Computer Goes After The Green River Killer Richland Scientists Hope Software Will Find Clues Officers Missed

For 15 years, detectives have been unable to find the Green River killer, who is suspected of having killed 49 women in the Pacific Northwest.

Now, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory here are running mountains of evidence from the unsolved case through a computer system they originally developed for the CIA.

The hope is that research equipment and the brains of top scientists can produce a breakthrough.

It is one of the first projects of a new program to link scientists and engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy facility to law officers in Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

“If you take a look at the scientific and analytical capabilities you bring to bear on DOE projects, it’s much the same as those in law enforcement,” said Gary Mong, a chemical researcher.

In the Green River case, Richland scientists think they may be able to help police find a new way of looking at information.

In 1986, two years after the last woman disappeared, the investigation reached its peak with 56 officers and support personnel filling binder after binder, bookcase after bookcase, with information.

The data eventually were fed into a computer, but new technology may make that information more useful.

The software, called Galaxies and Themescape, looks for word similarities and patterns in documents, then draws a picture that may show the needle of critical information in the haystack of millions of words.

“I think we’re going to be able to see things you would not normally see,” said Steven Martin of the lab’s National Security Division.

“One of our greatest assets is a multidisciplinary approach to problems,” Martin said. “We have chemists, botanists and statisticians we can bring around the table at very short notice.”

The information will be turned over to King County, whose detectives headed the Green River investigation.

The Richland laboratory has one of a handful of high-resolution mass spectrometers in the nation that is capable of analyzing a sample that’s a millionth of a microgram - far too small for the human eye to see.

It already has been used to help the Tri-Cities Metro Drug Task Force, which received a tip that a methamphetamine lab might be operating from a home.

Scientists took a sample of air outside the building, then ran it through the spectrometer.

Chemical analyses of the fumes were suspicious enough for a judge to issue a search warrant.