Dieter Yates

 

I came across this case when I learned about the last one I wrote about. And, like the previous blog there was a lot of confusion on the date in which prosecutors believed this crime had occurred. In the last few months of the year of 1975 the city of Evansville Indiana was a violent one. There were six murders in the matter of seven days. Five of those murders seemed to be focused in much of the same area so much so that they were often lumped together in articles. The other issue with confirming times or dates of death was the fact that the bodies were not found immediately. In fact, on Tuesday December 2^nd the bodies of Joe Edwards and Phyllis McCown had been found earlier in the day and then at 8:30 that evening the body of seventy-nine year old Clara Vickery found was just a few blocks away. Prosecutors theorized that Edwards and McCown were murdered on December 1^st between eight in the morning and two in the afternoon. As my previous blog pointed out there were questions about that timeline. I had also noted that the website findagrave.com had shown their deaths as occurring on December 2^nd. The same hold true with Clara Vickery.

Unlike the case of Edwards and McCown, findagrave.com has a picture of Clara's tombstone. The problem is that it only showed the years. But, like Edwards and McCown, the site also shows Clara's death date as December 2^nd. However, again, like the other case, prosecutors believe that Clara was murdered on December 1^st. I will say that while I had questions about this being the case for Edwards and McCown, I do not have those same questions about Clara.

Clara Vickey was a lifelong resident of not just Evansville, but also of the neighborhood in which she lived. Her late father, Samuel, was said to be a “prominent grocer” of the area and it appears she was his only child. Clara was described as a vibrant woman who, even through her elder years, would walk the neighborhood and was fairly well known. If someone in the area passed away or needed help Clara would walk door to door asking for donations to help or to get flowers.

On the night of December 2, 1975 some of Clara's family called the police department after multiple attempts to reach her had failed. Clara's body was found in the small garage behind her home. It seemed pretty apparent fairly quickly that she had been ambushed in her garage after she had returned home from the grocery store. Bags of groceries were scattered around her, along with a receipt from a local store; her purse had been rifled through and emptied of money and while her car was missing there was a blood trail indicating that the car had driven through her blood.

Investigators looked around the area and found a pipe in the garage with what appeared to be blood and initially they believed this was likely the murder weapon. They also looked at Clara's home. It was still locked and there did not seem to be any sort of forced entry. It appears that they were able to get access to the inside and nothing looked disturbed. This reinforced their belief that Clara had returned home from a grocery trip and never made it out of her garage.

The police informed the public to be on the look out for Clara's 1972 Buick. There seemed to be a few leads on the car but when the police would show up they could not find the car. Then on Thursday, two days after Clara was found, police received a call that they believed they had seen her car in the parking lot of a local high school. This time when they arrived the police found not just Clara's car, but with two teenagers inside. One of the teenagers was fifteen year old Dieter Yates, Clara's next door neighbor.

Yates' mother had reported him missing just a few hours before Clara's body had been found on Tuesday. It is unclear exactly when he had last been seen prior to being reported missing, but here he was now, and he was driving his dead neighbors vehicle. The other teenager in the car was sixteen year old John Robbins. Both boys were taken to the police station for questioning. Robbins was arrested on an unrelated burglary charge. When asked how the boys had gotten access to the car Robbins' answer seemed to always remain the same... he had no idea that it was stolen or who it belonged to, only that Yates had picked him up in it. Yates on the other changed his story a few times. In two different stories he claimed to have gotten it from a man. In each story it was a different man, and had been obtained in a different place. It appears that prior to going on trial he changed the story again. This time he agreed that he stole the car from Clara's garage and seemingly admitted to knowing she was dead but claimed he had seen a man leaving through Clara's yard not long before that. But again as time went on the story changed again and in the newest version he claimed that someone had come over to his home and they had smoked marijuana and had taken LSD and he was “out of his mind” and basically did not know what happened. In all of the stories he told after making a few stops he had picked up Robbins and they went to Arkansas to see Robbins' girlfriend.

It is unclear what Yates' parents were told when he was found but apparently they went to the police station to see him. As I mentioned earlier, they had reported him missing on the day in which Clara was later found and they had not seen him since. It appears that they were unaware that Yates was now a suspect in the murder of their next door neighbor. A conversation was had been Yates and his parents that appears was recorded. The prosecutor would later want to use this conversation in Yates' trial but the judge did not allow it based on the idea that his parents had no idea he was a suspect. I did not find out what was discussed in this conversation but presumably Clara's murder was discussed.

Investigators determined that James Robbins was not involved in the murder of Clara, nor was he involved in the stealing of her vehicle. When they were taken into custody investigators had noticed Yates appeared to have blood on his shoes. His shoes would be analyzed and it was determined to be human blood but extended analysis was unable to determine if it was Clara's blood type. Yates was held without bond until a grand jury convened and issued an indictment against him for premeditated first degree murder and murder in the commission of a robbery. While I was unable to determine for certain it appears that he continued to be held without bond after the indictment.

