The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (27 page)

Finally, after I had a set of files I could work with, I noted two physical locations in the area that I felt were crucial to the Green River investigations. They were the first point of contact between the victims and the killer, which in most instances was probably the strip area along Pacific Highway South, and the body discovery sites along the Green River and several blocks off Pacific Highway South.

The active prostitution strip along Pacific Highway South, or Highway 99, ran from South 216th Street north to South 140th Street toward Seattle. Parallel to Pacific Highway South and within one block is Sea-Tac Airport, the major airport serving the greater Seattle-Tacoma area. A carbon copy of any strip area in a large city, Pacific Highway South is a checkerboard of cheap, “no-tell” motels, topless dancing spots, card room taverns, rent-a-dent rental car agencies, massage parlors, and “stop-and-rob” grocery stores sprinkled amid expensive hotels and glamorous business buildings housing companies affiliated with the airline industry.

Prostitutes could be found walking along Pacific Highway South and congregating at bus stops and in parking lots of hotels and small grocery stores. The finer hotels always had off-duty police officers working as security, trying to rid the premises of the hookers, but the cheaper motels were their magnets.

It quickly became apparent that any person looking to abduct those women had to blend into the surroundings. Prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, and street people populated the three-mile strip section of Pacific Highway South. But a major problem for investigators was that the common john didn’t look out of place, whether he was driving up in a rented BMW or an old beat-up four-door sedan. Red-light districts such as the Sea-Tac strip can attract a cross section of people, so no one looks obviously out of place.

Four of the murder victims had confirmed arrests for prostitution, and the other two were only suspected of engaging in prostitution. Experience had told us that prostitutes and street people were hustlers, most of whom had mastered the art of the quick trick, but that even they could be fooled by a highly motivated killer. The transient lifestyles of the Green River victims and their willingness to associate with pimps, drug dealers, and men who seek prostitutes made
them very high risk victims of violent crimes. They were victims of opportunity for a phantom prostitute-killer masquerading as a customer, cabdriver, pimp, or even an undercover police officer. Why the killer was drawn to prostitutes was a matter of conjecture. Most important for our purposes, at the time of the separate investigations there were no statements taken from witnesses to the actual approach to each victim by the suspected killer. Therefore, how they were really enticed and abducted was known only to the killer himself.

As I analyzed the investigation of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of each victim, beginning with Deborah Bonner and proceeding chronologically and longitudinally through the last victim, Giselle Lovvorn, I uncovered an unfortunate trend: as the number of murders investigated increased, the quality of the investigation appeared to suffer. In other words, there was extensive investigation of the Bonner case, but the results seemed to drop off a bit in each of the subsequent cases. I was appalled when I examined the Mills case file: I found virtually no useful statements from any source and no active follow-up reports from any detective, despite the existence of what seemed to be real leads.

Frankly, the quality and thoroughness of any investigation depends, quite directly, on the quality of interviewing done with witnesses. It looked as though the interviewing techniques in many of the Green River cases were not structured properly from the beginning of the investigation. The interviews may have been affected by the lack of experience of some detectives and by indifference, impatience, or a negative attitude toward some of the prostitutes and pimps who were close to each victim. In order for a witness interview to be successful, the interviewer has to be focused on the information he or she is trying to elicit. The officer has to put all personal feelings aside in order to make the witness feel as comfortable as possible about talking. In the Green River case, detectives were interviewing prostitutes, runaways, and possible drug users. These were individuals already at risk and afraid that they would be picked up on vice or some other charges. Therefore, officers had to work harder at interviewing those types of witnesses. But some of the officers seemed to have lost their intensity during the interview process itself. At any rate, the outcome was that the amount and quality of information obtained during some of the interviews was minimal.

Experience in serial-murder cases has shown that highest investigative
priority must be given to isolating, as accurately as possible, the dates and times victims were last seen and to delineating their activity patterns up to the time of their disappearances. Proper questioning of suspects about their whereabouts at the time of the murder required focusing on those important areas. It appeared, from the file, that while patrol officers, likely inexperienced in follow-up investigations in homicide cases, were doing those high-priority interviews, many statements gained were vague and incomplete. For example, “When was the last time you saw the victim?” was rarely asked or, if it was, the crucial information about exact time and date was not recorded. When pimps and prostitutes recalled dates and times, they were seldom asked to corroborate their recollection. Thus, the resulting information was questionable. Unfortunately, the only solution to this mess was to recontact the witnesses, which would add even more work to an investigation already bogged down with an enormous amount of follow-up.

During the first month of review, I turned the facts over in my mind, trying to develop some theory that would reconcile the cases. With each file line I reviewed, I could see more and more faults evident in the interview process. I discovered, for example, that statements taken from more than one witness on the same case regarding disappearance times and potential acquaintances were often confusing and conflicting. Therefore, there was more than one set of “facts” per victim. It often appeared that statements taken by one officer were not reviewed before other statements were taken. That created even more conflicting information. In fact, I could hit upon nothing that would bring together all the disparate elements.

There was a considerable effort in the initial months of the Green River case on gathering information, and it was clear that all officers were directed to obtain specific statements from certain people. However, it wasn’t clear from the files
who
was responsible for examining and synthesizing the content of those statements into potential lead follow-up. That job, which is a major part of any homicide case, still needed to be done. Thus, the task still ahead was huge. A major part of my synthesizing process was to reduce the discrepancies in the witness statements in the case files.

