One month later, on 15 December, the skull of Kimi-Kai Pitsor was found in Auburn, Washington, near Mountain View Cemetery. It seemed as if the killer had found a new burial site to place his victims. It would be the fifth known ‘dumping ground’ used for the disposal of the bodies. By now, the police had called in more investigators. It was feared many more murders would occur in the coming months, and this prediction proved to be correct. On 14 February 1984, the skeletal remains of a woman, who was later identified as Denise Louise Plager, were discovered 40 miles from the city close to I-90. She was the first victim to be found that year, but not the last. Over the next two months, approximately nine more bodies were found. Some of those found included Cheryl Wims, 18, Lisa Yates, 26, Debbie Abernathy, 26, Terry Milligan, 16, Sandra Gabbert, 17, and Alma Smith, 22. The other victims remained unidentified. All of the girls had one thing in common: a history of prostitution.
In mid-April, a volunteer taskforce worker and psychic, Barbara Kubik-Pattern, had a vision that another woman’s body would be found close to I-90. Kubik-Pattern immediately contacted the police and told them about her vision, but became increasingly frustrated when they failed to act on the new information. Taking matters into her own hands, she and her daughter set out to find the woman. Following the leads revealed by her vision, Kubik-Pattern and her daughter eventually came across another body. Immediately after the discovery, the two women drove to a nearby search area that was patrolled by the police. When Kubik-Pattern informed one of the officers of her discovery, she was rebuffed and even threatened with arrest for obstruction of the guarded perimeter. Angered, she then informed reporters of her discovery. Finally, police officers approached her as she talked with the reporters and asked her to show them the body. Shortly thereafter the police were confronted with the gruesome discovery.
The decomposing remains were those of Amina Agisheff, 36. She had last been seen on 7 July 1982, walking home from her work at a restaurant in downtown Seattle. Agisheff did not fit the description of many of the other victims. She was older and a waitress, not a prostitute. Agisheff was also in a stable relationship at the time of her disappearance and was a mother of two. Although there were obvious differences between Agisheff’s lifestyle and those of the other victims and the location where her body was disposed of, investigators believed that she was also a victim of the Green River Killer.
On 26 May, two children playing on Jovita Road in Pierce County were shocked when they discovered a skeleton. The police were immediately alerted to the new finding. Following a medical examination, it was discovered that the remains were of 15-year-old runaway Colleen Brockman. Investigators still had no new leads to the identity of the killer, apart from the location of the bodies and the shoe print. After almost three years, the murderous killing spree continued.
Although the murders seemed to have slowed down, they did not cease altogether. Between October and December 1984, two more bodies, identified as Mary Sue Bello, 25, and Martina Authorlee, 18, were discovered. Both bodies were found off Highway 410. The total body count had climbed to 31, although only 28 of the victims were actually looked on as being victims of the Green River Killer.
On 10 March 1985, another partially buried body was found near Star Lake Road. The victim was eventually identified as Carrie Rois, 15. She had disappeared during the summer of 1983. In mid-June, a man bulldozing a patch of land in Tigard, Oregon, discovered the skeletal remains of two more women. The remains were later identified as Denise Bush, 23, and Shirley Sherrill, 19. Both girls were known prostitutes in Seattle. The discovery of the two women confirmed the fact that the Green River Killer’s territory had extended out of the state. It seemed that a new dumping ground had been revealed.
It was not until the winter that the skeletal remains of three more victims were found. The first remains were identified as belonging to Mary West, and were uncovered in a wooded area in Seward Park in Seattle. The other two remains were of Kimi-Kai Pitsor and another unidentified white female between 14 and 19 years old. The unusual aspect of this more recent discovery was that Pitsor’s remains had been found in two different locations. In December 1983, her skull had been discovered in Mountain View Cemetery and two years later the remainder of her body was found a short distance away in a ravine. It was possible that an animal dragged the skull from the body sometime after death; however, there was no evidence that this had occurred. The police believed it was the work of the killer. Police were uncertain about the killer’s motive for dividing the body between two different locations. They speculated that it was intended to taunt them or confuse the investigation.
