The road was quiet.
It was April 1984, and spring had barely begun to settle over Yates County.
The trees were still mostly bare. The fields were waiting to turn green. Along the rural roads outside Penn Yan, there was little to suggest that this morning would be different from any other.
Then, along the edge of the woods, something moved.
At first, perhaps it was difficult to understand what it was.
Then she emerged.
A girl.
Barely sixteen years old.
Badly wounded.
Alone.
She had somehow made her way out of the woods and toward the road.
She had been kidnapped hundreds of miles away.
She had been driven across several states by one of the most wanted men in America.
She had been brutally attacked, stabbed, and abandoned in the woods because the man who left her there believed she was dead.
But she wasn't.
Her name was
Dawnette Sue Wilt.
And somehow, against almost impossible odds, she had survived.
Now she needed someone to see her.
Someone to stop.
Someone did.
His name was Charles "Charlie" Laursen.
And on that quiet road near Penn Yan, an ordinary man going about an ordinary day was about to become part of one of the most extraordinary survival stories ever connected to the Keuka Lake region.
But to understand how a sixteen-year-old girl from Indiana came to be fighting for her life in the woods of Yates County, we have to go back.
Back to a camera.
A lie.
And a man traveling across America.
The Man Behind the Camera
Christopher Bernard Wilder did not necessarily look like the monster authorities were desperately trying to find.
Born on March 13, 1945, in Sydney, Australia, Wilder later immigrated to the United States and settled in Florida. By outward appearances, he had built a successful life.
He was a building contractor.
He raced expensive cars.
He was an amateur photographer.
And he understood exactly how to use that image to his advantage.
Wilder frequently approached young women and teenage girls in shopping malls, on beaches, and in other public places. Carrying a camera and presenting himself as a professional photographer, he offered the possibility of modeling work.
A photograph.
An audition.
A chance at something exciting.
It was a carefully constructed lie.
By early 1984, Wilder was about to embark on a violent cross-country crime spree that would stretch more than 8,000 miles across America, leaving families searching for daughters and law enforcement agencies desperately searching for answers.
He would become known in the media as the Beauty Queen Killer and the Snapshot Killer.
A Trail Across America
Beginning in February 1984, young women began disappearing.
Wilder's method was often frighteningly simple.
He would approach a young woman with the promise of a modeling opportunity. Sometimes he gained her trust. Other times, he used force.
Then he drove away.
Investigators would eventually link Wilder to numerous abductions and multiple murders as he traveled from state to state.
His victims were daughters.
Sisters.
Friends.
Young women with lives, families, dreams, and futures.
The FBI launched a nationwide manhunt.
His face appeared on wanted posters.
Law enforcement agencies across the country were warned to be on the lookout.
And still, he kept moving.
By April, his path was leading east.
Toward New York.
Toward the Finger Lakes.
Toward Penn Yan.
A Sixteen-Year-Old Girl from Indiana
On April 10, 1984, sixteen-year-old Dawnette Sue Wilt was abducted in Indiana.
Wilder drove her hundreds of miles east.
Imagine that journey.
Mile after mile.
State after state.
A sixteen-year-old girl trapped with a man who was by then the subject of a nationwide manhunt.
Eventually, they reached rural Yates County.
For those of us who know this region, it is difficult not to picture those roads as they were in April.
The vineyards still mostly bare.
The fields waiting for spring.
The woods not yet filled with summer leaves.
The long stretches of country road where another vehicle might not pass for some time.
Somewhere near Penn Yan, Wilder turned from the road and took Dawnette into a wooded area.
There, he brutally attacked her and stabbed her.
Then he left.
He believed she was dead.
But Dawnette was still alive.
The Girl Who Refused to Die
Alone in the woods and gravely injured, Dawnette faced almost unimaginable odds.
She could have surrendered.
She didn't.
Somehow, she found the strength to move.
She crawled.
Out of the woods.
Toward the road.
Toward the possibility that someone might come along.
Every foot mattered.
Every moment mattered.
And then someone did.
Charlie Laursen saw her.
The local truck driver spotted the badly injured teenager along the roadside and stopped.
He did not know that she had been kidnapped hundreds of miles away.
He did not know that the man who had attacked her was the subject of a massive nationwide manhunt.
He simply knew that a young girl desperately needed help.
And he helped her.
He got Dawnette into his truck and rushed her to Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hospital in Penn Yan.
