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- <text id=91TT1887>
- <title>
- Aug. 26, 1991: Serial Killers:Going for the Record
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Aug. 26, 1991 Science Under Siege
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 22
- SERIAL KILLERS
- Going for The Record
- </hdr><body>
- <p>A self-confessed murderer claims 60 victims, but police are
- skeptical
- </p>
- <p> Did he or didn't he? That's what cops want to know about
- Donald Leroy Evans, 34, a drifter from Galveston, Texas, who
- claims to have murdered 60 people in a 10-year rampage across
- 20 states. If true, the boast would make Evans the nation's most
- prolific serial killer. But police and FBI investigators are
- skeptical, and began a thorough investigation last week.
- </p>
- <p> The case came to light two weeks ago--just as Milwaukee
- mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer was making headlines--when
- Louisiana police arrested Evans. He told them he had kidnapped,
- raped and strangled Beatrice Routh, a 10-year-old homeless girl,
- on Aug. 1. As proof, he led police to her body in a grassy field
- off a rural Mississippi highway. Last week a murder charge in
- the Routh case was filed against Evans in Mississippi. Federal
- kidnapping charges will follow this week.
- </p>
- <p> At this point, only Evans knows for sure how many people
- he killed. But there are indications that Routh was not his
- only victim. According to his court-appointed attorney, Fred
- Lusk, Evans has told police about two prostitutes he claims to
- have killed in Florida in 1985. Pieces of evidence gathered in
- Fort Lauderdale and Daytona Beach, Lusk said, "basically match
- in detail what Evans told investigators." Evans says that most
- of his victims were women, and that he strangled and sexually
- assaulted many of them. He claims that he can lead
- investigators to "every one" of his victims.
- </p>
- <p> "It's hard to say what kind of person Donald Leroy Evans
- is," said Lusk. "He fits your description of a middle-aged
- Caucasian with above-average intelligence." A 1987 psychiatric
- evaluation quoted in the Washington Post found Evans to be
- suffering from a "lifelong history of behavioral difficulties
- and frank mental illness." Evans, who has been hospitalized for
- psychiatric treatment and once attempted to commit suicide, has
- a lengthy arrest record. Sentenced to 15 years in prison for
- sexual assault in 1986, he was released on parole last April.
- His main wish now, said his attorney, is to receive the death
- penalty.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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