A woman who was once married to serial killer Richard Evonitz shared the appalling moment she discovered she had married a madman who targeted and murdered teenage girls.
Bonnie Lou Gower was also just a teen in 1989 when she married Evonitz, the brother of her classmate and eight years her senior, she told her followers in a series of TikToks detailing her sham marriage.
Their 8-year-relationship was peppered with shocking red flags, ranging from Evonitz not allowing Gower to attend college to frantically asking her if she would bolt from the country with him — a question he suspiciously asked around the time several girls in their community turned up dead.
“Looking back at that, that seems kind of crazy but at the time I thought he was just stressed out about work, because it was a huge transition for him to get out of the military and move to Virginia and start a new life and try to get a job,” Gower said in one of her videos, adding that she plans to publish a book of her horrifying experience.
The pair had been married for several years at that point, she recounted. Things with Evonitz were rocky from the jump, but she stayed in the marriage because she believed in the commitment she made.
Although Gower didn’t detail instances of physical abuse, she stated that her serial killer husband remanded her to their family home, disapproved of her going to school, finding work or making new friends and even controlled her weight.
“He really limited the amount of money I was allowed to spend on phone calls to my family,” Gower recalled.
“Not having a lot of friends or anybody who I could talk to about my relationship — I really didn’t know how different it was from the average marriage, and I really didn’t have anybody to bounce things off of and find out what it was normal, which I think was probably exactly what he wanted,” she said in the TikTok videos.
It was in 1996 in Spotsylvania, Virginia — where the couple had moved after spending time in San Diego and South Carolina — that Evonitz abducted and killed 16-year-old Sofia Marlene Silva, whose body was found a month later in a roadside creek.
Seven months later, Evonitz struck again, this time abducting and killing Kristin Michelle “Kristi” Lisk, 15, and Kathryn Nicole “Kati” Lisk, 12, from their front lawn. He sexually assaulted and strangled both of them before dumping their bodies in a river.
Around that time, Evonitz started having “a lot of mood switches” and one day came home frantically asking if Gower would leave the country with him.
“I was like, ‘What do you mean? What the hell? Why would you ask me that?’” Gower recalled.
Evonitz saved face by pretending he had a rough day at work and wanted to ensure that his wife would stay with him through thick and thin, an answer she was happy to accept at the time.
Gower has not yet finished her series detailing the crazy story, but teased that she and Evonitz divorced and she later remarried before his reign of terror came to an end in 2002.
He abducted 15-year-old Kara Robinson from the yard of her South Carolina home at gunpoint and brought her back to his apartment, but she managed to escape while he was sleeping.
Evonitz fled when he realized the police would be coming for him. He called his sister to admit he had committed “more crimes than he can remember” before killing himself in Florida.
Although it was not confirmed, police believe Evonitz was responsible for other crimes — and at least one other murder — dating back to before his marriage to Gower.
“It’s taken a lot of time. It’s been 22 years, and I have to say that at this point I’m doing pretty well with it. It definitely has its moments where it comes out and in my current relationship and, or in my relationships over the last several years, and obviously,” Gower said.
“Talk about trust issues.”
