Body Count. Burl Barer
Pat’s car at the scene was like setting up a sign.”
Ray and the other deputies then pursued a “process of elimination” by investigating everyone with whom the couple associated. Perhaps something in their recent past, lifestyles, or behavior contained the singular clue that would reveal the killer’s motive and identity. It was time to take a deep look into the private lives of Patrick Oliver and Susan Savage.
“So who was Pat Oliver? He was born in Walla Walla. He was raised in Walla Walla. Unfortunately, murdered in Walla Walla,” said his brother Christopher. “He was always adventurous. Pat was the third son of four boys. The Oliver boys were a unit. If anyone had a problem, we all got involved. If there was something new to experience, we all had to try it. Pat loved sports. He played baseball up to colt league. He played football; he was a halfback and linebacker. He played track. He was a very good skier. He liked the mountains and he hunted pheasants. Pat was a leader.”
Patrick Oliver was a 1972 graduate of Walla Walla’s DeSales High School. He was class president in his sophomore and senior years, team captain of his football squad, president of the letterman’s club, and homecoming king during his senior year.
“After high school, Pat went to Washington State University,” continued Christopher. “While some of his contemporaries partied, he studied inorganic chemistry, microbiology, and other premed courses. He was an honor student and had an opportunity to study in Paris his junior year.” When Oliver returned from a year’s study at the University of Paris and the Sorbonne in the summer of 1975, he decided to attend Walla Walla’s Whitman College to study premed. He had only recently returned when Susan Savage and he went to Mill Creek.
“Susan was at a point in life that had the most promise,” said David Savage, Susan’s brother. She achieved an associate degree from Walla Walla Community College, received a bachelor of arts degree as an interior decorator from Washington State University, studied at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico, and was, at the time of her death, a respected employee at Viewbird Graphics and Corporate Design.
“I don’t know why this happened,” said her mother, Marybelle Savage, in 2001. “Why would anybody shoot your child? When you lose a child, you sometimes think you see her face in crowds,” she said. “She would have owned her own business. She would have been married with a family.”
Looking back, Christopher Oliver commented that “it would make sense to investigate who in the Walla Walla area had a license to both a small red car and a .357 handgun, but that wasn’t the tack taken.”
Assuming jealousy as the motive, investigators probed deeply into the couple’s history and private lives. What they discovered was that Patrick Oliver and Susan Savage shared a relationship similar to that of a loving brother and sister—they were each other’s most ardent supporter, but they never dated. The couple was not, and had never been, romantically involved.
“It was like that ever since they were kids, and all the way through school,” said one longtime friend. “Susan was Pat’s greatest booster. She thought he was tops; he thought she was the greatest. I guess they just knew each other too well to be anything more than good friends.”
With the jealously motive abandoned, an alternate scenario was created. The new theory was international in scope and exceptionally expensive. “I can’t really fault Ray or the sheriff,” said Christopher Oliver years later, “but I think they wasted an enormous amount of time and resources with Interpol.”
Because Patrick had only recently returned from Europe and Susan had spent some time in Mexico, Ray considered that perhaps something happened outside the USA that accounted for the killings. “We’ve drawn an absolute blank on any kind of motive from here,” said Ray, “and I think we can eliminate Susan as being the target for the killer because she has been home from Mexico for quite some time. But Pat was only back for two weeks when he was killed.”
Ray asked a resident FBI agent concerning the proper procedure for requesting assistance from Interpol. Complete information on Patrick Oliver’s travels and activities were then sent to Interpol headquarters. It was learned that after Oliver left Paris, he went to Amsterdam for a short visit. The hotel in which he stayed was a suspected drug-distribution center and the scene of a large narcotics bust prior to his return to Walla Walla. The question evolved: was Patrick Oliver the informant who “blew the whistle” on the hotel’s drug traffic? If so, perhaps an international drug syndicate hired a hit man to travel all the way to Walla Walla to kill Oliver in retribution or to silence him.
The investigation’s focus for almost a year and a half was Ray’s theory that a professional assassin, sent from Europe, killed the couple. “In my opinion,” said Sheriff Humpries in 2001, “they were off on a wrong track. A hit man usually targets one person, and they don’t do placement of bodies. Former sheriff Klundt’s theory that perhaps it was ‘some kook’ was more on target and was supported by psychologist John Berberich of the Seattle Police Department who, as the case remained unsolved, contacted Scotty Ray.”
Berberich wrote that he had been thinking a lot about the murders in Wall Walla. In his opinion, the most likely explanation was that one or two men had stumbled on the couple, observed them for a while, and decided they wanted to have sex with the woman. Her companion probably resisted and was shot, and the female victim was shot to cover up the crime.
Because the bodies were not mutilated, these murders did not give Berberich the picture of having been done by a psychotic. He did, however, note a “clear sexual component,” in the female victim’s state of partial undress.
Berberich was three months into his employment with the Seattle Police Department at the time he advised Ray. “I had written one profile prior to that which was of Bundy, and I did that in 1974 or ’75,” he stated in 2001. “The picture I tried to present to Scotty Ray was that of a psychopath, a personality type that tends to have the kind of descriptors I included here.”
“Berberich made some very interesting observations back then,” commented Sheriff Mike Humphrey. “As he mentioned, you can tell by the placement of the bodies that this was a sexually motivated homicide and not a murder for hire.”
The Oliver and Savage families, emotionally devastated by the brutal murders, were further dismayed by the extended investigation’s continual detours down dead-end roads. In time, the reward committee’s optimism also faded as fanciful theories proved fruitless. The murders remained unsolved. “We were left with no resolution,” said Chris Oliver. “But we never let go.”
In 1975, while Scotty Ray pursued the nonexistent international hit man, a quiet and courteous corrections officer at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla resigned his job after only six months’ employment. He moved away, taking with him his red Dodge Dart and his Ruger .357 handgun. His name was Robert Lee Yates Jr., and his primary passion was shooting.
“He shot all the time,” said Linda Yates, his wife. According to her, his favorite place to shoot was about ten miles up Kooskooskie Road to Mill Creek, not too far from the Wickersham Bridge.
CHAPTER ONE
In his hometown of Oak Harbor, Washington, they don’t call him Robert Lee Yates Jr. They call him “Bobby,” differentiating him from his respected father, Robert Yates Sr.
In 1945, Bobby Yates’s grandmother, wielding a double-edged ax, violently ended her husband’s life. “I was there,” recalled Yates Sr. “I heard the murder in the night.” He found his father near death and his mother seated in a straight-backed chair in another room. “She had given birth to eleven children, been under the stress of having a husband working away from home, and she simply broke. She spent seven years in a state mental hospital,” confirmed Yates Sr.
When speaking of Robert Yates Jr., family friend George Cantrell said, “This is a kid who was never in trouble. He was always practicing his upbringing—and it was a good one.” Yates’s upbringing was idyllic, healthy, moral, and exemplary.
Oak Harbor, situated on Whidbey Island, offers stunning views of the majestic Olympic