He already was serving one life sentence. At age 78, he got a second one for a 1976 rape.
WEST PALM BEACH — A 78-year-old man currently serving one life sentence received a second one after a jury found him guilty during his retrial in the 1976 rape of a teenage babysitter in Boca Raton.
Circuit Judge Caroline Shepherd imposed the new sentence on John MacLean during a hearing on May 12, just days after jurors convicted him on one count of armed sexual battery.
In imposing the sentence, Shepherd spoke about the victim, a woman who in October 1976 was 15 years old and tending to children at a neighbor's home when MacLean broke in and raped her twice.
"I cannot imagine a more vulnerable, innocent child and what she actually endured," Shepherd said.
Immigration crackdown: He played Jesus on Good Friday. Ten days later, he was deported to Guatemala.
MacLean, of Pompano Beach, is serving the first life sentence in a separate case from 1977 in which a jury convicted him of sexually assaulting a young mother in Boca Raton while her two children slept nearby.
Both cases remained unsolved until 2012, when Boca Raton police said they uncovered DNA that linked MacLean to four sexual assaults. Authorities arrested him at his home.
West Palm Beach: Three die of drug overdoses within hours; police fear synthetic opioid involved
Police said the DNA also connected MacLean to the 1976 rapes of two sisters, who were 14 and 18 years old. However, because state lawmakers didn't lift the statute of limitations for armed sexual battery until after those attacks, prosecutors could not charge MacLean with those assaults.
MacLean had also been charged in 1981 with rapes in Miami and Boca Raton, but the cases were dismissed.
In 2018, a jury convicted MacLean in separate trials for armed sexual battery. However, he received a new trial in the 1976 babysitter case in 2020 when the Fourth District of Appeal ruled that the trial court erred by not informing the jury that it could have convicted MacLean on a less serious charge of sexual battery.
The appellate court upheld his conviction and life sentence in the 1977 case.
Shepherd rejected a request from the defense that MacLean be given a sentence of time served, instead crediting him with 4,586 days, or 12 years and 6 months, spent in jail or prison over the course of the two trials.
Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Man serving life sentence gets second one in 1976 Boca Raton rape
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
True crime: A judge, his wife vanish at house 70 years ago, leaving blood trail to the sea
This story is part of a true crime series by The Palm Beach Post. Victims: Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth, 58, and his wife, Marjorie, 56 Killers: Bobby Lincoln and Floyd 'Lucky' Holzapfel; hit ordered by Judge Joseph Peel Jr. Where: In the ocean off Manalapan Date: June 15, 1955 Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth — one of the most influential and important men in Palm Beach County — didn't show up for a morning hearing at the courthouse on June 15, 1955. A stickler for rules, Chillingworth was never late. Something was wrong. The night before, he and his wife, Marjorie, had had dinner with friends in West Palm Beach, then returned about 10 p.m. to their oceanfront Manalapan bungalow on A1A. The next day, a carpenter showed up to build a playground for the couple's grandchildren and found only an open door and a smashed porch light above it. Police found a trail of blood on steps down to the beach. What happened to them would not be known for five years. Their murder 70 years ago would be considered Palm Beach County's crime of the century. More in The Post's true crime series True crime: Read about clown murder, local serial killer in Palm Beach Post series The pioneering Chillingworths were a prominent family of achievers. They arrived in Florida in 1892. Curtis' grandfather, Richard Jolley Chillingworth, served as West Palm Beach mayor and sheriff of Dade County from 1896 until 1901. (Palm Beach County was part of Dade until 1909.) His father, Charles, had been city attorney for West Palm Beach and Lantana, and Curtis himself was the youngest judge in Florida history when he was elected county judge in 1920 at age 24. Gravesites for all three sit in West Palm's historic cemetery, Woodlawn, but Curtis' body isn't there nor is his wife's. More on the case The crime of the century (like it's never been heard before) Unlike his father and grandfather, Curtis Chillingworth was born in West Palm Beach — in 1896. He was one of seven seniors graduating from Palm Beach High School (later to become