Speaker 1: Meet John Doe, a quiet, friendly type who likes to
Speaker 1: keep his yard trimmed and tidy. He's a perfect neighbor
Speaker 1: in every way but one. John Doe kills women, a
Speaker 1: lot of women.
Speaker 2: The bodies are piling up. People began wondering what's going
Speaker 2: on here? Who are these women? Who's killing them?
Speaker 1: Seventeen women dead and police can't find him. He's a
Speaker 1: serial killer with the ultimate weapon. He's a chameleon.
Speaker 3: Serial killers trademark is their ability to manipulate those around
Speaker 3: them into believing that they are nothing more than just
Speaker 3: a regular human being.
Speaker 4: It was like a puzzle, and I wanted to solve it.
Speaker 1: A dark, twisted puzzle spawned from the mind of a
Speaker 1: killer that only forensic science can stop. Spokane, Washington. By day,
Speaker 1: it's a safe place to raise a family, but when
Speaker 1: night falls, a darker underbelly emerges. In the past three years,
Speaker 1: six women have been found dead, shot and dumped in
Speaker 1: the countryside. Their bodies are so decomposed at least find
Speaker 1: little evidence, and identifying them takes months. When investigators finally
Speaker 1: do put names to the victims, they discover they have
Speaker 1: one thing in common. They are ladies of the night.
Speaker 3: There is extremely unusual half dead prostitutes in the city
Speaker 3: of Spokane. Within a short period of time, we had
Speaker 3: some type of a serial murder situation going on here.
Speaker 3: There was somebody preying on that segment of our society
Speaker 3: here in Spokane.
Speaker 1: Then the streets grow quiet and investigators pray the killing
Speaker 1: is over. August twenty sixth, nineteen ninety seven, a rider
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of Spokane sees what he thinks is
Speaker 1: a dead deer.
Speaker 2: That is no animal.
Speaker 1: Detectives Rick Gravenstein and Fred Rooch respond to the crime scene.
Speaker 1: Is this woman the latest victim of the serial killer?
Speaker 1: The location of the body strikes a chord with investigators.
Speaker 3: It was in a rural area, wheat fields and trees.
Speaker 1: Gravenstein and Rooch know this countryside well.
Speaker 3: Every single body that was found in this county. Regardless
Speaker 3: of the reason we responded to.
Speaker 1: Previous crime scenes have yielded little evidence. This victim's wounds
Speaker 1: are fresh, potentially offering clues about the killer. A small
Speaker 1: hole in the skull points to the cause of death,
Speaker 1: but a.
Speaker 3: Hole in the back then she had apparently been the
Speaker 3: victim of a gunshot wound. They had shot with a
Speaker 3: small caliber handgun.
Speaker 1: But if they're right, the crime scene doesn't match the crime.
Speaker 3: Every time you have a head wound, you have a
Speaker 3: great deal of bleeding, particularly with the gunshot wounds. That
Speaker 3: blood should be there at the scene.
Speaker 5: When there's a lack of blood and an immediate location,
Speaker 5: that generally indicates that the killing did not occure there.
Speaker 5: And this is what's commonly referred to as a dump site.
Speaker 3: Every one of the victims had been transported by a
Speaker 3: motor vehicle to their body found sites. We know we
Speaker 3: have a car somewhere. More than likely it has a
Speaker 3: great deal of evidence in it.
Speaker 1: And the method of transport isn't the only similarity to
Speaker 1: the previous crimes.
Speaker 5: The fact that they were in the rural areas, all female,
Speaker 5: in different conditions of disrobing, and the fact that they
Speaker 5: all having been shot it did lead you to at
Speaker 5: least suspect strongly that there was some relationship there.
Speaker 1: If the serial killer is back, investigators need hard evidence
Speaker 1: to confirm their suspicion, but first they have to id
Speaker 1: the victim. Through dental records, they learn her name is
Speaker 1: Jennifer Joseph.
Speaker 2: A local prostitute.
Speaker 1: At the autopsy, the coroner looks for the serial killer's
Speaker 1: signature mo O.
Speaker 6: There were generally at least two gun shot wounds to
Speaker 6: the head region very closely situated, and this is sometimes
Speaker 6: referred to in police military circles as double tapping. In
Speaker 6: other words, the habit of firing. If you're going to
Speaker 6: fire the gun firate twice.
Speaker 1: But Jennifer Joseph's body tells a different story.
Speaker 6: In this this particular autopsy, there were some distinctly different findings.
Speaker 6: She had gunshop wounds elsewhere that included the left shoulder,
Speaker 6: and there was also a gunshop wound to the chest region,
Speaker 6: the enteror chest region. This strongly suggested this lady either
Speaker 6: resisted or it may have potentially almost got away.
