Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Soft Kill

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

After a teenage girl shows up dead, investigators think they know who did it. However, when another pair of sisters are found deceased with a similar MO, investigators realize they not only have the wrong man but a possible serial killer.Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Listener discretion is advised. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. It's September 9, 1996, in Spotsylvania, Virginia. In the dying moments of a fall afternoon, a can of grape soda warms on the front porch of Phyllis Silva's home. The soda belongs to Phyllis's daughter, 16-year-old Sophia. The teenager, however, is nowhere to be found. Phyllis calls around to friends and schoolmates with no luck.

As an afternoon deepens into evening, an uncomfortable feeling hardens into cold fear. Phyllis calls police to tell them her daughter has gone missing. Major Howard Smith oversees the ensuing search. We actually flew the subdivision, and on the outside of the subdivision, there's a county park and a lot of woods and there's some ponds there. We searched the wooded area by helicopter and by foot.

We actually put scooped avids in the pond and dove the pond, and obviously with no success. Sophia Silva has disappeared. Best case scenario, she's another runaway teen. Worst case, Sophia's life, only barely begun, is already over. Five weeks later, in King George County, Silva's missing person's poster hangs in the lobby of the sheriff's office. On October 14th, a call rings through to dispatch. An unidentified female has been found just off King's Highway. Captain Steve Dempsey is first on the scene.

The body was seen laying in the edge of a creek bank, of which was wrapped in a blue blanket and tied, very tight in laying partially submerged in water. As investigators lift the body from the swamp, Captain Dempsey catches a glimpse of nail polish. I noticed purple nail polish, which led me to believe it could possibly be Sophia because that was certainly made known to us in her disappearance that she had purple, fingernail, and toenail polish. The body is confirmed to be that of Sophia Silva. The hunt for her killer begins on the autopsy table.

Five weeks of decomposition prevent any determination of an exact cause of death. The medical examiner, however, does notice something unusual. Most of her pubic hairs that have been shaving off. When you look at that, obviously, that's a trademark or a calling card to us, you know, about the offender, what the offender likes what he's into. FBI profiler, Agent Jerry Downs, is tasked to the case and asked to look into the Silva crime scene. Well, he's got a fixation on that. He's a lot of these people, these killers, are driven by fantasy. And he's thought about this a million times in his head.

And for whatever reason, he stepped over the line and went out and grabbed Sophia. Jerry Downs tells detectives their suspect fixates on young victims. He's most likely not finished killing and is probably still in the neighborhood. The investigation returns to Spotslvania, where police want to take a hard look at the locals. Five weeks after Sophia Silva first disappeared, investigators begin to knock on doors and ask questions. The list of suspicious characters in Spotsylvania is short, with one name prominent. A 44-year-old handyman named Carl Michael Roush. We had several residents there tell us that a lot of times they would see Roush out there,

watching the kids get on and off the school buses, acting very strangely, and watching the young girls in the subdivision. Detectives collect information about Roush and pay a visit to his workplace, where they find coils of hemp rope, the same type of rope used to bind Sophia. Investigators also discover that a number of blue moving blankets identical to the ones in which Silva's body was wrapped are missing from Rauch's job site. Based on that information, based on the information that was given to us by the neighbors, we were able to obtain enough information, enough probable cause to get a search warrant. Evidence technicians collect hair and fibers from Rauch's home and van. Major Smith sends the evidence to the state lab to be compared with the fibers collected.

