A Rage to Kill: And Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

“Marge had moved somewhere behind the car,” Pierce continued. “It sounded like she was crying.”

  Sobbing, she had crawled along the ground trying to find her clothes. She was on her hands and knees when he made his decision.

  “I don’t recall feeling any emotion at all,” he told Ted Forrester and Keith May. “I just wanted to leave, so I started the car and backed up. It must have seemed necessary at the time to back up—because I did—and I backed right over Marge. I felt it but I don’t think I realized what I hit because I just put it into first gear and drove over her again frontwards and off the field . . .”

  He had noticed dirt and grass under his bumper the next day and cleaned it off. Later in the week, he said the Ford’s engine had thrown a rod and he’d sold the whole car to the wrecking yard for fifteen dollars. He hadn’t “learned” of Marge’s death until more than two weeks later when a relative told him about it. “The news shocked me. At that time, I was not aware that I had caused her death.”

  Not impressed with his selective memory, Forrester and May arrested Pierce and placed him in the King County Jail. On October 16, 1972, he was formally charged with first degree murder. Pierce pleaded not guilty. But, on November 20, he changed his plea and told Superior Court Judge James Dore that he was guilty of second degree murder.

  The case of Bernie Pierce was far from over. Finally, Don Cameron and Ted Fonis of the Seattle Police Department could question him about Georgia Murphy. Their case was much more difficult; they had no physical evidence to link him to Georgia’s murder. Even with a confession, defendants have been acquitted unless there was some strong physical evidence to back up that confession.

  Bernie Pierce was cagy. He would admit only to having been with Georgia Murphy on the night she was alleged to have died. He wanted to “think about the rest of it.”

  When he thought about it, Pierce was not anxious to talk to Cameron and Fonis again. The Seattle Police detectives wanted Georgia Murphy’s parents to have the scant comfort of knowing what had happened to their eighteen-year-old daughter. Pierce said he would take another lie detector test only if he was assured he would not be prosecuted on the Murphy case as a result of his polygraph answers.

  As far as a prison term was concerned, the Murphy conviction would matter little. But, for her parents, it was essential to learn the truth. It was January 1973 when Pierce faced polygrapher Dewey Gillespie for the second time.

  Gillespie found strong evidence of deception on Pierce’s part when he asked the vital questions about Georgia. In the interview that followed, Bernie Pierce finally admitted his involvement in her death.

  Pierce told Don Cameron and Ted Fonis that he and Georgia Murphy had gotten into a fight late on the night of November 4, 1969. He said he had pulled Georgia out of his car and she’d hit her head on some concrete. She had lost consciousness.

  And then, with the flat, remorseless voice that detectives had come to expect from Pierce, he told them how he had simply rolled her into the Duwamish River. He didn’t know whether she was dead or not, nor, apparently, did he care. Asked about the clothes she wore that night in early November, he said he had probably dumped them somewhere along the Pacific Highway.

  Bernie Pierce was clearly a man full of rage, a rage that was exacerbated by alcohol. Beyond the two murders he had confessed to, and the sexual assaults detectives already knew about, Pierce admitting choking a prostitute into unconsciousness in Taiwan in 1967 while he was in the Navy. There was no way of checking to see if that woman had survived.

  Opinions from psychiatrists that were included in Bernard Pierce’s sentencing report stated that he was a sexual psychopath, and that his sociopathy was complicated by alcoholism. As friendly as he might seem when he was sober, he was terribly dangerous to women when he was intoxicated and aroused. No one will ever know how many women had been terrorized by Bernie Pierce. There may have been others who, like the girl who was almost strangled in her own apartment, chose not to report his attacks.

  For detectives from both the Seattle and King County Police Departments, Pierce’s conviction came at the end of years of dedicated investigative work which brought, finally, answers to tragic questions in the deaths of two trusting young women. Judge Dore sentenced the man who had so brutally violated that young trust to life in prison on February 21, 1973.

  At this writing, Bernie Pierce is fifty years old and still behind bars at Washington State’s Twin Rivers Prison. His first possible release date is March 13, 2001.

