Pregnant 19 year old student Amber Wilde, aspiring pediatrician, has been missing since September 1998 from Green Bay, Wisconsin – was she killed for refusing to get an abortion?

Amber Lynn Wilde was born on March 26, 1979 in Campbellsport, Wisconsin. She was excited to be studying at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay – she had transferred to UWGB only three weeks before from a community college, where she had completed an associate’s degree in only one year’s time. She had received a full scholarship to UWGB. During high school, she took accelerated classes, and she planned to go on to medical school to become a pediatrician.

Amber was four and a half months pregnant when she went missing. Her aunt had volunteered to watch her child when the time comes so that Amber could continue her education.

She last spoke to family on September 23, 1998, after she got into a minor car accident where she rear-ended another vehicle. She was not seriously injured, but she hit her head on the windshield and had a headache afterwards. She told her dad she had seen medical staff in the school, who advised her that she most likely had a concussion and should be checked on through-out the day.

Wilde was supposed to go to class at 1pm the following day. Her dad Steve, who lived in Mayville, Wisconsin, attempted to call Amber several times to wake her up for class that day, but she didn’t answer the phone. She also missed a scheduled eye doctor’s appointment. Missing appointments is out of character for her. Her father made the hour and a half drive to Green Bay and found Wilde’s apartment locked. Mr. Wilde could not locate his daughter or her car therefore reported her missing.

One week after the disappearance, her car, a dark gray, four door 1988 Subaru GL, was found abandoned in the parking lot of 50 Yard Line Sports Bar and Roadstar Inn, east of K-mart and off of Lombardi Access Road. The sports bar and inn have since been torn down. Her purse and cellphone were locked in the trunk, which is where she usually kept them, and the keys were in the ignition. The driver’s seat was pushed all the way back, indicating someone taller than Wilde was the last person to drive her Subaru.

Some authorities do not believe the car had been at that location for the whole week Amber had been missing, due to the fact that the car had been serviced in the days just prior to Amber’s disappearance, and it was discovered that there were 600 new miles that could not be explained.

In 2016, unsealed court documents revealed that based on statements from Amber’s diary, which she wrote religiously in up until the day she went missing, police have identified a prime suspect and possible motive. The documents show police have shared suspicions that the Wilde family has had all along.

Authorities named the suspect as Matthew John Schneider, the alleged father of Amber Wilde’s unborn child. Green Bay Detective David Graf wrote that he believed the records “constitute evidence of 1st Degree Intentional Homicide.”

Wilde had told her aunt that Schneider, whom she met at a party in May of 1998, had denied paternity. He was engaged to marry another woman at the time the baby was conceived, and he absolutely did not want his fiancee to find out about this situation. However, about a month before her disappearance, Amber told both Matthew’s fiancee and his mother that she was pregnant with his child. According to entries in Amber’s diary, Matthew was beyond furious when he found out what she had done. He had pressured her to have an abortion, but she refused.

In the two weeks leading up to her disappearance, Matt had been trying to get Amber to meet with him. Amber had written in her diary that Matt had been threatening her, saying he would hurt himself if she didn’t end the pregnancy or he would make sure she never saw the child again.

Matthew later told police that he hardly knew Amber and that they had never had sex. He said he only spoke to her a few times at a coffee shop. Matt’s fiancée told police that Amber had been obsessed with Matt and had been harassing him. His phone records showed this was a lie: Matt and Amber Wilde were in constant contact with each other until the night she disappeared. Wilde’s family said Amber and Matt had seen each other for approximately four months, until Amber got pregnant.

Schneider showed no apparent concern for Wilde’s welfare after her disappearance, and had never attempted to call her again after she had disappeared. He never provided an alibi and refused to be polygraphed. A friend of Schneider’s later told police that he said he “felt guilty” about having sex with Wilde.

No one has been charged in Amber’s disappearance, but it is being investigated as a homicide. A prevalent theory is that Schneider, a highway worker, buried Amber and her unborn child under or along Highway 29, which was under construction at the time. Multiple searches with digging attempts have taken place along the highway. Each time her family was there, and each time, investigators have come up empty. Searches were also conducted on the Schneider family farm to no avail.

Over the last 22 years, many different agencies have aided in the investigation and search for Amber Wilde, including the FBI’s BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit.) but no trace of Amber has ever been found. Her credit card, bank account, and social security number have not been used since September 1998.

Amber would be 41 years old today. Her family continues to look for her. They have attended Wisconsin Missing Persons events and given numerous interviews to news channels in hopes to resolve Amber’s case and bring her home.

 

“You sit back and you think about the span of time, and you don’t know where the time has gone,” Steve Wilde told WBAY News during an interview a handful of years ago. “She’s never out of our thoughts and our mind.”

In February of 2020, reporter Nina Sparano of NBC26 created a segment on Amber Wilde and spoke with Matthew Schneider’s wife, Heidi. This is what she had to say:

I think it was easy at first to point a finger at Matt. We’ve been married for 20 years – high school sweethearts. I am not a dumb woman. I wouldn’t stay with somebody that I thought that… I would never. My heart breaks, for that family and for our family.

Please contact the Green Bay Police Department if you have information regarding Amber Lynn Wilde’s disappearance, or if you saw her or someone else operate her vehicle. Her Subaru had a brown stuffed monkey hanging from the rearview mirror, stuffed animals in the rear back window, and a University of Wisconsin decal across the top portion of the back window.

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/7757596/may-7-2016-amber-wilde-police-wilde/

NBC26 has a great video segment about Amber here that includes videos of Amber and interviews with LE, Matt’s wife, and Amber’s aunt: Somebody Knows Something
https://www.missingpersons.doj.wi.gov/missing/amber-lynn-wilde

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/missing-persons/amber-lynn-wilde

http://charleyproject.org/case/amber-lynn-wilde

https://www.ghostwritergrownup.com/missingpersons/amber-lynn-wilde

https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/wi-amber-wilde-19-pregnant-green-bay-23-sept-1998.48522/

https://fox6now.com/2016/05/07/we-were-surprised-missing-person-case-in-wisconsin-now-being-investigated-as-murder/

https://www.wbay.com/content/news/What-Happened-to-Amber-Part-1-413599583.html