The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (94 page)

Ridgway had a new roof placed on his house on or around December 17, 1983, the same period of time Lisa Yates disappeared. He distinctly recalled picking up and killing a woman on the day the roof was being worked on. After picking up the woman, he drove her to the house, but the workers were still there. He then took her to the Levitz parking lot near the Southcenter Mall and strangled her in the back of his truck. Though this murder would have occurred close in time to when Lisa disappeared, Ridgway equivocated on whether Lisa Yates could be this victim.

Ridgway was taken to Exit 38 while being interviewed by the task force in 2003. Initially, he had difficulty pointing out the precise locations where he placed his victims. He accurately recalled that Delise Plager was on the other side of the street from Lisa Yates. The Exit 38 road bridges a stream near the dump sites, and he also accurately recalled that the women were left on different sides of the bridge.

Sixteen-year-old Mary West worked as a prostitute in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, along Aurora Avenue North and in downtown Seattle. On February 6, 1984, around 11:30
A.M.,
Mary left her aunt’s house, located several blocks west of Rainier Avenue. She was last seen a few hours later on Rainier Avenue. Mary had been punctual in her comings and goings, and her aunt reported her missing to the police two days later on February 8, 1984. Over a year and a half later, on September 8, 1985, a teacher on a field trip found Mary’s skull in Seward Park. A later search recovered her entire skeleton, which was lying near the base of a large fir tree. No clothing or other items were found with the body.

During interviews in 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Mary West. He remembered that she was black and under 20 years old. When shown her photograph, he acknowledged that she looked “familiar.” Ridgway said he believed he killed Mary on a weekday in the morning. He claimed not to remember where he picked Mary up but speculated it would have been in the Rainier Valley area.

Ridgway had been to Seward Park before. He told investigators in 2003 that he “figured [it was] a good place to have a date and kill a woman.” According to Ridgway, he and Mary walked up a trail and put down a blanket. Ridgway claimed that he killed Mary after having sex with her. He said he distracted her by suggesting that a car was coming and, when she raised her head, he grabbed her neck and strangled her. When she fought him, he told her that if she would stop fighting he would let her go. Ridgway said she continued to struggle and that he had scratches on his back after killing her. When she was dead, he said, he pulled her farther into the park and covered her body with debris. He took her clothes and jewelry and later disposed of them.

In 2003, Ridgway was able to direct the task force to Seward Park and, while in a van, correctly pointed out the area where Mary West’s body had been found.

In March 1984, 17-year-old Cindy Smith called her mother from California and told her she wanted to come home to Seattle. Cindy grew up in Seattle but had recently moved to California with a boyfriend. For the past couple of years, Cindy had been involved in topless dancing and prostitution. When she called her mother, she told her that she was ready to get away from the boyfriend and the life they had been leading. Her mother immediately arranged for an airline ticket, and Cindy flew home a few days later.

Cindy spent her first few hours in Seattle, with her family. Around eleven
A.M.
on March 13, 1984, Cindy left her parents’ home in Des Moines and headed toward Pacific Highway South. According to her family, Cindy intended to go to Seattle and visit her sister or apply for
a job at one of the topless dance establishments located along Pacific Highway South. She disappeared that day and was never seen again. Ridgway did not begin work until four
P.M.
on March 13, 1984.

On June 27, 1987, two children were playing in a ditch alongside SE 312th Way. This roadway is a turn-off from Highway 18 leading to the Green River Community College campus. They began exploring a pile of garbage and debris. Using a stick, they poked at the garbage pile and out rolled a human skull.

Task force detectives quickly located the remainder of the skeleton under the pile of garbage. A piece of old wood, likely from a door, had been placed over the body, shielding it both from the elements and scavenging animals. The investigation revealed that the victim was naked with the exception of a piece of material later determined to have been a tube top that was wrapped around the clavicle area. The medical examiner quickly identified the remains as those of missing person Cindy Ann Smith.

