"There Is Nothing I Can Say": Robert Yates in KXLY's "509's Most Notorious Crimes," Episode 3

KXLY's 2026 retrospective traces the Spokane serial killer case through the station's own reports from 1990 to 2000, and includes Robert Yates's brief apology in court before he was sentenced to 408 years.

Subject

Robert Lee Yates

Recorded

about 2026

Runtime

17:50

Content warning: Describes the shooting deaths of women in Spokane, the discovery of their bodies, and a victim's remains found buried in the killer's yard. No graphic description of wounds.

The Interview

This is not an interview. It is episode 3 of "509's Most Notorious Crimes," a true-crime streaming series from KXLY 4 (4 News Now) in Spokane, posted on the station's YouTube channel on March 17, 2026. Host Derek Dice revisits the Robert Yates case through the station's own reports from 1990 to 2000. Yates himself is heard for about 36 seconds, in two pieces of court footage from 2000: answering "Yes" and "That's correct" as a judge reviews his background at his first appearance, and addressing the families of his victims before he was sentenced.

Historical Context

Robert Lee Yates Jr., a former Army helicopter pilot and Army National Guard member, was arrested in Spokane on April 18, 2000, for the murder of Jennifer Joseph, after a white 1977 Corvette he had owned was linked to her. His first known killings were of Patrick Oliver and Susan Savage near Walla Walla on July 13, 1975. Through the 1990s, women connected with the street trade on Spokane's East Sprague were found shot across Spokane County, and a joint task force was formed in December 1997.

Circumstances

The episode opens with a 1990 KXLY report on three women found along the Spokane River that year. Dice explains that those killings were later attributed to a different offender, not to Yates. It then follows the 1997 task force, the tip about a white Corvette and the fiber and DNA evidence, the April 2000 announcement naming nine women detectives linked to Yates, and the October 2000 recovery of Melody Murfin's remains, buried in his yard below his bedroom window, after he drew investigators a map. In 2000 he pleaded guilty in Spokane County Superior Court to 13 counts of aggravated murder and one of attempted murder under an agreement that spared him the death penalty there, and was sentenced to 408 years.

What the Interview Covers

At his first court appearance a judge reads back his circumstances (married, five children, employed since December 1998) and notes that he has no prior felony convictions; Yates confirms them. Before sentencing he tells the court: "There is nothing I can say will erase the sorrow, the pain, and the anguish that you feel, and that I've caused in your lives," and says he has caused "much pain" for the families "and my family."

What Makes the Recording Significant

The episode is the original station's own account of the case across a decade, and it preserves Yates's sentencing statement in his own voice. His words are brief and general: he does not describe any killing.

Archival Importance

The episode gathers KXLY reports that are not otherwise easy to find, including the April 2000 naming of victims and the October 2000 recovery at Yates's home.

Important Caveats

The narration says Yates "was prosecuted for 16 murders." He is believed to have killed at least 16 people; his convictions cover 15 (13 in the 2000 Spokane County plea, which included the two Walla Walla killings and one in Skagit County, and 2 in Pierce County in 2002). The Pierce County death sentence was converted to life without parole after the Washington Supreme Court's 2018 ruling. Reporters' and officials' names are as heard and not verified. The automatic captions give the sentence as "48-year"; the machine transcripts hear "408-year," which matches published reports.

Narrator: You can't talk about notorious crimes in Spokane without talking about Robert Lee Yates, also known as the Spokane serial killer, even though his crimes stretch across the state of Washington.

Sheriff'S Official , August 2000: We're very confident that, uh, Mr. Yates is a suspect in 12 of our homicides, up to 18.

Narrator: That was August of 2000, but this story begins decades before. A couple killed while picnicking in Walla Walla, then a trail of murders that shocked Spokane, and overlapping serial killers in the Pacific Northwest. When police finally caught the killer they'd chased for decades, he didn't fit the profile you'd expect. A father, a veteran, a husband, a neighbor who now ranks among the worst killers in state history. Derek Dice picks up the trail from one of the last places anyone expected to find the Spokane serial killer.

Derek Dice: I'm standing in what is now known as the Southeast Sports Complex. My kids have played soccer here; yours probably have too. A nice middle-class neighborhood on the South Hill, near a playground and a park. But in April of 2000, this is where DNA and a decades-long search finally led.

