Transcript of The Green River Killer - Gary Ridgway (Part 3)

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna and this is Morbid.

This is Morbid.

It's Morbid on a Monday.

It's true.

And that's what's up.

And this is gonna be a little longer of a series than I initially anticipated. I think we're gonna be— we're gonna clock it at like 5 parts.

Yeah, I don't even think we told them like how many it was.

Yeah, I don't know if I told you guys how long it was gonna be. Yeah, it's ending at 5 parts. Um, I was gonna try to make it 4 parts, but that last part was gonna be so long. Yeah, and there's more people who who are killed during that part, and I didn't want them to get all kind of lumped together. Yeah, like lumped into the beginning and then lost in the end. I don't know, it just felt like it made more sense.

Yeah, you want to give everybody like their, their moment.

It's gonna be a little long, but I mean, it's the Green River Killer.

It's, it's spanned over a decade, right?

Yeah, so he, he was a big part of the '80s and early '90s, so, so there you go. Yeah, so he— I mean, this is just a lot, and when you really go into this case Holy shit. Yeah, holy shit.

I've heard you like watching some interviews with Ted Bundy.

Yeah, he's gonna come into this episode.

Okay.

Uh, because weirdly enough that fucker just ingratiated himself.

Yeah, I was like, what are you doing over there? I was like, I thought we were covering River Killer. We are.

Uh, but yeah, before we get it back into this, because holy hell, it's like a hellscape in there. Um, what kind of, what kind of fun stuff is going on?

What kind of fun stuff is going on? Your book is releasing super soon.

It is, it's gonna be out so soon.

Your little baby. And, um, less than a month now.

Yeah. And what exciting thing, um, I haven't announced it on socials yet, but you might, you guys should hear it first. Uh, I've decided that I'm gonna do a live signing line at all the locations of the tour that we announced. Ooh. Um, they will not be pre-signed copies. It will be a signing line.

I love signing.

The only reason that I wasn't before is because I have like high anxiety, like social anxiety. And I guess—

She's a little awkward.

I'm a little awkward. And so that always felt most comfortable. But then I was like, you know what?

I really—

I want to meet readers really bad. So like, and I want to have those moments with you.

So also like, I love you. You're not as awkward as you think you are.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Everybody, I feel I feel that way. Everybody feels that way. Like, so I feel socially awkward and you always say I'm good socially. I also have like a shit immune system, so that was the other reason why I was doing a lot of pre-signs, because like during the heightened times, yeah, um, I was a little nervous about— because I just weirdly, I'll pick up anything.

No, you do.

You know, I don't want to bring it to the kids and all that.

I'm having an asthma flare, so I'm gonna like watch you from afar. Yeah, so, you know, but I'll discuss with you.

I've been pumping up that immune system and I'm ready to do this.

Yeah, eat a lot of clementines.

I think there's some tickets left for the New York, um, book event at Union Square Barnes Noble.

I love that Barnes Noble.

And again, there'll be live signing lines because I, I would like to meet readers. So I'm just gonna say hello. Hello. So if you've already bought tickets to the other ones, like, hey, we're gonna hang out. And for the New York one, go get your tickets, period. But yeah, so that'll be fun. Uh, we have a game.

Oh my God, we have a game!

We have a game, guys, with Hunt a Killer. Slicer. Yeah, and it's Real fun.

It's so cool too to have a game with Hunt a Killer because—

Oh God, yes.

Again, I'm sure you've heard us say this before, but if you haven't, they were our first sponsor on Morbid back in 2018. So to now be like collabing with them is such a full circle moment for us. Yes. And just also such like a fever dream kind of vibe. Truly.

And I've been playing Hunt a Killer since they became a company.

I remember you always had them like piled up in your living room.

We, John and I used to love doing those. We had, and they used to come in like the plain black boxes that we had like stacked up.

You guys would always have like weird like evidence cards hanging around and like police reports. I'd be like, what are you guys doing? Yeah.

So it's pretty cool to all of a sudden be, have a game with them. I know. So pick it up. It's really fun. It's a cool like summertime like by the, by the lake or by the pool or hanging out at night outside with a fire going, play some spooky games.

Girls' night, boys' night, they/them night.

Yeah, whatever night you feel. Night. Or morning. You can do it in the morning if you want.

You can do it in the morning. That'd be really nice. We actually, like early morning, hazy outside with your coffee, hunt a killer.

Yeah.

Salem Slicer. That's a vibe.

There's a podcast episode in the game that we did. Yeah. About the case. So.

And it's exclusive.

Yeah. So check it out.

Go get it. It's like everywhere now.

Yeah, I think it is. It's like Walmart. And let me tell you, they were great to work with. We had a blast with Relatable.

They said, you better go buy our game.

So yeah, I just wanted to put that out there.

Anything else?

I'm trying to think if there's any other fun things. I miss Widow's Bay. Like to a point where it's like hurting a little bit. Yes.

So I want to have a party. This Widow's Bay theme.

Me too.

I know you want it to be your birthday party, but I frankly don't want to wait that long.

I want a Widow's Bay party so bad.

Maybe we can do like a summerween Widow's Bay party.

I think that would be so much fun. I just miss it.

Oh, I have an idea and I'm not going to talk to you about it, but I'm going to talk to your husband about it.

Period. Period.

I just, I felt passionate.

That was crazy. Uh, but yeah.

Lucia. Um.

I'm trying to think if there's anything else to tell you guys. I don't know. Something comes up, I'll let you know. Okay. But yeah, so I hope you guys are having a good summer and I'm stalling because it's gonna be rough.

No, it's, it's okay. Summer's almost over, by the way.

Summer is almost over. Halloween. It's spooky season. So let's get into it. All right. We gotta shift. This is gonna be hard shift. I apologize for the hard shift. Where did we leave?

You left off. At like a crazy place.

On a pretty crazy place. They just received that wild letter.

Yeah.

Like a wild letter.

I was so mad at you.

Yeah. And they had gotten a fingerprint off of it, but they couldn't really do anything with the fingerprint. It's just going to sit there because '80s. And then John Douglas was like, yeah, I don't think this is from the killer.

What's wrong?

Which was valid of him because it sounds insane, this letter. And you're kind of like, I don't know.

But also like, it sounds insane.

Right. Well, that's the thing. And it's like, so. Uh, and it was sent to the Post-Intelligencer, and what we found out was that he was wrong and that it was sent by the Green River Killer. Um, so again, this letter was just kind of like another piece of the puzzle that was getting more and more bizarre and hard to piece through, you know what I mean? Like, this whole case has been just like a mystery.

Yeah.

And what's crazy is when you really dig into this, you see that like the press were not helping very much during this. The media was not helping.

They rarely do.

Yeah, it was not. And they were not helping in like a different way with this one, where they were making the public feel like the, uh, investigators and the task force didn't care. Oh. And that was in fact not true.

Well, just the fact that there's a task force shows that they do care.

Yeah, like that— it just wasn't true. They were genuinely working very hard on this case and cared a lot. Um, I mean, like, we're going to talk about how Reichert joined Bob Keppel— like, Bob Keppel for life— um, and in interviewing Ted Bundy to try to get information.

For people who don't know, who's Bob Keppel?

Bob Keppel, um, he was like instrumental in the Ted Bundy case. Okay, if you know that case, you know Bob Keppel. He also, um, consulted on dozens and dozens and dozens of other cases because he's considered just one of the most, uh, skilled and talented investigators.

Okay.

Ever.

Period.

Like, he's like, he's up there and he just knows how to track down a serial killer. He really does. Like, he just knows how to get in the mind.

Like Mindhunter.

