I used to be married to a serial killer – here is how I came upon
The ex-wife of a serial killer has revealed the chilling moment she discovered her former husband had brutally murdered at least three young girls.
Bonnie Lou Gower married Richard Evonitz when she was just 17-years-old. The pair divorced when she was 25 and she later remarried and had two children.
But five years later the FBI showed up at her front door with a shock revelation, she explained in a viral TikTok video, which has since logged over 30 million views.
Investigators say Evonitz was responsible for the murders of three girls in Virginia between 1996 and 1997: Sofia Silva, 16; Kristin Lisk, 15, and her sister Kati Lisk, 12.
His reign of terror finally ended on June 24, 2002 when his next would-be victim, 15-year-old Kara Robinson Chamberlain, escaped and alerted cops. Three days later he shot himself after a high-speed car chase.
Pictured: Bonnie Lou Gower, who is now in her fifties and remarried with children, used to be the wife of serial killer Richard Evonitz in the late 1980s and early 1990s
Pictured: Richard Evonitz, who police have linked to the killings of three young girls throughout Virginia. He was never prosecuted for these crimes because he committed suicide amid a police chase
Bonnie Lou Gower has now shared details of her marriage to the serial killer in a series of TikTok videos.
She began with a ‘put a finger down’ style clip earlier this week.
‘Put a finger down if you were married at 17, divorced by 25, remarried, had two children, and then five years later the FBI showed up at your door to find out that your first husband was a serial killer who murdered three girls,’ Gower said.
She claimed she later learned he had allegedly killed multiple people before and during their eight-year-long marriage – but only three victims have ever been confirmed.
In her next video she explained how she had met her ex-husband through his younger sister, whom she lived three doors down from and was friends with through middle and high school.
According to Gower, Evonitz had the ‘older brother’ mystique and was in the Navy, so was not around that much.
After getting to know him when he was home on leave, she said she developed a crush on him, and when she was about 16, Evonitz began to reciprocate her feelings.
‘He started flirting with me and decided to ask me out,’ she said.
She explained that her family had reservations over their roughly eight-year age gap – she was 17 and he was 25 when they were first dating – but didn’t stop them.
‘They felt comfortable because they already knew the family, and they could see how much we liked each other. So, they supported it,’ she said.
Kristin and Kati Lisk were abducted from their garden on May 1, 1997 and later found dead in Spotsylvania County, Virginia
Sofia Silva, 16, was murdered in 1996 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia
In her first official video telling the story of her relationship with Evonitz, Gower started at the beginning and explained how they met and started dating despite the eight-year age gap between them
He quickly proposed and they were married in August 1988, eight years before the murder of Sofia Silva.
They moved to Maine and even though ‘everything was fine at first,’ according to Gower’s retelling in her part 2 video, ‘he very quickly took charge and let me know what my responsibilities were supposed to be to him as a wife.’
Evonitz was still in the Navy at the time and working as a sonar technician aboard the USS Koelsch in Portland from May 8, 1988, to May 31, 1989, according to centralmaine.com.
Meanwhile, Gower was unemployed and only had her high school diploma with no plans of going to college. So she took on the role of a traditional stay-at-home wife.
But soon he started making comments about her gaining weight, she claimed.
‘He started telling me I was fat and that I needed to join Weight Watchers,’ she said, adding, ‘If I cheated on my diet, he would tell me you’re going to wind up being fat like your mother.’
‘Up until this point, I felt pretty good about things overall, but as time was going on I was regretting my choice of getting married.’
But was determined to stay the course and prove wrong naysayers who had said she was too young to get married, she added.
The picture of Evonitz that the FBI circulated following his suicide to avoid capture and prosecution after his kidnapping of 15-year-old Kara Robinson Chamberlain
Pictured: Kara Robinson Chamberlain around the age she was when she was captured by Evonitz. She is in her thirties now
In a second video, Gower said that Evonitz had a habit of commenting on her weight
In the summer of 1989, the couple moved to San Diego where Evonitz had been relocated by the Navy.
But after initial ‘fun and romantic’ vibes his attitude shifted once again, she said, in her part 3 video.
She said he wanted her to get a job but also be home when he got back at 4pm – and he didn’t approve of the few jobs she was qualified to do with just a high school diploma.
He also didn’t support her in getting a college education, she added. Eventually though, he relented and allowed her to go to cosmetology school.
‘Going to cosmetology school really opened up my world and allowed me to get out of the house and make new friends. He didn’t really like that that much,’ she said.
She added that he always told her not to talk about their marital problems with anyone else.
‘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,’ she said.
‘I really didn’t have anybody to bounce things off of and find out what was normal, which I think was probably exactly what he wanted.’
