DeWayne Lee Harris, convicted of brutally murdering three women, was as eerily defiant yesterday, moments before he was sentenced to 94 years in prison, as he had been during his trial.
His words sliced through the silence of the courtroom, haunting those who heard his dark visions of the future long after he had been escorted back to his cell in the King County Jail.
Jul 16, 2020 Gary Leon Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. He was convicted of 48 murders, but confessed to a staggering 71, spanning from 1982 to 1998. He earned his nickname after many of his victims were discovered along Washington’s famous Green River. Stafford Creek Corrections Center, Aberdeen, Washington George Waterfield Russell, Jr. (born April 1958), also known as The Charmer, is an American thief and serial killer responsible for the murders of three women in Seattle over the summer in 1990.
'Everywhere, it's going to be chaos,' said Harris, who was convicted of killing three women along a wooded area beneath Seattle freeways. The area is known as 'The Jungle'- a stretch of undeveloped land under Interstates 5 and 90 frequented by the homeless and drug addicts.
'It's more of us (killers),' Harris told King County Superior Court Judge Marsha Pechman, adding that his imprisonment would not keep her and others safe in their homes and apartments.
Harris added that justice, for the victims and their families, could not be served no matter how much prison time he received because he was still alive and still had certain privileges, even in prison.
How Many Serial Killers Are From Seattle
'I'll still (be) walking (around) the (prison) yard. I still got radios, TV. I'm still gonna kick it (live his life),' Harris asserted.
During his trial, he shouted obscenities at the judge, pushed chairs and tossed objects and argued continually with the prosecutor.
Harris, 35, sat strapped to a restraining chair yesterday, nibbling on candy and occasionally smiling as Pechman imposed the 94-year sentence.
'I have never run into anyone who has shown the kind of lack of reverence for human life,' the judge told Harris.
Harris was convicted last month, after three days of jury deliberations, of first-degree murder in the deaths of Denise Marie Harris, 42; Antoinette Jones, 34; and Olivia Smith, 27.
He had confessed in May, while in jail on an unrelated robbery charge, to killing all three women. But last month, during the trial, Harris recanted, saying he had killed only one of the victims.
'I just snapped,' Harris testified during the trial, recounting how he killed Smith.'I cannot lie. I snapped. I did kill her. That's the God's truth. I don't have to lie (about killing) Olivia Smith.'
Attorney John Hicks, who represented Harris, said he did not believe his client was evil but rather 'a part of a disturbed society that is responsible for producing extremely damaged and dangerous human beings.'
King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Jeff Baird suggested Harris'actions were especially difficult to accept.
'You get affected in different ways by every case,' he said. 'But the sad thing is that he exploited (the victims') vulnerability. He exploited their weakness. . . and that kind of predation is really repugnant.
'I don't think he has a really good appreciation for feelings of remorse.'
Ronald K. Fitten's phone message number is 206-464-3251. His e-mail address is: rfitten@seattletimes.com
Spokane Police Mugshot (2000) | |
| Born | May 27, 1952 (age 68) Oak Harbor, Washington, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Other names | Spokane Washington's Serial Killer The Spokane Serial Killer |
| Criminal penalty | 1. 408 years in prison, Spokane County 2. Death (commuted to life), Pierce County |
| Details | |
| Victims | 16+ |
| 1975–1998 | |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | Washington |
Date apprehended | April 18, 2000 |
Robert Lee Yates Jr. (born May 27, 1952) is an American serial killer from Spokane, Washington. From 1975 to 1998, Yates is known to have murdered at least 11 women in Spokane. Yates also confessed to two murders committed in Walla Walla in 1975 and a 1988 murder committed in Skagit County.
In 2002, Yates was convicted of killing two women in Pierce County and sentenced to death, but it was commuted to life without parole after Washington outlawed the death penalty in 2018. He is currently serving life in prison at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Is There A Serial Killer In Seattle
Early life[edit]
Yates was born on May 27, 1952 and grew up in Oak Harbor, Washington[1] in a middle-class family that attended a local Seventh-day Adventist church. Before his birth, his grandmother murdered his grandfather with an axe in 1945.[2]
Yates graduated from Oak Harbor High School in 1970. In 1975, he was hired by the Washington State Department of Corrections to work as a correction officer at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.[3]
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. Yates also served three years in the Army National Guard as a Helicopter Pilot from April 1997 through April 2000. He earned several commendation and service medals during his military career, including the US Army Master Aviator Badge.[3]
Yates left the active duty Army in April 1996, apparently a year and a half short of being eligible for his full retirement benefits and pension. At this time, the military was reducing its numbers, so he got his full retirement despite being short of the customary 20 years served. He then joined the Army National Guard in April 1997 and served three years until his arrest in April 2000. He served a total of 21.5 years in the military.[3]
He has five children (four daughters and one son) with second wife Linda, whom he married in 1976. The children's birth years range from 1974 to 1989.[1]
Murders[edit]
The murders Yates committed between 1975 and 1998 in Spokane all involved sex workers who worked along Spokane's East Sprague Avenue. The victims were initially solicited for sex work 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-caliberhandgun, and one attempted murder was linked to the same model of handgun.[4]
Autopsies of two of the victims indicated that the killer was a marksman aiming for the heart.[5] One particularly bizarre detail of Yates' murders involved the case of Melody Murfin, whose body was buried just outside the bedroom window of Yates' family home, while his wife was sleeping in the room[6]
