The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (102 page)

April 1996, Yates moved his wife and five children to Again, semen was found that later matched the DNA of
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YATES, Robert Lee, Jr.

Robert Yates Jr. On December 7, 1997, pedestrians in searchers to her grave—beneath his bedroom win-Tacoma found the nude body of 24-year-old Melinda dow—in October 2000. More remains were found in Mercer discarded in a vacant lot. Four trash bags cov-the killer’s favored hunting ground on June 10, 1998, ered her head, ventilated with three .25-caliber bullets.

but missing pieces and advanced decomposition left Less than two weeks elapsed before the next murder in even the victim’s gender in doubt. Police had better luck Spokane. On December 18 a workman found 36-yearon July 7, when a transient found 47-year-old Michelyn old Shawn Johnson’s body on Hangman Valley Road, Derning in Spokane’s East Central neighborhood. Con-masked with two trash bags, shot twice in the head, her cealed beneath a discarded hot-tub cover, Derning had body stained with semen. The year ended badly, with been stripped and shot once in the head. No bullet was discovery of two more victims on December 26. Both found, but officers recovered a .25-caliber cartridge at lay in a gravel pit near Hangman Valley Road, each the scene. Unlike most of the victims, missing long shot twice, both hooded with three plastic bags. Thirty-before their bodies were uncovered, Derning had been one-year-old Laurel Wason was partially covered with seen alive one short week earlier.

foreign debris later traced to Yates’s backyard, and Yates logged his first failure on August 1, 1998, with semen on her body matched his DNA. Shawn McClena-32-year-old Christine Smith. He paid Smith $40 for oral han, age 39, also bore semen traces, and a fingerprint sex, performed in the back of his van, then shot her in from Yates marked one of the trash bags covering her the head when she proved unable to arouse him. Dazed head.

from the bullet’s impact, believing that she had been Police failed to identify their man from evidence col-punched by her “john,” Smith survived to file a police lected during 1997, since Yates had no criminal record report on the incident. Complaining of assault and rob-and his DNA was not on file. Investigators could have bery, she described her assailant as a 50-year-old white found his fingerprints in military dossiers, but their man (Yates was 46), five feet, 10 inches tall, with sandy search was limited to known felons. Yates suffered his blond hair. His van was black, a 1970s model with an first brush with the law in 1998, on a count of domestic orange exterior stripe, bucket seats, wood paneling violence against his wife, but the charge was dismissed inside, and raised bed in back. Ironically, Smith had without trial and detectives assigned to the ongoing asked the man if he was Spokane’s “psycho killer,”

murders made no connection between the dissimilar whereupon he replied that “he had five kids and would cases.

not do that.” Smith remained unaware of her gunshot On February 8, 1998, the semen-stained body of 41-wound until recurring headaches sent her to the emer-year-old Sunny Oster was found in a wooded area of gency room, where X-rays revealed bullet fragments in western Spokane County. Three trash bags covered her her face and skull.

head, drilled with two gunshot wounds, but only one Despite Smith’s clear description, detectives were no slug was recovered. Spokane residents held a candle-closer to their man. On September 3, 1998, they added light vigil for the murdered women four days later, 43-year-old Melody Murfin to the presumed victims’

while police announced ongoing investigation of 17

list. Missing since May 13, Murfin was another drug-unsolved murders reported in the area since 1984. The-addicted prostitute, whose disappearance caused alarm.

oretical links were drawn to the “Green River Killer”

Her body was not found until October 2000, when (later identified as GARY LEON RIDGWAY), although that Robert Yates directed searchers to a flowerbed outside stalker never used firearms. Another victim was found his home. Meanwhile, in October 1998, police in on April 1, 1998, dumped within 50 yards of the pit Lewiston announced a new investigation into the mur-where McClenahan and Wason were discovered. Linda ders of three more victims. The trio—18-year-old Maybin, a 34-year-old prostitute and drug addict, had Jacqueline Miller, 21-year-old Kristina Nelson, and 35-been shot once in the head, shrouded with two plastic year-old Steven Pearsall—vanished together from the bags. Semen from her body matched Yates’s DNA, Lewiston Civic Theater in September 1982. Pearsall while plant clippings strewn across her body were was still missing, but the women’s bodies had been traced to the killer’s backyard.

found together on a hillside near Kendrick, in 1984.

