Yahoo News All About Kara Robinson Chamberlain, Whose Daring Escape from Captivity Led to Her Predator's Capture
'The Girl Who Escaped: The Kara Robinson Story' premiered on Lifetime in February 2023
In the early afternoon of June 24, 2002, 15-year-old Kara Robinson Chamberlain was watering plants and bushes in the front yard of a friend's house in West Columbia, S.C., when a Pontiac Trans Am pulled into the driveway. Out of the car popped an affable guy in his late 30s wearing jeans, a button-down shirt and a baseball cap. He offered Chamberlain some "pamphlets."
"He said, 'Are your parents home?,' and I said, 'Well, this isn't my house. This is my friend's house,' " Chamberlain recalled to PEOPLE in 2022. "And he said, 'OK, well, what about her parents ... are her parents home?' And I said, 'No, her mom's not home right now.' "
What came next was a nightmare. The man, later identified as 38-year-old serial killer Richard Evonitz, pulled out a gun, pressed it to Chamberlain's neck and forced her into a large storage bin stowed on the back seat of the car.
She spent 18 hours of torture at the hands of her attacker before she was able to escape.
Evonitz, who had previously kidnapped and killed at least three girls in Virginia, later shot himself following a police chase in Florida after Chamberlain's escape put police on his trail.
Here are five things to know about Chamberlain's kidnapping and escape, plus details on how she has moved on since her abduction.
Kara Kept Calm Through Torture — and Gathered Identifying Information
Amanda Johnson
Kara Robinson Chamberlain photographed on March 8, 2021.Chamberlain told PEOPLE that once she was forced inside the large storage bin on the back seat of Evonitz's car, as he drove toward his apartment, she began counting the turns he made, hoping it would later help her find her way home.
She noticed details: He was listening to a classic rock station and smoking Marlboro Red cigarettes. She even memorized the serial number on the inside of the plastic container he had forced her to kneel inside.
"My survival mechanism said, 'All right, let's gather as much information as we can,' " she said. "Fear barely even kicked in … the human will to survive and the survival mechanism really just can't be underestimated."
Related: Sisters in Survival: How Women Who Escaped Kidnappers Have Helped Each Other Heal
On the way to his apartment, he pulled over, restrained her with handcuffs and put a gag in her mouth. He then took her to his cluttered apartment — also home to a guinea pig, a lizard and other small animals — and assaulted her for 18 hours.
Despite being terrorized, she tried to find ways to identify him — the names of his doctor and dentist were on his fridge — and keep him calm. When he wanted her to have some food, "I said, 'Well, I'm not going to eat right now, but is there anything I can do for you?' " she said. "I actually ended up sweeping his kitchen."
A Harrowing Escape at Dawn
In the dawn hours, while Evonitz was asleep, Chamberlain was able to free one of her hands from a pair of handcuffs — which were attached to the bed frame using a circular clamp tightened by a screw, connected to a rope — with her teeth and unclip a leather leg restraint attached to the foot of the bed.
She quietly tiptoed to the front door and, trying to make as little sound as possible, unbolted the two locks.
"I know he has the gun right beside him, and he's going to see me running, and he's going to shoot me in the back — that's all I could think," she told PEOPLE. "And I was like, 'You know what? It doesn't matter because I'm out, and at least someone will be able to find him.' My body was scared, but my brain was like, 'OK, we're just about business. We're doing this.' "
She made her escape and ran toward a car in the parking lot and flagged down two men who took her to the police station, where she recounted the ordeal. She was asked by the officers to take them back to Evonitz's apartment, and because of her keen powers of observation and the help of the apartment maintenance man, they found his lair.
Police Discover Evidence Suggesting Evonitz Is a Serial Killer
By the time authorities arrived at Evonitz's apartment, he had fled.
Inside his apartment, police found a locked footlocker with newspaper clippings about the unsolved murders of three girls: Sofia Silva and sisters Kati and Kristin Lisk. They had all gone missing in Spotsylvania County, Va., more than five years before Chamberlain's abduction.
"I don't care how tough you are as a cop when you see something like that, it grabs you," Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told PEOPLE in 2022. "At that point, bells really went off in our heads that we just didn't have a kidnapping of Kara Robinson. This was something else. This was actually a serial killer."
Evonitz Is Linked to Three Murders
Silva, at age 16, disappeared from her front stoop in the Loriella Park neighborhood of Spotsylvania, Va., on Sept. 9, 1996. Her remains were found a month later in a creek. Then, on May 1, 1997, 15-year-old Kristin and 12-year-old Kati were abducted from their home. They were found five days later in the South Anna River.
The murders went cold until Chamberlain's abduction ramped up the investigation. Forensic evidence found at the crime scenes later matched evidence found inside Evonitz's home. Police also found two of Kristin's fingerprints inside the trunk of Evonitz's car.
Police tracked Evonitz to Sarasota, Fla., on June 27, 2002, and a high-speed chase there ended when he ran over spike strips on the highway and was attacked by a police dog. Evonitz then shot himself.
In August 2002, Spotsylvania County Sheriff Ronald Knight announced that Evonitz was responsible for the crimes in his jurisdiction.
"We have experienced these crimes, and they overwhelmed our community with a sense of grief, fear and uncertainty, much of which still lingers today," he said, according to The Washington Post.
For her help in solving Silva and the Lisk sisters' murders, Chamberlain received $150,000 in reward money and was able to meet their families.
"It was one of the most important things that's ever happened to me," she told PEOPLE. "Because it brought home the importance of what I did. Because I felt like, 'Wow, I'm actually giving these families something that they never would've gotten without me.' Just the closure of knowing that the person responsible for their daughters' [deaths] is no longer here."
Kara Has Shared Her Story of Survival
In 2019, after participating in an interview with kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart, Chamberlain took part in a 90-minute Lifetime special, Smart Justice: The Jayme Closs Case, with five other survivors to lend support to Jayme Closs, a Wisconsin teen who escaped her captor that same year.
"I sat down on a couch with Elizabeth and five other women who had survived kidnappings and sexual assaults. And that was the moment that I realized that I really had a bigger purpose. I knew that I could find a reason for what happened. And I always knew that what happened to me was something that happened so that I could help other people," Chamberlain said.
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.
"I was healed on that couch, sitting there talking to those women in a way that I didn't even realize I was hurting," Chamberlain said. "Just to sit down and talk to women who really understood the heart of what I had been through."
Smart inspired Chamberlain, an advocate for trauma survivors, to continue to speak out. The two women teamed up to work on a documentary that could do her own story justice.
The final product, Escaping Captivity: The Kara Robinson Story, premiered on Oxygen in 2021, detailing how Chamberlain not only outsmarted her captor — serial killer Evonitz — but used her remarkable memory to help police track him down and stop his reign of terror.
"I want everyone to always have a sense of hope because no one gets through this life without their fair share of struggle and trial and heartbreak, and I think Kara's story really just brings that ultimate sense of hope," Smart told Oxygen about the documentary. "I'm so proud of Kara, and I'm so proud of everything that she's doing."
Chamberlain's story was also adapted for the Lifetime movie The Girl Who Escaped: The Kara Robinson Story. The film, starring Ginny & Georgia actress Katie Douglas in the titular role, premiered in February 2023.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
Read the original article on People.
