THOSE WHO KNEW EVANS WANT TO ASK HIM WHY.(CAPITAL REGION)

Byline: MIKE HUREWITZ Staff writer

He is isolated in a cell in the Rensselaer County Jail, without phone privileges, refusing all interviews with the press, incommunicado except to police and his lawyer.

But what he has told a State Police investigator has people in the Capital Region -- particularly those who knew his victims -- wanting to ask him one question above all: Why?

For Gary Evans, a 43-year-old Troy native with a reputation as a thief, an antiques burglar and a sometimes police informant, has now confessed to five murders since 1985, police say. He allegedly has led investigators to the bodies of two victims buried in Rensselaer County, told them about a third in Florida and admitted shooting two shop owners in Watertown and Little Falls.

``If I could just lay eyes on him and look at him and say, `What did you do?' '' said Mary DiPiero of Slingerlands.

On June 19, Evans revealed to police the location of the remains of a dismembered body in a shallow grave in Brunswick, the first to which he would lead police. The …