The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (72 page)

The final Ted that I saw was Ted the victim, denigrated, confused, and powerless. This kind of personality sometimes appears in the final appellate stages of high-profile death-penalty cases where the issues surrounding the case become more important than the life of the convicted killer. The individual—in this case, Ted—becomes subordinated to the needs of lawyers, ministers, publicists, and even journalists, all of whom have their own causes to promote. So it was with Ted, who lost his sense of direction amid conflicting strategies and agendas and finally admitted to his own pathological fears, surrendered his bravado, and gave up control. Ted allowed himself to become a public display item for the anti—death penalty movement, the antipornography movement, and all the psychologists who wanted to use him to prove their theories. He’d listened to their advice and trusted in them. But when he discovered that they weren’t interested in saving his life but in using him as an issue, he realized that his trust had been violated, and he broke.

On his own, Ted had survived by listening to his instincts. He knew when the coast was clear and he knew when to run. But in 1989, in part because he had allowed his own instincts to be influenced by others, he was without resources and without the precious time that he believed would run on forever. I saw how his strategy of playing information for time was doomed to fail because, as the U.S. Supreme Court said, “The world had had enough of Ted Bundy.” And, in an oblique way, it pained me to watch it. Even his dramatic news-release strategy—dribbling out his confessions to
tantalize judges, lawyers, and investigators and buy himself months or even years while he talked about his crimes one by one—was a failure. When his people in Florida broke the news to the press that Bundy was confessing to his murders, it was perceived as a very ill-timed and desperate announcement that was just another example of Ted’s self-serving, last-minute strategies to save his life.

As a result of Ted’s prolonged method of confession, the press commentators wrote that Bundy was simply holding the families of his murder victims hostage as he bargained for his life. If the U.S. Supreme Court justices and the governor of Florida hadn’t made up their minds already about not granting Bundy a stay of execution, the withering press reaction to Bundy’s slow confessions helped them do just that. The press announcement and the national reaction seemed to convince them that Ted Bundy’s games were over.

At our final interview, Ted was a defeated man. It was then that Ted told me about his most bizarre murder. The fact that he chose to reveal the details of that murder two days before his execution convinced me that he could have told a lot more if it wasn’t for bad timing and poor choices. Ted was a dead duck, and he and his attorneys refused to embrace this reality.

The essence of Ted’s plea to be spared was his insincere attempt to benefit mankind, the altruism he never understood; he hopelessly tried to give his last four days a greater meaning for which he was desperately searching. The governor of Florida sustained his greatest fear: that he would die being ignored. No interference on my part could have saved Ted from his fate.

In Ted’s last moments he ignored the black forces that festered in his head and dealt with the geographics of his crimes. He went to his grave after giving the warden one last location where the remains of a murdered woman might be found, a symbol of his effort to maintain his significance and keep his personality from imploding.

The fragmented personality of Theodore Robert Bundy was best expressed by his own closing: Peace, ted. Bundy used the lowercase “t” as a constant reminder to himself that he was a truly insignificant creature.

On November 30, 2001, at 3
P.M.,
the end of his shift as a truck painter at Kenworth Trucking in Renton, Washington, Gary Leon Ridgway was arrested by detectives from the King County police in connection with the murders of Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Christensen, the first victims discovered by police almost twenty years earlier in the Green River murders case. Ridgway, who had served in the navy from 1969 to 1971, had worked at Kenworth for more than thirty years and had been under scrutiny by the police since 1983, when he was contacted by Detective Fox of the Des Moines, Washington, police department in connection with the disappearance of a prostitute named Marie Malvar, whose murder he ultimately confessed to after he led police to her body and the bodies of his other victims. On November 5, 2003, Ridgway pled guilty to 48 murders in the Green River series.

