Donald Leroy EVANS , an army veteran, drug addict and drifter from Galveston, Texas, is another possible serial killer with a hefty ego. A convicted rapist, he was arrested in Louisiana in 1991 where he confessed to the kidnapping and murder of a ten-year-old girl in Gulfport, Mississippi. But that wasn't all he wanted to confess. EVANS kept on confessing and confessing to the tune of more than eighty kills. What he revealed to authorities was a ten-year killing rampage spanning ten states that later he said was a hoax. Evans made made a career out of leading federal authorities on multistate, fruitless searches for seemingly nonexistent victims.
Evans later admitted he misled authorities. The drifter was sentenced to death in 1993 in the strangulation death of Beatrice Louise Routh, who was abducted in Gulfport park, taken to Louisiana and killed, then returned to Mississippi, where her body was dumped. Previously he had been convicted on a federal kidnapping charge and was sentenced to a life term. He escaped from Harrison County jail in June 1993, but was recaptured about a mile away. In July 1995, Evans pleaded guilty in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the 1985 killing of Ira Jean Smith. He received a life sentence.
There are twelve other cases in which he is strongly suspected but for which he will never be tried. His other confessed killings remain unproved and, for the most part, have not been investigated. Evans became a local talk-radio phenomenon in Florida when declared himself a white supremacist, shaved his head, began calling himself "Hi Hitler." He spent two weeks on a talk show extolling the pleasures of murdering a black prostitute in Florida.
On January 5, 1999, the drifter killer was fatally stabbed in the Mississippi State Penitentiary by a fellow death row inmate Jimmie Mack. Evans, who was 41 at the time of his death, was gored with a cell-made shank by Mack, who is black, while returning from taking a shower. "We don't mourn him. We simply close his file," said Harrison County District Attorney Cono Caranna, who prosecuted Evans in the 1991 rape and strangulation of a 10-year-old girl. "Most people you'd be able to say something good about them," he said. "Everything I saw in his life was pure self involvement and as close to evil as I've ever seen." Corrections officials would not comment on whether there were any racial overtones in the slaying of Evans.
Donald Leroy EVANS , an army veteran, drug addict and drifter from Galveston, Texas, is another possible serial killer with a hefty ego. A convicted rapist, he was arrested in Louisiana in 1991 where he confessed to the kidnapping and murder of a ten-year-old girl in Gulfport, Mississippi. But that wasn't all he wanted to confess. EVANS kept on confessing and confessing to the tune of more than eighty kills. What he revealed to authorities was a ten-year killing rampage spanning ten states that later he said was a hoax. Evans made made a career out of leading federal authorities on multistate, fruitless searches for seemingly nonexistent victims.
Evans later admitted he misled authorities. The drifter was sentenced to death in 1993 in the strangulation death of Beatrice Louise Routh, who was abducted in Gulfport park, taken to Louisiana and killed, then returned to Mississippi, where her body was dumped. Previously he had been convicted on a federal kidnapping charge and was sentenced to a life term. He escaped from Harrison County jail in June 1993, but was recaptured about a mile away. In July 1995, Evans pleaded guilty in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the 1985 killing of Ira Jean Smith. He received a life sentence.
There are twelve other cases in which he is strongly suspected but for which he will never be tried. His other confessed killings remain unproved and, for the most part, have not been investigated. Evans became a local talk-radio phenomenon in Florida when declared himself a white supremacist, shaved his head, began calling himself "Hi Hitler." He spent two weeks on a talk show extolling the pleasures of murdering a black prostitute in Florida.
On January 5, 1999, the drifter killer was fatally stabbed in the Mississippi State Penitentiary by a fellow death row inmate Jimmie Mack. Evans, who was 41 at the time of his death, was gored with a cell-made shank by Mack, who is black, while returning from taking a shower. "We don't mourn him. We simply close his file," said Harrison County District Attorney Cono Caranna, who prosecuted Evans in the 1991 rape and strangulation of a 10-year-old girl. "Most people you'd be able to say something good about them," he said. "Everything I saw in his life was pure self involvement and as close to evil as I've ever seen." Corrections officials would not comment on whether there were any racial overtones in the slaying of Evans |
