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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 3: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening, This is your
Speaker 3: host Stan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most
Speaker 3: Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that
Speaker 3: have written about them. On August twenty sixth, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 3: the half naked body of prostitute Heather Hernandez twenty was
Speaker 3: found in an empty lot in Spokane, Washington. The same day,
Speaker 3: the decomposed corpse of prostitute Jennifer Joseph sixteen was discovered
Speaker 3: in an alfalfa field. Both women been shot in the head.
Speaker 3: The day after Christmas, four more women were found with
Speaker 3: plastic bags tied over their heads, the gruesome signature of
Speaker 3: a killer who had sexually violated each one of them
Speaker 3: after they had died, and then there were more victims.
Speaker 3: When the killer is finally arrested, it turns out to
Speaker 3: be a devoted husband a father of five, a National
Speaker 3: Guard helicopter pilot, and a desert storm veteran. Not since
Speaker 3: the Green River Killer had the Pacific Northwest ben so
Speaker 3: terrified by so Savage, A serial killer. Robert Lee J.
Speaker 3: Yates Junior confesses the fifteen murders. My guest is Edgar
Speaker 3: Award winning author Burl Bear discussing body Count, the terrifying
Speaker 3: true story of the Spokane serial Killer. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 3: and thank you for agreeing to this interview this evening.
Speaker 2: Burl Bear.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a pleasure to be here and where you're
Speaker 4: a future information. The town is called Spokane.
Speaker 2: Ah, Spokane. Thank you very much for correcting me on that.
Speaker 4: It looks like it's Spokane, but it's actually pronounced Spokane,
Speaker 4: a lovely town in eastern Washington. And you know, I
Speaker 4: almost didn't write the book. There were about thirteen other
Speaker 4: authors of buying to do the story of Rob the
Speaker 4: Eighth And actually there was another book called Murder and
Speaker 4: Spokane by Mark Furman, which I've never met, mister Furman,
Speaker 4: but allow me to say the book is totally inaccurate.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mentioned that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was going to be my first question because
Speaker 2: I thought it was very intriguing that normally publisher Pinnacle,
Speaker 2: the true crime imprint of Kensington Press, had approached you
Speaker 2: than you approach them. And you said it was because
Speaker 2: you were familiar with the social and cultural makeup the
Speaker 2: locales and your personal interaction with one or more of
Speaker 2: the principal care character central to the story. And yet
Speaker 2: you were hesitant. And yet you said you were hesitant
Speaker 2: to write this book. Now, why are you hesitant to
Speaker 2: write this book and explain the social and cultural makeup
Speaker 2: of the area in which this incredible story takes place.
Speaker 4: Well, his very first victims. It turns out we're actually
Speaker 4: friends of my family. This goes back to Walla Walla, Washington,
Speaker 4: which is a sleepy town of about well, officially twenty
Speaker 4: five thousand, it's actually more than that. It's in the
Speaker 4: southeastern Washington Tip and Patrick Oliver twenty one and Susan
Speaker 4: Savage twenty two grew up together in Walla Walla, Washington.
Speaker 4: They've been friends in childhood. They were both well known
Speaker 4: people in the community, and the Oliver family and my
Speaker 4: family knew each other, and it's a close knit town.
Speaker 4: And back in seventy five, on July thirteenth, they went
Speaker 4: out for picnics, and they'd be home from time for
Speaker 4: in time for dinner, and they didn't come back. Their
Speaker 4: bodies were found in a recreational area ten east of
Speaker 4: Walla Walla, in an area called Mill Creek, near a
Speaker 4: place called the wickersham Bridge. It was a favorite outing
Speaker 4: spot for the Olivers. They were both found murdered, their
Speaker 4: bodies under an old tire and an old sleeping bag.
Speaker 4: The murder was never found. It wasn't until years later,
Speaker 4: twenty five thirty years later when Yeates confessed that that
Speaker 4: murder was cleared up as well. They were friends of
Speaker 4: my family. In fact, his brother, years later, long before
Speaker 4: the Spokane serial killer, became well known as a frequent
Speaker 4: guest in my home, and so there was a connection there.
Speaker 4: And then one of the murder victims, Darla, who is
Speaker 4: mentioned in her boyfriend Arthur. Arthur and I became friends
Speaker 4: in Seattle when he was managing an apartment building. He
Speaker 4: moved back to Spokane, and I had friends and relatives
Speaker 4: in Spokane. My family went there for Bloomsday. My son
Speaker 4: in the Bloomsday marathon race, and on that day I
Speaker 4: stopped by to visit Arthur and his then current girlfriend, Darla,
Speaker 4: dropped by a very attractive young lady wearing very short
Speaker 4: cutoff jeans and obviously no enter pants, and she perceeded
Speaker 4: it proceeded to relate the fact that she just robbed
Speaker 4: somebody of six hundred dollars. I said, Darla, what are
Speaker 4: you talking about? Turns out dollar Darla was almost Freudian
Speaker 4: slip their dollar in.
Speaker 2: Dara.
Speaker 4: She was what we call in the polite vernacular, a
Speaker 4: twenty dollars horp. She worked the streets, but she happened
Speaker 4: to meet a very polite gentleman, traveling salesman who offered
Speaker 4: her six hundred dollars to spend the weekend with him
Speaker 4: in the finest hotel in Spokane. And he would do that,
Speaker 4: I believe, twice a month, regular as clockwork. She would
Speaker 4: be safe, she'd be well fed, she'd be with a
Speaker 4: safe person, and like many people, that's lifestyle. Unable to
Speaker 4: look at the big picture, she took the first six
Speaker 4: hundred dollars and ran and I said to her, Darla,
Speaker 4: let me give you a piece of advice. This is
Speaker 4: how women in your line of work get disfigured or
Speaker 4: at worst killed, because men who are doing that are
Speaker 4: very emotionally sensitive. You may never remember him, but I
Speaker 4: guarantee you he will never forget you. And you do
Speaker 4: that to the wrong person, you're going to wind up dead.
Speaker 4: The next time I saw Darla, it was photographs of
Speaker 4: her dead, decomposed body at the dumb site where she
Speaker 4: was murdered and left by Robert Lee Yates.
Speaker 2: Well, incredible, incredible connection. I had no idea. I knew
Speaker 2: you're from the area, but this is amazing.
Speaker 4: I lived in the same city with him, in Walla, Walla.
Speaker 4: My daughter went to the same school with him. I
Speaker 4: knew two of his victims I had met personally. Another
Speaker 4: one was a graduate of my same high school, although
Speaker 4: much older than I. So I was familiar with not
Speaker 4: only the cities, but the people. And Arthur made his
Speaker 4: sole rest in pace. He died of a stroke, a
Speaker 4: heart attack or whatever. He helped me with. Actually, the
Speaker 4: writing of the book put me in touch with a
Speaker 4: lot of the people I interviewed, and he gave me
Speaker 4: an extensive interviews for the book about Darla. He actually
Speaker 4: saw Yates come and pick her up on their final date.
Speaker 4: Her body was found wearing his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt that
Speaker 4: he had lent her that day, so I knew these people.
Speaker 4: And it was because I knew I knew the people
Speaker 4: I had interacted that despite their other authors who wanted
Speaker 4: to do the book, the public said, hey, you're this is.
