Many Fear Yates Has More To Tell Detectives Looking Into Other Unsolved Murders

How does a man who thrives on killing stop for 13 years?

Once he’s tasted blood, how does he go more than a decade without his next fix?

Experts who explore the psyches of serial killers say the answer is simple: He doesn’t.

Spokane’s serial killer likely has more skeletons in his closet than the 13 he claimed last week, say several serial murder experts.

Robert Lee Yates Jr. pleaded guilty last Thursday to murdering two people in 1975, one in 1988 and 10 more from 1996 to 1998. He still faces first-degree murder charges in Pierce County for two 1997-98 killings.

But while Yates has a few traits that set him apart from most serial killers, experts doubt that includes a killing hiatus. His confession seems to indicate he didn’t murder at all for two long periods - 13 years, then eight years - before falling off the wagon each time.

“The only reason why he wouldn’t is if he’s in the hospital, jail or something like that,” says Bob Keppel, who runs the Institute for Forensics in Seattle. “I’ve never heard of one with gaps that long. We just haven’t found out what happened in between. He’s very afraid of that.”

Spokane investigators don’t believe Yates stopped killing for such long stretches, either, says Spokane County sheriff’s Sgt. Cal Walker. “We, the task force, don’t buy that.”

That’s why investigators are compiling lists of every unsolved murder in the area during Yates’ quarter-century of killing. “There are other open cases around here we’re not satisfied he hasn’t had an involvement in,” says Walker, head of the serial killer task force.

Neither does Walker believe Yates confined his murders to Washington state. Investigators are working with law enforcement agencies across the country and in Germany.

Vernon Geberth, a former New York City homicide detective who studies serial murder, says investigators should keep looking for victims everywhere Yates has lived - perhaps people who weren’t easy-prey prostitutes like his typical targets.

“He didn’t stop,” Geberth says.

More likely, Yates experimented with various killing styles and victim types over the years, Geberth says. He may not have left his telltale “signature” of gunshot wounds and plastic bags over victims’ heads.

“As he got older, his killing would become more sophisticated,” Geberth says.

Tomas Guillen, who wrote “The Search for the Green River Killer,” even doubts Yates was a novice that summer day in 1975 when he leveled a gun at a young Walla Walla couple picnicking along Mill Creek. The case confounded police for 25 years until Yates confessed.

“The way he did it … like a cold-blooded professional,” Guillen says. First-time killers “are just not that cool, no matter who you are.”

In many ways, though, Yates is more typical of serial killers than people might think.

When detectives exposed Spokane’s most notorious mystery man last spring, jaws dropped. A married man? A helicopter pilot who’d been awarded military badges and medals? A hot rod buff and father of five who neighbors knew as a really nice guy?

Surprise, say the experts. Even that bewildered community response was typical.

“That’s always what people think,” says Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston. “Serial killers typically are the last person you’d suspect. They look more innocent than an innocent man.”

That’s what makes catching them so tricky, Levin says. “Many serial killers are married, have partners and children. Many don’t kill as a career. They do it as a hobby while they’re working, caring for family, going to church on Sunday.”

It was John Wayne Gacy’s wife who complained about the stench in the crawl space under their house, where police later found bodies of boys he’d tortured and buried. Oregon serial killer Jerome Brudos kept a breast in the freezer, claiming it was a paperweight. Turned out the Oregon electrician - married with two children - had quietly turned the family garage into a torture chamber.

Most serial killers are single, but the Boston Strangler was married.

How can such deviants go unsuspected, even by the people closest to them? Easier than you’d think, says true-crime writer Ann Rule. The title of her book about killer Ted Bundy, “The Stranger Beside Me,” says it all.

Before Bundy’s arrest, he and Rule worked together at a crisis center. “Here I am sitting next to Ted for two nights a week for a year, and I’d been a Seattle policewoman and I was a crime writer. I thought, `I can really spot aberrance,”’ Rule says.

“But I couldn’t.”

Ironically, innocent people are more likely to come under suspicion, Rule says. She hears from at least three women a week who are convinced their husband or boyfriend is behind the unsolved Green River murders.

Other reasons serial killers go undetected: They have a knack for blending. Many are shy. They’re fairly smart. And, some experts say, they don’t feel guilty, so they don’t look guilty.

Besides his average-Joe demeanor, Yates has plenty in common with other serial killers. Most are white men in their late 20s or 30s. (Yates is 48, but admits to first killing in his 20s.) Most target people of their own race who are easy prey - the homeless, hitchhikers, runaways, prostitutes or drug users.