During this time, the public became increasingly aware of the lack of results from the police – anger and fear reached a boiling point. The media publicly ridiculed the police for not apprehending the killer after this length of time. To make matters worse, that summer the skeletal remains of three more women were discovered east of Seattle: Maureen Feeney, 19, Kim Nelson, 26, and another unidentifiable young woman. Feeney was the only one of the three whom investigators were able to link to a career in prostitution. The number of victims was quickly climbing towards a staggering 40.
In December 1986, two more bodies were discovered, this time much further away in an area north of Vancouver, British Columbia. Yet again, the killer seemed to be taunting investigators. Even more intriguing was that the partial remains of several other women had been scattered alongside the bodies of the two women. Even though the bodies were located a great distance from the others, there was no doubt in the investigators’ minds that the work was that of the Green River Killer.
In 1987, investigators came upon a suspect by the name of Gary Ridgway (b. 1949) who had previously been under scrutiny. He had been arrested in May 1984 after attempting to solicit an undercover police officer posing as a prostitute. However, Ridgway was released without charge after he successfully passed a lie detector test. Police now looked deeper into Ridgway’s past; they discovered that he had been arrested for choking a prostitute in 1980 near Sea-Tac International Airport. He had pleaded self-defence, claiming the woman bit him, and he was soon after released from police custody with no charge.
The police now had cause to be highly suspicious of Ridgway and decided to delve even further into his past. They discovered that police had stopped and questioned the man back in 1982 while he was in his truck with a prostitute. The prostitute he had been with was one of the women on the Green River murder list, Keli McGuiness.
It also transpired that police had questioned Ridgway back in 1983 in connection with the kidnapping of murder victim Marie Malvar. A witness, Malvar’s boyfriend, had followed the truck to the suspect’s house after recognising it as the one that he’d last seen his girlfriend in.
The police decided to trace Ridgway’s ex-wife in an effort to obtain more information. They learnt from her that he often frequented the sites where bodies had been discovered. Looking back on previous statements, they discovered that several prostitutes claimed to have seen a man matching the suspect’s description regularly cruising the strip between 1982 and 1983. It turned out that Ridgway passed the strip almost daily on his way to work as a truck painter. When they went to his workplace and examined his work records they ascertained that he had been absent or off-duty on every occasion a victim disappeared.
Finally, on 8 April 1987, the police obtained a warrant and searched Ridgway’s house. They obtained samples from him for DNA comparisons. However, at that time there was insufficient evidence to arrest him and he was released from police custody.
In June 1987, three boys stumbled across the partially buried skeletal remains of a young woman while searching for aluminium cans. The girl, who was identified as Cindy Ann Smith, 17, was found in a ravine behind the Green River Community College. She had been missing for approximately three years before her discovery. More bodies of missing young women were discovered in the year that followed, some of which included missing runaway Debbie Gonzales, 14, and D
ebra Estes, 15, who had disappeared six years earlier. Their deaths were attributed to the Green River Killer.
In October 1989, two more skeletal remains of young women were found. One of the victims, identified as Andrea Childers, was found on wasteland near Star Lake. Like many of the young women found before her, the cause of death remained unclear due to the state of decomposition. In early February 1990, the skull of Denise Bush was found in a wooded area in Southgate Park in Tukwila, Washington. The remainder of Bush’s body had been located in Oregon five years earlier. Once again, it seemed as if the killer was purposely moving the bones around in an effort to confuse police, who by now were beginning to believe that the killer had defeated them. Morale among the officers was at an all-time low.
In July 1991, the investigation was reduced to just one investigator. After nine years, 49 victims and $15 million, the police still had not caught the Green River Killer. The investigation at that time became known as the country’s largest unsolved murder case. The case remained dormant for 10 years.
