'Did you ever get a bad feeling?': Woman revealing that her ex-husband turned out to be a serial killer will make you never want to date again (2024)

Bonnie Lou Gower has opened up on TikTok about her ex-husband, serial killer, and rapist Richard Evonitz, and what Gower has to say will make you think twice about ever going on a date again.

Evonitz, suspected of raping at least four teenage girls, and murdering at least three of them, died by suicide in 2002 before police could take him into custody. In her first post, Gower — Bonnielouwriter on TikTok — plays the finger game: Put your finger down if you were married at 17, she says, and divorced by 25, a common enough experience, one might expect.

But then, Gower says that five years after her divorce, the FBI showed up at her door, telling her ex-husband killed at least three girls, one of whom he murdered while they were still married. Twenty years after that, Gower says she found out Evonitz murdered girls before their wedding, and throughout their relationship.

Gower met Richard Evonitz through his younger sister

In a subsequent TikTok post, Bonnie Lou Gower explains she met Richard Evonitz through his younger sister. Gower admits, as a young girl, she had a crush on her friend’s older brother, and when she turned 16, Evontiz, who was in his mid-20s, asked her out. “That probably sounds like a red flag,” Gower says. But her family knew the Evonitz family, and gave their consent. Before long, Evonitz proposed, and because her life was chaotic at the time, “I jumped on it. It was really the best thing I had going for me,” Gower says.

Gower was happy at first

At first, her marriage to Richard Evonitz was happy, Gower says in a follow-up post, but within about a month things began to shift. Evonitz verbally abused her about her weight, and soon, Gower said she regretted her decision to get married. But she tried to work things out.

In the third TikTok installment, Gower explains that in 1989, about a year into their marriage, Evonitz — who was in the military — was transferred to San Diego, and she went with him. At that time, Evonitz became more controlling, Gower says. He told her to get a job, but he also demanded she be home when he got off work. He also didn’t allow her to talk to anyone about their marital problems. Still, Gower and Evonitz found some semblance of peace, until Evonitz left the military. “Then, everything shifted again,” Gower says.

At the time of this writing, Gower is still sharing her story on TikTok, and with that, she has left us on a cliffhanger until her next update. Gower says she is seeking an agent and publisher for a book. Her TikTok series has attracted millions of views and comments — so listen up, true crime publishers, podcasters, and Netflix documentary producers, your next harrowing true crime story may have arrived.

Richard Evonitz’s crimes were exposed in 2002, when Kara Robinson, a 15-year-old girl he abducted and raped, escaped and contacted the police. No one knows for sure how many women and girls Evonitz killed. Evonitz reportedly told his family members before he died that he committed “more crimes than he can remember,” according to The Washington Post.

Around the same time Bonnie Lou Gower updated TikTok on her marriage, Robinson — now Robinson Chamberlain — shared how she escaped. Handcuffed in Evonitz’s apartment, she made her move while he was asleep, and she credits her ability to stay calm to a trauma response.

“I had to actually use my teeth to kind of loosen the clip that connected the handcuffs to the bed and then slide out of the bed, get my things together. So I think the key for me was to stay calm, and that’s not always an option for everyone,” Robinson Chamberlain said in her TikTok post. Gower and Evonitz were divorced when Robinson Chamberlain was abducted.

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