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For years, Bonnie Lou Gower shared her life and a bed with a man she believed she knew completely. She never imagined that her husband was capable of murder.
Richard “Marc” Evonitz was living a hidden double life—one that eventually revealed him as a serial killer who targeted young girls.
One of his victims was a 16-year-old girl who was killed while Evonitz was still married to Gower.
Richard Evonitz and Bonnie Lou Gower were married from August 1988 until January 1997. (Investigation Discovery)
Decades after Evonitz’s crimes were exposed, Gower is looking back at the warning signs she missed. She is doing so alongside a young woman who survived an encounter with him.
In Investigation Discovery’s true-crime docuseries “The Serial Killer Connection,” Gower meets Kara Robinson Chamberlain, who survived 18 hours of captivity and torture before escaping Evonitz. Together, they examine whether he could be connected to additional unsolved cases.
Since discovering the truth about her former husband, Gower has been haunted by one central question.
Bonnie Lou Gower has since remarried and is now the mother of two children. (Investigation Discovery)
“When I initially learned about [his crimes] and told people, honestly, their first response was, ‘Well, obviously you knew. How could you not have known?’” Gower told News Media.
“That was my very first question to the FBI: ‘How could I not know this? How could I not know I was sleeping next to somebody for eight and a half years who was doing this?’ And, of course, they assured me there was no way I could have known.”
With the perspective of time, Gower said there were details she now realizes she never questioned.
Bonnie Lou Gower and Richard Evonitz are pictured in the 1990s. Gower told News Media that Evonitz insisted on staying home whenever she traveled to visit her family. (Investigation Discovery)
Whenever Gower left town to see relatives, Evonitz told her he had to remain behind for work. She later learned that he had actually taken time off during those same days.
“One of the reasons he never came with me was because he said he was working,” Gower said.
Richard Evonitz is pictured in South Carolina around 1988. (Investigation Discovery)
“Then I found out he had actually taken off work on the days I was out of town. But at the time, I wasn’t concerned at all about leaving him behind. I was simply going to visit my family. It definitely makes you reconsider everyone and everything, and whether you can trust what people say or do.”
Gower met Evonitz in South Carolina. Eight years older than her, he was the older brother of one of her friends and returned home whenever he was on leave from the U.S. Navy. As she got to know him, Gower developed a crush on him. When she was 16, Evonitz asked her on a date.
They married in August 1988, when Gower was 17 and Evonitz was 25.
After their wedding, Bonnie Lou Gower and Richard Evonitz moved from South Carolina to Maine, where Evonitz was stationed at the time. (Investigation Discovery)
“You think you know who you are when you’re 17, but I really don’t think I did,” said Gower. “I don’t think I had a handle on that. And I was relatively sheltered. I was very naïve, very trusting, taking everything at face value. I think he knew that.”
During the marriage, there were moments when Gower suspected Evonitz was being unfaithful. Whenever she questioned him, Evonitz told her it was all in her head. She believed him. But as the relationship progressed, Evonitz began isolating her from friends and family as they moved around the country, from Maine to San Diego to Virginia.
Bonnie Lou Gower initially believed Richard Evonitz was having an affair. He assured Gower it was all in her head. (Investigation Discovery)
“No one ever thinks that their significant other is going to be a serial killer,” Chamberlain told News Media. “I think worst case, and this is something that she expressed to me, he was having an affair. No one ever thinks your spouse is out murdering someone.”
“He kept that part of himself very tightly controlled and didn’t show it to the people he was closest to.”
In “The Serial Killer Connection,” a three-part docuseries, Bonnie Lou Gower and Kara Robinson Chamberlain retrace Richard Evonitz’s past. (Investigation Discovery)
The marriage began to unravel after Evonitz left the Navy. Gower said financial pressures fueled growing tensions between the couple, while Evonitz became prone to mood swings and what she described as “rages.” He also frequently criticized her weight. Behind closed doors, Gower was also uncomfortable with his interest in bondage, according to the docuseries.
In June 2002, Bonnie Lou Gower (seen here with Richard Evonitz in the ’90s) discovered that her ex-husband was a murderer who had killed at least three young girls and kidnapped a fourth. The FBI showed up at her doorstep in California and informed her of her ex’s secret double life. (Investigation Discovery)
Even as the marriage reached its breaking point, Gower said she still didn’t see Evonitz as someone capable of hurting her. Walking away, she said, was a decision that came after years of mounting unhappiness.
When Gower made the decision to leave the marriage, Gower said her fear was for him, not herself.
“I was concerned for his safety when he said he was going to take the gun and kill himself,” Gower recalled. “I never feared for my own life.”
According to the FBI, Richard Evonitz fled to Sarasota, Florida, where he took his life after being surrounded by law enforcement. (FBI)
Even after she finally walked away, Gower said Evonitz had left her questioning whether she had any justification for doing so.
“When I left, I felt like I was leaving for no real good reason,” she said. “[But] I wasn’t happy.”
According to Gower’s TikTok, she and Evonitz were married from August 1988 until January 1997. Multiple reports indicate that their divorce was finalized in 1998. Years later, Gower would learn just how much she hadn’t known about the man she left behind.
For 18 hours, Richard Evonitz held teenage Kara Robinson Chamberlain captive in his apartment, where he sexually assaulted her. (Investigation Discovery)
On June 24, 2002, 15-year-old Chamberlain was at a friend’s home in South Carolina when Evonitz pulled into the driveway. The stranger approached her with pamphlets and asked if her parents were home. Then, he held a gun to her neck and threatened to shoot her if she screamed. He forced Chamberlain into a dark storage container in his car.