  Profile of a Spree Killer

  We have become so familiar with the term “serial killer” that most of us don’t remember that this appellation is relatively new to the jargon of forensic psychologists and detectives. Before 1982, all multiple killers were called “mass murderers.” Indeed, when I published my book about Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, in 1980, even he was called a mass murderer on the cover copy—and no one questioned that. It wasn’t until my dear friend, Pierce Brooks, retired Captain of the Los Angeles Police Homicide Unit, invited me to present the Bundy case to the VI-CAP (Violent Criminals Apprehension Program) Task Force in Huntsville, Texas, that I first heard the term “serial killer.”

  Serial killers kill one or two victims at a time over a long period of time. They are addicted to murder—just as some people are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling—and they do not stop until they are dead or arrested. At first they kill out of curiosity and a deeply imbedded rage, and it gives them a chilling kind of “high.” They may not try it again for a few years. Gradually, their killing games grow closer together until they must kill just to feel what they term “normal.” The “substance” they abuse is, of course, not drugs or alcohol; it is the power of controlling the life and death of another human being.

  A mass murderer, unlike a serial killer, who is considered “sane” by current medical and legal standards, is almost always psychotic. The mass murderer makes headlines for just one day’s activities, when his paranoia sends him into a business, a restaurant, or, too many times, a post office, where he attacks every human being he encounters. The mass murderer’s toll is high, but rarely as high as the overall body count run up by a serial killer. The serial killer takes infinite pains to keep his identity secret and to escape detection. The mass murderer is often bent on suicide. He either kills himself or places himself deliberately in the path of police bullets. Charles Whitman, shooting at hapless targets from the Texas Tower in Austin, was a mass murderer, and so was James Huberty at the McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California, and Howard Unruh in Camden, New Jersey, in 1949. Whitman and Huberty died the day of their crimes and Unruh still lives in a mental hospital.

  There is another, less known, category of multiple murder: the spree killer. The spree killer borrows certain traits from both serial killers and mass murderers and yet he is neither fish nor fowl. (I say “he” advisedly in all three groups because serial murder, mass murder, and spree murder are all male-dominated crimes.)

  A spree killer erupts suddenly, metamorphosing from a seemingly normal—even charming and successful—personality to a killing machine. Once he begins, he is a juggernaut who selects and stalks his victims day after day after day until he is stopped. His binge as a self-proclaimed executioner may last a week or even a few months, and, like the serial killer when he reaches his endgame, the spree killer begins to lose control and he takes chances that make it more likely he will be recognized and caught.

  Andrew Cunanan was a spree killer, committing murder across America in July 1997, finally exposing himself to the public when he shot designer Gianni Versace in Miami. He committed suicide in a nearby houseboat, where he was hiding out. And so was Christopher Wilder, whose crimes inspired blazing headlines in 1984—although few people remember him today. Wilder was among the cruelest—and wiliest—killers I have ever researched.

  Christopher Wilder was born in 1944 in Sydney, Australia. Early on, the blue-eyed, blond-haired boy demonstrated signs of sexual aberrance. He was in
volved in a gang rape at the age of fifteen, a terrible crime against a young girl. Wilder told her that if she had sex with him, he would protect her from the other teenagers who held her captive, promising her that he wouldn’t let anyone else bother her. Desperate, she agreed—and Chris Wilder laughed as he broke his word.

  Fantasies of rape enthralled young Chris Wilder. He was given therapy and even electroshock treatments in an attempt to get him to re-focus his energies. On the surface, he seemed normal, although he exhibited symptoms that bespoke an underlying obsessive-compulsive disorder. He washed his hands until they were raw, and he drank gallons of water a day—as if he were trying to cleanse himself inwardly as well as outwardly. But he kept his deviant sexual fantasies to himself.