Speaker 1: Bullet fragments indicate the killer used a twenty two pistol,
Speaker 1: a discovery which gives them pause for thought. Investigators know
Speaker 1: the previous victims were shot with the larger twenty five
Speaker 1: caliber weapon. Now they must ask themselves, is the killer
Speaker 1: changing his mo or worse, could this be the work
Speaker 1: of a copycat killer. To link Jennifer's murder to the others,
Speaker 1: they'll need more than circumstantial evidence. The coroner searches her
Speaker 1: body for traces of the killer's DNA.
Speaker 6: What we're looking for primarily is seminal fluid that gives
Speaker 6: us the opportunity if we can recover it for DNA
Speaker 6: identification of a perpetrator or at least somebody who's had
Speaker 6: intercourse in a brief interval prior to the death.
Speaker 1: In previous cases, the massive deterioration of the bodies made
Speaker 1: DNA retrieval almost impossible.
Speaker 6: In many cases, putrefaction was so bad that you weren't
Speaker 6: even sure that you could tell where you were sampling.
Speaker 1: Despite these challenges, the coroner has managed to get two
Speaker 1: matching DNA samples from previous victims. Now he searches for
Speaker 1: male DNA in Jennifer Joseph's body. True to form, the
Speaker 1: coroner gets his sample and with it the answer investigators
Speaker 1: have been waiting for.
Speaker 5: It became very apparent to us that this was the
Speaker 5: DNA of our killer.
Speaker 1: Despite the different used in the Jennifer Joseph killing, the
Speaker 1: DNA evidence leads no doubt that after a year of silence,
Speaker 1: the serial killer is back on the prow. If investigators
Speaker 1: want to catch their killer, they have to head down
Speaker 1: to his watering hole and in Spokane that means East
Speaker 1: Sprague Avenue, better known as the Track. They spread a
Speaker 1: wide net attempting to identify regular customers.
Speaker 3: We briefed the uniform division to try to make as
Speaker 3: much note as possible of everybody that was utilizing the
Speaker 3: prostitutes actor. It's quite not.
Speaker 1: But winning the confidence of these women presents police with
Speaker 1: a challenge.
Speaker 3: The relationship between police and prostitutes is typically real adversarial.
Speaker 3: We're on opposite sides of the lock.
Speaker 1: The prostitute stonewall the police at every turn.
Speaker 5: They're reluctant to reporting of this to the police, and
Speaker 5: because they don't trust the police.
Speaker 1: The killer chooses his victims wisely. He stalks the track,
Speaker 1: knowing full well that a missing prostitute attracts little police attention.
Speaker 3: There were people at higher levels controlling purse strings, that
Speaker 3: sort of thing. That did make some off the cuff
Speaker 3: comments about spending that much time investigating the death of
Speaker 3: a prostitute, But.
Speaker 1: The attitudes of local citizens presents an even greater obstacle.
Speaker 2: Because only prostitutes were showing up dead, there was really,
Speaker 2: unfortunately not a lot of attention paid to this, and
Speaker 2: this community woke up very slowly to what was going on.
Speaker 2: If these had been school teachers or nurses ending up
Speaker 2: dead and tossed into these fields and along the roadsides,
Speaker 2: something would have been done much quicker.
Speaker 3: You know, the public's perception of the victims out there,
Speaker 3: that's a very little concern to me as a detective.
Speaker 3: I'm the guy at the bottom. My job is to
Speaker 3: catch who's killing him.
Speaker 1: That job's about to get a whole lot harder. In
Speaker 1: a high stakes game of cat and mouse. The killer
Speaker 1: continues to elude police over the next few months, right
Speaker 1: under their noses, he strikes again and again and again.
Speaker 3: This guy is not going to quit killing people.
Speaker 1: With every murder, the Spokane serial killer is cleaning up
Speaker 1: his act. In Spokane, Washington, investigators are chasing an elusive
Speaker 1: serial killer. They have his DNA, but no viable suspect
Speaker 1: to match it with, and with his latest victim, he's
Speaker 1: getting better at covering his tracks.
Speaker 5: I noticed that placed over her head was a plastic
Speaker 5: shopping bag with a smiley face imprinted on it, and
Speaker 5: at that time myself and the other detective's present discussed
Speaker 5: whether this was some kind of a.
Speaker 7: Sick joke. For lack of a better term.
Speaker 1: The latest victim is twenty six year old Darla SIUs Scott.
Speaker 1: Investigators question the purpose of the plastic bag.
Speaker 6: These are obviously not playing any role in the death,
Speaker 6: and the reason for that is there are no holes
Speaker 6: in the bags and there are gunshot wounds of the
Speaker 6: head underneath the bag. The only explanation that seems reasonable
Speaker 6: for this is a person who's probably transporting the body
Speaker 6: and needs to stop the shedding of blood from the wounds.
Speaker 1: With this new trick under his belt, the killer won't
Speaker 1: be leaving any more evidence behind in his car. He's
Speaker 1: cleaning up his act.
Speaker 6: If I can use the term learning in a perverse sense,
Speaker 6: that that's what's going on. He's learning from each of
Speaker 6: his victims as he moves along through the course of
Speaker 6: these murders.
