Aug. 19, 2025
Robert Lee Yates: The Decorated Soldier Who Hunted Women for Sport
Robert Lee Yates: The Decorated Soldier Who Hunted Women for Sport You know that feeling when you find out your seemingly perfect neighbor has been living a completely different life? Robert Lee Yates took that concept and ran it straight into...
Robert Lee Yates: The Decorated Soldier Who Hunted Women for Sport
You know that feeling when you find out your seemingly perfect neighbor has been living a completely different life? Robert Lee Yates took that concept and ran it straight into nightmare territory. This decorated Army helicopter pilot spent over two decades flying into combat zones, earning medals for bravery, and coming home to his wife and five kids in suburban Spokane. His colleagues couldn't say enough good things about him. His superiors trusted him with their lives. And for twenty-five years, he was systematically hunting and killing vulnerable women just a few miles from his perfectly manicured lawn.
What makes this case so unsettling goes way beyond the murders themselves. We're talking about someone who could compartmentalize his existence so completely that he was literally receiving military commendations while committing serial killings on the weekends. The same hands that flew rescue missions in Somalia were wrapping plastic grocery bags around women's heads back home in Washington.
The victims deserved so much better than what life handed them. Jennifer Joseph was just sixteen when family trauma sent her spiraling into street life. Connie LaFontaine Ellis lost two children before drugs and desperation led her to Robert's path. These weren't random statistics in a true crime story. They were real people with real stories who crossed paths with someone who had learned to hide his darkness behind a uniform and a smile.
By the time investigators finally connected the dots in 2000, Robert had perfected his double life to an art form. But DNA evidence doesn't care about your military service record, and plastic grocery bags make for a pretty distinctive calling card when you're trying to stay under the radar. The case raises questions that'll stick with you long after you finish listening about how well we really know anyone and what happens when evil learns to wear a really convincing mask.
#RobertLeeYates #SpokaneSerialKiller #GroceryBagKiller #TrueCrimePodcast #SerialKillerDocumentary #MilitarySerialKiller #WashingtonStateCrime
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Robert was the kind of soldier you'd want watching your back in a combat zone.
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Decorated helicopter pilot, respected by his peers, trusted with the most dangerous missions.
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But back home in Spokane, Washington, this war hero was living a completely different double life.
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One that would cost 16 women their lives and full an entire community for two decades.
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This is the story of how America's most unlikely serial killer hid in plain sight.
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[Music]
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Robert Lee Yates was born in May 1952 into a family that probably should have come with a warning label.
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Seven years before Robert even took his first breath, his grandmother had already set the family tone by murdering his grandfather with an axe.
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So you know, typical Tuesday night and the Yates household.
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But the real psychological foundation for Robert's future came from his mother, who took religious discipline to Olympic levels.
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Experts would later describe their relationship as profoundly unusual, which is academic speak for deeply messed up.
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Add to that then alleged molestation when Robert was six and you've got a recipe for disaster that's been slow cooking for decades.
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Robert graduated high school and headed off to university like any normal kid.
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But college life apparently wasn't his vibe, so he dropped out, married his girlfriend and joined the army.
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The marriage lasted 18 months, which honestly sounds about right for someone who makes life altering decisions on a whim.
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Military career, however, stuck around for over two decades.
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And here's where the story gets genuinely bizarre.
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Robert wasn't a washout soldier. He was actually phenomenal at his job.
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He became a decorated military helicopter pilot who served in Germany, Somalia and Haiti during United Nations peacekeeping missions.
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His tours earned him an armed forces expeditionary medal, and his chief warrant officer, Jay Inders, couldn't stop praising him.
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It's real gutsy, Jay explained about Robert's service. He would go out there and look for the enemy with no weaponry.
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Yates was a true professional when he was out there, very proficient.
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So we're talking about a guy who was literally flying into danger zones, getting medals for bravery and earning respect from his superiors.
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Meanwhile, he was developing what you might call some very different extracurricular activities.
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When Robert finally returned to American soil permanently, he couldn't shake the military life and joined the National Guard.
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By this point, he'd remarried and had five children.
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To ever went around him, he looked like the definition of a successful family man.
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But that facade was covering up something that had started decades earlier.
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The first murders happened in 1975, and they were absolutely random.
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Robert was heading home from target practice, still carrying his gun.
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When he crossed paths with 21-year-old Patrick Oliver and his 22-year-old girlfriend Patricia Savage.
