Grant will aid Green River inquiry

Associated Press

SEATTLE — A $500,000 federal grant will help King County dust off case files and re-examine DNA evidence in the Green River serial killings investigation, Sheriff Dave Reichert said Friday.

"We have an unprecedented amount of work to do," Reichert said, referring to old case files on all but four women on a list of 49 victims in the serial killings case of the early 1980s.

Sheriff’s deputies last week arrested a truck painter from suburban Auburn in the deaths of four Green River victims. Gary Leon Ridgway was charged this week with aggravated first-degree murder in those deaths.

Now investigators are taking another look at evidence to see if they can link the 52-year-old Ridgway to 45 other women on the list — most of them prostitutes and runaways from the Seattle area killed between 1982 and 1984.

"We have lots and lots of unsolved homicides," sheriff’s spokesman John Urquhart said. "The question becomes which of those cases have DNA evidence. That’s a question I can’t answer. We’re going through all our case files."

Many of the Green River victims were not found until their bodies had decomposed, so DNA evidence won’t be available in all cases.

But because of advances in technology, Reichert said it’s possible that genetic material can be lifted from many more semen samples and other evidence than previously thought.

King County’s grant for DNA testing was included in a Justice Department spending bill President Bush signed in late November after a last-minute request from U.S. Rep. Adam Smith and Sen. Patty Murray, both D-Wash.

King County Executive Ron Sims estimated the overall cost of the Green River killings investigation will range from

$8 million to $12 million over the next two years.

"It’s a very expensive case," Sims said, citing not only the DNA testing, but also the need for expert witnesses and myriad other costs.