from Sylva's body. A short time later, examiner down there said, we've got a match on your fibers. Obviously, we get very excited. The lab has linked fibers found at the crime scene to fibers found on the carpet inside Raushe's van. Spassylvania County presents their case to a grand jury

which returns an indictment against Rauch for murder. It was pretty much a slam dunk that he was responsible for Sophia's murder. Case closed. Roush pleads innocent and is placed in jail to await trial. With a presumed killer behind bars, a small town relaxes until two more girls disappear. Seven months later, at the other end of Spotsylvania County, Ron and Patty Lisk are working parents with two daughters Kristen 15 and Katie 12. Most days, one or both parents call home after

school to check in with the girls. On May 1st, Ron puts in the call around 3.30, but gets no answer. Several tries later, he gets a feeling something is not right. Lisk rushes home to find school books scattered across the yard, the front door wide open, and his daughter's gone. The distraught father calls police. We contact state police that night to get a helicopter in here with infrared on it. We use tracking dogs and we do a ground in search. The search continues for two days with no trace of the Lisk. girls. Five days later, a highway worker is repairing a section of bridge, spanning the North Anna River,

some 40 miles south of the Lisk home. The worker happens to glance down and notices something floating below. He sees what he thinks is some mannequins in the water. He goes down to take a closer look and he realizes that there's actually a body in the water. Two females are pulled from the North Anna River. Their names, Kristen and Katie, List. They were basically thrown off a bridge and just left in the water, no attempt made to cover them up or anything. So all of that tells us that there's probably no relationship between the offender and the victims. He's done with these girls and he dumps them. Due to decomposition, the medical examiner cannot determine a cause of death.

He does, however, discover a detail that is all too familiar to Spotsylvania detectives. We did notice on the oldest list child There was some shaving and some clipping of her pubic hair We kept going back to the Sophia Silva case and saying There's an awful lot of similarities here Detectives are beginning to believe that whoever killed Sophia Silva Also killed the Lisk girls And that the man they have behind bars on the charge of murder

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Make your move from the comfort of anywhere and make more time for you. Join the millions of happy renters and visit Apartments.com, the place to find a place. In September of 1996, Sophia Silva is kidnapped from her front yard. Five weeks later, the 16-year-old turns up dead.

Seven months later, a pair of sisters, Katie and Kristen Lisk, disappear from their home. Five days later, they too turn up dead. In both cases, the killer shaved the genital area of his victims, leading police to believe the cases are related. There is, however, a problem with this theory.

Relying on Trey's fiber evidence, detectives have already arrested a man, Carl Michael Roush, for the Silva killing. Since Roush was in jail at the time of the LISC murders, either he's innocent or the killings are not related. We kind of talked about it amongst ourselves, and we all... agreed that, hey, something's not right here. We need to take a closer look at what we got. Detectives asked the FBI to reexamine the fiber evidence links to Roush.

Analyst Doug Diedrich does the work. I reviewed all the evidence and I didn't see it. I mean, they said that the carpet fibers matched up with the van and I didn't find that. I thought they were different. Diedrich believes the state of Virginia has made a mistake, seeing a forensic link where there was none and arresting an innocent man. He shares his findings with the detectives who arrested Rausch. It was devastating. I couldn't believe it out. You know, we got a state forensic examiner here

that's made a huge mistake. Based on her report, we've indicted an individual to murder. On June 16, 1997, the indictments are dropped. Carl Michael Rauch is eventually set free and investigators admit they most likely have a serial killer still at large. Within a few weeks, the FBI lab confirms that suspicion, linking trace evidence pulled from Sophia Silva's body to fibers found on the LISC sisters. So now we have a forensic link as well as a behavioral link, and there's no doubt that the same offender killed all three girls.

The FBI classifies the LISC and Silva crimes as soft kills, meaning the killer did not torture or mutilate his victims. Profilers believe they're suspect to be a white male, age 30 or older, and more likely to use a smile rather than force to gain his victim's trust. He would be able to get close to these kids. He had a non-threatening appearance, gain their confidence very quickly, which he was able to do, get close enough to get these girls in a car.

And that's the person that we were looking for, someone that would fit in everyday society. That's a problem with these cases. When you look at them, I mean, you'd like to be able to go out and say you're looking for a three-hitted, green-eyed monster. but you can't. You're looking for the person next door to you. Investigators run down hundreds of leads,

months turn into years, and no arrests are made. If he is still alive, detectives are confident their suspect will strike again. The only questions are when and where. On June 24, 2002, as the workday ends in Columbia, South Carolina, worry settles onto the shoulders of a family missing a girl we will call Susan.

