Donald Leroy Evans (born July 5, 1957) is an American serial killer who murdered more than 15 people from 1970 to 1991. He was discharged from the United States Marine Corps in 1970. He was known for sexually assaulting and brutally killing victims at parks and rest areas across 20 states. He was a drifter, a drug addict, a convicted rapist and a white supremacist.

Arrest and conviction

In 1991, Donald Leroy Evans was arrested in Louisiana for the kidnapping of a ten year old girl. He confessed to the killing and led the authorities to the girl's body. He also confessed to killing more than 60 other people in over 20 different states.

Most of the murders and rapes took place at rest stops and public parks. The authorities were originally skeptical of Evan's claims, but many of his descriptions were perfect matches to unsolved cases across Florida and Illinois. He successfully escaped the Harrison County Jail, but was recaptured a short time later.

He was tried and convicted for the kidnapping, raping, strangulation, and murder of 10 year old Beatrice Routh in 1993. In 1995, Florida authorities tried and convicted Evans for the strangulation death of Ira Jean Smith. During the trial Evan's requested a name change to "Hi Hitler."

Donald Leroy Evan's execution was never carried out. He was stabbed to death in 1999 by a fellow death row inmate at the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

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U.S. task force to investigate Evans' claims of 60 slayings

Kevin Moran, Ruth Rendon, Stephen Johnson - The Houston Chronicle

August 15, 1991

GALVESTON - The odyssey that landed Donald Leroy Evans in a Mississippi courthouse confessing to more than 60 murders began with a con job in Galveston.

Now federal officials in Mississippi are forming a task force to determine whether the parolee - charged in the kidnap-slaying of a 10-year-old homeless girl - is attempting the ultimate con job by claiming he's murdered scores of people across the nation.

"We're taking it seriously," Jenny Smith, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Biloxi, Miss., said of Evans' claim. He has told authorities that during a 10-year period beginning in 1977 he killed dozens of people, most of them women.

The gruesome tale - which if substantiated would make him the worst serial killer in the nation's history - unfolded after Evans, 34, told his attorney he wanted assurances that he would get the death penalty for killing Beatrice Louise Routh, a 10-year-old he picked up on a Mississippi beach.

On July 26, taking the car of a man who thought he was helping out an ex-convict trying to turn his life around, Evans left Galveston on the journey that ended in Mississippi.

He had been paroled April 18 to Galveston after doing time in a Texas prison for sexually assaulting a Galveston woman in 1986.

At his Galveston east end apartment building, Evans buttered up neighbors with fresh fish dinners. He convinced them he was an ex-convict turned faithful churchgoer and charity worker. But, Evans wasn't so truthful about his criminal history with others.

He told one employer he was attending Chicago's DePaul University when he was really doing prison time.

"He could sell his grandmother a $10,000 pair of tennis shoes," said Joseph A. Whitted, 27, a commercial deep-sea diver whose car Evans took and whose identity the former convict assumed when he left Texas. Police said Evans also took $150 he got from pawning some of his girlfriend's possessions.

Along the way to Mississippi, using Whitted's identity, he cashed checks on a bank account Whitted had closed months before.

"He was telling people he was me, passing out my resumes," said Whitted. "It's kind of spooky."

Not only did Evans not return the car, he used Whitted's birth certificate, which was in a briefcase in the vehicle, to obtain a driver's license under Whitted's name.

Evans had given yet another name to the homeless girl's mother, but authorities here aren't surprised at the identity switch.

He was using the name "Jason Michael McGowen" when he was charged with the April 18, 1986, sexual assault of the Galveston woman. He pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was paroled after five years.

At his arrest, he also lied about his age, adding six years.

Whitted said Evans, whose history of crime and mental problems indicates an inner storm of anger and distrust, had a confident, calm outward demeanor.

"He was a good con man," said Whitted. "He had me snowed."

Evans told acquaintances he was helping raise money to build a new school at a Lutheran church here. It could not be determined late Wednesday whether such plans are under way in Galveston.

Evans got a job May 9 as a desk clerk at the S.S. Galveston Motel.

On his application, Evans said he graduated from high school in Brownsville, studied business accounting and English composition at DePaul for a year, then took design and drafting classes at a college in the east Texas community of Athens, near Tyler.

He listed research and study in theology and church history as an area of special study.

Galveston parole officials said they ordered Evans to leave the motel job because the potential for his committing another sex offense in the motel setting was increased.
His employer said he was fired.

Evans reported later he was working on a shrimp boat, but parole officials said they didn't verify that before Evans left.

Before his departure, officials said, Evans met all parole rules, including participation in a rehabilitation program for sex offenders.

A revealing account of his early history is in a court-ordered evaluation by Dr. John W. Goodman of Galveston, who conducted three 1986 interviews in pretrial mental evaluation in the rape case.

Evans told Goodman he is from a large family. He said he had five brothers and three sisters - one of whom died of cancer at age 6.

He told Goodman he completed elementary school in Michigan and middle school in Ohio. He said he attended a year of high school in Brownsville but dropped out because of "difficulty with teachers and other students."

