Murder In Spokane

Building on his two previous Murder in … bestsellers, Mark Fuhrman turns his formidable detective skills to the apprehension and arrest of Robert L. Yates, Jr., a serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least 23 women.

Written in the same fast-paced style as Murder in Brentwood and Murder in Greenwich, this is a shocking account of Fuhrman's investigation of the prostitutes' deaths as he worked alongside the Spokane Task Force.

The serial killer preyed on prostitutes with drug problems. He intentionally selected street people, who would not be missed right away, often women who were new to town. The police seemingly put these murders on the back burner because the victims did not stir up public sentiment. Only after the serial killer began to play with the police — planting bodies for attention and escalating the murders — did intense effort go into the case.

Though the understaffed police force did catch the killer, Fuhrman shows that their reliance on computers and on DNA test results from everyone they interviewed was slower than doing old-fashioned gumshoe detective work. With the clues they had, Fuhrman writes, the police could have made the arrest two years earlier — saving the lives of at least nine women.