Serial killer survivor who escaped 18-hour captivity reveals instinct she wishes she never ignored

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Kara Robinson Chamberlain was just 15 years old when she was abducted by a serial killer. Now, she's searching for answers in cases that have gone unsolved for decades.

The victim advocate hosts the ABC News Studios and Freeform true-crime series "Somebody Knows Something," which takes a fresh look at unsolved disappearances and murders that have baffled investigators. Working alongside loved ones, Chamberlain revisits a cold case in each episode, hoping renewed attention will generate the lead that finally cracks it.

"My purpose was to let families have the mic and show what law enforcement has done," Chamberlain told Fox News Digital. "We want people to have the information they need, so they can come forward with anything that could be helpful. involve children, young people. I have three kids, so I found myself identifying with either the young person who is missing or the victims themselves as parents.

"I genuinely think we can make a difference," Chamberlain said. "If I can get answers for one of these families, it would be a life goal for me."

That mission is deeply personal for Chamberlain, whose own story of survival began more than two decades ago.

On June 24, 2002, 15-year-old Chamberlain was at a friend's home when Richard Evonitz, the man who would abduct her, pulled into the driveway.

"There was a moment when my captor pulled into my friend's driveway, and I thought, 'That's weird,'" she recalled. "That was my intuition. But I immediately started making excuses for why he could have been there, what could have been the reason. And so, I quieted my intuition."

It was a split-second instinct Chamberlain would soon wish she had trusted.

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The stranger approached her with pamphlets and asked if her parents were home. Then, he held a gun to her neck and threatened to shoot her if she screamed. He forced Chamberlain into a dark storage container in his car.

"I'm often asked, 'What's the thing that we can learn from your story, Kara, to keep ourselves or our children safe?'" she said. "And the one thing that I tell people the most is there's a great book called 'The Gift of Fear.' And it's the first time that I've heard someone describe the way I feel, which is to listen to your intuition."

"Essentially, describes is that we all have something inside of us that's paying attention, and we're taught to silence that intuition for the sake of being nice, not hurting someone's feelings — lots of different reasons. And that's something that is meant to keep us alive."

"I hesitate to say if there's a lesson in these cases because they're all quite different," she continued. "But that's the big thing that I try to tell people — listen to your intuition and teach your children how to listen to that intuition. It is a powerful gift that everyone has, and it saves your life."

At Evonitz's apartment, Chamberlain was repeatedly sexually assaulted. But this time, she trusted the instinct telling her what to do: survive.

"I have to acknowledge that there was something inside of me that said, 'Not today. Not me. I'm going to outsmart this guy,'" Chamberlain said, describing herself as "very stubborn."

"Then, I think really the rest of it was maybe part luck," she said. "It was also a big part of my coping mechanism ... how I chose to appease my captor, which essentially is one of the lesser-known trauma responses. It's basically playing nice to let that person put their guard down. And then, I think partially, there's this part of him that was very arrogant, and he'd done that multiple times before. So I think all of those things played together