Green River, Running Red
Page 24
Rasmussen obviously was well off, and he didn’t really hurt her, but she felt trapped because she was his prisoner. Finally, he took her back to the motel where she had met him. When she told detectives about the rich man with the barn full of female photographs, it sounded as if she had only an overactive imagination. However, she was able to lead the detectives back to Rasmussen’s spread of land and point out the big house and barn set in the Green River valley.
In a ruse to take a look inside, Captain Bob Evans once drove alone to Rasmussen’s place in an unmarked white Cadillac. He knocked on the door and when Rasmussen opened it, Evans said his car had broken down. The wealthy farmer was arrested on charges of suspicion of unlawful confinement and a search warrant was obtained for his property.
The task force investigators saw that there was a round door in the barn ceiling, held in place with big spikes. They swarmed over the barn, wondering what arcane discoveries they might make. But they were to be disappointed. “We didn’t find any pictures there,” Adamson said, “although we did find one of Rasmussen’s cameras, and when the film was developed, our informant’s pictures were there.”
If this had been a horror movie, Ingmar Rasmussen’s isolated barn would have been the ideal place for a serial killer to hide his victims. But this was the real world, and he, like so many others, was removed from the suspect list.
He was a little kinky, all right, and he had taken young prostitutes to his barn for photo sessions. A private investigator a worried Rasmussen had hired told Adamson that the pictures had been in the barn all along, even during their search, but the old man had taken them down from the barn wall and put them in a drawer.
“We’d gotten very good at outdoor crime scenes,” Adamson said wryly, “but we were rusty on working indoor scenes, and we’d missed the photos.”
25
WHILE THE CONSERVATIVE CITIZENS of south King County tended to blame the business of prostitution and vice for the shadow over their lives, they didn’t really care to become involved. Responding to their complaints, King County executive Randy Revelle called a meeting in the Tukwila City Hall. Ironically, although Revelle, Sheriff Vern Thomas, and Captain Frank Adamson showed up to answer questions and listen to concerns, only four townspeople attended. The leaders of the probe and a gaggle of reporters were present, but nobody else seemed to care.
One person asked if the sheriff’s office thought the killer would strike again, and Frank Adamson answered an unequivocal “Yes.”
The Green River Killer had no reason to stop killing. As far as the detectives knew, he hadn’t even come close to being caught, and he must, indeed, be enjoying his “success.” Historically, serial killers don’t stop—they accelerate. Unless such murderers are arrested and incarcerated for other crimes or they become physically unable to stalk victims or they die, they keep going. In the rare case, a radical life change—marriage or divorce or severe illness—can call a halt to their obsession to destroy lives.
So, of course, the man they were looking for was going to kill again. And they were afraid it was going to be soon. They were right.
MARY EXZETTA WEST vanished from the Rainier Valley neighborhood on February 6, 1984. She had a sweet face and a shy smile. She lived with her aunt and she was always thoughtful about coming home on time. She had left her aunt’s house at midmorning that Monday. In exactly a month, Mary would have turned seventeen, but she didn’t make it that far. In six months, she would have given birth to a baby, but very few people knew that she was pregnant. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she began to show.
It was odd that so many of the GRK’s victims were killed so close to their birthdays. He couldn’t have known when they were born, not if he was picking them up as they happened to cross his path when he was in his killing mode. It had to be only grim coincidence.
IT HAD BEEN twenty months and the victim toll kept rising. Many people were anxious and restless, including the man himself, although the men and women who were looking for him didn’t know that. Women’s Libbers were stridently blaming the Green River Task Force and law enforcement in general for failing to really try to protect them by not catching the Green River Killer.
The GRK was not strident at all; he merely wanted to up the ante a little and make the tournament of terror more interesting.
On February 20, Post-Intelligencer reporter Mike Barber, who had written extensively about the Green River cases, had a letter routed to him from the City Desk. It had arrived in a small, plain white envelope with a Seattle postmark.
The typewritten address was incorrect:
Seattle postintelligencer
fairview n john
PO Box 70
Seattle WA 98111
Actually, the street address belonged to the Seattle Times, but somehow the letter got to the P.I. The sender had added “very inportent” to the envelope.
Barber read the message inside, which had no spaces at all between the words, and at first, it seemed incomprehensible. He looked at it several times to see what the “code” might be, if, indeed, there was a code. And it still made little sense.
