The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (90 page)

Ridgway said the woman he killed and left there was white even though Cheryl was a light-skinned African American, but he was unable to remember anything specific about her. As with virtually all the victims, Ridgway claimed not to recognize Cheryl’s photograph. He explained that, after killing 60 women, he could not describe her. He had a better memory for garbage that he noticed strewn along the road while walking with his victim than for the woman he’d killed.

In the fall of 2003, Microtrace reported that paint fragments recovered with Cheryl’s remains are indistinguishable, even after multiple analyses, from paint recovered with the remains of Delores Williams and Tina Thompson, who disappeared in July 1983 and was found at Highway 18.

On December 24, 1982, 15-year-old Colleen Brockman, a frequent runaway involved in prostitution, made plans to meet an acquaintance near the Greyhound bus depot in downtown Seattle. Colleen and her friend had checked into a motel in downtown Seattle the night before. They had last spoken to each other around nine
A.M.
on Christmas Eve and had planned to meet around noon. She never showed.

A year and a half later, on May 26, 1984, three youths found Colleen’s remains in north Pierce County about 10 yards north from Jovita Boulevard in thick undergrowth. The remains were between the boulevard and a creek that paralleled the road. Also near Colleen’s body was a ditch that carried water from a culvert that passed underneath Jovita Boulevard. A piece of broken concrete culvert, approximately 24 inches in diameter and three feet long, was nearby. The King County Medical Examiner confirmed Colleen’s identity through dental records. Her braces were still on her teeth.

In 2003, Ridgway admitted he killed a 16-year-old girl in Seattle around Christmas and dumped her body near Jovita Boulevard. He incorrectly identified the year, saying he believed he killed her in 1983 when it was actually Christmas Eve, 1982. Ridgway recalled that Colleen was white, and that she had about $20 on her. Detectives showed Ridgway a photo of Colleen, and he said he remembered the face and was 80 to 90 percent certain that it was the girl whom he killed and dumped near Jovita Boulevard. He said he could not recall whether she wore braces.

Ridgway said he picked up Colleen in downtown Seattle, north of Chinatown, and killed her in the back of his truck. He remembered that as he strangled her, she begged for her life. He told her, “Don’t fight. I’m not gonna … I’ll let you go.” Then he put his foot into her neck and finished killing her.

Ridgway said he drove to Jovita Boulevard, parked, and pulled the body 20 feet off the road. He recalled the culvert passing under Jovita Boulevard and described it as 24-inch “tunnel.”

In June 2003, Ridgway led detectives to the Jovita Boulevard site. According to detectives accompanying him on this trip, Ridgway
was able to direct them to within 150 feet of where Colleen’s remains were found.

On December 14, 1983, a man walking along Mountainview Drive made a frightening find: a human skull lying along the shoulder of the road. Beneath the skull was a pile of leaves, yet none covered the top, suggesting that the skull had only recently come to be in that location. The man called police. An extensive investigation followed resulting in the identification of the victim as Kimi-Kai Pitsor.

Eight months earlier, in April 1983, 16-year-old Kimi-Kai disappeared. She was last known to have been in the downtown Seattle area with her boyfriend. According to the boyfriend’s statement to police, he and Kimi-Kai had a disagreement over their relationship, and she ran off and jumped into an older green Ford pickup truck. The boyfriend hinted that Kimi-Kai was intending to engage in prostitution with the driver of the truck. He waited in the area for her to return but she was never seen again.

After her skull was found, task force detectives were dispatched to the scene, determined that the skull was found some two feet inside the King County line, and assumed responsibility for the case. By that time—December 1983—the local law enforcement agencies were fully aware that a serial killer was working in the area, targeting prostitutes and leaving their bodies in remote outdoor areas. Despite a further search of the area, no additional bones were found.

Two years later, in December 1985, the rest of Kimi-Kai’s remains were discovered, along with the remains of two other victims, in a dump site down a steep slope across from Mountainview Cemetery. Kimi-Kai’s case was added to a growing number of victims of the Green River Killer.

