Murder Trial Set for Professed Killer of 70
A drifter who has claimed he killed more than 70 people must stand trial in the murder of a 10-year-old girl, a judge ordered Wednesday.
Donald Leroy Evans, acting as his own attorney, waived a preliminary hearing and was arraigned on charges that he raped and strangled Beatrice Louise Routh after he took the homeless child from a Gulfport park on Aug. 1.
Evans, 34, pleaded not guilty and Circuit Judge Costa Vlahos gave him until Dec. 2 to file motions in the case. The judge set a March 16 trial date.
Evans earlier pleaded guilty to kidnaping the girl and has been sentenced to life in prison for that offense. He could be sentenced to death if convicted of murder.
Evans, from Galveston, Tex., has claimed that he killed more than 70 people on a cross-country spree. The FBI took him to Arizona in August to look for the bodies of three women he said he killed and buried in the desert. The search was fruitless.
He has been charged in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., with murdering a prostitute in 1985, and police in Daytona Beach, Fla., want to interview him about the slaying of a transient that year.
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