Yeah, he really does. Like, he's He's pretty fascinating. He actually wrote a book called The River Man about this case and like how he talked to Ted Bundy about it. And as we're going to get into it, but he was also trying to get a confession out of Ted Bundy for some of his own unsolved cases. He was working overtime. He was working double time. And he— and I'll give you some stuff to listen to or watch afterwards too, because it's a fascinating part. Like little deviation off this case, um, that actually had a little bit of stuff that, you know, like, I— like what— because Ted Bundy is a piece of shit and a serial killer and a sexual sadist.

Yeah, all of the above.

He didn't know, so some of how this guy's mind worked.

Yeah.

Uh, he did not do it for any other reason but to try to get a stay of execution. He was not— he was just scared to die. Yeah, it was no remorse. There was no sudden up of conscience or wanting to be a human being or caring about these women or their families. He was just doing it for his own good, just so you know that ahead of time. But some of it, he stumbled into some right answers, so there was—

all right.

Um, but yeah, this is a very frustrating case. But if the letter was genuinely from the killer, like it ended up being, it did appear to indicate a very high number of victims, more than what they knew.

Yeah.

Now, Reichert and the others barely had time to even consider all of this when the next victim was already discovered. Um, and this actually kicked off like kind of a wave of really gruesome discoveries that lasted about 3 months.

Oh wow.

Um, like Missy Plager, 19-year-old Lisa Yates had gone missing in late 1983, uh, when she didn't arrive to pick up her niece Veronica for a picnic on December 23rd. Her family simply— they just thought like maybe Lisa had kind of like taken off or something had come up. She had taken off before, so like it wasn't unusual. Possible. Um, Veronica recalled later, she was young and beautiful, gifted, loving, and funny. I thought she was so cool.

Oh, it was just like, oh, it's really sad.

On March 13th, 1984, Lisa's remains were discovered in a shallow grave out by Interstate 90, not far from where Missy Plager's body was found. It took several months to identify the remains, but in late September, Bill Haglund from the ME's office was able to identify these remains using dental records. One week later, on March 21st, Bob Van Dyke, who was the groundskeeper of 3 baseball fields out near the airport, was very startled when his dog came home one afternoon carrying what looked to be human bones. No. He said, I knew what it was, but I hoped that it wasn't.

Oh, man. Oh man.

The discovery was reported to the police, who searched the area where the leg was discovered and turned up an entire human skeleton. The ME estimated this victim to have been in her early teens, but due to the advanced state of decomposition, it was pretty impossible to tell cause of death, which is what he counted on.

Yeah.

Based on the state of the skeleton when it was found, she was estimated to have died roughly 1 year earlier. Wow. Like, he really picked places, and we'll get into it. That's one thing that when they talk to Ted Bundy, he says he does not want these bodies found. He's not trying to, to leave them out in the open. He doesn't want to be caught. He doesn't want this.

He goes by the airport so frequently.

Yeah, and it's like, but that— but he's going into like places around it where you're not really gonna be unless you're kind of—

unless you're already there for some reason.

Yeah, exactly. Now Under the circumstances in the timeline, it seemed entirely likely that the remains found in the woods were those of a Green River victim, but the task force had nothing to work with, and there was no one on the list of missing women who was in their early teens. Now, tragically, these remains would sit unidentified and unclaimed for nearly 40 years. Oh my God, until 2021.

Wow, that recently?

And it was only when a random check of DNA in the DNA Doe Project database found a match.

Oh, that's awful.

Now, and this is a teenager. Yeah. The skeleton was that of 14-year-old Wendy Stevens. How did she go on for so long? She was a runaway from Denver, Colorado, who disappeared in March 1983. And it's believed that after running away from Denver, she made her way, obviously, to Seattle, where she crossed paths with the killer. By the time all the victims were identified, she would turn out to be the youngest victim. Yeah. And the reason she wasn't identified was because she was from— was from Denver, probably. So it just didn't add up. Now, given that the killer had a history of dumping multiple victims in a single location, a major search of the baseball fields and surrounding area was done the following day. And it wasn't long before the search team found another victim. Seattle search dog handler Chris Clifford said, these hunts are real depressing. Uh, he said he had a bloodhound who was named Sorrow. Oh, because he was like used to find remains.

It's like really sad for Sorrow too.

Yeah. And they were contacted to help the task force with these searches. Uh, he later said Sorrow had this funny reaction when he finds something that's dead. He gets real tentative. He just stops. I came around the corner and saw him standing there frozen. Oh, now Sorrow had discovered the remains of 18-year-old Cheryl Wims, who'd gone missing from downtown Seattle 10 months before. On the night of her birthday.

Oh man.

Or, excuse me, the night before her birthday. Um, everyone who knew Cheryl had kind of a hard time picturing her engaging in sex work.

Okay.

Uh, according to her boss at a local restaurant where she worked as a busser, Cheryl was, quote, quiet, conservative, and conscientious, which just didn't immediately ring as a personality that would succeed on the streets. Really quiet, like not very put yourself out there, outgoing, you know. Still, her mother acknowledged that Cheryl had started keeping secrets from her in recent months, so it was possible that she had. Okay, she was like, I don't know. Now, just one week later, on March 31st, yet another dump site was discovered, this time out on Star Lake Road. To the surprise of the task force members, the new site was not new at all. Oh, it was just a few dozen yards from where they'd found the yet-to-be-identified remains of Gail Matthews 6 months earlier. And they were like, why did the killer leave Gail's body so close to the road but the others deeper into the woods?

Yeah.

And he— they were wondering, had he been forced to abandon his plan and leave her in an inopportune location? Like, he didn't want to leave her there because it seems like that had happened a couple times, that he got like spooked by something, or like something happened that he had to do it quick.

Yeah.

Now, whatever the reason, the Star Lake Road site turned out to be one of the largest and honestly the most heartbreaking the detectives had discovered. If, you know, this is shocking how many remains were found here.

Okay.

Yards from where Gail's body had been discovered, they discovered the remains, and they were also young.

Yeah.

They discovered the remains of 16-year-old Terry Milligan, disappeared August 28th, 1982. 17-year-old Dolores Williams, gone March 8th, 1983. 17-year-old Sander Gabbard, disappeared April 17th, 1983. An 18-year-old Alma Smith disappeared March 3rd, 1983. All of them in the same area.

And all teenagers.

And all teenagers at the same time. Just off Highway 410, which is a short distance from the Star Lake site, they found a fifth set of remains, those of 26-year-old Debbie Abernathy, who went missing September 5th, 1983.

Thank God.

And that's on top of Gail. That's on top of— it's like He also just leaves bodies everywhere. Yeah, like anybody, like clusters them into places, but like so many, right? And by the time the site had been fully excavated and all the victims removed, the list of Green River victims was double the size of the list of missing women.

Oh my God, so they didn't even have— they didn't even account for everybody who was missing.

No, with Debbie Abernathy making the 25th victim.

I was just gonna— I'm so glad you said that because I was like, how many victims are we at?

Debbie had come to Seattle from Waco, Texas, and had only been in the city a month before she disappeared. She had been performing sex work to support herself, her 3-year-old son, and her boyfriend Henry Maynor. When Debbie didn't return one afternoon, Henry reported her missing. That spring, she was among the remains Bill Haglund identified through dental records. Now, the discovery of the latest dump site confirmed the task force theory that the Killer had preferred dump sites and would go back to them. Like, once he found one, he used it to its fullest extent. Um, he started with the Green River, then the vacant lots around the airport, then the area around Highway 410, and most recently, the baseball fields by Star Lake Road. Still, the question kept nagging at them: where was he keeping these remains before dumping them?

Yeah, because it's like multiple bodies at the same time.

Yeah, because in many cases there were several months or even a year between the victim disappearing between their disappearing and when the remains were discovered. And in the case of Terry Milligan, almost 2 years.

And it's not like he— this is so awful to even think about, but it's not like he's, like, preserving the bodies either. No.

They're like skeletons.

Where are you keeping decomposing bodies? Yes.

