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You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening, This is your host Stan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that
have written about them. On August twenty sixth, nineteen ninety seven, the half naked body of prostitute Heather Hernandez twenty was found in an empty lot in Spokane, Washington. The same day, the decomposed corpse of prostitute Jennifer Joseph sixteen was discovered in an alfalfa field. Both women been shot in the head.
The day after Christmas, four more women were found with plastic bags tied over their heads, the gruesome signature of a killer who had sexually violated each one of them after they had died, and then there were more victims. When the killer is finally arrested, it turns out to be a devoted husband a father of five, a National Guard helicopter pilot, and a desert storm veteran. Not since the Green River Killer had the Pacific Northwest ben so
terrified by so Savage, A serial killer. Robert Lee J. Yates Junior confesses the fifteen murders. My guest is Edgar Award winning author Burl Bear discussing body Count, the terrifying true story of the Spokane serial Killer. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview this evening.
Burl Bear.
Well, it's a pleasure to be here and where you're a future information. The town is called Spokane.
Ah, Spokane. Thank you very much for correcting me on that.
It looks like it's Spokane, but it's actually pronounced Spokane, a lovely town in eastern Washington. And you know, I almost didn't write the book. There were about thirteen other authors of buying to do the story of Rob the Eighth And actually there was another book called Murder and Spokane by Mark Furman, which I've never met, mister Furman, but allow me to say the book is totally inaccurate. So yeah, I mentioned that.
Yeah, that was going to be my first question because I thought it was very intriguing that normally publisher Pinnacle, the true crime imprint of Kensington Press, had approached you than you approach them. And you said it was because you were familiar with the social and cultural makeup the locales and your personal interaction with one or more of the principal care character central to the story. And yet you were hesitant. And yet you said you were hesitant
to write this book. Now, why are you hesitant to write this book and explain the social and cultural makeup of the area in which this incredible story takes place.
Well, his very first victims. It turns out we're actually friends of my family. This goes back to Walla Walla, Washington, which is a sleepy town of about well, officially twenty five thousand, it's actually more than that. It's in the southeastern Washington Tip and Patrick Oliver twenty one and Susan Savage twenty two grew up together in Walla Walla, Washington.
They've been friends in childhood. They were both well known people in the community, and the Oliver family and my family knew each other, and it's a close knit town. And back in seventy five, on July thirteenth, they went out for picnics, and they'd be home from time for in time for dinner, and they didn't come back. Their bodies were found in a recreational area ten east of Walla Walla, in an area called Mill Creek, near a place called the wickersham Bridge. It was a favorite outing
spot for the Olivers. They were both found murdered, their bodies under an old tire and an old sleeping bag. The murder was never found. It wasn't until years later, twenty five thirty years later when Yeates confessed that that murder was cleared up as well. They were friends of my family. In fact, his brother, years later, long before the Spokane serial killer, became well known as a frequent guest in my home, and so there was a connection there.
And then one of the murder victims, Darla, who is mentioned in her boyfriend Arthur. Arthur and I became friends in Seattle when he was managing an apartment building. He moved back to Spokane, and I had friends and relatives
in Spokane. My family went there for Bloomsday. My son in the Bloomsday marathon race, and on that day I stopped by to visit Arthur and his then current girlfriend, Darla, dropped by a very attractive young lady wearing very short cutoff jeans and obviously no enter pants, and she perceeded it proceeded to relate the fact that she just robbed somebody of six hundred dollars. I said, Darla, what are you talking about? Turns out dollar Darla was almost Freudian slip their dollar in.
Dara.
She was what we call in the polite vernacular, a twenty dollars horp. She worked the streets, but she happened to meet a very polite gentleman, traveling salesman who offered her six hundred dollars to spend the weekend with him in the finest hotel in Spokane. And he would do that, I believe, twice a month, regular as clockwork. She would be safe, she'd be well fed, she'd be with a
safe person, and like many people, that's lifestyle. Unable to look at the big picture, she took the first six hundred dollars and ran and I said to her, Darla, let me give you a piece of advice. This is how women in your line of work get disfigured or at worst killed, because men who are doing that are very emotionally sensitive. You may never remember him, but I guarantee you he will never forget you. And you do that to the wrong person, you're going to wind up dead.
The next time I saw Darla, it was photographs of her dead, decomposed body at the dumb site where she was murdered and left by Robert Lee Yates.
Well, incredible, incredible connection. I had no idea. I knew you're from the area, but this is amazing.
I lived in the same city with him, in Walla, Walla. My daughter went to the same school with him. I knew two of his victims I had met personally. Another one was a graduate of my same high school, although much older than I. So I was familiar with not only the cities, but the people. And Arthur made his sole rest in pace. He died of a stroke, a heart attack or whatever. He helped me with. Actually, the writing of the book put me in touch with a lot of the people I interviewed, and he gave me
an extensive interviews for the book about Darla. He actually saw Yates come and pick her up on their final date. Her body was found wearing his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt that he had lent her that day, so I knew these people. And it was because I knew I knew the people I had interacted that despite their other authors who wanted to do the book, the public said, hey, you're this is.