Speaker 2: The guy right right now. What was the what was
Speaker 2: the community like you say, it's a little sleepy little place,
Speaker 2: and what was the what is Spokane like?
Speaker 4: And because is a bigger city than Walla Walla lle
Speaker 4: he was living and he originally wasn't from Walla wall
Speaker 4: He was originally from I believe Oak Harbor, which is
Speaker 4: not too far from Uncle Teo, where I was also
Speaker 4: living at the time. By side the contract to write
Speaker 4: the book, he was working in Walla Walla, Washington, ironically
Speaker 4: as a prison guard correctional officer. In fact, in the book,
Speaker 4: there was a photograph of Robert Lee Yates taken his
Speaker 4: employee photo. They take the employee photo and the convict
Speaker 4: photos in the same place, just like the booking photosh
Speaker 4: There's two photos of him in the book. One is
Speaker 4: his employee photo from the nineteen seventies when he was
Speaker 4: there was a correctional officer, and then the photo of
Speaker 4: him as a prisoner in the nineteen nineties after he
Speaker 4: was you know, founding and confessed, so he wound up
Speaker 4: right back where he was before.
Speaker 2: Ironic. Let's go back you do early on in the book,
Speaker 2: go back to Robert Yates, his life, his early life
Speaker 2: growing up. What were his parents like? Obviously everybody wants
Speaker 2: to know what the upbringing in the life so they
Speaker 2: can either draw some conclusions from that or not. But
Speaker 2: tell us about his early life growing up.
Speaker 4: Okay, Now, he actually came from actually a wonderful family.
Speaker 4: He had great parents, and you know a lot of
Speaker 4: people don't see pog can I can I blame myself?
Speaker 4: Was I a bad father? One on one thing and
Speaker 4: another In the hometown of Oaklarver, Washington, they don't call
Speaker 4: him Robert Lee as they call him Bobby to differentiate
Speaker 4: himself from his father. Interestingly enough, in nineteen forty five,
Speaker 4: his grandmother, wielding a double as the axe, violently ended
Speaker 4: her husband's life. His viad's father, I have a quoter,
Speaker 4: says I was there. I heard the murder in the night.
Speaker 4: He found his father near death and his mother seated
Speaker 4: in a straight back chair in another room. She's given
Speaker 4: birth to eleven children, but under the stress of having
Speaker 4: a husband working away from home, and she simply broke.
Speaker 4: She spent seven years in a state mental hospital. According
Speaker 4: to h Now, according to those who new Robert HS Junior,
Speaker 4: the convicted Spokane serial killer, this is a kid who
Speaker 4: was never in trouble. He was always practicing his upbringing.
Speaker 4: It was a good one. His upbringing was idyllic, healthy, moral, exemplary.
Speaker 4: He was, as far as everyone knew, he was nothing
Speaker 4: but a good kid. He you know, I mean, well,
Speaker 4: what do you do in the Olympic Mountains, by the
Speaker 4: Pacific Ocean, back padding, hunting, dirt back riding, fishing, wholesome
Speaker 4: activities of their other rule not the exception for a
Speaker 4: life on Winby Island. His father was an elder in
Speaker 4: the Seventh day Adventist Church. It was a tiny congregation,
Speaker 4: less than one hundred people. This is a close knit family,
Speaker 4: good people. You know, nothing at all that would give
Speaker 4: you any indication that this kid had something wrong with him.
Speaker 4: You don't get any indication until the time of his
Speaker 4: first marriage. He was married twice.
Speaker 2: Now before that you can talk about a little bit
Speaker 2: about his military career, because I ended up telling talking
Speaker 2: about him being a National Guard helicopter pilot and serving
Speaker 2: in desert storm. When did this all occur? Did this
Speaker 2: occur after gives.
Speaker 4: After the first murder. The first murder was in Walla Walla, Washington.
Speaker 4: It was after that that he goes into the service.
Speaker 2: How old is he when he does that, brol Oh boy,
Speaker 2: I'd have to look up the age, but the young man.
Speaker 4: At the age of twenty is what his first marriage.
Speaker 4: She married as Shirley Nylander. They moved to college place
Speaker 4: where he enrolled in Swallow Wallah College, which is college
Speaker 4: places like a suburb of Walla wall It's the Seventh
Speaker 4: Day Adventist School. Eighteen months after the marriage, she moved out,
Speaker 4: went home and asked for a divorce. He didn't give
Speaker 4: her an argument. Seventy four, he gets married to Lynda Brewer,
Speaker 4: who is a student at Walla Walla Community College. But
Speaker 4: his seventy four marriage to Linda was illegal and annulled
Speaker 4: because his divorce and his first wife wasn't final. Six
Speaker 4: months after the invalid ceremony, they did get get married.
Speaker 4: So but he went into the service. And you know,
Speaker 4: there is a suspicion that many unsolved murders in Germany,
Speaker 4: where he was stationed for a while. He may have
Speaker 4: been associated with that. There's nothing to really you know,
Speaker 4: back that up.
Speaker 2: Right now. So is there any indication from did you
Speaker 2: have a chance to speak to his first wife at all?
Speaker 2: Was there any information? Well, there was.
Speaker 4: He One of the problems with that is that when
Speaker 4: he was there in college place, there was this slight
Speaker 4: problem that he was running out the apartment dex store.
Speaker 4: There was an apartment next door, and he drilled a
Speaker 4: hole in the wall to watch his neighbors have sex. Now,
Speaker 4: everyone needs a hobby, but she is not usually considered
Speaker 4: socially appropriate. So that was a bit of a problem.
Speaker 4: But like I say, he went off he was in
Speaker 4: the service. Then they only trouble he got in there
Speaker 4: was having done a little shooting from the helicopter to
Speaker 4: shoot a buffalo or whatever that they cooked up for dinner,
Speaker 4: which was an authorized use of military equipment. But as
Speaker 4: far as his military record know, he was I mean
Speaker 4: this guy. I mean even after arrested he said, this
Speaker 4: guy's going to be a model prisoner in those will
Speaker 4: follow orders. He was a hard working guy. Nothing lazy
Speaker 4: about this man. He was not afraid of hard work.
Speaker 4: Had all I mean the work he was doing in
Speaker 4: Spokane was very difficult, demanding work. And he I can
Speaker 4: say he's had five kids who loved him, and a
Speaker 4: wife who was putting up with all sorts of nonsense.
Speaker 4: He was going through a lot of money. He lied
Speaker 4: and broke down and cried and told her he had
Speaker 4: a gambling problem, which wasn't wasn't the case. What his
Speaker 4: addiction was was prostitutes and illegal stimulants.
Speaker 2: Now you make a point of talking about the area
Speaker 2: where the serial killer was hunting, and this is East
Speaker 2: Sprague if I'm not Sprague, yes, and so this is
Speaker 2: a strip where the prostitutes, the most vulnerable prostitute you
Speaker 2: may not get out of a phone book at an
Speaker 2: escort service. These ones are on the street.
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Speaker 2: Flying their trade. Right.
Speaker 4: If you read the book, and I and I and
Speaker 4: people have been reading it, it was re released Againjie,
Speaker 4: I guess last year, which I'm very happy to say
Speaker 4: it it's been selling well again. I always like that.
Speaker 2: That's great, that's great.
