by Ann Rule
Debra Lynn Bonner, 22, was found in the Green River a month after Wendy Lee Coffield. Although she rarely had a permanent address, Debra was deeply loyal to her family and always carried their photos and mementos.
A King County police diver holds Debra Lynn Bonner’s dress, found in the Green River near her body in August 1982.
An aerial photograph of the Green River as it winds through a fertile valley in southeast King County, Washington. After the summer of 1982, the name Green River triggered thoughts of deadly violence instead of serenity. The bodies of five young women floated there, hidden by the tall grass.
The Robert Mills family, 1972 (REAR: Robert and Kathy; FRONT: Garrett and Opal). Opal and Garrett suffered from racial prejudice in school and stuck together fiercely. Garrett always felt responsible for his little sister’s safety and his ultimate failure to protect her haunts him still.
Because Garrett Mills had survived delicate heart surgery at age five, he and Opal collected money to give to the Childrens’ Orthopedic Hospital. Opal, whom her brother called “The Little Peanut,” was still safe then.
One of the last photographs of Opal Charmaine Mills, at 14 or 15, 1981. As a teenager, Opal lived a rich fantasy life, fancying herself in love with boys and men she hardly knew. Gullible and vulnerable, she, too, was left at the Green River.
A brown truck with a camper shell didn’t stand out as suspicious on the Pac HiWay “Strip” in the early eighties. Later, witnesses would remember this pickup, along with similar vehicles that patrolled the highway.
The Strip where prostitution proliferated from 1982 to 1985, the busy Pac HiWay that runs past Seattle’s SeaTac Airport. It became the prime hunting ground for a serial killer who targeted teenage girls.
Sheriff’s Lt. Dick Kraske confers with his detectives at the North Bend body-cluster site where several Green River Killer victims were found.
Lt. Dick Kraske after his retirement. He was at the center of both the “Ted” (Bundy) murders in the midseventies and the Green River probe seven years later.
In 1983, the first Green River Task Force posed for a photograph in the cramped office between floors in the King County Courthouse. FROM LEFT: Elizabeth Druin, Pat Ferguson, Sgt. Bob “Grizzly” Andrews, Ben Colwell, Dave Reichert. SEATED IN FRONT: Lt. Dan Nolan. Despite questioning hundreds of people about the murders, there were no easy answers.
Giselle Lovvorn, 17, traveled America following The Grateful Dead, but the freckled blond teenager with a genius I.Q. had decided to go home to her California family when she vanished from the Strip in July 1982. Her body was found in late September, the first victim of the GRK to be left away from the river.
Melvyn Foster, a taxi driver, knew the Strip and its habitués well. When he came forward to offer his advice to the task force, he instead became a “person of interest” as he revealed startling knowledge of the young prostitutes along the highway.
Detective Dave Reichert (LEFT) and Detective Mick Stewart during an extensive search of Melvyn Foster’s father’s home near Olympia, Washington, in September 1982.
Mary Bridget Meehan, 18, was a bright Irish adventuress, much loved by her family. She was a rebel who longed for a safe harbor, babies, and music, but she wandered too far to come home again.
Mary Bridget and her longtime boyfriend Ray. She was 8½ months pregnant with Ray’s baby when she disappeared from the Strip on September 15, 1982.
Detectives and medical examiners remove the remains of Mary Bridget Meehan and her unborn child from a shallow grave only a few blocks off the Strip in November 1983. She was one of the few victims who had been buried rather than just dumped.
Constance Elizabeth “Connie” Naon lived in her car, worked at a minimum-wage job, and occasionally on the streets, trying to make it on her own.
Green River Task Force detectives look for physical evidence at the site where Connie Naon’s, Mary Bridget Meehan’s, and Kelly Marie Ware’s bodies were found near SeaTac Airport.
Shawnda Leea Summers at the beach in a happier time. Missing for a long time, her remains were finally identified as those found in an apple orchard south of the SeaTac Airport, not far from those of Giselle Lovvorn’s.
Frank Adamson led the Green River Task Force longer than any other command officer. He had high hopes of closing the cases, but after seven years the killer was still elusive.
Sandra Kay “Sand-e” Gabbert, 17, was a free spirit full of life. She told her mother that she could make more in one night on the Strip than she could in two weeks at a fast-food restaurant. In the spring of 1983, Sand-e promised her, “I’ll be careful,” and walked away into the night…forever.
Carrie Ann Rois, 16, wanted to be a model and actress but she met the wrong man. Once, he let her go, and she trusted him. In the spring of 1983, he didn’t.
Carrie, age five, opens her Christmas presents. Her happy childhood days evaporated as she entered her teens and became a truant and runaway.
Carrie Ann Rois ended up in a dank ravine at this Star Lake body-cluster site. A dirt biker thought her skull was a football before realizing what it really was. Six victims were found here, and Carrie was the last to be discovered.
1985. Ann Rule stands at the Star Lake Road site next to a tree still emblazoned with a bright red “1” to mark where the first body was found. It was Gail Lynn Mathews, whose boyfriend had seen her last riding with a stranger in a pickup truck on the Pac HiWay.
Kimi-Kai Pitsor, 16, vanished within a day of Sand-e Gabbert, but her remains were found far away in a different cluster—at Auburn’s Mountain View Cemetery. This stolen Lincoln Town Car, pushed over a ravine, was unconnected to the four murder victims, but led searchers to the remains found nearby. Kimi-Kai was the only one identified.
Four witness drawings—individuals’ memories varied greatly. Were any of them the Green River Killer?
Randy Mullinax spent many years on the Green River Task Force. A young detective here, he would become both a shrewd investigator and a tremendous comfort to grieving families.