Investigators were able to determine that Clara was likely murdered between noon and two in the afternoon on December 1^st. They came to this conclusion piecing together a few things. First, both Monday and Tuesday newspapers were still in the place in which they were placed by her paperboy. Secondly they found a receipt with her groceries laying near her body and were able to check her transactions to determine when she had been at the store. As I stated earlier investigators had found a pipe in the garage with what they believed to be blood and had theorized Clara had been beaten with that pipe. The medical examiner had determined she had been beat upon the head at least thirteen times. They would later say she had been hit with a “heavy wooden instrument” but it is not clear whether they determined what that instrument was.

Yates' attorney attempted to have the charges dismissed as he argued that Yates' rights were violated when he was not taken to a juvenile court before he was indicted. The problem with this argument is that while Yates' attorney argued it was unconstitutional in the last legislative session a law had been passed that allowed juveniles that are accused of first degree murder to automatically be charged in adult court. The attorney argued that it was only this charge that allowed them to not place him in juvenile court. He claimed that Yates was entitled to a hearing in juvenile court to see if he should be transferred to adult court. The court disagreed with him and Yates' case continued.

It appears that there was an attempt to conduct the trial in Evansville but there were attempts to seat an unbiased jury and they failed so his trial was moved to Terre Haute and began in April of 1976, just four months after the murder. A friend of his testified that the day before the murder Yates had told her he was going to buy a car from a neighbor and was going to Arkansas. For the prosecution that pointed to the premeditation. There were also apparently notes that he had passed to other inmates in the jail presented in the trial in which he had confessed. These notes were given to the other inmates in return for things like cigarettes. At least one of these notes were turned over to investigators and used at his trial. The defense strategy was not completely clear. Obviously they could not argue a lot as far as Yates being in possession of the vehicle and his multiple stories hurt the defense severely. The most the defense lawyer had was to remind the jury, one that consisted of eight women and four men, that this was not a grown man on trial but a child of fifteen. That argument would have had much more leverage in 1976 than it would have today as we seem more and more youthful offenders. Even still, it did not help much as on April 9, 1976 Dieter Yates was convicted of both first degree murder and murder in the commission of a murder. He was given two life terms. But, this would not be one of my blogs if it did not have some areas that became confusing.

Every bit of information that I got on this case came from local newspaper articles. I never saw an appeal paper; I never even found Yates in the Indiana Department of Corrections. I saw an article that an appeal was filed in 1978 and his conviction and sentence was upheld. I also found one that said in November of 1995 he seeking parole. I have absolutely no idea if this was granted. I can only assume that I found nothing in the IDOC or a published appeal was because of his age at the time of the murder.

Unlike some cases that I blog about here, this is not one I am “on the fence” about. I do believe that, at least for the time period of the crime, investigators had the evidence on their side. Sure, I would have liked to have seen a little more when it came to the blood on Yates' shoes but it is what it is. It is entirely possible that his story about LSD was the actual true story but who knows. It was said at the time that he and Robbins were caught in Clara car that “one of them had been expelled and the other had dropped out.” The article was not specific on which scenario applied to which boy. We also do know that Robbins had the previous charge at the time they were caught but I did not see anything that stated Yates had any legal issues before this.

The only things I take issue with is that although it was legal to not just try Yates as an adult but that he never went to the juvenile system. Whether this is still a practice today I am unsure, but I would continue to disagree with it. One thing about our judicial system that I admit that I disagree with is how criminals are judged by their crime and not as individuals. The other thing I take issue with in this case is the speed in which this case was taken to trial, but again this was how things were done back then. I take issue with it in a lot of cases but I think I take a little more issue with it in this case due to Yates' age. This crime was committed on December 1^st, discovered December 2^nd and Yates was arrested on December 4^th. By the first week of April he was on he was on trial. Not only that, it was said his trial was moved and started after there had been attempts to start the trial in Evansville with an unbiased jury. That means that within the span of four months not only had the crime been commit, investigated, solved, there were multiple legal issues addressed including the motions filed by the defense based on his belief that Yates' rights were violated, and apparently a false start to a trial when a jury could not be found. That means there had to be more filings in court to have the case transferred and to get things set up in another town. All of this was done in such a short period of time to determine the fate of a fifteen year old boy.

In my previous blog there were four people involved in a double murder and the prosecutor ultimately made deals with three of those people. One of those men never faced charges for the murders and instead got a deal on another crime he had committed and even though the did not follow through on things, the deal included no jail time as long as he went to, and stayed, at a drug rehab facility. This all occurred at that same time, and in the same town, as Yates. My point is that the prosecutors had a lot of leverage and ability to do things differently. I do not want to say that Yates was “over charged” or was innocent necessarily I just feel as if things went way too fast in making some major decisions. I do not know what came of Yates. I do have a few suspicions as to what has come of him but I do not necessarily want to reveal them here. Part of the reason I do these blogs is so people remember victims and while this was a brutal crime that took the life of woman, a young man threw his youth away. If he has been able to turn his life around and learn something then I am all for it. A person does not have to be defined by a crime they commit. While some disagree there are those who are remorseful and deserve second chances but I am not one of those people. If Yates has done good for himself and remained out of trouble then good for him.