The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (35 page)

Bundy and other serial killers, such as John Wayne Gacy and Wayne Williams, had living victims or witnesses who eventually came forward to testify against them. Thus, we assumed, there were living victims of the Green River Killer. And we were right, as it turned out. We wanted to pursue with Ted this very possibility to see how he would react, especially in light of Carol DaRonch’s escape from him and her subsequent testimony.

Dave Reichert sneaked up on this question, asking, “Would there be anything unusual that he might do that maybe our officers have not asked living prostitutes about? Because we interviewed prostitutes out there, of course, in the areas where prostitution occurs. Is there anything that you can think of that our officers might be asking these girls that this person displayed in his contact?”

Ted knew exactly what Reichert was referring to—living victim—and he offered his own opinion eagerly. “I think there’s an excellent chance that he has picked up a number of prostitutes who he’s later released, for any number of reasons. Perhaps he just felt an unusual wave of compassion. Maybe he was surprised at some point and felt it’s too risky to kill that particular individual. Maybe somebody saw him at some point in time after he had made contact with her, or maybe it’s just entirely too risky to go through with it. But I think he’s doing it fairly quickly—he’s probably killing them fairly quickly. At least most of them, maybe not all of them.”

Trying to make Bundy think and work in order to give us something to use that we hadn’t already thought of, Reichert clarified the question by asking, “I guess what I’m getting at—is there anything this guy would say to the ones that he let go? Is there anything that he would do to maybe tip them off? ‘I think I left a killer’? He released them, but they don’t call us, and we end up interviewing them later. Maybe we’re not asking the right questions to get the information that we need.”

Patiently, like a mentor to his attentive students, Ted continued
with, “Well, what I’ve outlined before is nobody has gotten away from him, once he’s made his move, that I know of.” Ted momentarily avoided this issue by asking his own question. “Is this true? I mean, he’s not tried to, you don’t have anybody who’s pulled a gun on somebody or tried to tie them up or whatever, do you?”

“No,” said Reichert reluctantly as if not wanting to admit it. Dave had searched high and low for anyone who had escaped the Riverman and could have revealed what was behind his mask. In November 1984, however, Rebecca Gande Guay would tell the Task Force that she was a living victim of the Green River Killer, but Ridgway would be able to explain her complaint away by saying that she bit him and he reacted in self-defense when he choked her.

Noticing that Dave was beginning to wear his feelings of frustration with the Green River cases, I interrupted with, “We’ve had all kinds of kinky incidents happen with prostitutes out there.”

Ted reassured us. “Sure. That’s the problem.”

I continued. “So we more than likely have identified those type of people. We’ve followed up on those incidents and discovered that they were not associated with the Green River Killer, but that’s different. We don’t have anybody—we feel anyway—that’s escaped from him.”

After a minute of reflection, Ted sat up in his chair and his eyes positively gleamed with the light of revelation. “Sure,” he said. “I see what you mean. Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it very effectively. I mean, he’s done three dozen at least and nobody’s gotten away from him. That’s very impressive. Sometimes, it looks like he might have two at a time. It’s hard to tell. What I’m saying is, my guess is he’s driving to a location he feels very safe in, where he can make a move. Okay? And if there’s trouble, nobody will hear or see any kind of struggle or whatever he ends up doing effectively to take control of his victims. And so I don’t know how these prostitutes conduct their business once they get in the car, but I guess it is fairly standard procedure to go somewhere where they won’t be observed. But this guy is going to go somewhere, at least initially. My guess would be that he makes a move and there’s no question in his mind. If there is trouble or some kind of problem, they won’t be seen or witnessed by anybody passing by.”

Ted knew he was on the right track. “One of the questions I would ask, that comes just off the top of my head, is ‘Have any of
your clients taken you to locations that were particularly remote or secluded?’ See what I’m saying? As far as him saying something—‘You got away from me this time’—something obvious. You know, like you say, you’re going to have men, clients of these women, who are fairly bizarre in their relationships with women for one reason or another. And if they say something out of the ordinary, I don’t know that it would be significant. My guess is that he’s making his move really quickly, and he’s doing it in locations he’s very confident in making a move in.

