Despite troubles, victims also had families

Shawn Johnson was proud of her new job as a grocery clerk.

Laurie Wason raised Rottweilers and opened her home to adults who needed a place to live.

Shawn McClenahan loved going to garage sales.

Though to many they are known only as prostitutes and murder victims, the women who have been linked to the Spokane serial killings also had loves, hopes and plans, their friends and family say.

"I really - more than anything else - want people to know these women had families. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters," said McClenahan's brother Patrick McClenahan. "How they died was not how they lived."

The emphasis on prostitution makes her angry, said Audrey Oster, Sunny Oster's sister. "That doesn't matter anymore. No matter what they did, they didn't deserve what happened to them."

Spokane Police say they have evidence linking 12 dead women to Robert Lee Yates Jr., the man who was arrested Tuesday in Spokane and charged Wednesday with one of the murders. In eight of the cases, DNA evidence is involved, officers said.

These are the women police have linked to Yates:

Sunny Gale Oster, 41

Earlier this week, Sunny Oster's 19-year-old son, Derrick, had a tattoo etched into his arm. It bears the name of his mother, with a halo surrounding it.

Though he's lived with his aunt Audrey since he was 7, "he never stopped loving his mom," his aunt said. "The tattoo was his way of dealing with it, dealing with the pain."

Sunny Oster was raised in Auburn and went to Spokane to enter a drug-treatment program, one she didn't finish.

Just months before she disappeared, Sunny, Audrey and their father spent an idyllic summer together in Auburn. "It was the most time we'd seen her, it was almost like God was leading the path for her," Audrey said.

Sunny spent time with Derrick, and the two sisters went swimming. "We laughed a lot. It was the relationship I always wanted, but drugs were always in the middle," she said.

Today Audrey is left with memories of her spirited sister. She remembers that when the pair took swimming lessons she wouldn't put her face in the water, but Sunny was jumping off the diving board at age 5.

"The pain is almost unbearable," she said. "But I always told Derrick the reason was drugs, not that she didn't love him."

Oster's body was on Feb. 28, 1998, in rural Spokane County.

Laurie Wason, 31

Laurie Wason and her friend Eckart Salquist shared a love of dogs - Rottweilers she brought to him for training. Several times a week, Wason and her husband would go to Salquist's home in rural Spokane County and put the dogs through a training exercise.

"She was a nice person and she really liked the dogs," he said. She also operated an adult-family home and was licensed by the state.

But Salquist also noticed her mood swings, her weight loss, her drinking, her lifestyle. When she was identified as another victim of a suspected serial killer, he was not surprised.

Wason's body was found Dec. 26, 1997, in a culvert along a road southeast of Spokane.

Shawn McClenahan, 39

Shawn McClenahan had a passion for Winnie the Pooh and loved to attend auctions and yard sales.

"She was always the one who would help the neighbors, she was always real giving," said her brother, Patrick McClenahan.

She married four times and had a son, now 22.

Her sister, Kathy Lloyd, a teacher in Spokane, said an addiction to painkillers Shawn took for an arm injury led to heroin and a life on the streets.

She had worked at a hospital laboratory, but had to quit because of the injury.

"I told her that I was really, truly worried about her safety," said Lloyd. "She said, `Don't worry, I can take care of myself.' I believed her."

In early December 1997, Lloyd received a birthday card from her sister, telling her how hard it was on the streets. But the card bore good news, too: Shawn had been accepted into a methadone program and was determined to leave her life of drugs.

Then Christmas arrived and Lloyd didn't hear from her sister.

She still grieves.

"We did everything humanely possible to get Shawn away from drugs," she said. "She wasn't working on Sprague because she wanted to."

McClenahan's body was found Dec. 26, 1997, in south Spokane.

Shannon Zielinski, 38

Shannon Zielinski lived in Tacoma before moving to Spokane in the early 1990s. She had an easy laugh, great sense of humor and she hated to wear shoes, said Lynn Everson, who counsels prostitutes in Spokane.

Though Zielinski was herself a drug user, she once convinced a pregnant woman to seek treatment for drug abuse.

She seemed, Everson said, too smart and too tough to be a victim. "She was the kind of person who fought the good fight to stay alive and would not give up. We were all very, very shocked when she was killed," Everson said. "It made everybody feel more vulnerable."