Dreyfoos School of the Arts) in 1913 and graduated from law school at the University of Florida at the top of his class. At age 21, he returned to work at his father's law firm. He was elected circuit judge in 1922, holding that title until his death. It wasn't long after he went to work for his father, however, that he was called to service in the Navy during World War I, serving convoy duty overseas aboard the USS Minneapolis. At age 48, he would be called again to serve during World War II. Chillingworth was stationed in London and participated in planning the invasion of Europe, according to a bio from the Palm Beach County Bar Association. In 1920, Chillingworth married Marjorie Crouse McKinley, a Cornell University student. Their fathers had practiced law together and were good friends. Chillingworth's middle name was Eugene, after Marjorie's father, Eugene McKinley. The couple had three daughters. In addition to being accomplished, Chillingworth was highly ethical. And he was keeping his eye on another judge who wasn't. During the '50s, West Palm Beach and surrounding communities were considered small-town. Gambling and moonshine pervaded, a temptation for corrupt officials to make money off it. One of them was part-time munincipal Judge Joseph Peel, 36. Chillingworth had been keeping an eye on him for years and had already given Peel a warning because Peel had represented both sides of a divorce case. In those days, attorneys could be judges and practice law at the same time. Peel also was involved in the local bolita, an illegal numbers game, and in moonshine rackets. He would tip local operators before a police raid because he was the one signing off on the warrants. In return, they would pay him at least $500 a month. Peel's judicial salary was $3,000 a year. The day the Chillingworths died, Peel was due in court and believed Chillingworth was preparing to get him disbarred. He had told a client she was divorced but never filed the paperwork. She got remarried and had a child before finding out her divorce wasn't legal. For $2,500, Peel hired two thugs. Floyd 'Lucky' Holzapfel and Bobby Lincoln landed a boat on the sand of the Chillingworths' Manalapan beach house at 1 a.m. on June 15, 1955. They were in cahoots with Peel in the protection racket. Holzapfel, 36, was a West Palm Beach garage attendant and bootlegger, and Lincoln, 35, ran pool halls in Riviera Beach. Holzapfel knocked on the door while Lincoln hid in the bushes. The judge answered in his pajamas. As they walked the couple down the stairs to the beach, Marjorie, in her nightgown, screamed. Holzapfel pistol-whipped her. It was her blood that formed the trail. Judge Chillingworth offered them $200,000 to let them go to no avail. The couple's devotion to each other would echo in their final words. Holzapfel and Lincoln rowed the couple 2 miles out to sea in a small boat. Holzapfel weighed down Marjorie, 56, with diving weights. 'Ladies first,' he said, before pushing her overboard. The judge, 58, told his wife: 'Honey, remember, I love you.' She replied: 'I love you, too.' After he lost his wife, the judge, who had wriggled his feet free, jumped in on his own, but soon he surfaced. Holzapfel quickly pulled him into the boat, wound a rope with an anchor around Chillingworth's neck and tossed him back in. They have never been found. Now how do we know these details? One of the thugs would spill the beans. In 1959, Holzapfel bragged to a friend that he knew who killed the Chillingworths. The friend, James Yenzer, turned on him. Yenzer along with former West Palm Beach police officer Jim Wilber lured Holzapfel to a room at the Holiday Inn in Melbourne, got him drunk and got him to spill about the murders. Little did Holzapfel know, but an officer from the Florida Sheriff's Bureau was in the room next door, recording. Peel was sentenced to life in prison. He died in 1982, nine days after he was paroled with terminal cancer. Holzapfel was sentenced to death, which was later changed to life in prison. He died in 1996. Lincoln was never charged because he testified against the other two. He died in 2004 at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach. After the judge's death, relatives found a draft of a letter he wrote that was addressed to Gov. Leroy Collins. Chillingworth was announcing his intention to retire from the bench on June 16, 1955 — the day after his death. The date appeared to be erased and changed to July 1. "Because of my health and for several reasons, I feel I should retire," Chillingworth wrote. An empty grave at Woodlawn Cemetery memorializes the Chillingworths, whose bodies were never