Those discoveries took time, however, and police Authorities suspected one killer at work in those mur-had few viable leads as they added the latest murder to ders, in the 1979 disappearance of 12-year-old their growing list. By April 14, detectives knew that vic-Christina White from the Asotin County Fair, and in tims Maybin, McClenahan, and Scott had all worked the mutilation-slaying of 22-year-old Kristen David.

for the same escort service, but that clue failed to iden-David had vanished on a bike ride from Moscow to tify their killer. Melody Murfin’s name made the serial Lewiston in 1981; her headless torso, with one leg murder list when she dropped from sight in May 1998, attached, was found eight days later, on the north shore but her corpse was not recovered until Yates led of the Snake River near Clarkston; her head, arms and
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YATES, Robert Lee, Jr.

part of one leg were found farther downstream the next day. (None of the latter crimes were ultimately linked to Robert Yates.)

Police questioned various subjects, including an unnamed “prime suspect” in the Lewiston murders, without result as the manhunt continued. The next bona fide victim, 35-year-old Connie Ellis, was found in Tacoma on October 13, 1998. One bullet was extracted from her head, which was swaddled in three trash bags.

Eight days later, Pierce County detectives voiced fears that a corpse in Parkland “could have been dumped there by the Spokane killer,” but no further details were released.

Robert Yates survived another near miss with the Robert Lee Yates is escorted into court in Spokane, law on November 10, 1998. He was driving a 1985

Washington, on May 31, 2000. (Reuters/Corbis)

Honda Civic when police stopped him at 1:25 A.M. in a neighborhood notorious for streetwalkers. More to the point, a known prostitute—one Jennifer Robinson—

was riding with Yates in the car. Yates claimed that and declined to provide blood samples for DNA com-Robinson’s father had asked him to find her and bring parison. Robinson, in a separate interview, admitted her home, an improbable story that Robinson con-that Yates had paid $20 for oral sex, and further confirmed to avoid spending more time in jail. Stymied, the firmed that her father lived outside Spokane and had officer released them and filed a report on the incident never met Yates.

which vanished into police files.

Deception focused suspicion more sharply on Yates.

Spring 1999 brought a flurry of news in the case. On Detectives learned that he had been grounded as a mili-March 9, a dog retrieved a human hand from woodland tary helicopter pilot pending medical evaluations during south of Snoqualmie, then led searchers to the skeleton 1997 and 1998, when many of the victims were killed.

of Jennifer Justus. Although she matched the Spokane Interrogation of his wife revealed that Yates once came victim profile, police quickly dismissed Justus as a pos-home from a late-night drive with bloodstains in the sible victim of the region’s elusive killer. On April 15, rear of his van. (Yates claimed he had struck a dog, then sheriff’s deputies visited a physician at home in drove it to a veterinary clinic.) Yates had destroyed the Spokane’s affluent South Hill district, deemed a “person bloody fabric from the van, but police traced his vin-of interest” in the February rape of a downtown prosti-tage Corvette to its new owner in April 2000 and tute, but they found no link to the serial murders. Two matched its carpet fibers to those found on Jennifer days later, Spokane police investigating another “high-Joseph’s body. Bloodstains from the car’s floorboard risk” victim’s disappearance found charred human matched Joseph’s DNA, and a button found in the car bones in the furnace of a downtown apartment build-proved identical to those on Joseph’s blouse.

ing. Scandal erupted on May 6, after police chief Alan Police arrested Yates on April 18, 2000, and subse-Chertok said informers had named his predecessor, quently matched his DNA to that found in semen Chief Terry Mangan, as a suspect in the slayings. Cor-recovered from six murder victims around Spokane.

nered by reporters, Chertok said that Mangan—subse-Publication of his mug shot in a local newspaper quently hired by the FBI—was not suspected of the brought confirmation from Christine Smith that Yates crimes “and never would be.” His previous comment, was the man who shot her in August 1998. Yates was Chertok claimed, “wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.”

formally charged with Joseph’s murder on April 19, The denial was too little and too late. Chertok resigned held in lieu of $1.5 million bail. One day later, debris from the police department on May 27, 1999.