But that wasn't it. If the dates of their disappearances could be the stand-ins for their times of death, he also appeared to be taking victims in clusters.

Right.

For instance, like Gail Matthews, Andrea Childress, Sandra Gabbert, and Kimi Käypi— uh, Pizzor, excuse me— were all killed within days of one another, with, uh, Kimi and, uh, Sandra disappearing on the same day.

So he picks them both up. Yeah.

Now the cluster theory was strengthened again when, after the discovery of Alma Smith's remains, the discovery of new victims once again slowed down. More than a month passed before the next body was discovered, this time on Jovita Boulevard, a mile or so outside of the— of King County. On May 26, 1984, two boys walking in the woods in Pierce County were shocked when they stumbled upon the near-complete skeleton laying in the brush about 1,000 feet away from the road. Now, despite being in a different jurisdiction, Pierce County investigators clearly recognized the similarity between the skeleton and the Green River victims, so they called in the task force. Luckily, I'm glad nobody was like fighting over jurisdiction.

It drives me crazy when egos fuck all this up, especially in that time period too. I feel like it was— it's— oh, it always happens, but I feel like you hear it so much in these like '80s, like '70s, '80s cases.

They just won't share information because they're like, my jurisdiction. It's like, shut up, stay in your own town. In many cases, the idea of the newly— of newly discovered victims was a pretty long and arduous process that took months, if not years, to complete due to the level of decomposition and the lack of distinctive features that they could actually go off of.

Yeah, well, and just like the lack of science.

Yeah, like that we had was a little stagnant. Now this time though, there was one highly unusual feature the task force was able to rely on. The victim had braces, dental braces. But when they checked the missing persons list, none of the young women on the list had braces. It was only after the victim's father read about the skeleton in the local paper that he called the task force and reported that he believed this victim could be his daughter, 15-year-old Colleen Brockman.

Oh my God.

The ME compared the teeth to Brockman's dental records and confirmed it was Colleen. Her father's old, noticed in the paper and said, I think that's my daughter.

That's horrific.

I can't even conceive of that. I literally can't conceive of that.

No.

Now Colleen, it turned out, was like many of the other victims who disappeared over the years. She was a bright and friendly young woman who just had developed a defiant streak when she reached adolescence, and it put her in direct and constant conflict with her parents, her father. Just prior to her disappearance in late December 1982, Colleen had run away from home a few times, only to return a few days later. The last time she ran away, on December 28th, she took her clothes and several other personal items, giving her father the impression that this time she might not be coming back so soon, right? Hoping the re— the introduction of law enforcement might straighten his daughter out. Her father had reported her to the police for stealing some of his things, just trying to like, yeah, scare her straight.

Well, it's like hopefully they can apprehend her so she's not on the streets. Yeah, you know, like I see, I see that line of thinking.

Exactly. But at a time when runaway cases weren't taken very seriously, the report went nowhere. And I hope these are the kind of things that I hope they looked at, and that, that was the change of like, we can't just ignore, right, these kind of cases, right? Now, among the last people to see Colleen was her childhood friend Bunny. Oh, who was surprised to see how the 15-year-old was living at the time. She said, she told me that what she was doing, and I was instantly terrified for her. She seemed really happy with her new life though, and she said most of the guys were really nice to her, buying her presents and taking her to dinner. She was pretty naive. I think she thought that meant they loved her in some way.

Oh, that's really sad.

She's only 15.

Really disgusting on the men's part.

Yeah, she's 15.

So you're a pedophile.

She's a literal baby. Yep. Nearly 4 months passed before the next batch of victims, the last of 1984, were discovered. On October 12th, a mushroom hunter in the woods near Enumclaw found the skeletal remains of Mary Sue Bellow, almost a year to the day after she went missing. Mary Sue had been placed on the task force missing list in October of the previous year, but she was removed after they received confirmation that she was alive and living in Texas. Okay, uh, Faye Brooks told the reporter a detective in Texas said he had seen her, though he had not talked to her, in early December 1983. The discovery of Bello's body was followed a month later, on November 14th, by the discovery of the remains of 19-year-old Martina Arthurley, who was reported missing in May 1983. In 1982, Martina had moved from her parents' home in Tacoma to North Carolina, where she had enrolled in the Army. But just 6 weeks into her stay, she was given a medical discharge. The discharge seemed to derail whatever plans she had for herself, and she soon found herself kind of like a little bit in an aimless rut because obviously she had plans, right?

You know, that's hard. She moved to Hillsboro, Oregon, but from that point on, she became very secretive about her life, sharing very little with her family despite keeping in regular contact with them.

Okay.

According to author Anne Rule— I don't know if you know her, heard of her— yeah. She told them she had a job, but they didn't know what she did. It turned out she had been supporting herself through sex work. When Christmas came and went and they hadn't heard from Martina, her parents reported her missing. In April, her name was added to the list of missing women, and like Mary Sue Bellow, her remains were found in the woods in Enumclaw. She was identified through dental records.

It's just so sad to think that so many of these women and teenage girls were just struggling so much at the end of their lives.

That's the thing, like, they were just It's just so sad. They were like in the worst place. Yeah. Now again, like I said before, I'm gonna get into the Ted Bundy stuff now. Okay. Like I said before, the media actually was a big foe during this case. Uh, they did put it in the minds of the, the public that investigators didn't give a shit, right? Um, they actually put a lot into this case. Some of them ended up hospitalized because of stress. Like, a lot of them were.

I mean, think about how long it went on for and how many victims they're finding at each scene, and they can't do anything.

Like, they're trying—

probably they feel responsible.

I'm sure they were having people go undercover as sex workers to try to like lure him out. Like, that's terrible. Women like fresh out of college, like starting this stuff, like, and they were willing to do it. Like, people, they were giving it all they could. It's not like they were just like, oh, fuck it, whatever, right?

Well, and I think a lot of times, because we even see this in cases now, it's like when things are being kept close to the chest for real reasons. People can't wrap— like, the public has a hard time wrapping their head around.

Yeah, because you want to know, and it's completely natural and normal, but it's like, you, you have to step back.

Yeah.

And no, and obviously things got bad enough that they were— and they were far enough away from getting any real lead that they took an offer from one of the worst men to ever live.

Yeah, Ted Bundy, a straight-up serial killer.

Now, Dave Reichert had come to see Bob Keppel for his help because he knew Bob Keppel did this shit.

Was like a genius.

He's gonna— if somebody's gonna find this guy, it's gonna be Bob Keppel. Um, he— again, he's— if you have read the Ted Bundy case, then you know Bob Keppel. He's a great detective. So Reichert knew this Green River Killer situation was getting out of control, and he was doing what he could to bring in the best minds that he could.

Imagine having that reputation like Bob Keppel. I know, like, if anybody's gonna catch him, it's gonna be—

it's gonna be you.

I'd be like, my shit doesn't stink, right?

I'd be like, you can't hurt me.

Yeah, like, like, I'm like—

and like I said before, Keppel was brought in on a lot of cases like this just because of, you know, he— this was his area of expertise. And he was actually ranked as the lead criminal investigator for the Washington State Attorney General's Office.

Humble.

So Uh, Keppel became chief consultant of the Green River Task Force because of this. Now, at the time, Bundy was in prison in Florida, and there were 8 young women and girls who were murdered in 1974 that were still not being labeled as his victims, even though they were. Yeah, we know them to be, like, they have now since been connected. Um, and again, Keppel just couldn't charge him because he was sitting in a Florida prison cell. So, and it was driving him crazy. Uh, they were Linda Healy, Donna Manson, Susan Rancourt, Catherine Park— Kathy Parks, Brenda Ball, George Ann Hawkins, Janice Ott, and Denise Naslund. Um, Bundy actually was the one who reached out to them. Oh really? They did not reach out for the opportunity of the stay. They were not like, hey, we should go ask Ted Bundy about this. Like, that wasn't anybody's idea, right? Ted Bundy reached out to them in October 1984 because he was reading about the Green River Killer murder he said.