Her case was different, however, because there was a potential witness. Kimi-Kai’s boyfriend might have seen the killer, and provided detectives with a description of the man last seen with her. In 1987, when task force detectives began focusing on Ridgway as a
suspect, the boyfriend was shown a photographic montage that included Ridgway’s photograph. With some uncertainty, the boyfriend identified Ridgway as the man driving the pickup truck. However, he qualified his identification: he was not “one thousand percent” sure. Moreover, none of Ridgway’s trucks matched the description of the truck seen by the boyfriend.

In June 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Kimi-Kai. He said that he had picked her up in his girlfriend’s truck. Ridgway’s girlfriend at the time owned a light green 1970s Ford pickup truck with a silver canopy. Ridgway had a fairly clear memory of the events surrounding the murder of Kimi-Kai. On the night he killed her, Ridgway said, he was frustrated because he had a strong desire to kill a woman and “couldn’t find one.” When he spotted Kimi-Kai, he also saw her boyfriend. Ridgway said he was so desperate for a kill that he broke his cardinal rule: never pick up a victim in the presence of a witness. Ridgway said he drove around the corner, and, as he hoped, Kimi-Kai came to his truck. He said she agreed to date him at his house in south Seattle after he promised her he would drive her back downtown after the date. This, of course, was a hollow promise.

There’s no way I’m going to waste my time having sex with her, pay her $40, or $30 or $60 or whatever. And then drive her all the way back into Seattle. That’s something I wouldn’t do. I would get her there and kill her. I’m not going to waste my money driving all the way back.

True to his priorities, Ridgway said he had sex with Kimi-Kai, killer her, put her body in the truck, drove to Mountainview Cemetery, and dumped her body.

Ridgway provided conflicting explanations for the discovery of Kimi-Kai’s skull by the side of the road in December 1983. First, Ridgway suggested that he picked up her skull intending to take it to Oregon with the remains of Denise Bush and Shirley Sherrill. While retrieving Kimi-Kai’s skull, Ridgway said he dropped it and could not find it in the dark. However, in later interviews, Ridgway acknowledged that he had not intended to take the skull to Oregon, but that he had moved it simply to “throw off” the police. After retrieving the skull, he said, he accidentally dropped it while making
his way back up the steep hillside. When he tried to locate the skull, his flashlight batteries died. Although he felt around on the ground, he could not find the skull. Eventually, Ridgway said, he gave up the effort and left.

Questioned further about his motives for moving the skull, Ridgway explained that if the skull was found in a place like someone’s yard, the task force would waste time and manpower searching the area for the remaining missing bones. “[T]hey’ll waste all kind of man hours thinking the rest of the body’s in there.”

On December 30, 1985, two years after Kimi-Kai’s skull was found, task force detectives returned to Mountainview Drive, where a car had gone off the road and down a steep embankment several hundred yards from the place where Kimi-Kai’s skull had been found. Two men employed at the cemetery went down to look at the wrecked car and discovered what appeared to be human bones. When the task force detectives arrived, they immediately realized that this was another dump site. The bones found by the cemetery workers were obviously not those of Kimi-Kai Pitsor because they found another skull, indicating that they had located the remains of another person.

For the next week, detectives scoured the hillside in search of further evidence. When the search was over, they had found a total of three sets of skeletal remains. One of the remains proved by radiographic examination to be the rest of Kimi-Kai Pitsor. The other two bodies, despite extensive efforts, remain unidentified. They have been designated Jane Doe “B16” and Jane Doe “B17.”

Although these skeletal remains have not been identified, both were young women. A forensic anthropologist’s examination revealed that Jane Doe “B16” was an African American woman between the age of 20 and 25. She was approximately 5 foot 1 inch to 5 foot 4 inches tall. Her body had been placed along a large fallen log.

Some 40 to 50 feet uphill east from Jane Doe “B16” were the remains of Jane Doe “B17.” She was lying at the foot of a very large rotten stump on the peak of a ridge. The forensic anthropologist concluded that she was a Caucasian, between 5 foot 4 inches and 5 foot 8 inches tall. She was between 14 and 17 years old.

Two hundred and fifty yards to the west of these two young women, detectives found the remains of Kimi-Kai Pitsor. She was located about 100 yards from Mountainview Drive and approximately 100 yards from where her skull was found.