from his yard was matched to the grave sites of victims Two years after the fact, task force investigators dis-Maybin, McClenahan, and Wason. That afternoon, covered the error on Robert Yates’s traffic citation from Sheriff Sterk told reporters, “We have Mr. Yates tied to September 1997, drawing the obvious link between his at least 12 of the homicides, possibly 18.” Announce-white Corvette and the murder of Jennifer Joseph.

ment of Yates’s arrest renewed scrutiny of unsolved Detectives interviewed Yates for the first time on Sep-murders in Germany, New York, and Alabama, where tember 14, 1999, recording a list of his vehicles and he had served at various times with the U.S. Army, but pursuing further details of his encounter with Jennifer thus far no charges have been filed outside of Washing-Robinson. Yates repeated his lie from November 1998

ton. New indictments in Spokane, filed on May 18,
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YOUNG, Lila Gladys

2000, charged Yates with the murders of victims Dern-they met Althea Ottavio and Patricia Hewitt, who were ing, Johnson, Maybin, McClenahan, Oster, and Wason, visiting from Georgia, and strangled both women, steal-plus attempted murder in the case of Christine Smith.

ing their money and car. Their bonus was a loaded pis-Exactly two months later, Pierce County prosecutors tol, found inside the glove compartment.

charged Yates with the murders of Connie Ellis and On June 7, the pair stopped briefly in Tulahoma, Linda Mercer.

Tennessee, where they murdered elderly John Whit-Yates initially pled not guilty on all counts, then taker, swapping the new victim’s car for their hot set of changed his mind in October 2000 and directed police wheels. Whittaker’s vehicle brought them to

to the remains of two victims buried at his home, over-Edwardsville, Illinois, where they murdered 35-year-old looked in previous searches. Newspapers announced a Albert Reed for the hell of it. Seven miles down the plea bargain on October 16, whereby Yates escaped the road, they looted a gas station and killed the attendant, death penalty while confessing 13 homicides in Skagit, Martin Drenovac, age 69.

Spokane, and Walla Walla Counties. The deal was for-By June 9, the lethal nomads were cruising through malized in court on October 26, and Yates received a Kansas, pausing at Wallace long enough to murder sentence of 408 years in prison. Dissatisfied with that Otto Ziegler, a 62-year-old road master for the Union bargain, Pierce County authorities pressed for capital Pacific railroad. In Craig, Colorado, they offered 18-punishment in the Ellis and Mercer slayings; Yates year-old Rachel Moyer a ride to California, dumping responded on November 1 with twin not guilty pleas.

her corpse in a riverbed outside town, where it would Jurors convicted him of those crimes on September 19, be found on June 11.

2002, then recommended execution on October 3.

By that time, York and Latham were in custody. The Judge John McCarthy formally sentenced Yates to FBI had started tracking them for violation of the Dyer death on October 9, 2002.

Act, prohibiting transportation of a stolen car across state lines, and federal bulletins kept local law enforcement agencies apprised of the duo’s westward progress.

YERSHOV, Vadim

On June 10, they were captured by a Utah sheriff and A Siberian army deserter, 24-year-old Vadim Yershov lodged in jail at Salt Lake City for interrogation.

went to trial in October 1997 on charges of raping, rob-On June 12, after 24 hours of stone silence, the pris-bing, and fatally stabbing 19 victims in the months after oners cracked, relating details of their rampage with a his unscheduled departure from military service. As a kind of twisted pride. They boasted of eight or nine soldier of sorts, he pled his case before a military tri-murders, and eight notches had been carved into the bunal in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, where he was handle of their stolen gun, but in fact there were only convicted and sentenced to death on June 9, 1998. Yer-seven dead. (The FBI later reported that two unnamed shov reportedly fainted as the sentence was pronounced, victims had survived their wounds.) Convicted in but the dramatic gesture may have been in vain. Russia Kansas of the Ziegler slaying, York and Latham were has suspended execution of death sentences in recent sentenced to death on December 19, 1962. Addressing years, although CAPITAL PUNISHMENT remains part of the court, they declared, “We killed together, so we the nation’s legal code. The Council of Europe has urged expect to die together.” They got their wish two and a Russia to abolish the death penalty as a condition of its half years later, mounting the gallows on June 22, 1965.