Reporter: Good morning to you. I'm Trova Hutchkins, live in South Spokane outside the home of an alleged serial killer. His name is Robert Lee Yates Jr. We are bringing you this live coverage because we are about to learn some of the other evidence that's been under wraps and some of the names of his alleged victims.

Derek Dice: Before we talk about that evidence and those victims, let's go back. Back to Spokane in the 1980s and 90s, where women who worked on the street lived in fear, as one by one someone was snatching them up and leaving them dead.

Reporter: Detectives seal off a dirt road leading to the Spokane River. Below lies the body of another nude woman who's been shot to death. It's the third such case along the river in as many months. They await daylight to begin the hunt for clues. Amid eerie early morning clouds, a large search team fans out and a helicopter takes to the air.

Search Radio: [unclear: "74 is going to be running a river back towards Donkey Island" (captions); not in Whisper].

Reporter: The hills are steep and the brush is thick in this area, not unlike the first two riverbank killings. Detectives are forced to comb it inch by inch, looking for that one piece of evidence to answer the question they're all asking today: is the same person responsible? The hunt has intensified with each discovery. It began February 22nd, along Upriver Drive across from Spokane Community College. Detectives quickly identify the victim, 26-year-old Yolanda Sapp, a known prostitute. 31 days later, another prostitute is found a few blocks away, under the Green Street Bridge. Like the first victim, Nickie Lowe was shot in the upper torso and was partially disrobed. Spokane police say neither case has produced a solid lead. Last night, a pair of high school students found the latest victim on the riverbank south of Trent Avenue. An early morning autopsy confirmed she died of gunshot wounds. Authorities reportedly felt they were close to learning her identity late this afternoon. This latest case lies outside Spokane's city limits, but city police detectives spent all night and most of today right alongside county sheriff's investigators.

Investigator , 1990: We're looking for similarities in their case and our case. And we don't know yet if we've got anything along those lines, but on the chance that we do, they were here with us on the scene.

Reporter: The decision to form a special joint task force came late this afternoon, after a meeting between City Police Chief Terry Mangan and County Sheriff Larry Erickson. Erickson said the overriding conclusion was that these three killings are most likely connected. John Allison, News 4.

Derek Dice: That was 1990. Those women were the victims of a serial killer, but detectives found out later they were not victims of Robert Yates. Another serial killer named Douglas Perry was roaming Spokane streets at the same time. He wouldn't be caught for another 24 years. At that time, though, Robert Yates was hunting, and one woman after another was turning up dead across Spokane County. Here's how we reported it in 1997.

Anchor: A deadly day in the Spokane area today: two murders, and police have the name of a woman whose body was found last week. Authorities say she may be a serial killer's latest victim. 36-year-old Shawn Johnson was one of three women wanted for questioning in a string of prostitute murders. Johnson's body was found last Thursday along Hangman Valley Road. Unlike the other victims, authorities say Johnson has no record of prostitution, but they do say she's associated with prostitutes. [unclear: "Total News 4's" (captions) / "Told me as far as" (Whisper)] Mike Heckler is live at the public safety building with the latest on this. Mike?

Reporter: Maryanne, authorities still hesitate to say that a serial killer is responsible for these murders, but they have set up a special task force. It's made up of four detectives, two from the city police department and two from the sheriff's department, and they will work full-time trying to solve these murders. And there have been a lot of them: five this year alone, 10 since 1990. Authorities want more time to look for any sort of similarities between these crimes besides the obvious ones.

Official: So obviously some of them have been somewhat clustered. Uh, we've had the ones up on Mount Spokane and Forker Road. We've had two now in the Hangman area. So that in and of itself is something that draws your attention. And if you go back further in time, we had the ones, as I recall, along the river, uh, that makes you wonder if it might be the same individual.

Reporter: Aubrey says this task force has a very formidable task ahead of it. He says that although they might be able to find some sort of similarities, he believes the best evidence will come from a witness, someone who may have seen a suspicious vehicle or who will come forward with information about these murders.

Derek Dice: So in December of 1997, that task force was formed. Where I'm walking here on East Sprague has changed a lot since the 1990s. Where you now see thriving businesses and family foot traffic was back then seen as the underbelly of Spokane. Maybe Robert Yates knew that. Maybe he thought the women he murdered wouldn't be missed. But he was wrong.

Speaker At A Gathering: We're gathered here to mourn the loss of life, the disrespect of God's creation, and we are here to weep. The city has been called together to weep.