Speaker 1: With the death toll rising, Women working the streets like
Speaker 1: Christine Smith know that every trick is a high stake.
Speaker 8: Scambal are you doing, honey, It's like playing Russian roulette. Really,
Speaker 8: everybody was in fear. I mean it wasn't just I
Speaker 8: don't think it was just the prostitutes. I mean everyone
Speaker 8: was concerned.
Speaker 1: Although the track is a hunting ground, many prostitutes stay
Speaker 1: for one simple reason, drugs.
Speaker 8: Every penny I made went to Crack, every single penny.
Speaker 8: I would work twenty four hours a day, seven days
Speaker 8: a week. Go go go, go, go, go go.
Speaker 1: And it was it was just to Bi Crack and
Speaker 1: the women that work the track. The killer knows he's
Speaker 1: got a desperate, captive supply of victims for Christine Smith
Speaker 1: and the others, Leaving town isn't an option.
Speaker 8: I mean, you gotta feed the gorilla on your back
Speaker 8: no matter what.
Speaker 1: Pressuring the prostitutes for information isn't working, So investigators adopt
Speaker 1: a news strategy. They send in officers with special instructions
Speaker 1: build trust with the women.
Speaker 3: We had detectives assigned just for that purpose, whose marching
Speaker 3: orders were basically to overlook any of the misdemeanor or
Speaker 3: low level criminal activity they may be involved in. Befriend them,
Speaker 3: become their friend, become their trusted somebody so that they'll
Speaker 3: call you.
Speaker 1: Through sheer persistence, they finally succeed in getting one of
Speaker 1: the women to open up. She reveals a key piece
Speaker 1: of information about the night Jennifer Joseph disappeared.
Speaker 8: Last time I saw her, she was getting into a
Speaker 8: white Corvette, a white Corvette.
Speaker 1: She get a plate irregular.
Speaker 5: Now we had a good identification that Jennifer Joseph had
Speaker 5: been seen in a white Corvette the last time that
Speaker 5: we could verify that she was seen alive.
Speaker 1: It's the first big break in the case. But locating
Speaker 1: the car is not as easy as it might seem.
Speaker 3: We had about four thousand corvette registrations from eastern Washington
Speaker 3: and another nine hundred from northern Idaho.
Speaker 1: Investigators are also concerned that the car's color might have
Speaker 1: been misreported.
Speaker 3: Some people's idea of what white is is another person's
Speaker 3: silver or another person's light blue. So you're worried about
Speaker 3: excluding cars. It might be the killer's car. So the
Speaker 3: list is several thousand corvettes long.
Speaker 9: Right, we got the pictures of the vets.
Speaker 1: In an effort to focus the list, they re examine
Speaker 1: their evidence looking for any connection to the car. Forensic
Speaker 1: technician Kevin Jenkins recovers a red fiber from Jennifer Joseph schu.
Speaker 10: The characteristics that I look at to determine if something
Speaker 10: is a carpet fiber is generally the size. Carpet fibers
Speaker 10: are generally larger than those used for clothing or upholstery.
Speaker 1: Based on the lifestyle of the victim, he concludes that
Speaker 1: those fibers are not from just any carpet.
Speaker 10: The fibers were likely from a automotive source just by
Speaker 10: the nature of the victims being prostitutes and in and
Speaker 10: out of cars on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Now investigators have a specific tool to pare down the
Speaker 1: forty nine hundred corvettes on their list. They meet with
Speaker 1: corvette owners. They check all used car lots and corvette clubs,
Speaker 1: collecting carpet samples from every corvette they find with a
Speaker 1: red interior.
Speaker 10: Carpet samples from several vehicles were sent to the laboratory
Speaker 10: for analysis to compare against the carpet fibers that were
Speaker 10: found on for Joseph.
Speaker 1: But there is no match. Checking almost five thousand vehicles
Speaker 1: is going to take time, time the killer can use
Speaker 1: to hunt his next victim. Investigators finally know the make
Speaker 1: of the Spokane serial killer's car and even the color
Speaker 1: of its carpet, but they are no closer to determining
Speaker 1: his identity. They turn to the one piece of evidence
Speaker 1: they have that might bear the mark of their killer.
Speaker 6: You were hoping to potentially get a print off of
Speaker 6: those bags if at all.
Speaker 1: Possible, Investigators turned to a radical new approach in fingerprint technology.
Speaker 3: I first became aware of it one night at home
Speaker 3: watching a television show about forensic work.
Speaker 1: The new cutting edge technology is called vacuum metal deposition.
Speaker 1: It's the last chance they have to get the killer's fingerprints.
Speaker 5: This machine is a large metal tank from which they
Speaker 5: extract all the air and turn it into virtually a
Speaker 5: perfect vacuum.
Speaker 1: The device works by heating zinc and gold within the
Speaker 1: tank until they vaporize. The metals coat everything except contaminants.
Speaker 5: The fingerprints show up because that is a contaminant, and
Speaker 5: any contaminant disrupts the deposition of the metal onto the article.
