Twist in serial killer hunt as cops find their man in female prison

While Spokane law enforcement officials didn't want to say it out loud until they were nearly certain, three women over three months murdered and dumped by the river made it tragically apparent they were chasing a serial killer.

The third victim, Kathleen Ann Brisbois, 38, had visited the police station a few days earlier, after the murders of her friends Yolanda Sapp and Nickie Lowe, trembling with fear.

Her murder in May 1990 carried the same grim hallmarks: all three worked as prostitutes, a similar weapon had been used and their bodies had been discarded like trash by the Spokane River.

And though there was no evidence linking these three deaths to the unsolved Green River Killer cases in Seattle - which ultimately left 49 women and girls dead - the similarities were unsettling enough to have police on high alert.

The day after Kathy was found, the county sheriff and local police chief announced the formation of a joint task force to handle the case - a concentrated effort involving up to ten of their most experienced detectives.

The immediate focus became the victims' lives - uncovering every detail of their routines, connections and the men they interacted with. Investigators scoured their backgrounds, piecing together where they worked and lived and the circumstances surrounding their final days.

Fear grips East Sprague Avenue 

The FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was brought in to analyze the case for links to other murders nationwide. The chief of police warned that the Pacific Northwest had become a breeding ground for serial killers.

Fear became palpable on East Sprague Avenue, an area popular with [rough trade] workers. Traffic from prostitutes slowed as women began taking extra precautions - refusing unfamiliar customers, avoiding car dates and sticking to motels and bars. Still, many refused to believe they, too, could end up like Kathy, Nickie and Yolanda.

Within a month of the launch of the city-county task force to investigate the three murders, detectives had assembled more than 600 'clue sheets' that each contained the name of at least one potential suspect and the supporting information gathered during interviews with prostitutes or others who provided tips that could be useful.

Detectives had some of those listed on the sheets submit to lie detector tests after they offered suspicious or even incriminating accounts.

One man admitted he had been living a double life - happily married for seven or eight years, but still bringing prostitutes home when his wife was at work. He said he often used nitrite products such as Rush to make himself more sexually aggressive with them.

He said he could get verbally abusive with the women but never got physically violent or displayed a weapon and would back off if they looked like they were going to cry. He said he planned to seek professional help to deal with his infatuation with prostitutes.

Another said he had dated prostitutes for three or four years. He knew but had not dated Yolanda Sapp, although he had taken her and a man he thought was her brother to buy drugs.

Witness identifies possible suspect 

He did not know Nickie or Kathy but recognized them on sight. He said a friend had dated Yolanda. And he named a man he thought might be involved in all three killings because he was always saying someone should kill the hookers on East Sprague.

He had no proof of the man's involvement and didn't want him to know he had given his name to the police.

Despite statements like these, the detectives watched as the polygraph examiner administered the tests and concluded all the men were being truthful when one after another after another denied killing any of the women or knowing who did.

For the detectives, all the work and running down leads and conducting interviews was producing little more than frustration. And as of June 22, the police were no closer to solving the murders than they had been when the task force was formed more than five weeks earlier.

How could that be? cops wondered. Out of 600 leads investigated so thoroughly, not one single solid suspect? And they were worried that the killer could strike again while they were chasing leads that turned out to be dead ends.

The Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI Academy was about to become world famous when the film The Silence of the Lambs was released a few months down the road in early 1991.

The chief of the unit, Special Agent John Douglas, had essentially invented the science of creating psychological profiles of people who commit violent crimes and serial murders, based on his interviews and studies of serial killers imprisoned across the country.

The profiles set out the mentalities, characteristics, personalities, motivations, habits, appearances, professions and sometimes even the kind of car the killer might drive, which could help police zero in on the most likely suspects and, in some cases, draw suspects into the open.

Special Agent Douglas opened a case on the three Spokane murders so that any similarities with other cases across the country would automatically be noted, providing another opportunity to link the murders to other cases and perhaps even identify the killer.

Cold case breakthrough brings new hope 

But after months of almost frenzied activity, urgency faded as other investigations and activities demanded attention.

And by the time the last calendar page for the ugly year of 1990 was turned, the task-force investigation was essentially over.

However, two of its members, Sheriff's Detective Jim Hansen and city police Detective Jim Peterson, couldn't let it go. They continued chewing on the cases in regular conversations with each other. They realized there still were some loose ends - leads that weren't followed, tips that weren't checked out, people who weren't interviewed, theories that weren't tested.

There had been so much information coming in and being handled by so many detectives that no one knew everything the other detectives knew.

In January 1991, Hansen and Peterson sought approval to work together on the three murders in something of a rejuvenated joint investigation. The pair were allowed 30 days to start, with extensions of 30 days at a time if they made progress.

The new team of two didn't know if the killer was still in Spokane, if he was in prison, or even if he was still alive. They were confident, however, that the killer could be found if they could harness good police work with some solid information and some lucky breaks.

The call from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab to the Spokane County Sheriff's department came on September 14, 2012.

'Are you sitting down?' forensic scientist Mariah Low asked Detective James Dresback.

Low went on to explain that the male DNA profile from Kathy's fingernail matched a profile for a 60-year-old man identified on their database.

'His name is Douglas Robert Perry.'

That was great news and it got even better.

Unexpected discovery stuns investigators 

Low said the Spokane man was already in custody in the US Marshals Service's SeaTac facility, a center for temporarily holding federal prisoners near the Seattle-Tacoma airport.

There it was. After all these years and all the work, frustrations and disappointments, there was a name - maybe even the name.

Douglas Perry was almost certainly Yolanda, Nickie and Kathy's killer. Modern forensic science - specifically the analysis of DNA - had identified the serial killer that a cadre of Spokane detectives had chased for more than two decades.

Detective Lyle Johnston - who had just that day joined the investigative team - was assigned to contact the SeaTac facility for information about the potential suspect's incarceration there. Only moments later, he returned with some incredible information that no one could have seen coming.

Douglas Perry had been moved to a medical facility for federal inmates in Carswell, Texas.

But there was more. A lot more. Carswell was a women's prison.

'His name now is Donna Rebecca Perry.'

In all his cases in all his years as a cop, Dresback had never encountered anything like that. Not even close. 

Sitting at his desk, he wondered why Perry had taken this extreme action to alter his [identity]. It made no sense to the detective, who readily admitted the concept of gender identity/confusion/reassignment was difficult for him to accept or understand. 

Beyond that, he had to wonder what Douglas becoming Donna meant for the case against a serial murderer who took the lives of Yolanda, Nickie and Kathy.

Did the [identity] change mean that Douglas didn't exist anymore? Could the recently created woman named Donna be criminally liable for murders committed by a man she used to be but no longer was? 

Were Douglas and Donna separate and distinct people under the law? He was about to find out.

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