Derek Dice: By 1998, people were putting together the clues, realizing there was a serial killer in their midst. The bodies were being dumped across the community.

Investigator , With A Map: This is a map that shows the location of, uh, all the bodies that were found since 1984, uh, and what, uh, the four that have been linked. We have, uh, [unclear: "17, 18"] here that are located, or were found on December 26th, at 14th and Carnahan. Then we have, uh, the two others that are linked here on Hangman Valley Road.

Derek Dice: Then something happened that people could not ignore: the faces of the victims, where everyone could see them.

Mother Of Shawn McClenahan: I don't cry every day, but at least once a week.

Reporter: Just before Audrey's daughter Shawn died several years ago, she sent her family a card. "I spend all of this time alone wishing for better days. God, it looks like they are near. Please tell all the family that I love them and that I'm still alive." They were some of Shawn McClenahan's last words. Drive down Sprague Avenue today, and you can see her picture on a giant billboard, reminding Spokane of an unsolved murder mystery and a serial killer who might come back.

Speaker: Spokane has finally recognized that all of these women were people who had families that loved them very much.

Reporter: Over 10 years, the notorious murders have had their similarities. 10 known victims were women tied to prostitution and drugs in life, all shot in the back of the head to their deaths. Now, in more than one year, there hasn't been a trace of the serial killer. The county sheriff's department says it must consider all possibilities: that Spokane's serial killer could be alive, dead, incarcerated or free, and that at any time he could come back.

Derek Dice: So now they had the victims, they had the community concerned, and they had a task force dedicated to stopping this killer before he murdered again. But they didn't have the one thing they searched desperately for, the clue that would lead them to an arrest, until they received a tip about a white Corvette. Here's former KXLY reporter Dave Meany [name as heard; not verified].

Reporter: Robert Yates owned a white '77 Corvette, similar to this one, from 1994 to 1998. Witnesses allege they last saw Jennifer Joseph alive in a white Corvette in August of 1997. So investigators went to work, tracking down every white Corvette in the city and tracing one in particular back to Yates. Then fiber and DNA tests at the State Patrol lab linked Yates and his Corvette to Joseph.

Second Voice: The fibers obtained from the Corvette quite closely matched fibers recovered during the investigation of the Joseph homicide.

Reporter: Those items included Joseph's shoes and a towel. Also, bloodstains lifted from the Corvette's passenger seat and belt buckle helped make another connection.

Second Voice: The majority of the stains appear to have soaked through the seams of the seat. Human DNA was recovered from two stains off the seat.

Reporter: After testing those samples, the State Patrol determined the Corvette blood came from Jennifer Joseph. Finally, crime lab tests connected a button found in the Corvette's floorboards to a jacket Joseph was wearing when she was killed. Other DNA tests performed at the crime lab have also linked Yates to at least a dozen other serial victims. First for local news, I'm Dave Meany.

Derek Dice: Those clues led investigators here to the South Hill, to a home right down the road from where I'm standing, on 49th Avenue, not far off of Crestline. And in April of 2000, they could finally share the news so many in the community had waited for.

Reporter: Detectives have just finished searching the upstairs of Robert Yates's home. Even though no crucial evidence surfaced there today, for victims' families, this is the most important day of the investigation.

Speaker: And I can't imagine, I can't even imagine what it's like for them, waiting to hear something like this.

Official Reading The Names: [Victims] are Jennifer A. Joseph, Darla Sue Scott, Shawn L. Johnson, Laurie Ann Wason...

Relative: I want her back.

Official Reading The Names: Shawn A. McClenahan...

Relative: I desperately want her back.

Official Reading The Names: Melinda L. Mercer, Sunny G. Oster, Linda A. Maybin, and Michelyn Derning.

Relative: It's a relief that I finally, publicly, have heard the names.

Reporter: As if the murders weren't painful enough, families of nine women named today endured nearly 1,000 days and sleepless nights waiting for this.

Reporter: Detectives have definitive evidence tying Robert Yates to the murder of nine victims. The women, according to detectives, are tied by DNA and other evidence to this man, Robert Yates. Detectives claim Yates is a serial killer responsible for murders that date back to 1990.

Speaker: When this goes to trial, uh, then you will see some, I think, some anger.

Reporter: John, this is Yates's trial in the making. Detectives walked inside Yates's home for the first time today, wearing special suits like these, walking as if on eggshells to preserve what could be crucial evidence or absolutely useless in court.