Speaker 1: Having now retrieved four smiley face bags from the killer's
Speaker 1: latest victims, police are confident they'll find something, but the
Speaker 1: first bag reveals nothing. Disappointed, they return to the drawing board.
Speaker 1: Three bags from three victims are painstakingly run through the system,
Speaker 1: but still no sign of their killer. On their last try,
Speaker 1: they finally catch a break and manage to pull a print.
Speaker 1: It's not the fingerprint they'd been hoping for. It's a
Speaker 1: pomp print, and that poses problems for investigators.
Speaker 5: The palm print has to be compared one to one
Speaker 5: with a suspect palm print by a human examiner.
Speaker 1: The trouble is investigators are a long way from finding
Speaker 1: a suspect.
Speaker 5: I liken the whole investigation to a roller coaster. We
Speaker 5: would be up one moment believing that we were on
Speaker 5: the trail of our killer, only to find that the
Speaker 5: lab would prove us wrong.
Speaker 1: With every blind alley they go down, the killer gets
Speaker 1: another chance to strike, and two weeks after his last murder,
Speaker 1: he decides to double his efforts. The latest victims are
Speaker 1: Laura Wason and Sean mcclenahan. Again it's the same mo.
Speaker 1: The victims are prostitutes found in isolated rural setting. Both
Speaker 1: have been shot in the head. Both are tagged with
Speaker 1: the killer's infamous calling card, But this time one of
Speaker 1: the bodies yields a clue, a strange mark behind her
Speaker 1: lefty ear.
Speaker 6: When a contact gunshop wound occurs, there's a good chance
Speaker 6: of skin is blown back against the end of the barrel,
Speaker 6: and that can leave an imprint.
Speaker 1: Based on ballistics, police know the killer used a twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber pistol. Now forensic technician Ed Robinson hopes to
Speaker 1: use the gunshot mark to zone in on the specific
Speaker 1: make and model of the murder weapon.
Speaker 9: I was provided with photographs of one of the shooting
Speaker 9: victims which depicted damage to the skin near the ear
Speaker 9: of the hit. Looking at the photo, I was fairly sure,
Speaker 9: based on my original list of three firearms, that I
Speaker 9: was going to be able to narrow it down to
Speaker 9: one firearm. The process that I used was to put
Speaker 9: a thin layer of clay on a styrofoam mannequin head
Speaker 9: and then make impressions with various portions of the firearms
Speaker 9: that I had previously listed. The process for the photography
Speaker 9: was just to make everything one to one so that
Speaker 9: all of the images were the same size.
Speaker 1: After several attempts, he gets a perfect match.
Speaker 9: I narrowed the list to raven pistols.
Speaker 1: Police get a list of raven owners. They compare it
Speaker 1: to lists of corvette owners and sex offenders.
Speaker 3: It was felt if we could compare all those lists
Speaker 3: together and shift it and see what shook out the bottom,
Speaker 3: whose name appeared the most times and all those lists,
Speaker 3: that was probably our suspect.
Speaker 1: Thirteen women dead and police still don't.
Speaker 2: Have a suspect.
Speaker 1: As the death toll arises, so does the fear in
Speaker 1: the community.
Speaker 2: The pressure was really mounting, and so the public's awareness
Speaker 2: was really amounting. Even though these women were viewed by
Speaker 2: many as quote just prostitutes, it still was becoming an
Speaker 2: issue of significant community concern.
Speaker 8: I think that the public was also afraid that it
Speaker 8: was going to stem into like, not just out on
Speaker 8: Sprague with the prostitutes, if possibly you'd start killing off
Speaker 8: other just quote unquote normal people.
Speaker 1: Do police authorities respond to the public pressure.
Speaker 3: It formed a task force made up of detectives from
Speaker 3: the city police department, the Sheriff's Department, the worst State Patrol.
Speaker 3: We have participation from the FBI as well as the
Speaker 3: worst state attorney General's office.
Speaker 1: The heightened attention triggers an overwhelming public response.
Speaker 2: Once the task force was formed, hotline was set up
Speaker 2: and a lot of people were calling in their neighbors,
Speaker 2: their friends, their ex boyfriends saying I think you ought
Speaker 2: to take a look at this guy. And so in
Speaker 2: quick order, the task force had a long list of
Speaker 2: people they needed to look at.
Speaker 1: Despite the outpouring of tips, no credible suspects are put forward,
Speaker 1: suggesting to police the killer is a master at blending in.
Speaker 3: Cyyl. Killer's trademark is their ability to manipulate those around
Speaker 3: them in believing that they are nothing more than just
Speaker 3: a regular human being.
Speaker 7: They don't stand out for any particular reason. They don't
Speaker 7: look like Frankenstein or anything.
Speaker 1: The man who is killing prostitutes in cold blood could
Speaker 1: even be a family man, someone his friends and neighbors
Speaker 1: would never suspect. Someone who's not likely to ever come
Speaker 1: to the attention of police, someone with an iron clad cover.
