In the cold of a Pacific Northwest winter, the life of 24-year-old Melinda L. Mercer, a White/Caucasian female, came to a tragic and violent end. On December 7, 1997, her nude body was discovered discarded in a vacant lot among blackberry bushes in Tacoma, Washington, a place often used as a dumping ground. The night before, on December 6, she was last seen leaving a tavern in Seattle.
Struggling with a heroin addiction, she had recently turned to prostitution to support her habit and had intended to work on Aurora Avenue that night.
An autopsy would later reveal the brutal details of her final moments. Melinda had been shot three times in the back of the head with a. 25 caliber firearm. In a chilling act of cruelty, her killer had encased her head in four plastic grocery bags. Evidence suggested she was still alive when the bags were placed over her, as she had managed to chew through the inner two in a desperate fight for air. While the gunshots were fatal, the oxygen deprivation from the bags hastened her death. Her blouse, found at the scene, had bloodstains indicating she was clothed and upright when she was shot. Some of her clothes had been thrown on top of her body, but her green purse and several rings were missing, believed to have been taken by her killer as grim trophies.
The investigation into Melinda’s murder eventually led authorities to a suspect, a man who was already under scrutiny for a string of other killings. His name was Robert Lee Yates Jr., a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot and a father of five. Yates was identified as a serial killer responsible for the deaths of numerous women across Washington state, many of whom were sex workers. His signature method of shooting his victims and leaving plastic bags over their heads was a terrifying link between the crimes.
In 2002, Robert Lee Yates Jr. was convicted of the aggravated first-degree murder of both Melinda L. Mercer and another victim, Connie L. Ellis. A jury sentenced him to death for these crimes. This was in addition to a 408-year prison sentence he had already received for pleading guilty to 13 other murders. Years later, after Washington state's Supreme Court deemed capital punishment unconstitutional, Yates's death sentence was commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He remains incarcerated, having brought a reign of terror to a close, but leaving behind a wake of shattered families and the haunting memory of victims like Melinda Mercer.
