The Casanova Killer – Life of Serial Killer John Paul Knowles –13.End of the Road

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End of the Road
On December 4, Knowles was secretly transferred to the Douglas County jail in Douglasville because the facility was considered more equipped to contain a veteran escapee. Local residents later expressed shock that the now-infamous Casanova Killer had been a guest of the city lockup. An attorney with offices less than 20 yards from the building said he had had no idea. An attractive young woman at an office supply store on the next block shuddered, "I would have been scared out of my wits if I'd known he was back there."

Knowles bided his time, answering questions with a cocky smile or maddeningly cryptic response. Then, in mid-December, he agreed to show Sheriff Lee where he had disposed of Trooper Campbell's service revolver. It is unclear whether Knowles was offered an incentive to cooperate, or if he was simply toying with the police. The gun was an important piece of evidence as he'd allegedly used it to murder the trooper and James Meyer, so his keepers were willing to indulge him.

On December 18, Sheriff Lee and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Ron Angel put Knowles in a car for transport to Henry County where he had assured them that they would find the weapon. Lee drove while Angel sat up front beside him and Knowles reclined in the back, manacles securing his wrists and ankles.

Ron Angel (Author's Collection)

The vehicle was on US 20 near Lee Road when Sheriff Lee noticed that Knowles had lit a cigarette. Slowing down the car, he asked the prisoner to hand it over. Instead of complying, Knowles put out the cigarette and lunged, one of his wrists free while the handcuffs dangled from the other. He leaned over the seat and grabbed the sheriff's gun, which went off through the holster.

While Lee fought to control the careening car and push his attacker back, Ron Angel drew his own weapon and shot the prisoner three times. One bullet entered Knowles' chest, hit a bone, and exited out his right side. The second hit him under the right arm, and the third lodged in his brain.

"I'm sure he died instantly," the coroner said afterward. "Either the head or chest wound would have done it at that close range."

The car skidded off the highway, went down a small embankment, and stopped against a barbed-wire fence post. After confirming that Knowles was beyond medical aid, Lee radioed the news to headquarters. A pathologist arrived and pronounced the prisoner dead at the scene.

The mystery of how Knowles had undone his handcuffs was soon solved. A broken piece of paperclip was wedged in the right cuff's lock. If he had succeeded in grabbing Lee's gun, another double execution would almost certainly have followed.

James Campbell, brother of the murdered trooper, was thrilled by the news. "I'm just tickled to death that he died. I was afraid he could go into court, get declared insane, and go into a mental hospital. So I'm glad that it happened this way."

The personal effects taken from his jail cell included a photograph of an electric chair that he had ripped out of a magazine and a letter to Angela Covic in which he likened himself to Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and other outlaws who had died in a hail of bullets.

"When this is over," he wrote, "I will be more famous (or even more so)."

Scrawled on the cell wall in fading pencil was: Paul John Knowles, December 4, 1974 til?

Knowles' corpse was taken to the Whitely and Tidwell funeral home. Owner Steve Tidwell was instantly besieged with requests to see the bullet-riddled remains. One teenaged girl pleaded, "I've never seen a mass murderer before." Tidwell refused all of them, and breathed a sigh of relief when he obtained the clearance to place the body in a wooden casket and convey it to the Atlanta airport. From there it was flown to Knowles' father in Jacksonville for burial.

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Given his history of escape attempts, the inquest jury believed that Knowles had conned his keepers into taking him out of the jail so that he could break loose. His Florida attorneys thought otherwise.

"The least they could have done is wait until he was convicted to execute him," Ellis Rubin declared.

Sheldon Yavitz agreed. "I can't believe he attempted to escape. He didn't want to die. Where would he go with chains on?"

Both men refused to attend the inquest, saying that the result would be "a foregone conclusion." They insisted that their client had been set up for execution, and Charles Marchman, the dead killer's Georgia attorney, seemed to agree. He claimed to have a letter from Knowles' former cellmate, who swore that Knowles believed he would be killed before trial.

The letter was probably genuine, as Knowles made the same prediction to a lot of people. He had really appeared to believe that his deeds made him the Jesse James or John Dillinger of his generation, and that, like them, he would never live to face justice.

After the inquest jury absolved them of wrongdoing in connection with Knowles' death, Sheriff Lee and Agent Ron Angel received near-universal acclaim for taking out one of the country's worst serial killers to date. Sheila McGuire, the sheriff's secretary, told reporters that the office phone was ringing off the hook, with most of the callers wanting to congratulate her boss. Even if the killing had been pre-planned, some said, it was nothing less than such a monster deserved.

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When Angela Covic got the news about her former lover's death, she jumped in a car and drove across the country, intending to see Knowles' parents and in her words, "try to see that he gets a decent funeral." Reporters interviewed her during a stopover in Atlanta.

"Paul was deeply religious," she claimed. "He believed deeply in life after death.... He was very spiritual." Although her rejection of him the previous summer appeared to have played a contributing role in his rampage, she said, "I loved him. If he had escaped this time, I would have gone with him."

Knowles was buried in Jacksonville, Florida, with only his family and Angela in attendance. The Baptist minister who conducted the funeral service expressed popular sentiment when he refused to pray that the dead killer's soul would rest in peace.