Wife of Serial Killer Examines Warning Signs Decades Later

Bonnie Lou Gower spent years sharing a bed with a man she trusted completely. She believed she knew him better than anyone else in the world. That belief was shattered when she discovered the man sleeping beside her was capable of murder. Her husband, Richard "Marc" Evonitz, lived a double life that eventually revealed him as a serial killer who hunted young girls. One of his victims was a 16-year-old girl who died while Evonitz was still married to Gower.

Decades after the crimes were exposed, Gower is now looking back at the warning signs she missed. She is doing this alongside Kara Robinson Chamberlain, a survivor who escaped 18 hours of captivity and torture before fleeing Evonitz. Together they are investigating whether he may be linked to other unsolved cases in Investigation Discovery's docuseries "The Serial Killer Connection."

Gower has one question that has haunted her since learning the truth about the man she married. When she first told people about his crimes, their immediate reaction was often, "Well, obviously you knew. How could you not have known?" She asked the FBI the same thing. "How could I not know this? How could I not know I was sleeping next to somebody for eight and a half years that was doing this?" They assured her there was no way she could have known.

Looking back, Gower admits she did not question things at the time. Whenever she left town to visit family, Evonitz insisted on staying behind, claiming he had to work. Only later did she find out he had actually taken time off while she was away. "One of the reasons he never came with me was because he said he was working," Gower stated. She explained that at the time she was not concerned about leaving him alone. She was just going to visit her family. Now it definitely makes you look at everybody and everything, whether you can trust someone's words or actions.

Gower met Evonitz in South Carolina. He was eight years older than her. He was the older brother of one of her friends and would come home whenever he was on leave from the U.S. Navy. She quickly developed a crush on him as she got to know him. At age 16, Evonitz asked her out on a date. They married in August 1988 when Gower was 17 and he was 25. "You think you know who you are when you're 17, but I really don't think I did," said Gower. She admitted she did not have a handle on that. She was relatively sheltered. She was very naïve, very trusting, taking everything at face value. She thinks he knew that.

During the marriage, there were moments when Gower suspected Evonitz was being unfaithful. Whenever she questioned him, Evonitz told her it was all in her head. She believed him. But as the relationship progressed, Evonitz began isolating her from friends and family as they moved around the country, from Maine to San Diego to Virginia. "No one ever thinks that their significant other is going to be a serial killer," Chamberlain told Fox News Digital. She noted Gower expressed to her that in the worst case scenario, she thought he was having an affair. No one ever thinks your spouse is out murdering someone. He kept that part of himself very tightly controlled and didn't show it to the people he was closest to.

The marriage began to unravel after Evonitz left the Navy. Gower said financial pressures fueled growing tensions between the couple. Evonitz became prone to mood swings and what she described as "rages." He also frequently criticized her weight.

Behind closed doors, Gower confessed she struggled with his interest in bondage. The docuseries confirms this uncomfortable truth. Even as their marriage crumbled, Gower insisted Evonitz couldn't possibly be a threat. She viewed him as harmless. Walking away felt like the only choice after years of mounting misery. When she decided to leave, her fear was for him, not herself.

"I was concerned for his safety when he said he was going to take the gun and kill himself," Gower recalled. "I never feared for my own life." That quote rings loud today. Even after she finally walked away, Evonitz left her questioning her own judgment. She wondered if there was any real justification for leaving. "[But] I wasn't happy," she admitted on TikTok.

The couple married in August 1988 and stayed wed until January 1997. Multiple reports state their divorce finished in 1998. Years later, Gower discovered the dark side of the man she left behind. On June 24, 2002, fifteen-year-old Chamberlain sat at a friend's home in South Carolina when Evonitz pulled up. The stranger approached with pamphlets and asked if her parents were home. Then, he held a gun to her neck. He threatened to shoot her if she screamed. He forced Chamberlain into a dark storage container inside his car.

At Evonitz's apartment, Chamberlain faced repeated sexual assault. He restrained her to a bed. Hours of torture followed before Chamberlain managed to free one hand from handcuffs using her teeth. She unclipped a leather leg restraint and quietly bolted as Evonitz slept. As she ran out, two men caught her and took her to a police station. Chamberlain led officers back to the apartment. But when investigators arrived, Evonitz had already escaped. Police tracked him to Sarasota, Florida. They closed in just before he died by suicide. He was 38 years old.

Once investigators started digging into his past, Chamberlain's abduction revealed only part of the story. Evidence from his South Carolina apartment, former Virginia home, and vehicle linked him to three unsolved murders. On September 9, 1996, Evonitz abducted sixteen-year-old Sofia Silva from her front steps in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, where he and Gower lived. Her body was found about five weeks later in neighboring King George County. Then, on May 1, 1997, sisters Kristin "Kristi" Lisk, 15, and Kathryn "Kati" Lisk, 12, vanished after returning from school. Both girls were sexually assaulted and strangled. Their bodies surfaced five days later in the South Anna River. Notes found by investigators showed Evonitz was already hunting for other potential victims.

It took months after Chamberlain's kidnapping before Gower learned about her ex-husband's other victims. "It felt like it wasn't real at all," Gower admitted. "It felt like this was something that happens in the movies. This wasn't real life." She struggled to believe he could hurt anyone.

He had never hit me or physically abused me." That is the hard truth Donna Gower faces now, even as she fights to find answers about Evonitz's past and whether other victims remain hidden in the dark. Gower and her friend Chamberlain are digging deep into history to see if more people suffered like them. Gower has already helped reconstruct a timeline of Evonitz's movements during their marriage, handing investigators dates, locations, and old calendars as they hunt for cold cases. "Of course, he wasn't always where I thought he was," she admitted.

Chamberlain is looking elsewhere too. She is asking if Evonitz could be responsible for other unsolved crimes, pulling up files that go back to the 1980s and tracing his steps while in the Navy and before her own abduction. "I genuinely think that there is a level of escalation that we see between an indecent exposure [incident] and then three homicides in approximately nine months and then a break before me that is unexplainable to me," she stated clearly. Everything remains possible, yet nothing has been confirmed. Chamberlain stressed this point with heavy emphasis. "It's a frustrating place to be, but I will not stop searching."

DNA holds the potential key to unlocking these secrets. While working on the docuseries, Chamberlain discovered that Evonitz's DNA profile was missing from CODIS, the FBI's national database. However, authorities in Spotsylvania County still hold a blood sample ready for law enforcement agencies seeking to compare his genetic material against evidence from other cases. Chamberlain hopes his DNA will eventually be entered into CODIS, opening up broader comparisons with unsolved crimes. "I genuinely believe that there's no way he only murdered three girls and kidnapped me," she said. "I don't think that there's a world in which that's true."

While making the docuseries, Gower learned something chilling: Evonitz had kept a photograph of her when she was just 11 years old hidden behind another framed picture. This photo existed years before they began dating and was not one she took with her when leaving home; she never knew he possessed it. "It's disturbing enough that he would have 11-year-old me in a picture behind something," she said. Decades after learning the truth about the man she married, Gower is still trying to make sense of it all. "I don't think you ever make sense of it," she replied. There is no tidy little box to put it in to make it make sense. She is still grappling with it. She is still processing.