Paul John Knowles had a way with people, especially with women. His charm and good looks made people trust him and lower their guard. British journalist Sandy Fawkes described Knowles as “tall, well over six foot, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and as slender as a wraith” and a “cross between Robert Redford and Ryan O’Neal.” And as you will soon find out, she had a unique, personal perspective on the ruthless killer.
All of this was for show, however. Beneath the confident and affable smile was hiding something dark. Ever since he was a little boy, Paul Knowles decided that rules and laws weren’t meant for him; and that he could take whatever he wanted and do whatever he pleased to anyone. His entire life was one steady escalation of brutality and sadism – from petty theft to robbery, to sex crimes, and, ultimately, to murder.
A four-month-long savage killing spree left, at least, 18 people dead. In custody, Knowles showed no remorse or regrets over his actions, and, soon after, left the world the only way he knew how – in violence.
Creating a Monster
Paul John Knowles was born on April 17, 1946, in Orlando, Florida, the son of Thomas Jefferson Knowles and Bonnie Strickland. We can’t tell you much about his childhood. We can say that Knowles bounced around a few foster homes in his youth and that he started stealing from an early age.
Then, when he was 18, he upped the ante considerably. After being stopped for questioning during a traffic incident by a police officer in Jacksonville, Florida, Knowles held the patrolman at gunpoint and kidnapped him. Eventually, he released the officer unharmed but, still, that was not the kind of thing that the police would just forgive and forget. The criminal was arrested and convicted and, on April 21, 1965, the 19-year-old Knowles was sentenced to five years in prison for kidnapping.
He was released early because it was his first arrest, but Knowles would become very familiar with the inside of a prison cell. Over the next decade, he spent more time behind bars than as a free man, serving, on average seven months a year, mostly for thefts and burglaries. While doing a three-year stretch in Raiford, Florida, Knowles started putting his charm to work in the pen pal program. He began corresponding with a divorced woman from California named Angela Covic. She visited him in prison a few times and before you knew it, he popped the question and she said “Yes.” She even paid his lawyer fees to secure Knowles an early release and found him a job as a sign painter. What could possibly go wrong?
After being paroled in May 1974, Knowles traveled to San Francisco to meet with his betrothed. Angela was finally with the man of her dreams but, fortunately for her, her survival instincts kicked in and started screaming “Get the hell out of there!” After only a few days together, she realized that Knowles was not the kind of man she thought he was. She got a sneak peek at the darkness hiding underneath a veneer of friendliness and seduction and she understood that he was trouble, later stating that her fiance projected “an aura of fear.”
Covic broke up with Knowles and survived her encounter with the “Casanova Killer.” Others were not so lucky. According to his own confession, on the day he got dumped, Knowles took out his anger on a few unfortunate residents of San Francisco and killed three random people in a single night. Police could never verify these three victims, but it is worth pointing out at this stage that Knowles confessed to a lot more killings than the authorities could confirm. We only know of 18 victims, but he boasted to have murdered 35 people. Knowles killed indiscriminately – all over the country, victims of all ages, using different weapons, in their homes, on the street, in the woods. It’s very difficult to establish an accurate timeline. Whether or not these three would have been his first murders, we cannot say.
Even if these were made up, it would not be long until the brutal killer would begin his murder spree in earnest. After his rampage in San Francisco, Knowles returned to the familiar surroundings of Jacksonville, Florida. There, he got into a barfight and stabbed a bartender on July 26, 1974. Police arrested him and placed him in custody, but Knowles managed to break out of his detention cell and make his escape. Paul John Knowles was now on the run and would show little mercy to the people who were unfortunate enough to cross his path.
The Spree
Knowles’s first confirmed kill took place the same night he escaped from custody. He broke into the house of 65-year-old Alice Curtis, subdued her, and left her bound and gagged as he ransacked her home for valuables. Once he finished robbing her, Knowles got into her car and drove off, leaving Curtis to choke to death on her gag.
That killing may have been unintentional, with the criminal simply not caring what happened to the woman. The next ones, however, were not only completely targeted but also showed that the heartless Knowles had no compassion for anyone. His next victim was a 13-year-old girl named Ima Jean Sanders who disappeared from Warner Robins, Georgia, on August 1 while hitchhiking. Her remains were found two years later in the woods in Peach County but it wasn’t until 2011 that she was identified using a DNA match.
We’d like to say that that is as bad as it gets…but it isn’t. On that same day, Knowles tried dumping the car he stole from Alice Curtis since the authorities were looking for it, but two young girls had the misfortune of seeing him do it. Lillian and Mylette Anderson were only 11 and 7 years old, respectively, but the remorseless Knowles had no qualms about kidnapping and strangling them both and then burying their bodies in a swamp.
Just one day later, the killer forced his way into the house of 49-year-old Marjorie Howe and did the same thing he did to Alice Curtis, except this time he did not leave her fate to chance and strangled her before robbing her home. He repeated the act on August 23 when he broke into the home of 24-year-old Kathie Sue Pierce in Musella, Georgia, and strangled her with a telephone cord. Pierce had a 3-year-old son who was left unharmed, one of the exceptionally rare occasions when Knowles displayed a shred of mercy.
