The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (101 page)

coast. In Pralle’s words, their relationship was “a soul With mug shots and a list of names in hand, it was a binding. We’re like Jonathan and David in the Bible. It’s relatively simple matter to trace Aileen Wuornos, as though part of me is trapped in jail with her. We though her rootless lifestyle delayed the arrest for always know what the other is feeling and thinking. I another month. On January 9, 1991, she was seized at just wish I was Houdini. I would get her out of there. If the Last Resort, a biker bar in Harbor Oaks, detained there was a way, I would do it, and we could go and be on outstanding warrants for “Lori Grody” while police vagabonds forever.” Instead, Pralle did the next best finished building their murder case. A day later, Tyria thing, legally adopting Wuornos as her “daughter.”

Moore was traced to her sister’s home in Pennsylvania, Aileen’s trial for the murder of Richard Mallory where she agreed to help police. Back in Florida, detec-opened on January 13, 1992. Eleven days later, tives arranged a series of telephone conversations Wuornos took the stand as the only defense witness, between Moore and Wuornos. Tyria begged Aileen to repeating her tale of a violent rape and beating at Mal-confess for Moore’s sake and spare her from prosecu-lory’s hands, insisting that she shot him dead in self-tion as an accomplice. One conversation led police to a defense, using her pistol only after he threatened her storage warehouse Aileen had rented, a search revealing life. With no hard evidence to support her claim, jurors tools stolen from David Spears, the nightstick taken rejected the story, deliberating a mere 90 minutes before from Walter Antonio, another camera, and an electric they convicted Aileen of first-degree murder on January razor belonging to Richard Mallory.

27. “I’m innocent!” she shouted when the verdict was On January 16, 1991, Wuornos summoned detec-announced. “I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scum-tives and confessed to six killings, all allegedly per-bags of America!” The jury recommended death on formed in self-defense. She denied killing Peter Siems, January 29, and the following day Aileen was formally whose body was still missing, and likewise disclaimed sentenced to die. In April, she pled guilty to the murders any link to the murder of a “John Doe” victim shot to of victims Burress, Humphreys, and Spears, with a sec-death with a .22-caliber weapon in Brooks County, ond death sentence imposed on May 7, 1992.

Georgia, and found in an advanced state of decay on Around the same time, Aileen offered to show police May 5, 1990. (No charges were filed in that case.) “I where the corpse of Peter Siems was hidden near Beau-290

WUORNOS, Aileen Carol

fort, South Carolina. Authorities flew her to the Pied-Gillen’s report.) Even so, Gillen stopped short of calling mont State, but nothing was found at the designated for Aileen’s release. “She’s a sick woman who blew site, Daytona police insisting that Wuornos created the those men away,” Gillen said, “but that’s no reason for ruse to get a free vacation from jail. They speculate that the state to say, ‘She’s confessed to killing men; we don’t Siems was dumped in a swamp near I-95 north of Jack-have to do our homework.’ ”

sonville, but his body has never been found.

After nine years on death row, Wuornos decided to The Wuornos case took an ironic twist on November abandon her appeals. In April 2001 she asked Florida’s 10, 1992, with reporter Michele Gillen’s revelations on supreme court to expedite her execution, “since I’m one
Dateline NBC.
Thus far, Aileen’s defenders and Florida who seriously hates life and would kill again.” In a July prosecutors alike had failed to unearth any criminal 2001 interview with the
Ocala Star-Banner,
Wuornos record for Richard Mallory that would substantiate recanted her claim that her victims were shot in self-Aileen’s claim of rape and assault. In the official view, defense. “I just flat robbed, killed them,” she declared, Mallory was “clean,” if somewhat paranoid and over-

“and there was a lot of hatred behind everything.”

sexed. Gillen, though, had no apparent difficulty find-Wuornos added that before the first shooting, she had ing out that Mallory had served 10 years for violent

“always wanted to kill somebody.” At a special hearing rape in another state, facts easily obtained by running convened on July 20, 2001, she told Judge Michael his name through the FBI’s computer network.

Hutchenson, “I will kill again. I’ve got hate crawling

“The fascinating part about this,” Gillen said, “is through my system. There is no point in sparing me. I’m here is a woman who for the past year has been scream-a waste of the taxpayers’ money.” Hutchenson deemed ing that she didn’t get a fair trial and that everyone was Wuornos competent, and the state supreme court rushing to make a TV movie about her—and in reality approved the inmate’s decision to fire her attorneys on that comes true.” (The first TV movie depicting Aileen April 1, 2002. Wuornos was executed by lethal injec-aired on a rival network one week to the day after tion six months later, on October 9, 2002.

