The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (91 page)

Despite investigation, none of these tips were ever confirmed. Marie’s boyfriend later provided several statements concerning Marie’s last day, and even underwent hypnosis by a psychiatrist retained by the task force in an effort to recall additional details about the man in the truck. None of the later descriptions or details provided any further connection to Ridgway.

In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Marie. He said he picked her up, drove her to his house, and killed her there. Ridgway said that Marie fought him, scratching him badly on his inner left arm. Ridgway recalled that he was worried about the scratches when the Des Moines detectives came to his house on May 4, 1983. He said he stood against the fence in his yard to conceal them from the police. Ridgway later attempted to disguise the scratches by burning his arm with battery acid; those scars are still visible today. Ridgway had first claimed that he received the scar from some pimps, but quickly retracted this lie. Ridgway admitted taking Marie’s driver’s license and putting it on the floor in the airport. He said he did so to make it look like she left the state.

Ridgway claimed he dumped Marie’s body on the same day he killed her. He had planned to place her body near Mountainview Cemetery and was on his way there when he saw an area that looked like a good place to dump a body. He left Marie’s body in a wooded ravine near 65th Avenue South in Auburn. Ridgway said he parked his truck, pulled Marie’s body out, re-parked the truck a short distance away, and pulled her body 20 to 30 feet into the ravine.

After the Des Moines detectives’ visit to his house on May 4, 1983, Ridgway said, he went back to the site to bury Marie’s body. He spent about three hours unsuccessfully looking for her. He then planted leaflets from airport motels around the area, so that, Ridgway explained, if the body was found, the task force might think that someone like a traveling salesman was involved in the murder.

Ridgway never again returned to the site because soon thereafter he saw a co-worker driving in that area and learned that the co-worker
resided nearby. He insisted that he did not put any more bodies in this area because he knew, after the Des Moines detectives’ visit, that he was linked, however tenuously, to Marie Malvar’s disappearance.

Task force detectives spent several days searching the area identified by Ridgway. On September 28 and 29, 2003, they recovered more than 60 human bones, including the skull and mandible. A ligature was found with the bones. Dental records confirmed the remains were those of Marie Malvar. The ligature appeared to be a woman’s pantyhose; it was found near several neck vertebrae.

In the early 1980s, the task force discovered the bodies of three women along a short, rural stretch of Highway 410. Investigators soon realized that they had discovered another dump site. Several years later, after the Green River Killer had purportedly stopped killing, the bodies of more women were found along the same stretch of roadway. Investigators now realize Ridgway did not stop in 1984, and he did not stop using Highway 410 as his dumping ground. In fact, he continued to use Highway 410 after that dump site was discovered. Ridgway has admitted killing two women, never attributed to the Green River Killer, one in 1987 and one in 1990, and placing their bodies along Highway 410.

In August 2003, Ridgway led the task force to an area along Highway 410 where they recovered the remains of an original Green River “missing” victim, Pammy Avent. She had disappeared in 1983.

Highway 410 generally runs in an east/west direction between the cities of Tacoma and Yakima, Washington. A 16-mile stretch of the highway runs through King County between the towns of Enumclaw and Greenwater, beginning at milepost 26, just east of the Enumclaw city limits, and ending at milepost 42, just west of Greenwater. The terrain along this stretch of highway is hilly and heavily wooded, alternating between thick underbrush and large evergreen and deciduous forests. A well-developed gravel road known as the Weyerhaeuser Mainline runs just south and parallel to this entire 16-mile stretch of 410. The White River runs south and parallel to the Weyerhaeuser Mainline and serves as the border between King and Pierce Counties up to the town of Greenwater.
Dozens of gravel and dirt logging roads spur off of the highway and the Weyerhaeuser Mainline.

