Robert Lee Yates

Robert Lee Yates Jr. (born 27 May 1952) is an American serial killer who murdered 13 sex workers from 1975 to 1988, and has also confessed to 3 other murders, two in Walla Walla and one in Skagit County.

Murders
The murders Yates committed between 1988 and 1998 in Spokane all involved sex workers who worked along Spokane's East Sprague Avenue. The victims were initially solicited for sex work by Yates, who would have sex with them, do drugs with them, then kill them and dump their bodies in rural locations. All of his victims died of gunshot wounds to the head.

On August 1, 1998, Yates picked up sex worker Christine Smith, who managed to escape after being shot, assaulted and robbed. On September 19, 1998, Yates was asked to give a DNA sample to Spokane police after being stopped, but refused, saying it was an extreme request.

Conviction
On April 18 2000, Yates was arrested for the murder of sex worker Jennifer Joseph. A white van being tracked by the police was later found, and Yates's DNA was later found inside, along with blood from Jennifer Joseph. Yates's DNA was in turn linked to 12 other murdered sex workers. He pleaded guilty to 13 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder to avoid the death penalty and sentenced to 408 years in prison. He was later convicted for two other murders and sentenced to death in 2002.

Yates appealed his death sentence on the grounds that he believed his 2000 plea bargain to be all-encompassing, and that life in prison for 13 murders and capital punishment for two was an unreasonable application of the death penalty. His appeal was rejected in 2007, but he was granted a stay of execution in September 2008, and Washington State governor Jay Inslee refused to sign any death warrants in 2013, citing the high cost of the appeals process, the randomness of death sentences and a lack of evidence that the death penalty works as a deterrent. Yates's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2018 after the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty violated the state constitution.