A Hero Survives Nazi Warfare But Not a Burglar
‘Dockter Visit,’ Forensic Files
Forensic Files portrays many stories of society’s best colliding with its worst.
Diane Tilly devoted her life to teaching troubled young people. A man whose daughter she tried to help took it away. Jack Lynch served as a benevolent grandfather to neighbors who were struggling. A pair of local drug addicts robbed his house and killed him.
Walter Yokum’s murder is yet another tale of irony and good versus evil. He risked his life for his country dozens of times overseas yet met his end at the hands of an ex-convict right here in the U.S.
The only mitigating factor is that there was no betrayal. Kevin Dockter was scouting for a house to burglarize and thought the one at 12433 Dillon Road in Boulder County looked unoccupied. He and his victim were strangers.
For this week, I searched for more background information on both men and checked up on where Kevin Dockter is today. So let’s get going on the recap of “Dockter Visit,” along with additional information from internet research:
The episode starts out with black & white footage of aerial fighting in Europe during World War II. We learn that Walter Yokum, who was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1916, fought with the Eighth Air Force on a Grand Old Lady B-17 bomber. He served as a waist gunner — a crew member who fires a machine gun from a plane’s open windows — and survived 34 missions over Nazi-held territory.
While stationed in Suffolk County, England, Walter met Vera Borthwick, who was from West Yorkshire.
Walter and Vera married in Columbus in 1946, and he worked as an accountant at Mobil Oil. At some point, the couple lived in Montana — the Billings Gazette mentions a Walter and Vera Yokum who received some property in the state in 1955.
The couple moved to Colorado, where their two children, Sherry and Donald, graduated from Broomfield High School. Walter retired in 1981. When Vera died four years later, he remained in their home on Dillon Road, and didn’t remarry.
At the house, in the Pony Estates subdivision in Broomfield, Walter displayed his medals for bravery, including a Distinguished Flying Cross. But friends said he never bragged about his heroic acts, and barely even mentioned them.
On October 20, 1993, Walter didn’t answer the door for his housekeeper, and she noticed a broken window outside a ground floor bedroom. Investigators from the sheriff’s office found Walter, 77, lying at the bottom of the stairs with a bullet wound to his neck.
The murder scene suggested that an intruder entered after smashing the window and then stepped on the bed, where investigators found a partial shoe print on a blanket. They couldn’t help but notice candy wrappers littering the crime scene.
Police also saw an empty gun holster that, they found out later, usually housed the .45 caliber gun Walter brought home from the war.
It looked as though Walter heard an intruder, grabbed his gun, and walked to the top of the stairs, where the assailant shot him. The bullet had passed through Walter, penetrated the ceiling, and exited the house through the roof.
With the homeowner dead, the attacker helped himself to his Reese’s peanut butter cups from the refrigerator, investigators believed.
Elaborate ballistics tests and the efforts of volunteers with metal detectors led to the fatal .38-caliber expended bullet about 90 feet from the house.
The Boulder sheriff’s detectives set up a roadblock near Walter’s house and gave out about 3,500 fliers asking for help, according to the Broomfield Enterprise. A Denver Post account says there were actually three roadblocks. Whichever the case, the authorities were giving the investigation everything they had.
They also looked at locals known for committing burglaries. A neighbor told police he saw a tall man with long hair running away from Walter’s house.
Authorities suspected James Dobson, a convicted burglar recently released from prison. At first, I thought Forensic Files was using a pseudonym because the photo looks more like an actor’s headshot than a mugshot. But old Colorado newspapers have many mentions of a thief named James Dobson. (I still think the FF photo was fake, though.) Police considered Dobson a suspect because he had long hair and was known for eating at crime scenes.
But there was no evidence that Dobson owned a gun like the one used for the murder and he didn’t have boots that matched the prints at the murder scene.
Investigators turned their attentions toward Jason Fowler, who also had long hair, and Adam Bailey. They had a record of collaborating on residential burglaries.
Once questioned, the suspects started ratting each other out. Adam Bailey implicated Jason Fowler in the Walter Yokum murder, according to “Hunting Down a Killer,” an episode of the New Detectives.
Fowler, in turn, told police that Kevin Dockter killed Walter.
Kevin, a 29-year-old who accrued numerous drug and weapons offenses during his young life, had recently been arrested in North Dakota.
