Ann Rule is no doubt one of the world’s unluckiest people when it comes to working and living around some of the world’s deadliest men in this country. She worked very closely with “Ted Bundy” as her assistant, before finding out that he was a serial killer.
Now in this book “Green River, Running Red” she finds out that not only did the Green River Killer live close to her (can we say creepy), but he also attended signings of her books! I am starting to get the feeling that this woman attracts dangerous men to her like flies!
The Green River Killer was a heartless mastermind at NOT hiding his victims, while still hiding them. He used body clusters and relied on growth of weeds and grass to cover the bodies to do the rest. He killed over 49 victims in his murderous career, with the Investigators still not sure if there are even more out there.
The first victim that was officially placed under the Green River Killer was Wendy Lee Coffield on July 15th, 1982. Her murder was investigated by the Kent Police Department because she was found in the Green River which falls under the Kent jurisdiction. Needless to say, the detectives had no idea that this was just the start of a long, harrowing journey to find a ‘mastermind’ of murder and evil.
Throughout the years that passed even with all the bodies that surfaced and all the evidence that was subsequently found on the bodies of all these young women and yes children, the investigators were never able to actually pinpoint an actual viable suspect to bring in and charge, because DNA testing at that point in time just was not as advanced as it is today.
Fortunately, due to some very clear headed thinking of some of the detectives and the ME’s on some of the cases forensic evidence was stored and sealed for later comparisons if DNA testing ever did evolve to that point in the future, and fortunately this would prove to be the killers downfall in the end. But not for a very long time.
Through endless searches, questions, false confessions, statements, and false convictions that they had the real killer, the investigators on the Green River Killer Task Force were finally absorbed into the Crime Unit Task Force in the 1990’s, but was still running in the background trying to track down one of America’s Deadliest Serial Killer’s.
In 1997 Dave Reichert was appointed the position of Sheriff. He was the original detective on the second known killing of the Green River Killer. He still wanted to catch this killer something fierce, even if it was the last thing he did.
Some of the first Detectives on the case were still working on the case keeping the torches burning and the evidence safe. Along with the newly appointed sheriff they got the task force back together and started going back through files and statements from witnesses that dated all the way back to 1982-1984.
Finally in Mid-October of 2001 they finally cracked the case! They had there man, Gary Ridgeway! They spent day and night interviewing and compiling their case. It was almost airtight. Gary pretty much told them every detail of every crime and murder that he had ever commited that they wanted to know. He was PROUD of what he had done!
Ann Rule is a great true crime writer and this book is no exception. She writes about Gary Ridgeway from his point of view from interviews that he did with the FBI and analysts from way back when the first killings happened and even before then to give the reader and idea of what he was like growing up and going into puberty and into adulthood.
It is a little dry cut reading, but knowing that she was so close to the killer, and that the women that he killed lived such short lives, it is just a tragedy, that needed to be put out there and not glamorized in any way.