And he saw an opportunity.

And he saw an opera because, uh, this 1984, I think, um, Bob Keppel's son actually states it in this documentary I was watching, Dialogue with the Devil, I think it is. I'll link it. Um, he says like this was the beginning of his like play to try to make his execution stop.

Okay.

So he sent a letter to the task force saying that he had some information that he thought could, quote, prove useful in apprehending the person or persons responsible for what are referred to as the Green River Murders. He also said he would only help if they didn't tell anyone outside of the task force that he was helping. Oh, no media, nothing. He didn't want anyone knowing this. And he said his offer had to stay secret to only them. He also said he would only talk about the Green River Killer and not about anything else.

Do you think that was because, like, he's, he's a rat technically?

Yeah, and I think he— yeah, he didn't want to be looked at as— and he's doing this to not die.

Yeah. And he doesn't want everyone knowing that he's desperately trying to not die and that he's now willing to become a rat. Exactly. To avoid it. Okay.

Uh, he also said— so what he said about it was, quote, "We will handle this thing in a straightforward manner, or we don't handle it at all." And it's like, you have no power, babe.

Well, that's the thing too. I think he was very much looking for some kind of control.

Adorable that you think you have even an ounce of power here. He's like, we handle will it this way or not at all? They could just be like, not at all, thanks, bye. Yeah, like, what is this about?

See you at the execution chair, bud.

Like, I know it's— I know they haven't got him yet, but it's like, they are detectives and they're good at their job.

They're working on it.

And they're working on it.

And Bob's here.

They would do it. And Bob is here now. So Bob's here now. He knew that also— he knew that Bob Keppel had been put on as one of the leads on the task force.

So this worked out.

Like, They were like nemesis. Yeah, they were like— now, Keppel saw this obviously as an opportunity to not only see if maybe he did have some insight that could help them catch the Green River Killer. They said, what the fuck, we've never done this before, might as well try it. But also maybe he could tease some information out of him about those unsolved cases in Washington. Yo, he said, I can catch two birds with one stone here. Yeah, the worst part is that he was It was definitely him having like a free therapy session where he could confess without confessing.

Okay.

He could say everything that he felt and all his motives and what compelled him to do what he was doing. But he could do it in a— almost like an if I did it way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can say it without saying it.

And I'm also applying it to this other character.

Yeah, it's this guy that I'm talking about.

Right.

And he happens to just have the exact same MO that I have.

Right.

He would say things like, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then he'd be like, "He probably isn't telling anyone what he's done." And then he would add into it, "I certainly wouldn't." And I was like, "You're talking about you." Like, he said he wouldn't talk about himself during this. He's like, "I'm only talking about Green River." But then Bob Keppel and Dave Reichert were able to get him to talk about himself without even realizing he was. Okay. Now, and I love it 'cause he's such— his ego in this is, like, so fragile. But so overwhelming at the same time. Like he said, I'm the only one in possession of information and that's just the way it is. It's now or never.

I mean, not really.

Like I'm sitting there being like, it's now or never. Okay, shut the fuck up. Yeah, you're about to die.

Okay, get out of here.

Uh, and so a couple of the things that really struck me in the conversation were they're just very spooky and chilling and it really, really makes you think.

I heard some of it when you were watching and I was like, this is horrifying.

One of the things he said was, I don't know what it is, if there's something about the Pacific Northwest that seems to encourage this kind of activity. Several things.

No, I think it was that you had a head injury as a child.

This kind of activity?

Yeah.

You mean serial murder?

Right.

Like that kind of act? You mean sexual serial murder?

Right.

That? Something about the weather? I don't think it's the weather.

Yeah. That influences people.

I don't think that it's just dreary. Like, I don't think that's doing it. Yeah, like, he's, he's wild in this, the brain. He said at one point, I mean, how do you detach yourself and say this guy did these things, which I consider to be horrible and repulsive, and just really try to get into this guy's head? My advantage is that I don't have those barriers. That like chilled me to my bone.

Oh, so he's like, I don't find these things.

Yeah, like he's saying like, you look at it and say like, wow, this is horrible. He's like, I don't have those barriers because I did it.

It's so, it's so chilling that people like, how are you real? Well, it's like, you're like, obviously like he's a monster, but it's like at the end of the day, like he is a human. And it's weird that some humans are built different. Yeah, just like, like they, they either don't ever have those boundaries or they somehow lose sight of them, lose them along. And it's like, so I'm just like, how does that happen? I, I say it every time we talk about a case like this, but I'm just like, how does that work?

Now, some of the things that they had to admit, like, obviously it was easy for Ted Bundy to come out of this looking like he was able to provide insight, right? But the only reason he was able to do that is because he's the same kind of sick fuck that this guy is. So you can't give him any kind of pat on the back or any kind of like, oh, he did provide something. No, he just said what he does, and he happens to be the same kind of nasty that this guy is. It's like it just worked out that they were the same. They were the same kind of fucking losers as the other one. So some of the things he said that did turn out to be correct was that he believed that, you know, the Green River Killer searched these places out and, um, where he dumped the victims, and he would go during the day and night. This would not be accidental, like him coming you know, just finding a random place. He looked them out ahead of time to make sure he could do this.

Everything we know about serial killers, that also just kind of makes sense.

It doesn't for all of them. Some of them are fucking sloppy as hell and they just dump people wherever they can, or they leave them where they do it. Yeah, this is, this is very specific to this type of serial. Okay, this is very specific to like sexual sadists and like They're planners. They are going to come back. So they want to know where this is.

Exactly. And they want to know that nobody's going to be there.

That no one's going to be there. They have, they have a plan like they, they don't. And these kind of serial killers usually aren't trying to get caught. So they're not doing the like, I'm just going to leave this body on the side of the road or like where somebody could stumble upon it.

Right.

They would like to keep doing this and they would like to keep coming back to these corpses. They don't want this to stop, so they really make it an effort to make sure they scope these dump sites out. Was the Green River Killer the same as Ted in the way that he would come back? Seems like it.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

We'll get there.

Um, he said he's likely gone back to these places several times afterwards, and he was definitely talking about himself there. Like, that was easy for him to come up with because he's just talking about himself, right? He said they were killed, uh, very likely shortly after they were abducted. And he does it in the quickest and easiest way possible. He's not getting crazy with it, he's just trying to dispose of this person. Uh, he pointed out that he will keep doing what, quote, is working. He pointed out that killing sex workers makes it easier for him because simply because they were accessible and they were harder to investigate from a law enforcement perspective. He said he's likely just approaching them like a john or someone, like, or just offering money, drugs. He said things these women likely, quote unquote, need. He's non-threatening. He probably uses a ruse or a lure like Bundy did with the broken arm and the help me to my car, coming off very non-threatening. I'm just Ted, you know. He said the Green River Killer has an intense, extreme kind of need to do this. He said that just doesn't go away.

He said he believed he didn't want to be caught. Like I said, he, you know, has been trying to improve his dump sites. They asked him if it was possible if he left them, because there was a couple of times where they would find like partial remains, like, you know, one victim they only found the skull. And he said, was it possible that he did that to see if they could find the rest of the body?

Okay.

And he said, so Bundy said he didn't think so. He said he has plenty of other dump sites and and his disgusting words, because this is how he thinks, and it's how the Green River Killer thinks too. He said, quote, "If he wants to get his rocks off, he'll go there." Oh, that's how he— like, and he just said it like, "You writing this down?" Like, "Is what it is." Yeah, like, "You got this?" Okay. He pointed out that he felt that the Green River Killer was broadening his victim pool to include runaways, and the task force, um, later said they had actually already come to that conclusion themselves behind closed doors. Um, they asked him how long he will do this, and this answer was chilling because he said until he gets caught. Oh, and he was saying, I would keep doing it. Like, he was essentially saying, I would keep— I would be doing this right now if I didn't get caught.

