The Sleepwalk Killer

What kind of murder has no motive, an eye witness, and a killer that is believed to be innocent by experts 25 years later? The sleep walking kind.Join me as we dig into the murder of Yarmila Falater.

Episode Transcript

(00:19):
Hello, Hello everyone, and welcomeback to Murder Squared, the true crime
podcast. I'm your host, MICHAELAand here we talk about all things true
crime. It has been a verylong time since I have done an episode
for you guys. Just a lotof things go on in life and I

(00:40):
really haven't had time too But Ido have a couple episodes ready for you.
So with that being said, today'scase that I have for you,
it is a true crime case thatblows my mind every time I hear about
it. So this is the caseof the sleepwalk Killer. If you're ready,

(01:04):
get squared away and let's talk murder. So what kind of murder has
no motive, eye witnesses and akiller that is still believed twenty five years
later to be innocent by experts,and that would be the sleepwalking kind.

(01:29):
So in January sixth of nineteen ninetyseven, in Phoenix, Arizona, Greg
Coons heard a commotion coming from hisneighbor's house. Now, first one he
hears all this commotion that's going on. It's kind of like a low moan,
a little scream, and he can'tquite figure out what's going on,
and he doesn't want to be nosy. He doesn't want to be that nosy

(01:51):
neighbor looking over the fence. Butafter hearing this commotion go on for a
minute, he thinks, you knowbetter safe and sorry, I better go
look. So through these moans andthese sounds coming from the neighbors, he
can locate the sound and it's inthe corner of the property next door,
and it's next to his neighbor's pool, and this would be the Valator's house.

(02:12):
So when Gregg's looking over the fence, he sees something unimaginable. Yarmola
Palator, his neighbor, was layingon the ground next to their pool,
crying softly. And at first Craigdidn't know what to make of this.
And then he saw through the backdoor Scott, and this is Yarmola's husband,

(02:35):
and he sees Scott kind of wringinghis hands, and once he watches
him for a minute, he's like, okay, you're putting gloves on him.
So he can see through the panelof the back door glass that Scott
is putting gloves on. Greg watchedas Scott came outside. When he came
outside, he walked over to Yarmola'sbody and rolled her closer to the pool.

(02:58):
Then Scott again holding Yarmola underwater,and Greg at this point has figured
out, Okay, something needs tohappen. I need to get help.
Greg runs back into his home andhe calls nine one one, But by
the time that help has arrived,Yarmola was dead. And when police arrived
un scene, Scott was no longeroutside and he was nowhere to be found.

(03:21):
And there was an immediate concern becausethey knew that in this house there
were also two children, Michael forlater at the time was twelve and Megan
was fifteen. They were, thankgoodness, safely asleep inside in their beds,
but at the time they didn't knowthis. So a cob had actually
jumped the fence from Greg Koons's propertyand they found that Yarmola was still in

(03:45):
the pool. And when officers gotYarmola out of the pool, the water
around her was very dark red.A lot of the officers even compare this
to what it would look like ifshe had been attacked by a shark in
the ocean, how much blood therewas around her. It was later discovered
that she had been stabbed forty fourtimes before she was put in the water.

(04:08):
When police get to the house.They began knocking on the door and
Scott was upstairs. They come intothe house and Scott's asking them what they're
doing, and they ask Scott,they say, no, how many people
are inside this house? And hetells them there's four. So he says

(04:28):
it's him, his wife, Yarmola, and his two kids, Michael and
Meghan. And at first look atScott, he looks very clean. He
has on a white cotton undershirt.He has on his filannel pajama bottoms.
That night, Scott was arrested andthe kids were safely found asleep in their
beds. They were awoken and takendownstairs. Now, when Scott gets to

(04:53):
the station and they began questioning him, this is where things get very weird.
Scott claims he has no idea whereYarmola is or what happened to her.
And he says, the last thingI remember is I was going to
bed and I had been trying tofix the pump on our pool. Yarmila
kept asking me to fix it.She was really weird about the pool turning

(05:15):
green, and he had went backthere to try to fix it. After
a long day of work. Hehad been studying for a class he had
the next day at church, andhe was just very tired. Very went
out and he told her he wouldlook at it. He couldn't fix it,
and then he went to bed.He said, when he went to
bed, Yarmola was lying on thecouch watching er. So Scott asked the