In April 2001, almost 20 years after the first known Green River murder, the police renewed investigations into the murders. This time, the taskforce had technology on its side. All the evidence from the case was re-examined and some of the forensic samples were sent to laboratories. The first to be sent were found with three victims murdered between 1982 and 1983 – Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman and Carol Christensen. The samples consisted of semen, supposedly from the killer, found on some of the bodies. The semen samples underwent a newly developed DNA-testing method and were compared with samples taken from Ridgway in April 1987.
On 10 September 2001, a match was made between the semen samples taken from the victims and Ridgway. On 30 November, Ridgway was stopped by investigators on his way home from work and arrested on four counts of aggravated murder. The charges included those of the three girls and also Cynthia Hinds, in which circumstantial evidence was also found connecting him with her death. The elusive killer whom investigators had sought for 20 years was finally in police custody.
Ridgway, at the time of his arrest, worked for a computer company. At the time of the murders, he had been employed as a truck painter for 30 years at the Kentworth truck factory in Renton, Washington. Ridgway owned many trucks during that time. He allegedly had an unusual sexual appetite. His three ex-wives and several ex-girlfriends stated that he was sexually insatiable, demanding sex several times a day. Often, he would want to have sex in a public area or in the woods, even in the areas where some of the bodies had been discovered. Ridgway was also known to have been obsessed with prostitutes, a fixation that bordered on a love–hate relationship. Neighbours knew him to constantly complain about prostitutes conducting business in his neighbourhood, but at the same time he frequently took advantage of them. It was possible that he was torn by his uncontrollable lusts and his staunch religious beliefs. He became a religious fanatic, often crying following sermons and reading the Bible.
Ridgway confessed to more confirmed murders than any other American serial killer. Over a period of five months of police and prosecutor interviews, he confessed to 48 murders, 42 of the 48 murders on the police’s list of probable Green River Killer victims and six more murders, including one as late as 2000.
On 5 November 2003, Ridgway entered a guilty plea to 48 charges of first-degree murder as part of a plea-bargain agreed to in the preceding June, which would spare him execution in exchange for his cooperation in locating the remains of his victims and providing other details. In his statement accompanying his guilty plea, Ridgway explained that all of his victims had been killed inside King County, Washington, and that he had transported and dumped the remains of the two women near Portland to confuse the police.
Public opinion remains divided on whether a confessed murderer of 48 people should be spared execution in a state that has the death penalty and imposes it on people who have killed far fewer victims. Deputy prosecutor Jeffrey Baird noted in court that the deal contained the names of 48 victims who would not be the subject of ‘State v. Ridgway if it were not for the plea agreement’. King County Prosecuting Attorney, Norm Maleng, explained his decision to make the deal: ‘We could have gone forward with seven counts, but that is all we could have ever hoped to solve. At the end of that trial, whatever the outcome, there would have been lingering doubts about the rest of these crimes. This agreement was the avenue to the truth. And in the end, the search for the truth is still why we have a criminal justice system … Gary Ridgway does not deserve our mercy. He does not deserve to live. The mercy provided by today’s resolution is directed not at Ridgway, but toward the families who have suffered so much …’
On 18 December 2003, King County Superior Court Judge Richard Jones sentenced Ridgway to 48 life sentences with no possibility of parole and one life sentence, to be served consecutively. He is currently serving his sentence at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington.
Ridgway led prosecutors to three more bodies in 2003. On 16 August of that year, remains of a 16-year-old female were found near Enumclaw, Washington, and identified as belonging to Pammy Annette Avent, who was believed to have been a victim of the Green River Killer. The remains of Marie Malvar and April Buttram were found the following month.
On 23 November 2005, a hiker found the skull of one of the 48 women Ridgway had admitted murdering in his 2003 plea-bargain with King County prosecutors. A man hiking in a wooded area, southeast of Seattle, found the skull of Tracy Winston, who was 19 when she had disappeared on 12 September 1983.