Speaker 4: I had I did a lot of research, and you know,
Speaker 4: there's there's so many myths and misunderstandings about UH prostitution
Speaker 4: and prostitution America. I mean, just ask yourself a simple question.
Speaker 4: If you wanted a rentable sex partner, where's the safest
Speaker 4: place to get one? Is where it's legal. You go
Speaker 4: to Nevada, you go to Perump, you go the Mustang ranch.
Speaker 4: You know there's not going to be any problems, You're
Speaker 4: not going to get a disease, no one's going to
Speaker 4: rob you, right, and the girls are safe. When it's illegal,
Speaker 4: all bets are off. The majority of working girls as
Speaker 4: they're called working women or working men for that matter,
Speaker 4: are not on the street, that is the minority. Most
Speaker 4: of them also are not on drugs. That's also a myth.
Speaker 4: The majority of them work privately or they work through services.
Speaker 4: They're clean. If they were dishonest and rip off artists,
Speaker 4: they'd be fired. But you have a small segment of
Speaker 4: women who for one reason or another, and I really
Speaker 4: try to get into business book to show that these
Speaker 4: are real people with real families, who have had things
Speaker 4: happen to them that have put them in this situation,
Speaker 4: and they're highly vulnerable and one of the real I've
Speaker 4: got to give a lot of credit to Spokane Police Department,
Speaker 4: Spokane Homicide Department. They did something brilliant and so admirable.
Speaker 4: They went out to these women work in the street,
Speaker 4: and they went out to the pimps, they went out
Speaker 4: to the drug dealers, and they said, listen, drugs sex, okay,
Speaker 4: maybe some of it's misdemeanors, some of its felonies. Murder
Speaker 4: is an entirely different issue. Entirely, we don't care what
Speaker 4: you're selling. We don't care what sex you're having. Someone's
Speaker 4: killing people here, you know, this is all we care about.
Speaker 4: I don't care what drugs you got in your pocket.
Speaker 4: I don't care how many hookers you got working for you.
Speaker 4: We don't want anybody getting killed. Here's my phone number.
Speaker 4: You can talk to me. I'm not going to arrest you.
Speaker 4: When I say I'm not going to wrest you today,
Speaker 4: it cont Sento's cop football bad nasenise I'm not going
Speaker 4: to arrest you today. What they mean is going to
Speaker 4: come back tomorrow. But these guys were smart. They knew
Speaker 4: there was a killer on the loose. They wanted to
Speaker 4: save lives, and so they built bonds of trust with
Speaker 4: these working girls and the guys and the dealers. I mean,
Speaker 4: I mean, you had a strange alliance going on here.
Speaker 4: You had the police and the prostitutes and the drug
Speaker 4: dealers working together to try to catch this killer. And
Speaker 4: this was something that wasn't happening in Pierce County, in
Speaker 4: the Tacoma area, where this guy was also committing murders.
Speaker 4: They weren't that far sighted. They didn't They couldn't think
Speaker 4: out of the box that way. The Spokane, thank god,
Speaker 4: did where they you know, they were talking to people,
Speaker 4: they would go right into the drug houses. They don't worry,
Speaker 4: we're not going to arrest you. We don't care what
Speaker 4: you got. We're trying to catch a killer. And that
Speaker 4: makes all the difference in the world. The girls knew
Speaker 4: they could talk to the police, the drug dealers, and
Speaker 4: they could talk to the police, you know, about this
Speaker 4: killer and not have it affect anything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's admirable that you do point that out,
Speaker 2: and it's a very admirable effort by the police force
Speaker 2: to to actually genuinely reach out to those people that
Speaker 2: might really help them. And that's another question. Go ahead, sorry, no,
Speaker 2: go ahead, now.
Speaker 4: It's good. I mean, these are people that don't want
Speaker 4: to talk to the police. I mean, if you're if
Speaker 4: what you do for a living is tragically illegal, the
Speaker 4: last person you're going to talk to is a police officer,
Speaker 4: all right. So they had to gain their trust and say, listen,
Speaker 4: I don't care. I'm a homicide detective. You know, I
Speaker 4: might even taking notes on what drugs you're selling. We're
Speaker 4: trying to catch a killer here. You've got girls work
Speaker 4: on the street. We want them to come back. We
Speaker 4: don't want them dead, you know.
Speaker 2: Right now, getting back to this hunt for this particular person, obviously,
Speaker 2: when I introduced this story that he ends up confessing
Speaker 2: the fifteen murders. So we're just at a few here.
Speaker 2: You talk very much and very highly and it looks
Speaker 2: like you obviously had good access to the task force
Speaker 2: itself or the investigation itself. Now, tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about the contact with FBI. What if any help
Speaker 2: was the profiling that's normally done in a case like this.
Speaker 4: It wasn't. There wasn't. It was such a mess. I mean,
Speaker 4: I felt so sorry for these guys. You have a
Speaker 4: homicide task force in a city of Spokane. Spokane is
Speaker 4: it's much bigger than Walla, Walla. It's essentially a small
Speaker 4: town of limited resources. They put together a task force
Speaker 4: of the Spokane Police Department and some representatives from the
Speaker 4: Washington State Patrol. It's underfunded. Eventually, they did get some
Speaker 4: financial reimbursement from I think the federal government, but they're
Speaker 4: working on a limited budget, limited resources. They become somewhat
Speaker 4: of a political football. And also you had another gentleman,
Speaker 4: a well fairly well known personality who had a radio
Speaker 4: show in town, who was continually talking about the case,
Speaker 4: getting the public riled up with a lot of misinformation,
Speaker 4: a lot of false leads, picking on the homicide task
Speaker 4: force and making their life difficult. When I showed up
Speaker 4: to do the book and I met with a homicide
Speaker 4: task force. Usually when I go to meet with the
Speaker 4: homicide task force which has successfully solved the case, they're
Speaker 4: very happy to see me, right right, Not in this situation.
Speaker 4: They're looking at me sideways. A minute I walk into
Speaker 4: because there had just been a book, the other book
Speaker 4: that was written by another author called Murder and Spokane
Speaker 4: was originally written as an indictment of the homicide Task
Speaker 4: Force for being so lousy and not having solved the case. Well, okay,
Speaker 4: and just before the book was about to come out,
Speaker 4: they solved the case and the author went to them
Speaker 4: and said, please tell me how you did it, Please
Speaker 4: give me access for information, and they said, I won't
Speaker 4: give you the exact wording, but basically came down to listen,
Speaker 4: you're a convicted felon. You've done nothing but make life
Speaker 4: difficult for us with the stuff you said on the air,
Speaker 4: and you can go do an interesting trick that defies
Speaker 4: the laws of nature. We were going to do with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
Speaker 4: Then I show up and for all they.
Speaker 3: Know, I'm like him.
Speaker 4: Sure, And they wanted me even to sign some sort
Speaker 4: of an agreement with them that if I did this
Speaker 4: wrong or that wrong, I mean it was very very
Speaker 4: it was. I mean, I had to prove myself to them.
Speaker 2: How'd you do that?
Speaker 4: Might show some of your books, my books, my reputations,
Speaker 4: and I met with them repeatedly and about what my
Speaker 4: attitude was, and bless their hearts, and you know, they
Speaker 4: were still working on a deal even though Yates had confessed.