The guy right right now. What was the what was the community like you say, it's a little sleepy little place, and what was the what is Spokane like?
And because is a bigger city than Walla Walla lle he was living and he originally wasn't from Walla wall He was originally from I believe Oak Harbor, which is not too far from Uncle Teo, where I was also living at the time. By side the contract to write the book, he was working in Walla Walla, Washington, ironically as a prison guard correctional officer. In fact, in the book, there was a photograph of Robert Lee Yates taken his
employee photo. They take the employee photo and the convict photos in the same place, just like the booking photosh There's two photos of him in the book. One is his employee photo from the nineteen seventies when he was there was a correctional officer, and then the photo of him as a prisoner in the nineteen nineties after he was you know, founding and confessed, so he wound up right back where he was before.
Ironic. Let's go back you do early on in the book, go back to Robert Yates, his life, his early life growing up. What were his parents like? Obviously everybody wants to know what the upbringing in the life so they can either draw some conclusions from that or not. But tell us about his early life growing up.
Okay, Now, he actually came from actually a wonderful family. He had great parents, and you know a lot of people don't see pog can I can I blame myself? Was I a bad father? One on one thing and another In the hometown of Oaklarver, Washington, they don't call him Robert Lee as they call him Bobby to differentiate himself from his father. Interestingly enough, in nineteen forty five, his grandmother, wielding a double as the axe, violently ended
her husband's life. His viad's father, I have a quoter, says I was there. I heard the murder in the night. He found his father near death and his mother seated in a straight back chair in another room. She's given birth to eleven children, but under the stress of having a husband working away from home, and she simply broke. She spent seven years in a state mental hospital. According to h Now, according to those who new Robert HS Junior, the convicted Spokane serial killer, this is a kid who
was never in trouble. He was always practicing his upbringing. It was a good one. His upbringing was idyllic, healthy, moral, exemplary. He was, as far as everyone knew, he was nothing but a good kid. He you know, I mean, well, what do you do in the Olympic Mountains, by the Pacific Ocean, back padding, hunting, dirt back riding, fishing, wholesome activities of their other rule not the exception for a life on Winby Island. His father was an elder in
the Seventh day Adventist Church. It was a tiny congregation, less than one hundred people. This is a close knit family, good people. You know, nothing at all that would give you any indication that this kid had something wrong with him. You don't get any indication until the time of his first marriage. He was married twice.
Now before that you can talk about a little bit about his military career, because I ended up telling talking about him being a National Guard helicopter pilot and serving in desert storm. When did this all occur? Did this occur after gives.
After the first murder. The first murder was in Walla Walla, Washington. It was after that that he goes into the service.
How old is he when he does that, brol Oh boy, I'd have to look up the age, but the young man.
At the age of twenty is what his first marriage. She married as Shirley Nylander. They moved to college place where he enrolled in Swallow Wallah College, which is college places like a suburb of Walla wall It's the Seventh Day Adventist School. Eighteen months after the marriage, she moved out, went home and asked for a divorce. He didn't give her an argument. Seventy four, he gets married to Lynda Brewer,
who is a student at Walla Walla Community College. But his seventy four marriage to Linda was illegal and annulled because his divorce and his first wife wasn't final. Six months after the invalid ceremony, they did get get married. So but he went into the service. And you know, there is a suspicion that many unsolved murders in Germany, where he was stationed for a while. He may have been associated with that. There's nothing to really you know, back that up.
Right now. So is there any indication from did you have a chance to speak to his first wife at all? Was there any information? Well, there was.
He One of the problems with that is that when he was there in college place, there was this slight problem that he was running out the apartment dex store. There was an apartment next door, and he drilled a hole in the wall to watch his neighbors have sex. Now, everyone needs a hobby, but she is not usually considered socially appropriate. So that was a bit of a problem. But like I say, he went off he was in
the service. Then they only trouble he got in there was having done a little shooting from the helicopter to shoot a buffalo or whatever that they cooked up for dinner, which was an authorized use of military equipment. But as far as his military record know, he was I mean this guy. I mean even after arrested he said, this guy's going to be a model prisoner in those will follow orders. He was a hard working guy. Nothing lazy about this man. He was not afraid of hard work.
Had all I mean the work he was doing in Spokane was very difficult, demanding work. And he I can say he's had five kids who loved him, and a wife who was putting up with all sorts of nonsense. He was going through a lot of money. He lied and broke down and cried and told her he had a gambling problem, which wasn't wasn't the case. What his addiction was was prostitutes and illegal stimulants.
Now you make a point of talking about the area where the serial killer was hunting, and this is East Sprague if I'm not Sprague, yes, and so this is a strip where the prostitutes, the most vulnerable prostitute you may not get out of a phone book at an escort service. These ones are on the street.
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Flying their trade. Right.
If you read the book, and I and I and people have been reading it, it was re released Againjie, I guess last year, which I'm very happy to say it it's been selling well again. I always like that.
That's great, that's great.