“Unless he has a unique kind of vehicle—you know, a van, for instance, gives him a lot more control, as opposed to an automobile, where you can see any kind of struggle inside the windows. So, that’s just the first thing that comes to mind, but let me think about it, and that’s one of the things I’ll write back to you on.”

It was time to turn up the heat a little by confronting Ted about what he had delicately avoided up to that point. We at times wanted to see how Ted handled slightly antagonistic questions. I pressed by inquiring about the pick-up point. Ted had strayed away from talking about that in detail. Of course, he had a reason. He wanted us to show him photographs of dead bodies. We had predicted that crime scene photos would refuel him, but we weren’t yet ready to launch into that stage of the questioning. We wanted Ted to go through all the elements of the initial contact sites with us first.

I asked, “You seem to concentrate on how important the dump sites are, but the pick-up points are too. The killer is there, he created activity, and he felt comfortable. And the pick-up points, quite frankly, are heavily patrolled. I mean, police contact at those locations routinely, not only with john patrols, where we’re trying to catch the johns, but there are police officers out there busting prostitutes all the time. And generally there’s a lot of police around there. How does he feel so good in there?” We wanted to know how the predatory killer knew how to act only when there was the least possibility of detection.

Ted’s explanation involved how comfortable a long-term serial killer really was in his familiar surroundings. He was presumably also talking about his own high comfort levels on college campuses,
ski resorts, beach parties, and anywhere coeds gathered. He, therefore, was more than confident in his answer. “The same way that Wayne Williams felt so good in Atlanta. He knew that scene inside and out and operated in spite of all the heat that was coming down in Atlanta. There was more heat in Atlanta than there was in any case, you know, maybe except for yours now. Because there were young black children disappearing, there was an incredible amount of pressure, as I’m sure you’re aware, and, yet, he was just doing his thing. Even after all that publicity and all that heat. Why? Because he knew that scene inside and out. He was a fish in water. And that’s why—in that last letter I wrote to you—even though I was sort of speculating, you know, rashly at times, my feeling was, even with what little I knew, that your man was a part of the sub-culture that these women found themselves in.”

“A fish in water.” That was Ted in Seattle’s U-district and that was the Green River Killer on the Sea-Tac strip. Bundy continued along this same line. “Now, I don’t know if you can say there is a particular set of factors which characterize the subculture of prostitution, but I try to perceive it as a subculture that involves, you know, drugs and runaways and certain individuals just comfortable in dealing with that kind of scene, whether it be the bar scene or the drug scene and the prostitute and runaway scene. The person who’s doing it knows it very well. He knows these individuals. He knows how to manipulate them. He might not even be coming up to them as a john, even though that appears to be the most reasonable explanation.”

It was as if a bell had gone off. Ted identified an approach to the prostitute-type victim that, up to this point, our investigators had not been able to pursue. Maybe a prospective john was not the abductor. Maybe it was someone coming in under completely different camouflage and was slipping right through our net. It was a disturbing realization since the proactive methods we were using to detect the killer were heavily focused on his being a frequent customer of prostitutes. Stubbornly, Dave said, “Well, he sure doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb, that’s for sure.”

With the assurance of an expert, Ted proudly explained, “No!
Sure, and he’s not your typical client. And my feeling about the guy is he’s very low-key and inoffensive. My guess is he’s got more than one approach to these girls.”

Feeding Ted’s ego with his tone of voice while at the same time probing for some angle the killer may be using, Dave asked, “Have you thought about the approach at all?”

Ted immediately responded, “I have. You know, what the hooker might be.”

“What do you think he’s accomplishing then?” Dave asked.

