Spotsylvania County authorities had no way of knowing Richard Marc Evonitz's criminal history when they began investigating the deaths of three girls more than five years ago.

But even if they had, it's not likely that the serial killer suspect would have vaulted to the top of their list.

"We looked at a whole lot of people who had a far worse criminal history than him," Spotsylvania sheriff's Maj. Howard Smith said yesterday.

Smith said investigators looking for the man who killed Sofia Silva, 16, Kristin Lisk, 15, and Kati Lisk, 12, certainly would have taken a close look at Evonitz if they'd somehow known about his past.

Even if he'd been questioned at the time, Evonitz would not have been compelled to give a DNA sample to authorities.

But Commonwealth's Attorney William Neely said officials might have persuaded a judge to force him to give a blood sample, depending on what information investigators could have turned up at the time.

One thing that might have persuaded a judge to look favorably on such a request is the fact that Evonitz was absent from his job in Spotsylvania on both days the girls were abducted.

Evonitz, 38, killed himself in Sarasota, Fla., on June 27 after police tracked him down with warrants for his arrest in the June 24 abduction and rape of a South Carolina girl. She escaped from his apartment on June 25, sparking the manhunt.

He emerged as a prime suspect in the September 1996 and May 1997 Lisk-Silva slayings after police found circumstantial evidence in his Columbia, S.C., apartment.

Police also learned that he lived and worked in Spotsylvania at the time of the slayings.

Evonitz pleaded no contest to a charge of lewd and lascivious behavior in the presence of a child in Florida in 1987 and served three years' probation, which he successfully completed.

A 15-year-old girl reported that she was walking in her neighborhood with her 3-year-old sister when Evonitz pulled up beside her in a beige Dodge and began masturbating.

But the law that might have required Evonitz to register as a sex offender in Florida didn't take effect until more than six years later. By then, Evonitz was working in the Fredericksburg area, where no one knew of his record.