September was a big month for the murderous drifter, as he passed through Ohio, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Nevada and left bodies behind in all of these states. Some of them were unfortunate people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. An elderly couple named Emmett and Lois Johnson were killed while out camping near Ely, Nevada. Similarly, Knowles abducted 42-year-old Charlynn Hicks while she was on the side of the road and dumped her body at a rest stop in Seguin, Texas.
Other victims fell prey to the charm and affability that the so-called “Casanova Killer” could turn on whenever it suited him. Thirty-two-year-old William Bates was last seen alive sharing a few drinks with Knowles in a roadside pub near Lima, Ohio. He was having a good time and perhaps thinking he had made a new friend, but Knowles was only interested in one thing – Bates’s car. He strangled his drinking buddy, dumped him in the woods, and drove off in his new ride.
In Birmingham, Alabama, Knowles made the acquaintance of 49-year-old beautician Ann Dawson. The pair traveled together for a while. We don’t know if Dawson went along willingly or was a kidnapping victim, but her credit card was footing the bills during their trip. Either way, it made little difference. Once Knowles grew tired of her, Ann Dawson suffered the same fate as everyone else. The killer strangled her and discarded her body in the Mississippi River where it remained undiscovered for over three years.
In October, the Casanova Killer passed through Connecticut and Virginia before returning to his classic hunting grounds in Georgia and Florida. In Marlborough, Connecticut, Knowles broke into the home of Karen Wine who lived with her teenage daughter, Dawn. He murdered both women simply for the thrill of it because he didn’t even steal anything valuable. One thing that he did take was a tape recorder which he later used to record a long confession, giving detailed accounts of 14 murders he committed in eight states. Knowles then gave the tape to a lawyer in Florida and it was used later in his trial to identify his victims.
We’re not really sure why Knowles did this. It certainly wasn’t because he intended to give himself up or even to stop killing. Just a few days later, he entered the home of Doris Hovey in Woodford, Virginia, and shot her with her husband’s rifle.
Back in Florida, still driving William Bates’s car, Knowles picked up two hitchhikers in Key West. He obviously had criminal intentions in mind but was pulled over by a policeman for a traffic violation. The hitchhikers might have thought this was bad luck, but they did not know how wrong they were. Even though the cop let Knowles off with just a warning, the experience threw him off his game enough that he decided to drop off his riding companions in Miami safe and sound. Again, a rare example of someone who got close to Paul John Knowles and lived to tell the tale.
Downfall
Knowles started November with two double murders. He is strongly suspected of killing a young hitchhiking couple near Macon, Georgia on November 2. Then, a few days later, Knowles once again turned on his murderous charm and befriended a man he met in a bar named Carswell Carr in Milledgeville. The two got on so well that Carr invited his new companion back home to spend the night, but this was a decision that would cost him dearly. The next day, Carr was found bound and naked, with 27 stab wounds on his body from a pair of scissors, while his teenage daughter Mandy had been strangled with a pair of nylon stockings.
A couple of days later, Knowles was prowling the bars in Atlanta, already looking for a new target. That was where he met Sandy Fawkes, a British journalist with the Daily Express who was in America hoping to score some big interviews. As we said before, she thought he was a very handsome man and the two hit it off immediately. Fawkes knew him as Daryl Golden and the two not only went home together, but they spent the next few days together, as well. They tried having sex several times, but Knowles could not rise to the task. Fawkes later speculated that the killer was impotent with a willing participant. Despite feeling extreme frustration, Knowles allowed the journalist to leave unharmed. Perhaps this was because he believed she could be his ticket to notoriety. Knowles asked her several times if she ever intended to write a book and even suggested she could write one about him. And she did…it was called Killing Time.
After the Carr double murder, Knowles was starting to feel the net tightening around him. On November 16, 1974, patrolman Charles Campbell pulled him over near Perry, Florida. Unfortunately for him, Knowles was quicker to react and stole his gun, driving away in the cop car with Campbell in the back as a hostage. Because two are always better than one, Knowles used the siren to pull over a random motorist named James Meyer and took him hostage, as well. When they reached a wooded area, the killer handcuffed both men to a tree and shot them in the head.
The following day, Knowles ran into a police roadblock outside Stockbridge, Georgia…literally. He tried smashing through it, but totaled his vehicle and fled on foot through the woods. For hours, he managed to evade cops, police dogs, and even helicopters, until he ran into a civilian named David Clark. Knowles hoped he could convince or coerce the man to help him, but he was out of luck on that one – Clark was a Vietnam vet armed with a shotgun and he knew exactly who was standing in front of him. He held Knowles at gunpoint until the police arrived. The Casanova Killer was finally in custody.
Once Knowles had been arrested, he confessed to killing 18 people but later boasted of up to 35 murders. It was pretty obvious that his trial would be a mere formality but it never even got that far. On December 18, 1974, Knowles was being transferred to a new facility in a car with Sheriff Earl Lee and Georgia Bureau of Investigations Agent Ronnie Angel. Knowles made a grab for Lee’s gun, but this time he did not win out. Agent Angel drew his own sidearm and shot Paul Knowles three times in the chest, killing him right then and there.
