A serial killer survivor has described how she escaped the murderer's clutches and then helped police hunt him down.
Kara Robinson Chamberlain was just 15 when she was abducted from her friend's driveway in West Columbia, South Carolina, US.
The brave teen kept notes on her abductor, Richard Evonitz, who had snatched her away in a Trans Am van on June 24, 2002.
The serial killer, who had already claimed the lives of three other girls, had initially posed as someone handing out pamphlets when he spotted Kara watering flowers in the garden of her friend's parents home.
Kara described him as being in his 30s in a baseball cap, shirt and jeans, and said he had initially seemed "friendly" asking whether her parents or friend's parents were home.
But when she replied no, Evonitz turned and pulled a gun to her neck before throwing her into a storage bin in the back of his car and driving off.
Clever Kara counted the turns she felt in the car as Evonitz drove her to his apartment.
Determined to make it home alive, she began gathering as much information as possible, even noting the radio station tuned in the car and the brand of cigarette her abductor was smoking.
She even memorised the serial number on the side of the storage bin she was captured in.
In an interview with PEOPLE, she said: "My survival mechanism said, 'All right, let's gather as much information as we can.
"Fear barely even kicked in…the human will to survive and the survival mechanism really just can't be underestimated."
But she didn't escape without an 18-hour horrific ordeal where he assaulted her multiple times.
Kara was handcuffed and gagged with her legs restrained in Evonitz messy apartment.
Determined to survive, she used every detail to her advantage, offering to sweep up the floors when her abductor tried to feed her.
She used the time cleaning up to memorise the names of his doctors and dentists written on notes on his fridge.
Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County told PEOPLE that even at 15, Kara was employing manipulation techniques used by trained police negotiators.
He said: "She was just putting him at ease and making him feel comfortable, gaining his trust. And that's what police negotiators do.
"She controlled her emotions to the point where she was able to develop a plan."
Eventually, she managed to wriggle one hand from the restraints and free herself before quietly tiptoeing out of the apartment in the early hours of the morning.
Desperate to make it count, Kara threw herself in front of the first car she saw and begged the driver to take her to the local police station.
After she offloaded her information and details to the police, they were able to quickly locate her abductor's apartment but he had already fled the scene.
Officers chased Evonitz through Sarasota, Florida, in a high-speed car chase, but the killer shot himself dead after he was apprehended by a police dog.
As detectives combed his apartment they discovered a locker with newspaper clippings about the unsolved murders of three girls.
The girls, Sofia Silva and sisters Kati and Kristin Lisk, had all gone missing in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, five years earlier.
Kara had helped to solve the mystery of their murders and received a $150,000 reward for her efforts and even met the victims' families.
She said; "It was one of the most important things that has ever happened to me.
"Because it brought home the importance of what I did.
"Because I felt like, 'Wow, I'm actually giving these families something that they never would've gotten without me.'
"Just the closure of knowing that the person responsible for their daughters' death is no longer here."
The ordeal inspired Kara to become a resource officer for child and sexual abuse victims before she left the post to start her family.
Now the mum of two helps other kidnap survivors and even helps to improve the way victims are represented in the media.
In recent years she appeared in a 90-minute documentary with fellow kidnap survivors and Jayme Cross, a teen from Wisconsin who escaped her captor in 2019.
She said: "I sat down on a couch with Elizabeth [one of the survivors] and five other women who had survived kidnappings and sexual assaults.
"And that was the moment that I realized that I really had a bigger purpose.
"I knew that I could find a reason for what happened. And I always knew that what happened to me was something that happened so that I could help other people.
"I was healed on that couch, sitting there talking to those women, in a way that I didn't even realize I was hurting."
Kara hopes to write a book about her experience one day but for now, is using TikTok and Instagram to raise awareness and help other victims to gain closure by telling their stories or just speaking with someone who has experienced a similar incident.