Gradually, he began to draw diagonal lines between what might be words and the information became clearer, although the writer was either uneducated or striving to appear so.
whatyou eedtonoaboutthegreenriverman
dontthrowway
I first onebokenordislocatarmwhy
2oneblackinriverhadastoneinthevaginawhy
3whysomeinriversomeabovegroundsomeunderground
4insurancewhogotit
5whosetogainbytheredeaths
6truckdisoutofstatefatherhadpaintedorinriver
7somehadfingeralscutoff
8hehadsexaftertheydeadhesmokes
9hechewsgum
10chancefirstoneblackmaledhim
11youworkmeornobody
12thinkchangedhismo
bussnessmanorsellman
13carandmotelreservation
14manseenbiglugageoutofmotelwasheavyneededhelp
keysidcardatroad18whos
15wheresolosesomeringandmisc
16outofstatecop
17don’tkillinnoonarealookinoutside
18onehadoldscarse
19momaplehadredwinelombroscsomefishanddumpedthere
20anydurgsorselling
21headfoundwhofountitwhereisrest
22whendietheydiedayornight
23whatourntheremouthsoreisitatrick
24whytakesomeclothesandleavereast
25thekillerwheresatleastonering
26realestmanisoneman
27longhaultruckdriverlastseenwithone
28somehadropemarksonneckar.dhands
29oneblackinriverhaddoraononly
30alstrangledbutwithdefermetheds
31oneblackinriverhadworkedformetro
32mosthadpimpsbettingthem
33escortmodelingforcedthemofffearofdeth
34maybepimphatergetbackatthem
34whofindstheboneswhatareththerefor
35manwhithgunorknife
36someonepaidtokilloneothersarethideit
37killwhotheyareorisitwhattheyare
38anydeaddiferthenrestt
39itcouldamanportladsomeworkedthere
40ehatkindofmanisthis
therewasabookliftatdenneysignotthisotof
itbilongstocop
The letter was signed: “callmefred.”
“Call me Fred.” Well, that was clear enough, although it was unlikely that the tipster was really named Fred. The letter had probably been written by someone who wanted to play detective. He was offering motives that anyone might think of, but he was also giving a lot of information that wasn’t generally known. After Barber finished trying to separate the words into some kind of sense, he turned the letter over to Dave Reichert.
At the request of Bruce Kalin, a task force evidence specialist, Tonya Yzaguerre, a latent print examiner for the sheriff’s office, examined it for fingerprints. Using the Ninhydrin process—which use
s chemicals and heat and can bring up prints left even decades before—Yzaguerre found one that would be saved in the hope that someday they would glean prints from a Green River crime scene or body site. And then she sent the letter on to the F.B.I., both for John Douglas to evaluate for its content and in the hope that the typewriter used might be identified.
The F.B.I. lab felt that the typewriter was probably an Olympia style with a horizontal spacing of 2.60mm per character, and it had a fabric ribbon.
Despite the fact that the letter writer had referred to heretofore unpublished information like “One black in river had a stone in the vagina. Why?” and “Mom maple had red wine lombrosco some fish and dumped there,” John Douglas wrote to Bruce Kalin that he didn’t feel the real Green River Killer had written the letter.
“It is my opinion that the author of the written communiqué has no connection with the Green River Homicides. The communiqué reflects a subject who is average in intelligence and one who is making a feeble and amateurish attempt to gain some personal importance by manipulating the investigation. If this subject has made statements relative to the investigation which were not already released to the press, he would have to have access to this information [via] Task Force.”
As for calls that had come in telling the task force where bodies might be found, Douglas was also skeptical. “Your caller is not specific enough to establish himself as the ‘Green River Murderer.’ However, he does have the capacity to imitate and be a ‘copycat’ killer.”
Douglas said that the Behavioral Science Unit of the F.B.I. had found that very few serial killers of this type had communicated with the media or an investigative team. When true serial killers had called, they gave very specific details to establish their credibility. “That is part of their personal need,” he pointed out. “Having feelings of inadequacies and lacking self-worth, they must feel powerful and important.”
Douglas advised the task force detectives to demand that the man who called them give more precise directions to any alleged body site. Then they were to deliberately stay away from that location. “This will anger him and demonstrate that you are stupid and ignorant and cannot follow simple instructions. [He] will be compelled to telephonically admonish you and/or oversee your investigation at the ‘wrong’ crime scene location.”
Douglas still doubted that either the letter writer or the phone tipster were the real GRK. But there was the threat of a deadly copycat.
That was all the Adamson task force needed. Another serial killer. The real question was how many people not on the task force itself knew about the triangular stones placed in the vaginas of some of the first victims, and also about the wine bottle—indeed, Lambrusco—and the fish left on Carol Christensen’s body? I knew, but I never told anyone what someone on the task force had told me. Some Seattle Times reporters found out, too, but they did not publish it. These pieces of information were definitely not generally known, and they hadn’t been mentioned in newspapers or on television.
It was almost impossible to tell if the letter Mike Barber received was the real thing. In retrospect, I believe it was. But there were so many tips coming in—to the Green River Task Force, to well-recognized journalists, and, yes, to me.
In 2003, as I went through the huge stacks of material I’d saved for twenty-two years, I came across an envelope virtually identical to the one Barber got. It is addressed to
Mrs Ann RULE
c/o POST-Intelligencer
6th & Wall
Seattle, Wasjington
98121
With a Seattle postmark of April 24, 1984, it had been sent two months after the first letter. This address for the P.I. was correct. The mistake in the spelling of Wasjington had been corrected with a pen. On the back flap, it said,
“Andy Stack”
GREEN RIVER
and in ink:
G-R (209)
Someone at the P.I. had scribbled my box number on it and forwarded it. There is nothing inside the envelope now, and I cannot say for sure that there ever was by the time I got it. I don’t know who wrote “Andy Stack” on the back of the envelope, but that was the pen name that I used for almost fifteen years when I wrote for True Detective and her four sister true-crime magazines. Very few people knew that at the time. The “209”? I have no idea who wrote that or what it meant. Was it the 209th tip the P.I. had received? Or did it mean something to the person who mailed it?