Admitting that he underwent extensive counseling during his only year of high school in Brownsville, he said he attempted suicide at 16 by using roach poison and drugs.

He later joined the Marine Corps but was discharged because of psychiatric problems.

Maj. Rick DeChaineau, a spokesman with the Public Affairs Office of the Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C., confirmed that Evans joined the Marines in San Antonio on Sept. 30, 1975, at the age of 18 and was discharged less than a year later.

After boot camp, Evans was assigned to Infantry Training School at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and then transferred to the 3rd Marine Division based on Okinawa.

Upon arriving there, he was assigned to perform maintenance duties and was put in a Correctional Custody Platoon, or CCP. DeChaineau said he could not tell from Military Personnel Center information if Evans was a member of the platoon for disciplinary reasons or if he was a staff member assigned to handle other platoon members (prisoners).

"My reading is that Evans was dumped in the CCP because he was a whacked-out jerk," DeChaineau said.

Evans eventually was transferred back to Philadelphia where he was listed as a patient from July 14, 1976, until his discharge on Sept. 2, 1976.

Court records state that Evans received psychiatric care in Illinois and Michigan in veterans hospitals in 1978 and 1979.

The psychiatric report sheds little light on Evans' whereabouts after early 1979 and none on exactly when he arrived in Galveston.

In January 1987, Goodman found Evans only marginally competent to stand trial for the sexual assault of the woman here, but a jury later found him competent to stand trial. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was released on parole five years to the day after his 1986 arrest.

He spent much of the time writing and filing his own court documents, including repeated claims of poor representation by his court-appointed attorneys and repeated pleas for release on reduced bond.

In one letter to Galveston State District Judge Roy Engelke, Evans said he wanted psychiatric help.

"I'm not at all an idiot of any sort," Evans told Engelke. "I do have a mental illness and want very much to receive proper treatment in the veterans' hospital. But how can I when I can't trust a lawyer to prove my innocents (sic) so I can get treatment."

Susan Burris, the assistant Galveston County district attorney who prosecuted Evans, said, "This man is not a person I have forgotten over the years. He made that much of an impression on me at the time that I handled the case."

His Galveston parole officer said he seemed to be frank.

"He was a very talkative and open person," said Kelley Romar, senior district parole officer. "He was very open about his day-to-day lifestyle."

Galveston's acting police chief, Capt. Earnest Boyd, on Wednesday announced that Galveston authorities are checking records of unsolved murders in the area, but have found no positive links to Evans.

He said there are no reports that Evans confessed to murders in the Galveston area.

Evans doesn't claim any Island murders

Kevin Moran - Staff, Associated Press

The Houston Chronicle

August 20, 1991

Donald Leroy Evans - the drifter who claims more than 60 murders and who Monday pleaded guilty to kidnapping a girl in Mississippi - recounts no murders in Galveston, police said.

"I can tell you that he has claimed no murders in this area," Galveston police investigator Jim Thompson said Monday. "The task force has told me that."

Federal officials in Mississippi formed a multiagency task force to investigate Evans' claims that he killed more than 60 persons in a 10-year spree in 17 states after his release from the Marines because of mental problems.

Though he drifted from state to state during that time, Evans, 34, had lived off and on in Galveston since about 1984. He was sent to prison for a Galveston sexual assault in 1986 but was paroled back to the city in April.

After pleading guilty in a Biloxi, Miss., federal court Monday to kidnapping 10-year-old Beatrice Louise Routh - a homeless girl whose raped and strangled body was found Aug. 11 - Evans joked about the death penalty his lawyer says he wants.

"How can you hurt my case?" he asked U.S. District Judge Walter Gex III. " I'm going to death row. What are you going to do? Kill me?"

Although the maximum term for the federal case is life in prison, Evans has been charged in both Mississippi and Louisiana in the child's slaying. He confessed to taking her to Louisiana, raping and killing her there and then dumping her body in Mississippi.

Authorities in the two states have not decided where he will stand trial for the slaying, but both have the death penalty. Gex set a sentencing for Oct. 24 in the federal case.

Evans, born in Michigan, was one of nine children.

After his parents divorced, he spent one year of high school in Brownsville.

His name first turned up in Galveston police records when he was arrested in July 1984 for stealing a bottle of wine, Thompson said. In December 1985, Galveston County deputies arrested Evans for public urination on the Bolivar Ferry.

Thompson said his next known arrest came in March 1986, when Gail Stewart, his girlfriend, accused him of assault.

Thompson said he has no records of the outcome of any of the charges.

Evans is known to have been in the Galveston, Port Bolivar and Cameron, La., areas between July 1984 and his April 1986 arrest for sexually assaulting a Galveston woman, Thompson said.

After his return to Galveston in April, He lived with Stewart until he stole a car and fled to Mississippi in late July, parole officials said.

Confessed Killer Wants Direct Access To Press

By Gene Swearingen, Betty Attaway - Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Tuesday, August 20, 1991

Serial Killers: Going for The Record