Donald Leroy Evans: The Crimes of a Self-Proclaimed Serial Killer
Background and Criminal History
Donald Leroy Evans was born on July 5, 1957, in Watervliet, Michigan. A drifter with a lengthy criminal history, Evans became notorious after his 1991 arrest for the kidnapping and murder of a 10-year-old girl on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. What initially appeared to be the investigation of a single horrific crime quickly expanded when Evans began claiming that he had murdered dozens of people while traveling around the United States.
Before the murder case that brought him national attention, Evans had already demonstrated a history of sexual violence. In Texas, he was convicted of raping a woman in Galveston and received a 15-year prison sentence. He served approximately five years before being paroled in April 1991. After his release, he returned to the Galveston area and briefly worked at a motel, but parole authorities objected to a convicted sex offender holding a position that potentially gave him access to motel guests. Within months of his release, Evans was again on the move.
The 1985 Florida Murders
After Evans was arrested in 1991, investigators began comparing his numerous confessions with unsolved homicides around the country. Two Florida cases from 1985 attracted particular attention because Evans was reportedly able to describe details that investigators believed would have been difficult for an uninvolved person to know.
The strongest of those cases involved Ira Jean Smith, a 38-year-old woman killed in Fort Lauderdale. Smith was found dead on March 7, 1985, inside a motel room. Her body had been wrapped in a blanket and placed in a closet. Her death was initially associated with a possible drug overdose, but the case was later reconsidered as evidence increasingly pointed toward strangulation and homicide.
When detectives revisited the case following Evans's 1991 confessions, they discovered more than his claimed knowledge of the crime. Investigators determined that the motel room had been rented under an alias associated with Evans, and a fingerprint recovered from the room was linked to him. Fort Lauderdale authorities obtained a first-degree murder warrant against Evans in September 1991. Years later, on July 28, 1995, Evans pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Ira Jean Smith and received a life sentence.
Another Florida homicide linked to Evans was the death of Janet Marie Movich, a 38-year-old transient from Pennsylvania. Movich was killed in the Daytona Beach area in April 1985. Her body was discovered in a wooded area near U.S. Highway 1. Investigators determined that she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Evans later claimed responsibility for her murder and reportedly supplied investigators with details consistent with the crime scene. Unlike the Smith case, however, Evans was never formally prosecuted for Movich's death.
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