I had I did a lot of research, and you know, there's there's so many myths and misunderstandings about UH prostitution and prostitution America. I mean, just ask yourself a simple question. If you wanted a rentable sex partner, where's the safest place to get one? Is where it's legal. You go to Nevada, you go to Perump, you go the Mustang ranch. You know there's not going to be any problems, You're not going to get a disease, no one's going to
rob you, right, and the girls are safe. When it's illegal, all bets are off. The majority of working girls as they're called working women or working men for that matter, are not on the street, that is the minority. Most of them also are not on drugs. That's also a myth. The majority of them work privately or they work through services. They're clean. If they were dishonest and rip off artists,
they'd be fired. But you have a small segment of women who for one reason or another, and I really try to get into business book to show that these are real people with real families, who have had things happen to them that have put them in this situation, and they're highly vulnerable and one of the real I've got to give a lot of credit to Spokane Police Department, Spokane Homicide Department. They did something brilliant and so admirable.
They went out to these women work in the street, and they went out to the pimps, they went out to the drug dealers, and they said, listen, drugs sex, okay, maybe some of it's misdemeanors, some of its felonies. Murder is an entirely different issue. Entirely, we don't care what you're selling. We don't care what sex you're having. Someone's killing people here, you know, this is all we care about. I don't care what drugs you got in your pocket.
I don't care how many hookers you got working for you. We don't want anybody getting killed. Here's my phone number. You can talk to me. I'm not going to arrest you. When I say I'm not going to wrest you today, it cont Sento's cop football bad nasenise I'm not going to arrest you today. What they mean is going to come back tomorrow. But these guys were smart. They knew there was a killer on the loose. They wanted to save lives, and so they built bonds of trust with
these working girls and the guys and the dealers. I mean, I mean, you had a strange alliance going on here. You had the police and the prostitutes and the drug dealers working together to try to catch this killer. And this was something that wasn't happening in Pierce County, in the Tacoma area, where this guy was also committing murders. They weren't that far sighted. They didn't They couldn't think
out of the box that way. The Spokane, thank god, did where they you know, they were talking to people, they would go right into the drug houses. They don't worry, we're not going to arrest you. We don't care what you got. We're trying to catch a killer. And that makes all the difference in the world. The girls knew they could talk to the police, the drug dealers, and they could talk to the police, you know, about this killer and not have it affect anything else.
Yeah, I think it's admirable that you do point that out, and it's a very admirable effort by the police force to to actually genuinely reach out to those people that might really help them. And that's another question. Go ahead, sorry, no, go ahead, now.
It's good. I mean, these are people that don't want to talk to the police. I mean, if you're if what you do for a living is tragically illegal, the last person you're going to talk to is a police officer, all right. So they had to gain their trust and say, listen, I don't care. I'm a homicide detective. You know, I might even taking notes on what drugs you're selling. We're trying to catch a killer here. You've got girls work
on the street. We want them to come back. We don't want them dead, you know.
Right now, getting back to this hunt for this particular person, obviously, when I introduced this story that he ends up confessing the fifteen murders. So we're just at a few here. You talk very much and very highly and it looks like you obviously had good access to the task force itself or the investigation itself. Now, tell us a little bit about the contact with FBI. What if any help was the profiling that's normally done in a case like this.
It wasn't. There wasn't. It was such a mess. I mean, I felt so sorry for these guys. You have a homicide task force in a city of Spokane. Spokane is it's much bigger than Walla, Walla. It's essentially a small town of limited resources. They put together a task force of the Spokane Police Department and some representatives from the Washington State Patrol. It's underfunded. Eventually, they did get some financial reimbursement from I think the federal government, but they're
working on a limited budget, limited resources. They become somewhat of a political football. And also you had another gentleman, a well fairly well known personality who had a radio show in town, who was continually talking about the case, getting the public riled up with a lot of misinformation, a lot of false leads, picking on the homicide task force and making their life difficult. When I showed up to do the book and I met with a homicide
task force. Usually when I go to meet with the homicide task force which has successfully solved the case, they're very happy to see me, right right, Not in this situation. They're looking at me sideways. A minute I walk into because there had just been a book, the other book that was written by another author called Murder and Spokane was originally written as an indictment of the homicide Task
Force for being so lousy and not having solved the case. Well, okay, and just before the book was about to come out, they solved the case and the author went to them and said, please tell me how you did it, Please give me access for information, and they said, I won't give you the exact wording, but basically came down to listen, you're a convicted felon. You've done nothing but make life difficult for us with the stuff you said on the air, and you can go do an interesting trick that defies
the laws of nature. We were going to do with you.
Yeah, right.
Then I show up and for all they.
Know, I'm like him.
Sure, And they wanted me even to sign some sort of an agreement with them that if I did this wrong or that wrong, I mean it was very very it was. I mean, I had to prove myself to them.
How'd you do that?
