The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (37 page)

There was bloodthirsty competition for Green River news among the hundreds of reporters who came to Seattle from around the world during the height of the investigation. At this time, media types became relentless in their pursuit of information, especially that from task force members, that would satisfy their daily, sometimes hourly, need for a story. When someone was identified as a potential suspect, the media suddenly had a story to market and took advantage of this situation each time it arose. Between the tabloid newspapers, the tabloid television programs, and the talk shows, suspects became marketable commodities and some defense lawyers became nothing more than publicity agents. One suspect
in particular had excessive contact with the news media after it became known that he was a “person of interest” in our case. Dave Reichert and I asked Bundy about this type of personality and how it related to the Green River Killer.

Ted asked, “You mean after he’s come in contact with you?”

“Yeah, make it a game,” Dave said with the exasperation of one who had to live through one suspect appearing on the nightly television news and proclaiming how inept police investigators were.

“Make it tough, not a game,” I clarified.

Ted was dismayed that any detective would suggest that a sophisticated killer, like the Riverman or himself, would want to draw that much attention to himself. With his voice pitched high, Ted sarcastically replied, “Well, and still be active? And still do his thing?”

“Yeah.”

Laughing, Ted gave us a hypothetical situation to work from without referring to any one suspect by name. “Let’s say that this guy came to your attention in the first part of eighty-three when this thing started. Somehow, you talked with him. Then he went to the news media, and subsequent to his press interviews, you had all these other victims in eighty-three. I don’t think, quite frankly, that anything like that can happen. I don’t pretend to be a clairvoyant, but this guy doesn’t want to get caught. If he comes to your attention, he’s going to stop dead in his tracks and not do anything. I doubt that he’s going to draw attention to himself, but who knows?”

Another popular theory in the Green River cases was that the killer left town or stopped when the enhanced task force was formed. Why else would the killing appear to stop in March 1984? Up until August of 1983, there were, at various times, as many as 15 investigators working on the cases on a regular basis. On a couple of occasions, the investigation involved the efforts of over 20 personnel while investigating a “hot” suspect. Just prior to January 1984, only three detectives were assigned to catch the Riverman. Throughout the course of the investigation, the police force was inundated and therefore only nominally effective. A bare-bones team was trying to maintain the course of the investigation when, boom, 43 people were
added and the official Green River Murders Task Force was formed. I asked Ted, “Is that enough to scare him off, for him to get out of town, or would he consider that another challenge?”

Confidently, Ted responded, “I don’t think it’d be enough to get him out of town. I don’t think it is enough. On first glance, when I first saw this lucent, it appeared things just seemed to stop around October of eighty-three. I mean, on paper. He hasn’t stopped. Okay. He’s obviously somewhere else or doing this thing in a different way in Pierce County, King County, or western Washington. Aw, no! That’s not enough to scare him.”

Ted provided an interesting but weird analogy. “Because he knows, he’s like your boyfriend. He knows he still has an edge. And he reads the newspapers like everybody else, probably has one in his pocket. Recently, I read an article—I got all my back issues of the
Tacoma News Tribune
after being released from disciplinary confinement—well, here’s what happened. I read an article about the Kapowsin find. [A murdered female was found near Lake Kapowsin in rural Pierce County.] Just the initial find. At the time, I’d say the Kapowsin victim is not a Green River victim. I say, shit, you know, there he goes again. Like an asshole, I say, hey, I figured something out here. I see that this is the Green River task force. It doesn’t want to have any more publicity than necessary. No more details in the papers, wants to keep the amount of stuff that goes in the papers to a minimum. And that’s kind of fascinating because it cuts both ways, as you know. You need the public to help you, but I think this guy does not like—he does not like the task force.”

Grinning with pride, Dave stated, “Obviously.”

