Robert Lee Yates
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| Robert Lee Yates, Jr. | |
|---|---|
 mugshot of Robert Lee Yates, Jr. |
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| Background information | |
| Alias(es): | Spokane Serial Killer |
| Born: | May 27, 1952 |
| Penalty: | Death |
| Killings | |
| Number of victims: | 16 |
| Span of killings: | 1975 through 1998 |
| Country: | U.S. |
| State(s): | Washington |
| Date apprehended: | April 18, 2000 |
Robert Lee Yates, Jr. (born May 27, 1952) is a convicted serial killer from Spokane, Washington. From 1996 to 1998, Yates is known to have murdered at least 13 women in Spokane County, Washington. All 13 of these women were prostitutes working on Spokane's "Skid Row" red-light district on E. Sprague Avenue. Yates has also confessed to two murders committed in Walla Walla, Washington in 1975 and one murder committed in Skagit County, Washington in 1988. In 2002, Yates was convicted of two murders of women from Pierce County, Washington.
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[edit] Background
Yates grew up in Oak Harbor, Washington on Whidbey Island in western Washington [1]. He grew up in a middle class household whose family attended a local Seventh-day Adventist church.
Yates graduated from Oak Harbor High School in 1970, and in 1975 was hired by the Washington State Department of Corrections to work as a prison guard at the State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. After working there for only six months, Yates enlisted in the United States Army. Becoming a helicopter pilot, he later 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 ill-fated UN peacekeeping mission of the early 1990s. He earned several military awards and medals during his nineteen-year military career, including three Army achievement medals, three Army commendation medals, two Armed Forces expeditionary medals, and three meritorious service medals [2].
[edit] The murders
The murders Yates committed between 1996 and 1998 in Spokane all involved either prostitutes or street walkers on Spokane's "Skid Row" area on E. Sprague Avenue. All 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 also linked to the same model of handgun [3]. On August 1, 1998, Yates picked up prostitute Christine Smith, who managed to escape after being shot, assaulted and robbed [4]. 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 a request for a "family man" [5]. One particularly bizarre detail of Yates' murders involved the case of murder victim Melody Murfin, whose body was buried just outside of the bedroom window of Yates' family home[6].
[edit] Convictions and additional investigations
Yates was arrested on April 18, 1999, for the murder of Jennifer Joseph [7]. 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 [8]. Yates avoided the death penalty by confessing to the Spokane County murders in exchange for the life sentence [9].
In 2001, Yates was charged in Pierce County, Washington with the murders of two additional women. The prosecution in Pierce County 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 [10]. In October 2002, Yates was convicted of those murders and sentenced to death by lethal injection [11].
Yates currently is on death row at the Washington State Penitentiary [12] in Walla Walla, Washington.
[edit] 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 | |||||||||||||
[edit] References
- ^ Serial Killer Robert Yates
- ^ Robert Lee Yates was the Spokane serial killer, from The Crime Library - The Crime library
- ^ Serial Killer Robert Lee Yates Jr
- ^ http://www.radford.edu/~maamodt/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Yates,%20Robert%20Lee.htm
- ^ http://www.radford.edu/~maamodt/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Yates,%20Robert%20Lee.htm
- ^ Robert Lee Yates was the Spokane serial killer, from The Crime Library - The Crime library
- ^ http://www.radford.edu/~maamodt/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Yates,%20Robert%20Lee.htm
- ^ Serial Killer Robert Yates
- ^ ABCNEWS.com : Wash. Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty for Serial Killer
- ^ ABCNEWS.com : Wash. Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty for Serial Killer
- ^ Search Results | Seattle Times Newspaper
- ^ Serial Killer Robert Yates
