Bonnie Lou Gower spent eight and a half years married to Richard «Marc» Evonitz, a man she believed she knew completely. Only years after their divorce did she learn that her husband was a serial killer who targeted young girls, including a 16-year-old victim who died while the couple was still married.
Gower is now speaking publicly about the warning signs she missed, appearing in the Investigation Discovery docuseries «The Serial Killer Connection.» In the series, she meets Kara Robinson Chamberlain, the young woman who survived 18 hours of captivity and torture at Evonitz's hands before escaping. Together, the two women examine whether Evonitz may be connected to other unsolved cases.
For Gower, the most persistent question has been how she could have lived beside a predator without recognizing the danger. She told Fox News Digital that when she first learned of his crimes, the reaction from others was immediate and skeptical. «Well, obviously you knew. How could you not have known?» she recalled people saying. That was also her first question to the FBI. «How could I not know I was sleeping next to somebody for eight and a half years that was doing this?» Agents assured her there was no way she could have known.
Looking back, Gower acknowledges there were details she did not question at the time. Whenever she traveled to visit family, Evonitz insisted on staying behind, saying he had to work. Only later did she discover that he had actually taken time off during her absences. «At the time, I wasn't at all concerned about leaving him behind,» she said. «It definitely makes you look at everybody and everything now, whether you can trust someone's words or actions.»
Gower met Evonitz in South Carolina when she was a teenager. He was eight years her senior and the older brother of one of her friends, returning home during leave from the U.S. Navy. She developed a crush on him, and at age 16 she went on a date with him. They married in August 1988, when she was 17 and he was 25. «I was relatively sheltered. I was very naïve, very trusting, taking everything at face value,» Gower said. «I think he knew that.»
During the marriage, Gower occasionally suspected Evonitz of being unfaithful. Each time she questioned him, he told her it was all in her head, and she believed him. As the relationship continued, he began isolating her from friends and family as they moved around the country, from Maine to San Diego to Virginia.
Chamberlain, the survivor, said the situation is difficult for outsiders to comprehend. «No one ever thinks that their significant other is going to be a serial killer,» she told Fox News Digital. «I think worst case, and this is something that she expressed to me, he was having an affair. No one ever thinks your spouse is out murdering someone.» She added that Evonitz «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 described growing financial pressures, mood swings and what she called «rages,» along with frequent criticism of her weight. Behind closed doors, she was also uncomfortable with his interest in bondage, according to the docuseries. Even as the marriage reached its breaking point, she said she never saw him as someone capable of hurting her. 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,» she recalled. «I never feared for my own life.»
Gower said that after she walked away, she questioned whether she had any justification for doing so. «When I left, I felt like I was leaving for no real good reason,» she said. «[But] I wasn't happy.» According to her TikTok account, the couple was married from August 1988 until January 1997, and multiple reports indicate their divorce was finalized in 1998.
Years later, Gower learned how much she had not known. On June 24, 2002, 15-year-old Chamberlain was at a friend's home in South Carolina when Evonitz pulled into the driveway. He approached her with pamphlets and asked if her parents were home, then held a gun to her neck and threatened to shoot her if she screamed. He forced her into a dark storage container in his car and drove her to his apartment, where he repeatedly sexually assaulted her and restrained her to a bed. After hours of torture, Chamberlain freed one hand from a pair of handcuffs with her teeth, unclipped a leather leg restraint and quietly fled out the door as Evonitz slept. She encountered two men who took her to a police station, and she led officers back to her captor.