Speaker 4: There was a plea deal made between two different prosecutors,
Speaker 4: one in Spokane and the one in Pierce County. And
Speaker 4: then that was if he would plead guilty and if
Speaker 4: he would tell them where one of the missing bodies,
Speaker 4: was that they take the death penalty off the table,
Speaker 4: and then the Pierce County prosecutor when they've done the deal,
Speaker 4: so then there was going to be a trial in
Speaker 4: Pierce County, and so things got kind of messy then
Speaker 4: in terms of my book was actually held up for
Speaker 4: almost a year because I couldn't get the photographs, and
Speaker 4: even the photographs in the book aren't that great as
Speaker 4: far as true crime book photographs go, because they were
Speaker 4: going to be used an evidence in the trial. And
Speaker 4: also I think it was part of this so that
Speaker 4: they could stay in control. I think they had been there.
Speaker 4: I say it in their opinion really screwed over by
Speaker 4: this other author, and as cooperative they were, and I
Speaker 4: really must say that Cal Walker of the Spokane Homicide
Speaker 4: Task Force and the other guys were all things considered
Speaker 4: absolutely fantastic to me, considering what they had been through
Speaker 4: and how angry they were with this other author, that
Speaker 4: they were wonderful to me, especially Cal.
Speaker 2: Why did Pierce County renege on the plea agreement that you.
Speaker 4: Have got me on that one? I don't know. They
Speaker 4: pulled a rabbit out of a hat somewhere. And even then,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you'll ever actually be executed, because
Speaker 4: if you know, if you if you don't execute Gary Ridgeway,
Speaker 4: the Green Confess Green River killer, which is a lot
Speaker 4: more bodies, Sure, how do you execute this guy? You do?
Speaker 2: You do make a point in your book though, if
Speaker 2: the victims of any saying this they weren't interested in
Speaker 2: the death penalty, No, they weren't. Really, you know, usually
Speaker 2: that has some bearing on the situation, doesn't it.
Speaker 4: Well, now that's a whole other issue on victim impact statements.
Speaker 4: Well maybe so officially, but when you do have sort
Speaker 4: of a majority of people that do not want the
Speaker 4: death penalty, I think it may be a factor, even
Speaker 4: though it's all an emotional Yeah, it can be in fact.
Speaker 4: And I'm glad you mentioned this because it allows me
Speaker 4: to give a plug for my forthcoming book, which doesn't
Speaker 4: come out till January, which is called Fatal Beauty, where
Speaker 4: there's an entire section devoted to this is this very
Speaker 4: concept and the arguments over whether or not there even
Speaker 4: should be such a thing as victim impact statements when
Speaker 4: it comes to the outcome of something like that, which
Speaker 4: is a very highly debated issue.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, it's to me one of the
Speaker 4: fascinating things and that the Homicide Task Force ran into
Speaker 4: on this situation was public apathy, really, and this drove
Speaker 4: them nuts because he learned. Yates learned his lesson on
Speaker 4: that first killing. The first people he killed were well known,
Speaker 4: well respected young people in the city of Wallawah, and
Speaker 4: it was headline News front who rewards offered, et cetera.
Speaker 4: He got the hell out of town and he learned
Speaker 4: a few things. One is, you don't shoot someone in
Speaker 4: they head with a three fifty seven magnum their heads
Speaker 4: in your lap to use a low caliber weapon. And
Speaker 4: if you're going to kill people, kill disposable people, people
Speaker 4: that other people don't care about, supposedly, meaning the hooker
Speaker 4: on Sprague, the street walker, like they're not real. Well,
Speaker 4: they are real people, and that's something I really wanted
Speaker 4: to get across in my book. These were women that
Speaker 4: had moms and dads, and they had children that they're supporting.
Speaker 4: You know, somehow people get the idea that these aren't
Speaker 4: real people. Like one of them, the name is Cases.
Speaker 4: There's so many of them. Had worked for years in
Speaker 4: local hospitals. I had a reputable job, and their sister
Speaker 4: was a teacher and they were very very close. And
Speaker 4: she developed severe carpal tunnel syndrome and had the operation
Speaker 4: on her wrists. She couldn't work, she was on pain pills.
Speaker 4: She loses, she couldn't continue her job, winds up being
Speaker 4: addicted to the pain pills. Then she doesn't have any
Speaker 4: medical insurance coverage. One that there's no health care. And
Speaker 4: when you've got high medical expenses and a kid to
Speaker 4: take care of and you can't work, and you're a woman,
Speaker 4: there's always something you can do.
Speaker 2: Well. You know, it's another debate, but I certainly agree
Speaker 2: with you that prostitution should be legalized. In order to
Speaker 2: protect people at the level that everyone else expects to
Speaker 2: be protected by the police.
Speaker 4: And that's not even a matter of legalization. If you
Speaker 4: talk to them, they don't want to legalize. They wanted
Speaker 4: to criminalize. And here's the interesting reason which most people
Speaker 4: never think of, and that is if it's illegal or illegal,
Speaker 4: is no difference because it's still controlled by the politician
Speaker 4: and the police.
Speaker 2: Certainly, certainly those people would still be you know, those
Speaker 2: people would still be looking for a job outside of
Speaker 2: the uh. The establishment will say, yeah, but.
Speaker 4: If it could, if it's dreak decriminalized, if they're unionized,
Speaker 4: if they have the same protection. I mean, the fact
Speaker 4: that a woman can be beaten to a pulp and
Speaker 4: can and can't go to the police, and Jesus, what
Speaker 4: were you doing? Well, I'm a prosecut Well it serves
Speaker 4: you're right. What do you expect? You wouldn't get that
Speaker 4: in any other job. I work at the seven eleven.
Speaker 4: I got beat to a pope. What do you expect
Speaker 4: working in a convenience store. No one would dare say
Speaker 4: that to you.
Speaker 2: No, but Burrell just is not to not to argue
Speaker 2: the point. But at the same time, you've done You've
Speaker 2: covered a lot of cases, You've written about a lot
Speaker 2: of murder trials and murder victims. There is good victims
Speaker 2: and there are, as you say, less important victims. It
Speaker 2: seems to the public.
Speaker 4: The public seems to think the real real key to
Speaker 4: the public and what cal Walker, the on the Side
Speaker 4: task for it said, there are people who believe, as
Speaker 4: long as he's killing prostitutes worth safe because he's not
Speaker 4: gonna come kill us, that these people are buffer as
Speaker 4: long as he's killing these girls on the street. And
Speaker 4: here's another thing that well, could these women go to shelters?
Speaker 4: Could they go anywhere to be safe? Right? No, because
Speaker 4: up until a certain point, in order for a woman
Speaker 4: to go to a shelter, she had to be drug free.
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Speaker 2: No were necessarily lost the terms conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 4: She wasn't drug free, they wouldn't take her in. So
Speaker 4: you what you're doing is you're just putting the most
Speaker 4: vulnerable people. I mean, the police didn't want to use
Speaker 4: the term prostitutes for drug addicts. They'd always preferred the
Speaker 4: term people of high risk lifestyle. Sure, and it's just
Speaker 4: putting them out there like bait for this guy. He
Speaker 4: knew who to get, he knew he could get away
Speaker 4: with killing easier. It's like that guy up in Canada
Speaker 4: bumped off what eighty women or something, and the prostitutes
Speaker 4: themselves were going to the police saying someone's killing killing us.