found. Chillingworth Drive north of Okeechobee Boulevard runs past a West Palm Beach park named after the couple. Two West Palm natives, Jonathan Paine and John Maass, knew the case well. Their parents had grown up in West Palm Beach and knew the Chillingworths. Paine and Maass got ahold of the recordings of Holzapfel's confession and restored them, turning them into a podcast called "Chillingworth." TV shows, such as the series, "A Crime to Remember," have featured the crime. Despite all the hoopla, the meaning of the murders came down to one thing: an upstanding man standing up for justice. "The heinous act was considered the 'Florida Crime of the Century' having been committed and directed solely at the administration of justice, as a consequence of the Judge's steadfast efforts to preserve the integrity of Florida's legal system," the county Bar Association bio stated. Holly Baltz, who has a passion for true crime, is the investigations editor at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hbaltz@ Support local investigative journalism. Subscribe today. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: True crime: Judge Chillingworth, his wife vanish, leaving only blood trail to the sea
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Yahoo
Stay inside warning after fire in derelict building
People were told to stay inside after a fire broke out at a derelict commercial building in Burnley. Eight fire crews were called to the incident, where they used a drone unit to tackle the fire, on Holmes Street at around 14:30 BST on Saturday, Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS) said. There are no reports of any injuries, but resident Rachel Maclean told the BBC that Aldi, next to the building, was evacuated. Expressing concern about the incident, Ms Maclean said: "There are kids in and out (of the derelict building) all the time and local homeless people do stay in there." Ms Maclean said that her family were advised to stay indoors. The cause of the fire is under investigation. In a video shared on social media, Liam Wilson, group manager for Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, said: "We've worked tremendously hard over the afternoon, firstly, doing the firefighting operation but also working with partners to minimise the impact to the local community and the surrounding buildings and premises." He said they were "extremely grateful for the support of the community". A LFRS spokesperson said that, by 21:00 BST on Saturday, six fire crews and the aerial appliances remained. They said four crews remained on scene on Sunday, with Oxford Road and Holmes Street remaining closed to vehicles throughout the day. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service
USA Today
31-05-2025
- USA Today
Surviving a serial killer: She was attacked at age 11. Here's her story
Surviving a serial killer: She was attacked at age 11. Here's her story Serial killer Christopher Wilder snatched 2 girls, 10 and 11, in 1983. The next year he killed 9 in a cross-country rampage. What one sister says now. Show Caption Hide Caption Kris Conyers retraces steps when she was abducted and sexually abused Kristine Conyers retraces steps on the day she and her sister were abducted in Boynton Beach and sexually abused by serial killer Christopher Wilder in 1983. The Palm Beach Post Christopher Wilder, known as the "Beauty Queen Killer," abducted and assaulted two young sisters in 1983. Wilder's crimes escalated into a nationwide killing spree in 1984, claiming the lives of nine women. One of the sisters, Kristine Conyers, is now sharing her story 40 years later. It started with a phone call. The nice lady from school talked to 11-year-old Kristine Heck about stuff Kristine liked — roller skating, tennis and modeling. "Your mom is worried about you," the caller told her. "She says you're a model and a skater. You need a friend.' The calls kept coming to their home in Boynton Beach, Florida, and when Kristine eventually figured out that the caller was actually a man, she didn't want to be rude. As the calls progressed, he started talking about things that made her uncomfortable — sexual things. That was when she told her parents, and they told her to stop talking to him. The next time she encountered her creepy caller, it was in person — at gunpoint. Within eyeshot of the Boynton Beach Library on a summer's day in June 1983, Christopher Wilder abducted Kristine and her 10-year-old sister and took them miles away near Okeeheelee Park in West Palm Beach. They would live through the sexual assault that followed. Wilder deposited them right back where he had kidnapped them four hours