The Killer in My Backyard: Donna Perry (Douglas Perry) and the Spokane River Murders

This week, we continue The Killer in My Backyard series with the disturbing and often overlooked case of Donna Perry, also known as Douglas Perry, one of Spokane, Washington’s serial killers.In 1990, three women were murdered and dumped along the Spokane River. For years, the cases went unsolved and were even briefly attributed to another serial killer active in the area at the time, Robert Lee Yates Jr. It wouldn’t be until years later, following a completely unrelated arrest, that investigators realized they had been looking at the wrong person.In this episode, we walk through Perry’s early life, criminal history, and move to Spokane, before breaking down the Spokane River murders, how Perry avoided detection, and the moment everything finally unraveled. Perry was ultimately caught after attempting to purchase firearms at White Elephant, leading to DNA evidence that tied him directly to the murders.We also examine Perry’s prosecution, the failed defense argument that Donna and Douglas Perry were “different people,” and how advances in DNA testing reassigned these murders away from Robert Lee Yates and onto the correct offender.Told from a local perspective, this episode explores how violence hid in plain sight and how Spokane’s river became a silent witness to crimes that went unseen for far too long.