On May 4, 1983, according to a King County Sheriff’s Department November 2001 affidavit sworn out by Detective Sue Peters of the major crimes unit in support of a search warrant, Gary Ridgway first came to the attention of the Green River Murders Task Force
because of Marie Malvar, who disappeared on April 30, 1983, from South 216th and Pacific Highway South in King County. Malvar’s remains weren’t recovered until October 2003. Her pimp, Robert Woods, saw her get into a dark colored pickup truck at a bus stop near a 7-Eleven. After Malvar got into the truck, it traveled northbound on Pacific Highway South for approximately five blocks before pulling into a motel parking lot. After stopping for a few moments, the driver turned the truck around and headed southbound on Pacific Highway South, turning left, eastbound, onto South 216th. Woods, who was following the truck in his own car, lost sight of the truck at the intersection. He described the truck as dark with a primer spot by the passenger side wheel well. The truck did not have a canopy over the bed, and Woods described the driver as a dark-haired male in his late thirties or forties.

Woods was quoted as saying that what made him suspicious about the pickup truck that stopped for Marie Malvar was the way the driver sped up to the bus stop; most johns slowly coast by to pick up a prostitute. And then when Malvar got in, the truck sped away. That was why Woods followed it. He said that when he managed to catch up to the truck, he thought he could see Malvar struggling with the driver, but he couldn’t see much else. So when he lost the truck, he went searching the neighborhoods where he had last seen it and found it in the driveway at 21859 32nd Place South. He then contacted the Des Moines Police Department, and the police contacted Gary Ridgway because the address Woods had given them was Ridgway’s.

Ridgway was interviewed by Detective Fox of the Des Moines police; He denied any contact with Marie Malvar, but readily admitted having been arrested during the previous year on charges of offering and agreeing to engage in a sexual act for money, a sexual solicitation of prostitutes offense. Fox turned Ridgway’s name over to the Green River Task Force, and Ridgway was interviewed by task force detective Larry Gross on November 16, 1983.

Just over two months later—on February 3, 1984—Dawn White, identified as a prostitute, contacted the Green River Task Force and reported Gary Ridgway as the Green River suspect. Detective Randy Mullinax conducted a subsequent investigation as a result of the tip and discovered that Ridgway had been arrested for offering and agreeing to an act of sex in exchange for money with an undercover King County police officer on May 11, 1982. At the time of this arrest,
Ridgway had been driving his 1975 maroon Dodge pickup with the canopy on and was wearing a dark plaid shirt and brown pants. Mullinax also discovered that Ridgway had been interviewed by Green River Murders Task Force detective Larry Gross in 1983 as a result of the Des Moines police contact by Detective Fox.

On April 12, 1984, Mullinax interviewed Gary Ridgway at King County Police Precinct #4, where he took a tape-recorded statement in which Ridgway admitted “dating”—a euphemism for sex in exchange for money—missing person Keli McGinness and seeing victim Kim Nelson at South 146th and Pacific Highway South by the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. Ridgway had identified both McGinness and Nelson after viewing their photographs.

Ridgway said that he met Keli McGinness in July 1983 by the Spruce Motel on Pacific Highway South. McGinness, who was alone at the time, he said, was standing by the bus stop in front of a barbershop. After making a “date,” they went to the area of Sunset Junior High School Field, at 1801 South 140th, where they began what Ridgway described as their date. However, they were interrupted by the Port of Seattle Police. After a short exchange with the police, during which McGinness provided them with an alias of Jennifer Kaufman, they returned to the Spruce Motel, where they completed the date in McGinness’s room. Subsequently, according to Port of Seattle Police records, it was confirmed that the contact Ridgway described actually occurred on February 23, 1983, at South 140th and 22nd South and that Ridgway and McGinness were in Ridgway’s 1975 Dodge pickup.

Ridgway also told Mullinax during the April 12, 1984, interview that he had seen Kim Nelson near the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant at South 144th and Pacific Highway South, but that he had not spoken to her. He said that later he had talked to Nelson’s roommate, later identified by police as Paige Miley, who told him that Nelson was missing and that she thought the Green River Killer had gotten her. Miley told police that she had been with Nelson on the day Nelson disappeared and that that was the only time they had been on Pacific Highway South together. Miley also picked Ridgway out of a photomontage as the man who approached her on Pacific Highway South and made a reference to her roommate, Kim Nelson.