earlier. Though police began investigating that day, they would not be able to identify the girls' attacker until nearly a year later — after Wilder, a self-made millionaire and Boynton Beach resident, had kidnapped 12 women across the country, killing nine, in a nearly two-month rampage that landed him at the top of the FBI's Most Wanted list. Beauty Queen Killer: Christopher Wilder killed 9 in nationwide spree recounted in Hulu doc At the end of the rampage, Wilder, 39, died after two self-inflicted gunshot wounds during a confrontation with police. He was 10 minutes from the Canadian border. For the first time, Kristine (now Conyers) is telling her story 40 years after the attack. Her trauma stretched for decades. Though detectives in 1984 pegged Wilder — after he died — as the man who had assaulted Kristine and her sister, the pain continued. The adults around her failed to offer support and to help her make sense of what had happened. Instead, they sent her away to a mental hospital for the majority of her middle school years, she said. She suffered another sexual assault in her early 20s. And, decades after the 1983 assault, Kristine reeled from her mother's revelation — that she had known Wilder before he targeted Kristine and her sister. Another sad fact: During her high school years, Kristine, seeking comfort, had confided in some of her classmates that she had been the victim of a man who turned out to be a serial killer. But they didn't believe her — because she didn't die. The champion roller skaters Kristine and her sister were latchkey kids. The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network, does not identify victims of sex crimes unless they want to be, and Kristine's sister asked that her name not be used. They both attended King's Academy. Their bus dropped them at home about 4 p.m. on school days, but they didn't have to wait long for Dad, an engineer at the phone company, Southern Bell, who would appear like clockwork, an hour or so later. The summers, however, were different. The girls got to go to work with their mom, who owned a beauty salon within walking distance of things they loved to do. Kristine would play tennis near the library. Both girls were avid roller skaters — Kristine was a national contender in speed skating, and her sister, the 'graceful' one, as Kristine says, liked to perform as a figure skater. They traveled all over the county and across the country competing. Kristine also joined the Brownies and then the Girl Scouts. As she confronted Wilder, one of her scouting lessons came crashing back. 'That was one of my first thoughts,' she said. 'We weren't supposed to talk to strangers.' Wilder was a geeky but rich businessman Wilder was born in Australia in 1945, two months before Germany surrendered during World War II. He was a dual citizen with an American father and Australian mother. Setting out for South Florida in 1969, Wilder slipped out of Australia even as authorities were eying him as the top suspect in the sexual assault and murders of two 15-year-old girls on a Sydney beach, according to "The Snapshot Killer," a 2019 book about Wilder by former Australian police detective Duncan McNab. The Wanda Beach killings in 1965, still unsolved, rocked the country. That investigation would never catch up to Wilder as he landed in Fort Lauderdale then moved to Palm Beach County. Wilder worked as a carpenter in the 1970s, then flourished financially from the 1980s building boom in the land of fast boats, cocaine cowboys and "Miami Vice." He was a fan of J.R. Ewing, the shifty lead character on the popular TV show "Dallas." Eventually Wilder opened electrical and construction companies in Boynton Beach on a path to amassing a net worth later estimated at $1 million. He would buy one of those speedboats himself and lead a Grand Prix racing team though he wasn't a great driver. (His national killing spree began with a victim he grabbed at the Miami Grand Prix.) Wilder was living an unfettered life that intersected not only with his victims but also the people who would later track him. Palm Beach County Sheriff's detective Tom Neighbors, who would connect Wilder the serial killer to Kristine's kidnapping and assault, was married to the woman who monogrammed Wilder's racing jackets. Years later, Neighbors told an Australian news crew that on the day he learned about the killing spree during a police roll call, Wilder was scheduled to pick up some jackets. Neighbors called his wife, told her to get the gun, and if she saw Wilder, "Shoot him!" Wilder was intelligent and good looking with intense blue eyes and blonde hair. He spoke with a slight lisp. Another