“If he were just some john driving in and snatching prostitutes,” Ted said, “I think you would have caught him by now. But, like I say, I think he knows what these girls are like and what they need. Whether he’s coming on as a john or, in fact, maybe offering them employment, money, or drugs, I’ve thought out the various ways he might approach them, even calling them on the phone. Let’s say somehow he was able to contact them by phone—some of them, not all of them. I’m not saying he has one technique. In fact, he may not be a wizard, but he’s bright enough to understand that he can’t be approaching the same way every time. He knows that those areas are under heavy surveillance, even under the best of times. But he was going back there after the heat was on. I continually was amazed by this guy’s balls. I mean, after all the victims he’d snatched from Pacific Highway South, it seems that they continued to disappear from there. My guess is that he just blends into that environment—he may be a familiar-type character to that area. He may feel so comfortable with these type of women and understand them so well, he knows how to manipulate them.”

Ted was on a roll and needed to be brought back to our line of questioning, so, I asked, “How stable do you think he is in his occupation? Probably our number-one ruse is to pose as a cop, because that happens all the time. They show badges, flash badges. The city of Portland is going crazy right now. Cops can’t even go up and interview the prostitutes because there’s so many johns out there flashing badges at them. And just getting it for nothing.”

Ted admitted, somewhat embarrassed because I’d mentioned the cop lure that he himself had used in Salt Lake City before he mentioned it, “Yeah, you’re right. I left out parts of my number-one ruse or lure. Well, I don’t think it’d be my number one, necessarily. Maybe number two would be the police badge. You know that commands
a lot of power. At least initially, until the cover is blown. I mean, Bianchi and his cousin, the Hillside Stranglers, stretched that to the limits down in Los Angeles. That’s a good one, except, like you say, these girls, after a period of time, the prostitutes that are working Pacific Highway South, must have been very wary of something, even a cop flashing a badge. I don’t know what their reaction would be. But after a while, I think even that would scare them.”

He continued along the same line, explaining the way the Green River Killer tentatively approached his victims, bouncing off the ones that seemed resistant, and luring the ones who went along with his ruse. “I’m sure you’ve interviewed them and asked if they’ve had people approach them flashing badges, and that’s probably another question you should ask. Again, I’m sure you’ve asked it. To all the prostitutes out there, have they been approached by anybody flashing badges, because my guess is if the guy is using that technique, sooner or later he’s going to run into somebody, flashes a badge on her, and something happens. She either backs away or somebody, some other event, intervenes, because he’s not getting everybody he approaches.”

Undoubtedly, Ted was thinking of his attempted abduction of Carol DaRonch and how his use of a badge was not that convincing. Unlike other killers who had been successful in their ruses as cops, Ted was not only singularly unsuccessful in luring his victim, that victim turned out to be the lone living witness whose testimony landed Ted in jail in Utah and began, at least in his mind, the unraveling of his criminal career. Accordingly, in the same way that Ted didn’t get DaRonch, he predicted that the Green River Killer “[is] not getting everybody he approaches, whether he’s successful or not. Some of them he’d only make contact with. Using all his mental powers to assess the situation, and he’s in the progress of trying to convince her to go with him, something doesn’t feel right. She doesn’t appeal to him for some reason. And you know that too. If he fails as Bono and Bianchi did—at least once that I know of—that’s going to be something to follow up on. And I don’t know if you have any reports like that or not in the Green River case. You say it’s happening in Portland. Because these prostitutes are so wary, I think the guy is coming on really low-key, [in a] nonthreatening manner. And he knows them so well and I don’t think he’s coming on as a cop. Because if he did, I think you’d know about it. You’d have a pretty good feeling about it.
That’s not to say he’s never done it or hasn’t thought about doing it, or wouldn’t try it, you know.”

Even more disturbing for proactive strategies, Ted gave us a picture of how serial killers invent new ways of approaching their victims and why they are so able to slip through defenses. “But if he’s always reading—I’ll bet you, like I say—some people—hundred—read
Field and Stream,
this guy’s reading
True Detective.
So he’s always thinking of new ways. My guess is he’s so nonthreatening, so low-key, he knows them so well, that either he’s coming on sometimes with a job or sometimes with something else. And what that something else might be is anybody’s guess.”