Mary Sue Bello, 25, tried to help the Green River Task Force stop the roving killer when she reported a suspicious John.
While Mary Sue Bello had her wild side, she was also a loving daughter and granddaughter who was turning her life around when she disappeared. This is her mother’s favorite picture of her.
The small house on 32nd Street South looked much like others. Friends, neighbors, and the owner’s girlfriends who were invited inside had no idea what horrors took place here.
The Green River Killer’s fortunes rose steadily as he moved to a better house and neighborhood during the two decades he eluded detectives.
The Green River Killer took his un-suspecting prey to his master bedroom in his first house to have sex, knowing what would happen afterward. Ironically, he chose a wall mural that resembled the lonely woods where he planned to leave their bodies.
Ann Rule helped Forensic Artist Betty Pat Gatliff rebuild a face on the skull of an unknown Green River victim found at the Star Lake cluster. It took X-rays of Gail Lynn Mathews’s broken bones from a boating accident to confirm her identity.
Matt Haney joined the Green River Task Force in the mideighties, and partnered first with Randy Mullinax. Haney honed in on one suspect, but it would take almost fifteen years to prove he was right.
Delise Louise “Missy” Plager in one of her rare happy moments. A twin, she had to be resuscitated at birth and survived despite great odds. The space between her front teeth helped to identify her skeletonized remains.
Randy Mullinax (LEFT) and Fae Brooks (RIGHT) dig and sift dirt near where Missy Plager’s remains were found in the forest near Highway 18 and I-90.
Tracy, age 7, grew up in a happy suburban family. She was only ten years past her childhood days when she vanished in September 1983.
Tracy Ann Winston trusted everyone and tried to help them. Sadly, her perception of evil was flawed, and she mistook a killer for a friend.
Tra
cy always loved baseball and, due to her powerful throwing arm, was one of the first girls ever allowed to play on a boys’ Little League team. Here she hugs her mom, Mertie Winston, with whom she had a special bond.
In March 1986, Green River Task Force members and Explorer Search and Rescue Scouts prepare to search Cottonwood Park on the bank of the Green River. Lt. Jackson Beard, fourth from left in green jumpsuit, directed this search as he had many others. It would be thirteen years before they identified the remains as Tracy Winston.
William J. Stevens II, a Gonzaga University law student, led a secret life for many years. His collections of police paraphernalia and pornography and his hatred of prostitutes triggered the Green River Task Force’s suspicion. Entering a King County courtroom in 1989, he was now the prime suspect.
Gary Ridgway, who grew up near the Strip, was a familiar commuter as he drove the highway to the job he held for more than thirty years. Here he poses with his second wife, Dana,* with whom he had a son, but they divorced in 1981.
Gary’s first two wives had issues with his mother, Mary, who continued to dominate her grown son’s life.
The newly single Gary Ridgway was arrested in 1982 for soliciting a prostitute, a minor charge.
Sue Peters and Randy Mullinax, Green River Task Force veterans, stand next to evidence folders. Along with Tom Jensen and Jon Mattsen, Peters and Mullinax were the detectives who questioned the prime suspect almost daily throughout the summer of 2003.
One prime suspect, a truck painter at Kenworth Trucks, denied that he had any connection to the victims. Even so, Green River Task Force detectives searched the rafters in the Kenworth plant for possible mementos—photos or jewelry—taken from the dead young women.
During their many years together, Gary Ridgway and his third wife, Judith, had gone from a camper “with a coffee can for a bathroom” to a sumptuous motorhome.
Judith laughingly called Gary and herself “pack rats,” because they spent their weekends at garage sales, swap meets, and even dumps.
Gary Ridgway, 52, under surveillance, looks around nervously as he approaches his pickup truck on November 30, 2001.
Gary Ridgway after his arrest on November 30, 2001. He was stunned to find Detectives Jim Doyon and Randy Mullinax waiting for him when he left work on that stormy Friday.
When Ridgway was arrested, he wore jeans and a plaid shirt, the clothes described by abduction witnesses—but also the clothes worn by half the men in south King County.
Gary Ridgway wears coveralls after task force detectives bagged and labeled all his clothing, so it could be searched for trace evidence on November 30, 2001.
Dave Reichert, now the sheriff of King County, called a news conference with Prosecutor Norm Maleng on November 30, 2001, to announce the arrest of Gary Ridgway. Now a grandfather, Reichert was a detective for only a few months in August 1982, when he was assigned as lead detective in the murders of Debra Lynn Bonner, Cynthia Jean Hinds, Marcia Faye Chapman, and Opal Charmaine Mills.
King County Task Force investigators in the backyard of the Ridgways’ property in early December 2001. With a suspect in custody, they finally had good reason to smile. LEFT TO RIGHT: John Urquhart, Tom Jensen, and Steve Davis.
Task force investigators dug up the yard behind the house in Auburn, looking for the remains of victims still missing. After excavating the land around three of Ridgway’s houses, they replaced the dirt and plants, having found nothing at all.
Washington State Patrol crime scene investigators processed the interior of Judith and Gary Ridgway’s present and former houses. They wore booties and latex gloves to avoid cross-contamination with evidence, but found nothing of evidentiary value.
Patricia “Trish” Yellow Robe, a beautiful member of the Chippewa Cree tribe, was found dead in 1999. An autopsy found her death to be accidental—the result of an overdose—but, shockingly, the killer admitted to her murder. He had not stopped killing in 1985 as he previously claimed.
There are dozens of young women still missing in Washington and Oregon, including Keli Kay McGinness, who disappeared in the spring of 1983. Detective Sue Peters is still actively seeking Keli. The Green River Task Force continues and probably will for many years.