Scott Falater – Sleepwalking Murderer

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Scott Falater claims he was sleepwalking when he murdered his wife in 1997

On January 16, 1997, Scott Falater was awoken by police claiming that he had been seen murdering his wife in their backyard.  Scott had no memory of doing so claiming he must have been sleepwalking.  Was Scott sleepwalking when he stabbed his wife over forty times or was this an excuse to cover up his crime?  Listen to the Sleepwalker Murder Case and you decide!

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Location

This story occurred in Phoenix, Arizona which serves as the state capital is located in Maricopa County. It’s not the original capital of the Arizona Territory. The first capital was Fort Whipple. Then it moved between Prescott and Tucson until 1889. The area receives 320 days of sun a year. One of their hottest temperatures was recorded at 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) on June 26, 1990.

Celebrities from Arizona include Emma Stone, David Spade, and the original Wonder Woman, Linda Carter.

A Night to Remember

In the late evening hours of January 16, 1997, neighbors were awoken to screams and dogs barking. One neighbor went to the fence that separated his yard from his neighbors, the Falaters. That is when he heard moaning thinking maybe they were in their backyard “making love.” But when he looked he only saw Yarmila Falater lying on the ground. Scott Falater came out of the house, first quieting the family dog and then dragging her into the swimming pool. He held Yarmila under the water. The neighbor, Greg Koons, called 911 telling the operator that “the husband just threw, I believe the wife, into the pool; it looks like he is holding her underwater.”

Asked by the 911 dispatcher if the couple had been fighting the neighbor responded he didn’t know what the problem was and he was concerned. When police arrived they found 44-year-old Yarmila Falater floating in the pool. She appeared to also have been stabbed several times. Yarmila’s husband, Scott Falater, and their two teenage children were still sleeping inside the home.

When he was awoken he appeared confused as to why the police were at his home. He was asked by the police how many people were in the house, Scott responded there were four; him, his wife, and two children. The children reported that they had been sleeping and had heard nothing.

A Long Night

Police transported Scott Falater down to police headquarters expecting him to confess to murdering his wife. Surprisingly, that didn’t happen even when confronted with the information that his neighbor had seen him drag Yarmila into the family pool and hold her underwater. Scott told the police that he had no memory of putting his wife into the pool. He didn’t deny that he was involved in Yarmila’s death but kept reiterating that he had no memory of doing so.

Yarmila’s autopsy would show that she had been stabbed 44 times with a hunting knife and had water in her lungs. This meant that she was still alive when she was dragged into the water.

Young Love

Scott and Yarima had met in high school and later married while attending college. Both completed their undergraduate degrees and went on to obtain masters degrees. Scott’s was in electrical engineering, Yarmila’s was in teaching. She had been working as a preschool teacher’s aid.

The Falaters’ by all accounts, had a good marriage. They had been married for close to twenty years. Both were actively involved with their Morman Church. There was no history of violence in the marriage or criminal offenses charged to either spouse. Investigators were baffled as to why Scott would kill Yarmila.

Check the Trunk

Police searched the home and property of the Falaters. In the back of Scott’s car police found a clear plastic container with bloody clothes and a knife. When police questioned family and friends they reported that there were no issues in the marriage that they were aware of.

Scott’s sister, however, reported she may have known why Scott didn’t remember anything and that is because he had a history of sleepwalking. Back when they were younger living in Illinois Scott had been sleepwalking and when she went to stop him that caused him to throw her across the room.

Walking in your Sleep

Walking in your sleep is also known as somnambulism. It is a behavioral condition in which a person in deep sleep can walk or even performs complex tasks while remaining mostly asleep. Sleepwalking itself is a sleep disorder called parasomnia. It is a rare condition and is found more in children than adults.

  • 29% in children and about 4% in adult populations according to one long term study.

Incidents of sleepwalking usually last only about 10 minutes, 20 minutes maximum. Scott Falater had undergone a sleep study over four nights in which he was closely monitored. The results showed “hypersynchronous delta waves” that is associated with people who sleepwalk. Sleepwalkers are also known to not have any concept of facial recognition.

Pool Pump Problem

Scott told police what he did remember from that night. He told them that earlier that evening he had been fixing the pool pump when Yarmila called him into the house for dinner. He told Yarmila about some problems he had been having not only with the pump, but at work as well. The computer chip project he had been working on was looking to be canceled which may result in the people working under him losing their jobs.

After dinner, he went and worked on his computer until he went to bed while Yarmila remained downstairs watching the tv show “ER.”

Rosalind Cartwright, Ph.D. a sleep disorder specialist, theorizes that Scott had gone to bed with the unfixed pool pump on his mind. At some point, he had gotten up, got dressed, and grabbed a flashlight and a knife to cut a plastic ring around the pump. Yarmila, hearing noise from the back yard got up to investigate and had interrupted Scott and startled him. In return, he violently attacked Yarmila because she startled him. Dr. Cartwright notes that when interrupted, sleepwalkers have a fight or flight response.