Ridgway was extremely familiar with this 16-mile stretch of Highway 410. During interviews with the task force in 1987, Ridgway’s second wife told detectives that Ridgway regularly traveled Highway 410 between Enumclaw and Greenwater. She and Ridgway camped in the Greenwater area many times. Ridgway later confirmed his familiarity with Highway 410. He told detectives that he could remember freely traveling the forest access roads, roads that were later blocked when he returned to the sites. Ridgway also stated that he and his third wife camped in the Greenwater area throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2003, before the task force interviewed him, Ridgway prepared several documents that purported to detail the victims he left along Highway 410. Ridgway listed eight victims at different locations on this map. All but one of these victims was placed along the southern edge of Highway 410, between the highway and the Weyerhaeuser Mainline.

Once the task force began interviewing Ridgway, he provided additional details about killing and dumping as many as 11 victims along Highway 410. He was taken on many trips to point out the actual dump sites of the victims that had already been found and to locate missing remains. To date, the remains of six women murdered by Gary Ridgway have been recovered from Highway 410: Martina Authorlee, Debbie Abernathy, Mary Bello, Pammy Advent, Robert Hayes, and Marta Reeves.

Eighteen-year-old Martina Authorlee, who had run away from home when she was 15 into a life of prostitution and who had a troubled childhood that included time in foster homes and several encounters with law enforcement, disappeared on the night of Sunday, May 22, 1983. Earlier that month, police arrested Martina for prostitution in downtown Seattle. After her arrest, Martina moved into the Moonrise Motel, on Pacific Highway South, in Tukwila. Like victims Terry Milligan and Denise Bush, Martina was living at the Moonrise at the time of her death.

On May 22, 1983, Martina and a fellow prostitute left the Moonrise
Motel to work Pacific Highway South. After working the highway separately for a period of time, her companion last spoke with Martina in front of the “My Place” Tavern sometime between ten
P.M.
and one
A.M.
Martina told her companion that a date was picking her up in 20 minutes. The woman left Martina standing in front of the tavern. Martina was never seen again.

Ridgway did not work on the day of Martina’s disappearance. According to financial records, he was in south King County, selling items at a swap meet.

On November 14, 1984, two elk hunters discovered Martina’s remains just off Highway 410, near milepost 36 on the southern side of the highway just before a curve, near a fallen cedar log.

In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Martina. Although he claimed that he could not identify her or recall any details of her murder, Ridgway accurately described her physical appearance. He remembered that she was African American, 5 foot 7 inches or 5 foot 8 inches and full-figured. He claimed that he picked her up one night between 1982 and 1984, and that he killed her in his house.

Ridgway correctly described the area where Martina was found, having drawn several maps that purported to depict where he dumped victims along Highway 410. On the maps, he described Martina as a “Black Lady” buried next to a log. He wrote that he placed her body at the eastern end of the stretch of highway, very close to a large southeasterly curve in the roadway. His map correctly showed the road, the location of the log in relation to the road, and the correct position of the log and Martina’s body. Ridgway also said that he pulled Martina’s body 60 to 100 feet off of the roadway, over a fallen redwood log that was approximately three feet in diameter. His description not only matched the geographic location of Martina’s remains, he even knew the diameter of the log near her body.

Twenty-six-year-old Debbie May Abernathy moved to Seattle from Texas with her boyfriend and their young son just four weeks prior to her disappearance. During that period of time, Debbie worked as a prostitute, mainly at the corner of 8th and Pike in downtown Seattle. On September 5, 1983, at approximately one
P.M.,
Debbie left her residence near Rainier Avenue,
south of Seattle, to work the downtown area as a prostitute. Her longtime boyfriend never saw her again. On the day of Debbie’s disappearance, Ridgway was off work due to the Labor Day holiday. He gassed up his truck and withdrew cash from an ATM machine that day.

On March 31, 1984, an elk hunter discovered Debbie’s skeletal remains approximately 0.2 miles east of milepost 37 on Highway 410, next to the Weyerhaeuser Mainline, near the White River.