  In his twenties, Chris Wilder was investigated after two teenagers disappeared on a lonely Australian beach, but somehow he slipped through the cracks in that country’s judicial system. He emigrated to America with no criminal record, and eventually became a naturalized American citizen. He lived an upper middle-class life on the east coast of Florida where he became a successful contractor. With a partner, Wilder built fine homes and small office buildings in Boynton Beach and Boca Raton. He himself owned a very nice house located on one of the many canals snaking into the area; it was somewhat isolated from other homes, made more so by the trees and shrubs that grew high around it.

  On the surface, Chris Wilder would seem to have been a man that single women would find attractive. He owned his own home, complete with a swimming pool, plus a thriving business, and one of his avocations was race car driving. He had a customized Porsche 911 which he drove expertly on various tracks in the area. He also had a boat. At thirty-seven, Chris Wilder was a good looking man just under six feet tall, although his hairline had receded until he had only a single stray lock on top that he combed forward to a point in the center of his forehead. He made up for the thin hair on his dome with a luxuriant mustache and well-trimmed beard. His eyes were deep blue, his features even, and his smile expansive.

  But there was something about Wilder that turned women off. Lots of them wanted to be his friend, but few accepted dates that might turn romantic. Perhaps it was a sixth sense, a gut feeling that he was a little dangerous. It may only have been that he seemed to be a little nerdy.

  In 1981, Wilder made a real effort to find someone. He joined a dating service, paying a hefty fee up front for the professional video that promised to introduce him to available women. Gazing into the camera, Chris Wilder spoke in a soft voice that had the slightest trace of a lisp, but no Australian accent at all. “I want to date,” he said. “I want to meet and enjoy the company of a number of women. I want to meet someone special.”

  His words sounded like every ad ever placed by a “swinging” playboy in a lovelorn column. “I have quite a few playthings at home,” he bragged. “I like sports cars. [But] bar hopping is not—and never has been—one of my greater joys . . . I would like a family one day.”

  Perhaps. “Between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, I was heavy into surfing,” Wilder continued. “That was my sole game in life. Arriving here and finding no surf, I went from one extreme to the other. I was completely non-work oriented prior to coming here.”

  Apparently, he wanted to come across as a good, solid, marrying kind of guy—but also as an exciting man. He sounded too perfect. Why—at almost forty—was a man with so many sterling qualities still single? Why did he have to pay somebody to find him a date?

  In truth, Wilder had met many women already; he just hadn’t met any who wanted to be involved in a serious relationship with him. He took out Vicki Smith, who was also a race-car driver. They certainly had a lot in common and they went dancing once a week. “He was so polite and gallant,” Vicki remembered. “He never let me open my car door.”

  But politeness and gallantry weren’t enough for Vicki. And their dancing dates became sporadic when Wilder met a woman he found completely perfect for him. Her name was Beth Kenyon and she was twenty-one in 1982 when she met Wilder at the Miss Florida beauty pageant. Wilder introduced himself as a professional photographer. He had an expensive camera around his neck and was taking pictures of many of the contestants. Beth liked his easy manner and his smile.

  Beth was tall, slender, and classically beautiful. She had been a cheerleader through high school and college, and she was a finalist in the Orange Bowl princess beauty contest. When she graduated from the University of Miami, she became a teacher of special education classes at a high school in Coral Gables. She coached the cheerleading squad and the girls were thrilled to have her.

  Beth Kenyon and Christopher Wilder were never a couple, not in the way he visualized it. For one thing, he was sixteen years older than she was, and she had a number of men in her own age bracket whom she dated. Beth’s family was wealthy, and she was scarcely impressed with Wilder’s construction business, his house, cars and boat. She never considered him anything but a buddy. And she talked about him that way to her mother, Dolores Kenyon. Chris was someone she occasionally had dinner with, a good friend who was always available to her.

  Dolores Kenyon met Chris Wilder sometime after Beth did, when he invited Beth and her family out for dinner in an expensive French restaurant. “He was very polite,” she recalled. “He brought flowers for the women, and he stood when we entered the room.”

  Later, when Dolores would have a tragic reason to try to dig deeper beneath Wilder’s courtly facade she recalled, “There was nothing menacing about him at all. Actually, Beth found him a little boring . . .”