Speaker 4: So how do you know they just didn't leave town?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, he had fifty for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And this is really and the thing is is
Speaker 4: that the women the Yates were killing was killing. These
Speaker 4: thirteen all knew each other. They all ran this same
Speaker 4: little crew. They were all, with the exception of a
Speaker 4: couple of them, were fairly scandalous. The little Asian girl
Speaker 4: that was killed, who actually the button off of her
Speaker 4: blouse was the damning evidence found in the corvette. She
Speaker 4: wasn't in the drugs, and she became a prostitute on
Speaker 4: summer vacation because she liked the job and she liked
Speaker 4: the lifestyle. You know, everybody needs a hobby.
Speaker 2: She's only sixteen years old too, so it's many people
Speaker 2: would think that that wasn't really an adult decision. A
Speaker 2: little bit more sympathy.
Speaker 4: But you know, it's the strangest thing is some people
Speaker 4: certainly have different mindset. She wasn't a drug addict. She
Speaker 4: told her dad. She was very honestus, I liked the sex,
Speaker 4: I like the travel, I liked the lifestyle, and I'll
Speaker 4: be back in school in September. I mean, everybody's got
Speaker 4: their people thought at first, police said, well, maybe it
Speaker 4: was her boyfriend. Maybe you know, Nope, he was devastated
Speaker 4: as anybody because it wasn't him.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: What was tragic is this guy was driving a white
Speaker 4: Corvette and uh he was stopped and purely through a
Speaker 4: legibility error, the officer wrote instead of Corvette, wrote, I
Speaker 4: believe corvet, and it slipped through the cracks. It wasn't
Speaker 4: until years later, and by then he'd sold the car,
Speaker 4: but they did find the car, and even though had
Speaker 4: the car been sold and cleaned up, underneath the seat
Speaker 4: they found the button, the missing button, and they found
Speaker 4: the DNA on very of that that Asian girl, Jennifer Joseph. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so from.
Speaker 4: There it was it was as if she came back
Speaker 4: from the grave to capt to catch or killer. That
Speaker 4: it just it was just like the amount of a movie.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Now, how long did this man hunt? Approximately go for.
Speaker 4: Is years years And that was one of the problems
Speaker 4: is that, you know, they had trouble getting funding because
Speaker 4: they hadn't caught the guy. Everything was going to dead ends.
Speaker 4: There was one point where they really thought they had
Speaker 4: a lead because the tire tracks. Next to that, they
Speaker 4: got tire bowls from you know, one of the dump sites, right,
Speaker 4: and they found the exact same branded tire molds. Again,
Speaker 4: thank god, man, we got it. And they ran the tests.
Speaker 4: You know what it was. It was the cars there
Speaker 4: are all the top cars.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then it reached a point where they had a
Speaker 4: meeting one day in the Homicide Task Force. They all
Speaker 4: sat down and he thought, you know, maybe it's one
Speaker 4: of us. Maybe it's one of the guys in this room.
Speaker 4: And so they had they took DNA and everything from
Speaker 4: all the guys on amas I pass force. Incredible was
Speaker 4: them because it was just I mean, these guys arete
Speaker 4: a version just I mean breakdowns over this. I mean
Speaker 4: because they're living it, and it's just one after another
Speaker 4: periods of silence in the be you know, two in
Speaker 4: one week, and they had people that they thought it
Speaker 4: was that they're following and they're getting DNFM and it's
Speaker 4: not them.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I found it interesting they had You
Speaker 2: had so many you devoted so much of the book
Speaker 2: to the exhaustive leads that these guys pursued. You know,
Speaker 2: they they had different descriptions of vehicles, they had different
Speaker 2: they had all kinds of leads that they pursued to
Speaker 2: the very to the very end conclusion. And you could
Speaker 2: see that certainly they had a lot of pressure to
Speaker 2: solve this case, but they had to take every lead
Speaker 2: seriously and then to its final conclusion, exhaust that lead
Speaker 2: and then eliminate that suspect. So it was incredible, incredible
Speaker 2: story about the details of the investigation.
Speaker 4: And as you know, and this is something that makes
Speaker 4: me not watching Nancy Grace, which I do occasionally listening
Speaker 4: to the Lee Vi Pages Show. And I wrote about
Speaker 4: this on in Cold Blog, you know, the number one
Speaker 4: crime blog side and I had Aaron Moriarty on my
Speaker 4: show and we talked about this. I call it water
Speaker 4: cooler crime. You know, if there's an investigation in process
Speaker 4: right right, whether it's a missing kid or a killer
Speaker 4: on the loose, to sit around and pontificate on who
Speaker 4: you think did it is such a waste of time
Speaker 4: except for ratings, because if it's an investigation and progress,
Speaker 4: the police are not releasing the important information because the
Speaker 4: important information is what's going to help them catch the killer,
Speaker 4: and they don't want the killer to know they have
Speaker 4: that information. So anything that they released for Nancy to
Speaker 4: talk about, or Levi to talk about, or you and
Speaker 4: I to talk about around the water cooler is useless.
Speaker 4: And so for people to sit around for an hour
Speaker 4: and well, I think so and so did it. I
Speaker 4: think so and so did it. That's when you have
Speaker 4: the situation that poor guy who killed himself after some
Speaker 4: talk show accused him of being a child killer and
Speaker 4: he had nothing to do with it. Sure you know,
Speaker 4: and then you got to wonder what's the culpability of
Speaker 4: media and that sort of thing. I was on one
Speaker 4: of those shows and they asked him about Kaylee Anthony
Speaker 4: or something. I said, I said the same thing I
Speaker 4: just said to you. You know, if it's an investigation
Speaker 4: in process, in progress and still looking for it, you
Speaker 4: know who, I don't have the information to talk about it,
Speaker 4: and if I did, I wouldn't because then the killer
Speaker 4: would hear it. You know, let's here, let's be rational here,
Speaker 4: let's take care of something we can do something about.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is I think the thing is though,
Speaker 2: that authors like yourself that are investigative journalists take this information,
Speaker 2: have sat through trials and actually, at the end of
Speaker 2: doing all your research and being involved completely, you actually
Speaker 2: understand how a trial is conducted and understand the process
Speaker 2: more completely than anyone else. That's just superficially looking at
Speaker 2: the news. And I find that a lot of these
Speaker 2: pundents on TV, because they've got to do stuff all
Speaker 2: the time, they don't specialize, They really don't understand the law,
Speaker 2: and them speculating is you know, I don't listen to
Speaker 2: it too often because it's kind of ridiculous because you
Speaker 2: can't really, like you say, you can't have any more
Speaker 2: information than it's already been released, So to speculate who
Speaker 2: did what or how they.
Speaker 4: Looked on TV or it scares me out there. And
Speaker 4: this does scare me. I'm not just saying it scares
Speaker 4: me for the sake of viperbole. Is the people who
Speaker 4: are it so eager to say the minute someone's arrested
Speaker 4: or someone's charged, and it is saying string him up,
Speaker 4: kill him, hang him, you know, chop his testicles off. Whatever.
Speaker 4: The guy has, a guy woman, whatever, hasn't even been
Speaker 4: to court yet. They could be innocent. And just because
Speaker 4: someone's arrested doesn't mean they're guilty. And the thing of
Speaker 4: assumption of guilt, I mean, where's the person's supposed to
Speaker 4: get a fair trial anymore. It's difficult enough. And here's
Speaker 4: something that most people never think of. And this may
Speaker 4: surprise you. One of the purposes this has never discussed.
