9 notorious inmates call this Eastern Washington prison home. Who are they?

The Washington State Department of Corrections manages 10 prisons across the state.

These correctional facilities house inmates serving sentences after being convicted to murder, rape, theft, fraud and other crimes. Placement is determined based on the inmate’s gender, convictions, security risk and other factors.

While there isn’t a set system determining which crimes land an incarcerated person in a specific prison, many of the state’s most notorious inmates are carrying out their sentences at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

These are some of the Eastern Washington prison’s most noteworthy current inmates:

Why are notorious criminals held at Washington State Penitentiary?

Established in 1886, the site once known as the Washington Territorial Prison was previously the site of death row executions in Washington state.

The state carried out 78 executions at the prison at 1313 North 13th Ave. between 1904 and 2010, killing male inmates by hanging and lethal injection. No women were executed.

Then-Gov. Jay Inslee placed a moratorium on executions in 2014.

Four years later, the Washington Supreme Court unanimously ruled that capital punishment was unconstitutional. In 2023, the practice was formally removed from state law.

Washington State Penitentiary’s death chamber was ceremonially retired in 2024.

Despite this change, the Walla Walla prison remains the state’s go-to facility for prisoners with particularly long sentences for violent offenses.

It’s currently the third largest prison in Washington state, with capacity for 2,439 incarcerated individuals.

Is Gary Ridgway incarcerated at Washington State Penitentiary?

Gary Ridgway, better known as the Green River Killer, was serving multiple life sentences at Washington State Penitentiary as of Tuesday, April 14.

Ridgway, 77, murdered more than four dozen women across nearly two decades, disposing of their bodies along the Green River.

The serial killer originally pleaded guilty to 48 murder counts in a deal to avoid the death penalty, later confessing to a 49th killing. He ultimately received 49 consecutive life sentences without parole.

He began serving his time at the Walla Walla prison and remains there now.

With 49 women confirmed as Green River Killer victims, Ridgway has been convicted of more murders than any other serial killer in U.S. history. Detectives still hope to identify additional victims.

What other serial killers are incarcerated at Walla Walla prison?

Ridgway is not the only convicted serial killer serving a sentence at Washington State Penitentiary.

The mass murderer known as the Hillside Strangler was incarcerated at the Walla Walla prison as of Tuesday.

Formerly known as Kenneth Bianchi, he changed his name to Anthony D’Amato behind bars.

D’Amato, now 74, committed 10 rapes and murders in Los Angeles in the late 70s with the help of his cousin Angelo Buono Jr. He also killed two people in Washington state, reportedly on his own.

In 1979, D’Amato was convicted of killing seven people and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Robert Lee Yates Jr., 73, is also serving several consecutive sentences at Washington State Penitentiary.

He admitted to murdering 13 women in Spokane County beginning in the late 1980s, and was later convicted of two additional murders in Pierce County.

In 2000, Yates was sentenced to 408 years in prison, but he received the death penalty after the Pierce County murder convictions in 2002. His sentence was converted back to the original 408 years when the state outlawed executions.

Jack Owen Spillman, sometimes called the Werewolf Butcher, is at Washington State Penitentiary.

Now 56, the Spokane man confessed to killing and sexually mutilating a mother and her daughter in East Wenatchee in 1995. He also confessed to killing a young girl from Tonasket in 1994.

In 1995, Spillman was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 45 and a half years behind bars.

Mass murderer, serial rapist incarcerated at Eastern Washington prison

Joseph McEnroe, one of two killers involved in the 2007 Carnation murders, has been at Washington State Penitentiary since 2015.

On Christmas Eve 2007, McEnroe and his then-girlfriend Michele Anderson ambushed Anderson’s family, first killing her parents, then her brother and sister-in-law and their two young children. The couple later confessed to the crimes.

In 2015, McEnroe, now 47, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Other Washington State Penitentiary inmates include the Pasco man behind the Seattle Jewish Federation shooting in 2006.

Naveed Afzal Haq, now 50, shot six women at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building, killing one. The state classified the shooting as a hate crime.

In 2009, Haq was convicted of murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole, plus 120 years in prison.

More recently, Brandon Lamon Jones began his sentence at Washington State Penitentiary.

Now 30, Jones used guns to threaten his victims in Kennewick and Richland and force them to have sex with him.

In 2024, he was sentenced to 226 years in prison for 11 counts of first-degree rape and additional charges.

Which former death row inmates are at penitentiary?

There were eight men on death row in Washington state when the practice was abolished in 2018.

Their death row convictions were converted to life sentences with this change.

Three of the men are still at Washington State Penitentiary, including Yates.

Allen Eugene Gregory and Byron Eugene Scherf were also on death row when Washington state abolished executions.

Gregory was sentenced to death in 2001, after being convicted of raping and murdering a Tacoma woman in 1996.

Gregory appealed this conviction, and the Washington Supreme Court found that capital punishment in the state was imposed arbitrarily and with racial bias.

Scherf originally received the death penalty for the 2011 murder of a Monroe Correctional Complex officer inside a prison chapel.

At the time of the murder, he was serving a life sentence at the Monroe prison for abducting and raping a woman near Spokane.

Upon his 2013 murder conviction, Scherf asked for the death penalty, but the change to state law required his sentence be converted to life without parole.

This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "9 notorious inmates call this Eastern Washington prison home. Who are they?."