Richard Evonitz

Case record

Overview

Richard Marc Evonitz (July 29, 1963 - June 27, 2002) was a serial killer, kidnapper, and rapist responsible for the deaths of three girls in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and the abduction and rape of a 15-year-old girl in Richland County, South Carolina.

Evonitz was suspected of other murders. He confessed a number of crimes to his sister shortly before committing suicide.

Timeline

• January 1987 — Evonitz exposed himself and masturbated in front of a 15-year-old girl in Orange Park, Florida.
• February 1987 — Evonitz was arrested when his ship returned to port, pleaded no contest, and was sentenced to three years' probation.
• September 9, 1996 — Evonitz abducted 16-year-old Sofia Silva from her front yard near Loriella Park in Spotsylvania County.
• October 1996 — Sofia Silva’s body was found in a creek off State Route 3 in King George County.
• May 1, 1997 — Sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk, ages 15 and 12, were abducted from their front yard near Spotsylvania Courthouse.
• May 6, 1997 — Kristin Lisk and Kati Lisk’s bodies were found five days later in the South Anna River near Old Ridge Road in Hanover County.
• April 1997 — Evonitz filed for bankruptcy in federal court in April 1997.
• May 1, 1997 — Evonitz met with his creditors in U.S. District Court in Richmond at noon.
• July 14, 2002 — The 15-year-old victim described her ordeal publicly on “America's Most Wanted.”
• June 24, 2002 — Evonitz abducted a 15-year-old girl from a friend's yard in Columbia, South Carolina.
• June 25, 2002 — The victim escaped from Evonitz after being held in his apartment overnight and was able to identify her attacker to police.
• Two days later — Evonitz was tracked down in Sarasota, Florida.
• June 27, 2002 — Evonitz was surrounded by police near the waterfront in Sarasota, Florida; he shot himself and was declared dead at 10:52 p.m.
• After the return of his body to his family — Evonitz’s remains were cremated and scattered over the Saluda River.

Background

Richard Marc Edward Evonitz was born July 29, 1963 at Providence Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina to Joseph Evonitz and Tess Ragin Evonitz. He was the first of three children; two daughters, Kristen and Jennifer, followed him in 1968 and 1971. He was known as Marc to avoid confusion with a paternal uncle also named Richard.

He graduated from Irmo High School in 1980 at age 16.

After high school, Evonitz worked briefly as the manager of a Jiffy Lube before joining the United States Navy. He served as a sonar technician and received a Good Conduct Medal before being honorably discharged after eight years of service.

Following his stint in the Navy, Evonitz worked steadily at businesses that sold compressors and grinding equipment. He filed for bankruptcy in 1997, unable to keep up with bills following a divorce. A house was foreclosed on in 1999 after a failed business venture. At the time of his death, he was working at an air-compressor company since moving to South Carolina a few years earlier.

The offence

Abduction and rape of a 15-year-old girl (South Carolina)

On June 24, 2002, Evonitz abducted a 15-year-old girl from a friend's yard in Columbia, South Carolina. He took her to his apartment in Richland County, raped her, and tied her to his bed.

The victim later reported details of her abduction and confinement. She said:

• “He put me in a plastic container in the back seat and stopped after 10 or 15 minutes and put handcuffs on me,”
• “He also put a rope around her neck and a wad of paper towels in her mouth as a gag,”
• “He raped her for hours after telling her he wouldn't hurt her if she did what she was told.”
• “When the sexual assault stopped, Evonitz began 'playing house,'”
• “But when it came time for bed, he tied me up again,”
• “The girl was handcuffed and her legs were shackled, her arms and feet tied with rope to a restraint system on the bed,”
• “When she heard Evonitz snoring, she untied the rope and sneaked out of the house, still in her hand and leg cuffs.”

During her confinement, the victim also described that he carried and slid the container, with her inside, upstairs to his apartment. She said he “washed dishes, wiped down counters and vacuumed.”

While he slept that night, the victim was able to free herself, escaped, and was able to identify her attacker to police.

Authorities were awaiting the results of forensic tests before naming Evonitz as the man who killed Sofia Silva and the Lisk sisters.

Abduction and deaths connected with Spotsylvania County, Virginia

On September 9, 1996, Evonitz abducted 16-year-old Sofia Silva from her front yard near Loriella Park in Spotsylvania County. Her body was found a month later in a creek off State Route 3 in King George County.

On May 1, 1997, sisters Kristin Lisk, 15, and Kati Lisk, 12, were abducted from their front yard near Spotsylvania Courthouse. Their bodies were found five days later in the South Anna River near Old Ridge Road in Hanover County.