Unaware of what Reichert was thinking and not skipping a beat, Ted continued. “He doesn’t want to get caught. So he’s going to make changes in his behavior to stay ahead of you and avoid publicity. Because the best thing he has going for you and himself is a lack of publicity. The less the public is looking for him, has their eye out for him, I know that means a lot to him. It creates problems having a lot of people out there giving leads, but the less publicity, the better for him. And I quite frankly think the task force simply made him reevaluate what he’s doing and changed in some ways to improve his chances of avoiding detection. He may not be a sophisticated type to sit down and analyze this, but he knows it, like a fox knows stuff. He knows it like any predator seems to know his victim,
not in an analytical way but in a sensory, an intuitive way. And he knows that the kind of victims he’s looking for are difficult to trace and not reported right away. Except for a couple cases, they were investigated way down the line and hard to investigate. So he’s just taking advantage of that in a different way, in my opinion.”

Anxiously, Dave was concerned about the content of certain news reports spurring the Riverman to kill. He asked, “Do you think that certain news articles and TV reports could set him off to kill?”

That question appeared to puzzle Ted, but he wanted to warn us about emotional broadcasts. With his head cocked down and a coy smirk on his face, Ted said, “I don’t know. That’s a good question, one I can’t answer. I’m sure if you analyzed, for example, last weekend, when the TV stations in Seattle had a half-hour special on the task force. I was interviewed, and some other people were interviewed. One of the comments I heard was ‘We’re not giving up.’ And you will catch him, or somebody will catch him. In time. Aw, but you can’t tell him that. He’s not the type, to me, he’s not a show-off in that respect. I mean, he’s not like the Hillside Strangler. He’s not dumping his bodies on the hillsides. He’s not doing it in a spectacular way. I think he’s still very concerned about hiding people. He’s hiding his people, his victims.”

Dave informed Ted that the day after the broadcast about the task force, we got a telephone call, and somebody said, “You’re never going to catch me.” It was the only phone call like that we got. Would the Green River Killer have called?

Ted believed that the Riverman at all costs did not want to draw attention to himself, especially by calling the police. Therefore, he assumed that the caller was probably some crank. Ted warned, “Well, it’s not inconceivable. It’s entirely possible he’s getting an ego charge out of beating you people, staying ahead of you. I mean, that cannot be dismissed all the time. But that’s not what’s motivating him.”

Ted had opened a door to a place we wanted desperately to explore. What motivates a serial killer? Dave and I sounded like we were singing the same song when we asked simultaneously, “What do you think is motivating him?”

Ted prepared himself for his long answer by clearing his throat and placing his finger alongside his head as if he were winding up for a long lecture. This was something he wanted to talk about, at least in the third person. “He’s an active killer,” he said, almost as if it were a proclamation. “In his own way, he knows, in the detail recesses of his mind, how this particular behavior pattern evolved. He obviously did not start on July the seventh, nineteen eighty-two, and he was feeling like he wants to kill. I could speculate more—and some speculation might be useful in terms of your investigation, but some of it is purely academic.”

Ted hesitated because he knew that we knew he would be talking about himself and his motivations for murder. But Dave encouraged Ted to continue about the Green River Killer. “Go ahead. I’m interested in what you have to say.”

Ted shrugged. “Oh well, sure. I mean this would be purely speculating. Just looking at his victims. There are an infinite number of ways to explain how a man can come to the point where he destroys human life as this person has. And I suppose the only way to really know, someday, is to have the man studied. Even then, who knows. You get some verification from the killer. He’s killing because there’s some link, obviously, between sex and violence. Look at the number of prostitutes that were found nude more often than not; the fatal link between sex and violence has been made. I don’t know whether it’s anything anybody can rationally describe or explain, except the fact that sometimes our society promotes that link between sex and violence unknowingly through the media and whatnot.”

