SEATTLE — A few days before a film based on Dave Reichert’s pursuit of the Green River killer debuts on TV, the former King County sheriff was ambivalent about the exposure the movie would bring to his career.
Now a Republican congressman representing Washington’s 8th District, the 58-year-old Reichert told a Seattle newspaper he didn’t jump at a chance to sell the rights to his 2004 book, “Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer.”
“I really struggled with even agreeing to do it,” he said in a recent interview. He worried how a movie, with its artistic license, would tell such a personal, complex and horrific story, which culminated with Ridgway pleading guilty to killing 48 women and girls.
Reichert had little to do with the movie until after it was finished, when he screened it and met the actor who played him — Tom Cavanagh of “Ed” and “Scrubs.” Much of the money he received for selling rights to his book went to charity.
“When they started to do this thing, I said, ‘Look, there’s two things I want you to focus on: The victims, and the fact that we need to take care and love our kids, and prevent them from getting on the street. And secondly, that it was a team effort.’ “
“The Capture of the Green River Killer,” a two-part series airs on the Lifetime Movie Network tonight and Monday night. Reichert says the movie achieves his stated goals with mixed success.
It shows him doing nearly all the heavy lifting of the investigation: squinting at crime scenes, poring over files, interviewing creeps and getting the light-bulb moment after an invented scene involving Ridgway calling Reichert’s house and hanging up.
“It comes across as if I had all the brilliant ideas,” Reichert said. “But I just want to make it very clear there were a lot of other people involved in this investigation.”
He understood the movie’s need for a “hero,” whom he views as a composite of people. But he was so worried about slighting his former colleagues that he called some to explain his feelings.
The film’s biggest departure from the book is a fictional story of two teenage girls, one of whom flees an abusive home and becomes a prostitute — a sympathetic story line meant to honor Ridgway’s victims, said executive producer Stanley Brooks.
The movie also shows the investigation’s toll on Reichert’s wife, kids and faith, drawing a portrait of him as loving, driven and a very Christian cop.
“All these women are helpless, so it’s up to me to help God by stopping the bad guy who’s hurting them,” his character tells his young daughter in one scene. Reichert said it was difficult to watch parts of the movie, which he said well depicted the frustration and dedication of detectives.
“When you watch someone up there who is using your name, and it’s such an emotional experience — I mean, people are dying, and your job is to find the person who is taking the lives of innocent, young women — it’s emotional, because you relive those moments,” he said.
He found the hardest thing to watch was the use of the real names and faces of Ridgway’s victims, shown throughout the movie.
“I can’t look at those faces,” he said. “I have to look away.”
Those who lived the 21-year investigation, which began when five bodies were found in the Green River in 1982, may find other issues.
Now-retired police chief Fae Brooks, who cycled in and out of the Green River task force, is Reichert’s constant companion in the movie.
Former King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng becomes a hard-edged woman outraged at a deal sparing Ridgway’s life in exchange for information. Maleng, who has since passed away, supported the deal after some initial reluctance, Reichert said.
Randy Mullinax, the detective who arrested Ridgway, gets a slight mention, but Tom Jensen, the detective who submitted the DNA evidence in 2001 that nailed the killer, is not mentioned.
“No one individual should be patting themselves on the back,” said Jensen, who joined the Green River task force in 1984 and was the lone detective toward the end. He has since retired.
He said Reichert’s call to him went a long way. “I really did appreciate that,” he said.
John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County Sheriff’s Office and Reichert’s spokesman for many years, said it was a “shame” the film neglects the work of so many detectives, for whom Ridgway’s arrest was a life-defining moment.
“You need to keep in mind that this was the worst serial killer in the U.S.,” said Urquhart, who had not seen the movie. “There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears that detectives put into this, from Reichert all the way down. The movie doesn’t accurately portray that.”
Then again, the movie also has a character who disappears and comes back, dressed in angelic white, for lots of imaginary talks about God and fate. That probably didn’t really happen either.
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