Investigation

Investigators later identified Evonitz as the Lisk–Silva killer.

DNA samples from the crimes matched. Fibers from items in Evonitz’s apartment matched items found on the three girls’ bodies. Kristin Lisk’s handprint was lifted from the inside of Evonitz’s car trunk. DNA samples were a match.

Authorities suspected Evonitz killed since the murders of the Lisk sisters and believed he may have been responsible for the unsolved slaying of Alicia Reynolds in Culpeper, Virginia, in 1996. Handwritten directions that seemed to lead to Reynolds’ dump site were found in the footlocker.

Arrest / police confrontation

After Evonitz fled following the escape on June 25, 2002, he ended up surrounded by police in Sarasota, Florida.

He was urged to surrender peacefully but kept a pistol in his hand until a police dog was released. After being bitten multiple times, Evonitz shot himself. He was declared dead at 10:52 p.m.

A footlocker was opened and found to contain items that could be considered murderous “trophies,” including newspaper articles about the Lisk/Silva murders. It was discovered that Evonitz lived in the area of the abductions at the time and had a criminal record from an earlier arrest for masturbating in public in the presence of a young girl.

Trial

Sentencing

Appeals

Outcome

Evonitz died from a self-inflicted gunshot after being surrounded by police on June 27, 2002.

Death and afterward

Following the return of his body to his family, Evonitz’s remains were cremated and scattered over the Saluda River.

Investigators later linked Evonitz’s apartment to the earlier abductions and deaths. They learned that water in the Lisk sisters’ lungs was bath water rather than water from the South Anna River where they were found, and they concluded he drowned the girls at his home in Spotsylvania County before disposing of their bodies in the river.

Evonitz also hid Sofia Silva’s body underwater in a swamp in King George County. Police learned from Kara that he made her take a bath during her night of confinement.

Other details

Marriage and family

Evonitz was married twice. First, he married Bonnie Lou Gower from 1988 to 1996. Second, he married Hope Marie Crowley from 1999 until his death. He had no children.

Bonnie Lou Gower was 17 when they married. Evonitz met her as a neighbor in Columbia and a friend of his sister. He had known her since she was in the sixth grade and she had a crush on him.

Bonnie married Evonitz in Columbia in 1988. The couple lived in California and Maine while he was in the Navy. They moved to Fredericksburg in early 1993 after his discharge. They chose Fredericksburg because members of Evonitz’s family lived there, and because Virginia would honor Bonnie’s California cosmetology license.

In 1996, Bonnie prepared to leave Evonitz. She had met a man from California on the internet and wanted to move there. She visited California in early September 1996, returned a week later, and began packing in November to move permanently.

“Marc was devastated,” recalled his mother.

Second marriage and meeting details

Evonitz met Hope Marie Crowley in 1999 when she was 17 and he was 36. They met when she waited on him at Aunt Sarah's Pancake House in Massaponax, where she worked as a waitress. His mother and sister were with Evonitz for that breakfast. When Marc flirted with Hope, his sister encouraged her to go out with him.

When Hope turned 18, she moved from her parents’ home and lived first in King George County. She later moved in with Evonitz. They married in 1999.

“We just clicked,” said Hope Evonitz.

“Hope Evonitz doesn’t see her intimate relationship with her husband as outside the norm,” and she said:

• “When the FBI started talking to me about bondage and all that sort of stuff, they acted like it was such atrocious behavior,”
• “Our sex life was not extreme in any sense of the word. People do that sort of thing all the time.”

Statements and quotations

The victim said on “America's Most Wanted”:

• “I wanted to go to trial and let him see me again and know I was his downfall,”
• “Picking me, that was the greatest mistake of his life.”

On the show, she also said:

• “My heart goes out to those girls' families,”
• “My family got me back, but they're never going to see their daughters again.”

Show host John Walsh called Evonitz a “scumbag” and praised the teen victim. Walsh said:

• “It's an amazing tale of survival and a textbook case on fighting back,”
• “She's everything this show is about.”

Spotsylvania Sheriff Howard Smith said:

• “With Hope, "He'd ask her to dress up like a young girl and then he would actually force his way into their apartment and act like he was raping her,”

Investigators included the FBI profiler Gerard F. Downes, who said:

• “Bonnie grew up,”

Tess Ragin said:

• “I told him I didn't want to hear it,”
• “It was too painful.”

Joseph Evonitz said:

• “I don't make any excuses. There's no way to make excuses for what happened to those four girls,”
• “When he got up, he'd be even worse,”

The quotations above were taken verbatim as they appeared in the provided text.