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These college students were having a picnic together when Robert decided to completely derail their lives.
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He shot Patrick first, then turned his attention to Patricia.
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Both were killed, and with those deaths, Robert discovered something about himself that would define the next 25 years of his life.
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After those initial murders, Robert established what became his signature approach.
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He targeted primarily sex workers who struggled with substance abuse issues.
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He would cruise Spokane's Red Light District, solicit services, and drive his victims to remote locations.
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His method was consistent and calculated.
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He would cruise a well-known prostitution strip just a short drive from his average suburban home seeking out vulnerable women.
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Once alone with them, Robert would usually use drugs with his victims before assaulting them.
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He would then shoot them in the head, and then sometimes assault their bodies again before dumping their remains in secluded areas.
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What made Robert particularly disturbing was his calling cart.
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Most of his victims would be found with multiple layers of plastic grocery bags wrapped around their heads.
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Investigators later determined these bags weren't part of the murder method.
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They were Robert's signature. His way of telling law enforcement and the public that Spokane's grocery bag killer had struck again.
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Among Robert's many victims, some stood out for heartbreaking reasons.
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Jennifer and Joseph was only 16 years old when her parents divorced sent her spiraling.
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She dropped out of high school, ran away from home, and ended up working the streets while using meth.
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Within a month of this lifestyle, she was dead.
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She was last seen getting into a van with an older gentleman before a farmer found her remains under one of his pine trees.
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Jennifer's case would eventually become the key to Robert's downfall.
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Then there were 39-year-old Sean and McClanon and 31-year-old Laurie Page Watson.
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Both women were discovered together in a gully in the Spokane forests.
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Their heads wrapped in grocery bags before being shot twice and dumped.
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After these murders, the plastic bags signature became Robert's consistent trademark.
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Not all of Robert's victims fit his usual pattern.
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Twenty-four-year-old Melinda Mercer had no criminal record and worked as a waitress when she encountered Robert.
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He wrapped her head in four layers of grocery bags before shooting her multiple times in the head.
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But Melinda was a fighter. Even mortally wounded, she managed to chew through two layers of plastic bags before succumbing to her injuries.
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Connie Ellis' story represents the kind of "profound tragedy" that shows how life can systematically break someone down.
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She lost one infant son to SIDS, which is devastating enough for any parent, but then she lost another son at 11 years old while he was waiting for a heart transplant.
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Her father later said that losing her second child completely destroyed Connie and sent her into a downward spiral that led to drugs, then prostitution, and finally to becoming one of Robert's victims.
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It took until 2000 for law enforcement to finally catch Robert.
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But when they did, it was Jennifer Joseph's murder that proved to be the breakthrough.
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Robert became a suspect when both he and his car matched witness descriptions from people who had seen Jennifer getting into his vehicle.
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The timing worked against Robert because he was away on a National Guard mission when investigators began connecting the dots.
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But when he returned, they put him under 24-hour surveillance. On the morning of April 18, 2000, at 6.30 a.m., police officers pulled over a car heading north on Market Street in Spokane.
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Yates was arrested. The evidence against Robert was overwhelming once investigators searched his car.
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They found Jennifer's earring, which placed her inside his vehicle, with the DNA evidence was what sealed his fate. Blood samples from his car matched Jennifer Joseph and 12 other victims.
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Earlier, on September 19, 1998, Yates was asked to give a DNA sample to Spokane police officers after being stopped.
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He refused, stating that it was too extreme of a request for a family man.
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That refusal probably seemed reasonable to him at the time, but it became another piece of evidence pointing to his guilt.
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Robert Yates pleaded guilty to 13 murders, taking a place among the nation's most prolific serial killers.
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The Army veteran and helicopter pilot also pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder as a part of a plea deal to escape the death penalty.
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He even took the police to previously undiscovered graves, showing a level of cooperation that probably saved his life. His sentence was 408 years in prison.
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But Spokane wasn't the only jurisdiction with a bone to pick with Robert.
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A year later, Pierce County brought separate charges for the 1997 and 1998 murders of Melinda Mercer and Connie La Fontaine Ellis.
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Pierce County had made no deals with Robert and were actively seeking the death penalty.
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Robert fought these charges hard. He argued that his plea deal with Spokane should apply to Pierce County as well, but the courts disagreed.
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When that approach failed, his defense team switched strategies and argued that Robert was not guilty by reason of insanity.
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According to his lawyers, Robert, "Through no fault of his own suffers from severe paraffinic disorder that essentially compelled him to commit these murders."
