That revelation came in February 1987, when Evonitz admitted to masturbating in front of a 15-year-old girl in Orange Park, Fla. near Jacksonville.

“Suspect stated he has a problem with masturbating in front of girls,” the Clay County Sheriff’s report stated. “When he feels the urge, he drives around looking for a girl 18-19 years old, short in height and [with] brunett[e] hair.”

Evonitz pleaded no contest to a charge of lewd and lascivious behavior in the presence of a child and served three years probation. He also was ordered to undergo sexual counseling.

But Evonitz did not have to register as a sexual offender in Florida. That requirement did not take effect until October 1, 1993.

By then, Evonitz was living in Spotsylvania County, where no one knew of his previous record.

Local law enforcement now hope to tie him to the 1996 killing of Sofia Silva, 16, and 1997 slayings of 15-year-old Kristin Lisk and her 12-year-old sister, Kati. All three girls were from Spotsylvania.

Kristin and Kati Lisk vanished from their front yard after school May 1, 1997. Their bodies were found five days later, tied together and floating in the South Anna River in Hanover County.

DNA evidence later linked their deaths to the September 1996 abduction and slaying of Sofia Silva, who also vanished from her front yard after school. Her body was found in a King George County creek about a month after her disappearance.

Evonitz became a suspect on Thursday when he shot himself to death after a 100-mph police chase through Sarasota, Fla. He was wanted in Richland County, S.C., for the gunpoint abduction and rape of a 15-year-old girl last Monday.

In the 1987 case, a 15-year-old girl reported that she was walking in her neighborhood with her 3-year-old sister when a man pulled up beside her in a beige Dodge. She told police she had seen this man driving around the block several times earlier in the day.

This time, the man stared at her while he masturbated, she reported.