Green River killer may have started spree in 1970s

SEATTLE – Killings in one of the nation’s worst serial murder cases may have begun in the 1970s rather than 1982 and could involve more than the 48 victims cited in a plea agreement, an investigator says.

The possibility was raised Monday by Tom Jensen, a veteran Green River serial murder investigator, in a request for public assistance in identifying four of the women whom Gary L. Ridgway admitted killing when he pleaded guilty in November 2003.

“After a year and a half of investigation, we’re no closer to identifying these bones than when we started,” said Jensen, part of the King County sheriff’s Major Crimes Unit. “We’re just drawing a blank. We’ve done I don’t know how many DNA tests and nobody is matching these bones. We’re grasping at straws here.”

The Green River case took its name from the waterway south of Seattle where the first five victims were found in July and August 1982.

Concern about a longer and more extensive killing spree stems partly from tests on the remains of one of the four unidentified victims, listed in court papers as Jane Doe “B20” – the B stands for bones.

Her remains, including 21 bones and three teeth, were found in a ravine off Washington 516, the Kent-Des Moines Road, in Kent where Ridgway took investigators in August 2003. She was the last of the 48 to be placed on the Green River list.

Scientists have concluded that the woman’s body could have been dumped as recently as 10 years ago but most likely close to 30 years ago, Jensen said Monday.

Detectives returned last month and found additional human vertebrae they believe are from the same woman, who, based on Ridgway’s recollections and other evidence, was 16 to 26 years old and Caucasian or of mixed race with a thin or medium build and shoulder-length light brown hair.

He told detectives in 2003 he believed he picked up Jane Doe B20 on Pacific Highway South, killed her and buried her naked body in 1982 or 1983.

Ridgway also said, however, that it was “very possible” he had killed Jane Doe B20 and other women in the 1970s while living in Maple Valley with his second wife, investigators wrote in documents filed in court.

Jensen, who began investigating the Green River killings in 1984, noted that Ridgway wrongly told investigators his last killing was in the mid-1980s. The most recent victim on the list filed in court was Patricia Yellow Robe in 1998.

Although Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 killings, he once said he killed as many as 71 women, according to transcripts of interviews with investigators that were released last year.

Almost all of his identified victims were prostitutes, but Jane Doe B20 might not have been and – if she was the first – her killing might have been “experimental” as he escalated his attacks on women from assault to murder, Jensen said.