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[DRAMATIC MUSIC] BRIAN HARRIS: All three victims are found in the open. They're displayed for the world to see,
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their breasts and genitals left there for anybody walking by to see. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
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NARRATOR: Between 1990 and 1997, Spokane, Washington saw two serial killers at large.
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The first claimed three victims whose murders went unsolved for decades, in part, because detectives
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were looking for a man. JIM HANSON: My name is Jim Hanson. I'm retired detective from Spokane
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County Sheriff's Department. In 1990, I was one of the detectives involved in the investigation of three prostitutes that were killed
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in Spokane County and city. JIM DRESBACK: I am Jim Dresback. In 2004, I took over cases for another retired detective.
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And one of those cases was the Kathy Brisbois case. Kathy Brisbois was a case that was associated with two
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other murders of women. They were all left by the river, they had all been shot.
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They'd all been shot with what appeared to be the same caliber of bullet. So they thought maybe this was a serial case.
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JIM HANSON: This was typically the area that they would be strolling and working in.
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I think they realized the type of life they had and the dangers involved in it. I think that's the addiction to drugs just overcame all that.
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The prostitute is still a person, they've got family, and in many cases they have children.
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It makes them no different than another victim. JIM DRESBACK: They were prostitutes,
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they had drug habits. Therefore they had drug dealers, they had pimps, they had people that are known to,
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in general, not be nice to you if you didn't behave correctly. But there were many, many, many, many suspects.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: Yolanda Sapp was 26. She was the mother of two small children.
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But she also had a drug problem. And it had led her out to the streets. Yolanda had been shot three times in the chest.
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Her body was found nude and sprawled over an embankment just for the whole world to see.
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The bracelets and the necklace that she was known to have worn were gone. Her clothes were gone.
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They were never found. And a little denim purse that she was known to carry was gone.
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Her body was found under the green Street Bridge. She was partially nude. She died of a single gunshot wound to the chest.
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Kathy was found in Spokane Valley on the West side of the Spokane River. She had been shot three times, once in the chest, once
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in the head, once in the arm. But she had not gone down without a fight. This was a brutal scene.
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JIM DRESBACK: We're at Trent Pines, right along the banks of the Spokane River. And this is where Kathy Brisbois body was eventually recovered.
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They came here to do the sex act. And that either before, during, or after she must have had some sort of event that
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caused her enough concern that she probably tried to get away from it. So she ended up losing a coat.
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She lost her shoes over there. She probably outran him down to there because when we get down to the bottom of that hill,
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he's probably chasing her. And then we start seeing blood drops. So he may have injured her up here.
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But we wouldn't see the blood until she gets down there on the path. And along with that trail of occasional blood drops
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where some little clumps of hair. And right down here on that bush here, was a sundress, right in this general area.
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And there wasn't quite as much foliage as there is now. But in this general area her body
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was about halfway down that embankment. JIM HANSON: She put up a fight. She had a fractured skull.
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Her hair was pulled out. She was dragged for a distance. She was bleeding. So she was telling us that, I put up a fight here.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: The fact that she scratched and fought to save her life, may have
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saved the lives of other women. BRIAN HARRIS: As a detective looking at three prostitutes
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all killed in the same general area, posed in the same way. There are too many coincidences all killed by firearms.
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I would definitely be thinking, there's a link, there's a connection. We have a serial killer amongst our midst.
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JIM HANSON: Every serial killer has a signature. In this particular case, we were looking for a small caliber
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weapon at 22. Pieces of bullet fragments had been found in two of the victims. And so we were confident in that particular fact.
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NARRATOR: The red light area of Spokane became a dangerous place for sex workers.
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The deaths of three women kick-started a 20 year hunt for an elusive serial killer.
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JIM HANSON: Well, this case became cold probably in '91, '92. You know, there's other cases out there, other homicides
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that you're working. Other long involved investigations. So it goes cold, but it's not forgotten.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: Meanwhile over the years, more and more women in Spokane are winding up dead.
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JIM HANSON: This was a series of prostitute homicides in the Spokane area. As part of the investigation, you always
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go back and look at old cases. And these three cases surfaced in that investigation.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: Their deaths are eventually linked to the same man, serial killer, Robert Yates.
