Where Is Bonnie Lou Gower Now? Inside Her Life After Her Marriage to Serial Killer Richard “Marc” Evonitz
Bonnie Lou Gower was married to Richard “Marc” Evonitz for more than half a decade, and she later learned he had abducted, raped and murdered at least three teenage girls. She has now united with his only surviving victim for The Serial Killer Connection, a three-part documentary that premiered on Oct. 7.
Gower is Evonitz’s first wife, and she spent several years married to a serial killer without knowing it, the article says. Evonitz was a Navy veteran. Authorities and Gower did not learn about his crimes until June 2002, after 15-year-old Kara Robinson Chamberlain escaped from his apartment after up to 18 hours of torture and sexual assault. Gower was no longer married to him then, but was still shocked, according to the article.
In June 2024, Gower discussed the experience in a TikTok video that has since had nearly 40 million views. In her own TikTok account, as summarized by the article, she listed being married at 17, divorced by 25, remarried with two children, then learning five years later from the FBI that her first husband was a serial killer, and later learning his killing dated from before and throughout their marriage. She then made a 16-part TikTok series titled “Married to a Serial Killer.”
In a June 2024 TikTok video, Gower said she first met Evonitz — eight years her senior — when she was in sixth grade in South Carolina. He was the older brother of a classmate and neighbor, and visited home while on leave from the U.S. Navy. She said she developed a crush on him as she got to know him, and that he asked her out when she was 16. She said things moved quickly and he asked her to marry him.
They married in August 1988, per the Portland Press Herald. Gower said in a TikTok video that she was 17 at the time. That October, she moved more than 1,000 miles from South Carolina to Portland, Maine, where Evonitz was stationed, according to the outlet.
Gower and Evonitz were married from August 1988 until January 1997, according to her TikTok. However, the Portland Press Herald reports they divorced in 1998 — a discrepancy preserved in the article. During the marriage, Gower said in TikTok videos that she sometimes suspected an affair, but never felt she was in an unsafe relationship. She said she had an instinct something was not right, but that when she questioned him he said things that made her doubt her intuition.
Looking back, she said Evonitz kept her isolated from friends and family, moving around the country from Maine to San Diego to Virginia and insisting she confide in no one but him. She said he did not want her to go to college or have a job outside the home, though he eventually allowed her to obtain her cosmetology license, as recalled in another June 2024 TikTok video.
Their problems worsened after Evonitz left the Navy, Gower shared in another TikTok video two days later. Money was a source of stress, and Gower claimed Evonitz expressed wanting to smoke marijuana after several years of sobriety. According to Gower’s account, he also had mood swings and flew into what she called “rages.” After one explosion, in which he accused her of infidelity after she returned from a ballet class, she decided to leave, she recounted. She also said they attended a few couples-counseling appointments, but Evonitz stopped being willing to go because he felt the counselor was on Gower’s side and biased. She said she did not want to end the marriage, only to be happy and have stability, and that what was happening made her feel uneasy.
In June 2002, Gower discovered Evonitz was a serial predator and murderer who had killed at least three young girls and kidnapped and raped a fourth. She learned when the FBI came to her door in Northern California, where she was then living with her second husband and two children, aged 2 years and 3 months, she said in a TikTok video. She explained that Evonitz’s cousin had directed the FBI to her the day before. She said the FBI told her Evonitz had kidnapped a 15-year-old girl in South Carolina and then tortured and raped her for the next 18 hours. Robinson escaped after Evonitz fell asleep and led police back to the apartment where she had been held, but Evonitz had fled.
Police tracked Evonitz to Sarasota, Florida, where a high-speed chase ensued. After police flattened his tires, Evonitz died by suicide before authorities could arrest him. In the moments before his death, he reportedly told family members that he had committed more crimes than he could remember, according to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, per The Washington Post.
The FBI and police interviewed Gower to create a profile of Evonitz and establish a timeline for his suspected crimes, Gower said in a TikTok video. She learned Evonitz had killed one victim while she was still married to him. While Gower was out of town visiting her brother in San Diego, Evonitz abducted, raped and murdered 16-year-old Sofia Silva before disposing of her body in a lake, per the Portland Press Herald and one of Gower’s TikToks. Gower said investigators told her that seemed to be how he operated, because Robinson was kidnapped when Evonitz’s second wife was on a trip to Walt Disney World, per The Washington Post. Her conversations with investigators also helped confirm facts proving he had murdered Silva and sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk, who were abducted and murdered in May 1997. Gower said on TikTok that the news was beyond shocking.
Gower has admitted viewing the marriage through an entirely different lens after learning of the crimes, but the article says nothing led her to believe he was a serial killer. She even questioned the FBI about how there could be no warning signs during their more than eight-year marriage. She said on TikTok that their answer was that serial killers are normally sociopaths, that sociopaths are good at compartmentalizing, and that it is easy for them to hide things. She added that if she had seen signs, he would not have been a sociopath and probably would not have gotten away with the crimes as he did. She also believes that if she had suspected wrongdoing, she might have become another victim. She said in a TikTok that if she had found anything suggesting this while searching his things for evidence of an affair, she might not be alive today, and that she still believes not knowing saved her.
After splitting from Evonitz, Gower met and fell in love with her second husband, Scott. They had two sons together, before Scott died from ALS in 2012, according to her blog. She has since remarried a third time, marrying Daniel Rasmussen on Sept. 20, 2025, per her Instagram. In her Instagram caption for a montage of their nuptials, she described herself as blessed to have found a wonderful man to share her life with and grateful, after tragedy and loss, to find peace and harmony. After sharing the serial-killer marriage story on TikTok in June 2024, she was connected to Robinson Chamberlain, her ex-husband’s only surviving victim.
Gower and Chamberlain teamed up for the Investigation Discovery series The Serial Killer Connection, which premiered on Oct. 7. In the three-part docuseries, they seek answers to unanswered questions Evonitz left behind, including whether he was responsible for more deaths and disappearances. In an Instagram post in September 2026 alongside the docuseries teaser, Gower wrote that they hoped and prayed to find answers to unsolved cases they believed were committed by her ex-husband and Chamberlain’s captor, Richard Marc Evonitz, and to bring closure to the families involved. Gower is also writing a book about her experience with Evonitz, due out in late 2026, per her Instagram bio.