(05:35):
detectives once they're in the interview roomif Yarmola was dead. He says,
no one's told me anything, butI see the word homicide written everywhere in
this police station. He also askedthem, what do you think I did?
And they say, we don't thinkyou did anything, Scott. We

(05:55):
know that you did it because yourneighbors saw you. And Scott begins to
believe that he murdered his wife.He says, I'm sorry, I don't
remember doing it. I'm sorry,And later an interview, Scott would go
on to say that he was relativelyfriendly with all of his neighbors and he
knew that these particular neighbors, infact, there was no way that they
would have lied about seeing this.So at once again, first glance,

(06:19):
Scott is very clean. He doesn'tlook like someone that just stabbed his wife
forty four times and then went backto bed. So in the interview room,
they're looking at him, Like Isaid, he's in this really clean
white shirt. He's in his flannelpajama bottoms. And the detective's like,
now, where's that bandaid come fromon your hand? And he has a

(06:40):
scrape on his hand and there's abandaid on it. And if you look
at Scott, there is blood cakedbehind his ears. And he tells them,
he's like, I have no ideathis came from. And they're like,
well, what do you mean youdon't know where did the bandaid come
from? And he says, Idon't know, I don't remember. So

(07:00):
they're talking to him about what happenedthat night. They're telling him how many
stab wounds his wife has, whatthe neighbors saw him doing, and they
asked him, They're like, whydid you do this, Scott? And
he says, I have been marriedto Yarmola my entire adult life and she
did not deserve to die. Butthere's a few things that stick out to

(07:21):
detectives. Yes, Scott looks verywithdrawn, he looks very guilty, He
looks very sorry and very shameful forwhat has happened. But there's just a
few things that they can't get outof their heads. And this is there's
blood on his neck, but there'sno blood on his clothes. And Scott
had, like I said, thiscut on his hand. He has no

(07:43):
way to explain it. And hehas zero idea of what happened at all
that night after I believe it's aboutten o'clock, where he says he doesn't
remember anymore. So he says laterafter he is officially charged with first's degree
murder, he says, I acceptthe fact that the neighbors saw me do

(08:03):
the physical act. Would I intentionallykill her? Absolutely not. So this
happens, like I said, Januarysixth, nineteen ninety seven, and the
trial is not set for nineteen ninetynine, so we have two years of
the prosecution in the defense getting readyfor this trial. And let me tell
you right now, this trial isbig because up to this point, there

(08:26):
wasn't a lot known about sleepwalking.This was twenty five years ago. Imagine
the steps that we've taken now tolearn about these things. So before the
trial, twenty twenty did an interviewwith Michael and Megan and Michael he was
twelve years old at the time.He tells them. He says, he
went to bed at nine pm andthe next thing he knows, he's being
woken up at one thirty am bythe police department telling them that their mom

(08:50):
was dead. Micro remembers being toldthat his parents got into a fight and
that's why the police were there,but Mike and Megan again didn't understand this
because their entire life, they saidthey had never saw their parents. Argue
they had never seen them fight atall, and it wasn't until Scott was
being drove away in a police cruiserthat the kids were even told even a

(09:13):
glimpse of what was going on.And it basically was just like, your
mom and dad got into this fight, and your mom's dead. And then
Michael says, the police officer toldhim this news and just walked away from
them. Yarmola's friends and family werevery shocked to learn about Scott and Yarmola
and what had happened that night.They had been married for twenty years.
Police began looking for a motive forScott of why he killed Yarmola, but

(09:37):
they couldn't find one. They waited, and they waited. They knew that
something would come out. There wouldbe a mistress an a fair something,
but there was no money to befought over, there were no fights being
had, and as far as anyonecan tell, there was no infidelity.
Scott's defense has that on January six, nineteen ninety seven, he was sleep

(10:00):
blocking. He admits to killing her. That's not even a question in this
trial. The question is was heconscious when he did the physical act of
killing his wife. The prosecutor wasseeking the death penalty in this case,
and at the trial there was amedical examiner there that testifies to the fact
there was forty four stab wounds andthat over eighty percent of them were defensive

(10:24):
wounds. Now, the neighbor,Greg Coons, he testifies at the trial
as well, and he explains thathe didn't see the physical act of the
stabbing, but he did see Yarmolaon the ground, and he did see
when she got pushed into the pool, and it was unbeknownst to Greg that
she was slowly dying at that timeof her stab wounds. So Greg also

(10:48):
testifies what exactly he saw that night, and he says that he could see
lights being turned off in the house, and he says that he could see
lights being turned off the master bedroom, and then in the bathroom, and
then downstairs in the kitchen, andthen that's when through the door he could
see Scott putting gloves on. Andthen that is when Scott walked outside.