Speaker 1: With the count now at thirteen, law enforcement agencies across
Speaker 1: the region joined together to catch the elusive Spokane serial killer.
Speaker 1: Investigators believe they are chasing someone with an ironclad cover,
Speaker 1: a killer with the ability to hide in plane sight,
Speaker 1: but with no viable suspects, police follow up on the
Speaker 1: only concrete lead they have, the killer's brand of weapon.
Speaker 1: They contact raven gun owners in the area and bring
Speaker 1: their weapons in for testing.
Speaker 9: Twenty five auto caliber firearms were submitted to the crime
Speaker 9: lab for test firing and microscopic comparison to the bullets
Speaker 9: taken from the murder victims. All of the firearms that
Speaker 9: were submitted were test fired into a water recovery system,
Speaker 9: which allows for the collection of nearly Christine or Pristine
Speaker 9: bullets and the collection of the test fired cartridge cases.
Speaker 9: The bullets were Hubbard and those test fires were microscopically
Speaker 9: compared to the bullets from the murder victims.
Speaker 1: But no matches are made and the frustration wears hard
Speaker 1: on the team.
Speaker 6: My biggest challenge in these cases was to have a
Speaker 6: positive attitude that hopefully, this time we're going to find
Speaker 6: something that's going to shut down this activity. And over
Speaker 6: and over again that didn't happen. So it's frustrating.
Speaker 7: You can't sleep at night.
Speaker 3: You go to bed at ten o'clock, You wake up
Speaker 3: at two, you turn the coffee pot on, you get
Speaker 3: the books out, and you start reading about the case.
Speaker 3: You can't put it away.
Speaker 1: Just when they're at their lowest, the killer throws another
Speaker 1: sucker punch. The fourteenth victim is Linda Mabon, but this
Speaker 1: time is different.
Speaker 4: The body had been dumped into a ditch and then
Speaker 4: buried in the botanical debris. There was quite a lot
Speaker 4: of it in forensic standards ill on the site, enough
Speaker 4: to tell that it did not match the local vegetation.
Speaker 1: After thoroughly examining the debris. Forensic botanist Richard Old makes
Speaker 1: an expert determination.
Speaker 4: The evidence that was dumped with the bodies was all
Speaker 4: horticultural in nature. The site where it was dropped was
Speaker 4: primarily exotic weeds and a few native plants.
Speaker 1: The debris provides another clue.
Speaker 3: There was no pine needles associated with it, and this
Speaker 3: is largely a pine needle area.
Speaker 1: Instead, Old recognizes traces of Japanese maple oak and dark
Speaker 1: bark chips.
Speaker 4: This was typical of horticultural material that would have fallen
Speaker 4: in the fall. It was deciduous vegetation.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of vegetation found in backyards.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of illegal dumping that goes on in
Speaker 3: that area, typically from people getting rid of long clippings
Speaker 3: and cleaning up the yards that sort of thing. But
Speaker 3: no one would just put lawn debris on top of
Speaker 3: bodies unless you were the killer.
Speaker 1: A killer who likes to keep his yard trim and tidy.
Speaker 1: Based on the materials he found at the crime scene,
Speaker 1: Richard Old sets about creating a picture of the killer's yard.
Speaker 1: If he can find that yard, he can find the killer.
Speaker 4: That yard that that material came from was out there someplace.
Speaker 4: It was like a puzzle and I wanted to solve it.
Speaker 1: Old knows that the debris came from a landscape garden
Speaker 1: based on species type, a natural proximity from tree to tree,
Speaker 1: he begins to assemble a unique botanical fingerprint of the
Speaker 1: killer's lair.
Speaker 4: What I imagined the yard to look like was two
Speaker 4: bark beds within fifty feet of each other based on
Speaker 4: the amount of cross contamination, and I knew the species
Speaker 4: composition of each of those bark beds. To know the
Speaker 4: vegetation as well as knowing that there are two separate
Speaker 4: bark beds made this a very unique location that this
Speaker 4: material had come from. Normally, botanical evidence is used after
Speaker 4: a perpetrator has been identified. In this case, we had
Speaker 4: an opportunity to use the evidence to actually identify the perpetrator.
Speaker 1: But legally they can't just walk into any yard to
Speaker 1: check the flower beds. Instead, they develop an invaluable investigative tool.
Speaker 4: The detectives in the case put together a book of
Speaker 4: the species that I found in the debris and use
Speaker 4: this when they were visiting suspects homes to see if
Speaker 4: that plant composition occurred on those sites.
Speaker 10: This is obviously not the yard.
Speaker 1: In his lab, doctor Lindholm continues to pore over the bodies,
Speaker 1: searching for any trace evidence the killer may have left behind.
Speaker 6: We do take samples of the pubicare of we come it,
Speaker 6: and we also pulled samples now on the comb and
Speaker 6: the brushings. You're looking for somebody else's pubic hairs, what
Speaker 6: you're looking for.
Speaker 1: Months of examination pays off. Lindholm manages to recover foreign
Speaker 1: hair follicles from each of the victims.
