Body Count. Burl Barer
to the bullet recovered from the Heather Hernandez homicide. He also requested a comparison of the .25-50 grain ammunition. Awaiting results, Detectives Ruetsch and Grabenstein returned to Spokane’s streets.
Lynn Everson, a counselor at the public HIV clinic in downtown Spokane, knows the status of AIDS in Spokane County, and she also knows the names and faces of almost every prostitute on East Sprague. “The AIDS rate in Spokane County is very low,” said Everson. “Part of the reason for that certainly is that we try to work with the women to keep them as safe as possible and because condoms are free and available to them at two different locations, and that helps women to be safer.”
As for Heather Hernandez and Jennifer Joseph, she remembers them both. “I had only one encounter with Joseph. She asked for the list of ‘bad tricks.’ ”
The “Bad Tricks List” is a compilation of one hundred descriptions of customers known to be violent, deviant, and/or dangerous. “Women are advised to not get into these cars,” Everson explained, and offered some examples from the Tricks list.
“Red cab semi truck, white male tried to drag worker outside the truck. White van, older, looks spray-painted, white male, rapist tried to gut worker. Ninety-five percent of the people on the list,” Everson said, “are white males with trucks.” The hot August night Jennifer Joseph chatted briefly with Everson, she helped herself to several free LifeStyle condoms.
“As for Heather Hernandez,” continued Everson, “she struck me as very levelheaded, with a good sense of humor. I never saw her drink or use drugs, and she never appeared to be under the influence of either.”
“I don’t think she ever used any kind of drugs,” said “Young B.,” the man—her man—who knew her best of all. “If she did, I wasn’t aware of it.” Immediately following his initial interview concerning the Hernandez homicide, and before follow-up questioning could take place, he disappeared from Spokane. This sudden departure did not elevate him to “prime suspect” status. Such mobility is not uncommon for gentlemen of his lifestyle. It was, however, indicative of the reluctance for police interaction that plagued the investigation from day one.
September 22, 1997
At approximately 11:00 A.M., Detective Ruetsch observed the previously mentioned white Chevy Suburban parked partially in a garage entryway door on Augusta Street. “On October 1, 1997, Detective Grabenstein and I drove to the company headquarters of the firm to whom the Suburban was registered, and [we] contacted the secretary, asking to speak with the president of the company.”
The company’s president, warmly cooperative, asked how he could be of assistance. “We told him that we were investigating the death of a prostitute here in Spokane,” said Detective Fred Ruetsch, “and that during our investigation, a witness told us that they had observed the Chevy Suburban owned by his company possibly attempting to contact prostitutes on East Sprague.”
The company’s president told Ruetsch and Grabenstein that this particular Suburban was driven by one of any number of employees and that “he would look into it for us and get back to us as soon as possible.”
That same afternoon, Ruetsch received the call—the president was unable to determine which of his many employees might have been driving the vehicle on East Sprague. He offered to provide detectives with a list of his employees’ names, if that would be of any value. Detectives accepted his offer, but the names, for the most part, were as common as John Smith, and none of the names were flagged by Spokane police as having drug-related lifestyles, nor were any of the employees known for blatant and repetitive frequenting of Sprague Avenue prostitutes. The president, going the extra mile, provided investigators with a series of photographs taken at the company’s Christmas party. Hopefully, the individual whom they sought could be spotted in the pictures. “We had no such luck with that. We also heard back about the ballistics tests on the guns from the Camaro.”
“The Raven pistol, item thirteen, was submitted with a broken firing pin,” reported Edward L. Robinson, firearms examiner for the Washington State Patrol. “The pin was replaced with an exemplar, and test firing was completed without malfunctions. This pistol has a trigger pull weight of six pounds, which is within average parameters. Test-fired bullets from the Raven pistol were compared to an open-file bullet. . . . These items all share similar general characteristics; however, the microscopic comparison of individual characteristics was inconclusive.”
The Jennings pistol was also test-fired by Robinson, and it, too, functioned normally. “This pistol has a trigger pull weight of eight pounds, which is within average parameters. Test-fired bullets and cartridge cases from the Jennings pistol were compared with open file bullets and cartridge cases. . . . both with negative results.”
September 24, 1997
Robert Lee Yates, Jr. saw the flashing lights of Officer Corey Turman’s patrol car in his rearview mirror. Yates dutifully pulled his white Corvette over to the curb just blocks away from where Jennifer Joseph was last seen. Officer Turman, who regularly patrolled the “prostitution zone” on East Sprague, was asked by homicide detectives to keep on the lookout for a white Corvette. “I hoped the driver would make a mistake so I would have an excuse to stop him,” Turman later recalled.
There were two mistakes that night involving Turman and Yates. First, Yates neglected to signal a lane change when swerving around a city bus. The second mistake was more serious. Turman’s report accurately recorded the time, date, and the driver’s name and description. He even wrote that the 1977 sports car was in excellent condition. Under “model,” however, he wrote “Cam” instead of “Corvette”—he misidentified the vehicle as a Chevrolet Camaro rather than a Chevrolet Corvette.
“Slip of the hand,” remarked Turman years later. “You’re thinking apple and you write orange.” At the end of his shift, he delivered his report to crime analyst Jack Pearson. From there, it would be brought to the attention of the Spokane police major crimes unit. “It should have,” said Pearson in retrospect, but it wasn’t. A field report noting that the driver of a white Camaro failed to signal a lane change did not attract the immediate attention of homicide detectives.
“We decided against asking the public to help find the Corvette,” said Detective Fred Ruetsch. “We worried that the killer, if he indeed drove a Corvette, would quickly ditch it. He might destroy other evidence, too.”
“We suspected that the same person killed Hernandez and Joseph,” Detective John Miller acknowledged later, “but we weren’t completely convinced that a Corvette was involved. We had suspects who drove other cars . . . In addition, I could just imagine the complaints from innocent Corvette owners if we went public. If I owned a Corvette, it would irritate me.”
The first ray of hope was an illusory flicker, and the first solid connection to Yates and his white Corvette lay dormant due to a simple penmanship error. This was not going to be a quick solve; not quick at all. Three more women, regular prostitutes on East Sprague, Lynn Everson told detectives, had not been seen in some time: Their names were Laurie Wason, Shawn Johnson, and Darla Scott.
A check with the missing persons crew revealed that Darla Scott’s conspicuous absence had already prompted her distraught twin sister, Marla, to file a report. Shawn Johnson’s counselor had also contacted missing persons agents, explaining that Johnson was awaiting admittance into a local methadone program but never returned. “She was dressed,” said the counselor, “as though she were going to work on East Sprague as a prostitute.”
Shawn Johnson’s mother, describing her daughter as “a known drug user who had been living with her ex-husband’s brother in the Deer Park area,” also contacted police when the usual contacts between mother and daughter suddenly ceased. Johnson, of Native American descent, had received land claims payments, and had used Indian Health Care for her medical and dental. Her previous employment included the Wan-dermere Chevron Station, Taco John’s, Maid-o-Clover, and John Doempier Oil Company in Spokane. She had children, an occasional boyfriend, and the requisite number of angry associates outraged at unpaid debts, shoplifting incidents, and vanishing drug money. Her lifestyle and behavior were not dissimilar to that