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Richard Marc Evonitz stayed home from work the day the Lisk sisters vanished and left early the afternoon Sofia Silva disappeared, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.
The prime suspect in the slayings of the Spotsylvania County girls left work at noon on Sept. 9, 1996, telling his supervisors at Walter Grinders Inc. he had a dentist's appointment, sources said.
Sometime after 4:30 p.m. that day, 16-year-old Sofia disappeared while doing homework on her front porch in Oak Grove Terrace subdivision. Evonitz called in sick the next day.
On May 1, 1997, the ex-Navy man called in sick again. That day, Kristin Lisk, 15, and her sister Kati, 12, vanished sometime after their buses dropped them off after school. Their father, worried that he couldn't reach them by phone, came home at 4 p.m. to find the contents of Kristin's book bag strewn around the yard, but no sign of his daughters.
On Oct. 14, 1996, workers breaking up a beaver dam found Sofia's body in a King George County creek. On May 6, 1997, a highway worker mowing grass spotted the Lisk sisters' bodies tied together and snagged to a tree in the South Anna River.
Physical evidence linked the slayings. Authorities are now anxiously awaiting the results of DNA and other forensic lab tests to see if Evonitz is the killer they've been hunting for so long.
The information about Evon-itz's work schedule came from three law-enforcement officials, two of whom are involved in the case. The third has worked on the investigation in the past. All agreed to speak only on condition that their names not be used.
Walter Grinders president Ditmar Weselin declined comment. Spotsylvania sheriff's Maj. How-ard Smith, leader of the Lisk-Silva Task Force, said investigators have copies of Evonitz's work schedules, but he would not discuss the records.
The work schedules add to a growing pile of circumstantial evidence collected since Evonitz shot himself to death last week as police closed in to arrest him in connection with the abduction and rape of a 15-year-old South Carolina girl.
Evonitz lived in Spotsylvania County at the time of the slayings. He moved to the Columbia, S.C., area in 1999.
In his apartment there, authorities found a copy of The Free Lance-Star in which the Lisk girls' disappearance was the lead story. They also found notes indicating that he had been stalking young girls in the Fredericksburg area and mentioning Block House Road, where the Lisk girls lived.
So far, Smith said, none of the more than 200 pieces of physical evidence seized provides a clear link between Evonitz and the slayings. It could be weeks before the FBI lab finishes its tests on that evidence, he said.
Lisk-Silva investigators began focusing on Evonitz after the rape in South Carolina. The victim there told police that Evonitz, posing as a magazine salesman, abducted her at gunpoint while she watered a friend's lawn.
She said he shoved her into a green, plastic storage container, tied her hands and drove her to his apartment where he raped her repeatedly. The victim managed to get away the next morning while he was sleeping.
Her father spoke out yesterday, calling for better ways to punish and keep track of sex offenders.
"A sexual predator is the lowest form of life," the girl's father said. "We need to come together for tougher laws for these predators.
"We are all here to protect our children. They should not have to suffer, but when they do, we are all to blame and we all share the shame. It's time for a change."
The father, whose name was not released to protect his daughter's identity, spoke via speaker phone at the Richland County, S.C., Sheriff's Office.
Spotsylvania authorities say Evonitz's name came up early in their investigation on a routine list of new arrivals and business owners in the county. But they did not know about his earlier conviction for exposing himself to a young girl in Florida because the case occurred in 1987, before that state started a registry of sex offenders.
The Lisk-Silva Task Force and a team of investigators in South Carolina are now looking closely for possible links between Evonitz and crimes against young women in Florida, the Carolinas, California and Virginia.
"Mr. Evonitz traveled extensively from the East Coast to California," Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said yesterday. "He took the secret of why to his grave. But it's our job to make sure he didn't take the secret of who."
In Aiken, S.C., authorities are looking for links between Evonitz and the August 2000 slaying of a 17-year-old girl.
Dwayne Courtney, a captain with the Aiken, S.C., Public Safety Department, said he understands what the Lisk-Silva investigators have been going through. Jessica Carpenter was found dead in her Aiken home on Aug. 4, 2000. She had been raped and strangled, and her throat had been cut.
Courtney said DNA evidence recovered from Carpenter will be compared to Evonitz's.
"At this point, we don't have anything to tie the two of them together," Courtney said yesterday. "But in light of what we know about him at this point, we're obviously interested in him."
Aiken is about 45 miles from the Columbia area. Carpenter's description is similar to the other girls.
Carpenter was a rising senior at Aiken High School when her mother came home that day and found her dead.
The subsequent reaction in Aiken was the same as what the Fredericksburg region went through in the aftermath of the Lisk-Silva slayings. Residents expressed shock, parents began keeping a closer watch on their children and a reward was offered for information leading to the killer.
And like those involved in the Spotsylvania cases, investigators there have interviewed hundreds of potential witnesses and conducted a bevy of DNA tests.
Courtney said there are only a couple of homicides a year in Aiken. Carpenter is the only teen-aged victim Courtney knows of.
"Her death is still having a great effect on our community," he said.
Courtney clearly isn't getting his hopes up about Evonitz. He said there have already been two suspects who police thought for certain was the killer, but DNA tests ruled both of them out.
"We've had our hopes dashed a lot of times in this case," Courtney said. "But we're confident our day is going to come."
Investigators in the Lisk-Silva case have been careful to not express too much excitement about Evonitz either, though they do call him the best of the 12,000 leads they've investigated over the years.
The task force met for five hours at the FBI office in Fredericksburg yesterday, reviewing information collected so far and plotting the next steps in the investigation.
Smith said several women have called the Lisk-Silva hot line to report being stalked or followed by Evonitz in the 1990s.
"They've provided us some good details and we're tracking them down now," Smith said.
Investigators will continue their work on the case through the holiday weekend, talking to friends, associates, coworkers and neighbors who knew Evonitz.
"By the time this is over and done with, we plan on being able to answer all the questions on everyone's minds," Smith said.
Anyone who knew Evonitz or has any information about him is asked to call the Lisk-Silva hot line at 800/729-1411.