  Shortly after this “family dinner,” both Beth and her parents were stunned by what happened the next time Chris Wilder saw Beth. “He asked Beth to marry him!” her mother said. “Beth was shocked. She had never given him any encouragement. She told me she explained her feelings to him, and afterward she thought that everything was fine—they were just going to be friends. She said he took her refusal very well.”

  Beth Kenyon got over her surprise at Chris Wilder’s unexpected proposal, and decided that they had simply been miscommunicating, but that they had worked it out. Chris had taken her explanation that she just didn’t view him as more than a very good friend without any sign that he was hurt or angry. Had Beth known that he was devastated, she would have been even more shocked. He didn’t betray his feelings by so much as the flicker of an eye or a flush of embarrassment.

  Beth continued to see Chris and to trust him as a friend. She was serenely oblivious to the fact that he was totally obsessed with her. He had buried his secret fixations for most of his life, and by the age of thirty-nine, he was expert at hiding them.

  Chris Wilder had arranged to race his Porsche in the 1984 Miami Grand Prix during the last week of February. The dark sports car, Number 51, was as familiar to race fans as Chris himself was. On February 26, he was seen around the track, and so was twenty-year-old Rosario “Chary” Gonzalez, a pretty dark-eyed girl with dreams of succeeding as a model. A pharmaceutical company had hired Chary and several other attractive young women to pass out free samples of a new pill containing aspirin to the race fans. The “models” all wore red shorts and white t-shirts.

  Chary Gonzalez left her home in Homestead, drove north for twenty-three miles, and arrived at the parking lot of a hotel close to the racing action. She picked up her tray of samples at the pharmaceutical company’s tent at 8:30 that Sunday morning. She was a little tired because she had been on the phone with her fiancé until almost two A.M., making plans for their June wedding. But she was young and her smile was vibrant as she moved through the sea of people on Biscayne Boulevard near Flagler Street and the Bayfront Park.

  It was shortly after one P.M. when Chary dropped her sample tray at the company tent, saying she was going to take a lunch break and then return. But she never did come back to finish the day’s work. There were so many girls in white t-shirts and red shorts that no one noticed one of them was missing.

  Rosario Gonzalez had told her p
arents she would probably be home for supper in Homestead between six and seven that Sunday in February. When she wasn’t there by nine, they were worried—worried enough to call the Florida Highway Patrol to see if there had been an accident involving their daughter. There hadn’t been, but Chary still wasn’t home at 3 A.M. Some sixth sense told the Gonzalez family that Chary was in terrible danger. “We were so hysterical, screaming and crying,” her father said, “We couldn’t control our emotions long enough to say a prayer.”

  Miami Homicide detectives were handed Chary’s case the very next day, Monday morning. Miami has a tremendously high homicide rate as well as a high number of adults who simply disappear for their own reasons. But the vanishing of Rosario Gonzalez was treated seriously from the beginning. She was happy at home, madly in love, and thrilled to be planning her wedding. She had no reason at all to run away.

  Detectives’ questions produced only a few witnesses who remembered seeing Chary on Sunday afternoon. One of the other models who handed out aspirin samples said that she and her mother had seen Rosario. “She was following a man, or maybe just walking behind him in the crowd,” the girl said. “He was white, and looked as if he was in his late thirties.”

  It wasn’t much to go on, but a police artist produced a sketch of the man from the other model’s description and distributed it to the media. The Miami Herald printed a story about Rosario’s disappearance, and a scattering of “sightings” trickled in. A man on the Pompano Turnpike called police to say that he’d seen a girl resembling Rosario jump out of a car near the Turnpike Plaza and run. But two men had chased after her, caught her, and it looked as if they were struggling with her and beating her as they forced her back into the car.

  The motorist said he’d followed their car to the turn-off to Boca Raton and managed to get the last three numbers of the license plate. It was a little help—but not much; the Motor Vehicles Department at the Florida State Capital in Tallahassee fed the numbers into their computers and got back 12,000 cars which had that combination of numbers on their plates. It would be virtually impossible to check out the whereabouts of all the registered owners.