(11:11):
He pushed your armild into the waterand then held her under. After that,
Scott walked inside and Greg ran tocall nine one one. So Scott
had a clean record. And likeI said, there was no motive that
they could find for why he wouldkill his wife. So what exactly would
cause someone that was sleepwalking to killwhat could cause anything like this? And

(11:35):
the best that they could come upwith was that he was under a lot
of stress. And it's also importantthat you know this was not the first
time that Scott was sleepwalking. Scott'sfamily actually testifies about two times in particular
that Scott had previously sleepwalked. Nowone time he was violent, there were

(11:56):
other times when he would sleepwalk throughthe house and he might be naked,
or he might be going to thefridge, or he might just be walking
through the house too, just ina trance, almost looking for something,
and his mom would always make ajoke about it. But there was one
time that his sister said that hehad a violent episode with her. And

(12:16):
this was before he married Yarmola.So this is when Scott was twenty.
So his sister said that she wasin the living room, she was watching
TV and she saw Scott walk behindher and she said something like, hey,
what are you doing And he didn'tanswer. He knew that look on
his face, and she was like, oh, he's sleep walking. So
her first thought was, I needto run to the door and lock it

(12:37):
so he doesn't get out. Sowhen she tried to run in front of
him to lock the store, shekind of brushed by him with her shoulder
and she said that's when he grabbedher. And he grabbed her by both
of her shoulders and then threw heracross the kitchen. And this was two
months, like I said, beforehe married Yarmola. And at this time

(13:01):
he had a lot of stress goingon in his life. He was twenty,
he was getting married, he wasin the middle of finals, and
he was getting ready to settle downand had to find, you know,
his adult bearings for this life hewas about to begin. But the stress
that was going on in nineteen ninetyseven was a whole other level. And
that was Scott's job. So Scottat the time in ninety seven, he
was an engineer at Motorola about andat Motorola his project was failing and he

(13:30):
knew that it was failing, andhe was leading this whole team, and
he was worried about layoffs. Hewas worried about what was going to happen.
And at this time he was veryinvolved in his church, he was
teaching classes, he was very stressed, and he was experiencing a lot of
sleep deprivation during this time. Sothe defense never actually falters in this case
that Scott was the one that killedYarmola. What the defense is asking them

(13:54):
to believe was was he sleepwalking whenhe did this? Was he knowingly killing
his wife? Or was this allin his subconscious Was this all him completely
sleepwalking that night? But the defensesays, there's no way he did this
consciously. Scott goes under a testand he has to prove to them that

(14:16):
he is indeed a sleepwalker. Nowthe results come back inconclusive. The defense
expert witness for the sleepwalking and sleepstudies say, yes, this did prove
that he was a sleepwalker. Nowthe expert for the prosecution says, the
exact opposite. They say, nope, this doesn't prove anything. So at

(14:37):
the end of the day he wasjust considered inconclusive. The prosecution claimed that
if Scott was sleepwalking, then whywas there evidence hidden? And this is
what gets me every time. Sothe murder weapon, which was a knife,
it was a hunting knife, wasconcealed and it was hidden in a
tubleware container in Scott's and it waswrapped up in a shirt. And actually

(15:03):
the night of the murder is notwhen they found this. They found this
when they had to go look backat the later's property and really dig for
this knife and really find evidence.And this is when a forensic analyst finds
this in his car and it wasit looked like it was just a tubwork
container they had in his car becausehe took his lunch and forgot to carry

(15:26):
it in or something like that.But no, inside of this container it
was a shirt and in the shirtthere was a knife wrapped up. So
does a sleepwalker really think to dothat, and does a sleepwalker really think
to put those gloves on? Thatis the question. On January twenty fifth
of nineteen ninety nine, there wasan eight hour deliberation the jury members were

(15:50):
hung. There were eighth that saidhe was guilty and four that says that
he was not guilty. And themain reason they said he was not guilty
is because he had no motives.He had no motive and he had this
experience with sleepwalking, and no onein their lives ever said that they were
fighting, that there was any troublein this marriage. Even her friends attested

