#Spokane serial killer victims serial#
He has a couple of speeding tickets and a pending assault charge on his record, but nothing that hints at allegations of serial murder. "He was quiet, never caused a problem."Ī native of Washington, Yates moved to Spokane in 1996 when he retired from the Army. "Yeah, he was a regular," said Melanie Dunning, who manages the Spokane Budget Saver Motel, a low-slung, horseshoe-shaped building where Yates rented a $28.95 room a couple of times a month. Liked cars.īut along that strip of East Sprague, prostitutes and at least one motel manager knew this "family man." Yates's neighbors and co-workers quickly stepped forward to offer the requisite, banal descriptions: Quiet family man. The sheriff's department chaplain is raising money to help them. The family is staying in a motel while their house is searched by detectives. Investigators say Yates's wife and children, who are between the ages of 11 and 25, were stunned by the charges. A month later, they questioned a man on East Sprague who had just picked up a prostitute in a white Corvette. Looking back, investigators think they know why. Then, as suddenly as they'd started, the killings stopped. During that period, 12 more women were killed, 10 in Spokane and two in Tacoma, and dumped near houses, in fields, along remote roads. Then, from August 1997 to October 1998, bodies seemed to fall from the sky. Investigators suspected a serial killer, but were confounded by the long gaps between the killings. Between 19, three more bodies were found in the woods near Mount Spokane and in Tacoma, 290 miles to the west. During a four-month period of 1990, three women who worked as prostitutes were shot in the head and dumped along the banks of the Spokane River. This is overwhelming for a community of 450,000, a family-friendly city that might get 15 homicides in a bad year, the kind of place where people already have begun donating money to help the accused killer's wife and children.įor generations, prostitutes in Spokane worked a shifting, two-mile strip along East Sprague Avenue, cruising for "dates" behind adult book stores, tattoo parlors and used-car lots. "At this point," Sterk said, "there's no telling how many murders may be responsible for." Meanwhile, authorities in New York, Alabama and Germany-places where Yates reportedly was stationed during an 18-year Army career-plan to look at Yates in connection with similar unsolved slayings that occurred while he lived in their communities. In all, Yates is suspected in 18 homicides of women here. He expects lab results to tie Yates to three others by next week. Standing in a soccer field near Yates's split-level house, Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk said Friday his undermanned homicide task force has so far linked Yates's DNA to nine victims. With the arrest last week of Robert Lee Yates Jr., who was charged with murder in the death of one 16-year-old, investigators believe they've found him-a 47-year-old helicopter pilot and father of five who, they say, hunted and killed prostitutes for up to 10 years in this mid-sized city on the dry, low-tech side of the state. Written on the billboard were the words, "Help Us Find Our Killer!" For more than a year, a billboard displaying the somber faces of 16 women marked the unofficial entrance to a strip of taverns and hourly-rate motels at the edge of downtown.