On a summer day, July 13, 1975, 22-year-old Caucasian female Susan Patricia Savage and her childhood friend, 21-year-old Patrick Alan Oliver, ventured out for a picnic and a swim at a local spot along Mill Creek, about twelve miles southeast of Walla Walla, Washington. Both had recently graduated from college; Savage from Washington State University and Oliver had just returned from studying in France.
Their idyllic afternoon was tragically cut short when they were discovered the following day, having both been shot in the head.
The initial investigation into the double homicide yielded few leads, leaving the community shaken and the case growing cold. For years, the families of Savage and Oliver were left without answers as investigators struggled to identify a suspect. The motive behind the brutal killings remained a mystery, with speculation ranging from a robbery gone wrong to a targeted attack. Despite the efforts of the Walla Walla County Sheriff's Office, the case eventually became one of the region's most haunting unsolved crimes.
Decades later, a break in the case finally emerged with the arrest of Robert Lee Yates Jr., a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot, in connection with a string of murders in Spokane County. As the investigation into Yates's crimes deepened, he confessed to the 1975 murders of Susan Savage and Patrick Oliver. Yates, then 23 years old, had been living in Walla Walla and working as a corrections officer at the time of the killings. He revealed that he had been target shooting in the Mill Creek area when he came across the young couple and shot them. As part of a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty for his numerous crimes in Spokane, Yates pleaded guilty to the murders of Savage and Oliver and was ultimately sentenced to 408 years in prison.
