Robert Lee Yates: An American Serial Killer

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Robert Lee Yates is an American serial killer and he is from Spokane, Washington. He is also known as the Spokane serial killer. He was born May 27th, 1952. Yates is known to have murdered at least 13 women who were prostitutes working on Spokane’s skid row. After being convicted, Yates additionally admitted to two homicides that he did commit in Walla Walla, Washington in 1975 and a 1988 homicide that he committed in Skagit County, Washington. In 2002, Yates was indicted for murdering two women in Pierce County, Washington. He is currently serving his sentence on death row at Washington State Penitentiary. Yates was born to a middle class family and he grew up in Oak Harbor, Washington. After high school, he started working for Washington State Penitentiary as a prison guard. Yates was married at 20 years old, and the marriage lasted for 18 Months and then he was married again. His second wife left him for a month “after discovering he’d drilled a hole …show more content…

This case was very shocking and scary amongst the state of Washington, due to the fact that this case was the largest serial murder investigation since the early 1980’s in the Green River Killings committed by Gary Ridgeway. This case was very similar not only in the fact that both crimes were in the same state but their targets were prostitutes. He strangled the women unlike Yates who shot his victims. After strangling his victims he as well would dump the bodies. Ridgeway earned his name as the Green River Killer because when authorities found the first 5 victims located in the Green River. He is known to have murdered a minimum of 71 women, and was found convicted through DNA evidence, the same as Yates. Unlike Yates who is currently on death row and was sentenced to death, Ridgeway did not receive the death penalty due to confessing about missing women who authorities had not

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