During the interview, Ridgway also told the police that he had
dated five to ten women from Pacific Highway South and had caught venereal diseases at least three times. During this time he was driving his maroon Dodge pickup, which had a black canopy over the bed, but the truck was not operational during March, April, and May of 1983, he said, so he used his father’s 1978 brown-and-tan pickup one or two times. Ridgway explained that he dated mostly during the day and that most of the dates were “car dates,” although he said he used the Spruce, Airporter, and Ben Carol motels, and one other motel that was located at South 140th and Pacific Highway South.

Ridgway told his interviewer that he preferred dating white women and that he’d dated one girl from the Laundromat at 100th and Aurora Avenue North. That girl, who, he said, was white, took him to a motel during the day. He also mentioned having dated a hairdresser from Portland, whose first name was Kathy, and said that Kathy came to Seattle on weekends to make extra money. He only dated her one time. Ridgway did tell police that he had driven on Star Lake Road and that he was currently driving a 1977 brown Ford pickup with an eight-foot camper on it and owned a brown 1973 Plymouth Satellite four-door as well.

On May 7, 1984, Ridgway took a polygraph examination administered by Norm Matzke of the King County Police Department, who reported to Detective Mullinax that Ridgway had successfully passed the test. Based on both Detective Mullinax’s follow-up investigation through May 1984 and the results of the polygraph, Ridgway was considered to be cleared as a possible Green River suspect.

On November 29, 1984, Rebecca Garde Guay telephoned the Green River Murders Task Force to report that while she was working as a prostitute in November 1982, she had been the victim of a violent assault. Her report was investigated by Detective Ralf McAllister of the Green River Murders Task Force and resulted in the identification of Gary Ridgway as the perpetrator of the assault on Rebecca Guay. In 1986, Guay provided police with the following detailed account of the assault.

On November 9, 1982, she was approached by Gary Ridgway, driving his maroon-colored Dodge pickup with the black canopy over the
bed, at South 200th and Pacific Highway South while she was hitchhiking and standing at a bus stop. She said that Ridgway told her he had been arrested in a vice operation and that his son was being taken away by the court and he felt that everyone was out to get him that day. After agreeing to a twenty-dollar car date, Guay said she directed Ridgway to the area of South 240th off Pacific Highway South.

After stopping the truck, Ridgway, whom Guay described as wearing shorts, knee-high socks, and tennis shoes, told her that he wanted her to walk into the woods for the date and led the way into the woods and up a steep incline with Guay following several yards behind him. When she reached the area where Ridgway was standing, she noticed that he was partially undressed, his shorts down around his ankles, and naked from the waist down. There was very low light in the area, Guay said, because of the density of the trees and the time of day. She dropped to her knees in front of Ridgway, keeping her clothing on the whole time, and began the act of oral sex. However, at no time did she notice that Ridgway got an erection.

A short time later Ridgway began yelling at Guay, “You bitch, you bit my cock.” She told police that at no time did she bite Ridgway. But as he pushed her back away from him, he turned her around, placed his arm around the front of her neck in a police-type choke hold, and forced her to the ground, facedown. He released the choke hold with his arm and immediately placed his hands around the back of her neck, choking her.

As the struggle continued, Guay managed to turn over onto her back, facing Ridgway, while he continued to choke her, his hands now placed around the front of her neck. She said at this time there was no doubt in her mind that he was going to kill her. Because he had a tight hold on her, she was unable to scream; however, she managed to plead for her life, asking him why he was trying to kill her. She said there were only her mother and her. It was at this time, she told police, that Ridgway loosened his hold and sat back slightly, which allowed her to seize the opportunity to break free and escape.

As she fled, she said to police, she believed that Ridgway’s shorts were still around his ankles and that it seemed as if Ridgway was standing there in a “daze” as she ran away from him. She said she went to a nearby mobile home in a trailer park. She has never seen Ridgway again since this incident. Although she admitted she was involved in prostitution during the period when the alleged assault
took place, police found no arrests for prostitution-related activities.