DNA Links Man to 9 Killings, Police Say

Investigators Friday released the names of nine women whose slayings they say are definitively linked by DNA and other physical evidence to Robert Lee Yates Jr.

Further lab tests are expected to tie the 47-year-old father of five to the slayings of three other women shot to death from 1996 to 1998, Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk said.

Yates, an aluminum smelter worker and Army National Guard helicopter pilot, has been charged with first-degree murder in just one case so far.

More charges are expected to be filed after more precise DNA tests are completed in a few days and police reports are available, authorities said.

“We don’t have to rush through it,” county prosecutor Steve Tucker said.

On Thursday, investigators said Yates was linked to at least a dozen slayings, but did not specify which killings or disclose the number of cases in which lab results definitively pointed to Yates.

Investigators also are looking for possible links to six additional killings in Washington dating to 1990, Sterk said. In all cases, the victims were involved in prostitution, drugs, or both.

Five of the six cases in which authorities have no hard evidence linking Yates occurred before he moved with his family to this eastern Washington city of 189,200 in March 1996.

For now, investigators are focusing on the other 12 slayings, Sterk said.

Sterk would not discuss what non-DNA evidence investigators have, or comment on whether a gun had been recovered from the Yates home or any of the nine vehicles investigators have seized.

All victims had been shot, with most of the bodies dumped in remote areas on the edge of town.

As Sterk read the names of victims who detectives believe Yates is tied to, the sister of one victim watched from behind a row of reporters.

“I’m shaking right now,” Kathy Lloyd said after her sister, Shawn McClenahan, was named as one of Yates’ alleged victims.

“I’m getting shakier as the days go on,” said Lloyd, who also is mourning the loss of her father, who died Tuesday.

Yates, who was arrested Tuesday, is charged only in the slaying of Jennifer Joseph.

Authorities in January tracked down a white 1977 Corvette that used to belong to Yates. A DNA analysis of blood smears found in the Corvette matched Joseph’s blood, court documents say. Hair, clothing and other evidence that could have come from Joseph were also found inside.

The bodies of all but two of the 12 women named Friday were found in the Spokane area. Two others were found in the Tacoma area, about 300 miles west of Spokane.

Investigators have not commented on a motive in the killings. They also have not offered ideas on why the killings stopped in October 1998.

Yates is held in lieu of $1.5 million cash-only bond at the Spokane County Jail. He was on a “suicide watch”--jailers check on him every 15 minutes--though there have been no indications he might kill himself.

His public defender, Richard Fasy, said Friday he could not comment on the allegations and had spoken to Yates just once in jail, and only briefly.

Fasy said he expected he would seek to move Yates’ trial out of Spokane County because of media attention and the difficulty of finding an unbiased jury.

Tucker said he probably would fight such a motion and will consider whether to pursue the death penalty.

“It appears that DNA will be a major focus of this trial,” Tucker said. “There is a lot of other evidence, but DNA will be the major thing.”

Sheriff’s officials sequestered Yates’ wife, Linda, and the couple’s children at a hotel because investigators have sealed off the family’s home in a comfortable upper middle-class neighborhood on Spokane’s South Hill.

The family has been described as private, and members have made no public statements.

Detectives Friday were examining the Yates property and the vehicles, all of them currently or previously owned by Yates or family members. Neighbors say Yates was a car buff who frequently bought and sold vehicles.

Investigators also are looking for a 1980 Ford Mustang that Yates sold in the fall of 1997, Sterk said.

Yates was an aluminum smelter strike replacement worker and Army National Guard helicopter pilot.

He left the Army in 1996 after an 18-year career. He joined the National Guard as a helicopter pilot with the 66th Aviation Brigade, which trains once a month at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma.