Body Count. Burl Barer
she explained. “We’d been talking a bit earlier, and she told me that she was going to quit working and leave for home about midnight. Anyway, the last time I saw Jennifer, she was in the passenger seat of a white sports car heading east on Sprague. I didn’t get a good look at the driver, but I’d say that he was a white male about thirty to forty years old. I think the car was a Porsche.”
Grabenstein and Ruetsch transported her to the East Sprague area; she identified the intersection of Sprague and Ralph as the one where Jennifer Joseph was working. Because she earlier told Jennifer’s boyfriend that she had seen her get into a Porsche, the detectives drove her to a used-car lot.
“In that lot was a white Porsche nine twenty-eight,” Grabenstein recalled, “and we pointed it out to her. She then said that this was not the type of vehicle that she had observed. Parked along the curb nearby was a white 1975 Chevrolet Corvette coupe, with a fabric cover over the grill and headlights on the front. She pointed out the vehicle and said that this was the exact model and color as the vehicle the victim had been in, except that it would have had no black bra on the front.”
The identification of a white Corvette as the car in which Jennifer Joseph was last seen by a coworker was only potentially significant. Investigators wanted a description of every car and every customer that Jennifer’s street-savvy contemporaries considered suspect. The names of vehicles were better known than the names of customers. Most men use an alias or nickname when doing business with street prostitutes; the women do likewise.
“Just because Jennifer rode off in a particular car doesn’t mean that was her last date,” explained one seasoned Sprague Avenue veteran. “If it was a quick ‘car date,’ it could have been all over by the time they drove through a couple intersections. You get in the car, he gives you the cash, and you go down on him. Maybe you pull into a parking lot or an alley, and then there are some guys who’re perfectly happy to have you do it while they’re driving. Well, it’s all over real fast, he’s happy, you’ve got more money, and in less than ten minutes, you’re either back on the same corner you were before, or he drops you off somewhere else.”
On a busy night, quick car dates are the “fast food” of prostitution. “Some girls charge forty dollars for head; others will do it for twenty,” she explained. Some nights, even the ones who charge $40 will drop their price if things are slow, the night cold, and their financial situation desperate. “Jennifer Kim—that’s what she called herself—was the ‘high-priced spread,’ ” commented a sardonic older streetwalker. “Young like that? Shit. She could charge more, and here’s the important part: she could get picked up faster and more often. In other words, she could have been out of a Chevy and into a Ford in less than ten minutes. Get it? God only knows who had her last.”
Whoever had her last had a small-caliber gun to her head, and he pulled the trigger. The same scenario fit the death of Heather Hernandez. As her homicide was inside the city limits, Spokane police detectives worked the case, while the sheriff’s office worked the Joseph case.
Continual dead-end detours down convoluted cul-de-sacs of suspicion would dampen the spirits of lesser souls, but dogged dedication is a hallmark of professional detectives. The more suspects they can eliminate from suspicion, the better, and Spokane County detectives were still awaiting the return of “Roberts”—the man who shared the same address as the late Jennifer Joseph.
At two minutes after noon on September 3, 1997, Detective Ruetsch received a telephone call from the apartment complex’s resident manager advising him that the brown Cadillac belonging to Roberts was back.
“I was unavailable to respond immediately,” recalled Ruetsch, “so I had a district car swing by the apartments to check on the Cadillac. Primarily, I wanted to know whether or not the antenna was intact.” This was an important question because a broken car antenna was found near the body. “A half hour later, I received a call from Deputy Jack Rosenthal, who advised that the antenna was there and did not appear to be broken or recently replaced.”
Outgoing and gregarious, Roberts openly acknowledged his chosen career path in the escort-service industry. “My responsibility is to find girls for the customers and to keep people from harassing them,” he willingly elaborated. “I have associates that go and talk to people who are harassing the girls. The customers contact the girls via their pagers when they want to do business.”
“He readily admitted,” recalled Grabenstein, “that he rented the apartment under a false name because he knew he could not obtain credit under his real name.” Roberts was “borrowed” from a man in Post Falls, Idaho.
“I had surgery on my shoulder and was not working,” said the real Mr. Roberts. “Well, he loaned me some money. In return, I was asked to cosign on his cellular phone application.” The first cell phone bill was for over $1,000. “That bill was paid, and I didn’t get any more. But now,” he lamented, “it turns out that there is a thirty-five-hundred-dollar outstanding bill on the phone, and collection agencies are after me for it.”
His name was also the one used to obtain the apartment on Montgomery. “I only found out about that because another collection agency is after me for back rent on the place,” he explained. “I didn’t give anyone permission to use my name to get that apartment, and I suspect that the information I provided when I cosigned for the cell phone was also used on the apartment application.”
Detectives were more concerned with aggravated homicide than unpaid cellular-phone bills and overdue rent. D.D. was honestly distraught over news of Joseph’s death, and he had no objection to a complete examination of his car for any trace of evidence, nor did he resist the request for a sample of his blood. He also willingly offered to take a polygraph test. One more suspect was thus eliminated from an ever-widening spectrum of possible perpetrators.
CHAPTER THREE
September 5, 1997
At 8:40 A.M., Detective Rick Grabenstein received a telephone call relaying a message from a local prostitute. “The information was concerning a full-sized Chevrolet van, believed to be a late-1970s model which was dark brown in color with a center panel on the side that was beige in color with a dark brown flame pattern in the lighter center section. The vehicle also had an eagle painted on the back door or spare-tire carrier. It was driven by a white male, middle-aged, and probably with brown hair.”
“My parents don’t know I’m a prostitute,” the woman told Grabenstein when he interviewed her in person, “so if you ever have any reason to contact them, please don’t tell them.” Asked why she suspected the van’s driver, she offered an intuitive explanation. “I saw the van earlier this summer, and it didn’t have tinted windows, but now it does. Anyway, the guy in the van drove by where I was working about eight times. He finally pulled over to the curb,” she said, “and I guess he was expecting me to come over, but I didn’t because I just had this bad feeling about him. He drove away, and that was that. I just followed my intuition—I got bad vibes, you know. I did talk to another girl who said that she dated him and that he was harmless, but I don’t know. I go with my gut, and my gut said, ‘Don’t get in the van.’ I guess Heather Hernandez either didn’t have the same gut reaction, or if she did, she ignored it.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Detective Grabenstein.
“Well,” she replied, “because I saw her get into that van a couple days before they found her dead body.”
“That’s not the only uncleared homicide possibly linked to Yates’s van,” commented Detective Grabenstein several years later. “In the summer of 1996, I investigated the murder of Shannon Zelinski. Her body was found near a school bus stop. She died as a result of a gunshot wound to the head.”
It was at the same time of the year, according to Linda Yates, that Robert Yates Jr. took his daughter Sasha to work at Certified Security Systems at 11:00 P.M. At 2:30 A.M., Robert Yates still hadn’t returned home, so she locked up their Fifty-ninth Avenue residence. At 6:30 A.M., she heard her husband banging on the front door. “When I opened the door for him,” recalled Linda Yates, “he came in and immediately