Ted volunteered that he had a couple of ideas about developing suspects by exploiting the possible sources of motivation if we really want to stretch it, but didn’t want to talk about it at that time. He continued, “I think for whatever reason, however, he got to the point of killing prostitutes because he made a deliberate determination that those were prey. It may be that he has something specifically against prostitutes. What really confounds me in this case is the number of black prostitutes. I mean, this guy is an equal opportunity killer. And that fascinates me. He doesn’t seem to have a preference racially. That’s kind of odd. I don’t know if it’s odd in the whole scheme of things, but it certainly did puzzle me. Obviously, he did not shy away from black prostitutes. And I don’t know if, looking at the data on teenage prostitutes, he might not be
seeking out a greater share of blacks or not. I don’t know. There certainly are a number at the moment. Whatever inner drives are motivating him now, it’s sort of like it’s sort of obvious that it’s either a preoccupation or an obsession. He is influenced by a number of factors, both internal and external. Internally, I’m sure his desire to kill ebbs and flows, as you can see, generally, by your list of victims. Externally, there may be any number of things influencing him: publicity, the formation of the task force, car trouble, job trouble, illness, you know, a whole host of things, everyday stuff that everybody goes through.

“There are some interesting gaps in the series. For instance, he skips November eighty-two, if your list is complete. He skips January and February of eighty-three, again, assuming your list is complete. Sometimes these gaps are significant. He might have been sick or had car trouble. The gaps may have been just an anomaly, or maybe an accident. Perhaps he did get somebody you don’t know about. Or maybe, in fact, when he did Colleen Brockman, somebody saw him or did something that scared the shit out of him. Because he really put himself out on the line and was at risk. Therefore, he pulled back to see if anything would come of it. Also, your gaps can be explained by the fact that he left some loose ends and he’s going to sit back and see if anything materializes. And once he gains confidence…”

Once in a while, Ted needed to be interrupted because he sounded as though he was just rambling. Realizing he was loading up to babble on, I quickly asked, “What do you say about his pattern?”

“Ummm, what?” Ted muttered as if he were just awakened from a sort of trance.

I was more than impatient. “What do you say about a pattern? Do we have an erroneous assumption that there even is a pattern?”

Shaking his head to clear his mind, Ted emphasized, “Oh, sure. You shouldn’t lock yourself into a pattern. I’d hate to restrict my own analysis of any problem by saying, ‘That is the pattern.’”

I decided it was now appropriate to verbally acknowledge Ted’s statements more frequently. He needed affirmative confirmation, so I occasionally said yes.

Ted continued. “Because that limits your options, and you don’t want to limit your options. Anybody could be doing this. Whoever the Riverman is, he is fairly well composed and, generally speaking, a normal guy.”

I silently choked on Ted’s reference to the Riverman as a “normal guy” even though I knew that Ted meant he was normal-looking to the outside world and did not look like a wild-eyed, chain saw-wielding mass murderer. Still, it was shocking to hear anyone call a serial murderer normal.

Unable to detect my feelings and wanting to assert some of his own ideas on killing, Ted said, “So, yeah. There are patterns, but that may be imposing my own hit stuff on what’s already there. That might not be what is actually going on. And so there’s some interesting things I think we’re talking about: location of the bodies, how he progressed from area to area, and how he seems to jump around from dump site to dump site and so forth. But as far as his pattern goes, I’m just looking here at frequency—how often he does it—and just trying to get a feel for his own inner intensity. What is driving this guy, you know, from the inside out? And how often does he have to satisfy that, notwithstanding his desire to be cautious and avoid detection? And this guy, again relying on these lists as pretty accurate, he does one a week in July, does five in August, settles down to two and three a month until next May, when he gets four. That’s pretty damn active. He’s going Sunday through Saturday, generally speaking, not showing a preference for weekends. He’s going all days of the week, spreading them out. Two and three a month is pretty intense, even after some of the bodies have been discovered. But like you say, the task force wasn’t formed until January, and the bulk of the bodies weren’t found until early eighty-four and I think that’s probably what’s motivating him.”

With Ted’s suggestion that the publicity and the formation of the task force motivated the Riverman to move out of the area, Dave got the nod from me that it was time to change the subject. Ted would only say so much about a killer’s motivation before he realized he was talking too much about himself. So Dave changed the subject by asking, “Do you think this might be the type of person who would have to tell someone? Say he’s married; I’m not sure he’ll tell his wife. But let’s say he’s got a friend, a close friend; would he talk about it to somebody? Would he have a partner in this or do you think there’s just one person?”