On the afternoon of Monday, Sept. 9, 1996, Sofia Silva, 16, went outside to do her homework on the front steps of her family’s home in Virgi...
On the afternoon of Monday, Sept. 9, 1996, Sofia Silva, 16, went outside to do her homework on the front steps of her family’s home in Virginia’s Spotsylvania County.
Then she was gone.
Her sister Pam, 21, had been inside the house at the time, and heard nothing — no struggles or screams. When Pam went outside to look for Sofia, all she found was an open can of grape soda and the teenager’s class notes.
Despite her family’s insistence that this child was happy, well-adjusted and would never run away, the local sheriff approached her disappearance as a missing person’s case, with no worry of foul play. They set out looking for girls who matched Sofia’s description, 5-foot-5, slender, and with purple nail polish on fingers and toes.
Sofia sightings came in during the following weeks from all over country, from local malls to Las Vegas casinos. Psychics reported visions of farmhouses, cornfields and cars, wrote Diane Fanning in “Into the Water,” a 2002 book on the case. One reported seeing Sofia in a body of water surrounded by vegetation.
A little more than a month after the disappearance, farm workers found a decomposed female in a swamp. The corpse had purple nail polish on her fingers and toes, and was wrapped in a blue blanket.
Police quickly focused on Karl Michael Roush, 44, whose string of petty crimes involved traffic violations, trespassing, indecent exposure and “visiting a bawdy place.” Roush lived four houses away from the Silvas, and had been seen talking to Sofia in the past. The state’s forensic lab found hairs, blue fibers, and a purple flake in Roush’s van that appeared to be a match to similar fibers taken from the corpse.
“You’ve got him,” the forensic investigator declared.
Roush was charged with Sofia’s murder and prosecutors went about preparing a case against him. The circumstantial evidence appeared strong and it seemed as if it would be easy to prove he was Silva’s killer.
Then, on May 1, 1997, while Roush was behind bars, two more teenage girls — sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk, 15 and 12 — vanished.
The bodies were found in a river five days later. Several details suggested that this was the work of the same person who had murdered Silva. They were all young girls who had been snatched in front of their homes, killed and then dumped in water. They had been raped and their pubic areas had been shaved. Criminal profilers were certain the three cases were linked.
A second look at the findings connecting fibers from Roush’s van to those from Silva’s body showed that there had been several mistakes in the lab work. Investigators dropped the murder charge against Roush and started a hunt for a serial killer. They followed more than 11,000 leads and tested the DNA of more than 400,000 convicted felons.
Years passed with no useful clues, despite an America’s Most Wanted broadcast on the case and a $150,000 reward. Then, early in the morning of June 23, 2002, a panicked 15-year-old girl with a pair of handcuffs dangling from her wrists dashed out of an apartment complex in Columbia, S.C. She ran to a car and pleaded with the driver to take her to the nearest police station.
A day earlier, the girl, Kara Robinson, had been watering flowers in front of a friend’s house when a strange man drove up and started chatting with her. Then, he took out a gun and forced her into a giant Rubbermaid container in the back seat of his car. He took her to his apartment, handcuffed her and bound her legs, and raped her repeatedly. Miraculously, after 18 hours, her captor fell asleep, and she slipped one hand out of the cuff and escaped.
Richard Marc Evonitz was a seemingly normal guy on the surface. But he was later determined to be a "sexually sadistic psychopath," and responsible for the murders of the three girls.
Through the ordeal, Robinson made detailed mental notes of the man and his surroundings. She told police every single thing she could remember. “It was like memory dump,” she’d later recall.
Her notes led them straight to the assailant’s door. He was Richard Marc Evonitz, 38, who seemed to be an ordinary guy — a decorated Navy veteran and a married man with a job, friends and a place in the community. On the surface, Evonitz didn’t seem like a “sexually sadistic psychopath,” as an FBI criminal profiler would later describe him. Other facets of his character fit the image perfectly. The son of an alcoholic, he had a bad temper and a long history of legal troubles. In 1987, he had been arrested for exposing himself to a young girl.
By the time police got to Evonitz’s apartment, he was gone. While fleeing, he called his sister and confessed to his crimes. Police finally caught up with him in Florida, where he led them on a high-speed chase, and finally cornered him. He pulled a gun. As they released a police dog, he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Examinations of his belongings connected Evonitz to the deaths of the three girls, and there is reason to believe that he is behind other unsolved cases.
His suicide was, surprisingly, a disappointment to Robinson.