291

X

XITAVHUDZI, Elias

strictly segregated Atteridgeville, since the victims were One of half a dozen serial killers spawned by the South white and their killer turned out to be black. Upon cap-African township of Atteridgeville in modern times, ture, Xitavhudzi was swiftly tried and sentenced to Elias Xitavhudzi was nicknamed “Pangaman” prior to death, but his spirit lives on in Atteridgeville, which con-capture, after the long, broad-bladed knife he used to tinues to produce vicious stalkers on a regular basis—

kill and mutilate his 16 female victims. Occurring in the most recently, the still-unidentified “Atteridgeville 1960s, Xitavhudzi’s crimes were doubly traumatic for Mutilator.”

292

Y

YAKIMA Reservation Murders

agents from the FBI’s Seattle field office fulfilled Hall’s Authorities are divided in their opinions as to whether a prediction, calling it “extremely unlikely” that one serial killer is responsible for the murders of at least 13

killer was responsible for all 13 of the Yakima murders.

women committed since 1980 on the 1.3 million-acre FBI spokesman William Gore referred to “significant Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington State. Eleven evidence” and “logical suspects” in three of the cases, of the 13 victims were Native American, most of them although no charges were filed. On January 27, 1993, born and raised on the reservation, many with histories the FBI declared that 12 of the Yakima murders “are of alcohol abuse. Most of the victims were in their closed, though they could be reopened if new informa-twenties; at least eight left children behind. Some were tion surfaced.”

stabbed to death, while others were beaten, shot, or But the question remains: Is anybody looking?

strangled; two were apparently drowned, and one was Melford Hall, for one, was bitter toward the FBI. “A lot run down by a car. The bodies have typically been of times we would call them,” he told reporters, “and dumped in remote, wooded areas where decomposition they’d say, ‘Just send over a report.’ They spent millions and exposure to the elements or scavengers erases evi-of dollars over there [i.e., on the GREEN RIVER murders], dence, leaving the cause of death unknown in several and wouldn’t spend anything here.” It is a further point cases. At least two other Indian women—Karen Louise of bitter irony, Hall noted, that the FBI has direct Johnly and Daisey May Tallman, both in their twen-responsibility for all murders committed on Indian ties—were also reported missing between 1987 and reservations, but none at all in local murders, like Seat-1992, but their names have not been added to the “offi-tle’s infamous “Green River” case.

cial” Yakima victims list.

Another lawman who compared the two unsolved

One lawman who believes a serial killer
is
responsible cases was Yakima County Sheriff’s Deputy Dave John-for the murders, Melford Hall, retired in 1989 after 22

son, who complained that murder investigations are years as a criminal investigator for the Bureau of Indian hampered by the tendency of some tribal members to Affairs, citing the homicides as part of his reason for leave the reservation without informing friends or fam-leaving the job. As Hall told reporters in January 1993, ily. “It’s kind of like the Green River victims, many of

“They’ll probably say, ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talk-whom were prostitutes,” Johnson said. “You have ing about. But then you look at all these names.” Hall individuals with no permanent address.” One who links the murders to rampant alcoholism, so prominent resented the comparison was Johnnie Wyman, whose at Yakima and other reservations. “My own opinion,”

sister—44-year-old Jo Anne Betty Wyman—was found he explains, “is this guy sits at a tavern someplace and dead on the reservation in 1991, three years after she waits for an intoxicated woman and grabs her.”

disappeared. “The authorities take the attitude that it’s Yakima’s Tribal Police Department, meanwhile,

just a bunch of drunken Indian women,” Wyman told refuses all requests for interviews on the murders, but the press. “It’s just another slap in the face. I can’t
293

YATES, Robert Lee, Jr.

candy-coat it for anybody. She was my sister, and she Spokane, where he worked at a Kaiser Aluminum plant meant something to me.”

and spent weekends flying with the Air National Guard.

