Somebody is murdering prostitutes in the city of Spokane. They are shot dead and dumped, apparently nothing else. After several slayings the authorities find one victim who's had sex with someone shortly before death, and jump to the conclusion that he is the killer. Hmm, prostitute has sex with individual therefore he murdered her. Great detective work guys, not. The polygraph doesn't check out either, and now there are five victims of this apparent serial killer but no meaningful suspects.
Worse is to come, the unknown prospect appears to be a necrophiliac as well.
We hear a lot from detectives here, and the usual psychobabble about profiling. There is speculation that the killer is a police officer. One victim turns up alive, but there are two more murders.
The investigation is so intense that en route to catching the serial killer they catch another murderer who had killed one of the victims. Finally, they narrow down the suspect list to 44, men who became suspects for two or more reasons. Finally, finally, one man and only one man is on three lists, father of five Robert Yates. Yates would eventually confess to 13 murders which brought him heavy gaol time. Later he was tried for 2 more, and sentenced to death. Although he was scheduled for execution on September 19, 2008, at the time of writing that sentence has not been carried out.