Crime-related forensic observations

Investigators believed the “Lisk/Silva” murders were connected by method. The girls were abducted at their homes after school and without any struggle. Their pubic hair was shaved off by the killer. They were strangled or suffocated. They were dumped in water. DNA samples from both crimes matched.

Other suspects and unsolved cases

Authorities suspect Evonitz killed since the murders of the Lisk sisters and believed he may have been responsible for the unsolved slaying of Alicia Reynolds in Culpeper, Virginia, in 1996. Handwritten directions that seemed to lead to Reynolds’ dump site were found in his footlocker.

Earlier suspected offences

Evonitz exposed himself and masturbated in front of a 15-year-old girl in Orange Park, Florida in January 1987, and later pleaded no contest to the 1987 arrest and was sentenced to three years' probation.

Evonitz was suspected of a 1994 abduction and rape and a 1995 rape in Massaponax, Virginia.

Key investigative and family details in the narrative

Evonitz’s mother and father separated when he was a baby and again when he was about 12. Joseph and Tess divorced in 1985.

Joseph Evonitz was originally from New Jersey and was stationed at Fort Jackson just outside Columbia when he met Tess Ragin, who worked at the Army base. Joseph worked as a draftsman for sign companies and later as a taxi driver. Joseph also drank heavily, according to Tess Ragin, and Tess said he would often get drunk and pass out.

Joseph said he drank on weekends but did not pass out and was never an alcoholic, and he said he had stopped drinking.

Joseph remembered calling his family “morons” and “peons.” Marc bore “some psychological problems,” according to Joseph, and Joseph said the drinking was about them.

Family members differed about an incident involving Joseph attempting to drown Marc when Marc was about 6. Some said Joseph drowned Marc’s dog in front of him. Joseph denied that. Some said Joseph tried to drown him in a wading pool after Marc splashed water on hamburgers during a cookout; others said it happened in the bathtub.

Investigators learned that Joseph enlisted Marc to deliver messages to a neighbor with whom he was having an affair.

Tess Ragin began a phone relationship with Perry Deveaux. Deveaux was in a South Carolina prison at the time, convicted of murder and rape. Tess married Deveaux in prison and divorced him 12 years later, and Deveaux remained incarcerated.

Investigators said Evonitz began drinking and smoking at age 12 and started using marijuana at 13. He had a reputation for a bad temper and violated curfew and broke into a neighbor’s home.

“Every time he got in trouble, his mom came and bailed him out,” said Gerard F. Downes.

After graduation from Irmo High School in Columbia in 1980, Evonitz became the manager of a Jiffy Lube. Evonitz shut the store in the middle of the day to be with friends. Later, he and one of those friends wrote bad checks for $350 to a local Kmart. Joseph said he had to “go to the manager and beg the guy” not to prosecute.

Joseph pushed his son to join the Navy, and Tess Ragin supported the idea. Tess said it would give him direction.

Evonitz played the guitar and enjoyed raising a gray-cheek parakeet named Clyde. Tess described him as fun to be with and said he had a great sense of humor and always did practical jokes.

Spotsylvania Sheriff Smith watched a video made by Walter Grinders, Evonitz’s employer in Spotsylvania, showing Evonitz making a sales presentation to hundreds of people.

The narrative included a description of Evonitz using a “pseudo-seat belt” in protest of rules on a Navy base.

After Bonnie Evonitz moved out, Marc Evonitz couldn’t pay his bills. His take-home pay as a parts salesman at Walter Grinders was about $2,100 a month. His monthly mortgage payment was $859, and there were a student loan and other obligations.

A postcard from Bonnie Evonitz sent from California was found in his footlocker, and it was postmarked the day Sofia was abducted.

Names, locations, and victims referenced

Sofia Silva was 16 and was abducted from her front yard near Loriella Park in Spotsylvania County, Virginia; her body was found in King George County. Kristin Lisk was 15 and Kati Lisk was 12; both were abducted from their front yard near Spotsylvania Courthouse and their bodies were found in Hanover County. The 15-year-old victim in South Carolina was abducted from a friend’s yard in Columbia, South Carolina, and held in an apartment in Richland County. Alicia Reynolds was referenced as an unsolved slaying in Culpeper, Virginia in 1996.

Places referenced included Orange Park, Florida; Massaponax, Virginia; Spotsylvania County, Virginia; King George County; State Route 3; Hanover County; Old Ridge Road; Block House Road; Fredericksburg; Columbia; Richland County; Sarasota, Florida; King George County swamps; and Saluda River.