(16:11):
to the fact that he was agood husband. And when everyone else would
be sitting around talking and complaining aboutboyfriends and husbands, Yarmola never had anything
bad to say about Scott. AndScott's testimony is another thing that really swayed
these jurors into believing that he wasnot guilty. Which if you know anything
about true crime, if you watchthese you know, documentaries and things like

(16:34):
that, you know that most ofthe time when the defendant gets on the
stand, that is when everything blowsup. But they really felt for him.
But at the end of this trial, Scott feel Later it was found
guilty and he was sentenced to lifewithout parole. But the next step was

(16:55):
to decide because the prosecution they reallywanted the death fenalty in case, so
they said that it took Yarmola fifteenminutes for her to die, from the
first alb woomb until she was drownedin the pool. It was fifteen minutes.
And many jurors believed that he didsleepwalk, But what a large portion

(17:18):
of them did believe was that hewoke up, and when he woke up
and he saw what he had done, that is when he went and hid
things, and that is when hewent and took that shower and cleaned himself
up. So they talked at thetrial. Like I said, they're trying
to decide if they're going to dothe death penalty or not. They talk
to Yarmola's parents, They talked toScott and Yarmola's children, and Scott himself

(17:44):
talks people at their church come andtalk on Scot's behalf, and they decide
not to pursue the death penalty.All right, thank you for coming along
with me for this case. Ido want to talk about kind of what

(18:08):
I thought about this. Like Isaid, it gets me every time I
have to say that I believe whata lot of the jurors believed. I
think his sleepwalking was very possible.But what I don't think was possible was
while you're sleepwalking to have the knowit all to start cleaning up. And

(18:30):
that to me is where you knowit really gets into was he actually sleepwalking?
Because if you tell me that asleepwalker is going to clean up this
mess that they've made, and Imean clean up forensic evidence from a murder,
I'm gonna have to say that's ano. So I am going to

(18:51):
have to side with a lot ofwhat these jurors believed in the fact that
he woke up. I believe thatmaybe he did stab her, and I
believe that after the stabbing. Ithink that he woke up, he realized
what was happening, and maybe hedidn't know what to do with it then
and he was like, she's maybegonna die anyways, and then that's when

(19:12):
he decided to take her to thepool. It could have been after the
pool when he woke up. I'mnot sure, but my thoughts were too.
Is when Greg Coon's talks about Scott'sdemeanor during the time of when he
saw him putting the gloves on throughthe back door and rolling his wife into
the pool, he says he's verycalm, and he even talks about kind

(19:34):
of like describing a trance like statethat Scott is in. So I'm gonna
have to say he maybe did startkilling her in sleepwalking. And they never
said in any of the interviews oranything that he had slept walk in the
past twenty years that he had beenmarried to Yarmola, So maybe all the

(19:57):
stress that he was understarted it,and then maybe she tried to wake him
up, and you know, you'renot supposed to wake up sleepwalkers, and
that's when things got violent. Atthe end of the day. I feel
so incredibly sad for these kids.The last interview I believe that Scott fell
later has done was in twenty twentyone, and he actually had just gotten

(20:21):
over COVID and he was doing aninterview with twenty twenty and he did an
on screen and visit with his sonMichael, and his son Michael's obviously an
adult now, I believe he's inhis early forties, but and he talked
about how Michael still craves that relationshipwith his father. It makes him sad

(20:41):
and he doesn't believe that his fatherever did anything to his mom on purpose.
His daughter just doesn't really talk tohim anymore because it just makes her
very sad as what he said,and that he doesn't want her to be
sad. He wants her live herlife. So in prison, Scott has
been teen other prisoners and he doesa lot of volunteering and things, so

(21:04):
hopefully some good has come out ofhim being in there. But as always,
I would like to know what youall think, so you all can
go on the murder Squared Instagram pageand comment message me. It'll probably be
up on the story the day thatthis is posted, and let me know.
If you have a case that youwould like to suggest, you can

(21:26):
send that over to murder Squared atgmail. You can send it through messages
on Instagram. I'm glad to beback with you all for this episode.
I'm not sure how a schedule isgoing to go for more episodes, so
just hanging there for that and untilnext time, I'll see you next Murder