Robert Yates (serial killer)

Robert Lee Yates (born May 27, 1952 ) is a condemned American serial killer , known as the "Spokane Serial Killer" . He has been proven 15 murders that he committed between 1975 and 1998.

Private life

Robert Yates grew up in Washington State , graduated from Oak Harbor High School on Whidbey Island and then attended college, which he left after two years. On August 27, 1972, he married his girlfriend Shirley, from whom he separated again after 18 months, because he wanted a relationship with his girlfriend Linda. After working for a few months as a prison guard in Washington State Prison in Walla Walla in 1975 , he married Linda on July 24, 1976. The marriage had five children.

On October 4, 1977, he entered the United States Army and was trained as a helicopter pilot. Yates was very successful in his following career as a soldier: As a pilot of a Bell OH-58 he took a. a. participated in Operation Desert Storm , the relief efforts after Hurricane Andrew and the UN peacekeeping mission in Somalia , where he was stationed in Germany in between. Until his honorable discharge from the Army on April 1, 1996, he was honored with numerous awards, including a. with eleven medals. After moving to Spokane with his family , he joined the Washington National Guard in April 1996 . There he reached the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 4 and was commander of the only Bell OH-58 unit east of the Cascade Mountains .

Series of murders

On July 13, 1975, in Mill Creek, not far from Walla Walla, he shot dead Susan Savage, 22, and Patrick Oliver, 21, whose bodies were found the next day. At the time, he was working as a prison guard in Walla Walla and was in Mill Creek at the time of the murders at target practice when he decided to kill the two teenagers who happened to be there.

Thirteen years later, in 1988, his series of murders of prostitutes in the greater Spokane area is said to have begun, which always followed the same pattern: after he had a prostitute get into his car, he had sex with her, then shot her and laid her down the body in a remote part of town. The victims were between 16 and 60 years old.

On December 28, 1988, the body of the killed Stacy Hawn (23), who was last seen alive on July 7th in Seattle, was found. In 1990 the corpses of the murdered women Yolanda Sapp (26), Nicki Lowe (34) and Kathleen Brisbois (38) followed. On May 13, 1992, Sherry Palmer (19) was found murdered. When the police were of the opinion that the perpetrator was now active in another state because of his long inactivity, the body of Patricia Barnes (60) who had been shot was discovered on August 25, 1995. After Shannon Zielinski (39) was found murdered on June 14, 1996, the perpetrator began to kill at ever shorter intervals. On August 26, 1997, two women were found murdered: Heather Hernandez (20) and the youngest victim of the series of murders, Jennifer Joseph, who was 16 years old and whose murder would later prove fatal for the perpetrator.

The police first came into contact with him on September 24, 1997 when an officer on a routine patrol stopped him for a traffic offense. Yates drove a white Corvette with a Washington license plate, the last vehicle in which murder victim Jennifer Joseph was seen alive. However, since the police officer incorrectly identified the car as Camaro in his report , Yates was spared a closer inspection of the task force that had now been established . In December 1997, the bodies of the killed Melinda Mercer (34), Shawn Johnson (36), Laurel Wason (31) and Shawn McClenahan (39) were found. In 1998 the perpetrator continued to strike; Sunny Oster (41), Linda Maybin (34), Melody Murfin (43), Michelyn Derning (47) and Connie Ellis (35) were murdered almost every month.

On November 10, 1998, Robert Yates was stopped again by a police officer while driving a silver Honda in a red light district of Spokane in the early hours of the morning . Sitting in the passenger seat, prostitute Jennifer R. Yates said she had looked for the young woman on behalf of her father to bring her home, which she confirmed by saying that she knew Yates personally. The policeman made a note of the incident and then let him drive on, and sent the incident report to the task force as required .

Investigation and arrest

Decisive clues for the later investigation of the murders came from the testimony of the 30-year-old prostitute Christine S., who told of an incident that occurred on August 1, 1998. That day she got into a black van with a 50-year-old white man in it. She jokingly asked him if he was the psychopathic serial killer the police had been looking for for so long, which the police said in a friendly no and told her during the journey that he was a helicopter pilot with the National Guard and a father of five. After spending about five to seven minutes in the back of the van, she suddenly felt a blow on the head and suffered a bleeding wound. The man suddenly became aggressive and robbed her, but she managed to jump out of the van and escape. At the hospital it was found that she had been struck on the left side of the head by a handgun projectile. The investigators assumed that the perpetrator thought he had already seriously injured her, whereupon she managed to escape via the passenger side in the moment of surprise. Christine S. named characteristics of the stature and face of the perpetrator.

The officers checked all police reports of incidents in Spokane's red light areas, noting the two incidents involving Robert Yates, whom Christine S. described fairly accurately. He was also a National Guard helicopter pilot and had five children, as the perpetrator reported to Christine S. With this knowledge, they invited Yates to a voluntary questioning in September 1999 and questioned him about the incidents. In the course of further investigations, he was able to prove that he owned a white Corvette for the period from September 1994 to May 1998. The car's new owner allowed searches and samples to be taken, which revealed the same fibers found on Jennifer Joseph's body. When the car was confiscated and examined more closely, traces of blood from Joseph were found. A witness now testified that Yates had access to a black van at the time of the attack on Christine S. When Jennifer R. was questioned again, she finally admitted to having lied during the 1998 traffic control so as not to be arrested. She doesn't even know Yates and her father didn't ask him to take her home either. Now the investigators were convinced of Yate's culprit.

On April 18, 2000, Robert Yates was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Jennifer Joseph, a search warrant was obtained for his property in Spokane, and Yates was ordered to have DNA samples taken. Based on his DNA and fingerprints , he was convicted of numerous murders, which is why he sought a trade with the prosecutor on October 16 and made a full confession to avoid the death penalty . Through his statements, another corpse could be found: Melody Murfin, reported missing, which he had buried in front of his bedroom window.

On October 26, 2000, he was sentenced to 408 years imprisonment for 13 murders he had confessed to and for attempted murder of Christine S. On September 20, 2002, two more murders could be proven, for which he was sentenced to death on October 4, 2002.

Yates, who is believed to have been the prime suspect in at least three other murders, is currently in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla , Washington , where he once worked as a guard himself. He was facing the death penalty. With Washington State abolishing the death penalty in 2018, Yates will remain in prison for life.

literature

• Body Count: The Terrifying True Story of the Spokane Serial Killer by Burl Barer, ISBN 978-0-7860-1405-7
• Murder In Spokane: Catching a Serial Killer by Mark Fuhrman, ISBN 0-06-019437-5

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Washington state abolishes death penalty. bbc-news12. October 2018 .