The mystery envelope was sent at a time when I was receiving so much information from readers and people interested in the Green River cases that I could barely keep up with it. As always, I passed on the most likely sounding information to the task force.
One thing I had not known was that there was someone who kept track of my public appearances, someone who often stood eight or ten feet away from me, watching. Over the years, I gave scores of lectures in the Seattle area, and people always asked about the Green River Killer. I often commented about my feeling that I must have sat in the next restaurant booth from him, or stood behind him in line at the supermarket. But that was only logical, deductive reasoning. Most of his victims had been abducted within a mile or so of where I lived, and many of their bodies had been found that close, too. All of us who lived in the south King County area had an eerie sense that we might know him, or, at least, that we must have seen him without realizing who he was.
In the mideighties, I was as confident as Frank Adamson and Dave Reichert were that it was merely a question of how many months it would take to make an arrest, and I often made predictions off the top of my head, assuring the audience that I believed he would be caught by Easter or Thanksgiving…or surely by the next Christmas.
And I believed it myself, never really thinking that the man who was so elusive might be sitting in a darkened auditorium, listening.
26
WHEN THE LETTER sent to Mike Barber was revealed, I took a crack at being a cryptographer. There is no question in my own mind that it was written by the real Green River Killer, obviously a man who knew many secret things but who had extremely limited grammar or spelling ability:
Translated by author:
What you need to know about the Green River man
Don’t throw away.
First one broken or dislocated arm. Why?
One black in river had a stone in the vagina. Why?
Why some in river? Some aboveground? Some underground?
Insurance. Who got it?
Who set [stood] to [gain] by their deaths?
Truck is out of state. Father had painted [it] or [it’s] in [the] river.
Some had fingernails cut off.
He had sex after they [were] dead. He smokes.
He chews gum.
[There is a] chance the first one blackmailed him.
You work [for] me or nobody.
[I] think he changed his M.O. Businessman or salesman.
Car and motel reservation.
Man seen [carrying] big luggage out of motel. [It] was heavy [and he] needed help. Keys [and] I.D. card [are at] Road 18.
Where so close some ring and miscellaneous?
Out of state cop.
[I] don’t kill in no one area. Look in [and] outside.
One had old scars.
Mom [or one] Maple [Valley] had red wine Lombrosco, some fish dumped there.
Any drugs or selling?
Head found. Who found it? Where is the rest?
When did [they] die? Day or night?
What tore their mouths, or is it a trick?
Why take some clothes and leave [the] rest?
The Killer wears at least one ring.
Real estate man is one man.
Long haul truck driver last seen with one.
Some had rope marks on neck and hands.
One black in river had odor on only.
All strangled but with different methods.
One black in river had worked for Metro.
Most had pimps betting them.
Escort modeling forced them off fear of death.
Maybe pimp had—or got—back at them.
(Sic) Who finds the bones? What are they there for?
Man with gun or knife.
Someone paid to kill one. The others are [to] hide it.
Killed [because of] who they are. Or is it [because of] what they are?
Any dead different than [the] rest?
It could [be] a man [from] Portland. [Or] someone [who] worked there.
What kind of man is this?
There was a book left at Denney’s sign. Not this. Out of [doors.] It belongs to [a] cop.
Maybe the GRK wasn’t out there in my audiences very often. Maybe he actually resided a long way away. Although those of us in the south King County area still tended to believe that we lived in safe small towns—Des Moines, Riverton, Tukwila, Federal Way, Burien—our world had changed. In 1984, the SeaTac International Airport was known as the Jackson International Airport in honor of Senator Henry Jackson, and in the course of a year ten million people flew in and out of it. A quarter of a million people drove friends, families, and business associates to their flights or picked them up. If the Highline School District, which encompassed my children’s schools, were to incorporate as one city, it would be the fourth largest in the state of Washington.
Schuyler Ingle, a reporter for the Seattle Weekly with superior researching skills, looked at those figures and realized that 150,000 people passed through the Strip area in a month. Transients, yes, but from every class of society, both very rich and very poor and everything in between. They stayed in 4,500 motel rooms or slept wherever they could.
Lieutenant Jackson Beard headed the Pro-Active Team for the new task force. There were plainclothes officers on the Strip most nights. Female police officers dressed and made-up to look like prostitutes strolled beside the road at least one night a week. Male officers tried to keep an eye on them, waiting for the signal that a john had taken the bait. The Strip had become an uncomfortable place for both the real prostitutes and their customers, who would have to figure out a way to tell their wives and/or girlfriends why they’d been arrested.