Might show some of your books, my books, my reputations, and I met with them repeatedly and about what my attitude was, and bless their hearts, and you know, they were still working on a deal even though Yates had confessed. There was a plea deal made between two different prosecutors,
one in Spokane and the one in Pierce County. And then that was if he would plead guilty and if he would tell them where one of the missing bodies, was that they take the death penalty off the table, and then the Pierce County prosecutor when they've done the deal, so then there was going to be a trial in Pierce County, and so things got kind of messy then in terms of my book was actually held up for almost a year because I couldn't get the photographs, and
even the photographs in the book aren't that great as far as true crime book photographs go, because they were going to be used an evidence in the trial. And also I think it was part of this so that they could stay in control. I think they had been there.
I say it in their opinion really screwed over by this other author, and as cooperative they were, and I really must say that Cal Walker of the Spokane Homicide Task Force and the other guys were all things considered absolutely fantastic to me, considering what they had been through and how angry they were with this other author, that they were wonderful to me, especially Cal.
Why did Pierce County renege on the plea agreement that you.
Have got me on that one? I don't know. They pulled a rabbit out of a hat somewhere. And even then, I don't know if you'll ever actually be executed, because if you know, if you if you don't execute Gary Ridgeway, the Green Confess Green River killer, which is a lot more bodies, Sure, how do you execute this guy? You do?
You do make a point in your book though, if the victims of any saying this they weren't interested in the death penalty, No, they weren't. Really, you know, usually that has some bearing on the situation, doesn't it.
Well, now that's a whole other issue on victim impact statements. Well maybe so officially, but when you do have sort of a majority of people that do not want the death penalty, I think it may be a factor, even though it's all an emotional Yeah, it can be in fact.
And I'm glad you mentioned this because it allows me to give a plug for my forthcoming book, which doesn't come out till January, which is called Fatal Beauty, where there's an entire section devoted to this is this very concept and the arguments over whether or not there even should be such a thing as victim impact statements when it comes to the outcome of something like that, which is a very highly debated issue.
Interesting.
Yeah, but you know, it's to me one of the fascinating things and that the Homicide Task Force ran into on this situation was public apathy, really, and this drove them nuts because he learned. Yates learned his lesson on that first killing. The first people he killed were well known, well respected young people in the city of Wallawah, and it was headline News front who rewards offered, et cetera. He got the hell out of town and he learned
a few things. One is, you don't shoot someone in they head with a three fifty seven magnum their heads in your lap to use a low caliber weapon. And if you're going to kill people, kill disposable people, people that other people don't care about, supposedly, meaning the hooker on Sprague, the street walker, like they're not real. Well, they are real people, and that's something I really wanted
to get across in my book. These were women that had moms and dads, and they had children that they're supporting. You know, somehow people get the idea that these aren't real people. Like one of them, the name is Cases. There's so many of them. Had worked for years in local hospitals. I had a reputable job, and their sister was a teacher and they were very very close. And she developed severe carpal tunnel syndrome and had the operation on her wrists. She couldn't work, she was on pain pills.
She loses, she couldn't continue her job, winds up being addicted to the pain pills. Then she doesn't have any medical insurance coverage. One that there's no health care. And when you've got high medical expenses and a kid to take care of and you can't work, and you're a woman, there's always something you can do.
Well. You know, it's another debate, but I certainly agree with you that prostitution should be legalized. In order to protect people at the level that everyone else expects to be protected by the police.
And that's not even a matter of legalization. If you talk to them, they don't want to legalize. They wanted to criminalize. And here's the interesting reason which most people never think of, and that is if it's illegal or illegal, is no difference because it's still controlled by the politician and the police.
Certainly, certainly those people would still be you know, those people would still be looking for a job outside of the uh. The establishment will say, yeah, but.
If it could, if it's dreak decriminalized, if they're unionized, if they have the same protection. I mean, the fact that a woman can be beaten to a pulp and can and can't go to the police, and Jesus, what were you doing? Well, I'm a prosecut Well it serves you're right. What do you expect? You wouldn't get that in any other job. I work at the seven eleven. I got beat to a pope. What do you expect working in a convenience store. No one would dare say that to you.
No, but Burrell just is not to not to argue the point. But at the same time, you've done You've covered a lot of cases, You've written about a lot of murder trials and murder victims. There is good victims and there are, as you say, less important victims. It seems to the public.
The public seems to think the real real key to the public and what cal Walker, the on the Side task for it said, there are people who believe, as long as he's killing prostitutes worth safe because he's not gonna come kill us, that these people are buffer as long as he's killing these girls on the street. And here's another thing that well, could these women go to shelters?
Could they go anywhere to be safe? Right? No, because up until a certain point, in order for a woman to go to a shelter, she had to be drug free.
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She wasn't drug free, they wouldn't take her in. So you what you're doing is you're just putting the most vulnerable people. I mean, the police didn't want to use the term prostitutes for drug addicts. They'd always preferred the term people of high risk lifestyle. Sure, and it's just putting them out there like bait for this guy. He knew who to get, he knew he could get away
with killing easier. It's like that guy up in Canada bumped off what eighty women or something, and the prostitutes themselves were going to the police saying someone's killing killing us. So how do you know they just didn't leave town?
