A man accused of raping, knifing and shooting three teen-age runaways was found guilty Saturday of murdering one of them. A Kitsap County Superior Court jury found Daniel J. Yates guilty of aggravated first-degree murder and other charges in the attack last year. The same jury now will hear more testimony before deciding between a death sentence or life in prison without parole. Yates, 33, a tattoo artist from nearby Bremerton, was accused of taking the boy and two girls he picked up Sept. 17, 1987, to an isolated area, raping them at gunpoint, and tying them up. Bunnie Lynn Brown, 13, was shot in the head during the attack and died two months later. The other girl, 15, and the boy, 13, survived. Yates was also found guilty of two counts of attempted first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree rape. Kris Brown, the mother of the murdered girl, smiled, cried and hugged a supporter when the verdict was read. The 15-year-old girl, who survived gunshots and a slashed throat, also was in the courtroom for the verdict. In closing arguments Friday, Kitsap County Prosecutor Dan Clem pointed at Yates and said, ``The state has presented to you an ugly, violent picture with that man at the core.'' The isolated area where Yates took the three had ``no houses, no lights, no traffic _ perfect place to rape and murder,'' Clem said. Yates raped the teens at gunpoint and tied them up, and while binding them he had time to premeditate murder, Clem said. The death penalty can be given only when murder is premeditated. Yates raped a girl, tied her up, then shot her in the eye and ear, but she remained conscious and watched as Yates sodomized a boy, Clem said. After the assailant left she freed herself and ran barefoot down the gravel road to get help, the prosecutor said. ``Who should she run into but the defendant?'' Clem said. ``This nightmare shouldn't happen to anybody.'' Yates slit the girl's throat in the second encounter, but ``he's still not done,'' Clem said. ``He strangles her, smashes her face into the ground.'' The girl played dead to make Yates leave, he said. The defense maintained that Yates attacked the children only after one of the girls consented to have sex with him, and the three then threatened to double-cross him for money. ``I am not denying to you _ Daniel Yates is not denying to you _ that he cut, choked, shot and strangled'' the teens, defense attorney Judith Mandel told jurors. But ``there are different versions of these events,'' she added. The three teens are from Bremerton, across Puget Sound from Seattle.
