IF FEDERAL AUTHORITIES had pursued serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz as relentlessly as they pursued Darrell Rice, at least three families could know whether Evonitz killed their daughters.
Five years ago, relying predominantly on forensic testing, investigators announced that overwhelming evidence showed Evonitz killed 16-year-old Sofia Silva, 15-year-old Kristin Lisk and 12-year-old Kati Lisk.
In the final days of his life in June 2002, while fleeing from authorities into Florida after abducting and raping a South Carolina teen, Evonitz told one of his sisters he had committed “more crimes than he could remember,” police said.
Whether it was an idle boast remains to be seen.
On Aug. 13, 2002, with the local, state and federal law enforcement officials of the Lisk–Silva Task Force behind him, then-Spotsylvania County Sheriff Ron Knight pledged they would do all they could to determine every crime the former sailor and salesman committed in his 38-year life.
That hasn’t happened.
That pledge for a definitive investigation into Evonitz’s criminal activities has been either forgotten, aborted or blocked.
The FBI was to create a timeline of Evonitz’s life and then notify police agencies around the country—if not the world—to see if they had any crimes the former Spotsylvania resident might have committed. As they have done with other serial killers, the FBI’s profilers planned to then host a meeting of investigators to discuss their cases.
The timeline was finally finished in the summer of 2006 after the FBI got Evonitz’s Navy records. But plans for the meeting have been scrapped.
And despite saying they would forensically check Evonitz against crimes nationwide, the FBI and Virginia State Police didn’t pursue those tests for unsolved homicides in Evonitz’s own backyard.
Beginning in March 1996, seven girls and young women were killed in a 14-month span—all within the region where Evonitz was known to troll for his victims.
Four of those slayings remain unsolved.
Starting in 1997—five years before Evonitz surfaced—and still today, federal authorities have relentlessly pursued Darrell David Rice, a computer programmer from Maryland with mental health problems. His most serious crime before he became the focus of investigators’ attention was using illegal drugs.
They pursued Rice as a suspect in the March 1996 death of Alicia Showalter Reynolds, a 25-year-old graduate student who was abducted by a man in a pickup while traveling along U.S. 29 in Culpeper County.
They pursued him in the May 1996 deaths of 24-year-old Julianne “Julie” Williams and 26-year-old Laura “Lollie” Winans, killed at their campsite in Shenandoah National Park.
They checked him as a suspect in the abductions and deaths of Sofia Silva in September 1996 and sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk the following May.
And Culpeper Sheriff H. Lee Hart called him a suspect in the September 1996 slaying of Orange County resident Anne Carolyn McDaniel, whose body was found a few miles from Reynolds’ remains near the community of Lignum.
COMING UP EMPTY
Rice was 29 years old at the time investigators began considering him in the series of slayings.
He was arrested July 9, 1997, minutes after trying to grab a woman bicyclist in Shenandoah National Park and asking her to expose her breasts.
Even Rice’s attorneys admit it made sense to check him in Reynolds’ death and the Shenandoah park slayings the year before. He had tried to abduct a woman, he drove a pickup, his father had a home in Culpeper and Rice looked similar to one of the composites created after Reynolds’ death.
But the attorneys say it shouldn’t have taken long to eliminate the Columbia, Md., resident as a suspect.
Witnesses who saw Reynolds on the shoulder of U.S. 29 reported the man talking to her had a black pickup with lots of chrome, probably a Nissan. The same description was given by most of the women who were flagged down in the weeks before Reynolds’ disappearance by a man claiming they were having car troubles.
And women who got into the truck with the so-called “29 Stalker” said the truck was tidy and had an automatic transmission mounted on the steering column and an in-dash radio.
Rice’s truck was bright blue, not black; a Chevy S–10, not a Nissan. It had a stick shift on the floor, was littered with items and had a tape player on the seat that dangled from the dash by electrical wires.
In addition, state police asked one of two women used repeatedly to screen suspects to look at a lineup including his photo within weeks of Rice’s arrest and she didn’t identify him.
The Shenandoah slayings were committed by someone able to control two experienced outdoorswomen without drawing any attention along a trail a third of a mile from Skyline Drive and the busy Skyland Lodge.
The killer subdued both women and sliced their throats without Winans’ dog—which wasn’t harmed—creating a commotion.
