Post by Sher on May 9, 2005 14:15:37 GMT -5
Arrested for the Gulfport, Mississippi, rape and murder of ten-year-old homeless girl Beatrice Routh, Donald Leroy Evans soon confessed to over sixty murders. Evans claimed that immediately after his discharge from the Marines in 1970, he began drifting and evidently killing just about everybody in his path. His claims of prolific serial killing immediately bring to mind the inflated kill totals of Henry Lee Lucas, who sent investigators spinning with his claims of killing more than 100 victims.
It appears that Evans may not have been exaggerating quite as much as Lucas, though it certainly does not appear that he killed anywhere near sixty. After being tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in the Routh killing in 1993, Florida authorities in 1995 successfully prosecuted Evans for the strangulation death of Ira Jean Smith. He earned a life sentence for that killing. In both of his trials, and during his entire incarceration for that matter, Evans made a joke of the proceedings, making ridiculous appeals and requests on an almost daily basis. His least shining moment of the Florida trial was when he petitioned the court to refer to him not as Donald Leroy Evans during proceedings, but as "Hi Hitler". The not-too-bright Evans didn't realize that Hitlers followers addressed their leader with the chant of "Heil Hitler".
Thankfully for everybody involved, fellow Mississippi death row inmate Jimmy Mack stabbed Evans to death in the shower in early January, 1999. At the time of his death Evans was the prime suspect in at least twelve unsolved murders.
It appears that Evans may not have been exaggerating quite as much as Lucas, though it certainly does not appear that he killed anywhere near sixty. After being tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in the Routh killing in 1993, Florida authorities in 1995 successfully prosecuted Evans for the strangulation death of Ira Jean Smith. He earned a life sentence for that killing. In both of his trials, and during his entire incarceration for that matter, Evans made a joke of the proceedings, making ridiculous appeals and requests on an almost daily basis. His least shining moment of the Florida trial was when he petitioned the court to refer to him not as Donald Leroy Evans during proceedings, but as "Hi Hitler". The not-too-bright Evans didn't realize that Hitlers followers addressed their leader with the chant of "Heil Hitler".
Thankfully for everybody involved, fellow Mississippi death row inmate Jimmy Mack stabbed Evans to death in the shower in early January, 1999. At the time of his death Evans was the prime suspect in at least twelve unsolved murders.