I called my ex-wife, and she's sick. She's gone. I said, what do you mean, gone? And she said that we can't find her. She's not where she's supposed to be. We can't find her. Susan's father, Ron, believes he knows what has happened to his 15-year-old. I knew she was abducted.

I know this child. I mean, when she's late or she's going to be somewhere, she lets me or a mom or somebody know what's going on. And it's just totally out of a character for her not to be found and not for anybody to know where she is. Throughout the night, Susan's family continues to search and continues to worry. With sun-up, there is still no sign of the missing teen.

Later that morning, some 15 miles away, the Richland County Sheriff's Office breaks up its morning brief. Corporal Kevin Pate settles in at his desk to finish some paperwork when a teenage girl runs into the Richland County substation yelling for help. She basically said, You've got to help me. I was kidnapped. I was raped.

You've got to help me. The girl tells Pate her name. Pate runs her ID and pulls up Columbia's missing persons report from the day prior. Howell Sineard is the sexual assault investigator on call. Sineyard takes the lead on the case and sits down with the victim. She was a small, petite little girl sitting in a chair, and she had one handcuff home. And I noticed the handcuffs were real, they had fur around them. and in that fur was wrapped a piece of wire to like reinforce the handcuffs.

After removing the handcuffs, investigator senior listens to the victim's story. Susan claims she was alone in the front yard of a friend's house watering plants when a man in a green firebird pulled into the driveway. A young man got out and approached her and stated he was selling magazines. Then he produced a small handgun and put it up to her neck and told her to follow him to his car. And when she got into the car, she asked him where was she supposed to get because the back seat area was a large plastic container. And he sat in the container. So she crawled into it and he put the lid on it and drove away. The teenager was driven for about 20 minutes, then lifted out of the car.

When the lid came off the container, Susan found herself in a small one-bedroom apartment. Susan tells police she was cuffed and fastened to bondage boards attached to a bed frame. Throughout the night, she was raped repeatedly. She claims that he takes Viagra quite a bit during this episode, and that he takes her in the bedroom and basically sexually assaults her with several sex toys. And they're just too numerous to mention. When morning finally arrived, Susan's captor fell asleep. She waited until he was in deep sleep,

and she thought she knew he was in deep sleep when he started snoring. And that's when she took the declamp that was from, around her wrist, and she worked that loose. And once she had that loose, she had one ankle that was tied to the foot part of the bed, and that she reached down and slowly unhooked her leg. And once she was out of the bed, she knew at the door she had one chance to open it.

Sineard takes Susan's statement and then transports her to the hospital, where the teen is reunited with her family. There was a waiting room full of people, waiting for her to come out. And I gave her a big hug, and told her I was proud of her. I said, he missed with the wrong little girl, didn't he? She said, yes, Dad. While a family rejoices, investigators race across town to an apartment where they hope to catch

Susan's kidnapper. Susan told police she was taken to the Crossroads apartment complex apartment 301 in Columbia, South Carolina. Detectives enter the unit but find its occupant gone, leaving behind the tools of a sexual predator. While we're going through, it's just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of VHS tapes. And by the labels, we know they're probably X-rated tapes. And then in the bedroom, we ran into all these sexual explicit items. And just reinforced that we knew we had the right person if we could just locate him. The apartment is rented to 38-year-old Richard Yvonitz, a convicted sex offender.

Neighbors tell police Avonitz had left the apartment earlier that morning. Detectives run a check on bank account and credit card activity. He cleaned out his bank accounts in Columbia. He had stopped by the pharmacy. He had a prescription for Viagra. He'd gotten his prescription fill. And so for a rapist to be out there on the street, with a full bottle of Viagra can be dangerous.

