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TIME: Almanac 1995
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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>