The number of leads collected on tip sheets and developed through detective work was enormous, and, as in most cases, leads were assigned for follow-up. Unfortunately, the investigation into
the Green River murders had followed the traditional course of most serial-murder investigations: when there is massive input, investigators become so overwhelmed with the data that they are unable to complete their assigned tasks. As a result, the case quickly dissolved into chaos and the clues that might have led to the identity of the murderer were buried under increasing amounts of paperwork. The only solution was for someone to step forward and assume a role in organizing an overview.

I followed the course of the investigation through the paperwork by randomly checking about 10 of the over 200 suspect packets that had been filled with information. I observed that the entire investigation’s ebb and flow depended on the intensity of the investigation of any one suspect at a given time. The major portion of the investigation activities slowed down to a crawl when a hot suspect was being pursued. In other words, a number of investigators were working on a top suspect, and the other arms of the investigation didn’t seem to be moving. Acquaintances of some victims were recontacted and shown photographic montages of some suspects; this wasn’t done for other victims. There was no clear, discernible priority system that was set up for the active pursuit of quality suspects. Accordingly, only a quarter of the suspects had been eliminated by police investigators.

After viewing the course of the task force’s work from the perspective of the victim pick-up sites, I turned to the dump sites, the places where the killer chose to dispose of his victims. What was there about them that was important to the evasive killer? Viewing photographs and reading police reports describing the scenes weren’t sufficient. I had Dave Reichert take me out to the body recovery sites.

The day we chose to go was dull, foggy, and drizzly. The ground was saturated not only with rain, but with spring-melted snow from the Cascades. The nearby foothills and treetops were banked in with rolling clouds, which rose now and then to show the dreary curves of the desolate forest. The Green River was unusually high that season, churning mightily with the winter runoff of melting snow.

The first thing I noticed about Frager Road at the point where the three remains were found was how isolated the location really was. Even though it was less than 10 minutes from the honking airport traffic along Pacific Highway South, the killer could quickly be in solitude with his victim. Right above the recovery site was a small pull-off, conveniently concealed by high grass, offering the killer all
the camouflage he needed to do whatever he wanted with his victims. In the summertime, a driver would not be aware of the pull-off until he was right on top of it, nor could he see any vehicle parked there from any distance away. Conversely, a cautious murderer could easily be alerted by the sound of any approaching vehicle or, at night, by the headlight beams filtering through the leaves. But despite the ideal site nearby—mostly because the local television coverage had handed the killer our game plan for the investigation—the Green River had exhausted its usefulness as a dumping spot for him. The area was now too well known, a tourist spot even for a curious outsider. But the Green River Killer was still lurking out there somewhere, and both Dave and I felt that he would retreat to even more remote areas. The big question was where. The bigger question was what was the relationship of the Green River to the other possible dump sites.

For any serious homicide investigator, the historical understanding of the significance of the Green River as a dump site for bodies should have been essential to his pursuit of the case. It was not clear from the reports if any other deaths in the area had ever been investigated prior to the discovery of the Green River victims, or if they had been, whether the deaths had been classified as natural, homicide, suicide, accidental, or undetermined. This was a step that should have been taken at the outset. For example, when the Atlanta task force looked into their child killings, they found previous possible victims of the Atlanta killer in the Chattahoochee River, but those deaths were initially classified as accidental or undetermined. Reclassifying those deaths as homicides connected with the Atlanta Child Killer might have provided more possible leads for investigators to follow.

If there were possible victims from previous cases around the Green River, as there had been in Atlanta, anyone involved in those cases could have been a suspect in the Green River murders. Additionally, field interview reports, suspicious circumstance reports, police case reports, officers’ notebook entries, Department of Fisheries officers’ reports or notes, and any other creative resources relating to activities along the Green River should have been investigated for potential suspect behavior. Questioning of suspects and witnesses should
have focused on their access to, knowledge of, and visitations to the Green River area in a specific time frame when the deaths occurred.

The Lovvorn case was initially investigated by detectives who had not been involved in the Green River investigation. Many felt there was no connection. But Lovvorn’s dump site was as handy to the killer as the Green River. That wooded area had long since been abandoned by residents who moved away because of the noise of low-flying jetliners on their approach to the Sea-Tac Airport. Houses had been demolished and carted away and only empty, overgrown cul-de-sacs remained, perfect for the consummation of tricks and quick returns to the highway, only seconds away. A john driving his “date” to the cul-de-sac area would not have alarmed any prostitute since they themselves frequently directed their out-of-town johns to those areas and considered them safe streets.

On the night Dave Reichert and I explored the body dump site, the atmosphere was melancholy outside and in. Through narrow spaces between trees to the northwest, I could see the eerie silvery luminescence of the airport runway lights. To the east, I could see the alternating glow of neon lights of the topless bars along the Sea-Tac strip. The wooded area around the Lovvorn recovery site was a vast thicket with many intertwining roads that, just as often as not, twisted off into dead ends. It was a perfect location for quiet but quick sexual interludes in a vehicle. Little did Dave and I realize that a quarter of a mile away, several other prostitutes would be discovered dead—more victims of the Green River killer.

With the body disposal sites permanently etched in my memory, I returned to the case files. Very prominently mentioned throughout each one was the name of one prime suspect. Of all the potential suspects in the case, he definitely was
the
prime suspect at one time based on all the follow-up work that was documented in police reports. He was an unemployed cabdriver and definitely part of the Seattle area “street” scene. When first contacted by police, he admitted that he knew several of the victims and had difficulty accounting for his whereabouts during the time the murders took place.