Richard Marc Edward Evonitz was born on July 29, 1963, and served nine years in the Navy. He worked in industrial sales, married twice, and lived in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and later in Columbia, South Carolina, and was by every account an unremarkable neighbour.
On September 9, 1996, sixteen-year-old Sofia Silva disappeared from the front garden of her house in Spotsylvania while doing homework. On May 1, 1997, sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk, fifteen and twelve, disappeared from theirs. All three were found in rivers some distance away. The case was one of the most intensively worked in Virginia and produced nothing for five years.
On June 24, 2002, in Columbia, South Carolina, he abducted fifteen-year-old Kara Robinson at gunpoint from a friend's front garden, put her in a plastic container in his car, and kept her chained in his flat for about eighteen hours. She stayed calm, talked to him, and deliberately memorised the room: the papers on the desk, the name on a receipt, the fish tank, the make of everything. When he fell asleep she worked free of the restraints and ran.
What she gave police was so precise that they had a name within hours. Evonitz ran to Florida, and on June 27, 2002, after a pursuit in Sarasota, he shot himself. Hairs and fibres from his flat matched the three Virginia girls, and the case was closed on the strength of it. Kara Robinson has since worked publicly on victim advocacy, and the case is used in law enforcement training as an example of what a hostage's observation can do.