Yates Arraigned In Pierce County Serial Killer Pleads Not Guilty; Prosecutor Seeks Death Penalty

When Robert Lee Yates Jr. uttered the words “not guilty” a dozen days after he confessed to 13 murders in Spokane, he drew gasps from relatives and friends of his alleged Pierce County victims.

“He’s sick,” said a friend of Melinda Mercer, a Tacoma woman Yates is accused of killing in December 1997.

“He’s a small man,” said another.

Yates was arraigned Tuesday in a packed courtroom at the Tacoma City-County Building. After agreeing to a plea bargain to save his life in Spokane, he faces a possible death penalty here, where he’s charged with aggravated first-degree murder in the deaths of Mercer and Connie LaFontaine Ellis. Pierce County prosecutors said LaFontaine Ellis was killed between Sept. 11 and 19 of 1998.

Prosecutor John Ladenburg said he believes aggravating circumstances exist in those murders, which could justify pursuing the death penalty. He has 30 days to decide on pursuing death, but he made his opinion clear on plea bargains.

“Any offer by the defense in exchange for the death penalty means nothing,” Ladenburg said. “I’ve never plea-bargained a death penalty case and I’m not going to start now.” Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker’s decision to accept Yates’ plea bargain has drawn criticism from some victims’ relatives, politicians and Spokane investigators.

Roger Hunko, Yates’ court-appointed attorney in Pierce County, has 20 days to present a mitigation package - the defense argument against pursuing the death penalty - to the prosecutor’s office.

Hunko said it’s “fairly likely” he will ask Superior Court Judge John McCarthy for an extension to prepare the package. “We’ve started it, but it’s a lot of work,” Hunko said. A pre-trial conference is scheduled for Nov. 16, when a trial date may be set. While Yates is charged with two murders in Pierce County, sheriff’s detectives there are dusting off other unsolved homicides to see if they can link him to those.

“There are some other cases that show some similarities,” said Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer. “We have nothing that says he is the person who did any of these killings, but we’re not ruling it out, either.”

There was a full house to see Yates’ first court appearance in Western Washington.

“I just wanted to make sure justice gets served,” said Ondraya Smith, the mother of Yates murder victim Sunny Gail Oster.

Smith, who sat in the second row, also spoke Thursday in Spokane before Yates was sentenced to 408 years by Superior Court Judge Richard Schroeder.

“The death penalty, I’m not sure about that,” Smith said Tuesday in the crowded hall before Yates’ arraignment. “When he started to plead for his life in Spokane, I started thinking, `Well, maybe the death penalty is what he needs. Maybe that would make him suffer.”’

Smith, who held her daughter’s cremated remains in a wooden box in the Spokane courtroom last week, said she continues to struggle with “mixed feelings.”

“You know you’re aching,” she said, “because your kid is dead. And the way he killed her is devastating.” Smith said she often thinks about “what I’d like to do to him.”

Also in the courtroom Tuesday was Lauri Anne Murray, a recovering drug addict who once worked the streets in Spokane with Yates victim Darla Sue Scott. Murray said she also knew Yates victim Laurie Wason.

Murray quit drugs and prostitution in 1996, she said, and is now a victims’ advocate at a women’s shelter in Tacoma.

She stared at Yates through a Plexiglas window in the courtroom. “He looks really familiar,” she said later. “I can tell you that.”

Murray said she attended the arraignment in memory of the women who were killed by Yates.

The women suffered in “lifestyles that they really didn’t want for themselves,” Murray said. “I do not want any of these women forgotten or not represented, and that’s why I’m here.

“Look at me,” Murray said. “I could have been one of his victims. I feel so fortunate.”

After Yates’ 20-minute court appearance, Ladenburg, who wore a navy blue pinstripe suit, white shirt, red tie and steel-tipped brown cowboy boots, held a press conference to outline his position on the case.

In court documents, Ladenburg argues that Yates robbed his victims and tried to conceal the murders - making the crimes part of a common scheme or plan, and therefore punishable by death. Both LaFontaine Ellis and Mercer had connections to drugs and prostitution, according to Pierce County investigators.

Ladenburg said he’s not concerned about the potential cost of a capital case or the fact that Yates has already been convicted in another jurisdiction.

“We spend our money where it does the most justice,” said Ladenburg, a graduate of the Gonzaga University School of Law.

Yates, 48, was sentenced to 408 years in prison for the murders of 13 people and one attempted murder. Yates also admitted killing Shawn McClenahan, though he did not plead guilty to that crime. Tucker withheld that charge in the event that Yates appeals his sentence or plea bargain. If that occurs, Tucker could refile the charge and pursue the death penalty.

Yates was originally charged in eight Spokane murders. Tucker accepted Spokane defense attorney Richard Fasy’s request to not seek the death penalty in exchange for Yates’ confession to 10 Spokane County murders, the recovery of the body of Melody Murfin and an admission of guilt in three unsolved murders.

Two of those murders occurred in Walla Walla in 1975 when Yates shot a picnicking couple. In the other, he picked up a Seattle prostitute, shot her and abandoned her body in rural Skagit County.

Murfin was discovered by investigators after Yates directed them to a spot in the yard of his South Hill home.

All but two of the victims he’s admitted to killing had ties to drugs, prostitution or both.

Nine victims were shot to death with a similar handgun and moved by car to remote sites and dumped. Most were found with plastic bags over their heads - considered by investigators as Yates’ signature.

Pierce County authorities found four plastic bags tied over Mercer’s head and three tied over LaFontaine Ellis’.

Tuesday’s crowded court scene was similar to Yates’ Spokane hearings.

In one room Yates was surrounded by attorneys, law enforcement officials and four members of the Spokane Homicide Task Force, who drove to Tacoma for his arraignment.

A viewing room for onlookers barely held members of the media, who outnumbered family and friends of victims and other interested onlookers.