Twenty-one-year-old beauty queen and aspiring model Rosario Gonzalez was handing out aspirin samples in red shorts and a white shirt with a beaming smile at the Miami Grand Prix when she vanished.
Her fiance and college sweetheart Bill Londos was five hours away at college.
When his dorm phone rang that Sunday evening in 1984 he was expecting to hear Rosario’s voice.
Instead, it was her frantic parents.
“She was supposed to be home at five. It was seven o’clock,” Mr. Londos remembers of that night 42 years ago that changed his life forever.
“They were already frantic, and it was only two hours. I got in my car because I already knew something was wrong.”
In an exclusive interview for the Catching Evil hit podcast, Mr. Londos reveals how he drove through the night, arriving at dawn to find a family in crisis trying to understand how Rosaria simply disappeared from a crowd of 250,000 people.
“Even back then, I knew she was dead,” he said.
Andy Byrne, co-host of Catching Evil and the investigative journalist who spent eight years unravelling this case, said the final image of Rosario “is haunting in its ordinariness”.
“A Miami firefighter, captivated by the pretty girl in red shorts and a white T-shirt handing out aspirin samples, asked if he could take her photograph,” Byrne said.
“She smiled, sat down on some sandstone steps, and posed. Minutes later, she was gone.
“Look at that face, she looks remarkably like actress Samantha Eggar from The Collector – the film we know serial killer Christopher Wilder was obsessed with,” Byrne said.
“That resemblance may have sealed Rosario’s fate.”
What followed was every family’s worst nightmare. Mr. Londos, just 21 and suddenly thrust into the role of desperate advocate, learned to play the media game.
“I was on the news every day for months, even national news,” he recalls.
“I learned that game really quickly. I would call the news and tell them what was going on, and they would put it on the news.”
He and Rosario’s family started a reward fund. They convinced police to issue a missing persons report before the standard 24 hours had elapsed. They found witnesses.
“I depended on the police, which I think was a mistake,” Mr. Londos said. “But you don’t learn those things till it’s too late.”
Veteran reporter David Goldstein, then a rookie at CBS Channel Four where Rosario’s mother worked, covered the case from day one. He remembers the shock that rippled through Miami.
“Here’s this guy who somehow sweet-talks Rosario into coming with him, promising her some kind of modelling career, with the roar of these engines and the roar of the crowd,” Goldstein said. “That’s just something you can’t fathom.”
Christopher Wilder was at that Grand Prix. The wealthy Australian-born businessman and race car driver had competed in a junior race the day before, finishing 17th. He lived just 40 minutes from Rosario’s home.
Tall, handsome, seemingly respectable – he was the ultimate predator hiding in plain sight.
Rosario wasn’t his first victim – and she wouldn’t be his last.
Mr Londos became a successful Miami construction businessman and father of four, from four failed marriages. The ghost of what should have been still haunts him.
“Deep down inside, I know it’s shaped my personality over the years,” he said. “But you’re a guy and you’re supposed to be tough and you’re supposed to get over things.
“The biggest thing with me is there’s no closure. There’s no way for me to go visit her.”
The wedding date he can never forget: June 4
For 10 years following Rosario’s disappearance, Mr. Londos would go and sit alone on that day in the church where they were meant to be married, wearing the tuxedo that Rosario had picked out for him, and think of her.
His interview with Byrne is one of the most emotional in the entire Catching Evil series – a podcast that has spent eight years honouring the forgotten victims of one of America’s most prolific serial killers, born in Australia to a US war hero and a Sydney tram conductor’s daughter.
“These victims have largely been forgotten because, sadly, there were so many of them,” co-host Mark Llewellyn said.
“But Bill is one of the reasons we did this series. It was very important for us that we honour the victims and the people who loved them.”
Episode Four of Catching Evil – “Beauty Was Her Death Sentence” – is available from Tuesday.
Anyone with thinks they have encountered Wilder – who investigators believe is responsible for the Wanda Beach murders in Sydney – or has any information at all, is urged to contact info@catchingevil.com
