The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (45 page)

Ted’s response was somewhat of a surprise since the Riverman had murdered at least 40 women. “Who knows? This guy is learning! He’s trying to find the best way to dispose of those bodies he can think of. He’s just been dumping them in one way or another. He’s burying some, but God forbid someday he finds a secluded well somewhere that no one can stumble across and starts dumping them all down the well, or finding some other effective way, such as burying them in a basement like the gentleman Gacy.” Ted referred to his fellow serial killers as gentlemen, apparently holding them in high esteem. “Because, quite frankly, I think we get a chance to catch him if we can start finding fresh bodies again without him getting the wiser.” Ted sometimes talked as though he was now one of us.

“Let’s see now, you found three bodies in October of eighty-three. And that bothered the hell out of him, I’m sure. ’Cause you found Antosh, Naon, and an unidentified set of bones, all in different locations. So, you know, I’m sure he was starting to get a little bit edgy about leaving any more bodies around in similar locations. I think that’s obvious enough. And it’s no accident that your next bodies, in terms of chronological disappearances, start to turn up near Enumclaw, a location far from your most recent discoveries.
No doubt you have more remains in the recent area you haven’t discovered, but they’re your early victims you haven’t found.”

As it turned out, Ted’s predictions on this matter were way off base. He had just told us who we would find east of Enumclaw. But the Riverman’s early victims were not found there, but were later discovered near the Sea-Tac Airport strip.

Feeling that Ted probably revisited the Issaquah and Taylor Mountain dump sites with bodies long after his first dump, I asked, “How familiar is he with his dump sites? Do you think they’re accidental finds?”

Emphatically, Ted proclaimed, “Oh, no, no, no, no. I think he’s pretty sure. The Riverman may not select his dump sites with the precision of a geographer or surveyor, but it’s clear that he’s searched down and looked them over in daytime and nighttime. They are places he’s been back to many times after, obviously—places he’s been back to many times.” At this point, I felt Ted was telling us that he, himself, returned many times to his own disposal sites. The excitement in Ted’s voice was a clue, perhaps, that body disposal sites were the location of his violent exhibitions. They were places where he believed he could commit whatever sexual acts he wanted on the bodies of his victims and not be discovered. No wonder he was so excited at the thought of secure dump sites. They held for him the thrill of a honeymoon cabin.

After we took time to flip the tape, Ted tried to systematize his thoughts. He was striving to express himself clearly. “This is just sort of a spontaneous dialogue we’re having here. I’m not approaching it in any organized fashion, and I’ll go over my notes later to see if I miss anything that I’d like to talk to you about,” he said.

I wanted Ted to refocus on the dump sites and tell us what the Riverman would be doing when he returned to them. Ted repeated my question by saying, “He does. He is returning to the dump sites, not just to bring bodies back, but probably in the interim. I think it’s a high probability that he’s returning, if only to drive by. He’s returning to check those dump sites out after he’s dumped a body there.”

Dave wanted to know if he would return after we found a victim. Resoundingly, Ted declared, “Oh no. He wouldn’t touch it with a ten-mile pole. You see, that’s the problem. Again, that’s a whole new subject on surveillance, and we’ll have to get back to that later. But the interesting thing about his dump sites is he uses more than one. He doesn’t put subsequent victims at one site all together and then move to another. Like, I have it in my notes somewhere, not all the girls who were found at one site disappeared sequentially, I don’t believe. They disappeared at different times. So he might dump one here and one there. He didn’t use some, you know, one, two, three, and then go over here one, two, three. He jumped back and forth. Why he did that, I don’t know. It seems a little bit inefficient, but that’s what he was doing. But he’s still coming back to them, obviously. And I think he’s coming back to look at the possibility for returning with more bodies. He’s also coming back to check out and see, you know, the condition of the body. He may be going back for whatever kick he gets out of it. You know, obviously, what he is doing is not normal, so you cannot apply normal standards to it. But my guess is he’s coming back, if just nothing more than just check the site out and drive by or see if it’s been discovered or see if it’s been disturbed. Okay?”