At Evonitz’s apartment, Chamberlain was repeatedly sexually assaulted. He restrained her to a bed. After hours of torture, Chamberlain managed to free one of her hands from a pair of handcuffs with her teeth, unclip a leather leg restraint and quietly bolt out the door as Evonitz slept. As she took off, Chamberlain encountered two men who took her to a police station.
Kara Robinson Chamberlain after her medical exam. (Investigation Discovery)
Chamberlain led officers back to her captor’s apartment. But when investigators arrived, Evonitz had escaped. Police tracked Evonitz to Sarasota, Florida, but as they closed in on him, Evonitz died by suicide. He was 38.
Richard Evonitz shot and killed himself after a 100 mph car chase from Manatee County ended on Bayfront Drive across from Maria Jack in Sarasota, Florida, on June 27, 2002. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
Once investigators began digging into Evonitz’s past, Chamberlain’s abduction proved to be only part of the story. Evidence recovered from Evonitz’s South Carolina apartment, former Virginia residence and vehicle linked him to three unsolved murders.
Kara Robinson Chamberlain worked with law enforcement as a sex crime and child abuse investigator. (Investigation Discovery)
On Sept. 9, 1996, Evonitz abducted 16-year-old Sofia Silva from the front steps of her home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, where he and Gower had been living. Her body was discovered about five weeks later in neighboring King George County.
Then, on May 1, 1997, sisters Kristin “Kristi” Lisk, 15, and Kathryn “Kati” Lisk, 12, vanished after returning home from school. Both girls had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Their bodies were discovered five days later in the South Anna River.
After her abduction, Kara Robinson Chamberlain went on to pursue a career in law enforcement. (Investigation Discovery)
Notes discovered by investigators indicated that Evonitz already had his eye on other potential victims, News Media previously reported.
It would be months after Chamberlain’s abduction that Gower learned of her ex-husband’s other victims.
“It felt like it wasn’t real at all,” Gower admitted. “It felt like this was something that happens in the movies. This wasn’t real life. It was very hard to believe that he could hurt anybody. He had never hit me or physically abused me.”
After escaping, Kara Robinson Chamberlain went straight to law enforcement. She provided crucial information that led investigators to her captor’s apartment and helped identify him as the man responsible for at least three previously unsolved murders. (FOX Image Collection via Getty Images)
Now, Gower and Chamberlain are looking to Evonitz’s past for answers about whether there could be other victims.
Gower has helped piece together a timeline of Evonitz’s movements during their marriage, providing investigators with dates, locations and old calendars as potential cold cases are examined.
“Of course, he wasn’t always where I thought he was,” said Gower.
Kara Robinson Chamberlain previously appeared in “America’s Most Wanted” opposite John Walsh to raise awareness on the stories of victims. (FOX Image Collection via Getty Images)
Chamberlain, meanwhile, has been investigating whether Evonitz could be responsible for other unsolved crimes, examining cases dating back to the 1980s and tracing his movements during his years in the Navy and in the decades before her own abduction.
“I genuinely think that there is a level of escalation that we see between an indecent exposure [incident] and then three homicides in approximately nine months and then a break before me that is unexplainable to me,” she said.
Today, Kara Robinson Chamberlain is a survivor advocate. (Investigation Discovery)
“Everything’s possible and nothing has been confirmed,” Chamberlain stressed. “It’s a frustrating place to be, but I will not stop searching.”
Kara Robinson Chamberlain is adamant that Richard Evonitz may be responsible for other crimes across the country. (Investigation Discovery)
One potential key to finding answers is DNA.
While investigating cases for the docuseries, Chamberlain said she learned that Evonitz’s DNA profile was not in CODIS, the FBI’s national DNA database. However, she said authorities in Spotsylvania County still have a blood sample that can be provided to law enforcement agencies seeking to compare his DNA with evidence from other cases.
Chamberlain said she hopes Evonitz’s DNA can ultimately be entered into CODIS, allowing for broader comparisons with evidence from unsolved crimes.
Bonnie Lou Gower (left), alongside Kara Robinson Chamberlain, is looking back at forgotten notes and old calendars to provide more information that could uncover fresh clues and leads. (Investigation Discovery)
“I genuinely believe that there’s no way he only murdered three girls and kidnapped me,” she said. “I don’t think that there’s a world in which that’s true.”
“The Serial Killer Connection” airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Episodes will be available to stream on HBO Max. (Investigation Discovery)
While making the docuseries, Gower learned that Evonitz had kept a photograph of her when she was just 11 years old — years before they began dating — hidden behind another framed picture of her. Gower said it was not a photograph she had taken with her when she left home and that she never knew Evonitz possessed it.
“It’s disturbing enough that he would have 11-year-old me in a picture behind something,” she said.
Kara Robinson Chamberlain (left) was nervous about meeting Bonnie Lou Gower (right). They became fast friends. (Investi)
Decades after learning the truth about the man she married, Gower said she is still trying to make sense of it.
“I don’t think you ever make sense of it,” she said. “There’s no tidy little box to put it in to make it make sense.”
Bonnie Lou Gower is seen here embracing Kara Robinson Chamberlain. (Investigation Discovery)
“I’m still grappling with it. I’m still processing.”