During interviews in 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Debbie. Although Ridgway claimed that he could not identify her, he gave the task force specific details of her dump site. Ridgway told the task force that he carried a victim into the woods from Highway 410 and placed her very close to the Weyerhaeuser Mainline, so close that he could see it. He correctly recalled that Debbie was one of the first women dumped along 410. He said he hoped placing her next to the Weyerhaeuser Mainline would confuse the police into thinking she was a Weyerhaeuser employee.

Although Ridgway struggled to identify the exact location of the dump site when taken to Highway 410, he accurately described a gated entrance nearby that led to the location on Weyerhaeuser Mainline where Debbie was found. He also correctly recalled the terrain between the two roadways. He described the difficulty he had taking her body into the woods. Ridgway admitted that he threw the driver’s license of one of his victims out of his truck window while traveling on Highway 18. Debbie’s Texas driver’s license was found along Highway 18 in 1983.

As with many of his victims, Ridgway claimed to remember little if anything about killing Debbie. When reminded that her disappearance fell on his son’s eighth birthday, Ridgway told the task force that the date had no significance to him. Ridgway admitted that the times and circumstances of his killings were simply motivated by, as he described it, “opportunity.”

Approximately one month after Ridgway killed Debbie Abernathy, he killed Mary Bello and placed her body along that same stretch of Highway 410.

Twenty-five-year-old Mary Bello had lived a troubled life, with
an extensive history of prostitution and drug use. She was known to work as a prostitute along Pacific Highway South. In fact, she had contacted the task force on a number of occasions with information on possible Green River suspects. Thus it was ironic that she never recognized Ridgway as the actual killer until it was too late.

On October 11, 1983, at approximately five
P.M.,
Mary left downtown Seattle to work as a prostitute. She was never heard from again. Ridgway was in south King County on the day of Mary’s disappearance. On October 11, Ridgway worked until 6:35
P.M.
On the day of Mary’s disappearance, Ridgway filled up his truck at the Texaco Gas Station at South 172nd and Pacific Highway South, and withdrew $40 from a cash machine in Sea-Tac at 7:51
P.M.

A year later, on October 12, 1984, a mushroom picker discovered Mary’s skeletal remains approximately 200 feet west of milepost 34 just off Highway 410. The area in which the remains were found was heavily wooded, with large evergreen trees and sparse surface vegetation. The only distinguishing landmark in the area was the milepost.

During interviews, Ridgway claimed that he could not identify Mary. However, he did provide an accurate description of where he left her body. After some initial confusion about the precise mile-post, Ridgway told detectives that milepost 34 brought back memories. He described parking his truck in front of a milepost and pulling a victim into the woods without having to drag the body over a guardrail. He said he then got back into his truck, drove down the road, made a U-turn, and parked the truck on the opposite side of the road, facing west. Then, he said, he returned to the body and dragged it further into the woods. Ridgway’s description matched the dump site where Mary’s body was found.

When taken to the dump site, Ridgway first struggled to identify it. After he was informed that the area had recently been clear-cut, Ridgway suggested that he killed a woman in the early 1980s and pulled her body into the woods down the hill in this location. After reviewing historical photographs depicting the dump site, Ridgway confirmed this statement, telling detectives that after he dumped the woman’s body, he threw her clothes out of his truck window, “as soon as he could.” In the 1980s, the task force recovered a mixed print sundress with small straps, located approximately three miles west of Mary’s dump site.

Mary’s grandfather later told detectives that the dress was similar to the one Mary had worn on the day of her disappearance.

Approximately two weeks after killing Mary Bello and placing her body on Highway 410, Ridgway killed 16-year-old Pammy Avent, and left her body along the same stretch of road. Avent’s remains were not discovered until August 2003, when Ridgway directed task force detectives to them.

Pammy Avent worked as a prostitute in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle. On October 26, 1983, at 7:30
P.M.,
she left her mother’s Rainier Valley home in Seattle to work as a prostitute and was never seen again. Pammy’s mother reported her missing four days later.