Well, I mean, look at him, how many times he tried to escape so that he could do it again.

Yeah. He mentioned that the guy was familiar with the environments he was, quote, working in, and that he likely tracked these women from where they worked and lived. He spoke about how the fatal link between sex and violence had clearly been made here, and he said no one can fight that. Like, he made it seem like once you're in that place where you've linked those two, you're never getting out of it.

I mean, yeah, that kind of makes sense.

He said he's definitely going back to the bodies to check out the condition of them, or to, quote, get whatever kicks he gets out of it. Oh, he mentioned there was a certain level of possessiveness where the corpse could be just as important as the live victim. He said it was a physical possession and ownership, which is so dark, and it's exactly him.

Yeah, that—

like, he's talking about him, but he is describing the—

it's like they're like collecting.

Yeah. When asked whether the size of the task force would get to him, like, like make it— you know, they— the size of the task force had like exploded. They made it really big. And he said, would that kind of like scare him, kind of make him want to get out of town, slow down, or like scare him a little bit? And Bundy said it was entirely possible. He said, I don't think it's going to make him leave town. And he said it was entirely possible, actually. That he was getting an ego charge out of, quote, beating you people.

That makes sense.

And staying ahead of you.

Like, as horrifying as it is, it makes sense.

His advice was that anything they could do to make the Green River Killer nervous would be the thing to catch him, because he said nervous men make mistakes, right? He said make him feel less capable. He said publicity makes him nervous. Um, he said he— he— and he said personally, this is what he put his own personal thing onto it. He said, I don't like my name being in the papers. And I was like, you love publicity, actually. Yeah, shut the fuck up. You opted to represent yourself as like, you're a theatrical fuck. You didn't like publicity when you got caught.

Yeah, exactly. When everybody was like, oh, Ted's gross. I was like, babe, you wanted to be a politician. You don't like publicity?

You represented yourself in your trial, right?

That's what I just said. Get the fuck out of here.

You know, like, he's like, I hate attention. It's gross.

And I'm like, really? Okay, Ted.

Yeah, okay. Uh, but he said he believes this guy does not like publicity, and he was likely right.

Interesting though, because like he went out of his way to send a letter. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like, do you see where that kind of contradicts itself?

I think the— and yeah, because I think, I think he's a bullshitter here, right? I think he just wanted to look like, I'm not doing— that's why he made sure to say like, don't go to the media with me doing this.

Yeah, like, that's not who Ted is.

That's not who Ted is, right? Like, he's just sitting there being like, I just do this out of the kindness of my evil, evil heart, right? But now, yeah, it's like the Green River Killer went out of his way, almost, that, that they weren't getting anywhere, and it like annoyed him almost. So he was like, hey, have you thought about all this? Like, look at these things.

Because again, it goes back to the ego part of it all, where it's like they do want to see something in the paper about themselves. That's why, to add to like, you're not catching me, and that's why you're putting out information about me.

And that's why I think it's like they can't be easily shoved into this little box. Like, there's little nuances here that, like, I think Ted Bundy thinks he knows all of them and, like, this is the way all of them run and I know. And it's like, you can't know that because they're all gonna have their little nuances.

Yeah, yeah. No, I almost said quirks, but that's, like, too cute.

Yeah, there are little nuances.

Is right.

Yeah. Uh, and he— they were looking at, um, a man named Melvin Foster.

Okay.

As, um, one of the suspects, and they asked him like, what do you think of that guy? And he said he thought the attention on him was actually giving the real Green River Killer a boost of ego, saying like, look, they don't have anything, I'm home free. Which might have been true, and that's why there was an uptick in the—

yeah, in the discoveries.

Now this is also where it got crazy during this interview, because again, I suggest you watch it, it's very interesting. Um, this is when he was like Listen, I can tell you why I did it. I can tell you why he did it. And they're like, whoa, why? And he said, porn. It's just porn. I was a totally normal guy, and then porn just turned me into Ted Bundy.

Yep.

Ted. Not my fault. Not my fault. Not my sweet little baby eyes getting just forced to watch porn. I'm also like Ted. And then turn into a serial killer.

Also Ted, I'm sorry. Your childhood was like kind of fucked.

And also you're just an evil fuck, right?

Like, it's just like, there's like, there's a lot at work here. So to just chalk it up to porn is nuts. Yeah, because there was many things that went into the making of Ted Bundy, which may have already began like in the womb perhaps.

I think it was because he was real little slipping knives under his aunt's—

yeah, he was a mattress. He was a strange kid. Yeah, but then there's, you know, his like he grew up thinking his mom was his sister, the head injuries. Like, there's a lot to play with there.

And some people are just born evil.

Exactly.

It's just that it's not because you watched porn that you suddenly turn from a completely normal child and— or human into— right, a sadist, the worst serial killer that the world has ever known. Like, I don't know.

But then on the other side of things, I'm sure if you're already Ted Bundy and you watch crazy porn, that's not gonna help.

Yeah, that's not gonna help.

It's only gonna exacerbate the issue.

But it's definitely not—

but it's not—

he is who he is.

And he—

that was his whole ploy at the end of his fucking Stay of Execution series, was he was like, it's porn, get the church, let's— well, let's just like— everybody look at me as a victim.

It was like, it was very timely though, because there was like a huge thing going on. Yeah, like going after porn, latching on to anything, right?

But he tried to put it in here, and it was like, babe, no. Yeah, no. Like, we're not putting this— we're not seeing the Green River Killer watch some porn and then decided to do all this. Like, no. And so he did that, and they just kind of did the eye roll thing, like, okay, okay, Ted. And they were like, yeah, this isn't gonna help you. Like, we're not— like, I don't know why you're telling me this. And then they were like, because they had asked him, like, is there any way that you can think of— just see what he'd say— yeah, that we could draw him out of the woodwork? What would, you know, what would Ted do?

You know, W-W-T-D. Yeah, there you go.

But, and he said, all right, it's going to sound kind of crazy. And they were like, and I, and I'm sure they were like, I bet. Well, in the actual thing, Bob Keppel was like, we braced ourselves for what Ted Bundy found crazy. Like, they were like, uh, do we want to hear? He said, listen, I am willing to bet that this guy loves slasher flicks because we're also going to pin it on that now. And I said, excuse me, And they said, he said, okay, so this is what you're going to do. You're going to put together a slasher film festival.

Not Ted just trying to enjoy summerween.

And then you are going to film every single innocent person that attends said slasher film festival. And then you're going to go through and you're going to figure out who it is. And they said, first of all, I have several questions. One, what? Two, what would that do? We don't have anything to compare it to.

Right.

Why would— what?

Like, we're just gonna see him and we'll know?

We're just gonna— is he gonna be like, by the way, I'm the Green River Killer? Like, does he have a thing that says, hello, I'm the Green River Killer? Like, we're just looking at random faces.

Ted said, look for the vibe.

He said, you know what, I'm an idea man. I'm not trying to think this further. But then they say, They said, 3, you can like scary movies and violent movies and not be a sexual serial murderer. 4, that's highly illegal. You can't just take pictures of people going into a movie with no probable cause and then just say one of those is the Green River Killer. Like, you can't do that.

And bring that to a judge for an arrest warrant.

So they were like, yeah, no, I don't think we're going to do that. At one point, Dave Reichert, it's literally in, like, you can hear it on the film. Dave Reichert was so shocked that he was suggesting this, like, was like, "You are such an idiot," that he accidentally, like, nudged the recorder off the table. Like, you hear it, like, crash to the ground, and then they have to put it back on because he was so like, "What?" So— and then at one point, so they hear this and they're like, "Wow, that's an idea. That's a real idea." And then Bob Reichert— or Bob Keppel was like, I knew one thing about— because he knows Ted Bundy and he knows these fucks. He said, I knew a well-placed yawn was gonna get him right back on track because he was now leading us down. He's having fun with this. Yeah, he's just— he's telling you to start a slasher film festival. Like, he's having a blast.