The flyer first published by the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office after Sofia Silva went missing on September 9, 1996. Her body was found in a serious state of decomposition a month later
Kristin and Kati Lisk, whom Evonitz kidnapped and killed a year after Silva, according to police, are pictured with their bookbags
On top of all his forced secrecy, Gower was far away from her family, isolating her further.
Long distance phone calls costed ‘a lot of money back then and he really limited the amount of money I was allowed to spend,’ she said.
In her fourth video released Thursday afternoon, she skipped ahead in the narrative to November 1992.
That’s when she and Evonitz moved back across the country from San Diego to Virginia, despite Gower’s entire family moving to the southern California city to finally be close to her.
Gower said her husband was struggling with transition out of the military and into a regular job.
Then one day she claimed he came home and repeatedly asked her if she would join him if he suddenly had to fly out of the country.
Initially, Gower was confused, asking things like, ‘why would you ask me that?’ and ‘why do you need to go?’
But after he demanded an answer, Gower finally said that she would go with him to get him to calm down.
At the time, she said she thought this behavior was just due to him being stressed at his new job.
‘There were things like that, that eventually played into future things,’ she said. ‘Looking back at that that seems kind of crazy.’
Her story is continuing to unfold on TikTok, and Gower has said she will drop regular videos providing insight into her marriage.
She said she has also written a book about her experiences and is in the process of searching for an agent or publisher.
Many commenters have urged her to get in contact with Evonitz’s 2002 kidnapping victim Kara Robinson Chamberlain.
Gower has not yet publicly addressed the story of Chamberlain, who herself has a large social media presence on TikTok.
Amid videos of her working out and spending time with her child, Chamberlain frequently recounts the harrowing experience of almost being Evonitz’s fourth murder victim.
Gower has not yet publicly addressed the story of Chamberlain, pictured as an adult, who herself has a large social media presence.
After a news conference announcing that Richard Evonitz had been identified by police as the killer of Kristin and Kati Lisk an unidentified FBI agent kneels by the grave of the Lisk sisters, Tuesday, August 13, 2002, at Goshen Baptist Church in Spotsylvania, Virginia
Chamberlain has previously recounted how Evonitz confronted her in the front yard of her friend’s South Carolina home at gunpoint.
He then handcuffed her and put a gag over her mouth while on the way to his apartment, where raped and tortured her for about 18 hours.
Throughout the terrifying ordeal, Chamberlain said she made sure to pay attention to her surroundings.
‘My ability to escape was part of my trauma response,’ Chamberlain said in a June 4 TikTok video.
‘I was able to stay calm and collected and appease my captor so that I could make him feel safe enough to sleep. So when I escaped, it was when he was asleep the next morning.
‘I had to actually use my teeth to kind of loosen the clip that connected the handcuffs to the bed and then slide out of the bed, get my things together. So I think the key for me was to stay calm, and that’s not always an option for everyone.’
After she led the police to his apartment, they found evidence linking Evonitz to the unsolved murders of Sofia Silva and sisters Kati and Kristin Lisk, People Magazine reported.
FBI Lab Director Dr. Dwight E. Adams, right, explains some of the forensic evidence recovered from Evonitz’s South Carolina apartment during a news conference Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2002. Items recovered from his home were tied to Sofia Silva, Kristin Lisk and Kati Lisk
Professor Deirdre Enright, who founded the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, has previously speculated that Evonitz murdered more than the three known victims – and may also be responsible for the death of Julianne Williams, 24, and Laura ‘Lollie’ Winans, 26, back in 1996.
Their bodies were found in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia in 1996, and Darrell David Rice, the original suspect, was excluded as the perpetrator through DNA testing.
DNA testing on Evonitz was described as ‘inconclusive.’ But his grandmother was dying in a hospital in Harrison, which was just 25 minutes away from the park, according to a University of Virginia Law School article.
There is also some speculation that Evonitz may have killed 12-year-old Sarah Cherry, who disappeared in broad daylight from a Bowdoin home in July 1988 and was found dead two days later.
The magnitude of the crimes of Evonitz are unknown. But he told his sister moments before his death that he had committed ‘more crimes than he can remember’
At this time, Evonitz was newly married to Gower and stationed in Portland on a Navy ship – just a 40 minute drive from Bowdoin, where Cherry was kidnapped and killed.
However, Dennis Dechaine, a 31-year-old farmer, was convicted Cherry’s murder and is serving a life sentence. And prosecutors remain steadfast in their opinion that they have the right man.
Yet as police closed in on Evonitz in 2002, he allegedly called his sister and admitted he’d committed ‘more crimes than he can remember.’