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JIM HANSON: In the Robert Yates investigation, they had a lot of DNA evidence, they
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had a number of specific leads they were following. And the Mo in the 1990 cases just did not fit
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that Mo of the Yates killings. CAROLYN CANVILLE: It was clear this was someone else
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and that someone else is still out there. JIM HANSON: I retired from the Sheriff's Office in 1996.
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And it was still unsolved at that point. JIM DRESBACK: In approximately 2005, our then Sergeant of the unit told us
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that he wanted us to start going through our cold cases looking at some of the trace evidence and evidence items
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that we had in the case. Because improvements have been made in DNA processing and it had become so much more sensitive
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that there may be some items that now, could be tested for DNA and get results where 10 years prior,
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there was no way that they would have been submitted. JIM HANSON: We did not have DNA in 1990.
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So you preserve the evidence the best way that you know how. And among the evidence that's resubmitted for testing
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are fingernail clippings from Kathy Brisbois. JIM DRESBACK: It's entered in a combined DNA indexing system
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and then it's routinely run every time somebody's DNA is entered. The city detectives took a dozen reference samples
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from possible suspects that had been suspects for a long time, couldn't really be eliminated but wasn't enough to include
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them as suspects either. So they just kind of sat there. So they went around and took 12 samples,
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sent them out to the lab to be compared to this unknown male DNA under the fingernail,
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and they were all eliminated. [DRAMATIC MUSIC] CAROLYN CANVILLE: And among the evidence that's resubmitted
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for testing to that lab in Marysville Washington are fingernail clippings from Kathy Brisbois.
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And almost in no time, the lead detective in the Brisbane murder case, Spokane Sheriff's deputy, Jim Dresback,
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gets a call. JIM DRESBACK: Six months after the case was sent to the Marysville lab, I got a call from one
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of the scientists that said-- asked me to sit down, which I always love when you get a call
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that says are you sitting down. Because it never seems to mean bad news. So I said, oh, yeah.
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She said, she'd developed a full male nuclear profile from under the left middle finger of Kathy Brisbois.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: Whoever that DNA profile belongs to is almost certainly Kathy's killer.
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And almost certainly the killer as well of Yolanda and Nickie This is a huge breakthrough.
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JIM HANSON: You do your job, you do it the way you're taught to do it. And hopefully, somewhere down the line,
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something's going to happen to help solve that case. NARRATOR: But the case wasn't yet solved.
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Detectives may have had a full DNA profile of their serial killer. But without a match on their database,
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they still had no idea who could be the killer. [DRAMATIC MUSIC] March 2012, Spokane Valley.
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Police officers pick up a 60-year-old woman known as a loner and a lady who loves cats.
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Her name is Donna Perry. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Donna Perry is spotted at a white elephant
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store, is buying ammunition and a pistol magazine, a clip, for a gun. And the retired detective sees her
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and knows that this is a felon. And is not allowed to legally own firearms. So Donna Perry is arrested.
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And this arrest will change everything. BRIAN HARRIS: There's a federal requirement, as of
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well as many states that once you're incarcerated, you have to provide a sample of your DNA.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: That's when it happened. A crime lab technician in a Washington state lab
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gets a hit. Donna Perry's DNA is a direct match to the DNA found under the fingernail of Kathy Brisbois.
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They have a match. JIM HANSON: Donna Perry was not even known to us at that time.
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Did not come up in any of our investigations. So that particular person was not even looked
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at during our investigation. JIM DRESBACK: Perry looks like a meek, mild, doddering old woman.
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But has potential that's far beyond what they look like. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Just who is Donna Perry?
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What kind of secrets has she been hiding? Clearly, she's not just some crazy cat lady
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who happen to like guns a lot. MAN: Doug Perry as a child, was living in Omak Washington,
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which is kind of this North central part of the state of Washington. It's a rural, predominantly farming, ranching communities.
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And his family had an Orchard. BRIAN FREDERICK: So young Douglas was raised in an environment that was hyper masculine.
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We're talking about the Northwest of the United States, where guns are sort of the daily norm.
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Huntsmen, you find militias up in that part of the country. CAROLYN CANVILLE: It was far from a storybook childhood.
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Doug's dad was a military weapons expert though and he would take Doug out target shooting.