Speaker 10: I analyzed the hairs and compared them and determined that
Speaker 10: these pubicares did not match the.
Speaker 1: Victims, suggesting one thing, the pubic hairs belonged to the killer.
Speaker 1: A DNA match to the seamen sample recovered from Jennifer
Speaker 1: Joseph's body confirms their suspicions.
Speaker 10: When I analyzed the pubicres, I found them to be
Speaker 10: light brown and likely from a Caucasian person.
Speaker 1: Armed with new information about their killer, investigators returned to
Speaker 1: the track, this time with a new tactic. Undercover officers
Speaker 1: pose as prostitutes. Every John is a potential suspect.
Speaker 5: Who had instructed the certain officers who worked that downtown
Speaker 5: corridor to look for evidence. It was pertinent to our
Speaker 5: investigations such as grocery and merchandise bags, small caliber weapon,
Speaker 5: and specifically in any vehicle that might be capable of
Speaker 5: carrying or conveying a body and a large amount of
Speaker 5: debris in it.
Speaker 1: Even if there's nothing suspicious in the car, a john
Speaker 1: is still fair game for closer inspection.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if a potential customer contacted them and agreed to
Speaker 5: a sex act for money that was constituted, the crime
Speaker 5: is soliciting for prostitution, and they would be arrested. We
Speaker 5: would get their identification, We would get fingerprints and palm
Speaker 5: prints when they were booked that could be compared to.
Speaker 7: Information we already had.
Speaker 1: Trying to stay one step ahead of the killer, the
Speaker 1: Task Force adopts a radical approach in dealing with missing persons.
Speaker 3: We learned real quickly in this investigation to treat all
Speaker 3: missing persons, particularly females, as if they were homicide victim.
Speaker 1: Missing at least fear the worst. When a woman reports
Speaker 1: that her roommate, Melody Murphin has gone missing. The local
Speaker 1: prostitute was last seen leaving her house with a repeat customer,
Speaker 1: someone she knew well, someone she trusted.
Speaker 8: It's not unusual to have repeat customers. I feel safe,
Speaker 8: he feels safe. We know each other.
Speaker 1: We know it or not.
Speaker 8: I'm not out to get him. He's not out to
Speaker 8: get me.
Speaker 7: I'm not a cop.
Speaker 8: He's not a cop.
Speaker 1: You ready to go? The roommate describes the collar as white,
Speaker 1: middle aged with brown hair. He fits their serial killer
Speaker 1: description to a t. It's a killer out there.
Speaker 2: Don't worry. I'll take care of her.
Speaker 3: Melody Murfins disappeared near Mother's Day. Although we had no
Speaker 3: bo with Melody, it was felt that she was had
Speaker 3: been killed because she wasn't around anymore.
Speaker 1: Investigators search the city streets and Spokane countryside, but they
Speaker 1: find no trace of Melody murphin I Get Your Name.
Speaker 1: Three weeks later, the case takes a dramatic turn when
Speaker 1: police questioned local prostitute Christine Smith.
Speaker 7: I got hit with something.
Speaker 8: A good man, a black van pulled up and I
Speaker 8: got into the van, and I had Since there was
Speaker 8: a serial killer running around, I was trying to always
Speaker 8: put up my feelers out to get an intuition on
Speaker 8: whether or not the person was, you know, okay or not? Yeah,
Speaker 8: I'm good, I asked the customer if he was the
Speaker 8: serial killer. Sure, you're good, and he said that he
Speaker 8: was a helicopter pilot with the Army National Guard. He
Speaker 8: was a father of five. Now does that sound like
Speaker 8: a serial killer to you. We proceeded to drive down
Speaker 8: the street and I told him that I wanted to
Speaker 8: go to my spot. He gave me forty dollars for
Speaker 8: oral sex and nothing was really happening. He said, okay,
Speaker 8: like he was talking to somebody else. I thought that
Speaker 8: I had been hit in my head really hard by
Speaker 8: maybe a a a wrench or or s or crowbar.
Speaker 8: I jumped out of the passenger seat, ran down the street,
Speaker 8: screaming to the top of my lungs. My youngest daughters
Speaker 8: life is what flashed before me, and that's what kept
Speaker 8: me from passing out. And then I went into the
Speaker 8: elevator and I started pushing buttons so that the elevator
Speaker 8: would keep the door closed, hoping not to not see,
Speaker 8: you know, a hand come in to open the elevator door.
Speaker 8: And an arm did come through the elevator at one point,
Speaker 8: and I thought it was, you know, the person that
Speaker 8: had just hit me, and it turned out to be
Speaker 8: the security guard.
Speaker 1: After almost nine years and thirteen murders can someone finally
Speaker 1: put a face to the notorious Spokane serial killer.
Speaker 7: I think.
Speaker 1: After nine years of hunting the infamous Spokane serial killer,
Speaker 1: police have a put potential eyewitness. Prostitute Christine Smith, has
Speaker 1: survived an attack with an aggressive John.