sheriff's detective, who arrested Wilder in 1980, described him as "very well-spoken and educated." Detective Neighbors said Wilder seemed shy and always looked down. The detective didn't perceive the killer as "any threat at all" though he later acknowledged Wilder "most likely had killed a number of women when I was talking to him." Neighbors' wife, Dana, who monogrammed Wilder's jackets, described him as a "true gentleman," saying he always overpaid. To his friends and workers in Boynton Beach, Wilder loved to perform gags in the office but was quick to demand respect for women, one told McNab. Wilder didn't smoke and rarely drank alcohol. He kept a fastidiously clean house, said a girlfriend who lived with him in Loxahatchee. His geeky retort to anything was always, "Oh, love a duck." Behind the mask of a killer Wilder's light-hearted facade cloaked a monster, several veteran law enforcement officers agreed. He'd been stalking and assaulting minor girls since his teens. At 17, he was convicted of sexual assaulting a 13-year-old girl in Australia. Police in South Florida, especially Palm Beach County, would quickly learn of Wilder's penchant for victimizing minor females. But they couldn't quite find a way to put him away. When he was 26, Wilder was arrested in 1971 by Pompano Beach police after he tried to get young girls at the beach to pose nude. He paid a $25 fine. Wilder once told a sheriff's detective that he knew he had a "problem," that on the weekends when he didn't have work, "something came over him and that's what made him do the things he had to do," the detective said in court documents. When the compulsion struck, Wilder would pick up an empty camera and pose as a fashion photographer or modeling agent at shopping malls, promising jobs to lure young victims — most in their mid- to late-teens. A 16-year-old girl reports a rape in Boca Raton Five years after the Pompano Beach fine, Wilder crossed paths with a 16-year-old girl in Boca Raton when he was parked on the side of the road. He told her he knew her family and persuaded her to ride with him. In a remote area, he slapped her about the face then sexually assaulted her on the front seat of his truck, according to "The Snapshot Killer." Wilder was found not guilty of sexual battery in 1977. According to news reports, the truck had a stick shift, and jurors didn't think a front seat rape was possible given that obstacle. Wilder had girls eat pizza at the Palm Beach Mall, then was charged with raping one of them The next time Wilder was arrested, he knew authorities were coming, said former Palm Beach County Sheriff's detective Arthur Newcomb. "He felt bad about what he had done," Newcomb added in court documents. This was a common M.O., apologizing and looking remorseful in order to get a lighter sentence, McNab says in his book. Newcomb arrested Wilder in 1980 after Wilder had targeted a 16-year-old girl with her friend at the Palm Beach Mall. This time Wilder donned his camera and convinced the teens he worked for a modeling agency. He said he was going to film a pizza commercial, and he wanted to see them eat a slice. He told the 16-year-old to chew slowly, Newcomb testified. As she became disoriented, Wilder found a way to separate the girls, took the 16-year-old to a remote parking lot and raped her, court documents say. Though deputies recovered the slice, the lab couldn't find any drugs. Newcomb said in a 2025 interview that he later learned that Wilder had used a tiny dot of LSD. Newcomb knew Wilder's predations were extensive in Palm Beach County, according to court documents. Lake Park police were investigating Wilder at the time in a case that was never filed. Also reported were 'suspicious incidents' in which the girls got away. With inconclusive evidence, Wilder got a deal to plead guilty to attempted sexual battery of the girl he met at the mall. He was sentenced to five years of probation. Newcomb said the case was out of his hands by that time, and it frustrated him. "We had him," he said in 2025. "We should have locked him up." Wilder would indeed violate his probation, but then a Palm Beach County circuit judge would refuse to put him behind bars. The attack on Kristine Conyers and her sister Still preteens, Kristine and her sister couldn't fathom the danger lurking as they walked on June 15, 1983, in the early afternoon three blocks from their mother's beauty salon to a book event at the Boynton Beach Library. On their way, they were stopped. Wilder, in his 1970s Chevrolet El Camino, asked the girls whether they knew how to get to Congress Avenue. They said, 'No,' but a woman sitting at an apartment house nearby answered the question so he drove away. Half a block later, there he was again, parked on the same side of the street as the girls — next to the tennis courts and in view of the library. He pointed a gun at them and ordered them to "get in." Kristine's 10-year-old sister started to stomp her feet, looking like she was going to run, according to sheriff's documents. 