Sure? Yeah, he had fifty for sure.
Yeah. And this is really and the thing is is that the women the Yates were killing was killing. These thirteen all knew each other. They all ran this same little crew. They were all, with the exception of a couple of them, were fairly scandalous. The little Asian girl that was killed, who actually the button off of her blouse was the damning evidence found in the corvette. She wasn't in the drugs, and she became a prostitute on summer vacation because she liked the job and she liked
the lifestyle. You know, everybody needs a hobby.
She's only sixteen years old too, so it's many people would think that that wasn't really an adult decision. A little bit more sympathy.
But you know, it's the strangest thing is some people certainly have different mindset. She wasn't a drug addict. She told her dad. She was very honestus, I liked the sex, I like the travel, I liked the lifestyle, and I'll be back in school in September. I mean, everybody's got their people thought at first, police said, well, maybe it was her boyfriend. Maybe you know, Nope, he was devastated as anybody because it wasn't him.
No.
What was tragic is this guy was driving a white Corvette and uh he was stopped and purely through a legibility error, the officer wrote instead of Corvette, wrote, I believe corvet, and it slipped through the cracks. It wasn't until years later, and by then he'd sold the car, but they did find the car, and even though had the car been sold and cleaned up, underneath the seat they found the button, the missing button, and they found the DNA on very of that that Asian girl, Jennifer Joseph. Yeah.
Yeah, And so from.
There it was it was as if she came back from the grave to capt to catch or killer. That it just it was just like the amount of a movie.
Interesting, Now, how long did this man hunt? Approximately go for.
Is years years And that was one of the problems is that, you know, they had trouble getting funding because they hadn't caught the guy. Everything was going to dead ends. There was one point where they really thought they had a lead because the tire tracks. Next to that, they got tire bowls from you know, one of the dump sites, right, and they found the exact same branded tire molds. Again, thank god, man, we got it. And they ran the tests.
You know what it was. It was the cars there are all the top cars.
Yeah.
And then it reached a point where they had a meeting one day in the Homicide Task Force. They all sat down and he thought, you know, maybe it's one of us. Maybe it's one of the guys in this room. And so they had they took DNA and everything from all the guys on amas I pass force. Incredible was them because it was just I mean, these guys arete
a version just I mean breakdowns over this. I mean because they're living it, and it's just one after another periods of silence in the be you know, two in one week, and they had people that they thought it was that they're following and they're getting DNFM and it's not them.
You know, Yeah, I found it interesting they had You had so many you devoted so much of the book to the exhaustive leads that these guys pursued. You know, they they had different descriptions of vehicles, they had different they had all kinds of leads that they pursued to the very to the very end conclusion. And you could see that certainly they had a lot of pressure to solve this case, but they had to take every lead seriously and then to its final conclusion, exhaust that lead
and then eliminate that suspect. So it was incredible, incredible story about the details of the investigation.
And as you know, and this is something that makes me not watching Nancy Grace, which I do occasionally listening to the Lee Vi Pages Show. And I wrote about this on in Cold Blog, you know, the number one crime blog side and I had Aaron Moriarty on my show and we talked about this. I call it water
cooler crime. You know, if there's an investigation in process right right, whether it's a missing kid or a killer on the loose, to sit around and pontificate on who you think did it is such a waste of time except for ratings, because if it's an investigation and progress, the police are not releasing the important information because the important information is what's going to help them catch the killer, and they don't want the killer to know they have
that information. So anything that they released for Nancy to talk about, or Levi to talk about, or you and I to talk about around the water cooler is useless. And so for people to sit around for an hour and well, I think so and so did it. I think so and so did it. That's when you have the situation that poor guy who killed himself after some talk show accused him of being a child killer and he had nothing to do with it. Sure you know, and then you got to wonder what's the culpability of
media and that sort of thing. I was on one of those shows and they asked him about Kaylee Anthony or something. I said, I said the same thing I just said to you. You know, if it's an investigation in process, in progress and still looking for it, you know who, I don't have the information to talk about it, and if I did, I wouldn't because then the killer would hear it. You know, let's here, let's be rational here, let's take care of something we can do something about. You know.
Well, the thing is I think the thing is though, that authors like yourself that are investigative journalists take this information, have sat through trials and actually, at the end of doing all your research and being involved completely, you actually understand how a trial is conducted and understand the process more completely than anyone else. That's just superficially looking at
the news. And I find that a lot of these pundents on TV, because they've got to do stuff all the time, they don't specialize, They really don't understand the law, and them speculating is you know, I don't listen to it too often because it's kind of ridiculous because you can't really, like you say, you can't have any more information than it's already been released, So to speculate who did what or how they.
Looked on TV or it scares me out there. And this does scare me. I'm not just saying it scares me for the sake of viperbole. Is the people who are it so eager to say the minute someone's arrested or someone's charged, and it is saying string him up, kill him, hang him, you know, chop his testicles off. Whatever. The guy has, a guy woman, whatever, hasn't even been to court yet. They could be innocent. And just because
someone's arrested doesn't mean they're guilty. And the thing of assumption of guilt, I mean, where's the person's supposed to get a fair trial anymore. It's difficult enough. And here's something that most people never think of. And this may surprise you. One of the purposes this has never discussed. You'll love this. One of the purposes of having registered sex offenders is so you've got someone to hang a case on when you can't solve it.