It was very serious, as serious as they get. We wanted to get him before he got away and before he did this to somebody else. Richard Avanitz is on the run. Detectives put a trace on the suspect's cell phone hoping he might give away his location. A few hours later, several calls hit a cell phone tower 30 miles south of Columbia in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Avanitz has a sister near Orangeburg. She admits she rented him a hotel room at the local Days Inn. Deputies descend on the room, but Yvonitz is a son.

long gone. We don't know exactly how he was notified, but we feel maybe someone tipped him off that we had people en route to his location. Detectives begin to organize the hunt for Richard Yvonnez. Meanwhile, a second squad pours through the suspect's apartment. They open up a foot locker and discover their fugitive is not just a possible rapist, but most likely a serial killer.

In South Carolina, a 15-year-old girl named Susan is handcuffed to a bed. For the better part of a day, she is raped repeatedly. Finally, her captor falls asleep, and Susan makes her escape. An hour later, Detective Swarm Apartment 301 where the girl had been held, but its occupant has already fled. His name is Richard A Vonitz, a man with a history of sexual assault, a man who is believed to be armed in dangerous, a man on the run. Mr. Devonis has been on the run from police since Tuesday. Richland County officials had charged him with a kidnapping and rape of a 15-year-old girl here in Columbia.

I came to work and everything had been on the news overnight and in the morning. That's when I got a call from Charlotte Foster. She works for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children here in the Columbia office. She said, you might give me a few details on the case, and we'll do some checking and see if we can connect him to anything. Stewart passes along everything he knows about Richard Yvonnez. Kathy Naharney, with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, enters the information into the center's database. I'm looking through the address history, and all of a sudden I note

he lived in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. And the immediate response I had was the Lisk sisters in Sophia. Sophia Silva abducted and murdered in September of 1996, sisters Kristen and Katie Lisk abducted and murdered in May of 1997. Fiber evidence links three cases to one killer, but the murders have remained unsolved for more than five years. And I stopped and I went back to the case files and I looked and double-checked the dates that they were abducted and found deceased.

And then I looked again at the dates on the address history and they were in the same time frame. So he lived in that area during the time. that these three girls were abducted and murdered. It is the first connection between Richard Yvonitz and the Virginia murders. Later that afternoon, detectives worked their way through Yvonitz's South Carolina apartment. They discover a footlocker. Upon opening it, a second connection is laid bare,

and Captain Stewart places a call to authorities in Virginia. He says, hey, he says, you're not going to believe what investigators have. And I said, what's that? And he says, there was a foot locker. in Abonix's apartment. And when they searched it, they found the May 2nd, 1997 edition of the freelance star.

The clipping is a front-page story from Virginia on the disappearance of the Lisk Sisters. You know, why would anybody save that? Moving down here from Virginia, if they didn't have some kind of involvement in it, and that was something really big as far as connected them. I mean, we pretty much knew right then

that he was probably the person or had a real strong suspicion. We also knew from profiling that people like to keep souvenirs and trophies, as they call them. It's a trophy that reopens this cold case. Virginia investigators and FBI agents catch the next plane to Columbia, South Carolina. The next day, members of the Silva Lisk Task Force joined detectives outside Richard Avonitz's apartment. While one team collects fiber evidence, a second team searches Yvonitz's car, a green Ford Taurus.

Motor vehicle records indicate it is the same car Yvonitz drove five years ago when the Silva enlist girls disappeared. A police officer pops open the trunk and dust for fingerprints. Probably within two minutes of being in a trunk when he was dusting for fingerprints, the pretty set of prints came up on the inside the trunk lid. The prints are those of a child, a child it appears, who was locked inside Richard Yvonitz's trunk. We photographed them and then tried to lift them.

We actually couldn't lift them. It wouldn't come off. So we decided, said to heck with it. We actually just took the trunk lid off and brought it back with us to the FBI lab in Washington. Forensic matches the prince to 12-year-old Katie Lisk. Word is passed along to those searching for Yvonets. The man police are hunting for is not just a possible rapist, but almost certainly a serial killer.