'I'll blast a hole in your sister's head,' he told Kristine. She quickly grabbed her sister by the hair to keep her from bolting. They had to crawl over his lap to sit beside him on the bench seat. As Wilder drove, meandering across the central and western parts of the county, he talked about 'adult things,' the girls told police. 'Do you know what sex is?" Then he would explain. Each girl told police they didn't understand it. The girls asked for his name. 'Steve,' he said. (Wilder's younger brother was Steven.) Wilder told the girls he was taking them to a modeling agency, but one asked why he had to take them by force. He replied that no one would come any other way, according to the police report. He took them to a wooded area west of Okeeheelee Park where he put down a painter's dropcloth then sexually assaulted them. When he returned them to the tennis courts, the girls went to their mother's salon and told her what had happened. When their mother said she was going to call the police, the girls became "hysterical,' the police report said. They told her that Wilder was a Boynton Beach police detective and would know if they reported the crime. They also said that he carried a rifle that could shoot a mile and would kill them. But soon they led the officers to the scene, where they found the painter's cloth along with women's underwear that Wilder had been wearing. They each described their assailant as about 5'8', 180 pounds with blue eyes and brown hair that was thinning on top. He looked to be about age 30 with a trimmed mustache. His T-shirt had a picture of a Smurf and the words, 'Smurf this.' He wore dark blue silky jogging shorts and KangaROOS brand tennis shoes in maroon. They also described his El Camino in detail, including the rust color, the possible model and beige racing stripe on the hood. Their recounting of the events, taking police right to where they were attacked and the detail they offered was impressive, especially for victims so young, said Michael Gauger, former chief deputy at the sheriff's office. Why police couldn't find their attacker until it was too late The day after the attack, as the investigation got rolling, Kristine's mother, Averil Heck, received two phone calls about two hours apart. Both times a male caller asked to speak with Kristine. Her mother said she wasn't there and offered to take a message. He hung up. During the second call, he replied, 'No, it has to be her' before hanging up. Averil Heck didn't recognize his voice. She said in 2025 that she wasn't sure why. Both ran businesses within blocks of each other in downtown Boynton. She said she had heard him at city council meetings but had never spoken directly with him. Kristine was gobsmacked in 2017 after her mother told her out of the blue that she'd known Wilder before the attack, but her mom wouldn't say much more. After the calls in June 1983, police put a "trap" on the line but got nothing. Police interviewed several suspects but couldn't find a way to tie them to the crime. One had gone into a bar wearing a Smurf T-shirt the evening of June 15. He didn't look like Wilder. Another had bought a dropcloth that day and drove a rust-colored El Camino, but the dropcloth didn't match the one in evidence. Detectives worked through at least five sex offenders, but they didn't match the descriptions the girls gave. The suspect police were seeking was one who targeted young girls under 14. Wilder typically preyed on older underage teens. "I think the police did the best job they could," McNab said after examining the police report. "Police tend to look at age groups when chasing these people, and quite a few sex offenders target teens but not younger." One sexual offender who matched the girls' description and had a similar M.O. was relayed to investigators by a West Palm Beach detective. He'd twice been arrested on lewd and lascivious charges on girls under age 14. Kristine and her sister tentatively picked out the man from a photo array but couldn't positively identify him in an in-person lineup. The case went cold. How Kristine coped after Wilder's attack Kristine's home life was rocked by the attack. Her family didn't speak of it. In the fall, Kristine went back to King's Academy and completed the fifth grade with help