Speaker 8: Because it was a violent crime, the hospital said that
Speaker 8: I had to.
Speaker 10: Make a police report to have any idea where you
Speaker 10: were that's happened, I don't.
Speaker 1: Smith describes the attack and reports that she was struck
Speaker 1: in the head with a heavy blunt object. No, I
Speaker 1: don't remember anything.
Speaker 3: Christine Smith's case didn't fit the profile that we had
Speaker 3: of our victims at that time.
Speaker 5: The most glaring discrepancy was the fact that she in
Speaker 5: the kid, that she had been hit with something, struck
Speaker 5: with a club or something different.
Speaker 3: All of our victims had been shot in the head.
Speaker 3: We knew of none of them that had been physically assaulted.
Speaker 1: Back to square one, The elusive nature of the killer
Speaker 1: continues to baffle police. Who is he and where is he?
Speaker 3: High We had over seven thousand tips, which ultimately led
Speaker 3: to about eighty thousand pages of investigative material. To clear
Speaker 3: those seven thousand tips, It's a needle in a haystack.
Speaker 1: To cross reference and filter the mountain of leads. Forensic
Speaker 1: technicians turned to a new program called tip Man. From
Speaker 1: seven thousand tips, tip Man narrows the field to just
Speaker 1: forty four suspects.
Speaker 2: Most these suspects when they were approached, if they were
Speaker 2: truly innocent, they were rolling up their sleeves and offering
Speaker 2: up their blood sample. And if they weren't guilty, bingo,
Speaker 2: they walked.
Speaker 1: Closing in on a possible suspect, Police turned their attention
Speaker 1: to finding the white Corvette.
Speaker 5: The corvette might disappear, I might find it in the woods,
Speaker 5: burned up after it's been reported stolen, or any number
Speaker 5: of things which will destroy evidence in it.
Speaker 1: One by one, investigators approached the forty four Corvette owners
Speaker 1: on their list of suspects and search their vehicles.
Speaker 5: I took a number of samples from the interior carpeting
Speaker 5: of the corvette in different areas.
Speaker 7: Here it is guys, have a look if you want.
Speaker 1: Nearing the end of the list, their search pays off.
Speaker 1: The red carpet fibers strike an immediate cord with investigators.
Speaker 3: Those fibers were microscopically almost identical to the fibers that
Speaker 3: were recovered from Jennifer Joseph's shoes and the towel that
Speaker 3: are with her body.
Speaker 2: But there's a snag.
Speaker 1: The car owner only recently purchased the Corvette.
Speaker 2: I got all the paperwork in that, so they can
Speaker 2: go get it if you want YEA.
Speaker 1: Now police have to track down the previous car owner
Speaker 1: and bring them in for questioning. The Corvette is immediately impounded.
Speaker 10: As part of our houses We pretty much took the
Speaker 10: Corvette apart, piece by piece. On the interior of the vehicle.
Speaker 3: The vehicle was spotless. It was actually a real collector's car.
Speaker 3: I would have loved to have owned a car like that.
Speaker 1: The team quickly discovers a small white button encased in
Speaker 1: the passenger floorboard.
Speaker 3: I recognized that button immediately as a button that I
Speaker 3: had seen before.
Speaker 10: I compared it against the buttons that were still on
Speaker 10: the Jennifer Joseph jacket.
Speaker 3: It was an identical match to the one that was
Speaker 3: underneath this car seat.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that the car had been professionally detailed,
Speaker 1: The forensic team makes out a faint stain on the
Speaker 1: passenger seat belt. Immediate DNA testing proves the blood belongs
Speaker 1: to Jennifer Joseph. The evidence in the vehicle confirms what
Speaker 1: investigators had earlier suspected. The killer viciously murdered Jennifer Joseph
Speaker 1: then drove her lifeless body to the outskirts of Spokane,
Speaker 1: dumping her in the countryside. Now police need a name
Speaker 1: in connection to the car. Who was the previous owner
Speaker 1: of the white Corvette. Police quickly learned that the car
Speaker 1: was last registered to a helicopter pilot, a doting husband
Speaker 1: and a father of five. The man's name Robert Yates.
Speaker 1: Police move in to make an arrest.
Speaker 3: We picked a isolated section of highway in case the
Speaker 3: worst case scenario happened. We weren't going to jeopardize those
Speaker 3: people in the community.
Speaker 1: Gotta be that we're taking him down, possibly armed police lead.
Speaker 1: Nothing to chance, Robert Yates. Let's he both fans out
Speaker 1: the window. Now hot a car on the ground. Now,
Speaker 1: when Yates fully complies with police, it begs one question. Blood.
Speaker 1: In their desperate attempt to catch the Spokane serial killer,
Speaker 1: have investigators captured the wrong man? After a decade of slaughter.
Speaker 1: Spokane police arrest forty seven year old Robert Lee Yates
Speaker 1: and charge him with murder. Investigators are convinced they have
Speaker 1: finally found their killers. Now they need the evidence to
Speaker 1: prove it. All units are dispatched to the Yates family home.
