Submitted Photo Minot native C.J. Wynn is shown on a golf course in Maricopa, Ariz., where she now lives and writes true crime novels.

The human psyche has long been a source of curiosity for C.J. Wynn.

Wynn, then Carla Rodacker, graduated from Minot High School in 1994 and from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks in 1998, going on to receive a master’s degree in psychology from Capella University in Minneapolis. But it has been her interest in the criminal mind that eventually led to her penning her first true crime novel, which is to be followed soon with the release of a second novel.

Wynne, who now lives in Maricopa, Arizona, researched and wrote about two North Dakota crimes involving murders that captured broad public attention.

She and her mother have been fans of true crime stories since the 1980s, said Wynn, the daughter of Jeff and Donna Rodacker, who also now live in Arizona. She remembers working the late shift at Choice Hotels in Minot while glued to her television during the day to watch the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial.

After leaving Minot, initially to pursue her education, Wynn returned for about a year and a half in the mid-2000s during the course of her career. Although her work had her writing project plans and training programs for consultants and accountants, her interest in writing went deeper.

“I’ve written a lot of short stories and things like that. I ran a blog for a while,” she said. “So that was always kind of a passion of mine.”

She said she has a curiosity, and in some ways a fascination, surrounding people who do horrific things to other people, especially people they’ve once loved. She was drawn to know more about the psychology of people who can take another life with reckless abandon and zero regret, she said.

At the time a crime story about the 2015 murder of Angila Wilder in Minot appeared on national television in 2018, she had just lost her job during a staffing shake up at a Minneapolis company.

“I honestly thought, ‘You know what? Maybe now is the time. Maybe now is the time to kind of try my hand at this. I’ve read dozens upon dozens of true crime books. I thought, maybe I might know what I’m doing. I kind of just dove in head first and asked for a little bit of guidance from a former mentor of mine,” she said.

However, Wynn said she didn’t tell anyone but a close friend and family that she was writing the book, wanting to save herself embarrassment if it didn’t get finished, was a poor read or was never published.

Fortunately, she found the Minot Police Department helpful and engaging as she researched her first book.

“It absolutely helped that I had connections in Minot, or at least roots in Minot,” she said of the need to gain law enforcement’s trust. “So the first one was actually kind of easy, as far as getting the materials I needed, talking to the people I needed to.”

Getting published was a bit more difficult.

“It was also sort of narrowing down which publishers were actively looking for new authors. And further narrowing it down, parsing it out, to those who are actually interested in new true crime writers,” she said.

In the process of submitting to publishers and getting a lot of rejections, Wynn read a book by true crime author Steven Epstein, now a friend, who had written in his acknowledgements about a smaller publishing house in Oregon that gave him a chance as a new writer. Wynn sent her manuscript for “Wilder Intentions: Love, Lies, and Murder in North Dakota” to the company, Black Lyon Publishing, which agreed to publish it.

Wynn finished the book in February 2020. Having read hundreds of true crime novels, Wynn said the writing went quickly because she knew the story format and style she liked.

What she did not expect, but discovered from the case file, was how much more involved the case was than it had appeared in the hour-long television show she had watched in 2018.

“That was a lot of research. I came to Minot several times. I sat in the Courthouse and printed off documents and looked through so many things. So, it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, given all the information that I had,” she said.

Wynn admitted it was emotionally difficult to talk with the victim’s family and maintain neutrality along with empathy. Her prison interview with Cynthia Wilder to better understand her also was emotionally difficult, she said.

Although the jury found Richie Wilder Jr. and his wife, Cynthia, guilty of the murder of Richie’s ex-wife, Angila, as a writer Wynn couldn’t declare their guilt but needed to bring readers to that conclusion through her story-telling.

“There’s a lot of nuance to it, which I wasn’t expecting,” Wynn said.

Wynn’s latest book that comes out in April tells of the mysterious disappearance and murder of Kristopher “K.C.” Clarke in 2012 in New Town and the 2013 murder of Spokane, Washington, businessman Doug Carlile. Both murders were linked to James Henrikson and the North Dakota oil fields. The case has been the topic of a couple of national crime shows, of which Wynn will participate in one that will air Sunday.

“As soon as I started to dig in, I right away thought, ‘I have bit off more than I can chew. This is so overwhelmingly large and involved,'” she said.

The tentacles of the crime reached to about 40 people in a case with multiple elements.

“It took me a long time to sort of gather that and figure out a way to put it into a book that a reader can consume and understand but also find interesting. That was not an easy task for me at all,” Wynn said. “There were so many things that were saying, ‘Don’t do this book.'”

It was the help and encouragement of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in North Dakota, Homeland Security Investigations and a Spokane detective that kept her going.

“They really wanted this book written, and if it had not been for them, I would not have finished this book,” she said. “They had patience with me for the four years it took for me to finish this.

“The emotional connection to this story was more so with the detectives and the investigators who gave their hearts and souls to finding out what happened to both K.C. Clark in North Dakota and Doug Carlile in Spokane. Their stories are pretty emotional – the things that they have gone through – and I’m hoping that when readers pick up this book, they realize the sacrifice that some of our law enforcement officers give to bring justice and some sort of semblance of peace to victims of crime, violent crime, things like that. I hope that people see what these guys did and the sacrifices they made to bring this story – and countless others that they’ve worked on – to a conclusion that families know that justice was served for the people who hurt them,” she added.

Wynn’s publisher currently is discussing the book with filmmakers.

Having finished “Miles of Destruction: A True Story of Oil, Greed, Lust, and Murder,” Wynn said she is taking a break from true crime writing for a while. There are a couple of crime cases outside of North Dakota swimming in her mind for future books, although she has enjoyed writing books based in her home state.

“North Dakota will always be my home. I miss it immensely. I have a lot of friends, I have a lot of family that still live in North Dakota, throughout Minot, Fargo, Grand Forks,” Wynn said.