If it was Rice, he did it without leaving a single bit of forensic evidence.
That was of particular note given that the lead investigator, FBI Agent Peter C. Groh, looked at Rice’s truck after his 1997 arrest and said it appeared it hadn’t been cleaned since the time of the slayings and would likely provide evidence.
Not only did the truck not provide any link, nothing else did, either—not belongings from Rice’s home, his computer, his father’s car, his father’s home or even his DNA.
Not one bit of forensic evidence linked Rice to the Shenandoah slayings.
And not one bit of forensic evidence linked Rice to Reynolds’ death or to any of the women who had contact with the 29 Stalker.
Who is the 29 Stalker?
The one thing women who were stopped by the 29 Stalker consistently said was that he was smooth, seemed sincerely concerned about their safety and came across as nonthreatening—so much so that three women besides Reynolds got into the truck with him.
Two of them—including the second woman used to screen suspects—looked at a photo lineup that included Rice’s picture and didn’t identify him.
The third woman picked a Virginia state trooper from the first lineup she viewed. Six years later, after Rice’s photo appeared in newspapers and on TV, that woman picked him from a six-person photo spread.
One year later, she reportedly told a private investigator Evonitz was the man who abducted her.
That woman, Carmelita Shomo, isn’t the only person to open up the possibility that Evonitz could be the 29 Stalker. At least three other people make a case for that to be fully explored.
Ann Ferguson Swibold of Orange told The Free Lance–Star that Evonitz was the man who tried to stop her in February 1996 by suggesting she was having car problems.
Swibold told state police that on Feb. 26, 1996, a man in a large, dark sedan followed her along State Route 230—a 10-mile stretch connecting U.S. 29 in Madison County to U.S. 15 in Orange.
She said he came up behind her and flashed his lights until both cars reached U.S. 15. When she turned right, he pulled beside her and mouthed for her to pull over because something was wrong with her car, the police report from March 12, 1996, shows.
All of that—apart from the vehicle—is identical to what other women who encountered the 29 Stalker reported to police.
Swibold said she didn’t pull over because she knew she didn’t have car problems.
She saw Rice’s photo and said it wasn’t him.
When she first saw Evonitz’s photo, she said she had no doubt.
“I’m 101 percent sure,” she said.
“I don’t remember too many names, but I don’t forget a face,” she added.
Amy Adrian Ates contacted the FBI in 2002 after seeing Evonitz’s picture in the news.
Interviewed before Evonitz was confirmed as the Spotsylvania girls’ killer, she told state police Special Agent David A. Russillo that Evonitz was the man who followed her home from work along U.S. 29 in Culpeper in either August or September 1999.
She told police the driver was a clean-cut white man with brown hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. The car was a “cherry red two-door coupe.”
“Ates advised when she saw the photo of Evonitz on the television she became very scared because he looked exactly like the individual that followed her,” the police report states.
Evonitz lived in the Fredericksburg area from 1992 to ’99, moving to Louisa County after he lost his Spotsylvania home to foreclosure in June 1999, according to information assembled by the Lisk–Silva Task Force.
While living in Louisa, Evonitz worked out of rental space there at Centurion Tools.
On July 24, 2002, Centurion Tools President Fred Fitzsimmons told state police Senior Special Agent David M. Riley and Spotsylvania sheriff’s Detective Joseph Cagnina of the Lisk–Silva Task Force that Evonitz sometimes associated with four former co-workers from Walter Grinders in Spotsylvania.
He specifically mentioned one who owned a red Pontiac Fiero, and said Evonitz may have driven his colleague’s car sometimes.
A Fiero is a small two-door coupe.
Walter Grinders co-worker Lyell Chapman said Evonitz often took long midday breaks, and told him of trying to pull over women drivers.
“He just went on and on about how you can flag ’em down in traffic and tell them there’s something wrong with their car. Then they think you're a nice guy,” Chapman told The Free Lance–Star.
“One day he came in mad as hell. He pulled up alongside one woman in traffic. She got in the center turn lane and he caught the red light. He was some kind of mad about that.”
Walter Grinders is a machine-tool business in Spotsylvania, located just minutes from Evonitz’s South Fork Court home.
