The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer

by Robert Keppel; William J. Birnes; Ann Rule

  It’s because police officers have continually investigated one or a pair of killers for just a single murder. Murders committed by the same killer over time are unusual for most agencies. They don’t know how to react because they’ve never investigated related murder cases before. So they end up using traditional single-murder investigative methods just as they have done in every murder case that came before. That reaction is a conditioned response, not the product of Sherlockian deduction. No matter what the type of case, investigators take the wrong approach by starting with the thought, It’s okay, I can do it myself. It’s worked that way before. The illusion has been emphasized over time at the expense of logic by the way cases have been assigned and followed up. The supervisor assigns a detective to a case. That detective has some help with the initial investigation, but when the heat dies down, it’s all his. His name is on the folder. So what’s developed is a “my case” attitude. Anything that comes in regarding that one case goes to detective so-and-so. Other members of the department relinquish all responsibility for the investigation, thereby placing it solely in the hands of one unwitting detective.

  The dangers of this attitude are very real and very large. One detective is left with only what worked in the past—looking for suspects within the closed circle of a victim’s acquaintances. How can a lone detective investigate a case that might have multiagency implications? When all the traditional investigative options are exhausted, what does the detective do? Indecision on the part of the investigator, lack of alternatives, and delays in pursuing strangers play right into the hands of the multiple killer. By the time the detective completes a routine investigation, he or she is already many steps behind the killer, and more than likely, the killer has probably murdered again and again. Serial cases call for a traditional investigation of the victim’s acquaintances as well as an investigation of suspects who are complete strangers.

  Institutionalized Separateness

  Another infirmity that cripples serial-murder investigations from the very start is institutionalized separateness. Members of one department just aren’t used to working with members of other departments who are pursuing the same killer. The hesitancy agencies have about working together comes from the memory of how previous cases that were shared among different precincts or counties were handled when things were going badly—certainly it was the other guy’s fault. And when things were going right, the credit wasn’t equally shared. The dynamic is unfortunately horribly infantile, like two high-school girls bickering over the same boyfriend. The cold reality here is that the killer knows that this is exactly what happens. The more cunning killers intentionally abduct victims from one jurisdiction and eventually dump their bodies in another jurisdiction because they know the bickering alone between members of different departments will delay or even prohibit any meaningful investigation.

  Whatever the reason for the resistance to recognizing the serial, many investigations have suffered for it. In the beginning of the Bundy cases, there were those who didn’t believe that the victims at the Issaquah crime scene were related to women found at the Taylor Mountain site. Why? Because no one knew how the killer approached any of the Taylor Mountain women until the witnesses came forward in the Susan Rancourt case from central Washington. Even once the information became available, there were still doubters.

  The Bobby Joe Long Case

  This attitude, apparent in the early stages of the Bundy investigation, was not unique. The early investigation into the victims of Bobby Joe Long, who raped and murdered at least 11 women in Florida, suffered from the same malady. The method of death was so different from one body to another, and the fact that victims came from various backgrounds had police officials publicly saying that there was no serial. Only when conclusive evidence was found—that of an orange trilobal fiber, which was discovered in each case by the FBI laboratory—did investigators link the victims together and conduct a meaningful follow-up investigation.

  In spite of their experience with Bundy eight years before, some investigators in the King County Police Department didn’t believe the five victims in or near the Green River were killed by the same person who murdered the prostitutes whose bodies were found on land at the north and south ends of Sea-Tac Airport or east of Enum-claw. If that resistance indicated the prevailing attitude, how diligent were those very investigators in pursuing the theory that they were all murdered by the same person? Could their beliefs have been so clouded that their motivation to investigate thoroughly was stifled? Not wanting to admit the presence of a serial-murder case makes it next to impossible to go through any list of suspects with any degree of accuracy. It leads only to a more tense and ugly situation.

  My approach to linking cases has been borne out by misinter-pretations in the investigations of killers such as Bundy, Russell, Long, and others like New York’s Arthur Shawcross and Atlanta’s Wayne Williams. All of these killers’ victims were found within a reasonably small geographical area and they drove the number of murders in the area above the average. The respective investigations all began in the same way, with the disbelief that the victims were killed by the same person. Even at the earliest stages of the Green River cases, common sense told us that over 90 percent of the victims we discovered during the course of the Green River investigation were murdered by the same person. There are not five or six different killers thrown into the mix. A serial-murder case that has been filtered by reluctance and politics heavily bends the outcome of that investigation in favor of the killer.

  For most serial-murder cases, there were no clear guidelines to alert police to the fact that they were dealing with a serial killer. And once the series was identified, there still were no standard operating procedures or textbooks that detailed the proper way to pursue a serial murderer versus a single-victim killer.

  Hot Suspects

  A nonsystematic investigation of random suspects in a serial-murder case can be a dangerously hypnotic fascination that leads nowhere. Haphazard pursuit of innocent people plagues every serial investigation. Since these cases generate hundreds of suspects, usually in a very short period of time, the investigation gets instantly bogged down because the pursuit of suspects is not systematic. The reason for this problem is inadequate experience among supervisors and investigators in establishing priorities for follow-up. They don’t know whom to investigate first.