Many of the dump site crime scenes offered no more tangible clues than anthropological digs by the time we got to them. Bones were the only remains found of most victims. Some bodies were stripped clean, either by animals or by the Riverman. There was no clothing, no jewelry.

Ted asked his own question. “Why is he doing that? He’s keeping it to a minimum amount of items found, I’d say. No fibers, no hairs. He may have a thing for clothes, but more than likely this guy doesn’t want to be caught. Leaving a victim nude is the best way to leave the least amount of evidence.”

Dave asked, “Do you think he’s saving any of that?”

Ted responded, “Who knows? That’s too hard to say. If he’s being that careful, probably unlikely, unless he really has some sort of thing. But he doesn’t seem like a mentally disturbed individual, somebody who’s just really bizarre. And he’s going about it in a
very businesslike, very efficient, way. And I don’t think his type is going to keep anything, if he’s being so meticulous as to leave bodies without any clothing and to try to dispose of bodies as best he can, and he’s learning all the time how to do it better. The Riverman is not the kind of person who’s going to leave stuff around the house, I don’t think. I mean, that’s just my guess. He doesn’t want to get caught. He’s learning more and more. And I’d be fascinated to read a collection of news clippings over this time to see when the publicity, the intensity of publicity built up and receded, or when it intensified, and try to plot his activity, his intensity, his activity level with the publicity. Because the Riverman understands the difficulty of trying to do something when the public is aroused. And maybe that’s the one reason why in the past eight months or so you just really haven’t heard a lot from him.”

The last known Green River victim was Cindy Smith, missing in March 1984, nine months before we met with Ted. I was curious if the formation of the Green River Murders Task Force two months earlier had any affect on the Riverman’s intensity.

“Oh, sure,” Ted answered. “And you found all those bodies in March and April. And that is the thing he does not like. And it caused him to reevaluate his entire strategy. If it didn’t make him move, it certainly made him rethink what he’s doing. It doesn’t make him stop. It just makes a difference.” Ted felt strongly about this, voicing throughout our conversations that the Riverman would never stop, no matter how many officers were trying to catch him.

With that, Dave continued, “To find these sites that are really way out, how does he search for them? Do you think he’s got a reason to be out there? Do you think he’s found these sites before he picks his victim? Or do you think he’s picked up a victim in Seattle and then he’s driven off trying to find a spot?”

“Oh, I think the chances are in favor of him having been there at least before, probably looking for them deliberately,” Ted answered. “Well, I did some analyzing of the mass gravesites that you have on some maps I was sent. Looks like he certainly has returned to one site over and over again and that would lead me to believe
that he’s looking for good places. And once he’s found one, he will keep going back to it. Generally, in fact, you see him changing all the time, like east of Enumclaw. He’s starting to spread them out rather than going back to one place again and again. But my guess is he has a type of area in mind. If he hasn’t picked it out before-hand and has a body in the trunk, then he knows what he’s looking for. If it’s not a specific area, like the Star Lake site that he already was leaving bodies at, and if he’s just completely at a loss as to where to drop the next one off, he may just start hunting on his own. But he has an idea of what he’s looking for. Like you say, the turnaround, the deserted areas, the dirt road, or whatever. I’d say that he certainly has in mind what he thinks will be an effective place to leave his victims’ bodies.”

Ted’s idea of the Riverman looking for a particular
type
of site, rather than one he had been to many times, was an intriguing concept. We knew that serial killers were very familiar with their body disposal sites. But if a killer found a site that resembled his favorite type of site, that might satisfy him, even if he had never been there before. For example, a serial killer who is a long-haul truck driver may be very familiar with his hometown area. He is also familiar with freeways and off-ramps along his route of travel. Commonly, off-ramps resemble each other no matter where they are. If the truck driver picked up a prostitute at a truck stop and drove for over 100 miles, he would be just as acquainted with the off-ramp area 100 miles down the road as he would be with the one 300 miles farther ahead. So any off-ramp, any secluded guardrail, is a type of site that the trucker feels comfortable dumping a body over. In other words, the killer does not have the pressing need to be in a preselected location where he is totally familiar with the entire surroundings—just the type of site in general.

