[4] After graduating from Irmo High School in 1980,[2] Evonitz worked briefly as the manager of a Jiffy Lube, before joining the United States Navy.

[5][2] On January 3, 1987, Evonitz pulled up beside Kelli Ballard, 15, in his car in Jacksonville, Florida and exposed himself and masturbated while she walked her 3-year-old sister down the street.

[5] On July 6, 1988, 12-year-old Sarah Margaret Cherry was abducted while babysitting at a home in a rural part of Bowdoin, Maine.

However, Dechaine has filed a number of appeals, maintaining that he is innocent, and the circumstances surrounding his conviction remain controversial.

[7][9] Evonitz served as a sonar technician aboard USS Koelsch which was based at Portland, Maine from May 8, 1988, to May 31, 1989, while the ship was undergoing a refit at the Bath Iron Works facility.

Deirdre Enright, the founder of the University of Virginia Law School's Innocence Project, has linked Evonitz to Cherry's murder due to similarities with his modus operandi.

[10] Evonitz had access to a white Toyota Corolla similar in description to a vehicle sighted near where Cherry's body was found and he was known to have frequently visited Brunswick Naval Air Station commissary, thirteen miles (21 km) south of Bowdoin.

DNA evidence recovered from Cherry's body was unable to be compared to Evonitz's profile due to being deemed insufficient.

Witnesses later came forward to police saying they had seen Alicia along Route 29 talking to a man with a blue pickup truck on the side of the road.

[12] On September 22, 1996, the burned remains of 20-year-old Anne Carolyn McDaniel were discovered by sportsmen exercising their dogs just ten miles (16 km) from where Reynolds' body was found.

McDaniel, who had cerebral palsy, was last seen leaving a group home for mentally and physically disabled adults in the town of Orange on September 18, 1996, trying to hitchhike along Route 29.

On September 9, 1996, Evonitz abducted 16-year-old Sofia Marlene Silva from her home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, after she returned from school near Loriella Park.

Their father came home from work later to find no sign of his daughters except Kristin's book bag lying discarded in the front yard.

[17] The police determined that the fibers from the furry handcuffs on Kara's wrists were also found on the bodies of Silva and the Lisk sisters.