Experts Condemn Yates Lie Detector Tests Detectives Also Doubt Results That Became Key In Plea Deal

Copyright, The Spokesman-Review, 2000

The detectives who caught serial killer Robert L. Yates Jr. are angry about the plea bargain that allowed him to escape the death penalty in Spokane County.

They sat quietly in court like good soldiers as Yates was sentenced to 408 years in prison Thursday - a week after he’d pleaded guilty to 13 murders.

But behind the scenes, the serial killer detectives are steamed that the plea bargain was put together before they completed their investigative work and without a chance for them to interrogate him.

A cornerstone of the controversial plea bargain was lie detector tests administered in June by an independent polygraph examiner, who concluded Yates was being “truthful” during the tests.

Yates admitted in a statement to killing “no more than 16 people,” all in Washington state, according to results of the two tests obtained by The SpokesmanReview.

Spokane task force investigators said they believe the lie detector results are phony - and that they were used to dupe Prosecutor Steve Tucker into the plea bargain.

Two detectives felt so strongly about the tests and the pending plea bargain that they met with Pierce County prosecutors during the summer without Tucker’s knowledge.

Also casting serious doubt on the validity of the Yates lie detector tests are three nationally recognized experts who examined them last week at the request of The Spokesman-Review.

Those experts said they believe it was wrong to conclude from the tests that Yates was telling the truth.

At best, the three experts said, no opinion should be rendered based on the test results.

That view is shared by polygraph experts for the Spokane and Walla Walla county sheriff’s departments.

All the experts, who examined the results independently of each other, said the lie detector test questions were poorly framed and Yates’ physiological readings were abnormal. Therefore, an opinion about Yates’ truthfulness can’t be rendered, they said.

If the Spokane County prosecutor relied on those tests to strike the plea bargain, he was duped by Yates and his attorneys, the experts said.

Frank Horvath, a professor of criminology at Michigan State University, said Yates may have attempted to beat the lie detector tests by employing countermeasures, including intentionally altering his breathing during the tests.

“I do not see a basis for concluding that Mr. Yates `answered the relevant question in a truthful manner,”’ Horvath said in a four-page report prepared for the newspaper.

Another expert, Ted Ponticelli of Post Falls, called the test results “garbage.”

“I would say that the test is invalid,” said Ponticelli, who has administered 10,000 criminal polygraph tests and does government contract work.

“I’d tell the prosecutor not to rely on the results of this test,” Ponticelli said. “He’s got egg on his face if he relied on these tests.”

In Los Angeles, lie detector expert Larry Peelen said Yates’ polygraph chart readings “are horrible.”

“The best these charts are is inconclusive, which means zero,” Peelen said. “It certainly doesn’t mean he was being truthful.”

After being told of the experts’ opinions, Tucker said Friday he may not have gone through with the plea bargain if he had known the Yates lie detector tests were inadequate.

But he defended his decision to reach the plea agreement, in which Yates admitted to six murders in addition to seven he was already charged with, and directed investigators to a missing woman’s body.

Tucker confirmed that task force detectives registered their disgust with the lie detector tests after they were reviewed in July by a sheriff’s department examiner.

Task force detectives “didn’t like the questions that were being asked” of Yates, Tucker said.

The prosecutor said the results of those polygraph tests helped convince him Yates was being truthful with his attorneys.

“The polygraph was an extra chip in the whole plea agreement to try and convince me that this was all he had done, so we don’t all look bad when they come up with other evidence of other crimes,” Tucker said.

“I hope he was telling the truth, but if he wasn’t, it is not going to stop any other prosecutions from going ahead, in this county or anywhere else.”

Examiner Lawrence Kuciemba, selected by Assistant Public Defender Richard Fasy and Tucker to administer the two lie detector tests, concluded that Yates was being “truthful.”

“Every effort was made for Mr. Yates to submit to a polygraph by an independent examiner (Kuciemba) who we believe is experienced and capable,” and does contract work for the state of Washington, Fasy said.

Kuciemba was out of town and didn’t return telephone calls left at his Spokane office on Friday and Saturday.

“It was pursued in good faith and submitted in good faith,” Fasy said of the lie detector tests.

Fasy said he stands by the “truthful” conclusion of the test results. But he declined to discuss the tests further because Yates still faces two aggravated murder charges in Pierce County.

Chuck Delgado, a polygraph examiner who works with Fasy in the public defenders office, said he was asked initially if he would perform the tests.

“I had nothing to do with these tests and know nothing about it,” Delgado said.

Tucker and Fasy said they didn’t use Delgado because they wanted to get a “more neutral” examiner who wasn’t affiliated with either sheriff’s investigators or the public defenders.

Tucker said the lie detector examination and Yates’ willingness to disclose the location of a victim’s body hastened the guilty plea and sentencing.

But that doesn’t satisfy investigators.

“This whole deal was rushed, and we didn’t get the answers to many of the issues that still exist,” said a task force investigator, who asked not to be named, last week.

