In Australia, Pix officials said there is no record of the magazine ever employing Wilder or purchasing photographs from him.

More recently, in what the FBI termed a “close call,” a 20-year-old Fort Lauderdale model was forced to turn down an invitation Feb. 23to pose for Wilder when she couldn’t arrange transportation to his Boynton Beach home.

The young woman, who talked on condition that her name not be used, said a photographer told her Wilder had seen photos of her, was “dying to meet her” and wanted to take her photograph for a beer advertisement at the then upcoming Miami Grand Prix.

“When Wilder called later that night, he said he was doing a Budweiser commercial and wanted to do a shoot in his garage, with a car he was going to race the next day,” the model said. “I thought that was strange, taking pictures in a garage. But since my photographer recommended him, I didn’t think any more about it.”

The model said she decided against the trip when her parents, fearing something was “not right,” refused to lend her their car.

“I called Wilder back and told him I couldn’t make it,” she said. “He seemed upset and wanted me to take a cab. But when I said no, he asked me to meet him the next day at the race. I told him I was busy.”

Aspiring model Rosario Gonzalez disappeared from the Miami Grand Prix on Feb. 26. The 20-year-old woman is still missing. FBI agents said Wilder is a suspect in her disappearance.

“The FBI told me I was lucky,” the Fort Lauderdale model said. “They said it was a close call. I’m still shook up about it.”

Ted Martin, the photographer who attempted to set up the “shoot” between Wilder and the Fort Lauderdale woman, said he believed Wilder was a legitimate photographer. He had met Wilder at a fashion show at the Cutler Ridge Mall two years ago.

“I spent my time professionally with him,” Martin said. “He was very into the business.”

Investigators don’t know how many other young aspiring models were unlucky enough to cross Wilder’s path.

Detective Neighbors said he is suspected in a 1979 rape case. A 17-year-old girl reported at the time that she had been approached on the Lake Worth beach by a man claiming to be a talent agent for a prominent modeling agency in Fort Lauderdale. After luring the girl to his car, the man took her to a secluded area west of West Palm Beach and raped her. Neighbors said the woman recently told detectives her abductor was Wilder.

Investigators suspect Wilder used several aliases, business cards and ploys to lure young women to photo sessions where he would attempt to seduce them or rape them.

“There is evidence of different names and cards he would flash,” said Neighbors. “That is part of his M.O. He had quite a line.”

William Silvernail, who operates the Blackthorn modeling school in West Palm Beach, said Wilder approached his agency in 1981as a freelance photographer looking for work. He didn’t get any work, but Silvernail suspects Wilder may have taken a business card and then had copies made that identified him as a Blackthorn photographer.

Silvernail said his agency began getting calls from parents checking on a photographer who had approached their daughters. The name of the photographer was often different but the description was always the same: blond, balding and bearded – a description similar to Wilder.

At the Barbizon School of Modeling in Broward County, talent director Dorothy Girard said Wilder also used the name of her agency to approach young women and girls. In those cases, Mrs. Girard said Wilder was often wearing a Barbizon T-shirt.

“And, at that time, we didn’t even have Barbizon T-shirts,” she said. “When he was using our name, our students called up to check on him and we said, ‘Forget it, he is not with us.’”

Some of the girls Wilder approached apparently didn’t bother to check him out. He was arrested in 1980 for raping a 16-year-old girl after luring her from a West Palm Beach shopping mall with promises of appearing in a pizza advertisement as a Barbizon model.

According to court records, Wilder first told the girl to strike poses for him at different stores in the mall. “My eyes are the camera,” he told the girl, according to court records. “Don’t pay attention to me.”

Sheriff ’s Detective Arthur Newcomb, who arrested Wilder for the rape, later said in a court deposition that Wilder was believed to have continually used the photographer-agent ruse to seduce young women.

“[Wilder] stated this was a common operation, posing as this modeling agent, and that this is something he has done often,” Newcomb said in a deposition. “He tries to get girls in order to have relations with them. I have non-crime reports that show this man has done this frequently. It is nothing he denies.”

In that case, Wilder pleaded guilty to attempted sexual battery and was placed on five years’ probation. He began receiving psychiatric counseling but never ended his life as self-styled fashion photographer.

Detectives said that in the early 1980s he built a studio in his home on Mission Hill Road. The room was complete with developing, printing and lighting equipment, backdrops and cosmetic supplies. A friend said Wilder even had fans “for blowing a model’s hair back.”

In December 1982, two months after he had bluffed his way into the Miss Florida Pageant, Wilder was arrested in Australia and charged with the abduction and indecent assault on two teen-agers he had lured from the beach with a promise of modeling jobs. Wilder had first taken the girls to a zoo where he took their pictures as they posed on a rock sculpture.

Police said there was no film in the camera he was using. On April 4, he failed to show for a court hearing on the case in Australia.

According to records in Australia and with Interpol, Wilder showed the girls a card identifying himself as a photographer for Tide International, a talent agency located on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach.

Detective Neighbors said Wilder was associated with Tide as a freelance photographer in the early ’80s. According to the detective, models were referred to Wilder’s home studio for photo sessions.

“He used [Tide] as a source for models,” said Neighbors. “He would call and say I need a model and they would send one over. He legitimately hired them. What he did with the pictures, I don’t know.”

Neighbors said the sheriff’s office has received no complaints from any Tide models that posed for Wilder. He said several that were interviewed said Wilder had acted very professionally and they expressed shock that he was suspected in several abductions or murders.

Tom Davis, owner of Tide, said Wilder was not associated with the business. While Davis acknowledged that he had met Wilder through Grand Prix racing, he said Wilder was not one of about 40freelance photographers associated with Tide.

“We never sent him models, no way on that,” said Davis.

Though Neighbors said Wilder may have had arrangements with other agencies throughout the area in the early ’80s, he said Wilder removed the studio and photographic equipment from his home after his arrest in Australia. The self-styled fashion photographer then began dropping off his film at a local Kmart store to be developed.

Sun-Sentinel staff writers Ott Cefkin and Patricia Sullivan, along with correspondent Nick Yardley in Australia, contributed to this report.

February 23, 1985

Haydee Gonzalez will think about the wedding that was planned for her daughter last June and she will cry.

Delores Kenyon will talk about the bedroom, filled with her daughter’s unused belongings, and she, too, has to cry.

It has been 12 months now since Rosario Gonzalez disappeared and nearly as long since Beth Kenyon has been gone, but to each of the missing young women’s families, the pain and the questions have not been diminished by time.