Some of Ridgway’s victims still haven’t been located

SEATTLE — Four women, long believed to be victims of the Green River killer, are still missing.

Two other women — whose bodies were found after they disappeared in the 1980s — are not on the list of 48 women whose murders Gary Ridgway has admitted.

So the families of those six women were denied whatever closure was available at Ridgway’s sentencing Thursday, when those who lost loved ones addressed the court about their years of pain, loss, rage and, in some cases, forgiveness.

That’s because prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to file a charge in those cases.

Ridgway told detectives he’s certain he killed three of those women — Keli McGinness, 18, missing since June 28, 1983; Kase Ann Lee, 16, last seen by her husband Aug. 29, 1882; and Patricia Osborn, 19, last seen on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue on Oct. 20, 1983.

But their remains were never found to corroborate his claim.

Mary Marrero knows how their families feel. Her sister, 20-year-old Rebecca Marrero, disappeared Dec. 3, 1982, leaving behind a 2-year-old daughter. She vanished from a motel on Pacific Highway S. — a favorite hunting ground of Ridgway’s. Her body was never found.

Mary Marrero has created a shrine for her older sister in her Ballard home. She wishes she’d had the chance to tell Ridgway how much her family hurts.

"We want to bury her where we want her, not where he left her, out in that cold weather, where he left her like a dog," said Marrero, 38.

"We would have some kind of answer. It would have helped for my mom. She thinks Becky is still alive."

The situation is a little different for Jason Liles, whose 16-year-old sister Tammie Liles disappeared from downtown Seattle on June 9, 1983. Her remains were found three years later, in Tualatin, Ore.

"I was 15 when they had to bury her in a baby casket, because we couldn’t find all the parts of her body," said Liles, now a 32-year-old New York City police officer who was in Seattle to witness Ridgway’s sentencing Thursday.

But her name was not on Ridgway’s list.

"You live with this for 20 years, wondering what happened. I can’t see myself ever finding closure. But I think it would settle a lot better if the guy would say, ‘Yeah, I did it.’ "

In those five cases — and that of Amina Agisheff, 36, who vanished July 8, 1982, her body found nearly two years later in April 1984 — prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to make a charge.

Ridgway remains a suspect in the open cases and could still be charged in some of them, said spokesman John Urquhart with the King County Sheriff’s Office.

He’s also a suspect in the death of a young woman or girl whose remains were found with Ridgeway’s help but who has not been identified.

Investigators may search for more remains in the spring, when the weather improves, Urquhart said.

Authorities in other jurisdictions also are continuing to look at their unsolved killings that could be linked to Ridgway.