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Robert Lee Yates Robert Lee Yates, Jr. 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" on E. Sprague
Avenue. Yates also confessed to two murders committed in Walla Walla in 1975 and a 1988
*** 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.
Early life 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. In October 1977 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 and Haiti
during the United Nations peacekeeping missions of the 1990s. He earned several military awards
and medals during his 18.5 year military career, including three Army Achievement Medals, three
Army Commendation Medals, two Armed Forces Expeditionary Medals, and three Meritorious
Service Medals.Yates left the Army in April 1996.
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 *** was linked
to the same model of handgun. Autopsies of two of the victims indicated that the killer
was a marksman aiming for the heart. 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 ***
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, 2000, for
the *** of Jennifer Joseph. After Yates' arrest, a search warrant was executed 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. Coincidentally, 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 *** and one
count of attempted first-degree *** 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 is currently on death row at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Victims