Three days into the hunt for Richard Yvonitz, the trail has gone cold. A series of calls placed from Avanus' cell phone had the suspect heading south towards Jacksonville, Florida. Avanitz has relatives in the area, and detectives organize a stakeout, but Avanitz never shows. Concern mounts that the suspect might bypass Florida and head for the border. On the evening of June 27th, however, the FBI gets a tip. Avanitz has resurfaced and is scheduled to meet his sister at a pancake house in Bradenton, Florida. At about 11 o'clock, I received a call from the FBI stating that he was at a restaurant and the local officials had moved in to apprehend him on the federal warrant.

Avanitz cruises into the parking lot in a silver Ford escort. Officers from Manatee County wait for him to enter the restaurant where they'll take him down. The suspect, however, catches wind of the Senate. up in bolts. Heading south on Highway 41 at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, Manatee police follow and call ahead to Lieutenant Paul Sutton at the Sarasota Police Department. They sent a message to our communication center that they had been pursuing a car, that the driver of the car was wanted for murder and sexual battering. He'd fled at 100 miles an hour. He did it with his lights off. And we had law enforcement officers who were telling us

that he was armed with a handgun that they thought was a 45. caliber handgun. Within minutes, a Sarasota squad car pursues Avonis down Highway 41. A mile down the road, Lieutenant Paul Sutton waits at the intersection of 10th Street. I saw that at 10th and 41, there were cars stopped for red light blocking every southbound lane. So I was anticipating that the pursuit may end at 10th and 41 because I did not think that he would be able to get through that intersection. He managed to squeeze in between a couple of cars that were stopped for the red light and continue southbound. And at that point, I told my officers to go ahead and deploy stopsticks. Stop sticks are a series of tubes containing steel quills.

The quills puncture the car's tires, slowly letting the air out and bringing the car to a controlled stop. Avonitz's car hits the sticks just where Highway 41 turns left along Sarasota's bayfront. His car hits a curb and comes to a stop. An array of police cars immediately surround the vehicle. Sutton is in charge at the scene. Over a loudspeaker, he instructs Ivana's to show his hands and exit the car. He ignored repeated commands. Then he, I want to say he taunted us because what he did is he showed his left hand only

while he continued to have a handgun in his right hand. Sutton realizes he needs to move quickly and command the scene. I didn't feel like time was our friend. because the longer he sat there with the loaded gun in his hand, with the realization that he was not going to escape. I thought the more likely that there was going to be violence. Sutton decides to call in a canine unit. Alan Devaney and his dog Matt are tasked to approach the car.

I honestly didn't know what he was going to do. The option was there that he could kill himself. The option was there that he could shoot at us. He could shoot at the dog. He could run. There was a lot of different options that he could have taken. And I think we needed to be prepared for all of those. Devaney approaches from the rear.

Richard Avanitz is sitting in the driver's seat, a gun in his right hand, and the driver's side door ajar, when Devaney orders the dog to attack. The dog runs forward. He went right to the vehicle, bit the suspect in the arm. The dog came off and then bit him in the leg,

which was now moving and was actually pulling and trying to yank the leg from the vehicle. Richard Avanitz leans back into the car, places the gun in his own mouth, and pulls the trigger. For those who hunted down of Onitz, the self-inflicted sentence seems hardly justice enough.

We still think he took the easy way out. He orchestrated it his way, and we wanted to orchestrate it our way, and we lost on that. Everybody would have liked to have arrested him and him been alive because nobody knows what else he may or may not have done. Most of the detectives who worked on the case are convinced Richard Avonitz committed other crimes we will probably never know about. All of the people who worked this case agree on one further thing. Catching a Vonets would have been impossible without the courage of a 15-year-old girl who escaped while her captor slept and led detectives into the lair of a killer. I think the little girl in South Carolina made this case for us.

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