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BRIAN FREDERICK: So young Douglas Perry between the ages of four and seven was raped and beaten by his own father.
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JIM DRESBACK: He seemed to be closest maybe to his mom. But even that wasn't a real genuine loving
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kind of relationship. CAROLYN CANVILLE: She had some problems of her own. She wound up institutionalized for severe schizophrenia.
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So Douglas was pretty much on his own from a young age. He is arrested on a series of assault
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charges and weapons violations. And in his mid-thirties in 1988, he gets his first felony
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weapons charges. Police find a huge stash of weapons. 50 guns both handguns and rifles.
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And 20,000 rounds of ammunition. And even a pipe bomb. JIM DRESBACK: He really seemed to have an affinity to guns,
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he loved them a lot. Because every time he was arrested, and a search warrant was done in his house there were dozens
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of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition that were recovered every single time.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: In 1994, he's arrested again with an even larger stash of weapons.
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Crossbows, hunting bows, assault rifles and AK 47. BRIAN HARRIS: He refers to weapons
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almost as you would a child, very affectionate, and passionate when talking about weapons.
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Not just about the parts, but almost as if it's a lover. When he describes a firearm, it's
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almost as if it's taken on a human characteristics and he's in love with the actual weapon itself.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: But now from this point on, Doug is no longer allowed to legally own
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guns, which is a big problem for someone whose gun obsessed as Doug is. NARRATOR: Following the murders of the three women,
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Perry was jailed for illegal firearm possession. Inside, many learn of his other obsession.
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BRIAN HARRIS: Inside the prison walls there are mental health workers who are screaming
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trying to let people know, there's something wrong with this man. Something that sets him apart from other prisoners.
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CAROLYN CANVILLE: He seems fixated on prostitutes. He stalks them, he'd befriend them.
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He makes use of their services. He's known to have actually prostituted himself to pay for his weapons.
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Clearly Doug is obsessed with prostitutes, but he has a complicated relationship with them.
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BRIAN HARRIS: He didn't like women. He found them disgusting and vile, at least the women that were involved in the sex
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trade, that were prostitutes. He viewed them as pond scum. He looked at them as a person might look as a cockroach,
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as totally worthless. No use for them. JIM DRESBACK: What he said is he hated the prostitutes
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and he hated them because they could reproduce, and they were wasting it. BRIAN HARRIS: He looked at them with disgust
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because he couldn't reproduce, but it was because of biological reasons. He looked at them, there was no Excuse for them.
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But they chose to give away and throw away what was given to them, this beautiful way
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of creating life. CAROLYN CANVILLE: During his stay, he reportedly tells a fellow inmate
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that he has killed around nine prostitutes because he hated them. BRIAN HARRIS: He went on to describe in detail that he
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murdered, and posed, and placed these women naked in the very locations where their bodies were found.
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He confessed, he confessed to his cellmates of his murders. NARRATOR: Nobody believed him.
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A year after his release, Harry was back in the red light district of Spokane picking up sex workers.
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He took one of them back to his house. CAROLYN CANVILLE: And there she sees a collection of weapons.
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She sees knives. She sees guns. She sees crossbows. JIM DRESBACK: And she was really creeped out about the weapons,
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all the weapons around. And how he was saying he wasn't going to hurt her because he liked her.
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When he took her back downtown to the street corner, she flagged down the first cop she said, and said,
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I want to tell you about this weird date that I just had, oh, and there he goes.
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And so the police went and stopped him and identified him. BRIAN FREDERICK: The notes of a mental health practitioner
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were found in Perry's car. The document came as having gender psychosis disorder.
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Not only that, but Perry was described as having an intense hatred of women. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Douglas Perry flies to Bangkok, Thailand
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and has gender reassignment surgery. And returns to Spokane as Donna Perry. NARRATOR: 12 years later, Donna Perry
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is arrested by police for yet another federal firearms violation. Donna Perry, the cat lady in custody
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had a history of violence under another name. Suddenly, police have a new line of inquiry.
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JIM DRESBACK: Who is Doug Perry? Where did Doug Perry come from? Where did Doug Perry live?
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Who were the neighbors? Who were the friends? Who were-- you know, what was his family like?
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JIM HANSON: You've got to be able to put the suspect back in Spokane at the time of the homicides.