Chapman said Evonitz, who was in customer service and sales, would come to his work area in the late afternoon and tell him about his fascination with the idea of raping and strangling women and his admiration for serial killer Ted Bundy.
Chapman told police Evonitz said Bundy “was probably the most intelligent man on the planet” and “no matter what Bundy did, you’ve got to admire his brilliance because he manipulated and got control of so many women without getting caught for a very long time.”
On July 3, 2002, Chapman told Spotsylvania Detective Cagnina and state police Senior Special Agent Riley that Evonitz “acted as though he could come and go as he pleased at the company and didn’t have to account for his time like the non-salaried employees.”
Evonitz created Walter Grinders’ time-keeping system in Excel software. He filled out his own time sheets on an honor system.
The 29 Stalker incidents occurred at various times and on various days of the week.
Alicia Reynolds was abducted on a Saturday morning. Evonitz claimed he was working that day from 9:25 a.m. until 12:10 p.m.
Chapman said he never knew Evonitz to work on Saturdays.
Bonnie Jose, Evonitz’s wife at the time, was astounded at even the suggestion that he worked Saturdays. As a hair stylist, she said, she worked every Saturday but never knew him to work that day.
Despite what is depicted in the 29 Stalker composites released to the public, many women reported the man had facial hair, some saying he may have had a mustache. One composite circulated among law enforcement officials shows a man with a goatee. Evonitz sported at least a mustache at the time, and also had a goatee at some point.
Handwritten notes found in Evonitz’s locked footlocker inside his home place him in the Lignum area of Culpeper where both Reynolds’ and McDaniel’s bodies were found. The notes also place him on the road that leads to Shenandoah National Park.
Evonitz’s widow, Hope Crowley Evonitz, told King George County sheriff’s Capt. Steve Dempsey and state police Agent William Hicks that she and her husband both enjoyed driving back roads. Specifically, she said they drove back roads in Culpeper.
Though Evonitz never owned a pickup, Chapman said he saw him driving one. A friend owned a Nissan truck, and his first wife told the FBI Evonitz knew how to hot-wire cars, having done it as a teen to take joy rides.
Police noted that many of the women flagged down by the 29 Stalker were petite, in their 20s, with long, dark hair. Sofia Silva and the Lisk sisters were petite with long, dark hair, a point law enforcement stressed in suggesting Evonitz was attracted to a particular “type” of victim.
In the park slayings, FBI profilers said Julie Williams was likely the focus of the attack. She was 24, tall and thin, with dark hair.
Similar crimes?
Based on witness accounts and other information, the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office attributed two sexual-assault cases to Evonitz in addition to the Lisk and Silva slayings.
The first was a May 1994 incident that began in the parking lot of the Massaponax McDonald’s.
An 18-year-old woman was assaulted after a man talked her into giving him a ride in her pickup. Once inside the truck, the man threatened her with a knife and forced her to drive to two Spotsylvania sites where he assaulted her.
The second case was the rape of a Spotsylvania teen inside her home in June 1995. Two girls, ages 13 and 11, were home alone when a man broke in between 1 and 2 p.m. The older girl was raped and the younger was fondled, according to police reports.
Those cases share similarities with Evonitz’s known crimes, as well as with the unsolved slayings of Williams, Winans and Reynolds.
As was the case when he abducted Sofia Silva and the Lisk sisters, police don’t believe Evonitz worked the day of the June 1995 rape.
Evonitz also was off work four days during the week when Williams and Winans were believed to have been killed in Shenandoah National Park. The date of their deaths is unknown.
In the Spotsylvania break-in, he came prepared with a sports bag that included scissors and surgical gloves. He cut a sheet at the house into strips to bind the younger girl.
Clothing from the Shenandoah slaying victims was used to gag them and to bind Winans’ ankles. Their killer also used duct tape he is believed to have brought with him to bind their wrists. That tape was cut, not torn, according to an FBI Laboratory report.
FBI profilers said in an October 1996 analysis of the Shenandoah slayings that the killer “came prepared and with sufficient time to act in a calculated and concerted rather than frenzied, spontaneous fashion.”
No seminal fluid was found with the young rape victim, nor was any found in the cases of Sofia Silva, Kati Lisk, Kristin Lisk, Julie Williams or Lollie Winans. Initial forensic tests in the Reynolds case showed the only such evidence there likely came from her husband, who is not a suspect.