Detectives still have four samples of human DNA, found on property owned by Yates, that they can’t connect with any of his admitted victims. That raises the possibility he killed others.

Investigators also haven’t recovered the .25-caliber pistol Yates used to shoot most of his victims in the skull, before wrapping their heads in plastic bags.

Yates also wasn’t compelled to answer detectives’ questions about murders he now admits to.

Yates took the lie detector tests in jail June 24, and the “truthful” results were immediately forwarded to Tucker, the prosecutor confirmed Friday.

The test questions were based on a handwritten statement Yates provided to the examiner before the tests began. The statement was not turned over to Tucker or detectives.

From that written statement and polygraph questions about it, the examiner concluded Yates was showing no deception when he said he’d killed no more than 16 people, all in Washington.

With those test results, the prosecutor and Yates’ public defenders reached a tentative plea bargain fewer than 90 days after his arrest.

Yates initially was set to plead guilty on July 20 to 16 murders, including two in Pierce County, sources and documents confirm.

But when Spokane investigators got wind of that deal, two task force detectives made a trip to see prosecutors in Pierce County in early July.

Pierce County Prosecutor John Ladenburg, running for election as county executive, immediately withdrew his two Tacoma murders from the Spokane plea bargain package being proposed by Tucker.

Yates is now in Tacoma, where he is to be arraigned Tuesday on two charges of aggravated first-degree murder that could result in the death penalty.

Tucker admitted he was angry after learning that two Spokane detectives had gone to see the Pierce County prosecutor.

Tucker said he talked about having them fired or charged with prosecutorial interference. But he said Friday it “was just talk and not a real threat.”

“I didn’t know the purpose of their trip over there,” he said.

Tucker said that after he found out about the detectives’ trip, he was contacted by Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk, who oversees the task force.

“The sheriff said he was sorry for that and asked me what I thought,” Tucker said. “I wasn’t happy.”

“At first I said they should be fired,” Tucker said. “Then I thought about a (criminal) charge, but there was no threat. I never threatened to do it.

“I’ve known these two guys for a long time since I was in the State Patrol,” Tucker said. “We worked together when they were on the road.”

His anger, he explained, was based on the belief that detectives should do investigations and leave prosecution decisions to the prosecutor’s office.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Cal Walker, who supervises the task force, said those lines of separation are clearly respected.

“Even though we may disagree with the eventual outcome of this case, it will have no impact on how we cooperate with the Spokane County prosecutor’s office,” Walker said. “We will continue to work with them cooperatively and in good faith.”

After Pierce County dropped out of the proposed plea agreement in July, negotiations didn’t resume until late September, when Fasy again contacted the prosecutor’s office, Tucker said.

Prosecutors in Walla Walla and Skagit counties were still willing to be part of the plea bargain to resolve three unsolved murders.

“They were kind of hedging with their victim (families),” Tucker said. “They said they’d found a killer, but they couldn’t tell them who it was.”

Spokane task force detectives went to Tukwila, near Seattle, the week of Oct. 9 to meet with other investigators from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. The topic: other murders possibly committed by Yates.

Attorney General Christine Gregoire attended, as did other prosecutors, but Tucker said he wasn’t invited.

When the Spokane task force detectives returned from the conference, they learned Tucker had struck another plea agreement. Tucker said the agreement with Yates was finalized Oct. 13, six months after Yates’ arrest.

On Oct. 19, he entered guilty pleas to 13 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder.

Tucker said he reserved the right to file additional charges if other evidence against Yates develops.

The prosecutor said he still has doubts about whether a serial killer could go for long periods of time without killing others. Yates confessed to killing two people in 1975, one in 1988, and the others between 1996 and 1998.

Told about the experts’ opinions of the lie detector tests, Tucker said he probably still would have gone through with the deal with Yates because he wanted Melody Murfin’s body to be recovered.

“I would still have had some of the same doubts I have anyway,” he said. “I still think I would have done the same thing.

“The polygraph was just an extra chip, you know. The defense attorneys decided to show me because it came out with a truthful result. I don’t know if I ever would have ever seen it if it had come up deceptive.”

Tucker said he personally doesn’t “think polygraphs are that reliable anyway.”

He said if Spokane task force investigators are angry about not being able to talk with Yates because of the plea bargain, it’s partly their own fault.

Tucker said he believes Yates would be answering investigators’ remaining questions if he weren’t facing two more charges in Pierce County.

“That is the irony,” Tucker said, referring to Ladenburg’s decision to withdraw from the initial plea deal after meeting with the Spokane detectives.

“I know they talked to him,” Tucker said, “and apparently he took something they said to heart because he changed his mind and he filed the aggravated murder charges.”

Tucker said the prospect of a death penalty “withdrew the chance of Yates answering their questions.”

“His attorneys tell me he wants to come clean and answer as many questions as possible, and that he wants to be studied by the FBI,” Tucker said.

“That may be part of what they’re going to be offering John Ladenburg in Pierce County now - the murder weapon, the full free talk, those things.”