Dr. Cartwright also felt that Scott didn’t know that he was rolling Yarmila into the pool and it was more likely he had walked into her body not knowing it was a body. She points to the neighbor who reported that Scott appeared dazed and confused when he stood over Yarmila’s body. She also pointed out that Scott had a history of sleepwalking and had not been sleeping well and was under stress from his job. Stress and sleep deprivation are shown to be contributors to someone who sleepwalks.

A Viable Defense 

Sleepwalking was used successfully as murder defense in 1982 and in 1987. In 1982 in Scottsdale, Arizona, Steven Steinberg was acquitted of murdering his wife after stabbing her 26 times. Steinberg claimed that he had no memory of stabbing his wife as he had been sleepwalking and was therefore not sane when he committed the act. The jury believed him and found Steinberg not guilty due to having a dissociative reaction when he committed the crime.

Kenneth Parks, 24, had murdered his mother-in-law, Barbara Ann Woods,  on May 24, 1987, in Scarborough, Canada. He was also charged with the attempted murder of his father-in-law. Parks had stabbed them both with a knife after driving the 15 miles from his home to theirs. He turned himself into the police soon after. After a 10-week trial, he was acquitted of second-degree murder by a jury. The prosecutor tried to show that Parks had stolen from his employer and had financially ruined his family from his gambling addiction. After he was acquitted he was found guilty of stealing over $30,000 from his employer which he paid back by selling his home.

Motive

Through the investigation, police discovered that Yarmila was not happy with the amount of time Scott was spending on church activities. He also wanted more children, which Yarmila did not. In the Morman culture it’s typical to have large families. It had gotten to the point that Yarmila was considering a divorce.

Battling Experts

The state hired their own sleep expert, Dr. Mark Pressman. They wanted him to look at the behaviors that Scott engaged in the night of the murder. Pressman dismissed the four-day sleep study as he felt the delta waves can also be found in people suffering from sleep apnea. He also noted that sleepwalkers can’t distinguish day from night so Scott getting up and retrieving a flashlight didn’t make sense.

Dr. Pressman felt that Scott was consciously aware of what he was doing that night as evidence by:

  • Being seen by the neighbor going back inside the house to wash his hands.
  • Taking off his bloody clothes and putting them and the knife into the plastic container and then taking them downstairs and putting them into the trunk of his car.
  • Scott also put a band-aid on a cut he had received on his hand.
  • He was seen by his neighbor calming down his dog when he was barking even though Scott said he had no memory of Yarmila screaming at him.
  • Touching the cold water should have woken him up from a sleepwalking episode.
  • In all, Dr. Pressman noted 65 behaviors Scott had engaged in that were inconsistent with someone who sleepwalks.
    • All of these incidences convinced the prosecutor that Scott Falater was awake and not sleepwalking as he claimed.

Trial

In May 1999, Scott Falater went on trial. He plead not guilty to murder in the first degree. Prosecutor Juan Martinez, who would also prosecute Jodi Arias years later, theorized that Scott planned to murder his wife and blame it on an unknown intruder. The defenses plan was to show that Scott was not guilty due to him sleepwalking at the time. They would have a slew of sleep disorder experts and character witnesses testify on Scott’s behalf.

After the children had gone to bed the night of the murder Scott got Yarmila to come out into the backyard around 11 pm. He then started stabbing her, leaving her severely wounded on the pool deck while he went upstairs to change clothes, clean up and bandage his hand. He put the container containing his clothes and the knife in his trunk and came back inside.

That is when he went back outside and noticed that Yarmila was still breathing. He dragged her over to the pool and drowned her. When Yarmila was found she was not wearing her wedding ring. The murder took about an hour to commit in total. Prosecutors felt that Scott’s original plan was to leave Yarmila in the pool and go back to bed. The children would find her the next morning. However, that plan went out the window when his neighbor called the police.

Prosecutors also felt that Scott knew about the sleepwalking defense that Kenneth Parks had successfully used to be acquitted as he had talked to a co-worker about the case three weeks before his wife’s murder. This was not brought up at trial.

No Motive?

A problem for the prosecution was that there still was no real motive as to why Scott killed Yarmila. The age-old reasons of jealousy, cheating, or money weren’t the issue. Keep in mind that the state doesn’t have to provide a motive, but it certainly helps.

Verdict

Death Penalty

The jury came back with a guilty verdict on June 23, 1999. The judge sentenced Scott Falater to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The judge was swayed by letters for leniency from the Falater children and the victim’s mother. The prosecution was going for the death penalty.

The jury could not get over the number of stab wounds and how he dragged Yarmila to the pool. They felt that what Scott did that night defied common sense. Plus as some of the experts at trial testified the more complex tasks committed the more likely someone was not sleepwalking. Some of the jury members didn’t feel Scott’s testimony, which was over two hours in length, was truthful and he was putting on more of a tearful show.

Scott Falater was incredulous that the jury could find him guilty of premeditated murder.

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