FL FL - Elizabeth Kenyon, 23, Coral Gables, 5 Mar 1984

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[h=1]Elizabeth Ann Kenyon[/h]
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  • Missing Since 03/05/1984
  • Missing From Coral Gables, Florida
  • Classification Endangered Missing
  • Date of Birth 01/11/1961 (57)
  • Age 23 years old
  • Height and Weight 5'7 - 5'8, 125 pounds
  • Clothing/Jewelry Description Possibly a pink shirt, blue jeans, white shoes and white socks.
  • Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Brown hair, hazel eyes. Kenyon's nickname is Beth. She had blonde highlights in her hair at the time of her disappearance.


[h=3]Details of Disappearance[/h] Kenyon disappeared from the parking lot of Coral Gables High School, where she worked teaching special needs children, at 3:00 p.m. on March 5, 1984. She spoke to the security guard, then drove away in her car, a Chrysler convertible.

When she didn't arrive home at her apartment on Ives Dairy Road, her roommate wasn't worried at first and assumed she had gone to visit her parents in Pompano Beach, Florida, thirty miles up the coast. Kenyon was carrying a duffel bag containing workout clothes and a curling iron when she vanished; she left behind her purse.

A Shell gasoline station attendant in Coral Gables, Florida who often sold fuel to Kenyon recalled seeing her on March 8. He said she had been driving her car, but had been talking to a man who drove a Cadillac Eldorado.

They seemed to be conversing about someone taking Kenyon's picture, and Kenyon told the station attendant that she was going to the airport. The man with the Eldorado paid for her gasoline and they drove off together. Kenyon has never been heard from again.

Kenyon was not reported missing until she failed to show up for work the next day. Her car was found abandoned at Miami International Airport on March 11, six days after her disappearance. She did not have plans to travel and had not packed to go anywhere, and her name was not listed on any recent flights going out of Miami. Her family says it is extremely uncharacteristic of her to leave without warning.

Kenyon is a former fashion model, who won the Orange Bowl Princess title in 1982 and was a finalist in a Miss Florida contest. Christopher Wilder almost immediately became a suspect in her disappearance. Photos of Wilder are posted with this case summary. The gas station attendant identified him from a photograph as the man last seen with Kenyon.

Wilder, who is a native of Australia, has been linked to at least a dozen disappearances, rapes, murders and/or attacks of women in the early to mid-1980s, including the disappearances of Mary Opitz, Rosario Gonzales and Tammy Leppert.

Wilder sometimes attempted to lure young female victims by offering non-existent "modeling sessions" or other tactics, and he knew Kenyon. They had dated a few times and he had even proposed marriage to her, but she turned him down because she thought he was too old for her.

Wilder was put on probation in 1980 after pleading guilty to attempted sexual battery towards a teenage girl. While on a visit home to Australia that same year, he was charged with kidnapping and sexually assaulting two teenage girls. His parents bailed him out of jail and he flew back to the United States, promising to return for his trial which was set for April 1984.

Wilder, when initially questioned by police about Kenyon's disappearance, said he had not seen her in over a month. However, two gas station attendants claim to have seen Wilder with Kenyon on the day of her disappearance. In addition, Wilder knew where Kenyon's car was before this information was released to the press.

Wilder went on a killing spree later in 1984 where he traveled across the United States, abducting, raping, torturing, and killing women along the way. He was killed in a struggle with police officers in New Hampshire in the late spring of 1984 and died without ever divulging what he might have known about Kenyon's disappearance.

Kenyon is a graduate of the University of Miami and was the coach of the cheerleading squad at Coral Gables High School. Her parents are now deceased. Her case remains unsolved and foul play is suspected due to the circumstances involved.


http://charleyproject.org/case/elizabeth-ann-kenyon

https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/21368/
 
Current list of exclusions for Elizabeth per NamUs:
UP8419 01/16/2001 Isle of Wight VA
UP15630 07/03/1984 Cuyahoga OH
UP6629 02/03/1991 Frederick VA
UP12683 06/06/2014 Newport News VA
UP6661 02/03/1991 Stafford VA
UP8493 12/06/1993 Fairfax VA
UP6796 11/18/1985 Alleghany VA
UP1143 03/23/1993 Miami-Dade FL
UP6642 08/07/1986 Chesterfield VA
UP6150 11/07/1998 Stafford VA

 
What a sad loss of such a bright light. Just seeing that she graduated from UOM, a prestigious private college, is heartbreaking. UOM is very difficult to get into. She had to have had so much potential and great grades, drive, discipline and work ethic.

"Kenyon is a graduate of the University of Miami...."
 
Published April 24, 1988

THE MYSTERY OF BETH KENYON

Snip
CHRISTOPHER WILDER'S thoughts were on Canada and escape. He had parked the stolen Pontiac Firebird outside Staton's Getty Service Station in the tiny town of Colebrook, New Hampshire, and was questioning the attendant, trying to find a way to sneak across the border, five minutes away.

Troopers Lee Jellison and Wayne Fortier were patroling the area. The sports car and the clean-shaven Wilder looked suspicious. The FBI had been tracking Wilder in a zigzag course across the country that had started when he fled from his home in Boynton Beach.

It was 39 days, 8,000 miles and six brutal killings of young women since Wilder had been seen with Beth Kenyon in Coral Gables.
 
I think that although police don't have definitive proof that Christopher Wilder was ever in Western New York Shane Kurz Sia is "absolutely certain" that she met him in Lockport on July 1, 1983 which is around the time of Shari's murder... she was having a garage sale and he told her she was attractive and gave her a business card so she could help her get modeling jobs... she remembers the name on the card was Christopher Wilder... she remembers saying to him, "Do you go to garage sales to find models?" and “he got angry, went to his car and came back and showed me a big portfolio with all kinds of pictures of pretty young women”…she later saw his face at a nationally televised press conference where it was announced that Wilder was a serial murder suspect and had been added to the agency’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list…
in 2014 when police announced they had identified Shari’s body she “clicked” that “this woman was murdered by Christopher Wilder and it must have happened a day or two before I met him in 1983”… “It’s very chilling to me that I met this serial killer, and that he offered to help me get into the modeling world”…
a police investigator interviewed Sia and said she seems very credible and believes “it’s possible that Wilder, who traveled a lot around the Northeast during his killing spree, was the man who met her”…

be it like may
he rest in peace
 

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