Robert Lee Yates, Jr. (born
May 27, 1952) is an American serial
killer from Spokane,
Washington
. From 1996 to 1998, Yates is known to have
murdered at least 13 women, all of whom were
prostitutes working on Spokane's "Skid Row"
red-light district on E. Sprague Avenue.
Yates also confessed
to two murders committed in Walla
Walla
in 1975 and a 1988 murder committed in Skagit County
. In 2002, Yates was convicted of killing two
women in Pierce
County
. He currently is on death
row at the Washington State
Penitentiary
.
Background
Yates grew
up in Oak Harbor, Washington
in a middle-class family that attended a local
Seventh-day Adventist
church. He graduated from Oak Harbor High School in
1970, and in 1975, he was hired by the Washington State Department
of Corrections to work as a prison guard at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. After working there for six
months, Yates enlisted in the
United
States Army, in which he became certified to fly civilian
transport airplanes and helicopters.
Yates was stationed in
various countries outside the continental United States, including
Germany
and later
Somalia
during the
United Nations peacekeeping mission of the early 1990s. He
earned several military awards and medals during his 19-year
military career, including three Army achievement medals, three
Army commendation medals, two Armed Forces expeditionary medals,
and three meritorious service medals.
Murders
The murders Yates committed between 1996 and 1998 in Spokane all
involved prostitutes in Spokane's "Skid Row" area on E. Sprague
Avenue. The victims were initially solicited for prostitution by
Yates, who would have sex with them (often in his
1979 Ford van),
sometimes do drugs with them, then kill them and dump their bodies
in rural locations. All of his victims died of gunshot wounds to
the head; eight of the murders were committed with a Raven
.25-caliber
handgun, and one
attempted murder was linked to the same
model of handgun. One particularly bizarre detail of Yates' murders
involved the case of Melody Murfin, whose body was buried just
outside of the bedroom window of Yates' family home.
On August 1, 1998, Yates picked up prostitute Christine Smith, who
managed to escape after being shot, assaulted and robbed. On
September 19, 1998, Yates was asked to give a
DNA sample to Spokane police after being stopped; he
refused, stating that it was too extreme of a request for a "family
man".
Convictions
Yates was arrested on April 18, 1999, for the murder of Jennifer
Joseph. After Yates' arrest a search warrant was served on a 1977
white Corvette that he had previously owned. A white Corvette had
been identified as the vehicle that one of the victims had last
been seen in. Ironically, Yates had been pulled over in this
vehicle while the Task Force was searching for it, but the field
interview report was misread as saying "Camaro" not "Corvette",
thus the incident was not realized until after Yates had been
arrested. After searching the Corvette police discovered blood that
they linked to Jennifer Joseph and DNA from Yates that they then
tied to 12 other victims. In 2000, he was convicted of 13 counts of
first-degree murder and one
count of attempted first-degree murder in Spokane County Superior
Court. The judge sentenced Yates to 408 years in prison,
essentially a
life sentence. Yates
avoided the
death penalty by
confessing to the Spokane County murders in exchange for the life
sentence.
In 2001,
Yates was charged in Pierce
County with the murders of two additional women.
The prosecution sought the
death
penalty for the deaths of Melinda L. Mercer in 1997 and Connie
Ellis in 1998, which were thought to be linked to the killings in
Spokane County. In October 2002, Yates was convicted of those
murders and
sentenced to death by
lethal injection.
On September 5, 2008, a judge signed Yates'
death warrant, with September 19, 2008
given as the execution date.
On September 11, 2008, Washington Supreme Court
Chief Justice Gerry
L. Alexander issued a
stay of execution to allow the
defense time to file additional appeals.
Yates
currently is on death row at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Victims
| Name |
Date of discovery |
| Patrick Oliver |
July 13, 1975 |
| Susan Savage |
July 13, 1975 |
| Stacy E. Hawn |
December 28, 1988 |
| Patricia Barnes |
August 25, 1996 |
| Shannon Zielinski |
June 14, 1996 |
| Heather Hernandez |
August 26, 1997 |
| Jennifer Joseph |
August 26, 1997 |
| Darla Scott |
November 5, 1997 |
| Melinda Mercer |
December 7, 1997 |
| Shawn Johnson |
December 18, 1997 |
| Laurie Wason |
December 26, 1997 |
| Sunny Oster |
February 8, 1998 |
| Linda Maybin |
April 1, 1998 |
| Melody Murfin |
May 12, 1998 |
| Michelyn Derning |
July 7, 1998 |
| Connie LaFontaine Ellis |
October 13, 1998 |
References
- Fuhrman, Mark (2001). Murder in Spokane New York:
Harper Collins.
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