The Wrong Benchmark
- Jun 30
- 5 min read
Why Christopher Wilder does not measure against Bundy — he measures past him
By Regan Hunt
For half a century, Ted Bundy has been the bar, the figure against whom every serious offender is measured: the charming, intelligent predator who hid in plain sight.
Measured against him, Christopher Bernard Wilder does not merely reach that bar. On dimension after dimension, he clears it. The closer I look, the more I think Bundy is not the ceiling for Wilder. He may be the floor.
It may begin earlier than anyone has been willing to say. Wanda Beach, January 1965: two fifteen-year-old girls dead on the sand at Cronulla, a case still open sixty years on. Wilder has been a long-suspected hand in it, and the suspicion has never been answered, only left to sit.
If it is his, then his chain does not start in Florida in the 1980s. It starts in New South Wales while he was barely out of his teens, and almost two decades of it went uncounted before anyone was even looking.
He was detected again and again, and never once held.
This is worse than the charge it replaces. Wilder did not slip past notice. He was investigated in Sydney and in Florida across more than a decade, and he walked away from every one of those encounters with his liberty and his standing intact.
Once the system closed on Bundy, it stayed closed. For Wilder, being caught and being stopped were never the same thing.
He ran a fully successful parallel life.
Construction and electrical contracting firms, real estate, a kennel business: genuine wealth, not the borrowed respectability of a law student who never finished.
Where Bundy performed competence, Wilder owned it outright. He earned a real public profile through motorsport. He campaigned a Porsche in national-level road racing and put his name in the results sheets and the regional racing press. Bundy became famous only after his arrest, and only as a defendant. Wilder was a known and admired figure in legitimate society while he was still hunting.
He operated across three countries.
Australia, the United States, and Canada, with a final spree in 1984 that ran from Florida clear across to California and then back up toward the northeast border.
Bundy's range, wide as it was, never crossed a national line. Wilder crossed two.
He turned the law itself into his means of escape. This is the sharpest line between them. Bundy broke custody twice, both times by force, both times unlawfully, and both times he was recaptured, the second escape ending only after he had killed again in Florida. Wilder did the reverse. Facing grave charges in New South Wales in 1983, he was granted bail, allowed to keep his passport, and permitted to board a flight out of the country. He left lawfully, through the front door, and Australia never recovered him. No sawn ceiling and no courthouse window: only sureties, a hearing, and a boarding pass.
He bent the judgment of serious people. Magistrates, sureties, instructing solicitors, examining doctors: the very people whose work is to be hard to deceive. The Australian bail and the lenient Florida dispositions each required someone in authority to study Wilder and conclude he was a manageable risk. He gave them every reason to believe it. And then there is the count, which is the heart of why I think the comparison has been running the wrong way round. Bundy's number is roughly known because Bundy talked. At the end he gave interviews, drew maps, and traded confessions for time, and most of his victims were eventually accounted for. Wilder gave nothing.
He died in New Hampshire in April 1984 with the full reach of his crimes sealed inside him, and that silence is not a gap in the record. It is the record. The official tally credited to him is not a measure of what he did. It is a measure of how little time anyone had to ask before he was gone.
So we have been doing the asking he never permitted. Following the geography, the corridors, the recoveries that fit and the disappearances that line up with where he was and when. And the figure does not sit at the official number. It moves north of twenty-two, and every careful pass moves it the same direction, upward, never down. That is the thing to hold onto. Bundy's number is settled because he settled it himself. Wilder's is still climbing because we are only now recovering what he took the trouble to bury, lie about, and outlive.
Put plainly: Bundy may hold the higher confessed total, but he holds it because he confessed. Strip the confessions away and measure both men only by what investigators had to drag into the light without the killer's help, and Wilder does not trail him. On the work as it stands, he closes on Bundy and threatens to pass him. Bundy is the bar.
Wilder is the case that suggests the bar was set in the wrong place, by a man who made sure no one could measure him while he was alive.
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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
Brilliant insight...