On August 1, 1998, Yates picked up sex worker Christine Smith, who managed to escape after being shot, assaulted and robbed. She is Yates' only known attempted murder survivor.[7] 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.'[7]
Convictions and appeals[edit]
Yates was arrested on April 18, 2000, for the murder of Jennifer Joseph.[citation needed] After his 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 in which one of the victims had last been seen. 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.[8]
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.[8] In 2000, he was charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder in Spokane County Superior Court.[1] As part of a plea bargain in which Yates confessed to the murders to avoid the death penalty, he was sentenced to 408 years in prison.[9] Charges were dropped in the murder of Shawn McClenahan, however in a statement made by Yates, he apologized to her family and the other victims.[10]
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.[9] On September 19, 2002, Yates was convicted of those murders and subsequently sentenced to death by lethal injection on October 3, 2002.[11]
The 2002 death sentence was appealed on grounds that Yates believed his 2000 plea bargain to be 'all-encompassing' and that a life sentence for 13 murders and a death sentence for two constituted 'disproportionate, freakish, wanton and random' application of the death penalty. The arguments were rejected in 2007 by the Washington Supreme Court.[12] A September 19, 2008 execution date was stayed by Chief Justice Gerry L. Alexander pending additional appeals.[13]
In 2013, Yates's attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition in federal district court, stating that Yates is mentally ill and, 'through no fault of his own ... suffers from a severe paraphilic disorder' that predisposed him to commit murder. The still-pending motion is regarded as a 'long shot' by most observers. 'I don't think Mr. Yates helps his cause by relying on the fact that he's a necrophiliac,' said Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist.[14]
Yates remains incarcerated at the Washington State Penitentiary.[1] His case was further complicated by Washington Governor Jay Inslee's 2013 declaration that he would not sign death warrants for anyone on death row while he is in office. Inslee cited the high cost of the appeals process, the randomness with which death sentences are sought, and a lack of evidence that the penalty serves as a deterrent to other criminals.[15][16]
In July 2015, the Washington Supreme Court once again rejected an effort by Yates to overturn his conviction and death sentence.[17] After the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the death penalty violated the state constitution, Yates's death sentence, as well as that of Washington's other death row inmates, was commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.[18]
Victims[edit]
| Name | Date of discovery |
|---|---|
| Patrick Allen Oliver | July 13, 1975 |
| Susan Patricia Savage | July 13, 1975 |
| Stacy Elizabeth Hawn | December 28, 1988 |
| Shannon Rene Zielinski | June 14, 1996 |
| Heather Marie Hernandez | August 26, 1997 |
| Jennifer Ann Joseph | August 26, 1997 |
| Darla S. Scott | November 5, 1997 |
| Melinda Lee Mercer | December 7, 1997 |
| Shawn Johnson | December 18, 1997 |
| Shawn Ann McClenahan | December 26, 1997 |
| Laurie Page Wason | December 26, 1997 |
| Sunny Gail Oster | February 8, 1998 |
| Linda Marie Maybin | April 1, 1998 |
| Melody Ann Murfin | May 12, 1998 |
| Michelyn Joann Derning | July 7, 1998 |
| Connie LaFontaine Ellis | October 13, 1998 |
See also[edit]
References[edit]
Is There A New Serial Killer In Seattle
- ^ abcdSable Burns, Kari. 'Serial Killer Robert Yates'. www.karisable.com. Retrieved May 14, 2009.
- ^https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.true.crime/Gm3bFiVLTvc
- ^ abc'Robert Lee Yates was the Spokane serial killer'. Crime Library. p. 8. Archived from the original on March 7, 2005. Retrieved May 15, 2009.
- ^'Serial Killer Robert Lee Yates Jr'. www.francesfarmersrevenge.com. Archived from the original on April 22, 2009. Retrieved May 15, 2009.
- ^Barer, Burl (October 24, 2011). Body Count. New York: Kensington Books. ISBN978-0786030255.
- ^'Robert Lee Yates was the Spokane serial killer'. Crime Library. p. 11. Archived from the original on June 1, 2009. Retrieved May 15, 2009.
- ^ ab'Robert Lee Yates'. Retrieved May 15, 2009.[unreliable source?]
- ^ abFuhrman, Mark (April 30, 2002). Murder in Spokane. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN9780061098734.
- ^ ab'Wash. Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty for Serial Killer'. ABC News. Archived from the original on April 21, 2001. Retrieved May 15, 2009.
- ^Barker, Kim. 'Families lash out, killer apologizes'. The Seattle Times. Retrieved August 27, 2020.
- ^'Serial killer Yates sentenced to death'. The Seattle Times. October 3, 2002. Archived from the original on August 6, 2020. Retrieved September 25, 2012.
- ^'State high court upholds death penalty for Yates'. The Seattle Times. September 28, 2007. Retrieved September 17, 2014.
- ^'State Supreme Court grants Yates stay of execution'. KHQ-TV. September 11, 2008. Archived from the original on August 6, 2020. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- ^Carter, Mike (May 16, 2013). 'Serial killer Robert Yates Jr. seeks federal appeal of death sentence'. The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on August 3, 2015. Retrieved September 17, 2014.
- ^'Inslee halts executions in state while he is governor'. The Seattle Times. February 11, 2014. Archived from the original on February 12, 2014. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
- ^Millares Young, Kristen (February 11, 2014). 'Washington state to suspend death penalty by governor's moratorium'. The Guardian. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
- ^'Supreme Court rejects serial killer Yates' petition to overturn death sentence'. KCPQ. July 9, 2015. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
- ^Cornwell, Paige (October 11, 2018). 'List of inmates whose sentences are changed from death row to life in prison'. The Seattle Times. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
External links[edit]
- Robert Lee Yates, Jr. at Crime Library