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Pierce County prosecutor Mark Linquist had a pretty direct response to this defense strategy.
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"I don't think Mr. Yates helps his cause by relying on the facts that he's a necrophiliac."
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The courts agreed with Linquist and upheld Robert's death sentence.
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But in 2018, Washington State ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, and Robert's sentence was commuted to life in prison along with many other death row inmates.
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Robert Lee Yates represents one of the most perplexing cases in American criminal history.
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Here was a man who could fly helicopters into combat zones, earn medals for bravery, and maintain the respect of his military colleagues while at the same time hunting and killing vulnerable women in his spare time.
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In the record books, Yates is linked with the murders of 16 victims. The majority of these victims were female sex workers, people who operated on the fringes of society.
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This case raises uncomfortable questions about how well we really know the people around us.
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Robert's neighbors, fellow soldiers, and even his family had no idea about his double life.
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He managed to compartmentalize his existence so completely that he was literally receiving military commendations while committing serial murders.
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Today, Robert Lee Yates sits in prison, where he'll remain for the rest of his natural life.
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The families of his victims continue dealing with losses that can never be repaired, and the Spokane community still grapples with how someone so seemingly ordinary could cause such extraordinary devastation.
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The grocery bags that became his signature weren't about the murders themselves. They were about recognition.
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Robert wanted credit for his crimes, wanted law enforcement and the public to know when he had struck again.
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In the end, the need for recognition became a part of what led investigators to him, proving that even the most calculated killers eventually make mistakes that bring them down.
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Thanks for listening to "10 Minute Murder" - bingeable true crime stories.
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Hi, I am Joe, I'm the host, and if you're a new listener, I really appreciate you checking out the podcast.
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Make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening right now.
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It's not more important, but I don't know why I said more importantly.
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This isn't more importantly. The most important thing is to subscribe.
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But, I guess secondary, follow the show on social media, links from the show notes of this episode.
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And quickly, let's get to an email from one of you that listens. Subject, your voice has range.
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Joe has anyone told you that you could probably narrate a murder and a kid's bedtime story without changing your tone, because that is both impressive and mildly terrifying.
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Gea from Austin.
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I appreciate the email, Gea. I don't know if that was a compliment or not. I choose to take it as a compliment.
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And you know, that's one of the most common things people mention to me.
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And I take it as a compliment because it means a lot to me when they say that you're easy to listen to.
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And I like hearing that because the opposite of that would be you're difficult to listen to.
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I still listen, but you're really hard to listen to. I would hate that.
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And I do get people that tell me I listen to you and fall asleep. You help me fall asleep at night.
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And I personally choose to not like that one, even though I think they mean that as a compliment.
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But it makes me feel like I'm boring. I'm putting you to sleep. I'm making your whole brain fall asleep.
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And I don't want to do that. I want to be interesting and keep you listening to the podcast.
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Right? And I get what you're saying. It goes back to the previous compliment where I'm easy to listen to.
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I just choose to take it in a negative way.
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Gea, thank you for the email. Thank you for the compliment. I think and thank you for listening to 10 Minute Murder.
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I'll see you next time.
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Robert was the kind of soldier you'd want watching your back in a combat zone.
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Decorated helicopter pilot, respected by his peers, trusted with the most dangerous missions.
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But back home in Spokane, Washington, this war hero was living a completely different double life.
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One that would cost 16 women their lives and full an entire community for two decades.
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This is the story of how America's most unlikely serial killer hid in plain sight.
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[Music]
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Robert Lee Yates was born in May 1952 into a family that probably should have come with a warning label.
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Seven years before Robert even took his first breath, his grandmother had already set the family tone by murdering his grandfather with an axe.
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So you know, typical Tuesday night and the Yates household.
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But the real psychological foundation for Robert's future came from his mother, who took religious discipline to Olympic levels.
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Experts would later describe their relationship as profoundly unusual, which is academic speak for deeply messed up.
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Add to that then alleged molestation when Robert was six and you've got a recipe for disaster that's been slow cooking for decades.
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Robert graduated high school and headed off to university like any normal kid.
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But college life apparently wasn't his vibe, so he dropped out, married his girlfriend and joined the army.
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The marriage lasted 18 months, which honestly sounds about right for someone who makes life altering decisions on a whim.
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Military career, however, stuck around for over two decades.
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And here's where the story gets genuinely bizarre.
