SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- An autopsy Friday confirmed that a body found near the Arizona-Utah border was that of a young Colorado woman believed to have been kidnapped by serial killer Christopher Wilder.
FBI Special Agent Terry Knowles said the body wasidentified as that of Sheryl Lynn Bonaventura, 18, of Grand Junction, Colo. Dental records were used to identify the young woman, believed to have been killed March 30, Knowles said.
Knowles said the nude body was found Thursday by picnickers in the desert near U.S. Highway 89, about 12 miles east of Kanab, Utah. The autopsy showed Miss Bonaventura died of stab wounds to the chest. She also was shot once, Knowles said.
The woman's family reacted with relief and sadness at the news.
'I'm happy to know where she is,' the victim's mother, Sandra Bonaventura, said in a telephone interview with UPI in Grand Junction, Colo. 'I have some contentment she is with the Lord.'
Wilder, a wealthy part-time photographer and Grand Prix race car driver, posed as a professional photographer and lured young beautiful women with promises of modeling careers, the FBI said.
He is blamed for the deaths of five women and for the disappearances of three others from Miami to Los Angeles. Three women escaped from him.
Wilder was shot and killed April 13 at Colebrook, N.H., after state troopers spotted his car and began to ask him questions. FBI spokesman Lou Bertram said Wilder grappled with a trooper and a .357 magnum discharged, sending a slug through him and into a trooper's chest. The gun then discharged again and Wilder suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the throat.
FBI records show Wilder, 39, traveled through Colorado March 26-29, from Denver through Durango. Miss Bonaventura disappeared from a Grand Junction shopping mall March 29. Wilder checked into a Page motel with the young woman March 30, Bertram said.
When he checked into a motel in Las Vegas, Nev., the next day, records showed he was alone, Bertram said. Michelle Korfman, a 17-year-old beauty queen, disappeared from Las Vegas April 1.
The FBI said three women believed abducted by Wilder have not been located. They are Miss Korfman, Rosario Gonzalez, who disappeared Feb. 26 in Miami, and Elizabeth Ann Kenyon, who vanished March 5 in Miami.
He is blamed in the deaths of Teresa Wait Ferguson, who was abducted March 18 at Merritt Island, Fla., and Terry Diane Walden, who was kidnapped March 23 in Beaumont, Texas. Their severely beaten bodies were found later.
Knowles said there was an outstanding arrest warrant for Wilder in Australia for sex crimes when he came to the United States.
