint.
She did not know that the man holding her down had spent the past six weeks as the FBI's most wanted fugitive, leaving a trail of murdered young women across America.
She was sixteen years old. And she was on her own.
Before You Read On
This is the most confronting episode of the series so far, and the one where we have thought most carefully about what to broadcast and what to hold back.
Every word spoken by Dawnette and by Tina is their own — taken from police and FBI interviews and from a recent Hulu documentary, and revoiced with care. Every detail of what Wilder did to them comes from unclassified FBI reports.
Akron. Niagara. Watkins Glen.
In a motel room in Akron, Ohio, on the first night, Wilder raped Dawnette repeatedly.
The next morning, he tied wires to her body and electrocuted her. Tina, locked in the bathroom, heard her screaming and could do nothing — except, as she passed Dawnette afterwards, catch her eye for a moment and silently mouth two words.
"I'm sorry."
They drove east. At Niagara Falls, Wilder left Dawnette drugged and bound in the back of the car while he wandered among the tourists with Tina, scoping out the Canadian border. That night, in another motel in upstate New York, the rapes and the torture continued.
On the morning of 12 April, the television in their motel room was tuned to Good Morning America. Tina's mother appeared on screen, pleading on national television for her daughter's life.
Something in Wilder shifted.
He told Tina she was going home.
Then he forced two sleeping pills down Dawnette's throat, put her in the car, and drove east on Interstate 90.
The Woods near Watkins Glen
He stopped at a secluded patch of woodland near Watkins Glen, New York. He took her out of the car. He walked her into the trees with his briefcase and his hunting knife.
For half an hour, he tortured her.
She begged him to stop. She begged him, when she realised what was about to happen, to use the gun rather than the knife. He gave a snort of derision and began to suffocate her.
And then — Dawnette Wilt decided to fight back.
"That was the time that I remember fighting back. And I... that was a good feeling."
She wriggled. She twisted. She would not stop.
Wilder gave up on choking her, pulled out his hunting knife, and stabbed her three times — twice in the back, once in the chest. He stood over her, watched the blood pump from her wounds, and walked away.
She lay there. She drifted.
And then she heard a voice in her head. Her own.
"Dawn, you have to get up. You cannot let this be it. Your mom is so worried about you. You have to move."
She got up.
She took off her trousers and tied them around her chest as a makeshift bandage. She began making her way, slowly, towards the road. Then she heard the sound of Wilder's car returning — he had come back to make sure she was dead — and she dragged herself behind a fallen oak tree and waited until he gave up and drove away.
A Vietnam veteran named Charles Laursen, a tractor mechanic, took a wrong turn that morning and found himself on a dirt road called Welker. He saw a sixteen-year-old girl staggering along it, covered in blood. He lifted her into his truck and drove her to the nearest hospital.
The knife had missed her heart by inches. It had punctured her lung.
Another few minutes, and she would have been dead.
The Question That Will Not Die
Tina, meanwhile, was still in the car. Wilder had returned to her, sweating and pale, and told her they needed to find another vehicle. She did not ask what had happened in the woods. She believed Dawnette was dead. She did what he said.
For forty years, the question of what Tina Risico did has divided the people closest to this case.
Victims' families, police officers and FBI agents have all, at different times, argued she should have been charged as his accomplice.
Others — including the FBI agent who finally interviewed her — point to the gun in her mouth. The seven days of rape and torture that preceded the mall. The impossible arithmetic of a sixteen-year-old's survival.
Dawnette herself, speaking now, will not call her an accomplice. She will say only that she knew she was in a very scary situation with a monster and his — "I'll say accomplice" — and that it was never really clear what that relationship was.
We do not resolve the question of Tina Risico in this episode. We do not believe it can be resolved by us — or by anyone other than the women who were in that car.
What we have tried to do is tell, in full and in their own words, what happened to both of them. And let you sit with it.
Two Girls. One Car.
Because the truth at the heart of this episode is the one that should haunt every listener.
Two incredibly brave sixteen-year-old girls. One car. One survived him. The other survived by him.
And one of them, against every reasonable expectation, got up.
"If I had decided not to get up, then I would have died for sure." — Dawnette Wilt
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Help Us to Keep Investigating
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
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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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