The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (30 page)

The north end of the airport and the noisy flight path of approaching jetliners was where the skeletal remains of Shawnda Leea Summers, a black 17-year-old female, were found by fruit pickers on August 11, 1983. Summers disappeared in October 1982 from South 144th and Pacific Highway South, just 20 blocks from her dump site. Most believed that the vast area north of the airport—once a teeming single-family residential area but long since abandoned and left overgrown with weeds, blackberry bushes, and empty cement foundations—would be the site of future discoveries.

We discovered another one of the killer’s dump sites farther away from the airport on Star Lake Road. The remains were found near where Star Lake Road nearly intersects Pacific Highway South and about four miles south of the main Sea-Tac strip. There is a one-mile stretch of that road where tall fir trees closely border the narrow winding road, which is marked by frequent pull-outs for cars to dump garbage. It was an obvious comfort zone for the killer, who knew the area well. The remains of the first of six victims that were found along Star Lake Road belonged to Gail Lynn Mathews, an American Indian female, 23 years old; her body was discovered on September 18, 1983. She would remain unidentified for nearly two years. A member of her family reported that she was last seen on April 8, 1983, at South 216th and Pacific Highway South, even though it was her pimp who actually saw her last. Another family member claimed to have seen her after that date and reported it to police, so she was taken off the missing-persons list. Then the King County Medical Examiner’s Office had forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow from Oklahoma examine all the unidentified skeletons for identifiable characteristics not previously recognized. Dr. Snow discovered that one set of remains had, at one time in the recent past, probably suffered an accident, because her pelvic bone had healed from a previous fracture. Once this information was publicized, a family member came forward with Mathews’s name again. This time, the identification was confirmed through medical and dental records.

On December 18, 1983, another dump site was discovered along the Mountview Cemetery Road, located about three miles from Star Lake Road. It, too, was a narrow winding road bordered by a
steeply rising wooded area. It was at a desolate spot along the side of that road where we found the skull of Kimi-Kai Pitsor, a 16-year-old white female, sitting upright right near the sign that read
AUBURN CITY LIMITS.
No other remains were found in a several-hundred-yard ground search of the area. Some speculated that the killer intentionally left the skull in that location so it would be found. Others felt the local predators had dragged it to that point from an original dump location of Pitsor’s body outside the perimeter of the search.

Each of those five dumping grounds would be the future resting place for at least three sets of remains. They would be the most influential evidence that led us to believe that a serial killer was in operation, for they were all classified as multiple-body recovery sites.

As we uncovered more and more dump sites in the forested areas surrounding the Green River, it was only natural that we would expect to keep finding more and more of the killer’s victims. But the discoveries of bodies came at random and were agonizingly slow. Even though investigators located several other victims, it was only a small portion of the total count yet to be found. From the years 1982 to 1984 inclusive, the Green River Killer was a very busy man, preying like a demon on the prostitute population around the Seattle area. And we were still playing catch-up with history because the missing-persons reports had been filed months or even years before we found the remains. We knew there were more bodies out there, but couldn’t account for the gaps between victims. We thought at first that the killer had left the area for long periods or had been arrested for another offense. But we were wrong. We just hadn’t yet recovered those prostitutes who were decomposing in deeply concealed wooded areas of King County. We also didn’t know, until he confessed in 2003, that the Green River Killer hadn’t stopped killing until just before his arrest in November 2001. But that was to change on March 13, 1984, with the start of a series of discoveries of a multitude of murder victims. That day marked the beginning of a new notoriety for the Green River Murders Task Force. It would eventually become famous in the media for processing outdoor crime scenes for body parts and evidence.

A wandering moss hunter stumbled upon the first body as he was searching a wooded area just off I-90, about 38 miles east of
Seattle. Hidden within the confines of fallen and rotten trees were the skeletal remains of Lisa Lorraine Yates, white, who was just 19 years old when she was killed. Yates was last seen leaving a friend’s residence to work the johns in the area of Rainier Avenue and South Graham Street on December 23, 1983. Less than one month earlier, she had been arrested by Seattle police for offering and agreeing to an act of prostitution.

Naturally, the finding of Yates’s body during the initial work of the task force caused some excitement and unfounded expectations that the killer would have left his signature. Within the four months that it had lain in the wooded area, her body was totally skeletonized, leaving her cause of death a mystery. Not a scent of the killer was found at Exit 38—only another murdered prostitute to fill December’s gap in the task force’s calendar of horrors.