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Robert wasn't a washout soldier. He was actually phenomenal at his job.
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He became a decorated military helicopter pilot who served in Germany, Somalia and Haiti during United Nations peacekeeping missions.
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His tours earned him an armed forces expeditionary medal, and his chief warrant officer, Jay Inders, couldn't stop praising him.
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It's real gutsy, Jay explained about Robert's service. He would go out there and look for the enemy with no weaponry.
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Yates was a true professional when he was out there, very proficient.
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So we're talking about a guy who was literally flying into danger zones, getting medals for bravery and earning respect from his superiors.
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Meanwhile, he was developing what you might call some very different extracurricular activities.
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When Robert finally returned to American soil permanently, he couldn't shake the military life and joined the National Guard.
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By this point, he'd remarried and had five children.
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To ever went around him, he looked like the definition of a successful family man.
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But that facade was covering up something that had started decades earlier.
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The first murders happened in 1975, and they were absolutely random.
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Robert was heading home from target practice, still carrying his gun.
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When he crossed paths with 21-year-old Patrick Oliver and his 22-year-old girlfriend Patricia Savage.
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These college students were having a picnic together when Robert decided to completely derail their lives.
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He shot Patrick first, then turned his attention to Patricia.
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Both were killed, and with those deaths, Robert discovered something about himself that would define the next 25 years of his life.
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After those initial murders, Robert established what became his signature approach.
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He targeted primarily sex workers who struggled with substance abuse issues.
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He would cruise Spokane's Red Light District, solicit services, and drive his victims to remote locations.
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His method was consistent and calculated.
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He would cruise a well-known prostitution strip just a short drive from his average suburban home seeking out vulnerable women.
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Once alone with them, Robert would usually use drugs with his victims before assaulting them.
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He would then shoot them in the head, and then sometimes assault their bodies again before dumping their remains in secluded areas.
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What made Robert particularly disturbing was his calling cart.
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Most of his victims would be found with multiple layers of plastic grocery bags wrapped around their heads.
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Investigators later determined these bags weren't part of the murder method.
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They were Robert's signature. His way of telling law enforcement and the public that Spokane's grocery bag killer had struck again.
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Among Robert's many victims, some stood out for heartbreaking reasons.
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Jennifer and Joseph was only 16 years old when her parents divorced sent her spiraling.
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She dropped out of high school, ran away from home, and ended up working the streets while using meth.
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Within a month of this lifestyle, she was dead.
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She was last seen getting into a van with an older gentleman before a farmer found her remains under one of his pine trees.
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Jennifer's case would eventually become the key to Robert's downfall.
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Then there were 39-year-old Sean and McClanon and 31-year-old Laurie Page Watson.
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Both women were discovered together in a gully in the Spokane forests.
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Their heads wrapped in grocery bags before being shot twice and dumped.
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After these murders, the plastic bags signature became Robert's consistent trademark.
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Not all of Robert's victims fit his usual pattern.
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Twenty-four-year-old Melinda Mercer had no criminal record and worked as a waitress when she encountered Robert.
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He wrapped her head in four layers of grocery bags before shooting her multiple times in the head.
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But Melinda was a fighter. Even mortally wounded, she managed to chew through two layers of plastic bags before succumbing to her injuries.
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Connie Ellis' story represents the kind of "profound tragedy" that shows how life can systematically break someone down.
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She lost one infant son to SIDS, which is devastating enough for any parent, but then she lost another son at 11 years old while he was waiting for a heart transplant.
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Her father later said that losing her second child completely destroyed Connie and sent her into a downward spiral that led to drugs, then prostitution, and finally to becoming one of Robert's victims.
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It took until 2000 for law enforcement to finally catch Robert.
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But when they did, it was Jennifer Joseph's murder that proved to be the breakthrough.
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Robert became a suspect when both he and his car matched witness descriptions from people who had seen Jennifer getting into his vehicle.
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The timing worked against Robert because he was away on a National Guard mission when investigators began connecting the dots.
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But when he returned, they put him under 24-hour surveillance. On the morning of April 18, 2000, at 6.30 a.m., police officers pulled over a car heading north on Market Street in Spokane.
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Yates was arrested. The evidence against Robert was overwhelming once investigators searched his car.
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They found Jennifer's earring, which placed her inside his vehicle, with the DNA evidence was what sealed his fate. Blood samples from his car matched Jennifer Joseph and 12 other victims.
