SEATTLE – A year and a half after Green River killer Gary Ridgway admitted to 48 murders, investigators are issuing a new call for the public’s help to identify four of the victims.

“We’re no closer to identifying these bones than when we started,” said Tom Jensen, a veteran investigator on the Green River cases. “We’re just drawing a blank. We’ve done I don’t know how many DNA tests, and nobody is matching these bones. We’re grasping at straws here.”

Investigators are asking anyone with information on missing women in King County in the 1970s and 1980s to call them.

Ridgway was arrested in late 2001 based on DNA evidence. He is serving life in prison without parole after pleading guilty in November 2003, and in return, he avoided the death penalty and agreed to cooperate with investigators.

Although Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 killings, he once said he had killed as many as 71 women, according to interview transcripts released last year.

Associated Press

Malaga: Second pot field discovered

Authorities have discovered the second large marijuana field in less than a week near here.

The 4,400 plants seized Monday also appear connected to four similar grow operations in Douglas and Chelan counties, and may be connected to a criminal network based in California, Chelan County Sheriff Mike Harum said.

Harum said local drug officers had information pointing to two large marijuana plantations in southern Chelan County before a Civil Air Patrol plane spotted the first field last week.

Harum said he found the other marijuana field about 10 miles south of Wenatchee while scanning the area in a helicopter Monday morning.

Associated Press

Idaho: Biologist calls for breaching dams

An Idaho biologist who argued for a quarter century that fish ladders were good enough to prevent salmon from dying out now says four dams on the Snake River in Washington state ought to be removed to help the endangered fish.

Don Chapman, 74, wants to get rid of the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite dams, located between the Idaho border and where the Snake River flows into the Columbia River. They produce an average of 1,239 megawatts of power, enough to light Seattle, and have allowed barge shipping of grain and other goods from Lewiston to Portland since they were built, starting in 1962.

Chapman for years worked as a consultant for electric utilities, arguing that man-made fish bypass systems on the dams such as ladders and barges were enough to keep salmon populations viable. He said he now believes that warming of the Columbia River and its tributaries and changes in the Pacific Ocean that may be caused by global warming necessitate breaching of barriers to help fish migrate upstream.

Associated Press

B.C.: Whistler’s mayor moving to Hawaii

The mayor of the resort town and key site for the 2010 Winter Olympics says he needs a mid-life change from the mountains and snow.

Whistler, B.C., Mayor Hugh O’Reilly, staring at his 50th birthday next month, announced Tuesday that he’s moving to Hawaii to sell real estate.

O’Reilly won’t run for re-election in November. Instead, “he will be completing the rest of this term, either telecommuting or commuting to council meetings from his new home in Hawaii,” the city said in a news release.

Whistler is a resort community about 75 miles north of Vancouver.

Associated Press