  Every investigation has its hot suspect. The downfall of most investigations is the haste and intensity with which the hot suspect is pursued. Everyone drops everything they’re doing to concentrate on one person, and, after a while, the hot suspect fizzles. The time wasted pursuing that suspect puts investigators that much farther away from the real killer. The lack of a clear priority system for suspect investigations results in some suspects being partially investigated, in their elimination being postponed by investigations of a “better” suspect, in having to play catch-up, and in a feeling of being overwhelmed by masses of work.

  The Yorkshire Ripper

  The hot suspect is usually defined on the whim of the most vocal supervisor. Determining which leads to follow in order to develop a good suspect is as difficult as defining the hot suspect. Some information, coming in the form of tantalizing false leads, called red herrings, takes the investigation in wrong directions. For example, in the Yorkshire Ripper cases in England, a parliamentary review criticized investigators for giving excessive credence to letters thought to have been written by the killer and cassette tapes believed to have been dictated by the killer. Ripper task force investigators expended thousands of hours trying to track the source of both. Finally, when Peter Sutcliffe was apprehended, it was discovered that he was not responsible for either the tape or the letter. It is very difficult to avoid these false leads in the complexity of a serial-murder investigation. Unfortunately, they will probably always be one of the obstacles. The false leads in this case actually took police away from the real leads and needlessly prolonged the investigation.

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bsp; There is a grim reality to serial-murder investigations. As the body count increases, the elimination of suspects becomes easier because there are more dates, times, and locations to link to any one particular suspect. If a suspect wasn’t available for one murder in the series, he’s eliminated from consideration and further investigation. As aptly pointed out by members of the Ripper task force, there is a danger in using eliminating factors unless they are conclusive. Therefore, corroboration of information concerning the whereabouts of people is crucial. So many times investigators are fooled by their own records. For instance, a frequent eliminating factor is whether the person was in jail on a certain date. At first blush, the custody status of a person is usually reliable, until the policies of the jail are checked out. A rap sheet may show a person in jail on certain dates, but what the rap sheet doesn’t say is that the person was on work-release for several weeks of the custody. So this means the suspect was on the loose for some hours of the day. Undoubtedly, the cautious investigator will go beyond what’s listed on a rap sheet to confirm eliminating information.

  Confusion of Leads

  Another unpleasant and wasteful characteristic of previous serial-murder investigations was that large amounts of information flowed through many hands, resulting in duplication, confusion, untouched leads, numerous individual priorities, tunnel vision, investigations on tangents, and an almost total lack of coordination and direction. In the Atlanta child murders investigation, the task force received as many as 7,500 calls a day; the Ted task force took about 500 calls a day. When vast amounts of information like this are coming in, it is best to designate one person through whom all incoming information must flow first. Leads then can be assigned based on viable investigative priorities that have been set. It is important to note as well that those priorities must be constantly reviewed for their effectiveness.

  The best way to monitor incoming leads and sort and organize information is through the use of a computer. As the investigation becomes more complex with additional contacts and companion cases, a system in place will reduce major time-consuming tasks. As much as Bundy and I discussed the utility of lists of names in searching for suspects, he never realized that using the computer to examine lists of potential suspects was the very act that enabled us to discover his name from a large pool of suspects. In spite of my repeated attempts to explain the various lists of suspects we developed in the Ted murders, the light bulb never once went off in his head that I was telling him about a very useful strategy for identifying the killer in series of murders. Instead, he focused on staking out crime scenes or holding sex-slasher film festivals. To placate me, he finally conceded that making lists of potential suspects, based on information collected about the body recovery and abduction sites, and comparing one list against another would be useful. Maybe he did realize how we pin-pointed him, but he masked it very well. He wasn’t one to throw out a lot of compliments unless it was beneficial to him.

  Bundy was very adamant about the importance of collecting additional data around the scenes of murders that seemed similar. Bundy’s mind was so tuned into modus operandi, he was convinced that similar murders could be linked to the same killer if the characteristics of those murders could be analyzed in detail. From his standpoint, what he saw from the various crime scenes of murdered prostitutes in the Green River cases was that they were all the work of the Riverman. “Like I said, he got better over time.” Bundy believed that the variation among dump sites was a learning experience for the Riverman. At first, the Riverman might have believed that placing bodies in the river was a good method of disposal, but that changed over time. He learned from previous mistakes and changed his modus operandi. If the police don’t catch serial killers early, learning from experience will only prolong the killers’ apprehension and cause further victimizations.

  Bundy believed computers might help. At one point, he confidently asked that I outfit him with a computer and the necessary database program so he could examine the elements of each case more closely. He used computer information as a way to keep our conversations going since he knew that I favored that method.

  The intelligence of HITS was based on the killer’s methods: collect numerous details on each murder and those murders that are similar will stand out from the others. This very strategy made for a more productive investigation into the George Russell cases. Even though HITS didn’t solve Russell’s murders, it helped strengthen the prosecution against him. Data had been collected on all murders in Washington State dating back to 1981. By examining the three significant elements in Russell’s murders (openly displayed bodies, sexual insertion of foreign objects, and posing bodies), the only murders found in the database belonged exclusively to one killer. Without that data, connecting the murders of George Russell might have been missed by the casual observer.

