Show Notes
She was four years old when Christopher Wilder stole her mother. For forty years, Mindy Walden told no one her story. Now, she's ready to speak.
Terry Walden was 23 — a nursing student, a young mom who loved baking and birthday parties. In March 1984, a stranger approached her on her university campus in Beaumont, Texas, and told her she could be a model. Terry called him a dirty pervert. The next morning, he was waiting beside her car. Terry never came home.
Her four-year-old daughter knew. Dropped at daycare that morning, Mindy screamed and sobbed as she watched her mother walk away. That night, as her father drove frantically through every parking lot in town, Mindy told him: I think she's dead. Two days later, she watched them pull her mother's body from a canal — on a road that bore their family name.
For forty years, Mindy has been haunted by a dream in which her mother appears but cannot speak — because Mindy can no longer remember her voice. But she has recently discovered a cassette tape, unheard for 35 years, on which Terry is talking. The moment it plays changes everything.
And then comes a revelation no one saw coming — when Mindy's partner steps forward with his own shattering confession, exposing an extraordinary bond forged from opposite sides of the same violence. This is the episode that will stay with you long after it ends.
Join the Hunt:
Contact us here: [email protected]
Follow us: Instagram: catchingevil
Facebook: Catching Evil: True Crime Podcast
TikTok: catchingevil
#catchingevil #prettygirlkiller #truecrimetok #truecrime #givingavoice #christopherwilder #serialkiller #MiamiGrandPrix #ProtectOurGirls #SafetyEducation #EmpowerYoungWomen #BreakTheSilence #TrueCrimeCommunity #UnsolvedMysteries #TrueCrimeObsessed #MindysStory #TerryWalden #BeautyQueenKiller #TerryFerguson #Survivor #WandaBeach #TrueCrimePodcast #SurvivorStories #RememberHer #PodcastRecommendation #VictimsMatter #NeverForgotten #MarianneSchmidt #ChristineSharrock #RosarioGonzalez #BethKenyon #ColleenOrsborne
Credits:
Hosts Andy Byrne Mark Llewellyn
Audio Production Sam Blacker - The Podcast Butler
Artwork Susan Armstrong
Resources The Pretty Girl Killer by Andrew Byrne - courtesy of Penguin Random House
Special thanks to Darcy at Pro Podcast Studios, Sydney
Catching Evil is hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information Get in Touch If you knew Wilder or one of his victims, contact us in confidence: [email protected]
Record a voice message: https://www.speakpipe.com/catchingevil
Join us and support these not-for-profits: US Survivors of Homicide Inc - https://www.survivorsofhomicide.com/ Yesterday Today Tomorrow Women Inc - https://www.yttwomen.org/ Aus Mary’s House 1800 002 111 https://www.maryshouse.org.au/about/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Catching Evil
No one should be in a grave without a name. This is the finale — and it is full of breaking news. A listener tip connects Wilder to the Tyre Murders: dozens of young women lured from car parks across five states, years before anyone was counting. We name five new victims. We reveal the pattern hidden in 3,500 classified ads — every gap, a girl. And Ellery Jane Doe, murdered and nameless for decades, may be about to get her name back. The official count said nine. The evidence now says Bundy territory — and beyond. We end the only way we could: with every victim, name by name. Every one of them was a person. Every one of them was loved. Follow the show — because this isn't over. It's unfinished business.
Mindy was four when her mother was taken. She still can't remember her voice. This is the episode we promised at the beginning: every one of Christopher Wilder's victims, finally heard. A reckoning. New evidence. New witnesses. Cold cases live again, police forces are now working leads we uncovered.
Two girls named Mary. The same mall. Four weeks apart. One found stabbed in a ditch — the other still missing, forty years on.
A killer who confessed to eleven murders. A sixteen-year-old runaway with a modelling dream. And a sister who never stopped fighting to bring her home.
A serial killer who confessed to 11 murders. A body that lay nameless in a swamp for 30 years. And a chilling new discovery.