Zielinski's body was found June 14, 1996, near Holcomb Road and Mount Spokane Drive.

Darla Sue Scott, 29

Darla Sue Scott loved her family, especially her small daughter who lived with Scott's mother in Wenatchee.

Blue-eyed with brown hair, Scott visited a homeless shelter twice a week to chat with folks there. Friends said the shelter was a refuge from the drudgery of her street life.

"She was a person with a lot of difficulties, but she certainly was often a very thoughtful person about friends and family," said Everson. "One of the things to remember is that these women get up every day and deal with being treated so badly by tricks and the community. They often try to make things better" for others.

Her body was found Nov. 5, 1997, buried near Hangman Valley Golf Course South of Spokane.

She was buried on her daughter's fifth birthday.

Jennifer Joseph, 16

Jennifer Joseph, born of an American father and a Korean mother, had been popular and done well in elementary and junior-high school. She played classical piano and sang in the school choir.

But like many teens, she lost her footing as she entered adolescence. Her father said she began to hang out with the wrong kids, her grades slipped and she dropped out of school.

By the summer of 1997, her parents had divorced and she began spending more and more time away from her Spanaway home.

She told her father just before she disappeared not to worrry about her, that she could take care of herself. But Joseph never got her footing back.

Her body was found Aug. 26, 1997, near Forker and Judkins roads. She was killed by a gunshot.

Melinda Mercer, 24 Melinda Mercer loved eating tacos, watching movies and hanging out with friends.

Those who met her thought she was a sweetheart, with her red hair and flashing green eyes that seemed starved for affection.

When her life began spinning out of control, many tried to pull her back, but couldn't.

Mercer's body was found in a field in south Tacoma Dec. 7, 1997.

Shawn Johnson, 36

A spark of pride shone in Shawn Johnson's eyes; she was kicking her drug habit and working as a grocery clerk in Spokane.

She wanted to start taking an an active role in the lives of her family and child.

"She was trying to get it all together before calling her family, not to say, `I'm trying, but I did it,' " said Everson, the counselor.

"Something must have made her feel she had no choice but to go out because she was so proud to have a job," she said.

Johnson's body was found Dec. 18, 1997, near a sewage-treatment station in Spokane.

Heather Hernandez, 20

Heather Hernandez moved to Spokane in July 1997 from the Southwest.

Everson didn't know her well but said Hernandez struck her as smart, funny and level-headed.

"I never saw her drinking or using drugs," said Everson.

Her body was found Aug. 26, 1997, in an overgrown and abandoned lot in Spokane.

Linda Marie Maybin, 34

Linda Marie Maybin was known to some as Barefoot Linda for her habit of not wearing shoes in the summer.

She lived in Chesaw, Okanogan County; Cheney, Spokane County; and in Ellensburg, and had two children, one 7, the other 8.

Rose Marquis, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said Maybin's corrections officer wrote in her file that she seemed "genuinely sincere about changing her lifestyle" and wanted "to get clean."

Her body was found April 1, 1998, in Spokane.

Michelyn Derning, 47

Michelyn Derning was the daughter of a Marine Corps colonel.

She grew up a military brat, graduating from high school in Virginia and attending Palomar College in California before moving to nearby San Diego to be an executive secretary.

She married and had a son, but drugs cost her her marriage. She lost custody of her son.

She moved to Spokane in 1997, working in a variety of jobs, from ranch hand to nursing assistant. At one point, she renewed a friendship with a computer instructor she had met in San Diego.

He helped her find an apartment and befriended her but later moved away to Arizona.

Derning's body was found in a vacant lot east of downtown Spokane on July 7, 1998.

Connie LaFontaine Ellis, 35

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Connie LaFontaine Ellis grew in North Dakota.

Her father, Emil LaFontaine, said she wanted to be close to her mother and stepfather who lived in Spokane, and as a teenager moved there. She married and later divorced. She had two children but lost them both, one to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and another to a heart condition.

Ellis studied cosmetology and planned to be a hair stylist. She tried to get into treatment for her addiction problem, her father said, "but it just didn't work."

Ellis' body was found in Pierce County on Oct. 13, 1998.