Over the course of the next 15 years, numerous attempts were made to identify the two young women found along Mountainview Drive. Leads relating to Kimi-Kai’s disappearance were likewise investigated but never led any further than the tentative identification of defendant Ridgway. The cases remained open, but “cold.”

In 2003, Ridgway admitted murdering Kimi-Kai Pitsor and dumping her at the Mountainview site. When he was questioned about the other two unidentified remains, he claimed that he could not recall any specifics about them other than to say that he thought he killed one of the women before Kimi-Kai and one after her. Ridgway said that he staggered their bodies along the hillside, which was consistent with the way the remains were found.

Ridgway was asked why and how he chose the Mountainview site. He said that he drove up the road and thought, “There’s a fantastic bank and trees. Just an excellent place to dump a woman and I can see ahead when I drop her off.” According to his ex-wife, Ridgway knew the road well. During their marriage the couple lived in the Twin Lakes area, and Ridgway drove past the cemetery on his way to work at the Kenworth plant.

Investigators asked Ridgway to direct them to the location where he placed the bodies at Mountainview. Ridgway did so and identified the precise location where investigators had found the three sets of remains. Ridgway correctly recalled that he placed two of the bodies closer together and a third some distance away.

In April 1983, 18-year-old Marie Malvar lived in Des Moines, King County. On April 30, 1983, she went out to Pacific Highway South to work as a prostitute. Marie’s boyfriend saw her get into a dark-colored pickup truck, occupied by a single adult male driver, at a bus stop near a 7-Eleven at South 216th and Pacific Highway South. After Marie got into the truck, the boyfriend got in his car and followed the truck as it traveled northbound on Pacific Highway South. The truck pulled over into a motel parking lot, turned around,
and headed southbound on Pacific Highway South. The truck then turned left going eastbound onto South 216th. The boyfriend lost track of the truck at that intersection. Marie was never seen again.

The intersection at South 216th and Pacific Highway South where her boyfriend last saw Marie is exactly where, just a few weeks earlier, on April 8, Gail Mathews’s boyfriend saw her for the last time. Exactly like Marie, Gail was in a pickup truck heading eastbound on South 216th.

At the time, Ridgway lived one block south of South 216th, off of Military Road. Military Road is east of Pacific Highway South. Ridgway lived a little more than half a mile from the intersection where Gail and Marie were last seen, and South 216th is the most direct route to Ridgway’s house from that section of Pacific Highway South.

Three days later, on May 3, 1983, Marie’s boyfriend reported to the Des Moines Police Department that she was missing. Initially, he lied to police, reporting that he had last seen Marie at their residence and that she was on her way to a phone booth on Pacific Highway South. The next day, on May 4, 1983, the boyfriend admitted that he knew Marie was working as a prostitute and that he last saw her being picked up by a trick. He described the trick as a 42-year-old Mexican or Indian male driving a black pickup truck. Later that day, the boyfriend returned to the police station and reported that he had searched the neighborhoods around South 216th and Pacific Highway South and thought he had found the truck that Marie had entered. The truck was Ridgway’s maroon 1975 Dodge pickup. When Marie’s boyfriend saw the truck, it was parked outside Ridgway’s house at 21859 32nd Place South.

Two Des Moines detectives went to Ridgway’s residence that day, noticed Ridgway’s Dodge pickup in the driveway, and contacted him. He admitted that he had been arrested for picking up prostitutes in the past, but denied picking up Marie. He also claimed that he had been unemployed for the last year (he was actually on strike from Kenworth).

Several weeks later, on May 27, 1983, an airport worker discovered Marie’s driver’s license at the Sea-Tac Airport. In the years following Marie’s disappearance, as in the cases of many of Ridgway’s other victims, there were many reported sightings of her. Tips came in that Marie had moved to Hawaii and dyed her hair
blonde or that she was working in Hollywood. In February 1985, her family reported that they had heard the rumors that she was in Hollywood, Long Beach, or Tacoma and expressed their belief that she was still alive. In 1986, one tipster claimed to have been with one of Marie’s brothers when Marie had called from California.