Like most of his murders, Cindy’s case remained unsolved until June 2003 when Ridgway began talking to detectives about his crimes. Although Ridgway claimed not to recall the specifics surrounding Cindy Smith’s murder, he was insistent that he had killed her and described the dump site. Ridgway stated that he placed her off a small road that exited to the left from Highway 18, near the community college. Ridgway also recalled that he placed the body very close to the road and that he covered it with some debris he found at the site. Ridgway correctly recalled that one piece of debris was “a piece of wood.” He expressed surprise that it took three years to find Smith; he expected since she was close to the road she would be found quickly. In fact, Ridgway considered his placement of this body a “mistake”: he should have put her farther out so she would not have been found at all.

During one of the many trips taken with Ridgway, detectives asked him to show them where he left Cindy’s body. Ridgway was unable to direct detectives to the correct location, and was unable to find the exit he used the night he dumped the body. In fact, the exit that Ridgway took to gain access to SE 312th no longer exists, and the area has changed significantly. When shown aerial photos from 1984 depicting Highway 18, Ridgway quickly pointed to the exit he had taken to access SE 312th.

Ridgway was also shown photos of the scene where Cindy was
found. He was not told the location, but rather asked if he recognized what was depicted in the photographs. Ridgway correctly identified the photographs as the location where he’d placed her body.

In 2003, while discussing Cindy Smith, Ridgway also disclosed that he’d placed another victim nearby. He referred to this victim as “SIR [Seattle International Raceway] Lady.” Ridgway considered this body and Cindy Smith’s a sort of “cluster,” which was his word for a dump site with numerous bodies, because the two were less than a half-mile apart. Ridgway believed that this woman’s body had not been found. Ridgway claimed that he placed her body in the area “where people take shortcuts into ‘SIR’” and that he expected she would be found. Ridgway was shown a historical aerial photograph that depicts the Seattle International Raceway. He pointed to a spot where he left the woman he killed. The area identified by Ridgway was the location where the remains of Patricia Barczak had been found in 1993.

Nineteen-year-old Patricia Barczak had disappeared on October 17, 1986, several years after the Green River Killer had purportedly stopped killing. She had been staying at the Airporter Motel on Pacific Highway South, went out to engage in prostitution, and never returned. She had dark brown hair and was slightly overweight. Ridgway began working the swing shift at Kenworth in October 1986 and did not report to work until late afternoon on October 17, 1986.

Six and a half years after Patricia’s disappearance, in February 1993, a road worker found her skull just off Highway 18 between milepost 8 and 9. This area was commonly used by people sneaking into the Seattle International Raceway. Ridgway incorrectly thought that he killed Patricia prior to 1985 and that she was either black or “black-haired.” He correctly recalled that she was approximately 20 years old and a little bit overweight. Ridgway further remembered that he killed Cindy Smith prior to killing Patricia.

On Tuesday, August 4, 1998, at approximately 1:30
P.M.,
the owner of a South Park, King County, business, “All City Wrecking,” located
at 9328 Des Moines Way South, closed his office and locked the fence surrounding the wrecking yard. He returned on the morning of Thursday, August 6, 1998, and discovered the body of Patricia Yellowrobe lying just outside the fence on the east side of the tow yard, in a gravel parking lot west of an entrance ramp to the southbound lanes of Highway 99. Patricia had a history of prostitution and chronic alcohol abuse. Her body lay at the edge of the parking lot, near some tall bushes. It was fully clothed, in a bra, T-shirt, underpants, jeans, socks, and boots.

An autopsy was performed at the Office of the King County Medical Examiner. No evidence of significant injury was found. No spermatozoa were seen on vaginal, anal, or oral swabs. High levels of alcohol and controlled substances were found in the blood. Patricia’s vaginal swab and pubic hair were subjected to DNA typing at the Washington State Police Crime Lab. The vaginal swab showed a low amount of semen that was insufficient to obtain a profile. A partial male profile was developed from the pubic hair; Ridgway can be excluded as a source of this DNA profile.