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You've got to run down vehicles that the suspect may have had, residences. There's just a lot of things to go.
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And you're-- then you've got to be able to tie each homicide to the suspect. JIM DRESBACK: We searched the house
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that Perry was living in when she was last arrested for the firearms violations, in case there were things that she
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took with her like trophies. Things that you keep. When we talk to the alcohol, tobacco and firearms they said,
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you know there was one weird thing when we did the search warrant on that house.
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We didn't pay much attention at the time, but you might want to consider this, is that there was
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one door that was sealed shut. It was like a closet door in the bedroom and it was sealed shut.
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And we pried it open. And it had a bunch of boxes of stuff, and there were some women's underwear.
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Yolanda Sapp's body was found with no clothing at all. There was a couple of blankets deposited
00:21:10
with her, where her body was. But she had no clothes at all. Kathy Brisbois body was completely naked,
00:21:15
there were some clothes scattered about the scene, as if she'd thrown them off, or as they were battling.
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So we thought, well, maybe there was underwear that were kept and we're interested in these documents.
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BRIAN FREDERICK: So in the serial killer literature, we often hear the word totem come up,
00:21:36
which is derived from an Algonquin word that means, an object or an animal that has some sort
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of spiritual significance. I prefer the word trophy. So in Perry's case, his totem, his trophy,
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his talisman was a victim's clothing. NARRATOR: More than 20 years on from the Spokane sex workers
00:21:57
murders, police were convinced that Donna was their mystery serial killer. BRIAN HARRIS: Perry wasn't trying to hide the victims
00:22:05
and get away with murder, she was trying to send a message. She's displaying them as if they were trophies.
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JIM HANSON: I think we probably had 600 to 700 tips that were generated in this case.
00:22:20
And that not one of those ever identified her as even a suspect. BRIAN HARRIS: For Perry, this was a way of putting up caution
00:22:32
signs, stay away from this kind of activity, this is what will happen to you. JIM HANSON: There was DNA of Perry's on the blanket
00:22:42
that was found with Sapp. So that ties those two together. Then you've got DNA from the items found in the dumpster
00:22:54
that tie him to Nickie Lowe. Then you've got the fingernail clippings of Brisbois.
00:23:04
What we did back in 1990, the investigations, the collection of evidence, and everything was sufficient enough to help
00:23:16
somebody catch this killer. NARRATOR: Perry was in the frame for the murders of Yolanda Sapp, Nickie Lowe, and Kathy Brisbois.
00:23:28
But she was throwing a complicated defense at investigators. BRIAN HARRIS: Can somebody who identified themselves
00:23:36
at one point in their life as a man, now identify themselves as a woman and say, I'm changed.
00:23:42
I haven't done those activities and that's not me. Douglas Perry is dead, I am Donna Perry.
00:23:48
JIM HANSON: Doug is going to say, Doug did it. And Doug's going to say Donna did
00:23:54
it and we're going to get in a big brouhaha in court as to-- I mean, they're going to fight back and forth.
00:24:02
And it's not really going to get-- go anywhere. DONNA PERRY: Douglas didn't stop, Donna stopped it.
00:24:10
The gender change operation, I I'm not Doug. I'm convinced of it. NARRATOR: Detectives have Donna Perry in custody.
00:24:33
But she claims her former identity was solely responsible for the deaths of the three women.
00:24:40
Would Donna Perry confess? JIM DRESBACK: I spoke to a guy who was in this type of work for the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.
00:24:48
He said that he was unaware of any other serial killer that had ever had a gender reassignment surgery.
00:24:54
This is the first one of these that he'd run into. Therefore he didn't have a lot to give
00:24:59
me as far as what I could-- could say or do in an interview. But just that it would be very important for me
00:25:07
to use the correct pronoun. Don't call her a he, because after all of that to be called
00:25:13
a man might be a shut down moment for this person, that may just lock them up. NARRATOR: Donna's gender was irrelevant to the crimes
00:25:21
the detectives were investigating. JIM DRESBACK: That doesn't matter to me. Because you know, women can kill people, men can kill people.
00:25:28
It doesn't matter to me whether it's a man or woman. In this case, I just want to make sure
00:25:32
that I didn't step in something that was going to cause this whole thing to stop.