from a kind teacher. But she felt different, she said, when church officials admonished girls to save themselves for marriage. "I felt like … that's who I am. I was labeled promiscuous," she said. Her parents never brought up Wilder's attack again, and Kristine and her sister became separated for large swaths of time while they grew up. One day Kristine's father caught her and her friends reading 'The Beauty Queen Killer,' a 1990 book by Bruce Gibney about Wilder. Her parents were incredulous, asking, ''What is wrong with you?' All I gained from that was shame,' she said. As Kristine entered her teens, trouble in her home piled up. She recalls seeing her mom with another man and telling her father about it. Her mom, who didn't challenge that memory in a 2025 interview, tells the story instead of a troubled girl who ran away and needed professional help. Kristine doesn't recall running away until she was older, but remembers being told she was imagining things and needed therapy. In the end, Kristine's parents made the call and she landed in inpatient care at a treatment center. "This is when I learned a child was not going to win a 'he said she said' against a parent." She said she was traumatized again, living in the hospital off and on for years. 'Going to the bathroom and showering with someone always watching you as a 13-year-old rape survivor was completely horrifying and humiliating," she said in a draft of her book, which is set to be published in 2026. 'We couldn't have razors, belts, certain bath products and appliances with electric cords. To me, this was so unbelievable and scary.' When she was released, she attended Santaluces High School in Lantana but dropped out, saying she felt bullied by her classmates giving her a hard time about the attack. At age 21, Kristine became a victim yet again, when she went on a rare night out with her friends to see a male revue in Fort Myers. She got caught up with the group of dancers behind the building and was raped, she said. When she reported it to police, they told her it was the dancers' word against hers so she dropped it. Children who are abused sexually are nearly 50% more likely to be revictimized, according to a 2017 analysis posted on the National Institutes of Health website. Researchers are still trying to determine why. Kristine eventually earned an associate's degree and at 53, runs a successful business. She has four sons and two grandchildren. But it's not until now that she's started to shake the effects of a horrific sex crime against her at such a young age. 'I was paralyzed my whole adult life,' she says. Kristine recently started a nonprofit called 'Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow Women' to help other survivors of sexual assault have a safe place to talk and for women in general to empower each other across generations. Christopher Wilder's 1984 rampage across U.S. Wilder had visited Australia six months before Kristine's attack. He was still on probation in the 1980 sexual battery case. While he was there, in late December 1982, he was charged with sexual offenses against two minor girls. An Interpol agent alerted his probation officer in Palm Beach County, according to court documents. With the help of his parents and uncle putting up their houses for his $400,000 bail, Wilder was able to fly home to Boynton Beach. The probation officer alerted Judge John Born, who had presided over the 1980 case. In February 1983, the judge let the millionaire out on $1,000 bond on charges of violating his probation. Wilder remained free for 14 months, enough time to attack Kristine and her sister and to abduct 12 women and kill nine of them across the United States the next year. Five of them were from Florida and four died, including the daughter of a police officer in Satellite Beach and a 15-year-old in Daytona Beach. A Florida State University nursing student escaped him and survived. Two from Miami have never been found. The FBI hunted Wilder from Florida to California and back east to New Hampshire in spring 1984. As detective Neighbors assisted them, something rung a bell about the girls' case. As he learned more, the evidence began to match Wilder and his M.O.: from the KangaROOS brand shoes to the phone calls to a scar on his ankle that one girl described. But it was too late. Though Kristine and her sister each identified Wilder in a photo array, he was dead. "I don't feel like what keeps me up is the event of being kidnapped," Kristine said. "It was the women who died after.' Holly Baltz is the investigations editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network. You can reach her at hbaltz@