We next wanted Bundy to talk to us about the likelihood that someone might have interrupted the Riverman at any of his dump sites. Bundy had a lot of experience ferrying his victims to secluded areas and spending time with them there. We wondered if Bundy had any experiences with uninvited guests. And along those same lines, we were curious as to what someone might have seen
who spotted the Riverman and either didn’t know what he was seeing or who simply chose not to come forward unless he was asked. If this had happened we might actually have had an informed witness without ever realizing it.

“Do you think that he’s thought far enough ahead to come up with an excuse for himself in case he gets stopped searching for his body disposal site?” Dave asked Ted. “What I’m getting at is, does he have a reason? Let’s say you’re an officer up there, and you see this guy in a wilderness hunting or fishing area. There’s no fishing pole. No rifle. Do you think that he might be a fisherman or a hunter or do you think he might try to pose as somebody else?”

Ted’s answer indicated that he had surely thought about what he would do if he ever was caught at the scene. He answered, “It’s not unlikely he might try to pose as a hiker; that’s a good cover.” We knew Ted was a hiker, and hiked in areas where he dumped bodies. “A hiker or a fisherman. Or I would think that a mushroom hunter might be a good one. Then you don’t have to worry about being out of season or by a lake. You’re just out enjoying nature. Who knows? I don’t imagine that has escaped his imagination because I may have underestimated the amount of thought he has devoted to this. Again, he makes mistakes. He’s not perfect and probably does a lot of things on impulse. But I think there are a lot of things he does do to try to cover his ass. And one of them is having a reason to be up there. Now, it’s not going to be the best reason in the world. I mean, he might have a knapsack over his back or something like that, saying, ‘I’m just hiking around.’ But, Jesus Christ, if officers are out there, and you find anybody in the area of those dump sites, then they’re at the top of your list, no matter what excuse they give you. I mean, if you found anybody on foot within a couple miles of those bodies, you know they’d be right at the very top of your list.”

Ted once said that a preferred method of disposal was burial. One of the Green River Killer’s victims found at the south end of the airport was completely buried. It was a mystery why one victim was left on top of the ground, another covered with twigs, and another
buried. I asked Ted why the Riverman might have chosen to bury only one victim at that location.

It seemed that the variance in techniques also confused Ted, because he said, “Depends on whether they were close. I mean, if one was buried at the south end, I would expect that to be the last one. Assume that maybe he thought it would be an improvement over dumping them in plain sight. If it wasn’t, I couldn’t explain it. I think clearly from his point of view, burying is more effective than just dumping on top of the ground.”

Dave pressed Ted, knowing that Ted didn’t feel any emotion toward any woman, by asking, “Could that mean that maybe she had some special relationship with the Riverman?”

Ted’s belief in the lack of remorse a killer feels for his victims was about to surface. Ted answered, “That he felt anything and that burial had some ritualistic or personal significance apart from disposing of the body itself? I’d say no! And I ask you this, how many of those twenty-seven victims you found were buried or partially buried?”

“Less than five.”

“That’s interesting. That’s a cover-up, isn’t it?” Ted argued.

I injected, “Well, let’s define what burial is. You said buried or partially buried, okay? There’s one here in the dirt, all right? Then there are probably three others who are covered with twig-type branches and maybe a little bit of dirt. And then there is something unusual about the two victims in the river, who were held down by large rocks. The Riverman did not want them discovered, either. They’re not the normally dumped victim. You know, he’s not Wayne Williams. He’s not throwing them into a river from a bridge. Right? Something else special he’s done to the girls.”