00:25:49
We just got her from the jail, brought her down to an interview room. And went in and talked to her.
00:26:08
I didn't take the warrant with me and I did that intentionally. And so then I just waited for a little bit
00:26:14
then I went back in with this. And I read it to her. And when I read that the charge was murder,
00:26:19
she said murder, murder. I am there to find out what happened, to see if I can find out the truth about what happened.
00:27:11
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] So I got old photographs of these women who are all hookers, knowing that Perry associated
00:27:41
with them back in 1990. The purpose was quite simple really when it came right down
00:28:08
to it, was to show him these photographs, her, these photographs one at a time. And have her declare do you know this person, have you ever seen
00:28:18
her? Every single one she said, nope, never seen him. Nope, never seen him. Including the victims that were randomly spread out,
00:28:33
I just put them up there. Ever seen this person, nope, never seen them, never seen them, never seen them.
00:28:38
Until I showed them Yolanda Sapp and then he said, no, she's Black, I would never have anything
00:28:42
to do with a Black person. At that point, all we got was distraction, deflection.
00:29:04
Well, I was abused as a kid and it just made no sense. Changing the subject, not addressing
00:29:11
the question directly. Mark Burbridge came up with the singular brilliant question
00:29:57
in this interview, which was, we know that when people kill more than one person
00:30:03
it tends to continue on and it goes on and on and on. What made this stop? Why did these stop?
00:30:18
That's as close to saying I did it as anything I've ever seen in an interview room.
00:30:27
It was an admission that was couched in an excuse as to why it wasn't her, when in fact it's saying,
00:30:33
it was her. And there you have a look into the mind of Donna Perry. It's just an exercise in contradictions.
00:31:02
CAROLYN CANVILLE: The cops ask her if Doug killed the women, she says she has no idea that was 20 years ago.
00:31:16
JIM DRESBACK: So I'm trying to continue to get her to admit, but she wouldn't make a traditional admission.
00:32:00
She believed that her gender reassignment surgery drew a curtain and nothing before that occasion,
00:32:08
she wasn't responsible, that was somebody else's doing. NARRATOR: Would Donna be able to argue
00:32:37
her way out of responsibility as the Spokane serial killer? Perry's claims aside, what were her motives?
00:32:58
For criminologist Brian Frederick, a troubled childhood and misogyny drove Perry to kill.
00:33:05
BRIAN FREDERICK: This is the extreme manifestation of all those issues. In Perry's mind, Perry was killing the thing that he hated
00:33:14
and then trying to become the perfection of it. [DRAMATIC MUSIC] JIM DRESBACK: When Donna was Douglas,
00:33:28
Donna had the singular girlfriend, Claire Ann, who was a prostitute and hooked on cocaine.
00:33:34
And Doug was trying to get her out of that life. Then these other three women who were
00:33:41
associates of hers in the prostitution trade, were maybe seen as rivals. BRIAN FREDERICK: I can imagine that there was
00:33:47
also a little bit of jealousy. He picked some attractive victims, perhaps more attractive than he could ever plan to be as Donna.
00:33:56
And he felt that they were squandering this beauty by giving sex to other men, who didn't necessarily
00:34:04
have the purpose that he had. He was mission oriented, he had a mission. He was on a mission and he was aiming to fulfill that mission.
00:34:13
JIM DRESBACK: It was interesting that Claire Ann was booked into jail on the nights that two of these people
00:34:20
were killed. Now, she's back in jail again. And that makes Doug Perry mad. And then he finds somebody to take it out on.
00:34:30
And the first person, people is going to look at are the people that maybe he thinks are standing in the way.
00:34:58
Claire Ann was a drug user. And his whole goal was to get her out of that life. So he-- they could have a white picket fence,
00:35:05
ride off into the sunset. He and his wife, the only girl that he ever loved. If he could get her away from this.