Investigator: What we're going to do is map the scene, uh, and provide the county with a three-dimensional diagram.

Reporter: Forensic mapping, as it's called, is such an exact science, these investigators could later testify to the exact location of evidence down to the hundredth of an inch.

Official: We want a mountain of evidence when we take this into the courtroom. So we're not going to rely, we're not going to consider DNA a slam dunk. We're going to go in with, uh, the best evidence that we can present [unclear: "the trier of fact" / "the trial of fact" (captions) / "the trial fact" (Whisper)] in this case.

Reporter: Even with much of the evidence still under wraps, for the families of these nine women, today is truly a turning point that's allowed many of them to finally grieve.

Relative: Her memory will always be kept alive.

Derek Dice: With this neighborhood turned into a crime scene, his cars torn apart for evidence, and his family in shock, Robert Yates faced a judge, his decades-long secret unraveling.

Judge: That you are married, you have five children, uh, that you have some family in Arizona, that you recently had been employed with Kaiser, and that is since December of 1998?

Robert Yates: Yes.

Judge: And you were currently working there at the time of your arrest?

Robert Yates: That's correct.

Judge: All right. It does list your income here, the fact that you have no prior felony convictions.

Derek Dice: A husband, a father, a military veteran, a man with no criminal history. This is not who anyone would have expected. Through this grainy old court footage, we see a serial killer unmasked. But we did not yet know all of Robert Yates's secrets. There was one victim still missing, and three other murders across the state which were until now unsolved. In exchange for his life, Robert Yates would reveal the secrets, including one literally buried right outside his bedroom window.

Reporter: For the second time this year, blue tarps enclosed the home of accused serial killer Robert Lee Yates Jr.

Official: We're here today because Robert Yates has decided to disclose the location of a body, uh, murder victim, at his home.

Reporter: Following directions on a map Yates drew himself, detectives found a gravesite: the remains of another victim, buried under a tree in Yates's front yard. It was a surprise to investigators who had scoured the area last spring.

Official: We'd been over the, over the yard thoroughly. We'd been through the house thoroughly. Um, then again, we weren't looking for victims. There was no, nothing to [unclear: "evident" / "ev"], to indicate that any of the victims had been brought here to the residence.

Reporter: The body was taken to the county morgue, where the medical examiner will make an identification. Although it's too soon to speculate, chances are the victim is Melody Ann Murfin, who's been missing since May of '98.

Anchor Or Second Reporter: She is the only known victim who has not been discovered. Prosecutors now expect Yates to plead guilty to 13 murders, including two in Walla Walla and one in Skagit County. In return, at least in Spokane County, prosecutors won't ask for the death penalty.

Yates'S Attorney: He's extremely remorseful. He's wanted to come clean since the inception of this case.

Reporter: But who Yates is more remorseful for, his victims or himself, we may never know.

Derek Dice: In exchange for those confessions, Spokane County spared Robert Yates the death penalty and spared the families from going through a trial. Before being handed a 408-year prison sentence, Robert Yates addressed the families of his victims, and his own.

Judge: Is there anything you would like to say to the court before sentence is imposed?

Robert Yates: Yes, Your Honor. There is nothing I can say will erase the sorrow, the pain, and the anguish that you feel, and that I've caused in your lives. I've caused much sorrow, much pain. You can't know how much pain I know I've caused for all of you, and my family.

Derek Dice: Still, Robert Yates did not escape the death penalty altogether. Prosecutors in Pierce County later linked Yates to two more previously unsolved murders there. They did seek the death penalty for those crimes, and got it. Maybe the Spokane serial killer would pay the ultimate price for his crimes after all. Robert Yates was sent to death row at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla. He once came within two months of having a date set to die by lethal injection. He appealed multiple times, citing mental disorders and bad legal representation, but the court shot him down every time. He sat on death row waiting for the day his sentence would be carried out.

Derek Dice: Ultimately, though, Robert Yates's life was saved in 2018. That's when the Washington Supreme Court ruled the death penalty violated the state constitution. Everyone on death row had their sentences changed to life in prison instead. So Robert Yates is still there, 73 years old, with no chance of ever seeing freedom. The Spokane serial killer was prosecuted for 16 murders from 1975 to 1998. His name is synonymous with violence in our community. And even though he'll never get the death penalty for what he did, he will never have a chance of parole and will die in prison. For 509's Most Notorious Crimes, I'm Derek Dice. ---