Yates to admit 13 killings to avoid death penalty

SPOKANE - To avoid the death penalty, accused serial killer Robert L. Yates Jr. is expected to plead guilty Thursday to killing 13 women, Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker said yesterday.

Yates, 48, a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot and married father of five, also pointed investigators to where he had buried one victim, next to his house on Spokane's South Hill.

Since his arrest April 18, Yates had said he was innocent. He has written letters to friends, saying that his wife believed he was innocent and that he was patching things up with his family.

But yesterday, he changed his story. He drew a map for the Spokane County Sheriff's Office, showing where a body could be found on the east side of his house. Deputies found human remains six to eight inches beneath the ground.

"Mr. Yates is remorseful," public defender Richard Fasy said of the plea agreement. "Mr. Yates wants to put this matter to rest."

In May, Yates was charged with eight murders in Spokane County. A killing in Skagit County and two in Walla Walla County had not previously been linked to Yates. Details about these victims were not released yesterday.

Thursday's pleading also may include two other Spokane County murders. No details were available yesterday.

Yates' plea deal with Spokane County would not preclude Pierce County from deciding to pursue the death penalty in two Tacoma-area cases, officials say. In July, Yates was charged with two murders in Pierce County, where he trained for the National Guard.

Yates lived in both Walla Walla and Skagit counties in the 1970s, and has visited since. His wife, Linda, is from Walla Walla.

Walla Walla County Prosecutor Jim Nagle said he was unaware of any unsolved murders linked to Yates.

"I don't have any information on that," Nagle said yesterday. "I understand they're talking to him about a bunch of unsolved cases."

Most of the murdered women were prostitutes and drug users. They started disappearing in 1997, a year after Yates retired early from the Army and moved his family from Alabama to Spokane.

The plea deal hinges on whether the body found yesterday is that of Melody Murfin, a presumed serial-killer victim missing for two years, Tucker said.

"None of the rest takes place if it's not Murfin," Tucker said.

Under the plea agreement, Yates would be sentenced to life in prison, not death. Aggravated murder is the only crime in Washington punishable by death.

Tucker said he has been agonizing for months over whether to seek the death penalty against Yates, largely because the evidence of so-called aggravating circumstances is weak. Those aggravating factors include requirements that the killings were part of a pattern, or were committed to conceal a crime.

"I feel good about it," Tucker said of the agreement. "The two families I talked to today thought it was great."

But he acknowledged that the families of some victims would prefer he sought the death penalty.

No court date has been set to enter the plea agreement.

Yates' confession also surprised people who had defended him since his arrest in April. Yates, who grew up in Oak Harbor, has written letters to friends from jail. He didn't discuss the charges, but he was positive.

"He said at the time, `It's in the hands of God, in the hands of the jury,' " said Al Gatti, who has received five or six letters in recent months from Yates, his childhood best friend. "He's not the person I know. Somewhere along the line, something's went haywire."

Linda Yates, married to Yates for 26 years, has taken her phone off the hook, said her father, Bill Brewer, of Walla Walla. She has refused to talk about the charges against her husband.

Brewer said he talked to his daughter yesterday afternoon, and that as far as he knew, "she's doing OK."

The family has been in hiding since the arrest.

Neither the discovery of a body at the Yates home nor the plea agreement surprised Brewer.

"I just don't let anything bother me anymore after what's happened," he said.

Yates also is supposed to plead guilty to attempted murder in an attack on a Spokane prostitute who survived a gunshot wound to the head in August 1998.

Yates, who often cruised Spokane's red-light district in a white Corvette, was linked to the killings by DNA and other physical evidence, authorities have said.

Spokane County sheriff's spokesman David Reagan said the body discovered yesterday was well-hidden and officers likely would not have found it if Yates had not drawn the map.

Sheriff's officers spent weeks searching Yates' house and yard after his April arrest.

The spot where the body was found had not been previously dug up by investigators, Reagan said.

"We dug everywhere we had an indication that Yates had ever dug," he said.

Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Kim Barker is included in this report.

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The victims

Among the women Robert L. Yates Jr. has been charged with killing:

-- Jennifer Joseph, 16, runaway from Spanaway. Death was linchpin in serial-killer investigation. Body found northeast of Spokane Aug. 26, 1997.

-- Darla Sue Scott, 29. Body found Nov. 5, 1997, along South Spokane road.

-- Shawn Johnson, 36, last seen north of Spokane in October 1997. Body found Dec. 18, 1997, near where Scott's body was found.

-- Shawn McClenahan, 39. Body found Dec. 26, 1997, in field in east Spokane, where two other bodies eventually were found.

-- Laurie Ann Wason, 31, a former adult-care home operator. Body found near McClenahan's remains on same day.

-- Sunny Oster, 41, mother of two sons, came to Spokane for drug-treatment. Remains found Feb. 8, 1998, south of Spokane.

-- Linda Maybin, 34. Remains found April 1, 1998, in the same field where bodies of McClenahan and Wason were found four months earlier.

-- Michelyn Derning, 47. From Southern California. Remains found in northeast Spokane July 7, 1998.

-- Connie LaFontaine Ellis, 35, Tacoma. Body found just south of Tacoma near Parkland on Oct. 13, 1998.

-- Melinda Mercer, 24, body found Dec. 7, 1997, in Tacoma.