In another twist to the case, in February 2011 teenagers found a skull of another missing person, Rebecca Marreos, who had disappeared 28 years before. Ridgway had previously confessed to her abduction and murder, but due to the body not being found her murder was not included in the main indictment relating to the original 48 murders.
As a result Ridgway was formally charged with Marreos’s murder. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a further life imprisonment sentence, which will run concurrently to his current life sentences.
JOEL RIFKIN
It is a known fact that many serial killers have been apprehended not because they were found committing a crime, nor thanks to forensic technology, but simply because they took a risk, become careless or were simply stopped by police on a routine check, after committing an unrelated crime – a road traffic offence, for instance. The arrest of Joel Rifkin (b. 1959) falls into this latter category.
The beginning of the end for Joel Rifkin was 3.15am on 28 June 1993, when two New York state troopers saw a Mazda pick-up truck with no rear number plate. They attempted to stop the vehicle but it sped away. A chase then ensued involving other police vehicles, ending with the Mazda pick-up crashing into a telegraph pole. The driver was detained and offered no resistance. He was identified as 34-year-old Joel David Rifkin, residing on Garden Street in East Meadow, Long Island. He was scruffy in appearance and a thick layer of Noxzema was smeared across his moustache. When told his truck had no rear number plate, Rifkin assured the officers it had been present when he left his home, some 40 minutes earlier. He could offer no explanation as to why he had sped away from the officers, but the reason was revealed moments later.
Police could smell a foul odour coming from the back of Rifkin’s truck and, on pulling back a tarpaulin, discovered a woman’s naked, decomposing body. She appeared to have been dead for several days. That explained Rifkin’s use of Noxzema. This was a trick for handling dead bodies, to mitigate the stench of decomposition; film makers had depicted this technique two years earlier in the Oscar-winning film, The Silence of the Lambs.
When asked about the body, Rifkin said, ‘She was a prostitute. I picked her up on Allen Street in Manhattan. I had sex with her, then things went bad and I strangled her. Do you think I need a lawyer?’ Rifkin was arrested. The body found in the back of his truck was soon identified as Tiffany Bresciani, a 22-year-old native of Louisiana and a drug addict. She had been working as a prostit
ute in Manhattan for the past two years in order to feed her drug habit.
At the time of Rifkin’s arrest, other officers carried out a search of his home, where he lived with his 71-year-old mother. The search lasted six hours. When they left, they had seized many items that would later link Rifkin to other murders. A bedroom upstairs yielded 75 pieces of women’s jewellery, photographs, various items of feminine clothing, make-up cases, a woman’s curling iron, purses and wallets, plus a mixed bag of ID cards. One driving licence belonged to Mary DeLuca, who had been found dead in Cornwall, New York, in October 1991. Another belonged to Jenny Soto, whose body was found floating in the Harlem River in November 1992. Rifkin’s bedroom reading material included a book on the unidentified Green River Killer and news clippings about the case of New York serial killer Arthur Shawcross.
In Rifkin’s garage, detectives examined a wheelbarrow, from which they extracted 85g of human blood. A pair of women’s knickers lay on the floor, near a stockpile of rope and tarpaulin. A chainsaw found in the garage was stained with blood and pieces of human flesh.
Detectives began interrogating Rifkin at 8.25am on 28 June 1993. They questioned him for eight hours, but for some reason never recorded the interviews. Rifkin later claimed that he asked for a lawyer at least 20 times and this was always refused. The written transcript of his interview, presumably reconstructed from memory, suggests that Rifkin had been offered a lawyer and declined.
He described 17 murders, writing out the names he remembered and sketching maps to help police find those victims still missing. Rifkin was dispassionate, referring to the murders as ‘events’ or ‘incidents’, and listing his victims by number.
The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers Page 28