BEAUMONT, Texas -- The husband of a woman abducted by serial murderer Christopher Wilder and found stabbed to death won a $3 million wrongful death suit against the killer's estate Friday.
A six-member jury found Wilder's estate liable for $3 million in damages in the death of Terry Walden, a student nurse. She disappeared from Parkdale Mall in Beaumont March 22, 1984. A jogger found her body in a canal just west of Beaumont three days later. She had been stabbed three times in the chest.
U.S. District Judge Joe Fisher Thursday ordered a directed verdict, leaving the jury to decide only the damages and whether National Mutual Insurance Co., which carried a business policy on Wilder, was liable.
The jury found the company liable, but National attorney Mickey Shuffield of Beaumont said he did not consider the policy applicable to the case because it was taken out on an apartment building owned by Wilder.
Jurors deliberated about five hours after two days of testimony before returning with the $3 million verdict against the estate, which is worth about $300,000, said Joe Blanks, an attorney for Walden's husband, John David Walden, 30.
Blanks said he earlier asked the insurance company for a $300,000 settlement but was refused. He said he now plans to sue the company for $8.1 million, triple the difference between the potential settlement and Friday's ruling.
'We're going to ask the jury to give us treble damages for their failing in good faith to settle when they had the chance,' Blanks said. 'We still have a ways to go because we still have to try to recover from the insurance company.'
Walden was a mother of two daughters, now ages 11 and 17.
Three witnesses said they saw Wilder in the mall asking women if they would model for him the day Terry Walden disappeared. Witnesses also said they saw Wilder talking to Terry Walden.
Police found Wilder's car in a Beaumont parking lot with a large bloodstain inside. Walden's car was found in New York three weeks after her death.
Wilder shot himself to death while fighting with a New Hampshire state policeman near the Canadian border in May 1984 and never came to trial.