The girl who had been left to die had made it out of the woods.
But her fight wasn't over yet.
The Quiet Heroes of Penn Yan
Inside
Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hospital, doctors, nurses, surgeons, and emergency personnel suddenly found themselves caring for a critically injured sixteen-year-old whose story would soon become part of one of America's most notorious criminal investigations.
They worked to save her.
And they did.
Their names may not have appeared in national headlines. Many may never have been publicly identified at all.
But they were there.
A local truck driver who stopped.
Medical professionals who used their skill and experience to save a life.
Law enforcement officers who suddenly found their quiet rural county connected to a nationwide investigation.
These were the people who stood between a sixteen-year-old girl and the worst possible ending to her story.
Sometimes history remembers presidents, generals, inventors, and celebrities.
But some of its greatest heroes are simply people who show up when someone desperately needs them.
Dawnette Speaks
Dawnette had survived something almost unimaginable.
And then she did something else remarkable.
She spoke.
Despite her injuries and everything she had endured, she provided authorities with information about her attacker.
The man who believed he had silenced her had failed.
Dawnette had a voice.
And now law enforcement was listening.
Her account provided investigators with valuable information as the nationwide search for Wilder intensified.
Among the local law enforcement officers connected to the investigation was
Chief Deputy Ron Spike of the Yates County Sheriff's Office.
Suddenly, a case stretching thousands of miles across America had arrived in Yates County.
And time was running out.
Wilder was still moving.
Another Sixteen-Year-Old Survivor
Dawnette was not the only teenage girl who survived Wilder.
Sixteen-year-old Tina Marie Risico had been kidnapped in California and forced to travel with him for nine terrifying days.
Under threats against herself and her family, Tina was coerced into helping Wilder approach other potential victims.
She, too, survived.
The stories of Tina and Dawnette are complex, painful, and extraordinary.
Both were sixteen years old.
Both were caught in the path of a violent predator.
Both lived to tell their stories.
And their voices mattered.
The Manhunt Ends
Two days after Dawnette was found near Penn Yan, on April 13, 1984, law enforcement officers located Christopher Wilder in Colebrook, New Hampshire.
During a confrontation with New Hampshire State Police, a struggle occurred and Wilder was fatally shot when his own gun discharged.
The cross-country manhunt was over.
The man who had traveled thousands of miles leaving tragedy behind him would never face trial.
For many families, questions remained.
Some still remain today.
But in Penn Yan, a sixteen-year-old girl was alive.
More Than a True Crime Story
More than four decades later, the Christopher Wilder case remains one of the most disturbing crime sprees of the 1980s.
But here at Keuka Roots™, I believe we have a choice about how we tell stories like this.
We can make the killer the center of the story.
Or we can remember the people who fought back against the darkness he brought with him.
I choose the second.
Because the story that unfolded near Penn Yan is ultimately about a sixteen-year-old girl who refused to die.
It is about Charlie Laursen, who saw someone desperately in need of help and stopped.
It is about the doctors, nurses, surgeons, and emergency personnel at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hospital who fought to save the life of a girl they had never met.
It is about local law enforcement officers who found themselves suddenly thrust into the middle of a nationwide manhunt.
And it is about a community that became part of an extraordinary story of survival.
Keuka Roots Reflection
Today, someone can drive along the peaceful country roads outside Penn Yan and never know what happened there in April 1984.
The fields are quiet.
The woods have reclaimed their silence.
Cars pass by.
Life continues.
But more than forty years ago, somewhere along one of those roads, a sixteen-year-old girl emerged from the woods after surviving the unimaginable.
And someone stopped.
That may be the part of this story that stays with me most.
Someone stopped.
Charlie Laursen did not know who Dawnette was.
He did not know where she had come from.
He did not know that the person who had left her in those woods was one of the most wanted men in America.
He only knew that someone needed help.
And he stopped.
In the middle of one of America's darkest crime sprees, on a quiet road in Yates County, one ordinary act of humanity helped change the ending of a young girl's story.
Christopher Wilder passed through our region.
But he does not deserve the final word.
Dawnette does.
Charlie does.
The doctors and nurses who fought to save her do.
Chief Deputy Ron Spike does.
Because sometimes the most important stories in our history aren't about the darkness that arrived.
They're about the people who refused to let that darkness win.
Stay Rooted. Stay Keuka.™
Small Towns. Big Stories. One Crooked Lake.™
