It was on of the worst murder sprees in the history of our country and also on of the most bizarre. In 4 months from July to November in 1974, Peter John Knowles, age 28, raped, strangled, stabbed, shot and killed 20 complete strangers as he drove 20,000 miles across country and randomly picked victims-someone admiring the sunset on a road, an elderly couple camping out, a teenager hitchhiker, a man he met in a bar. Eight of those people were killed in Georgia where Knowles was finally captured.

Maybe it all started when he was 8 years old, living in Jacksonville, Florida. He stole a bicycle and his father, a heartless and unforgiving man, put Knowles in a foster home. He never went home again. From foster, he went to reformatories and than finally to prison for petty thievery and car theft.

The crimes he committed gradually became more serious. He was driving a stolen car when a policeman tried to arrest him. Knowles abducted the policeman and when caught was given a 5-year sentence in Florida's Raiford Penitentiary.

Knowles, AKA the Casanova Killer, was a very good looking man-tall, slim with red hair. He could be charming and was certainly convincing as he talked his way into people's homes and women's hearts. While in prison, Knowles corresponded with a San Francisco woman, Angela Covic. She agreed to marry him and hired a lawyer who arranged parole for Knowles on May 14, 1974. Covic flew him out to California. But after 4 days something about Knowles made her nervous and she backed out.

After this rejection, Knowles graduated to murder. He traveled back and forth across the country killing people at whim. In August, he killed 2 people in Georgia and then returned for his final murder spree in November.

Policeman James D. Josey met Knowles 31 years ago when he was with the Milledgeville Police Department in Georgia. Josey still remembers the killer vividly. "Knowles was the coldest man I've ever dealt with," Josey said recently, "His eyes were like cold steel. He killed people like he was stomping on a bug."

Josey was investigating the Carr murders. Caswell Carr and his daughter Mandy, 15, were killed on November 6, 1974. "Nobody knew who the killer was," Josey recalled. "He was very careful. The Carr house was totally savaged. Carr was stabbed 35 times and his daughter was strangled, yet there wasn't one fingerprint." Oddly, most of Carr's clothes were missing.

The Carr's were the 16th and 17th persons Knowles killed.

The next day, November 7, in Atlanta, Knowles dictated into his tape recorder, "I'm pulling into the Holiday Inn and I don't know what I am going to do next." For months Knowles had been dictating all the details of his crimes into a tape recorder.

In the hotel bar, he picked up an attractive woman named Sandy Fawkes. Knowles seemed fascinated when Sandy told him she was a British journalist. They danced, had dinner and drinks and wound up in bed. Sandy thought Knowles was incredibly handsome. Yes, his yellow eyes were strange but he had a "rugged face with a firm jaw and cleft chin." She was also impressed with his chic, expensive looking clothes and his car, a 1974 white Impala Chevrolet. Of course, Sandy didn't know that his great looking clothes had belonged to Caswell Carr, while the Impala was stolen from another victim, William Bates of Lima. Ohio.

The next evening, he suddenly asked Sandy, "Would you write a book about me. You see I haven't long to live; I am going to be killed soon. It might be 2 days or 2 months. I don't know when."

He wouldn't explain, he just said, "One day my name will be in newspaper headlines all over the country. I've made tapes and given them to my lawyer. He'll release them after my death."

The fact that Sandy was a writer was probably what saved her life. Not many people lived after meeting Knowles.

Sandy and Knowles spent 6 days together. Sandy had an interview in West Palm Beach, Florida; Knowles offered to drive her. During the trip, Knowles gave Sandy the Mickey Mouse watch he had removed from Mandy Carr's dead body.

When they arrived in West Palm Beach, Sandy introduced Knowles to a friend of hers, Susan Mackenzie the wife of a follow journalist. After drinks, Sandy decided it was time to say goodbye to Knowles. She was starting to feel uncomfortable with him. It was November 13.

On the morning of November 14 Knowles offered Sandy's friend, Susan, a ride. In the car, Knowles made sexual advances. When Susan resisted, he produced a gun, and grabbed her hair. Somehow Susan got out of the car and ran screaming into the road.

A passing car gave her a lift to the West Palm Beach police station. Susan led the police to Sandy and described the car that Knowles was driving.

This turned out to be the break in the case that police were waiting for-the description of the white Impala. That afternoon, a police car spotted the Impala but as the officer was getting out of his car, Knowles leveled a shotgun at him through his car window and said, "Hold it right there." The policeman dropped to the ground and Knowles sped away.

Knowles realized he had to get rid of his car-fast. He stole a Volkswagen and kidnapped its owner, Barbara Tucker.

At the police station Sandy was shown several photographs of Caswell Carr and recognized his clothing. Knowles chic suits belonged to Carr.

Sandy was horrified-the man she had slept with was a mass murderer. She remembered teasing him several times saying, "You know I really don't know who you are. You could be the Boston Strangler." They both laughed.

Once they knew his name, it was easy for the police to get a prison mug shot of Knowles. Sandy and Susan identified him and the photograph was released to television and newspapers.

On November 16, Knowles left Tucker tied up in a motel room (she eventually freed herself) and was driving north in his Volkswagen when Florida State trooper Charles E. Campbell flagged the car down. Campbell tried to arrest Knowles, but Knowles wrestled his gun away and took off with Campbell and his squad car. A little while later, Knowles, siren blasting, forced businessman James Mayer to pull over. Now Knowles had a new car and 2 hostages.

When Knowles stopped for gas at a station in McDonough, Georgia the attendant notice the two men in the back seat were upright but unmoving and thought it strange that one was a state trooper in uniform. He wrote down the license number and called the police. Knowles was running out of time.

That night, Knowles calmly checked into an Ambassador Hotel in Macon, while the Georgia police were searching the whole area for him. He even went to Sears and brought clothes with Trooper Charles Campbell's credit card.

The next afternoon, November 17, 2 Georgia sheriff's deputies recognized Knowles' car on Highway 42. Roadblocks were set up and Knowles crashed into one and smashed into a tree. He jumped out of his car, firing his gun at pursuers and took off into the Henry County woods.

Ironically, with 200 police, dogs and helicopters hunting him, Knowles was captured by a civilian, a local hunter named David Clark who was carrying a shotgun.

Knowles was taken in to Milledgeville police station. Enjoying their frustration, he refused to tell police what he had done with his hostages, Trooper Campbell and Mayer. Four days later, hunters found their bodies tied to a tree in the woods. Both were shot in the head.

On December 18, Douglas County Sheriff Earl D. Lee and Ron Angel, an inspector from the GBI, were transferring Knowles to another prison. While underway, Knowles picked the lock on his handcuffs with a paper clip and tried to grab Lee's gun.

"Knowles reached over the seat and jerked my sidearm from the holster," Lee said. "I grabbed Knowles' hand and the gun went off". As the car swerved off the highway more shots were fired by both Lee and Angel. Knowles was killed.

The police and FBI could only prove that Knowles killed 20 people, but Josey thinks that Knowles killed many more. "When we followed a paper trail of his credit slips in 30 states and sent teletypes to the police departments there, we got queries back asking about similar unsolved murders," explained Josey, who this year retired as Chief of Detectives in Baldwin County. My gut feeling is that he killed one or two people in each state he visited."

When Knowles had drinks with Sandy at the Hyatt Hotel on November 8, he told her he would be dead soon. He was killed 40 days later. He also asked her to write a book about him. And she did, she called it "Killing Time."

Eventually 20 murders were attributed to Knowles, all committed in 1974. (Other possible murders are unproved.)