Police soon had plenty of forensics tying him to the Yokum case. Kevin owned a .357 Magnum and ammunition consistent with the bullet used in Walter’s murder. Kevin was also in possession of a World War II era gun with its serial number sanded down (traditionally done when soldiers took their weapons home from the service, according to Forensic Files) and vintage cartridges. They belonged to Walter Yokum. Shoe prints outside the house matched a pair of Kevin’s boots.
Jason Fowler admitted that he and Kevin supported their drug habits by committing burglaries. He confirmed what police thought, that Kevin saw Walter at the top of the stairs and shot him.
After the murder, the two went to a bar and decided to go back and burglarize Walter’s house. (It’s not clear why they made it a two-step process instead of stealing Walter’s stuff directly after the murder.)
When they returned, Kevin ate Reese’s cups from the refrigerator while exploring the residence for valuables. He moved Walter’s body to look though his pockets.
Their entire take from the murder-robbery was a credit card, $20 in cash, and the WW II gun. A checkbook was missing too, according to the Denver Post.
So who was Kevin Dockter? I found more about who he wasn’t. North Dakota newspapers circa 1977 to 1981 mention a Kevin Dockter who played football at around the time the suspect would have been in high school, and later became a beloved public school teacher and coach. But it looks as though that’s another man, Kevin Henry Dockter, who was law-abiding; he died in 2023. There’s also a nature photographer named Kevin Dockter, but he’s not our guy either.
A 1982 Bismarck Tribune story mentions a Kevin Dockter who won a North Dakota Prisoner Rodeo. That’s probably our Kevin. When not incarcerated, Kevin lived in Northglenn, Colorado, according to the Denver Post.
In December 1994, authorities got an arrest warrant for Kevin in connection with the Walter Yokum murder.
Finding Kevin took little effort. He was already in Colorado’s ADX Florence — the nation’s only supermax federal prison — while serving 17 years for possession of a firearm as well as aggravated robbery and burglary.
On October 25, 1993, just a few days after Yokum’s murder, a sheriff’s deputy had found Kevin and his felon buddy Floyd Shulze in illegal possession of fire arms and ammunition in a vehicle just south of Bismarck, North Dakota. Deputy Dewitt Meier also “detected the odor of burnt marijuana emanating from the vehicle” and “observed several bundles of single cigarettes attached to wooden kitchen matches by rubberbands in the console area between the driver and passenger,” according to court papers.
Both suspects had at least three prior convictions for violent felonies, meaning a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years.
At the time of Kevin’s apprehension for weapons and marijuana, authorities didn’t know about his connection to the Walter Yokum homicide, but they soon would.
Another informer came forward. Ex-convict Michael Bentley told police that he, Kevin, and a third buddy were once sharing a crack pipe while cruising the streets of Bismarck in a white 1969 Ford Mustang, when Kevin started bragging about shooting an old man.
“They figured the guy was gone,” Bentley later testified. But when Kevin broke into the house, the elderly man was standing on the landing, pointing a gun.
Kevin told Bentley that he laughed at Yokum, then pulled out a gun and shot him, Bentley said. Defense lawyer Lauren Cleaver called Bentley, who admitted to 14 prior felony convictions, a professional snitch looking for leniency for his own misdeeds.
As though the defense didn’t already have enough to refute, a convicted thief named Paul Kidwell of Colorado testified that the day after Walter Yokum was shot, Kevin Dockter and Jason Fowler admitted to him that they had burglarized Walter’s house.
Prosecutors also had evidence of Kevin’s affection for peanut butter cups — they found an empty Reese’s bag in his vehicle.
When all was said and done, Kevin ended up with a 40-year sentence for second-degree murder. Jason Fowler got 25 years for burglary.
Today, the Colorado Department of Corrections website lists Kevin R. Dockter as having an estimated sentence discharge of February 10, 2028. It also, however, flags him as a parolee. State law gives all inmates a chance at parole as long as they didn’t commit a class 1 felony such as first-degree murder. At 6-foot-1 and 238 pounds, Kevin could still do a lot of damage to someone or something, so let’s hope he keeps a low profile and finds an occupation other than career criminal.
As for Walter Yokum, his goodness is remembered by many, including his son-in-law, Bill Linfield, who started a Facebook tribute page to him a few years ago and also makes sure he’s noted on the Fans of the B-17 Flying Fortress page.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
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