Some kill until they get caught; others quit when they become impotent. Some vow to kick the habit but don’t. “They think every single time is going to be their last time, their big finale,” says P. Terry Macdonald, a criminologist at San Jose State University. “And it never really is.”

Levin says Most move their victims’ bodies from the crime scene, and many get a thrill out of taunting police. In 1998, when partially decomposed bodies began turning up on a brushy South Hill lot, Spokane detectives wondered if the serial killer was moving bodies to taunt them.

Yates also apparently resisted sharing his adventures with others, revealing a resolve common among serial murderers.

“Serial killers are hard to catch because they do not talk,” says Guillen, the author and Seattle University professor. “They do not speak of their deeds, unlike the common criminal who gets caught because he mouths off.”

Men such as Bundy gave serial killers a reputation for being highly intelligent and unusually cunning. Most are clever with a good dose of common sense and a fascination with police procedure. But they’re also plain lucky, says Guillen. “The public image that these people are like Hannibal Lecter in `Silence of the Lambs’ is just not the case.”

Yates, he points out, made many sloppy moves, from openly cruising Sprague Avenue to leaving behind DNA.

Like most serial killers, Yates picked on strangers. “It’s usually vital to them that they do not know the woman beforehand,” Rule says. “They want the victim to just be an object so they can vent their rage.”

That may be one reason he pulled plastic bags over most victims’ heads, some experts suggest.

But why the rage? Why the seething desire to kill? The question still haunts community members and torments the victims’ families and friends.

Perhaps Yates knows - but, at least publicly, he hasn’t said.

Yet those who study serial killers point to several elements that could have converged to produce a man capable of raising four daughters and simultaneously murdering young women.

Eric Hickey, a Fresno State University criminologist who has interviewed many serial killers, suspects Yates’ trust in people was quashed early on - perhaps when he reportedly was molested by an older boy.

“He doesn’t know how to talk about it, so he buries it,” suggests Hickey. “The anger keeps fueling his fantasies, and that just pushes him over the edge. He was angry at whoever didn’t protect him.”

It’s “very, very common” for serial killers to have been molested as children, Hickey says.

Most abused children don’t become killers, he points out. But, Hickey asks, what if a molested boy also had a genetic predisposition for violence? What if, as in Yates’ case, his grandmother killed her husband by whacking him three times with a double-edged ax?

Molestation plus rage plus genetic, violent tendencies could equal serial killer, Hickey says. Even stress from his mother’s struggle with cancer or the demise of his first marriage could have fueled the fire.

Yates’ career as an Army helicopter pilot may have been an indication of his secret desires, Geberth says. Serial killers often are “obsessed with authority figures” and long for power themselves, he says.

Yates’ short stint as a guard at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla in the mid-‘70s may have been another quest for power, Geberth says. “Some people who place themselves in a job like that have sadistic backgrounds. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t taunt prisoners.”

Whatever the trigger, says Keppel of the Institute for Forensics, serial killers “choose to do this. It’s not because they have some screw loose or some pressure point in the brain. They have a choice. They like to do it.”

While no one really knows why Yates killed, experts say most serial murderers are sexually motivated. Some keep souvenirs from victims for sexual gratification. Walker, of the Spokane task force, says some of Yates’ victims were missing clothing but so far there’s no evidence Yates kept it.

He did, however, bury victim Melody Murfin just outside his bedroom window beneath an existing flower garden - even replacing the decorative bark, plants and plastic edging afterward, Walker says.

Maybe Robert Lee Yates Jr. wasn’t the serial killer Spokane residents had expected after all these years. But the experts are surprised by just one thing: that Yates used a gun. Most serial killers lust for intimate, hands-on death - perhaps strangling or knifing.

So what about the tears Yates shed during his guilty plea hearing last week? By the time the judge read the eighth murder count, Yates was dabbing his eyes with tissue.

It’s hard to find a sympathetic expert out there.

“Yates cried and confessed because it was self-serving to cry and confess,” Levin says, noting Yates avoided the death penalty.

Confessing also allowed him to avoid a trial that might have revealed embarrassing details about his sexual dysfunction, Hickey says. “By pleading guilty, he avoids a lot of evidence coming out.”

Guillen is already suspicious of the statement of remorse Yates’ attorneys have said he’ll make today when he’s sentenced.

“What I’ve seen historically is that these people don’t have remorse, and they will find any angle to stay alive,” Guillen says.

“What would have been a great indication of remorse would have been turning himself in. That’s remorse from the heart.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: ON TV

KHQ, KREM and KXLY each are scheduled to air the sentencing of Robert Lee Yates Jr. today. Coverage begins at 1 p.m.