U.S.

Spokane Serial Kill Lab Results In

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 20, 2000 / 2:16 PM EDT / CBS

Definitive evidence ties Robert Lee Yates, Jr. to the slayings of nine women, and investigators are awaiting laboratory results in the deaths of three others, Spokane County officials said Friday.

Yates, a 47-year-old father of five, was charged Wednesday with one count of first-degree murder and is linked to the others through DNA and other physical evidence, Sheriff Mark Sterk told a news conference.

Detectives would not specify what evidence links Yates to each case, but Sterk and others have said it is a combination of DNA and other physical evidence.

Prosecutor Steve Tucker said additional charges will not be filed until police reports and DNA testing are received.

Investigators are awaiting laboratory results in three other cases they believe will be linked to Yates, Sterk said.

Authorities say the women all were drug addicts who supported their habits through prostitution. In Spokane, they worked an area east of downtown, but their bodies were dumped remote areas of the county.

The allegations come in the state's largest serial murder investigation since the slayings of at least 49 women in Seattle's Green River killings in the early 1980s. Those homicides remain unsolved.

The nearly three-year investigation by a task force of Spokane county, city and Washington State Patrol detectives resulted in Yates' arrest Tuesday in the August 1997 killing of Jennifer Joseph, a 16-year-old who had been in Spokane for only a month before her body was discovered in August 1997.

Serial Killings Suspect
Robert L. Yates Junior

Yates was being held on $1.5 million bail. He was under a "suicide watch," meaning jailers check on him every 15 minutes, Sterk said. There was no indication he had actually threatened to kill himself, the sheriff said.

His wife, Linda, and the couple's children were sequestered at a hotel, Sterk said, because investigators had sealed off the family's home in a comfortable middle-class area in this city of 188,000.

"This is a shock for the family," Sterk said.

The family has been described as unusually private and members have made no public statements.

After spending three days meticulously searching the home's yard for evidence, Sterk said officers still had not begun searching inside the house on Friday.

They have not found anything they think is a murder weapon, Sterk said. The slain women were shot to death.

Yates' arrest is the third this year dealing with the serial killing of prostitutes.

In January, Andre Crawford was charged with the serial killing of 10 prostitutes in Chicago. Earlier this month, ex-sailor John Eric Armstrong was accused of murdering five Detroit prostitutes and was linked to more murders worldwide.

The emergence of three possible serial killers in as many months is odd; such killers are quite rare. But the similarity of the victims is no coincidence, says criminologist James Fox.

"Prostitutes are the most common category of victims of serial killers," Fox says. "They find it easy to abduct them. They find it easy to kill them. They find it easy to get away with it."

Spokane authorities have been unusually confident they have solved the serial killings. Sterk, who was elected on a platform that included finding the serial killer, has repeatedly said that Yates is the perpetrator.

Public defender Richard Fasy has been assigned to Yates, and met briefly with his client on Thursday. He says Yates cannot get a fair trial in Spokane County because of media attention and will seek a change of venue. "I know it's a big case and the community has a right to know, but Mr. Yates also has a right to a fair trial."

Yates, an aluminum smelter strike replacement worker and Army National Guard helicopter pilot, was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Joseph.

Tips from the public and two police reports linking Yates to the city's red light district brought him to detectives' attention only recently, Sterk said.

Authorities in January tracked down a white 1977 Corvette that used to belong to Yates. A DNA analysis of blood smears found in the Corvette matched Joseph's blood, court documents said. Hair, clothing and other evidence that could have come from Joseph were also found inside the car, court records showed.

Authorities have seized eight vehicles Yates owns or formerly owned, and are also searching them for evidence. They are also looking for a Ford Mustang Yates sold in the fall of 1997, Sterk said.

Yates left the Army in 1996 after an 18-year career. He joined the National Guard as a helicopter pilot with the 66th Aviation Brigade, which trains once a month at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma.

Detectives from Tacoma were expected to come to Spokane to exchange information with the serial killer task force, Sterk said. The bodies of two women linked to the serial killings were found near Tacoma.

While in the Army, Yates was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y., and Fort Rucker, Ala.

Spokane authorities were working with the FBI to determine if there were unsolved slayings in places Yates had lived in the past, Sterk said.

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