By Peggy Andersen
Associated Press
SEATTLE — Triumph was written all over King County Sheriff Dave Reichert’s face as he announced an arrest, finally, that is likely to lead to the first charges ever filed in the so-called Green River killings — the nation’s worst unsolved serial killing with at least 49 victims in the early 1980s.
"I feel absolutely wonderful," he said Saturday. "Sometimes, you almost want to slap your face and say, ‘This is really happening.’ "
His detectives had Gary Leon Ridgway under surveillance for two months before the arrest Friday — since DNA technology advanced to the point that a sample Ridgway submitted under court order in 1987 could be matched with fluids from the bodies of three victims. A fourth victim was linked to those three by other factors.
"Until we took him into custody, everybody was holding their breath, hoping somehow it wasn’t going to fall apart," Reichert recalled in an interview.
When they got word of Ridgway’s arrest for investigation of those four deaths, "a cheer went up. There were a lot of teary eyes, a lot of backslapping and hugging," he said.
"And we’re so happy for the victims’ families in these four cases," said Reichert, who became close to many of the families, serving as pallbearer in one victim’s funeral.
The relatives of the other slain women hope eventually "to share in their relief," he said.
Ridgway, 52, of Auburn, the thrice-married father of an adult son who has worked as a painter for Kenmore Truck Co. since 1969, was being held without bail. Prosecutors say charges must be filed by Wednesday.
Reichert wants more.
"I’m hoping we can get to the point where he might be forced to … sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk with us," Reichert said.
"That’s our next prayer. … We’re going to build this thing so tight he’s not going to have any choice but to face death or make a deal and tell us everything."
Meanwhile, the long dormant Green River task force has roared back into life.
"Today we’ve got about 40 to 50 people out" searching Ridgway’s current and former residences, canvassing neighborhoods, tracking down possible witnesses and following up on a new flurry of tips since the arrest.
There have been 80 to 90 possibly connected slayings since the last official Green River case in 1984, Reichert said. Each case — and every piece of evidence — must be re-examined. Investigators also will be scrutinizing Ridgway’s travels, "his whole timeline, his credit records."
"We’ve got a lot of work to do yet," he said. But it’s being tackled "with renewed energy, I’ll tell you that."
Reichert was the first detective on the case in 1982, when the first body, 24-year-old Debra Bonner, was found in south King County’s Green River.
Three days later, the river surrendered three more young women: Marcia Chapman, 31; Cynthia Hinds, 17; and Opal Mills, 16 — the three linked to Ridgway through DNA. Ridgway also is being investigated in the death of Carol Christensen, 21.
His arrest is "really gratifying for all of us who worked back then," Reichert said.
"We took a lot of heat," he said. "People didn’t have a clue what we were doing, how hard we were working — how close we really were."
He angrily dismissed speculation that the victims’ low status — some were working prostitutes, though others appeared to have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time — made the killings a low priority.
"They were human beings to us. … No one had the right to take their life," said Reichert, who headed the Green River task force for eight years, when his own daughters were growing up.
"All of us could identify with having our daughter being out there and being one of those victims," he said.
In 1984, it appeared the killings stopped.
"We had a number of theories," he said. "That we’d put so much pressure on the highway" — a seamy stretch of Pacific Highway S., where many of the victims were picked up — "that he stopped, that there were so many cops he moved away."
Some speculated "that our killer was probably dead in a mental institution or had been arrested somewhere else … and may start up again somewhere else," Reichert said.
But all were aware he could still be around, perhaps responsible for other unsolved slayings in the region.
The 49 deaths that occurred between July 1982 and March 1984 are linked by the time frame, by the south King County area where so many were taken, by the edgy lifestyle some had chosen.
Pseudo-sacramental staging — using cleaned fish and a bottle of wine in one instance — occurred "only in a few cases," Reichert said, though many bodies were not found for weeks or even months and years, and were "pretty much decomposed."
"One could never say with any certainty that the bodies in the river were absolutely, positively tied to bodies found at Star Lake or … the east Cascades," he said.
Given "all the information we’ve gathered over the years, the likelihood they were committed by the same person is very high."
But investigators must keep an open mind, Reichert said.
"Anything is possible," he said.
"As we move forward, we’re certainly going to be looking at Gary Ridgway first for these, but as evidence is developed, we may find some of these may not have been the work of Gary Ridgway — and that’s part of the challenge."
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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