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Earlier, on September 19, 1998, Yates was asked to give a DNA sample to Spokane police officers after being stopped.
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He refused, stating that it was too extreme of a request for a family man.
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That refusal probably seemed reasonable to him at the time, but it became another piece of evidence pointing to his guilt.
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Robert Yates pleaded guilty to 13 murders, taking a place among the nation's most prolific serial killers.
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The Army veteran and helicopter pilot also pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder as a part of a plea deal to escape the death penalty.
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He even took the police to previously undiscovered graves, showing a level of cooperation that probably saved his life. His sentence was 408 years in prison.
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But Spokane wasn't the only jurisdiction with a bone to pick with Robert.
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A year later, Pierce County brought separate charges for the 1997 and 1998 murders of Melinda Mercer and Connie La Fontaine Ellis.
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Pierce County had made no deals with Robert and were actively seeking the death penalty.
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Robert fought these charges hard. He argued that his plea deal with Spokane should apply to Pierce County as well, but the courts disagreed.
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When that approach failed, his defense team switched strategies and argued that Robert was not guilty by reason of insanity.
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According to his lawyers, Robert, "Through no fault of his own suffers from severe paraffinic disorder that essentially compelled him to commit these murders."
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Pierce County prosecutor Mark Linquist had a pretty direct response to this defense strategy.
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"I don't think Mr. Yates helps his cause by relying on the facts that he's a necrophiliac."
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The courts agreed with Linquist and upheld Robert's death sentence.
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But in 2018, Washington State ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, and Robert's sentence was commuted to life in prison along with many other death row inmates.
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Robert Lee Yates represents one of the most perplexing cases in American criminal history.
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Here was a man who could fly helicopters into combat zones, earn medals for bravery, and maintain the respect of his military colleagues while at the same time hunting and killing vulnerable women in his spare time.
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In the record books, Yates is linked with the murders of 16 victims. The majority of these victims were female sex workers, people who operated on the fringes of society.
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This case raises uncomfortable questions about how well we really know the people around us.
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Robert's neighbors, fellow soldiers, and even his family had no idea about his double life.
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He managed to compartmentalize his existence so completely that he was literally receiving military commendations while committing serial murders.
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Today, Robert Lee Yates sits in prison, where he'll remain for the rest of his natural life.
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The families of his victims continue dealing with losses that can never be repaired, and the Spokane community still grapples with how someone so seemingly ordinary could cause such extraordinary devastation.
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The grocery bags that became his signature weren't about the murders themselves. They were about recognition.
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Robert wanted credit for his crimes, wanted law enforcement and the public to know when he had struck again.
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In the end, the need for recognition became a part of what led investigators to him, proving that even the most calculated killers eventually make mistakes that bring them down.
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Thanks for listening to "10 Minute Murder" - bingeable true crime stories.
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Hi, I am Joe, I'm the host, and if you're a new listener, I really appreciate you checking out the podcast.
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Make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening right now.
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You can also go to the website 10minuteMurder.com, find out everything about the show, send me an email if you want to, and more importantly, find the links to where you can follow the podcast.
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It's not more important, but I don't know why I said more importantly.
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This isn't more importantly. The most important thing is to subscribe.
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But, I guess secondary, follow the show on social media, links from the show notes of this episode.
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And quickly, let's get to an email from one of you that listens. Subject, your voice has range.
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Joe has anyone told you that you could probably narrate a murder and a kid's bedtime story without changing your tone, because that is both impressive and mildly terrifying.
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Gea from Austin.
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I appreciate the email, Gea. I don't know if that was a compliment or not. I choose to take it as a compliment.
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And you know, that's one of the most common things people mention to me.
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And I take it as a compliment because it means a lot to me when they say that you're easy to listen to.
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And I like hearing that because the opposite of that would be you're difficult to listen to.
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I still listen, but you're really hard to listen to. I would hate that.
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And I do get people that tell me I listen to you and fall asleep. You help me fall asleep at night.
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And I personally choose to not like that one, even though I think they mean that as a compliment.
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But it makes me feel like I'm boring. I'm putting you to sleep. I'm making your whole brain fall asleep.
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And I don't want to do that. I want to be interesting and keep you listening to the podcast.
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Right? And I get what you're saying. It goes back to the previous compliment where I'm easy to listen to.
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I just choose to take it in a negative way.
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Gea, thank you for the email. Thank you for the compliment. I think and thank you for listening to 10 Minute Murder.
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I'll see you next time.