The most recent slaying—and that which finally None of it kept him from killing. On July 7, 1988, he brought national publicity to the murders—was that of picked up Stacy Hawn, a 23-year-old drug-addicted Shari Dee Sampson Ewell, found strangled and sexually prostitute, in Shoreline, Washington. Yates drove her to mutilated on December 30, 1992, in a section of the a site near Mount Vernon and shot her once in the reservation closed to non-Indians. Sufficient media head. Her skeletal remains were found on December attention was generated by Ewell’s death that the 28, but Hawn’s boyfriend did not report her missing Yakima Indian Nation offered a $1,000 reward for until February 1989. She was identified the following information leading to the killer’s arrest, the fund month. In the first half of 1990, three women were shot increased by $5,000 from the FBI on May 14, 1993.

and discarded along the Spokane River. Yolanda Sapp, Thus far, the money has not helped. The murders on the age 26, was found on February 22, followed by 34-Yakima reservation remain unsolved.

year-old Nickie Lowe (March 25) and 38-year-old Kathy Brisbois (May 15). Lowe and Brisbois were killed with the same .22-caliber weapon. Sherry Palmer,
YATES, Robert Lee, Jr.

age unknown, was found shot to death outside Tacoma The U.S. Pacific Northwest has produced many serial on May 13, 1992. Another shooting victim, 60-year-old killers, but none in modern times has proved as effec-Patricia Barnes from Port Orchard, was discovered in tive at dodging police as Robert Yates Jr. His 23-year rural Kitsap County on August 25, 1995.

killing spree is presently unrivaled in American history.

Although Yates maintained a busy schedule after Today, with Yates awaiting execution in Washington April 1996, juggling family, work, and the National State, authorities still puzzle over what it was that Guard, he still found time to hunt. At the same time, he drove him to the brink of madness and beyond.

developed a ritualized “signature,” leaving victims with In October 1945, nine years before Yates was born, plastic trash bags pulled over their heads, several his paternal grandmother killed her sleeping husband dumped in the same area. Thirty-eight-year-old Shan-with an ax. She was indicted for murder but never non Zielinski was discarded near Tacoma on June 14, stood trial, and relatives dismiss any suggestion that 1996. On August 16, 1997, 16-year-old runaway Jen-the crime may have influenced her grandson. Yates nifer Joseph was last seen alive as she entered a white entered the world on May 27, 1952, as a breech baby Chevrolet Corvette driven by a white man in his forties.

(born feet first). He was sexually molested by an older She was found 10 days later, hooded with trash bags boy at age six. His family brands those events as irrele-and shot through the head with a .22-caliber pistol. The vant. Raised in Oak Harbor, Washington, Yates gradu-same day brought discovery of another woman’s

ated from high school in 1970 and moved on to Walla decomposing body, in a different Spokane neighbor-Walla Community College, where he met his future hood. The second victim was identified as Heather Her-wife. Claims that he earned a degree in biology remain nandez, a 20-year-old drifter. Investigators found semen unverified, but today we know that Yates claimed his on Joseph’s body, along with a brown hair from a Cau-first two victims a year before his marriage, in July casian male. The bullet that killed Joseph bore “insuffi-1975.

cient characteristics” for comparison with the .22 slugs Twenty-one-year-old Patrick Oliver and 22-year-old extracted from victims Brisbois and Lowe.

Susan Savage were picnicking beside Mill Creek, 10

On September 24, 1997, a Spokane patrolman

miles east of Walla Walla, when Yates arrived and shot stopped Robert Yates, at the wheel of a white 1977

them both. A quarter-century later, Yates explained that Chevrolet Corvette, for a minor traffic violation. Yates he often went target shooting in the area on days off received a citation, which correctly recorded his license from his job as a guard at Walla Walla’s state prison.

plate number but misidentified his vehicle as a Camaro.

He shot the two strangers on a whim, covered their It was a small but critical mistake, corrected long after bodies with brush, and left a mystery that remained the fact when detectives double-checked the car’s regis-unsolved until he confessed the crime in October 2000.

tration. In the meantime, detectives seeking a Corvette Yates married in July 1976 and joined the army two from the Joseph murder knew nothing of Yates.

years later, serving 18 years in uniform as a helicopter Six weeks later, on November 5, a man walking his pilot. His tour of duty included stints in Somalia (where dog spotted a shallow grave near Spokane’s Hangman Yates was reprimanded for shooting wild pigs from the Valley Road. Police found 29-year-old Darla Scott, air) and Haiti, but he spent most of his military career another prostitute, buried with two trash bags over her in the United States. Upon discharge from the army, in head, shot twice in the brain with a .25-caliber weapon.