Through May 1984, a succession of 10 more female murder victims of the Green River Killer were discovered. That pressure-packed three-month period left task force members literally running from one skeleton to another. It was very obvious to all that everyone had seriously underestimated the extent of the murders. The task force of 50 people was formed on the basis that there were 13 murder victims in all. But, in reality, by January 1984, the prolific slayer was suspected of killing at least 47 females, making the total task force contingent itself only the minimum crew of personnel that would have been necessary to handle the investigations. Ultimately Gary Leon Ridgway would confess to the murders of 48 women in a plea bargain that let him escape the death penalty.

While some detectives were busy trying to identify the 10 new victims and retrace their last steps, others were corroborating information previously gathered on the first 13 victims. Having drawn every other cover and picked up no scent of the killer, I tried my luck with tips that had been gathered in each case to that point. Much to my surprise, no one had done any type of review of the old Green River cases. After I thought about this for a moment, I realized that was probably because seven more victims were found in 1983 and leads in those cases were worked by our short-staffed team instead.

The first thing I noticed when I began my follow-up was that the investigation of suspects was an incredibly difficult process. By June 1984, over 100 potential suspects had been intensively investigated and only a few were absolutely eliminated. The rest of the investigations went just so far before there was simply nothing more to do in many of them. Many of the suspects’ whereabouts were essentially untraceable because there weren’t enough people around them to keep track of their travels. Most Green River suspects never left a paper trail by writing checks and using credit cards for purchases. The only certainty was that most of them had been arrested previously, and that was the only reliable indicator of their whereabouts at certain times—when they were behind bars. Corroborating their alibis was next to impossible. Compounding the inquiries even more, many suspects were uncooperative with police, unlike suspects in the Ted murders. Only one person didn’t cooperate in the Lake Sammamish murders, and that was none other than Theodore Robert Bundy himself. Regrettably, only a handful of suspects were totally cooperative with detectives in the Green River cases.

After six months as commander of the task force, Captain Adamson was concerned that what we were doing wasn’t working. After half a year and the accrual of a lot more evidence, we were still no closer to the killer. Adamson was starved for ideas about what to do. So he assigned me the task of contacting the commanders of successful serial murder investigations to ask them what worked best at catching a killer. And, in retrospect, was there anything they would have done differently to catch the killer sooner. Of course there was. What we did not know back in 1985 was that three years earlier, in 1982, Gary Ridgway, the individual who would be identified as the Green River Killer, had been arrested for soliciting a prostitute by an undercover police officer. And in 1983, Ridgway had been interviewed by two local Des Moines police in connection with the disappearanc of Green River victim Marie Malvar (whose remains were recovered in 2003 after Ridgway led Task Force detectives to her burial site as part of his plea agreement Confession). In 1987, Task Force detectives interviewed Ridgway, who would become, for the next 11 years, one of the five major suspects in the Green River murders.

The first person I contacted was Morris Redding, the former commander of the Atlanta Child Murders Task Force and the chief
of police of Atlanta. I was already aware of how Wayne Williams was apprehended, so I was more interested in what Chief Redding would have done differently. Almost without being asked, he said, “He was right in front of our noses the whole time.” As the Atlanta police were going into elementary schools warning children about the possibility of impending danger to them and how to avoid it, Wayne Williams was coming out of the same schools after having taken photographs of those same children for their class pictures. Also on several telephone poles around where children were missing, a sign was posted that read:

Can you? Sing or Play An Instrument

If You Are Between “11-21” (male or female)

And Would Like To Become A Professional Entertainer.

“YOU” Can Apply for POSITIONS with Professional Recording Acts

No Experience Is Necessary, Training Is Provided

All Interviews Private & Free

For More Information Call
3PM-7PM
404/794-8980

The telephone number was for Wayne Williams.

7
 
Ted Versus the Riverman

O
ne day in October 1984, I was buried in a pile of paperwork at my desk. I looked up to see Detective Ed Striedinger of the Seattle Police Department. He had retrieved a letter from a judge in Pierce County who wanted it delivered to task force staff. It was a letter from a “wannabe” consultant and the most unlikely person I ever expected to be of assistance in the Green River murders. The letter came from a cell on death row in Florida; the sender was Theodore Robert Bundy. I was stunned.

Ted wrote that he had some information that he thought could prove useful in apprehending the Green River Killer or Killers. But his offer of assistance was conditional. He wanted our assurance that his correspondence and subsequent communications would be kept confidential. He did not want anyone outside our task force, especially members of the news media, to become aware of his offer. Even though I felt Ted’s offer was sincere and honest, I was wary because Ted Bundy always seemed to have a hidden agenda.