  Serial Killers Do Leave a Trail

  Even an elusive serial killer is not invisible. Accomplished murderers appear to be phantoms only because investigators haven’t found a way to see someone that has been literally in front of their eyes. Morris Redding, the Atlanta task force commander, once said that Wayne Williams was “right in front of our noses.” As officers were going into elementary schools to advise children to stay away from strangers, Wayne Williams was coming out after having taken their class pictures. Also, Williams pinned his recruiting posters to telephone poles near schools, and the police never picked up on it.

  A remarkable feature of some serial-murder investigations is that the name of the killer is buried somewhere in the files within the first two weeks of the investigation. We had Bundy’s name within a week of the Lake Sammamish disappearances. Los Angeles authorities had Kenneth Bianchi’s name on a list of recruits for the sheriff’s office. In both cases, Bundy and Bianchi were not immediately a focus for the investigations. With this in mind, a certain logic would tell investigators who are burdened with a long-term, unsolved serial investigation to carefully review the information received in the first two weeks of the inquiry. What information came in early in the investigation? In long-term cases, circumstances within the serial change over time, so examining the early leads based on information collected over time may help to prioritize certain suspects who would not have been originally classified as a top priority because of a lack of information.

  In the midst of intense pressure and mountains of leads created in the serial investigation, what do law enforcement officers look for? How do they find that tree in a forest of suspects when every previous lead was useless? Surprisingly, numerous serial killers have been brought down by an unlikely source—the living witness, the one who has gotten way. There is nothing better than firsthand information. Somewhere, in most cases, a living witness has been located.

  Both Ted Bundy and Wayne Williams had living witnesses who testified against them. In the Bundy investigation, witnesses surfaced before Bundy became a suspect. Outside the Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Utah, Carol DaRonch escaped from Ted’s VW Beetle with one handcuff still locked around her wrist. Nita Neary surprised Ted inside the Chi Omega sorority house and he hightailed it out of there before she realized what had happened and could alert others. In Atlanta, after Wayne Williams was arrested and his name and picture were published by the media, several people came forward to report that they had seen Williams in the company of at least seven victims just prior to their murders. All these living witnesses provided crucial testimony against Bundy and Williams.

  Wouldn’t it be better if living witnesses could be found more quickly, before more victims fell prey to the killer? In examining the cases of Bundy, Williams, and other brutal creatures, a disturbing truth is evident: there were numerous witnesses who saw the killer and were unable to perceive him as a danger to someone else. But then after the killer’s capture was publicized, these people came forward to report what they saw, retrospectively. The women who were approached on that Lake Sammamish beach and didn’t help the good-looking Ted load his sailboat saw something less th
an circumspect. But it wasn’t until the disappearances of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund were reported that they came forward. A major problem for all serial-murder investigations is always to sift through mountains of information to find those living witnesses who really saw the actual killer.

  Creating Luck

  Catching the killer or finding out his identity has been frequently termed serendipitous: some streak of luck suddenly entered the investigations. I believe luck is luck, but creative detective work is still required to turn that luck into a successful resolution of a case. Sometimes the careless killer has assisted police in finding him. For example, California and Oregon had been experiencing the murders of many males from the early 1970s until the mid-1980s. In 1986, Randy Kraft was spotted driving erratically by a California police officer. The unsuspecting officer soon discovered that the inebriated Kraft had the body of a murdered male in the seat next to him. Upon further investigation, detectives found the identification of many of Kraft’s victims inside his home. It has been estimated that Kraft killed over 60 males in California, Oregon, and Michigan.

  Sometimes officers create their own luck, as the Atlanta task force did with its strategic surveillance of the bridges across the Chattahoochee River when the infamous splash was heard. Then there was the string of prostitute murders I investigated in the late ’70s near Seattle. We were looking for a dark green Dodge Charger, driven by a tall white male with bushy hair and wearing glasses. The Charger was linked to the location of a brutal murder of a prostitute; a witness had seen a man put a female in the trunk of his car about five miles from that same murder site. Meanwhile, Seattle police detectives were looking for a beat-up red pickup truck leaving the area where a prostitute’s body was dumped in a related case. King County and Seattle police detectives put out bulletins that described the green Charger and red pickup to all the police precincts within greater King County. On a Sunday, two Seattle Police undercover cops were working the noon to eight o’clock shift in West Seattle. The previous week they had been stopping green Chargers and submitting the field interview reports to detectives. After having made several stops, they were surprised to observe a green Dodge Charger pulling a red pickup with a chain, the two vehicles described in the bulletins. What luck! They carefully waited until the driver committed a traffic violation—failure to yield to oncoming traffic—and was almost struck by the oncoming car while making a left-hand turn. The alert officers noticed bloodstains on the car. An arrest was made, and in one heart-stopping lucky moment, the officers had solved a series of murders.