Ted's just doing community outreach.

So he said, I can do this so easily. So Bob Keppel leaned back in his chair and just did one little yawn. Just a little— this is a little long. I don't know. We've been sitting here for a while. And Ted, on the video, you can hear him say, like, he laughs and says, "Am I boring you?" It got him immediately. Like, he knew. It won't even take a second yawn. One yawn and this fucker's ego will be so crushed at the idea of me being bored.

One, I'm obsessed with that. And two, it's very Butcher Legacy. I know. It's very Butcher Legacy.

I didn't realize how much of this kind of personality.

Yeah. I don't want to make any spoilers, but wow.

Yeah, there is definitely. And I didn't realize how much like that John LaRue has some Bob Kepel vibes.

He does. Pre-order The Butcher Legacy.

Yeah, that was a very organic plug. But yeah, he yawns and he says, am I boring you?

You're saying that a lot, so now I feel I need to yawn.

I'm just hanging out. Like, just, this is a long time, Ted, that you're just kind of talking about bullshit.

Going on and on.

And he said, Immediately after he's like, am I boring you? And they're like, this is just like kind of long, I don't know. He was like, okay, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna go to a fresh body site, one that he has just left a body at. You're gonna put it under surveillance 24/7. They said, you don't want him to know, you gotta let him do his thing. You gotta keep it off the radios. You can't let him know at all that you're gonna be there. And he said, you're gonna watch it because he's gonna come back. And they were like, boom, that's an actual viable thing.

I'm actually kind of surprised that they had to have Ted Bundy think of that.

Well, that's— I think they had already thought of that.

Okay.

But they were more just shocked that he actually gave them like a real, like, valuable thing to do. Like, they were just kind of like, okay, like, that's— yeah, that's like a thing we would do.

And maybe it was almost like a litmus test to be like, should we keep talking to him?

Yeah, I think it was. It was kind of like, are you ever gonna give me a real thing?

Yeah.

And I think when they did the yawn thing and he suddenly snaps into like, okay, well, I'm gonna give you real shit right now, they were like, oh, that's all it takes, right? Just act bored. So yeah, so he also said something that ended up being true, but again, was pretty, it was the same thing as him. Yeah. This guy is going to appear very normal as anyone else.

You've already met him.

Like he's gonna be, like he's not gonna strike you right away as like, oh, he's a raving, and in his words, he was like, this guy is not like a raving maniac. Like he's an everyday guy.

Well, and obviously.

That's how he's been able to do this for so long.

Exactly, that's what I was just gonna say, obviously, because he maintains a lot of control over his psyche.

He's moving through his life as this, like, crazy wild monster who's just, like, pissing everyone off. And, like, he would have already been brought up as, like, this guy's crazy and probably did it.

Yeah.

So, yeah, um, his profile, um, because they, they did say to him, and I loved it because Bob Keppel literally says to him, he was like, you know, someday I would love to present you with the profile that was done on you.

Oh my God.

And it is the most It's a read. Oh, it's so saucy the way he just drops it. Like, maybe someday we can talk about your psychological profile.

Like, I don't know, like, that was done because it's like, don't forget who you are. Like, he literally— like, a big shot helping us right now, but don't forget.

That was it. And it is chef's fucking kiss because the way he just puts him back in his place. Everyone's so— but does it in a way where he doesn't get him to get up and leave, right?

Like, it's—

it's enough where he sits there and takes it but is pissed about it. It's like Very interesting to listen to. Yeah, he was very, very good at talking to him. Um, but he did say, he was like, because again, they, they give him that, they say, hey, maybe someday we can talk about your psychological profile, you fucking asshole, right? Uh, and then he's like, and you know what, what's, what would your profile on this guy be? Because then they give him the little, like, why don't you tell me? You can be help. Like, yeah, like, remember who you are. Help me, Ted.

Do you want to draw a picture?

So he said he's probably, you know, young, like 30s, correct? Uh, he has probably has a low-paying job that restricts his movements.

Okay, which is another reason he's not leaving, which is right.

He doesn't have a lot of money. He's white. He said he may have a girlfriend, but as active as he is, he said it would put a strain on any relationship. So he's likely not holding down like a pretty, like, serious girlfriend. And that was what he gave them, and they said, cool, okay, thanks.

They—

this did end up helping move some things along in his case as well. So Bob Keppel and Dave Reich are doing this ended up being a pretty, a pretty good thing that they did.

Okay.

Now, so they got all that, and now that was in like 1984. I think they— I believe they went back to him in 1988, I want to say, and got a couple more things out of him. But, you know, as much as they could get, right? Um, because that's when he started trying to be like, I don't want to die, so I'm going to start giving you information about my case. I'm going to get crazy. Uh, but the Green River Task Force started off 1985, the year after they talked to Ted Bundy. In a pretty frustrating position still. They had 28 victims at this point, a handful of vague and pretty conflicting witness statements, and no new leads. But there was something else they noticed that was pretty unexpected. The list of missing women had not been growing.

Okay.

In fact, as far as they could tell, the most recent Green River victim to be murdered was Lisa Yates in March 1984. Um, Faye Brooks said, women keep disappearing in this area, but we keep finding them. Yeah, so like, they're not coming— it's not growing, right? Um, initially there was some speculation that the killer had simply moved on to a nearby state, maybe, because there was this like, uh, little period of, uh, sex workers being murdered in Portland that gave a little credence to this theory. Maybe he moved on there. Okay, but it was quickly shot down because detectives looked closely at the individual murders and realized It just wasn't—

they don't match up.

Yeah. Uh, Portland Police Lieutenant Rob Aikle said, we've examined each case, and once we get beyond race and prostitution, you're grasping for common denominators.

Okay.

Now, the lack of new victims appeared to defy the conventional wisdom that serial killers don't stop killing until they're caught or die. And the little thing that Ted thought he had nailed— yeah, uh, Faye Brooks said, we can't assume that he has stopped killing. We've got to assume that he's still in this area and that he could kill again. Uh, in the hope of spurring new leads, Brooks repeated the basic profile of the man they were looking for. He's someone who portrays or exudes an air of trust in order to get the young women into his car with him. He also likes to drive because of the distance between where these women were last seen and where to find them. The decrease in calls about missing women and the lack of evidence of new murders was a positive development.

I mean, yeah, you don't want that to continue on, losing their lives.

But if the letter received from the post intelligencer was to be believed, there was a lot more bodies to be found. Yeah, like he maybe stopped killing more people, but there's a lot of people that are not found yet. On March 7th, 1985, an advertisement went out in the all King County papers with a photo and description of 15-year-old Carrie Ann Royce, who went missing sometime in the weeks of June— in the first weeks of June 1983. At the time of her disappearance, Carrie had been living in a youth home. She had gone through some really horrific abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Oh, uh, Carrie Ann had a history of running away. She'd been shuffled around so many times that by the time— spring of 1983, it was difficult for anyone to say for certain when they'd last seen her. Carrie's friend Margaret said, the last time I saw her, Carrie was standing near the Safeway store on Rainier and Genesee Street. She was wearing blue jeans and a tan coat with brown, uh, high brown boots. None of those items were found with Carrie when her remains were discovered out by Star Lake Road on March 10th, just days after the advertisement with her description appeared in the papers.

Wow. Because Carrie's remains were found about 50 or so feet outside the perimeter of the previous Star Lake search zone, task force members couldn't be certain whether her remains had been recently placed in the area or if they'd been there before and were just missed by the search team. As a result, a second search of the area was undertaken, but no more remains were found.

