Wilder's series of murders began in Florida on February 26, 1984, and continued across the country through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada and California, with attempted abductions in Washington and New York.

[10] After their divorce, Wilder's ex-wife told law enforcement that he had attempted to seduce both his mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and that she had found pictures of young women in their underwear in a briefcase inside his car.

[10] In November 1969, Wilder used nude photographs to extort sex from an Australian student nurse; she complained to police, but charges were ultimately dropped when she refused to testify in court.

He frequently traveled to Hawaii and the Bahamas and also developed an interest in photography which resulted in his converting a bedroom of his home into a darkroom.

[12] In 1977, a psychologist deemed Wilder a "mentally disordered sex offender" and "not safe except in a structured environment and should be in a resident program" and also noted his need to dominate women and turn them into slaves for his pleasure.

While visiting his parents in Australia in 1982, Wilder was charged with sexual offenses against two 15-year-old girls whom he had forced to pose nude after luring them from Manly Beach.

His parents posted bail and he was allowed to return to Florida to await trial, but court delays prevented his case from ever being heard, as the eventual initial hearing date of April 1984 came after his death.

[13][14] Two other young girls, aged 10 and 12, later identified Wilder from mugshots as the man who had abducted them in Boynton Beach in 1983 and forced them to perform oral sex on him.

[1] The first murder attributed to Wilder was that of 20-year-old Rosario Teresa Gonzalez, who was last seen on February 26, 1984, at the Miami Grand Prix, where she was employed as a spokesmodel at a temporary job distributing samples of aspirin for a pharmaceutical company.

She dated Wilder for a period of time, and was proposed to by him, but she declined due to their age difference; she is believed to have been last seen with him at a gas station near Miami.

[18] On March 21, 1984, Wilder approached Terry Diane Walden, a 23-year-old wife, mother, and nursing student at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, about posing as a model.

After breakfast the next morning, he drove to Milford Reservoir, 90 miles northeast of Newton near Junction City, Kansas, where he stabbed her to death and dumped her body under a cedar tree.

Her body remained undiscovered near a Southern California roadside rest stop until May 11, and was not identified until mid-June via dental X-rays.

[19] On April 4, 1984, near Torrance, California, Wilder photographed 16-year-old Tina Marie Risico before abducting her and driving her to El Centro, where he assaulted her.

Wilder apparently believed that Risico would be of use in helping him get other victims,[20] so he kept her alive and took her with him as he traveled back east through Prescott, Arizona, Joplin, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois.

[12] Two New Hampshire state troopers, Leo Jellison and Wayne Fortier, approached Wilder, who retreated to his car to arm himself with a Colt Python .357 Magnum.

[50] A copy of the novel The Collector by John Fowles, in which a man keeps a woman in his cellar against her will until she dies, was found among Wilder's possessions after his death.