00:35:56
NARRATOR: Criminologist Brian Frederick has another theory about the way the Spoken killer
00:36:01
murdered their victims. BRIAN FREDERICK: What's interesting about Perry is, despite having this arsenal of weapons,
00:36:07
we can imagine some pretty big guns and pretty big shotguns, his weapon of choice with his victims
00:36:12
is a much smaller feminine James Bond type pistol. He shot them, he didn't strangle them, he didn't beat them,
00:36:19
he didn't need marks on the body. This is his way of showing some sort, however slight,
00:36:25
some sort of reverence for what he considered to be his future temple. In Perry's mind, by exposing their breasts
00:36:34
and their genitals, this is the only indication in his mind of their womanhood. And he wanted people to see that he
00:36:41
had murdered a woman who wasn't deserving of that status. NARRATOR: As detectives probed for the motives
00:36:52
and methods of Donna Perry, she continued to openly deny the murders. JIM HANSON: The fact that he wanted to become a woman,
00:37:26
was that his whole life? Did he always want that? Or did that come about because he killed three women?
00:37:33
CAROLYN CANVILLE: One of the prosecutors said, she gelded herself like you would a farm animal.
00:37:38
BRIAN HARRIS: She felt that if she had her genitals taken away as a man and got rid of that portion of her life, then
00:37:46
she wouldn't be as violent. She wouldn't have that desire anymore to kill. She's trying to use the same idea when people talk
00:37:56
about castrating rapists and people who commit sexual assault. But what Donna doesn't realize is that this
00:38:04
had nothing to do with sexual assault. This had everything to do with what was going
00:38:09
on up here, not down there. JIM HANSON: Donna versus Doug, Donna didn't do it. But Douglas did.
00:38:21
And so you can't convict me because I'm Donna, Douglas did it. I was concerned it was going to be an issue in court.
00:38:28
And I was afraid that this transgender operation was going to somehow derail the court case.
00:38:40
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Is it right to lock up Donna Perry when it was Douglas Perry who committed the murders?
00:38:46
Was the surgery an elaborate way to avoid being charged with murder? Or did it have little or nothing to do with gender identity?
00:39:06
BRIAN FREDERICK: Knowing full well that he wouldn't be approved, knowing that he would have
00:39:10
to go out of the country to get that surgery, probably bolstered his hatred towards women.
00:39:16
Because they were born with this. They didn't have to go through the work that he had to go through.
00:39:20
They weren't denied their sexuality. What he was in essence doing was denying them their sexuality
00:39:27
and then going on to become. BRIAN HARRIS: When you come down to the law, did Donna Perry, at the time that she was Douglas Perry,
00:39:36
did she know that taking of life was wrong? Was against the law? And clearly, it would be yes.
00:39:44
Resoundingly, it would be yes. NARRATOR: And the Washington jury agreed. Donna Perry was found guilty of the murders
00:39:53
of Yolanda Sapp, Nickie Lowe, and the fighter Kathy Brisbois. JIM DRESBACK: All of them had family, and all of them
00:40:00
do have family. And they're human beings and they're valuable human beings, regardless of what they do.
00:40:07
And regardless of what a person thinks, morally what they do. It was her fighting instincts that collected the evidence
00:40:20
that put Perry in prison. She collected DNA by scratching, fighting, kicking, whatever.
00:40:27
She got his DNA embedded under her fingernails enough that it was viable 28, 29 years later
00:40:38
that they could still get a sample from that. Nickie Lowe had her-- Perry's fingerprint on one of the items that belonged to her.
00:40:47
It was in a dumpster, I don't know, a mile, two miles away from where her body was recovered.
00:40:53
So when the DNA is developed to the point where it's as sensitive as it is, then we have a suspect
00:40:59
that we would not have found. Never would have found him without it. JIM HANSON: The transgender operation
00:41:18
was part of the investigation. But had nothing to do with the killings. BRIAN FREDERICK: There's been speculation
00:41:26
that Douglas Perry decided to become Donna Perry in order to escape conviction. I'm not convinced by that.
00:41:33
I think that was the end game the entire time. His procuring of sex workers, his having sex with them,
00:41:39
him discarding of the bodies. This reverent, irreverence he had towards them was all part of the master plan.
00:41:47
He needed to perfect, he needed to become, he needed to get away from the little boy that was raped
00:41:52
by his father, and become a woman who could actually provide sex to another man.
00:41:57
That was the game plan. BRIAN HARRIS: In the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter what the genitalia says.
00:42:21
What matters in this case is what the DNA says. Donna Perry, Douglas Perry, they're one and the same.
00:42:29
They are the killers. Donna Perry is not a sex offender, Donna Perry is a serial killer.
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