Okay.

Now, around the time Carrie went missing in June 1983, another girl, 16-year-old Tammy Lyles, also disappeared from the area around the airport. We're getting, like, way younger.

Yeah. Suddenly there's, like, a stretch of really young victims, very young teens.

Uh, Tammy was last seen on June 9th, 1983, but no one ever reported her missing, so she didn't make it onto the task force list. As a result, when her remains were found in the woods adjacent to the golf course— a golf course in Oregon— in April 1985, there was no reason for anyone to assume she was a Green River victim. It wasn't until 1988 that her name was added to the list after some of her remains were identified through dental records. More of her remains, those that were labeled simply Bones 20 and placed on a shelf, were identified in January 2024.

Oh my God.

Yeah, they're like still working on this. Yeah. Now, while the task force members continue to search for any leads that would point them in the direction of a suspect, old victims continue to be discovered. In June, the remains of Denise Bush and Shirley Sherrill were two victims who disappeared in October 1982. Wow. Were discovered together in the brush and overgrowth of a vacant lot in a suburb just outside Portland.

This was 1985.

They were discovered—

holy shit—

on June 12th and June 14th. Shirley Cheryl lived in Seattle, but she was known to work the streets of Portland regularly. This place where, in Portland, where sex workers would like hang out was called The Camp. On October 18th, Shirley and a friend went out to lunch at a restaurant in Seattle's International District. But she hadn't been seen since. The friend later said, the last time I saw Shirley was in Chinatown. She was talking to two men in a car. She looked really nice that day, and I assumed that she was going to go with them, but then I got picked up and I never saw her after that. At the end of November, Shirley's mother reported her missing to the police, and a few days after that, her name was added to the task force list. Like Shirley Cheryl, 23-year-old Denise Bush frequently traveled back and forth between Portland and, uh, Seattle. When the Green River murders started, many of the young women working in Seattle, including Denise, decided to spend more of their time, like, a few hours away in Portland. Yeah. Just to see if that distance helped. They assumed that would be, like, a little less risk.

One woman said of the girls who worked the camp that all of them had their— all they had to their name was a pack of cigarettes, the motel key, and some change. Change. That's so—

which is so sad because you think that like these are like 15 to 20-something-year-old girls.

Yeah.

And that's all they have.

The last time anyone saw Denise was June 8th, 1982. She was crossing at the intersection of Pacific Highway and South 144th Street, where several of the other victims had been seen last. Now, that the remains belonged to victims of the Green River Killer was not even a question at this point. The two skeletons were discovered by a work crew clearing an area for highway expansion, um, and Tammy Lyle's remains were discovered. It appeared to be in like another cluster dump situation. Okay, uh, but when they were initially uncovered by the bulldozer, the task force was careful not to jump to any conclusions. Although she had been reported missing by her boyfriend in October 1982, Denise's friends and associates told investigators they thought she might have moved to Seattle. Um, Faye Brooks told reporters, at this time, Miss Bush is not listed as an official victim of the Green River homicide investigation. It was only after the remains of Shirley Sherrill were discovered the next day that they were comfortable including her in the list of victims. Okay, now after 3 years and more than 30 victims, Jesus, the members of the task force had become kind of accustomed to regular— a regular schedule of discoveries, either individual or clustered together.

Because of this, it came as something of a surprise when the entire summer passed without a single report of a new discovery or a new death. And they were thinking, okay, is this it? Yeah, because this is where it finally ends, right? Something happened. Uh, the answer to that question arrived in the first week of September when the skeleton of 16-year-old Mary West was discovered in a wooded area of Seattle's Seward on sewered on September 8th, and it was by a teacher accompanying a group of students on a field trip.

Oh my God.

Yeah, that is so horrific. To the task force members, the discovery of Mary's remains was more than just another victim to add to the list. Having been reported missing on February 6, 1985, she was also the first new victim to have been killed since the murders seemed to stop, right, more than a year earlier, right? That meant that not only was the Green River Killer still dumping bodies and playing games with investigators, but he was also still killing members of Seattle's sex worker community. At the time she went missing, Mary West was 3 months pregnant, though she hadn't told anyone yet. No one else knew. By the time her body was discovered, her remains had been reduced to nothing more than bones laying at the base of a fir tree. As usual, the ME was able to identify the cause of— was unable to identify the cause of death, but he speculated that it was likely the body had been in the park for many months and had simply gone undetected until it was discovered by the students and teacher on a field trip.

That is so fucked up.

At the time, the lack of newly missing or recently murdered women and the absence of any new suspects or leads led some to wonder whether it was time to disband the task force. 'Cause nothing's happening.

Yeah, it's like—

And maybe hand it back to the Seattle Police. Like, maybe this task force is doing— that's what people were thinking.

That's a tough— that's a tough call.

Which is hard because you know they're doing everything they can. They're working really hard. But from the outside, it can seem like nothing's moving. And it seems like we're not even having new victims. So, like, why do we have this? Right. But the discovery of Mary West's remains put any of that speculation to rest.

There are new victims.

It not only reminded people that the killer was still out there and active, but also that he was still killing new victims. Mm-hmm. Rather than disband the team, their ranks were expanded with the formal addition of the FBI. And it was somebody who was really widely respected, a criminal profiler named Pierce Brooks. Because the murders had all occurred within the bounds of Washington State, the FBI had no jurisdiction, and it was left to local authorities. And the discovery of the victims in Oregon and their addition, um, to the Green River Killer's victim list made the case a federal matter though, since the killer had now crossed state lines to commit a federal crime. So it was good because they were able to bring them in now. In a press conference held in mid-September, King County Sheriff Vern Thomas welcomed the presence of the FBI on the case. Uh, he told reporters, we'll give them every piece of information we have. There's nothing we're going to keep back. It's their decision on how many agents to put on the case and what other resources to commit. After years of spinning their wheels with very little progress, spokesperson for the task force, Faye Brooks, echoed his comments, saying any additional help that would solve this case is appreciated.

There are a lot of leads that we can follow up with their manpower. Okay. And I'm glad they were like open to this.

Yeah.

And not being like, this is our case.

You know, again, the jurisdiction fight.

They were just like, take it all, we'll give you everything.

I mean, at this point it's like you just have to—

yeah, you can't let ego get in here. Uh, a former homicide captain with the Los Angeles Police Department who worked the infamous Onion Field murders— oh, before joining the FBI, Brooks had come to national prominence as a consultant on the Atlanta child murders, uh, between 1979 and 1981. We haven't covered those ones.

I don't know that we will.

Um, and the Tylenol poisoning cases in Chicago.

That was one of our earliest.

The task force hoped the addition of his expertise would finally bring this case to an end, but Brooks was not so confident that his presence were going to make things move faster. Uh, he said, I'm confident that in my lifetime police officers will know who the killer is. That's like— he was like, I think we're gonna figure this out in my lifetime. Uh, but he acknowledged that the case was, quote, one of the toughest cases he'd ever seen. Yeah, the discovery of a more recent victim kind gave like a little more energy to the case, like new energy. But it appeared that the 1984 murder of Mary West was not the beginning of a new slate of missing women, but it was kind of like an anomaly. In fact, nearly 3 more months passed before more remains were found. And when they were finally discovered in late December, they weren't recently murdered victims, but they were a woman who disappeared 3 years earlier in late 1982.

So again, Where is he keeping? It's so bizarre because for 3 years to go by, it's like, was she there? Yeah, all 3 years. Or did he put her there like at some point?

What is going on? Now, on the evening of December 30th, police in Auburn, Washington, about 30 miles outside of Seattle, were investigating a car crash near Mountain View Cemetery, not far from when— where, uh, Kimi was— Kimi Kai was found. Um, The two— and that's where they discovered two sets of skeletal remains down an embankment. The two skeletons were removed from the scene and taken to a lab, but there was nothing unique about them that could help investigators identify who they were, so they were labeled Bones 16 and Bones 17.

