To some women who met him, Paul John Knowles
was smooth and charismatic, a “cross between
Robert Redford and Ryan O’Neal.” To others,
he was their worst nightmare, a cold-blooded
killer with no pattern, and no regard for
anyone but himself.
For decades, Knowles traversed the country,
racking up a slew of criminal charges, including
kidnapping and theft. Then, in 1974, he escalated,
and added murder to his increasingly long
list of crimes.
In the 19 short years between 1946 and 1965,
Paul John Knowles had made quite the name
for himself among the police. Beginning in
1954 when he was just eight years old, Knowles
had set out on a life of crime, mostly consisting
of petty theft. By the time he was 19, he’d
escalated to kidnapping, and was incarcerated
for kidnapping a police officer.
He was soon let go, however, starting a pattern
he’d stick to for the next eight years;
short stints in jail followed by a return
to petty crime followed again by a short stint
in jail.
In early 1974, Knowles was serving a prison
sentence in the Raiford Prison in Florida,
now known as the Florida State Prison. While
incarcerated, he began corresponding with
a California woman named Angela Covic.
Covic, a recently divorced cocktail waitress
from San Francisco, was delighted to have
Knowles as a pen pal, and after just a few
letters back and forth had fallen in love
with him. Before long she’d hired him a
lawyer, who managed to swing him a parole,
and arranged for him to fly to San Francisco
to marry her.
However, upon seeing Knowles, Covic called
off the wedding. According to her, Knowles
projected “an aura of fear” that scared
her. In addition to his aura, her psychic
had recently warned her about a dangerous
new man in her life. The aura combined with
the warning was enough for Covic to send Knowles
packing.
Psychic babble or not, in the end, Covic was
lucky she took her psychic’s advice and
paid attention to Knowles’ aura.
That night, after Covic ended their engagement,
Knowles murdered three strangers on the streets
of San Francisco. The next day, he arrived
back in Jacksonville, Florida, where he pulled
a knife on a bartender during a fight. He
was arrested for the bar fight, and thrown
back in jail, but he didn’t stay there for
long.
On July 26, 1974, Paul John Knowles picked
the lock on his prison cell and escaped into
the night.
Sixty-five-year-old Alice Curtis was Paul
John Knowles’ first victim. The retired
schoolteacher from Jacksonville was home alone
the night that Knowles escaped from jail.
In an attempt to burgle her home, Knowles
broke in and bound and gagged her. Her cause
of death was later determined to be chocking
on her own dentures, and while it’s unclear
whether her death occurred while Knowles was
in her home, there’s no doubt he was to
blame.
Knowles fled the home in Curtis’ car. A
few hours later, as he drove up the street
looking for a place to abandon the stolen
vehicle, he came across two young girls, Lillian,
and Mylette Anderson. Recognizing them as
family acquaintances, he quickly realized
they too could recognize him. Instead of abandoning
Curtis’ car, he kidnapped the eleven-year-old
Lillian and her seven-year-old sister, strangled
them, and dumped their bodies in a swamp.
Over the next two months, Knowles traveled
from Florida up the east coast to Connecticut,
leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Later
dubbed the “Casanova Murders” for Knowles’
good looks, the police remained largely in
the dark about Knowles part in the murders
until his capture. For most of the spree,
the police were baffled by the murders, as
they seemed to have no rhyme or reason behind
them. It appeared there was no pattern between
any of the cases or even any of the victims.
Of the 20 people found dead, 14 were women
and six were men. Three were children, and
three were elderly. Some were shot, some were
strangled, some were burgled and others seemed
to have been killed as an afterthought, murdered
while camping or while walking up the street.
Some of the corpses had been sexually assaulted,
while some of the victims had been raped while
alive, further throwing police off the trail.
The victims were also killed in at least six
different states, making it almost impossible
for police to create a perimeter. At that
point, police didn’t know whether they were
looking for a rapist, a murderer, an armed
gunman, an opportunist or worse – all of
the above.
The only real lead that authorities had to
go on was from a reporter named Sandy Fawkes.
About two weeks before Knowles was ultimately
arrested, he attempted to pick up Fawkes in
a hotel bar. For three days, Fawkes traveled
around with Knowles, booze-filled and blissfully
unaware that she was fraternizing with the
man at the center of a multi-state manhunt.
According to Fawkes, Knowles was a “dreamboat.”
It was she who first described him as Redford-like
in appearance, years later after realizing
how close she had come to becoming one of
his victims. However, as close as she was,
she truly didn’t realize it. Not once during
their three-day bender did he show signs of
wanting to hurt her, she claimed, and after
the two parted ways Fawkes thought she’d
remember her time fondly.
Most people believe the reason Knowles let
Fawkes go was that he wanted the fame, at
least in part, a theory corroborated by the
survival of Barbara Tucker, another writer
who escaped his wrath. Perhaps he felt that
writers would immortalize him and that if
they told his story, he could go out in a
blaze of glory, rather than the criminal’s
ending he got.
On Nov. 17, a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper
named Charles Eugene Campbell recognized a
car matching the description of one stolen
from the most recent murder victim. He pulled
the car over, never knowing he had just cornered
a cunning and skilled mass murderer.
Paul John Knowles, however, was ready. As
the trooper leaned over to see into the car,
Knowles wrestled his gun away from him. After
taking Campbell hostage, he took off in Campbell’s
patrol car and pulled over another car. Then,
he took that driver prisoner, put him and
Campbell both in the less conspicuous vehicle,
and drove the three of them to a remote area.
He then led the two men into the woods, tied
them to a tree, and shot them. As he attempted
to escape the scene of the crime, he lost
control of his vehicle and hit a tree. Though
he took off on foot and was pursued by dogs,
officers, and helicopters, he ultimately made
it out of the perimeter established for the
manhunt.
However, thanks to a local man and his shotgun,
Knowles was able to be apprehended. Once arrested,
he confessed to 35 murders, including the
20 that police were already aware of.
Over the next month, police attempted to take
Knowles on a tour of his crime scenes, to
gain insight into the crimes and help find
missing bodies. On December 18, just a month
after his arrest, Sheriff Earl Lee and Georgia
Bureau of Investigation Agent Ronnie Angel
were transporting Knowles to Henry County,
where Charles Campbell’s handgun had allegedly
been dumped.
While en route, Knowles jumped Lee in the
car, attempting to steal his handgun. The
gun went off through the holster in the car,
and as Lee and Knowles struggled, Angel fired
three shots at Knowles, killing him instantly.
And so, the tumultuous life of Paul John Knowles
ended as viciously as he’d lived it. The
motives behind his murders had never been
disclosed, and even today some of the victims
remain a mystery 
as well.
