Author gives voice to story’s anguish

SEATTLE – Ann Rule begins “Green River, Running Red: The Real Story of the Green River Killer – America’s Deadliest Serial Murderer” with the list of victims in order of their disappearance.

It takes up most of a page – one long paragraph of names. One woman after another suffered horrible deaths. The big block of gray text casts a shadow through the book, much as the nation’s worst convicted serial killer blocked the light of life for so many in the Seattle area for so long.

“Green River” is a sad, creepy story. Rule is a veteran true crime author with the talent to give voice to the anguish.

She gained fame by writing about earlier Seattle serial killer Ted Bundy who once worked with Rule at a crisis center phone bank. He was “The Stranger Beside Me.”

Green River Killer Gary Ridgway was the stranger in her neighborhood. He lived in the same area south of Seattle, drove streets she drove, picked up prostitutes she saw on the Pacific Highway strip near Sea-Tac Airport and confounded King County detectives she knew.

Rule skillfully handles the personal angle to bring the reader closer to the victims, the crimes, the investigation and the long-awaited arrest and conviction.

Rule is particularly adept at profiling the victims and their families. She reveals the low life of many in the 1980s and 1990s when Seattle was high on lists of most-livable cities.

It was the least livable city for dozens of “boy-crazy runaways” or “working girls” looking for “dates” who made the mistake of climbing into Ridgway’s pickup truck, Rule writes.

The killings took their name from the Green River where the first bodies were found. Most victims were dumped in wooded areas around Seattle.

Rule is equally expert in profiling the investigators and Ridgway himself. Dave Reichert was one of the first detectives frustrated by the case. After he became King County sheriff he finally had the satisfaction of catching the killer.

Rule writes that Ridgway was a slow, awkward kid, a bed-wetter whose mother would bathe him. She dominated much of his life. He dominated the first two of three wives. He had a strong sex drive and an urge to kill prostitutes he called “ladys.”

Unimposing physically, Ridgway managed to choke dozens of women to death. He had a family life with a son and a regular job painting trucks while making a habit of necrophilia.

Rule calls him a “boring little man of meager intelligence” who hid his rage and eluded investigators. He passed two lie-detector tests. Eventually, DNA evidence brought him to justice.

Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for his cooperation in identifying victims and finding remains. Ridgway pleaded guilty in November 2003 to 48 murders. He is serving a life sentence at the Washington state Penitentiary at Walla Walla.

Rule always planned to write a book about the Green River killings, after the killer was caught. She wrote 19 other books while waiting for resolution to the case that still seems beyond understanding.

“The sheer cruelty that consumed him and his total inability to empathize with any living thing is unfathomable,” she writes, “a black cloud of evil that was so hard to erase from my own memory.”