Evonitz was experiencing sexual dysfunction in 1996 and 1997. By the time he abducted and raped the South Carolina teen in 2002, he had been prescribed Viagra.
FBI profilers said in their analysis of the Shenandoah slayings that the “lack of evidence of sexual assault by the offender may be the result of his inability to perform due to sexual dysfunction.”
The South Carolina assault and Lisk–Silva cases also offer parallels to the Shenandoah slayings.
Evonitz stuffed a rolled-up paper towel into the South Carolina victim’s mouth to keep her quiet after abducting her. Crime scene investigators found a flattened and blood-soaked roll of toilet paper at the Shenandoah scene.
Evonitz used sexual devices in assaulting the South Carolina teen and had a wide assortment of them in his belongings. The same kind of device was found at the Shenandoah slaying scene, where both victims were found naked.
Evonitz owned oils as part of his cache of sexual items. An oil was detected inside both young women during their autopsies. Its source was not among their belongings.
Intricate knots were used to tie rope around the blanket that covered the body of Sofia Silva. Police said Evonitz’s Navy training may have been employed in tying the knots. He served in the Navy from February 1984 through October 1992.
The first expert consulted by the FBI in the Shenandoah slayings said the knot used in the ligature on Winans’ ankles was a “midshipman’s hitch,” something “commonly used aboard ships.”
She said it requires training and generally is “associated with the Navy, Coast Guard or water craft,” according to her Aug. 23, 1996, letter to the FBI.
As with Silva, who had been wrapped in a blanket, the bodies of Williams and Winans were cocooned. They were left naked inside their sleeping bags.
FAILURE ON FORENSICS
Law enforcement officials have not turned a blind eye to Evonitz.
Following his June 27, 2002, suicide, they gathered hundreds of pieces of evidence from all of his vehicles, from his last residence in South Carolina, from his former home in Spotsylvania and from his body during his autopsy.
They interviewed his mother, father, sisters, widow, ex-wife, colleagues, co-workers and supervisors.
They sent an electronic communication about Evonitz to police agencies across the country, and later sent letters to jurisdictions he was known to have visited.
They created a timeline that juxtaposed his work schedule with the 29 Stalker incidents. And they’ve long had a preliminary timeline of his life and know much about the places he lived, worked and traveled.
But what they have not done is taken what some would argue is the simplest step—pursuing science as far as they can.
Rice was indicted in April 2002 on federal capital murder charges in the May 1996 slayings of Williams and Winans, without any forensic link.
Four months later, police said forensic evidence showed conclusively that Evonitz was the Lisk–Silva killer.
In the ensuing months, additional forensic testing in the park slayings strengthened Rice’s claims of innocence while raising questions about whether Evonitz could have been the killer.
In September 2003, after confirming none of the Shenandoah slayings evidence was from Rice, FBI Lab hairs-and-fibers expert Douglas Deedrick checked two head hairs from the Shenandoah slayings scene against hairs from Evonitz and noted microscopic similarities.
The hairs were then forwarded to the lab’s mitochondrial DNA analysis unit.
In October 2003, FBI Lab scientist Constance Fisher reported that mitochondrial DNA analysis showed Evonitz could not be ruled out as the source of the two crime-scene hairs.
In January 2004, federal prosecutor Tom Bondurant hired an outside lab to test DNA from the Shenandoah slayings scene using a new forensic test called Y-STR.
But he didn’t ask that it be checked against Evonitz, The Free Lance–Star found.
Y-STR analysis is useful because it isolates the male portion of DNA from a mixed sample and produces a profile based on the Y chromosome that is unique to men.
Bondurant said the results provided the final impetus for dropping charges against Rice on Feb. 25, 2004. But he refused to release the results.
A review of the evidence, the timing of the analyses and what remains undone in the evaluation of Evonitz leaves many questions. It specifically raises the issue of why each time forensic tests could have furthered—if not answered—the question of whether he killed Julie Williams, Lollie Winans or Alicia Reynolds, those steps weren’t taken.
Given the timing, the answer appears to be because of one man—Darrell Rice.
More precisely, the pending prosecutions of Darrell Rice.
Pamela Gould: 540/735-1972 pgould@freelancestar.com
The former chief of the FBI�s Richmond Division said serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz got only a �cursory look� in the slayings of two young women in Shenandoah National Park because the bureau was focused on Darrell Rice.