That's your opinion, right.
That's a fact. I could name you a case, but someone might sue me.
I don't know.
There is a case where there is a man in prison right now for life who it is known by the detectives and by a very well known forensic. What's you gonna call it? My mind has one blank worked
on the case that the guy didn't do it. And I said to the protective, to a detective in the city, because I followed the case, I went to and I said, according to the police, because this man was a registered sex offender and you immediately suspected him, you had him under surveillance twenty four to seven from this state on. Is that correct? I said yes. I said it was also testifying in court that the body of this child was moved on such and such a date approximately to
this other location before it was found. And his eyes just kind of averted, and I said, you know what I'm saying, he couldn't have done it, because if he had done it, you would have seen it. And his response was, well, at least we cleared the case. So I followed up on that, and I went to the medical expert who had examined the body and spoke to him, and he said the child wasn't strangled the child wasn't molested. Everything medical about the child was indicative that the kid
had been crying. The mother tried to silence the child with her hand over the kid's mouth and accidentally suffocated her child. Not Able to deal with that, she dumps the kid and reports that someone horrible did something to the kid. And where is it.
Well, the police didn't. Obviously the person you spoke to didn't have all the information.
Well, that's so you will also get in situation with it. You know, it's tragic for people to stop because there are so many wonderful police people out there, and so many wonderful homicide investigators. You can get in situations where you have political pressure, you have social pressure, You've got a really good, viable candidate to have done the job, and if you can close the case, you can close
the case. I'll give you an example. I know we're talking about BodyCount, but I'll mention I have a book called Murder in the Family, where it successfully prosecuted Kirby D. Anthony for the horrifying rape and murder of his own aunt and her two lovely little children. It's a terrifying case. The man's a monster. In my opinion, this tragic story.
They almost didn't pursue him because upstairs in the same building was a fellow of the approximate age range who was a previous who was a listed sex offender, and they were ready to go gung ho after this guy
lived right upstairs. The only thing that stopped him was they did have an FBI profiler involved, Judson Ray, who was involved, who said, no, he fits everything that you're looking for, except who ever did this because of the way that people were strangled knew them intimately, and this guy, even though he lived upstairs, he did not know them intimately. If they would have focused all their attention on that guy, the real killer would have got away.
Well, certainly, you also have those kinds of cases as well too, where you have an organized serial killer who very much like Yates here, doesn't have any criminal background. And when the police are looking for the suspects and they're weeding through a list of suspects because they don't have a criminal record, because they don't fit any kind of profile, they're the last people in the investigation.
You've hit on something really on the button there. And this is the tragic thing when you're dealing with these kind of serial killers of the last person you'd ever think of. When they went on TV that Robbert Lee Yates was arrested and it confessed to being the serial killer, one of the women who knew him was sitting in the restaurant and she saw him on TV. She about broke into tears. She knew him. In fact, she liked him so much. She had fallen in love with him,
even had taken him home to meet her family. She was a working lady, but she thought he was so wonderful. And then there was the woman who was the survivor, who did not know that she had survived him until after he was arrested.
Yeah, tell us a little bit about that.
He had picked up this particular young lady. He dated almost every working girl and spoke Anne. From from what I understood, he didn't kill all of them, as you notice, right, sure, but he was dating her and there was always the same thing. She was performing oral sex on him and all of and but he wasn't responding well. All of a sudden, she thinks that he's smashed her over the
head with something. All of a sudden, Oh, she's got to know, bang, it's her head And so she gets up and he wants his money back and she says, no, you know, I was doing what I was hired to do, and he's furious and she runs away. Well, about three months later, she's in a car accident on the other side of the state and goes to the hospital. They do X rays and the doctor says to her, are you aware of the fact you have bullet fragments in
your skull? She goes, what and apparently you see what he would do is is I don't know how sensitive your audience is to this sort of thing, but if they listen to this kind of program, they're not too sensitive. The woman will be performing oral sex on him, and if after seven minutes he didn't respond, he would pull out a low calimber weapon twenty two, twenty three, twenty four whatever it was, and in his right hand and place it directly behind what would be her left ear
and pull the trigger. Well, apparently this young lady a zigged when he thought she was going to zag, and the bullet, instead of going into her skull, grazed it. Well, of course it hurt. She thought she'd been hit in the head, and she went away, So the bullet did not penetrate her skull, but it's fractured. The bullet fragments in her head. Well, when she saw his picture on TV, she realized that was the guy who hit me in
the head. My god, he didn't hit me, he shot me. Incredible, But she didn't realize she was shot until later.
So she goes to court and that that ballistic evidence, that that's bullet fragment matches with the other kinds.
He would just say, yeah, well he did. He didn't kill her, but she certainly had a.
Headache, certainly, so she had her come up at court.