That's awful.

And they were just put on a shelf. Oh, it would be—

that was a human. Yeah, that's so fucked.

And it would be decades before anyone learned their identities of either of these victims. But finally, in 2012, Bones 16 would be identified as those of 20-year-old Sandra Major. Sandra hadn't been in Seattle very long before she disappeared just before Christmas in 1982. She had come from Rochester, New York earlier that year, but after she left New York, her family lost track of her. According to Sandra's cousin, she was involved in prostitution before she disappeared. Quote, The last time anyone saw Sandra Major, she was climbing into a blue-green pickup truck.

We've heard that before with the primer spot.

A friend filed a missing person report with the Seattle Police, but the report went nowhere, and Sandra's name never made it to the task force list of missing women. When they didn't hear from her again, some members of Sandra's family assumed she'd met the same fate as many of the sex workers did in Seattle at the time. But being on the other side of the country and without any useful information they never spoke to investigators. Now, in April 2012, the television channel Lifetime ran a special on the Green River case.

Honey, don't you just love Lifetime?

Lifetime coming again. And it concluded with a phone number and a plea for any information that might help identify the remaining unidentified victims. Sandra's cousin was watching that special in her home in New York and reached out to detectives for the first time and told them about Sandra. Based on that information, saliva samples were collected from Sandra's brother and sister, which turned out to be the match for Bone 16.

Oh wow.

And finally were given a name and a proper burial. Uh, task force member Tom Jensen said, I just always— I just always had a feeling from the beginning. She fit the physical description of the victim. The circumstances were right. I felt like, this is it, this has got to be her.

Yeah.

The remains of Bone 17 would sit on the shelf for another 12 years until a full DNA profile was created in 2023.

Jeez.

And submitted to 3 genealogy databases for comparison.

It is so cool that we finally got there with like genealogy and that, that whole thing.

Yeah, the profile came back as a match for a deceased person in Washington, but that individual was adopted through a closed adoption process. Okay, so it was effectively a dead end. Yeah, it took genealogists several more months to build out a larger family tree, but eventually they came upon an obituary for William Reds Potnick. William had died in Juneau, Alaska, but had lived for many years with his family in Seattle. It was not the first time they'd seen William's name come up, so the investigators at the lab decided to reach out to his wife, Donna Hurley, to present her with a composite image they'd created based on the remains. Um, Hurley said, it took me a long time to admit it looked like her. You become numb at a certain point. Donna Hurley's 15-year-old daughter Lori Ann went missing in Seattle in November 1982 after the two got into an argument. Oh, which, like, that always ruins me. That turns my stomach in a way I can't even describe. Lori wanted a horse and promised her mother all she needed to pay for was the feeding and boarding, and Lori would take care of the rest.

As a single mother raising two children, the cost of feeding and boarding a horse was just completely out of the question.

Oh my God, horses are so expensive.

But that was not the answer Lori wanted to hear, right? Donna recalled, I told her no, and away she went. Oh, it was the last time she saw her daughter. Oh my God, I got like a full chill on that one. That just—

because that's just like—

that's such a normal argument.

Exactly.

It's like, yeah. Oh my God.

I, I always tell my kids now, because like, you don't get to leave mad.

You do not get to leave mad. And obviously that's not on, you know, her.

Well, unfortunately, the older they get, the less control.

That's the thing. It's like a 15-year-old, and it's like, oh my God, it just breaks my heart. Donna described Lori as a, quote, firecracker. She was interested in everything, loved animals, and was smart as a whip. She said she could get straight A's without opening her book. Oh, when Laurie was 5, tragedy struck when her father died unexpectedly, leaving Donna to raise the children alone. When Laurie reached her teen years, she did become rebellious, getting into fights with her mom, skipping school, you know, normal stuff. Donna, when she was gone, Donna filed all the police reports and did everything a parent would do to find a missing child. But when the months turned into years, the pain of loss became too much to bear. Donna and Laurie's brother William moved to Juneau, where Donna was raised and where her parents still lived. Over the years, she occasionally saw or heard something about the Green River Murders in Seattle, but it never occurred to her that her daughter could be one of them, right? Uh, she said, I— we were in Alaska, we were so far removed, I was still raising my son, I was trying to push all of it out of my mind.

Yeah. Donna was unloading groceries from her car one afternoon in September 2023 when she was approached by two detectives from the King County Sheriff's Office. Wow. They told her that they thought they had identified Lori's remains. She said, I went, oh no, and then I just went into shock. There's no other way to say it. Eventually she collected herself and invited the detectives into the house. A saliva sample was taken and sent back to the lab where they matched it to the DNA from Bones 17, and they were indeed those of her daughter Lori.

That's so awful because, you know, some piece of her just hoped that her daughter was still out there and okay, and that someday she would find her again, right?

And to know that she's a victim of the Green River Killer. Yeah, you got in an argument over a horse, she left mad, and then became the victim of one of the most prolific serial killers in United States history.

How does that all go together?

How does that— what are the odds of that, right? And after all the paperwork is done and the remains were transferred, Laurie was buried alongside her father at Evergreen Cemetery in Seattle.

Okay.

And we are going to end there because that's a lot.

That was heartbreaking.

And there are still more to come.

Yeah.

So I think we need to like, whoo, just take a minute.

Yeah. Let me grab a fun fact for us.

But yeah, we're getting to the point where we're gonna get, we're gonna get this fucker. Yeah, this ends with getting this fucker. Okay.

Yeah, it sure does.

I was gonna try to make it 4. I think it's gonna be 5 if I can Somehow get it into 4, I will, but I'm thinking right now it's gonna be 5 because he doesn't get caught right away, unfortunately. I hate that. Yeah, took a little bit, but don't worry, he's caught.

I have an asterisk for my last fun fact. I said that Hawaii moves 3 feet closer to Alaska.

Is it 3? It's 3 inches. I had a feeling.

I just misspoke, and it happens to the best of us. I was like, because I was like, 3 feet is a lot of it.

Yeah, I was like, damn, we will have a Pangaea situation, like a reverse Pangaea.

Listen, 3 inches still a lot.

It is a lot. So that's the thing, 3 inches is still a lot.

But now let me make sure that I really— I'm really on my shit today.

Okay, how'd you discover that?

I saw somebody comment. I was like, okay. They were nice though, they were like, aww, sweet ass, sweet ass. And I said, aww, sweet comment.

You know, it happens. Let's see, your fact is more fun, I think.

3 feet. Yeah, it's— I just wanted— I wanted it to be cooler.

I would say that's more fun.

Thank you. I think so too.

That's a small child.

Let's see.

That's a small child.

That is a small child. I think this is fun.

Uh-oh.

King Charles had a car fueled by wine.

What?

Yeah. The fuck? Yeah. In the search for more efficient fuel, Charles, at the time the Prince of England, took a strange but entertaining approach. The heir to the British throne had his vintage Aston Martin reworked to use wine as its primary fuel.

That's what—

and that's from Reader's Digest.

Damn.

Yeah, and I read that verbatim.

Okay, that's interesting.

Somebody's like, it was actually orange juice. I'm like, it was wine, it was wine, it was just grape juice. Yeah, but also, like, I'm not a wine drinker, but like, I feel like if you were, that would be such a waste. And also, yeah, quite expensive.

It would be expensive, right?

I mean, he's the king. I was going to say, I feel like not the time, so money ain't no thang.

But yeah, you know, Damn. Yeah, that's a fact.

Maybe we could— we can fuel our cars with something different.

Yeah, there you go. Wine.

So that's that. We hope you keep listening. We hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you put wine into your car, because I don't think that'll go well for like the day-to-day person.

Yeah. Bye.