Speaker 4: You'll love this. One of the purposes of having registered
Speaker 4: sex offenders is so you've got someone to hang a
Speaker 4: case on when you can't solve it.
Speaker 2: That's your opinion, right.
Speaker 4: That's a fact. I could name you a case, but
Speaker 4: someone might sue me.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: There is a case where there is a man in
Speaker 4: prison right now for life who it is known by
Speaker 4: the detectives and by a very well known forensic. What's
Speaker 4: you gonna call it? My mind has one blank worked
Speaker 4: on the case that the guy didn't do it. And
Speaker 4: I said to the protective, to a detective in the city,
Speaker 4: because I followed the case, I went to and I said,
Speaker 4: according to the police, because this man was a registered
Speaker 4: sex offender and you immediately suspected him, you had him
Speaker 4: under surveillance twenty four to seven from this state on.
Speaker 4: Is that correct? I said yes. I said it was
Speaker 4: also testifying in court that the body of this child
Speaker 4: was moved on such and such a date approximately to
Speaker 4: this other location before it was found. And his eyes
Speaker 4: just kind of averted, and I said, you know what
Speaker 4: I'm saying, he couldn't have done it, because if he
Speaker 4: had done it, you would have seen it. And his
Speaker 4: response was, well, at least we cleared the case. So
Speaker 4: I followed up on that, and I went to the
Speaker 4: medical expert who had examined the body and spoke to him,
Speaker 4: and he said the child wasn't strangled the child wasn't molested.
Speaker 4: Everything medical about the child was indicative that the kid
Speaker 4: had been crying. The mother tried to silence the child
Speaker 4: with her hand over the kid's mouth and accidentally suffocated
Speaker 4: her child. Not Able to deal with that, she dumps
Speaker 4: the kid and reports that someone horrible did something to
Speaker 4: the kid. And where is it.
Speaker 2: Well, the police didn't. Obviously the person you spoke to
Speaker 2: didn't have all the information.
Speaker 4: Well, that's so you will also get in situation with it.
Speaker 4: You know, it's tragic for people to stop because there
Speaker 4: are so many wonderful police people out there, and so
Speaker 4: many wonderful homicide investigators. You can get in situations where
Speaker 4: you have political pressure, you have social pressure, You've got
Speaker 4: a really good, viable candidate to have done the job,
Speaker 4: and if you can close the case, you can close
Speaker 4: the case. I'll give you an example. I know we're
Speaker 4: talking about BodyCount, but I'll mention I have a book
Speaker 4: called Murder in the Family, where it successfully prosecuted Kirby D.
Speaker 4: Anthony for the horrifying rape and murder of his own
Speaker 4: aunt and her two lovely little children. It's a terrifying case.
Speaker 4: The man's a monster. In my opinion, this tragic story.
Speaker 4: They almost didn't pursue him because upstairs in the same
Speaker 4: building was a fellow of the approximate age range who
Speaker 4: was a previous who was a listed sex offender, and
Speaker 4: they were ready to go gung ho after this guy
Speaker 4: lived right upstairs. The only thing that stopped him was
Speaker 4: they did have an FBI profiler involved, Judson Ray, who
Speaker 4: was involved, who said, no, he fits everything that you're
Speaker 4: looking for, except who ever did this because of the
Speaker 4: way that people were strangled knew them intimately, and this guy,
Speaker 4: even though he lived upstairs, he did not know them intimately.
Speaker 4: If they would have focused all their attention on that guy,
Speaker 4: the real killer would have got away.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly, you also have those kinds of cases as
Speaker 2: well too, where you have an organized serial killer who
Speaker 2: very much like Yates here, doesn't have any criminal background.
Speaker 2: And when the police are looking for the suspects and
Speaker 2: they're weeding through a list of suspects because they don't
Speaker 2: have a criminal record, because they don't fit any kind
Speaker 2: of profile, they're the last people in the investigation.
Speaker 4: You've hit on something really on the button there. And
Speaker 4: this is the tragic thing when you're dealing with these
Speaker 4: kind of serial killers of the last person you'd ever
Speaker 4: think of. When they went on TV that Robbert Lee
Speaker 4: Yates was arrested and it confessed to being the serial killer,
Speaker 4: one of the women who knew him was sitting in
Speaker 4: the restaurant and she saw him on TV. She about
Speaker 4: broke into tears. She knew him. In fact, she liked
Speaker 4: him so much. She had fallen in love with him,
Speaker 4: even had taken him home to meet her family. She
Speaker 4: was a working lady, but she thought he was so wonderful.
Speaker 4: And then there was the woman who was the survivor,
Speaker 4: who did not know that she had survived him until
Speaker 4: after he was arrested.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: He had picked up this particular young lady. He dated
Speaker 4: almost every working girl and spoke Anne. From from what
Speaker 4: I understood, he didn't kill all of them, as you notice, right, sure,
Speaker 4: but he was dating her and there was always the
Speaker 4: same thing. She was performing oral sex on him and
Speaker 4: all of and but he wasn't responding well. All of
Speaker 4: a sudden, she thinks that he's smashed her over the
Speaker 4: head with something. All of a sudden, Oh, she's got
Speaker 4: to know, bang, it's her head And so she gets
Speaker 4: up and he wants his money back and she says, no,
Speaker 4: you know, I was doing what I was hired to do,
Speaker 4: and he's furious and she runs away. Well, about three
Speaker 4: months later, she's in a car accident on the other
Speaker 4: side of the state and goes to the hospital. They
Speaker 4: do X rays and the doctor says to her, are
Speaker 4: you aware of the fact you have bullet fragments in
Speaker 4: your skull? She goes, what and apparently you see what
Speaker 4: he would do is is I don't know how sensitive
Speaker 4: your audience is to this sort of thing, but if
Speaker 4: they listen to this kind of program, they're not too sensitive.
Speaker 4: The woman will be performing oral sex on him, and
Speaker 4: if after seven minutes he didn't respond, he would pull
Speaker 4: out a low calimber weapon twenty two, twenty three, twenty
Speaker 4: four whatever it was, and in his right hand and
Speaker 4: place it directly behind what would be her left ear
Speaker 4: and pull the trigger. Well, apparently this young lady a
Speaker 4: zigged when he thought she was going to zag, and
Speaker 4: the bullet, instead of going into her skull, grazed it. Well,
Speaker 4: of course it hurt. She thought she'd been hit in
Speaker 4: the head, and she went away, So the bullet did
Speaker 4: not penetrate her skull, but it's fractured. The bullet fragments
Speaker 4: in her head. Well, when she saw his picture on TV,
Speaker 4: she realized that was the guy who hit me in
Speaker 4: the head. My god, he didn't hit me, he shot me. Incredible,
Speaker 4: But she didn't realize she was shot until later.
Speaker 2: So she goes to court and that that ballistic evidence,
Speaker 2: that that's bullet fragment matches with the other kinds.
Speaker 4: He would just say, yeah, well he did. He didn't
Speaker 4: kill her, but she certainly had a.