The autopsy report concluded: “The cause of death is acute combined opiate and ethanol intoxication. The circumstances scene investigation and postmortem examination, which did not reveal evidence of significant injury, indicates that the manner of death is probable accident.”

Because Patricia was believed dead from an accidental drug overdose, and because she died in 1998, she was never considered a Green River victim. No documents, photographs, or other material on her death were ever provided to Ridgway or his attorneys before he began discussing his victims with investigators.

However, during interviews in 2003, Ridgway confessed to killing Patricia and leaving her body at that location. His admissions came slowly, but, in the end, he provided details to investigators that only the killer would have known.

His statements concerning this homicide unfolded as follows:

On June 26, 2003, Ridgway said he never killed anyone in South Park, the neighborhood where Patricia’s body was discovered.

On July 3, 2003, Ridgway said that he had not killed or even hurt any of the prostitutes he dated in the 1990s.

On July 7, 2003, Ridgway said “I don’t think I killed anybody in South Park.”

On July 9, 2003, detectives took Ridgway to various sites in King County where they had found bodies associated with the Green River Killer, and others, like South Park, where they had not. Their motive was, in part, to determine whether Ridgway could recall sites where he had dumped bodies some 20 years before. Some of the sites visited were considered “false sites,” where no homicide victim had been found, to test Ridgway’s veracity. Investigators chose a South Park site as one of the “false sites,” even though the victim of an apparent drug overdose had been found at that location in 1998.

The scene had changed dramatically because new buildings had been erected. While at that location, Ridgway told detectives that he had dated nearby, but only once, and that he had never assaulted anyone at that location. At the other “false” locations, Ridgway maintained that he had not left any bodies there.

Then, on July 22, 2003, toward the end of a lengthy interview session that ranged over a number of topics having nothing to do with South Park, the following exchange took place between Ridgway and a detective:

DETECTIVE:  What else? There anything else I should talk to you about?

GR:  I, ah, promised I wouldn’t lie but … and I … it …

DETECTIVE:  You know, if you told me a lie, I don’t care.

GR:  I … I know.

DETECTIVE:  I just wanna know the truth.

GR:  I thought and thought about that site at South Park, and I told you I’d never been there before and everything, you know, you got it on tape.

Ridgway recounted a vague memory of killing a woman in South Park. He said he was not certain that he had murdered someone there, but he had been thinking about the murder, and it had been “bugging” him for days. The memory, he said, involved killing a black woman after struggling with her on the ground at “a site next to the freeway that was, ah, surrounded by blackberry bushes, and a road going in and it was like a U-turn.” This describes the site where Patricia’s body was found. Highway 99 is a divided freeway at that location.

Ridgway said he could not recall whether she was naked or
clothed, which was unusual since most of his victims were unclothed when he dumped them. He said he could not recall what vehicle he had driven to the spot, or the decade in which the murder took place. He said he believed that she “seemed to be pretty easy” to kill.

Ridgway told detectives that he thought he remembered “a lot of glass on the ground” where he struggled with the woman. Crime scene photographs taken of the parking lot where the body was found depict numerous glass fragments. Detectives did not ask Ridgway any questions about this incident during the following week. On July 30, 2003, a forensic psychologist interviewing Ridgway was addressing the issue of Ridgway’s last victim when the following exchange took place:

DOCTOR:  So who … all right. Who was next after her?

GR:  Uh, I vaguely remember uh, killing a woman over in South Park.

DOCTOR:  Where … and tell me again. In South Park? That doesn’t mean anything to me.

GR:  Uh. South … is a South Park and uh, right next to the freeway I … first thought I’d … I killed her and she was naked. But I’ve been thinking about it. And I think I was havin’ sex with her in the back of the truck and um, was ready to … Uh, walked out to the passenger side to, to um, open the door for her. And I didn’t wanna pay for the sex. And uh, I choked her. And she was fully clothed, I think. And I don’t remember if she uh … one of the women uh, when I choked her, she wet her pants. But I don’t know if that one was the one or not.