November 2024 will mark the 50th anniversary of the capture of serial killer Paul John Knowles, nicknamed “The Casanova Killer,” who is suspected of murdering at least 18 people during a four-month crime spree across seven states.
Known for his charm and good looks, Paul John Knowles had been the target of an extensive manhunt and likely would have continued his carnage had it not been for David Clark, a Vietnam veteran who apprehended him and delivered him to authorities in November 1974.
Knowles was charged with seven murders, and has since been connected to 11 more. He bragged to his lawyer about killing up to 35 people, but that claim remains unverified.
A month after he was arrested, Knowles was killed by police during what was described as an escape attempt. He never made it to trial.
In his first lengthy interview with the media, Clark, now 76 and living in Blairsville, Georgia, spoke to A&E True Crime about his experience, recalling how he came upon Knowles and how the serial killer told him he was scared of being killed by police.
Early Trouble
Knowles was born in Orlando, Florida, and grew up with four siblings in Jacksonville, Florida. He started getting into trouble at an early age and was convicted at 19 of kidnapping a police officer. He shuttled in and out of jail for eight years, eventually ending up in Florida State Prison, also known as Raiford Prison.
“I thought he was just a small-time crook. You know, stealing cars, breaking windows, that kind of thing,” his brother, Clifton Irving Knowles, told the Atlanta Journal in 1974. “I didn’t know he could do something like this.”
In prison, Knowles met his girlfriend, Angela Covic, who lived in San Francisco, California. The two began corresponding after Knowles saw her name in the pen pal column of an astrology magazine, according to a 1974 interview with The Miami News.
Covic visited him in prison and eventually hired an attorney who represented him at a parole hearing in May 1974. Knowles was paroled on condition he move to San Francisco, where Covic had gotten him a job with a billboard company.
But Knowles never made it to work, leaving California just four days later.
Killing Spree
Back in Florida, he ended up in jail again, and broke out by picking a lock.
His first alleged homicide victim was Alice Curtis, a retired teacher in Jacksonville, whose house he broke into the day of his escape. He bound, gagged and robbed her, and she choked to death.
Over the next four months, Knowles is believed to have left a trail of victims—mostly women, but also men and children, all seemingly chosen at random—in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Connecticut. Some were sexually assaulted, including post-mortem.
Jimmy Josey, a former police officer in Milledgeville, Georgia, where Knowles appeared before a judge after being captured, told WGXA TV in Georgia that Knowles had no motive for his murdering spree.
“He had no compunction about killing you, makes no difference whether he strangled you, whether he shot you, whether he stabbed you or what,” Josey said. “He was a martial arts expert. He was tough. He was mean.”
One of his victims, Barbara Mabee Abel, made it out alive after being held captive by Knowles in a motel in Fort Pierce, Florida, for 18 hours.
“I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he could kill me,” Abel told People magazine in 2024. “I decided I would do whatever I needed to do to survive.”
Another woman who crossed paths with Knowles was Sandy Fawkes, a British journalist who described him physically as “a cross between Robert Redford and Ryan O’Neal,” the New York Daily News reported.
Knowles and Fawkes met in Atlanta and ended up driving together to Florida over a three-day encounter. Then, Knowles allegedly tried to rape Fawkes’ friend, who managed to escape.
Knowles went on to kidnap Abel, and then took hostage a Florida state trooper who’d pulled him over. Driving the trooper’s vehicle, he allegedly took another hostage, a Delaware man in Florida for business. He is believed to have driven both men to a secluded area in Pulaski County, Georgia, and shot them in the head.
Shortly after, Knowles was chased by law enforcement and crashed his vehicle through a police roadblock. He escaped on foot, with officers and dogs in pursuit, eventually running into Clark.
Paul John Knowles Is Apprehended
Then a 27-year-old hospital mechanic who lived near McDonough, Georgia, Clark says he’d spent the weekend in the mountains, hunting with relatives, unaware of the ongoing manhunt.
On his way back home on November 17, 1974, Clark ran into a roadblock about three miles from his home. “They looked in the truck and waved me on through,” he tells A&E True Crime. “I didn’t know what was happening.”
Once home, seeing his wife wasn’t there, Clark decided to get back into his truck and go check on his livestock. He parked, started walking toward the animals and detected a figure in the woods.
“[Knowles] came out of the edge in the woods and said he’d been in an automobile accident. He was disheveled and torn up from the briar patches. He had a shotgun in his hand,” he says. “I put two and two together, and I knew it was connected to the roadblock.”
Clark went to his truck to retrieve his shotgun, and walked back to Knowles. “He looked like he was going to raise his shotgun, so I pointed mine at him and I told him to drop the shotgun, or I was going to blow his [expletive] head off,” Clark says.
Knowles complied, dropping the gun, and Clark directed him to walk toward his house. Knowles asked to go in for some water, but Clark refused.
“He asked me what my name was, and I told him,” Clark says. “I didn’t ask him who he was. We didn’t have a conversation. I was just directing him what to do.”
Clark directed Knowles to walk across the street, to ask his neighbors to call police. The two walked up to the first house, but no one answered the door. The neighbor, a preacher, later told The Atlanta Journal that he’d seen the two men across the street, and hustled his wife, children and a couple of neighboring children to hide in a rear bedroom and closet.
As he was turning to go, Clark says, he heard another neighbor yelling at him to leave because he was scaring people. He told her to call the police.
While the pair waited, Clark says, Knowles asked him to tell police not to hurt him.
“He was afraid they’d shoot him down right there in the front yard,” Clark recalls.
Two Henry County Sheriff’s officers arrived within 10 minutes, and Clark relayed the message to them. “They responded, ‘Oh, we’re not going to hurt him,'” Clark says. “They walked up, put the cuffs on him and put him in the car. He didn’t say anything.”
Knowles’ Death
Knowles was charged with murdering four people in Georgia, two in Florida and one in Ohio.
At one point, he was “secretly taken” to Douglas County jail, according to The Macon Telegraph and News. A month after his arrest, authorities announced that Knowles was shot and killed by law enforcement en route to show them where in Henry County he hid a gun belonging to the state trooper he’d killed.
They said on December 18, 1974, Douglas County Sheriff Earl D. Lee and Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent Ronnie Angel were in the car with Knowles, who sat in the back seat, alone, in handcuffs and leg irons. Instead of a squad car, which would have had steel mesh between the front and back seats, Lee was driving his personal car, The Miami Herald reported.
Police said Knowles freed one of his hands by picking the lock of his handcuffs, and reached over to grab Lee’s gun. Angel shot him three times in the chest.
Clark says he was surprised to hear Knowles attempted to escape, because of what he’d observed of Knowles’ behavior—scared and compliant—when he was captured.
Lee died in 1998. Angel, now retired, declined to speak with A&E True Crime.
Clark says he never received any official recognition for his role in apprehending Knowles. At the time, he was mostly relieved that his now ex-wife wasn’t home when Knowles appeared, he says.
Clark moved about two years later, and over the years hasn’t thought much about the events of 1974, he says.
Now battling a serious illness with his second wife, Susan Baron, by his side, Clark says he “wanted the story to be told correctly.”
“I am glad that it all came to an end without anybody else getting killed.”
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