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Lee Yates Bimmer Bio
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Lee Yates was born and raised in a suburb of Detroit. He attended the University of Michigan were he met his future wife, Barbara. Both graduated from University of Michigan; he with a law degree and she with a post doctorate degree in economics. After school they lived for a year in Amsterdam. In 1970 they came to visit Lee’s brother who was a forest ranger in Eastern Washington. They loved the Northwest and decided to move to Seattle. Lee and Barbara were married in Seattle shortly after settling here. Lee took the bar exam and then got a job as a deputy prosecuting attorney with King County where he still works, now as a senior prosecuting attorney. Barbara is the Chair of the Economics Department at Seattle University Business School. Lee and Barbara don’t have any children; “just cars” he says with a chuckle. The Yates have lived in the same 1920 circa brick colonial on the south slope of Queen Anne since 1975.
Over the years Lee has done everything you can do at the prosecutor’s office. He considers the work very challenging and important. From the early 1970’s to late 80’s Lee was involved in an enormous amount of jury trial work. He worked as the lead prosecutor on numerous cases, many being high profile in the local media.
One of his more infamous cases was probably the Queen Anne axe murderer. In this case a man broke into the house of an elderly woman and murdered her in her sleep with an axe. He also had attacked other people and had been involved in numerous burglaries. Lee had a special interest in this particular case because the guy was attacking people right around Lee’s house.
Another case was the murder of a young woman in the Pioneer Square district by a man that was out on work release. The man was convicted and later the family of the woman sued the state because he should not have been in the work release program. The young woman’s mother took an active role in politics after that and has been a State Senator for the last ten years.
For the last few years Lee has been involved in the appeals of major criminal cases in the King County prosecutor’s office Appellate Division. That work includes numerous appearances in front of the Washington Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court in Olympia. Crime writer Anne Rule included two of his cases in her book “In the Name of Love” which was recently published.
Lee notes that as a prosecuting attorney in criminal cases he has a responsibility not to just win the case but to see justice occur. There is more of a look at the bigger picture. When dealing with extremely violent criminal cases there is a challenge to marshal all of the evidence and witnesses (some reluctant) and present everything coherently to a jury. He indicates that there is a high burden of proof for a prosecuting attorney and working to meet that burden professionally is also a big challenge. Lee’s recent work in the Appellate Division is also rewarding in particular because he finds himself dealing with issues that are on the cutting edge of the law.
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Lee has been a BMW club member since 1985. His first and only BMW is a Burgundy 1972 Bavaria. Many members that have attended track events or the annual concourse are familiar with the car. He purchased the car new and has put roughly 105,000 miles on it. Because Lee is able to walk to work the Bavaria has never had to perform the functions of a daily driver. Lee was interested in the Bavaria because it cost less than the BMW 2800 that had preceded it. The 2800 was more expensive because of extra appointments like leather interior, power locks and mirrors and air-conditioning. Lee felt that many of these items weren’t reliable anyway so why pay for them. The Bavaria could have been considered a stripper model with manual locks and windows, no leather and no air-conditioning. Roughly ten years ago Lee ordered a Metric Mechanic flat 6 engine and had Strictly BMW perform the engine swap. The 255 H.P. engine has a Weber 38D downdraft non-progressive carburetor which gives instant low-end power. This completely transformed the personality of the car. He followed the new engine up a couple years later with a Metric Mechanic 4-speed transmission. He has also installed a 3-core radiator which helps the cooling tremendously and also had fitted larger vented brakes from a 6 series to handle the extra power that the big six puts out. Finally, the suspension has upgraded shocks, springs, sway bars and tires.
The Bavaria has been featured previously in the Zundfolge as well as the November 1988 issue of the national Roundel magazine. The car is a rocket and has a sweet distinctive BMW sound. After riding around with him through the streets of lower Queen Anne I couldn’t wipe the smile off of my face.
Lee’s first high performance driving schools were with the BMW club in the mid 1980’s. He attended numerous schools and many track days during this time. Later, he rode with a friend in a 1973 Porsche 911. That experience led him to purchase a stock ‘69 911S and modify it into a street legal race car.
Lee’s first car was like many peoples: something handed down from the family; a ’62 Chevy with fins. “It was ridiculous” he said.
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Lee and Barbara spent some travelling in Europe while living in Amsterdam
and they purchased a tiny Fiat 850 convertible which they drove all over Europe
and enjoyed immensely. They brought
the Fiat back to the states with them but then traded it in on a Peugeot which
they then traded in fairly quickly for the Bavaria.
Lee’s other rides include the racing 1969 Porsche 911
and a Dodge Stealth Turbo all-wheel
drive. “My one modern car” he
notes. Lee has been racing his
Porsche in local SCCA and PCA
events for a number of years. He is
one of the few SCCA/PCA racers that still drives his car to the track instead of
hauling it on a trailer. He
indicates that even though the car is a race car it is street legal.
He has never been pulled over while on public roads as he traveled to a
race weekend. His 911 has roughly
225 H.P., weighs 2,150 lbs and revs safely to an impressive 8,000 RPM.
The engine was rebuilt ten years ago and some special bits were used to
help attain the high RPM limit. He
estimates that he now has 15,000 competition miles on the engine.
He has the stock “vintage” push-button radio in the car and enjoys
listening to ball games while on the road heading to a race.
Lee and Barbara are big Mariner fans.
When
Lee and Barbara travel they usually go over seas so he couldn’t share a
particular automobile road trip that he could look fondly back on.
He was happy to have the AWD Stealth late in December of 1996 during the
weekend winter blast after Christmas. He
was in Olympia and was barely able to make it back to Seattle.
The AWD pulled him through.
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