She Married a Serial Killer Who Murdered Multiple Girls. Now She’s Speaking Out About It
Bonnie Lou Gower married Richard Evonitz when she was 17 and he was 25, according to her new TikTok
The woman who was once married to Richard Evonitz — an American serial killer who murdered at least three teenage girls — is speaking out about her marriage on TikTok.
Bonnie Lou Gower married Evonitz when she was 17 years old, and the pair divorced when she was 25, according to her first TikTok, which has garnered more than 10 million views. She says that when she was married to her second husband, she learned through the FBI that Evonitz murdered three girls. Twenty years later, she allegedly learned he murdered multiple additional people before and during their marriage, she says.
In a follow-up TikTok about how she met Evonitz, Gower says the pair met through his younger sister, whom she was friends with. Gower did not provide many details about her marriage, yet — saying she plans to post another follow-up video to address more questions. She says she has written a book about her marriage and is currently looking for a publisher.
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In 2002, Evonitz abducted 15-year-old Kara Robinson (now Kara Robinson Chamberlain) from the front yard of her friend's home at gunpoint, PEOPLE previously reported. He put handcuffs on her and a gag in her mouth on the way to his apartment, but she made sure to pay close attention to her surroundings in his vehicle and apartment.
That evening, while Evonitz was asleep, she escaped from his apartment and told police everything she'd memorized. When police arrived at the apartment she described, Evonitz had already fled, but they found evidence linking him to the unsolved murders of Sofia Silva and sisters Kati and Kristin Lisk, according to PEOPLE's past reporting. The Herald-Tribune reported in 2002 that Evonitz's family said he idolized the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy.
In a new TikTok, Chamberlain recounted her escape.
"My ability to escape was part of my trauma response," Chamberlain said in the June 4 video. "So 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 was handcuffed. 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 Chamberlain's harrowing escape, police found Evonitz in Sarasota, Fla., where a high-speed chase occurred. Shortly after the chase, Evonitz died by suicide. He was 38 years old. Despite Gower's claims that Evonitz killed more than three people, police have not publicly linked him to any additional murders at this time.
However, according to a 2002 Washington Post story, in the moments before his death, Evonitz told family members her committed "more crimes than he can remember," a local sheriff said at the time.
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