Yeah, well, I mean he's he's in prison. And you know, there were people I knew. There was one woman and I interviewed us in the book that she was on the street and Spokane. She was a heroin addic. She got clean and then she fell back off the wagon. So you know a lot of these people were only working the street when they had to h There was a subtext in my book that you'll notice there is towards the end, there's a statement in my book that
makes no sense. I don't know if you've come across it, but the statement where I say, and similar to the Linder case. And there's no reference to the Linder case in the book, so you might, well, what the world is mister Bear talking about the Linder case?
Right?
That was an editing era they took out from the book, an entire subtext of my book, because I guess they took it distracted from the story. I thought it was important in nineteen whenever the Harrison Act was passed. Harrison Act what nineteen nineteen something like?
That?
Harrison Act was a tax act, a one dollar a year wholesale tax act on direct distributors, okay, And people were afraid at that time that it was going to interfere with them getting their drugs. And that time there was no link between drugs and crime in America, and most of the drug addicts in America were Southern white women actually taking over the counter medications that had, you know,
addictive substances in them. And if you did have a drug addiction, you simply, much like in England, you just went to your doctor and your doctor gave you what you needed. Harrison Act was a one dollar a year wholesale tax to make sure that distributors that the people were actually writing prescriptions. Well, in Spokane, Washington, the same sitting, there was a doctor Linder. The collection of the revenue of the Harrison Act was given to the Department of Revenue.
They sent a woman to doctor Linder who said, my regular doctor is out of town. I'm going through withdrawals. I need some morphine and I need some cocaine. So he legally wrote her a prescription for three morphine tablets and three cocaine tablets, had her take one in the office, and had her space them out until her regular doctor was back in town. Next thing he knows, he's arrested and he is charged with some crime of giving these drugs.
He loses because the judge rather tells the jury, if you were to find the doctor Linder prescribe these medications to relieve the pain of someone with stomach cancer, that's okay. But if you decide that he gave those medications to alleviate the pain of her withdrawals, you must find him guilty. He was found guilty. He appealed it all the way
to the US Supreme Court, and he won. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the federal government has no right to interfere in the doctor's treatment of a patient and has no right to say what a reasonable amount of addictive medication is, and that he was perfectly within his medical right to alleviate the pain and suffering of
an addict by giving the addict what they needed. The climate at that time was such that doctors were still afraid to do that, and so the doctors stopped treating their atticts when it was cheap, and so whom lived moved in to do it for them. Organized crime, certainly, and up until van there had never been a link
between crime and drugs in America. Well, doctor Lindstrom was the medical examiner in Spokane at the time of this case, and he was arrested for an alleged impropriety with drug prescriptions and so s by a reference to Linder case. Had it not been for the fallout of the Lender case, you would not even have the subculture of street prostitutes and illegal drugs that made his victims possible. Certainly, Yeah, I can understand that subtext, certainly, and they took all
that out except the one reference to doctor Linder. One of the most overlooked Supreme Court decisions in American history. It was a very famous case with Elender versus the United States or US versus lender in any event that was also in Spokane, Washington. It's very tragic if we did not have the you know, I had on my show the guy who was head of law enforcement against prohibition, and as he said, if you just took all schedule one drugs in America and made them schedule two, the
problem would be solved. Your writer, prescription, you get it. You're done. Their cheap organized crime is out of it. The crime is out of it. The what you have is there's more money in corruption. You know, if there weren't so much money in corruption, it wouldn't still be the way it is. I think the thing is that sometimes there's a combination of things. It's politically, it's it would be a huge football to try to roll back drug laws or actually scale them back. Even to talk
about lifting mandatory minimums is politically suicidal sometimes. But I do agree with you the only way to.
Solve the problem. It might seem absurd to some people, but many people that have been involved with this police law enform and enforcement people have said, you have to legalize all drugs, you have to take organized crime out of it, because I mean, who's because I say what age you have to be to buy.
Alcohol where you are eighteen? How old do you have to be to buy cocaine?
Sure? Any agent?
Any age? Yeah, you know who's in charge of the quality, the mob, who's in charge of distribution? The mob?
You know.
But it's not that way in other countries, you know, and they don't have those problems, like I say, in America didn't have the leakage between drugs and crime until the nineteen twenties when it became illegal. It's just like prohibition. Prohibition didn't work with al Capone, and it doesn't work with these guys either. It's just that the corruption is so profer I had Norm Stamper, former chief of police of Seattle on and it'll be the first to tal you.
He says, it's a waste of police resources. It causes nothing but corruption, and you wouldn't have these I'm happy to say. However, you know, when Robert Lee, yes the Spokane killer, was captured. Prior to that, they did, thank god, establish a shelter for women where they could go, where they didn't have to be clean and silver in order to get in, because all otherwise they were just sitting ducks for him. They were just out there, you know, like fish in a barrel, so didn't have anywhere to go.
The minute he was captured, they wanted to close it. Fortunately, I think it was Volunteers for America came in and kept it open.