“I wanted to go to trial and let him see me again and know I was his downfall,” Robinson said on “America’s Most Wanted” soon after the death of her captor. “I wanted him to look at me and know that choosing me was the biggest mistake he ever made.”
Eight years later, this tough-as-nails girl would graduate from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, the sole woman in her class and begin a career as a crime fighter.
Then she was gone.
Her sister Pam, 21, had been inside the house at the time, and heard nothing — no struggles or screams. When Pam went outside to look for Sofia, all she found was an open can of grape soda and the teenager’s class notes.
Despite her family’s insistence that this child was happy, well-adjusted and would never run away, the local sheriff approached her disappearance as a missing person’s case, with no worry of foul play. They set out looking for girls who matched Sofia’s description, 5-foot-5, slender, and with purple nail polish on fingers and toes.
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Kara Robinson accepts plaque at graduation of South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy in 2010. She showed her mettle eight years earlier as a 15-year-old, getting away from killer Richard Marc Evonitz. |
A little more than a month after the disappearance, farm workers found a decomposed female in a swamp. The corpse had purple nail polish on her fingers and toes, and was wrapped in a blue blanket.
Police quickly focused on Karl Michael Roush, 44, whose string of petty crimes involved traffic violations, trespassing, indecent exposure and “visiting a bawdy place.” Roush lived four houses away from the Silvas, and had been seen talking to Sofia in the past. The state’s forensic lab found hairs, blue fibers, and a purple flake in Roush’s van that appeared to be a match to similar fibers taken from the corpse.
“You’ve got him,” the forensic investigator declared.
Roush was charged with Sofia’s murder and prosecutors went about preparing a case against him. The circumstantial evidence appeared strong and it seemed as if it would be easy to prove he was Silva’s killer.
Then, on May 1, 1997, while Roush was behind bars, two more teenage girls — sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk, 15 and 12 — vanished.
The bodies were found in a river five days later. Several details suggested that this was the work of the same person who had murdered Silva. They were all young girls who had been snatched in front of their homes, killed and then dumped in water. They had been raped and their pubic areas had been shaved. Criminal profilers were certain the three cases were linked.
A second look at the findings connecting fibers from Roush’s van to those from Silva’s body showed that there had been several mistakes in the lab work. Investigators dropped the murder charge against Roush and started a hunt for a serial killer. They followed more than 11,000 leads and tested the DNA of more than 400,000 convicted felons.
Years passed with no useful clues, despite an America’s Most Wanted broadcast on the case and a $150,000 reward. Then, early in the morning of June 23, 2002, a panicked 15-year-old girl with a pair of handcuffs dangling from her wrists dashed out of an apartment complex in Columbia, S.C. She ran to a car and pleaded with the driver to take her to the nearest police station.
A day earlier, the girl, Kara Robinson, had been watering flowers in front of a friend’s house when a strange man drove up and started chatting with her. Then, he took out a gun and forced her into a giant Rubbermaid container in the back seat of his car. He took her to his apartment, handcuffed her and bound her legs, and raped her repeatedly. Miraculously, after 18 hours, her captor fell asleep, and she slipped one hand out of the cuff and escaped.
Richard Marc Evonitz was a seemingly normal guy on the surface. But he was later determined to be a "sexually sadistic psychopath," and responsible for the murders of the three girls.
Through the ordeal, Robinson made detailed mental notes of the man and his surroundings. She told police every single thing she could remember. “It was like memory dump,” she’d later recall.
Her notes led them straight to the assailant’s door. He was Richard Marc Evonitz, 38, who seemed to be an ordinary guy — a decorated Navy veteran and a married man with a job, friends and a place in the community. On the surface, Evonitz didn’t seem like a “sexually sadistic psychopath,” as an FBI criminal profiler would later describe him. Other facets of his character fit the image perfectly. The son of an alcoholic, he had a bad temper and a long history of legal troubles. In 1987, he had been arrested for exposing himself to a young girl.
By the time police got to Evonitz’s apartment, he was gone. While fleeing, he called his sister and confessed to his crimes. Police finally caught up with him in Florida, where he led them on a high-speed chase, and finally cornered him. He pulled a gun. As they released a police dog, he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Examinations of his belongings connected Evonitz to the deaths of the three girls, and there is reason to believe that he is behind other unsolved cases.
His suicide was, surprisingly, a disappointment to Robinson.
 |
| STF/The Free Lance-Star Robinson wished that Evonitz had been prosecuted rather than killing himself. "I wanted him to look at me and know that choosing me was the biggest mistake he ever made," she said. |
Eight years later, this tough-as-nails girl would graduate from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, the sole woman in her class and begin a career as a crime fighter.
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