�We had another suspect so I think that would have been an extremely cursory look, and probably as quickly decided Evonitz wasn�t involved,� said Donald W. Thompson Jr., who retired in July 2006 after eight years in the Richmond office.
Further, he said he felt the May 1996 slayings of 24-year-old Julie Williams and 26-year-old Lollie Winans �just didn�t track� with Evonitz�s known crimes.
But Thompson, like former Spotsylvania County Sheriff Ron Knight, had the impression more was done to forensically check Evonitz in those slayings and the March 1996 slaying of 25-year-old Alicia Showalter Reynolds than actually occurred.
�I�m sure it was done because nobody would not take advantage of that kind of information,� Knight said in an interview earlier this year.
It is unclear to what extent Evonitz was checked in the death of 20-year-old Anne Carolyn McDaniel, who disappeared from the town of Orange in September 1996.
At least one item from her slaying was submitted to the FBI Laboratory, but the lead investigator, Culpeper sheriff�s Maj. Jim Branch, declined to say how or to what degree Evonitz was assessed.
Virginia State Police Capt. Rick Jenkins, who oversees the Reynolds case, wouldn�t say why the agency never asked to have the evidence forensically checked against Evonitz. He would not specify what was done to investigate the serial killer, but said state police relied on information from the Lisk�Silva Task Force.
�We evaluated that individual, but I�m not going to comment any further on that information,� Jenkins said.
�You can�t possibly think we haven�t looked at every individual that could be a possible suspect.�
Science trumps behavior
During their pursuit of Rice in state and federal court, prosecutors said Evonitz wasn�t a valid suspect in the four unsolved slayings because those victims were all in their 20s whereas his known murder victims were between 12 and 16.
But law enforcement officials interviewed for this project disagreed.
�You wouldn�t eliminate a young 20-year-old, 25-year-old, and there are females in their 30s that look very young,� Thompson said.
�You don�t rule out anything,� said Knight, who retired in January 2004.
John J. Hess, head of the FBI�s Behavioral Analysis Units, acknowledged the women in the unsolved slayings didn�t fit the description of Evonitz�s �victim of choice,� but said �they wouldn�t automatically be ruled out.�
If asked, he said, the profiling units would recommend that evidence from those cases be checked forensically against Evonitz.
�Hard science trumps behavior,� he said.
Evonitz has been looked at for crimes involving victims older than 16.
In 2004, Spotsylvania Sheriff Howard Smith, Knight�s successor and the head of the Lisk�Silva investigation, linked Evonitz to the abduction and sexual assault of an 18-year-old.
And The Free Lance�Star learned that a Palm Beach County, Fla., detective asked to have Evonitz checked forensically in the 1989 slaying of a 23-year-old woman suspected of being a prostitute. That case was being checked, in part, because of unique similarities between the conditions of that woman�s body and one of the Spotsylvania victims.
�A new pledge�
Three years ago, the FBI�s profilers said they would host a meeting of investigators from across the nation to discuss crimes Evonitz might have committed. But Hess said that isn�t going to happen.
�It�s mainly because we feel to our satisfaction that all departments where he [lived or visited] have been made known about his whereabouts,� Hess said.
�We don�t have the resources to do conferences like this on every case,� he added.
Knight, who still has photos of Evonitz�s victims displayed in his home, was disappointed with the decision.
�I�m sure, with 9/11 and all, they�ve transferred a lot of agents to terrorism ... but you�d like to see them do that,� he said. �It shouldn�t take that long to do�a day or two.�
Despite not viewing Evonitz as a strong suspect when he surfaced in 2002, Thompson said he supports running the forensic checks for the region�s unsolved slayings.
�In general terms, if you have an unsolved case and a suspect and some evidence that might tie him to the case, I�d say, yeah, do it,� he said.
�Why he wasn�t checked, I just don�t know,� he added. �I really was not down in the weeds to that extent.�
Charles J. Cunningham, who replaced Thompson as head of the FBI�s Richmond Division, volunteered �a new pledge� to the families and the community earlier this year, saying he would look into what happened to checking Evonitz in the unsolved cases.
�I�m taking an interest in it,� he said. �I want to know.�
�Pamela Gould