Speaker 2: Headache, certainly, so she had her come up at court.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean he's he's in prison. And you know,
Speaker 4: there were people I knew. There was one woman and
Speaker 4: I interviewed us in the book that she was on
Speaker 4: the street and Spokane. She was a heroin addic. She
Speaker 4: got clean and then she fell back off the wagon.
Speaker 4: So you know a lot of these people were only
Speaker 4: working the street when they had to h There was
Speaker 4: a subtext in my book that you'll notice there is
Speaker 4: towards the end, there's a statement in my book that
Speaker 4: makes no sense. I don't know if you've come across it,
Speaker 4: but the statement where I say, and similar to the
Speaker 4: Linder case. And there's no reference to the Linder case
Speaker 4: in the book, so you might, well, what the world
Speaker 4: is mister Bear talking about the Linder case?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: That was an editing era they took out from the book,
Speaker 4: an entire subtext of my book, because I guess they
Speaker 4: took it distracted from the story. I thought it was
Speaker 4: important in nineteen whenever the Harrison Act was passed. Harrison
Speaker 4: Act what nineteen nineteen something like?
Speaker 2: That?
Speaker 4: Harrison Act was a tax act, a one dollar a
Speaker 4: year wholesale tax act on direct distributors, okay, And people
Speaker 4: were afraid at that time that it was going to
Speaker 4: interfere with them getting their drugs. And that time there
Speaker 4: was no link between drugs and crime in America, and
Speaker 4: most of the drug addicts in America were Southern white
Speaker 4: women actually taking over the counter medications that had, you know,
Speaker 4: addictive substances in them. And if you did have a
Speaker 4: drug addiction, you simply, much like in England, you just
Speaker 4: went to your doctor and your doctor gave you what
Speaker 4: you needed. Harrison Act was a one dollar a year
Speaker 4: wholesale tax to make sure that distributors that the people
Speaker 4: were actually writing prescriptions. Well, in Spokane, Washington, the same sitting,
Speaker 4: there was a doctor Linder. The collection of the revenue
Speaker 4: of the Harrison Act was given to the Department of Revenue.
Speaker 4: They sent a woman to doctor Linder who said, my
Speaker 4: regular doctor is out of town. I'm going through withdrawals.
Speaker 4: I need some morphine and I need some cocaine. So
Speaker 4: he legally wrote her a prescription for three morphine tablets
Speaker 4: and three cocaine tablets, had her take one in the office,
Speaker 4: and had her space them out until her regular doctor
Speaker 4: was back in town. Next thing he knows, he's arrested
Speaker 4: and he is charged with some crime of giving these drugs.
Speaker 4: He loses because the judge rather tells the jury, if
Speaker 4: you were to find the doctor Linder prescribe these medications
Speaker 4: to relieve the pain of someone with stomach cancer, that's okay.
Speaker 4: But if you decide that he gave those medications to
Speaker 4: alleviate the pain of her withdrawals, you must find him guilty.
Speaker 4: He was found guilty. He appealed it all the way
Speaker 4: to the US Supreme Court, and he won. The United
Speaker 4: States Supreme Court ruled that the federal government has no
Speaker 4: right to interfere in the doctor's treatment of a patient
Speaker 4: and has no right to say what a reasonable amount
Speaker 4: of addictive medication is, and that he was perfectly within
Speaker 4: his medical right to alleviate the pain and suffering of
Speaker 4: an addict by giving the addict what they needed. The
Speaker 4: climate at that time was such that doctors were still
Speaker 4: afraid to do that, and so the doctors stopped treating
Speaker 4: their atticts when it was cheap, and so whom lived
Speaker 4: moved in to do it for them. Organized crime, certainly,
Speaker 4: and up until van there had never been a link
Speaker 4: between crime and drugs in America. Well, doctor Lindstrom was
Speaker 4: the medical examiner in Spokane at the time of this case,
Speaker 4: and he was arrested for an alleged impropriety with drug
Speaker 4: prescriptions and so s by a reference to Linder case.
Speaker 4: Had it not been for the fallout of the Lender case,
Speaker 4: you would not even have the subculture of street prostitutes
Speaker 4: and illegal drugs that made his victims possible. Certainly, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I can understand that subtext, certainly, and they took all
Speaker 4: that out except the one reference to doctor Linder. One
Speaker 4: of the most overlooked Supreme Court decisions in American history.
Speaker 4: It was a very famous case with Elender versus the
Speaker 4: United States or US versus lender in any event that
Speaker 4: was also in Spokane, Washington. It's very tragic if we
Speaker 4: did not have the you know, I had on my
Speaker 4: show the guy who was head of law enforcement against prohibition,
Speaker 4: and as he said, if you just took all schedule
Speaker 4: one drugs in America and made them schedule two, the
Speaker 4: problem would be solved. Your writer, prescription, you get it.
Speaker 4: You're done. Their cheap organized crime is out of it.
Speaker 4: The crime is out of it. The what you have
Speaker 4: is there's more money in corruption. You know, if there
Speaker 4: weren't so much money in corruption, it wouldn't still be
Speaker 4: the way it is. I think the thing is that
Speaker 4: sometimes there's a combination of things. It's politically, it's it
Speaker 4: would be a huge football to try to roll back
Speaker 4: drug laws or actually scale them back. Even to talk
Speaker 4: about lifting mandatory minimums is politically suicidal sometimes. But I
Speaker 4: do agree with you the only way to.
Speaker 2: Solve the problem. It might seem absurd to some people,
Speaker 2: but many people that have been involved with this police
Speaker 2: law enform and enforcement people have said, you have to
Speaker 2: legalize all drugs, you have to take organized crime out
Speaker 2: of it, because I mean, who's because I say what
Speaker 2: age you have to be to buy.
Speaker 4: Alcohol where you are eighteen? How old do you have
Speaker 4: to be to buy cocaine?
Speaker 2: Sure? Any agent?
Speaker 4: Any age? Yeah, you know who's in charge of the quality,
Speaker 4: the mob, who's in charge of distribution? The mob?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: But it's not that way in other countries, you know,
Speaker 4: and they don't have those problems, like I say, in
Speaker 4: America didn't have the leakage between drugs and crime until
Speaker 4: the nineteen twenties when it became illegal. It's just like prohibition.
Speaker 4: Prohibition didn't work with al Capone, and it doesn't work
Speaker 4: with these guys either. It's just that the corruption is
Speaker 4: so profer I had Norm Stamper, former chief of police
Speaker 4: of Seattle on and it'll be the first to tal you.
Speaker 4: He says, it's a waste of police resources. It causes
Speaker 4: nothing but corruption, and you wouldn't have these I'm happy
Speaker 4: to say. However, you know, when Robert Lee, yes the
Speaker 4: Spokane killer, was captured. Prior to that, they did, thank god,
Speaker 4: establish a shelter for women where they could go, where
Speaker 4: they didn't have to be clean and silver in order
Speaker 4: to get in, because all otherwise they were just sitting
Speaker 4: ducks for him. They were just out there, you know,
Speaker 4: like fish in a barrel, so didn't have anywhere to go.
Speaker 4: The minute he was captured, they wanted to close it. Fortunately,
Speaker 4: I think it was Volunteers for America came in and
Speaker 4: kept it open.
Speaker 2: Well that's good, it's a very good thing. Now you
Speaker 2: talked about Yates confessing the fifteen murders. What was the deal?