Speaker 3: What I wanted to do is find the weapons in
Speaker 3: the house first and foremost.
Speaker 10: I'm sorry to have to do this, but we have
Speaker 10: a warrant to search the premises.
Speaker 2: Can you believe it? This guy's a war hero, helicopter pilot,
Speaker 2: mister average Spokane. He had five children and a wife.
Speaker 2: He'd been married, he'd been in the Army, he'd been
Speaker 2: in the Army, National Guard.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. A search of the house turns up nothing.
Speaker 3: Let's take a look in the yard.
Speaker 1: Hoping that Yates may have buried his guns in the garden.
Speaker 1: Investigators move outdoors, but again the search comes up cold.
Speaker 1: Forensic botanist Richard Old is initially puzzled by the elaborate
Speaker 1: landscaping in the backyard.
Speaker 4: It didn't work. It wasn't the way I had pictured
Speaker 4: it in my head.
Speaker 1: But a closer examination of the individual plant species draws
Speaker 1: Old back to his original sketch. That's what I was saying.
Speaker 10: It's the stuff that we found in the field, right.
Speaker 1: He determines that most of The plants used to cover
Speaker 1: Linda Maven's body are present in yates His backyard, but
Speaker 1: there is one glaring difference, the new red bark. He
Speaker 1: covered the black bark with red chips.
Speaker 4: When I saw that old bark that I'd spent so
Speaker 4: many hours digging through the hair on the back of
Speaker 4: my neck just stood on end.
Speaker 1: Old's theory pays off in spades and fuels a search
Speaker 1: for more evidence. When police discover a black van on
Speaker 1: the property, they strip it for clues and turn up
Speaker 1: a bullet fragment, but is it enough to guarantee a conviction.
Speaker 1: Investigators are then approached by former prostitute Christine Smith. She
Speaker 1: tells them about the recent visit she made to her doctor.
Speaker 8: He comes back into the room and he says, well,
Speaker 8: miss Smith, you have the beginning of osteoarthritis in your neck,
Speaker 8: but can you tell me what year you were shot?
Speaker 1: X rays reveal bullet fragments lodged in the bone at
Speaker 1: the base of Christine's skull. Her attacker didn't hit her
Speaker 1: with a crowbar, as she had earlier believed. He shot
Speaker 1: her point blank in the head.
Speaker 8: I was shot right here, and it being that close
Speaker 8: to my ear all you hear is in men's ringing.
Speaker 1: It's a miracle that Christine Smith survived the attack. The
Speaker 1: fragments are removed from her skull and sent to the
Speaker 1: ballistics lab for comparison.
Speaker 9: I was able to say that they were consistent in
Speaker 9: design with the bullet that had been recovered from a
Speaker 9: ban where Christine Smith had.
Speaker 1: Been DNA testing will make or break the case. If
Speaker 1: investigators can prove that the seamen's samples recovered from the
Speaker 1: earlier victims belong to Yates, they have their killer. The
Speaker 1: DNA results are unmistakable. Robert Lee Yates is the Spokane
Speaker 1: serial killer responsible for murdering fourteen women in Spokane County.
Speaker 3: I gotta tell you that I started to cry. I
Speaker 3: sat at my desk and I cried. I was so
Speaker 3: happy that we had finally done what we'd set out
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: But investigators aren't done with Yates. The prosecution makes it deal.
Speaker 1: They'll waive the death penalty in exchange for information. They
Speaker 1: suspect Yates is responsible for the disappearance of Melody Murphin,
Speaker 1: the prostitute reported missing two years earlier.
Speaker 3: He drew on a little map that he gave to
Speaker 3: his defense attorneys, and we follow his defense attorneys from.
Speaker 1: A helicopter thousands of feet in the air. Our own
Speaker 1: date mentally.
Speaker 3: Points to a house in South Smotanne.
Speaker 1: The map leads them right back to the Yates family home.
Speaker 7: That's something here.
Speaker 5: We encountered a badly decomposed body that had obviously been
Speaker 5: buried for some time. That body that had been buried
Speaker 5: at mister Yates home for the better part of two
Speaker 5: years was that of Melody Murphin.
Speaker 1: In a Spokane courtroom, Robert Lee Yates receives a life
Speaker 1: sentence in a separate trial, and Pierce County there's no
Speaker 1: obligation to honor Yeats's plea bargain.
Speaker 2: Jury ultimately decided he should be put on death row
Speaker 2: where he's still where he still is today.
Speaker 3: I can tell you that every one of those women
Speaker 3: were loved dearly by somebody at some point in their life.
Speaker 1: The memorial service is held for all the victims, closure
Speaker 1: for their families.
Speaker 8: Because the victims, even though they were prostitutes, they were
Speaker 8: still mothers and daughters and aunts and nieces and you know,
Speaker 8: grandkids of people.
Speaker 6: The stas
Speaker 2: Talking talk