Well that's good, it's a very good thing. Now you talked about Yates confessing the fifteen murders. What was the deal? You say, the plea bargain was given up. But in the end, we're fifteen murders solved. Where the bodies of identifying the real tragedy? And this is in the book and poor count Walker or the Spokante homicide pask for just his stomach just sank with this, you know. They said, well, we're looking were the one, you know, we we haven't
found the haven't found the body. I remember what her name is is at the very very end of the book.
Uh. And he says, okay, I'll draw you a map, you know, to where the body is. Right and where the body was was at his home, buried in the room window. And they had, uh, they had torn that place apart, they'd had dogs, they'd had everything. He had brought her home as the ultimate trophy and buried her under his bedroom window.
Incredible.
And so when they started following him in the car to find out where he took that body, and they and cal Walker told me when I realized we were going back to his house, so I just got sick to my stomach. He says, how could we you know, how could we miss that she was us? I mean, it's just really really just training. And one thing they
never did find out. They never asked him and they never told I was thinking about this just the other day, of writing him a letter and asking him when he would shoot these women after the first time when he made the big mistake of using the three fifty seven, right, is he'd shoot him and he'd immediately put a paper towel over the wound, right, and then he'd put these paper bags over. They never could find where where the paper towels came from.
Yeah, I found that interesting that they they that was part of their investigation. They tried to track down the origin of those people.
Where's the paper towels? If you could fight buying him near the house or something, you know, what brand of paper towels? They never could find out what the hell kind of pied my language, what kind of paper towel was and they never did bought to ask. Of course, once he confessed, I was thinking about the other day because I mean, it's doing wall wall write what kind of paper towels? Were those? Incredible?
Incredible, even the plastic bags. They did an exhaustive investigation on where those bags might be and did some geographical sort of profiling to say this might be where he where he could have operated or.
Even able to take finally take prince or DNA or whatever is off the bags.
That was incredible.
I felt so sorry for his wife. Can you imagine how devastated that woman was. She was, what, having pie in a restaurant and they came and, you know, talk to her and says about your husband, and they said, oh god, if he's if he's in trouble, I'll kill him. And when they told her you know he's in trouble, Yeah, they didn't want to come and take him away, you know, in front of the kids and everything.
Did he I know, you to talk about the father supporting him despite the crimes. But basically, what was his demeanor in court? We only got about three minutes left, But what was Yeates like in court?
Did he really just the eighth the killer. It was like he was angry when he kept saying he'd read read the people's names. You know, Linda Maybeit, I'm sorry, you know, Darlas showing her I'm sorry, you know, it's like he wasn't sorry at all. He you know. Uh. But of course, I mean if the guy, if the guy is a psychopath, they don't have they you know, they don't have the emotion. They're missing the emotionship. Sure, and most of them can cry on cue because that's
the one thing they can do. But they really are incapable of feeling remorse. I mean, you can get mad at him for killing, but you can't get mad at him for not feeling remorse. They're incapable.
No, I agree with you too, because they always they also they always ask well that you know, jeez, did the guy show any remorse? Well, if he showed any remorse, it would be disingenuine anyway, or advised by his lawyers. So I don't really put too much stock in somebody showing the worse.
It was the only one I know of. Caitlin Rother, wonderful person, a wonderful author, wrote the book Body Parts, which team.
She's on next week. She's on next week talking about that book.
Yeah, give her my best regards and she'll tell you. Here's a guy who walks into a police station says, I'm a serial killer. You know, there's a guy with remorse, he turns himself in.
Well, I know somebody that turned himself in. But there was no remorse, so you know, that's not always an indication either.
So we at least the guy knew he was doing something wrong. You know. It was like Brent Turvey says, you know, why do they do it? It's simple. They tried it, they liked it. They did it again. Same reason. You go to the same Chinese restaurant, you try it, you like it, you do it again. Once you crossed that line between fantasy and doing it, you can't go back. I mean, you may fantasize about, you know, doing something sick.
Once you've done it, you've done it, and then when it comes to murder, there's no way you can take it back. You've killed once. What difference does it make if you do it again?
Sure? Well, we just got a little bit of a few seconds left. We're talking about the the book Body Count, the terrifying true story of the Spokane serial killer, Burl, tell our audience how they can contact you. You have a great radio show on your website. Tell our audience about when that is live and real, real easy.
If you go to outlaw Crime, all one word outlock crime dot com and you'll always get the news of who my guests are. I got a Mandal Lamb coming up to this Saturday. Gonn have you on in a couple of weeks?
Great fun.
Yeah, we we have all the best people, including you. If you go to outlaw crime dot com or Burl Bearer b U R L B A R E R dot net, you can always get hold of me and great. Thanks for so much for having me on the show. I really went by fast.
Well. Thank you very much. I know our audience appreciate and then it was a great pleasure for me to have you on the show. Burl.
Thank you very much for this interview. Okay, thanks, Hey, hi to Caitlin for me.
Next week I will and you have yourself a very good evening, Burl. Okay, you do bye, Okay, take care. You've been listening to the program True Murder the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, with your host Dan Zapaski, good night,