Speaker 2: You say, the plea bargain was given up. But in
Speaker 2: the end, we're fifteen murders solved. Where the bodies of
Speaker 2: identifying the real tragedy? And this is in the book
Speaker 2: and poor count Walker or the Spokante homicide pask for
Speaker 2: just his stomach just sank with this, you know. They said, well,
Speaker 2: we're looking were the one, you know, we we haven't
Speaker 2: found the haven't found the body. I remember what her
Speaker 2: name is is at the very very end of the book.
Speaker 4: Uh. And he says, okay, I'll draw you a map,
Speaker 4: you know, to where the body is. Right and where
Speaker 4: the body was was at his home, buried in the
Speaker 4: room window. And they had, uh, they had torn that
Speaker 4: place apart, they'd had dogs, they'd had everything. He had
Speaker 4: brought her home as the ultimate trophy and buried her
Speaker 4: under his bedroom window.
Speaker 2: Incredible.
Speaker 4: And so when they started following him in the car
Speaker 4: to find out where he took that body, and they
Speaker 4: and cal Walker told me when I realized we were
Speaker 4: going back to his house, so I just got sick
Speaker 4: to my stomach. He says, how could we you know,
Speaker 4: how could we miss that she was us? I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just really really just training. And one thing they
Speaker 4: never did find out. They never asked him and they
Speaker 4: never told I was thinking about this just the other day,
Speaker 4: of writing him a letter and asking him when he
Speaker 4: would shoot these women after the first time when he
Speaker 4: made the big mistake of using the three fifty seven, right,
Speaker 4: is he'd shoot him and he'd immediately put a paper
Speaker 4: towel over the wound, right, and then he'd put these
Speaker 4: paper bags over. They never could find where where the
Speaker 4: paper towels came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I found that interesting that they they that was
Speaker 2: part of their investigation. They tried to track down the
Speaker 2: origin of those people.
Speaker 4: Where's the paper towels? If you could fight buying him
Speaker 4: near the house or something, you know, what brand of
Speaker 4: paper towels? They never could find out what the hell
Speaker 4: kind of pied my language, what kind of paper towel
Speaker 4: was and they never did bought to ask. Of course,
Speaker 4: once he confessed, I was thinking about the other day
Speaker 4: because I mean, it's doing wall wall write what kind
Speaker 4: of paper towels? Were those? Incredible?
Speaker 2: Incredible, even the plastic bags. They did an exhaustive investigation
Speaker 2: on where those bags might be and did some geographical
Speaker 2: sort of profiling to say this might be where he
Speaker 2: where he could have operated or.
Speaker 4: Even able to take finally take prince or DNA or
Speaker 4: whatever is off the bags.
Speaker 2: That was incredible.
Speaker 4: I felt so sorry for his wife. Can you imagine
Speaker 4: how devastated that woman was. She was, what, having pie
Speaker 4: in a restaurant and they came and, you know, talk
Speaker 4: to her and says about your husband, and they said,
Speaker 4: oh god, if he's if he's in trouble, I'll kill him.
Speaker 4: And when they told her you know he's in trouble, Yeah,
Speaker 4: they didn't want to come and take him away, you know,
Speaker 4: in front of the kids and everything.
Speaker 2: Did he I know, you to talk about the father
Speaker 2: supporting him despite the crimes. But basically, what was his
Speaker 2: demeanor in court? We only got about three minutes left,
Speaker 2: But what was Yeates like in court?
Speaker 4: Did he really just the eighth the killer. It was
Speaker 4: like he was angry when he kept saying he'd read
Speaker 4: read the people's names. You know, Linda Maybeit, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: you know, Darlas showing her I'm sorry, you know, it's
Speaker 4: like he wasn't sorry at all. He you know. Uh.
Speaker 4: But of course, I mean if the guy, if the
Speaker 4: guy is a psychopath, they don't have they you know,
Speaker 4: they don't have the emotion. They're missing the emotionship. Sure,
Speaker 4: and most of them can cry on cue because that's
Speaker 4: the one thing they can do. But they really are
Speaker 4: incapable of feeling remorse. I mean, you can get mad
Speaker 4: at him for killing, but you can't get mad at
Speaker 4: him for not feeling remorse. They're incapable.
Speaker 2: No, I agree with you too, because they always they
Speaker 2: also they always ask well that you know, jeez, did
Speaker 2: the guy show any remorse? Well, if he showed any remorse,
Speaker 2: it would be disingenuine anyway, or advised by his lawyers.
Speaker 2: So I don't really put too much stock in somebody
Speaker 2: showing the worse.
Speaker 4: It was the only one I know of. Caitlin Rother,
Speaker 4: wonderful person, a wonderful author, wrote the book Body Parts,
Speaker 4: which team.
Speaker 2: She's on next week. She's on next week talking about
Speaker 2: that book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, give her my best regards and she'll tell you.
Speaker 4: Here's a guy who walks into a police station says,
Speaker 4: I'm a serial killer. You know, there's a guy with remorse,
Speaker 4: he turns himself in.
Speaker 2: Well, I know somebody that turned himself in. But there
Speaker 2: was no remorse, so you know, that's not always an
Speaker 2: indication either.
Speaker 4: So we at least the guy knew he was doing
Speaker 4: something wrong. You know. It was like Brent Turvey says,
Speaker 4: you know, why do they do it? It's simple. They
Speaker 4: tried it, they liked it. They did it again. Same reason.
Speaker 4: You go to the same Chinese restaurant, you try it,
Speaker 4: you like it, you do it again. Once you crossed
Speaker 4: that line between fantasy and doing it, you can't go back.
Speaker 4: I mean, you may fantasize about, you know, doing something sick.
Speaker 4: Once you've done it, you've done it, and then when
Speaker 4: it comes to murder, there's no way you can take
Speaker 4: it back. You've killed once. What difference does it make
Speaker 4: if you do it again?
Speaker 2: Sure? Well, we just got a little bit of a
Speaker 2: few seconds left. We're talking about the the book Body Count,
Speaker 2: the terrifying true story of the Spokane serial killer, Burl,
Speaker 2: tell our audience how they can contact you. You have a
Speaker 2: great radio show on your website. Tell our audience about
Speaker 2: when that is live and real, real easy.
Speaker 4: If you go to outlaw Crime, all one word outlock
Speaker 4: crime dot com and you'll always get the news of
Speaker 4: who my guests are. I got a Mandal Lamb coming
Speaker 4: up to this Saturday. Gonn have you on in a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks?
Speaker 2: Great fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we we have all the best people, including you.
Speaker 4: If you go to outlaw crime dot com or Burl
Speaker 4: Bearer b U R L B A R E R
Speaker 4: dot net, you can always get hold of me and great.
Speaker 4: Thanks for so much for having me on the show.
Speaker 4: I really went by fast.
Speaker 2: Well. Thank you very much. I know our audience appreciate
Speaker 2: and then it was a great pleasure for me to
Speaker 2: have you on the show. Burl.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for this interview. Okay, thanks, Hey,
Speaker 4: hi to Caitlin for me.
Speaker 2: Next week I will and you have yourself a very
Speaker 2: good evening, Burl. Okay, you do bye, Okay, take care.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the program True Murder the most
Speaker 2: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 2: have written about them, with your host Dan Zapaski, good night,