The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (48 page)

The curiosity of what the Riverman did with some of the victims’ clothing and jewelry was a burning subject for Dave and he returned to it time and again in these interviews with Ted. It was an important subject, not only because Bundy’s opinions shed light on what he did with his victims, but it gave us another line of insight
into the Riverman. If he kept the victims’ belongings as totems, they would be evidence if we ever picked him up in his car. If he dumped them along the way, they might be a trail from the abduction site to the dump site. Dave asked Ted, “Is he keeping their stuff, throwing it in the garbage can? Or how else was he disposing of their clothing?”

By now Ted knew that we were asking questions about the Riverman’s method of operation that resembled Ted’s. Ted carefully proceeded by stating the alternatives. “Well, he’s keeping the clothing or he’s apparently leaving the area pretty well bare and not leaving any clothing on the victims. He could have a variety of motivations driving him, but the one that appears most apparent to me, given his behavior in causing the disappearances of many victims, is he wants to leave a minimum amount of evidence at the scene. He probably read enough about cases in the newspaper or perhaps in detective magazines. He knows about fibers. He knows about hairs and whatnot. And there could also be the element that he gets off on having their clothing. I don’t know.”

The next phase of our conversations were a harbinger of my final conversation with Ted immediately before his execution. Neither Dave nor I realized at this time that Ted would speak about exactly what he did with clothing and other belongings of victims. Dave inquired, unknowing, “Between here and the Enumclaw sites, we find one of the victim’s I.D., in the cloverleaf along Highway 18 near the Mountview Cemetery Road. What causes him to throw things like that out the window? What would cause that to end up there? Would he have been in a struggle with her along? Was she alive at the time or do you think he just disposed of it after he dumped her?”

Ted’s response was flattering. He felt the urge to compliment us on our thoroughness so that he could set his hook into us, to get us to continue our conversations. The great Ted Bundy was impressed with our work. He patronized us by saying, “You guys know these cases. I’m impressed. You’ve been working on these cases long and hard, and I’m still impressed you know them this well. Sure. You said it before I said it. The second thing that he might be doing is simply throwing the shit out the window of the car as he’s driving along. That might sound a little bit weird. That’s one way to do it. There are any number of ways to dispose of clothing. He could be burying it. He could be burning it at home if he has a fireplace or
burning barrel. He might not. If my sense of him is right, he’s going for the quick disposal. He doesn’t want to have much around at all. He doesn’t want to have the body around. He doesn’t want to have the body in his car very long. And if he has that kind of mentality, he might be jettisoning the belongings out the window as he drives along. That’s not a particularly bad way of getting rid of such things because there’s trash along the highway all the time that’s collected. In these areas where you found the bodies, have you ever conducted any routine searches along the highways for any distance? Looking for clothing?”

Dave parried, “Oh, yeah, but there’s still a lot of distances that we haven’t covered yet.”

“There are any number of places he could throw it out the window. My guess is you found the I.D. card because he threw it out the window, not because they were struggling. And if he’s doing that, it’s a very sound indicator that he’s employing that method to get rid of the stuff by simply throwing it out the window. Maybe he stops someplace and throws it down an embankment. But he might be of a frame of mind that he wants to get rid of all this stuff as efficiently as possible, but as quickly as possible, too. That means not taking any stuff home. Maybe not always, but most of the time he’s getting rid of it quickly. But it might be just stopping and putting it in a Dumpster somewhere or throwing it out,” Ted explained.

Dave reminded Ted, “He doesn’t know that we’ve found that stuff; I don’t think he considers it to be a mistake.”

Ted followed up with “That’s a good point. Have your people search up and down the roadways in the Enumclaw area where three bodies have been found. It’s not unreasonable to find some things up there because I’m sure that there are a number of more victims up there. I had a feeling last night about that question that you asked. I was thinking about did he keep the stuff or would he keep the stuff or not. And on the one hand I don’t know how much difference it makes on one level, because either he’s going to have it when you throw down on him or he isn’t. If you have a suspect, and just because he doesn’t have anything, doesn’t mean he isn’t a good suspect.”

Most of the bodies near Sea-Tac Airport were found in cul-de-sacs where houses had been removed owing to jet noise. “Here’s the Naon site south of the airport,” I explained as I showed Ted the map.

Ted said, “That’s good hiding territory.”

“You can see how she was discovered with her foot out of the ground,” I said as I showed him a picture.

Ted’s curiosity was piqued. He asked, “What kind of soil is that? Does it need a pick?”

“Pretty well packed,” Dave explained with authority, since he processed most of the body recovery sites.

“What? So the guy’s carrying around a pick and shovel or that kind of thing in the car?” Ted quizzed us.

“Bet he used just a shovel,” Dave said.

“But this is the only one he did this with. It’s an anomaly event,” Ted proclaimed. He had had “anomaly victims,” too.

It was clear to Dave and me that Ted and the Riverman shared a great many methods and characteristics as killers. The common ground they occupied mentally was underscored by Ted’s tendency to speak in the first person and his obvious excitement when discussing the Riverman’s actions and motivations. We learned a great deal about the unknown Green River Killer from Ted, and that information turned out to be extremely prescient when the killer was caught and was questioned. Ridgway, in his note to the task force before he was identified, referred to himself as “the Green Riverman,” an eerie confluence with Bundy’s monicker. But the final questions we asked Ted in our 1984 interviews were a subtle transition from a focus on the Green River Killer to Ted and his own practices. When these talks with Ted came to an end, I thought he had given us a great deal of information. I didn’t know at that point that my relationship with Ted would continue for years to come and result in the kind of confessions I had only dreamed of.

11
 
“Some Murders Are Okay!”

S
omeday, Gary Ridgway, the self-described Green Riverman, may write me a letter, just as Ted Bundy did, because he will want to talk about his crimes. He will be in search of someone who “understands,” someone he can brag about his crimes to, someone he believes he can control with his stories, someone who will make the commitment to listen to the agony bubbling out of his fragmented personality. He may even be frustrated at the efforts of the police officers who investigated him for his murders but who missed the larger point of his crimes. Even serial killers want to tell some version of the truth as they see it, even if it turns out to be just another lie. So he may call me in because he knows I’ll hear him out and help tell his whole story. I expect he’ll even know that Ted Bundy taught me how to do that.

Ted Bundy helped me rewrite the book on interrogating killers—this revision would contain a much truer picture of serial killers. In four years of letters, phone calls, and jail-cell conferences under the guise of helping solve the Green River murders, Bundy gave me a look inside the mind of a serial killer. He showed me just how to talk to a person who has eluded the police for years, but who now may be willing to tell his story. This particular function is unlike that of any other interrogation.

Interviewing a prisoner you suspect of committing a series of murders is much different than interviewing a killer who has just committed a “routine” murder. In fact, few interview techniques work at all. There are no manuals, no police handbooks, and no empirical research whatsoever to help you pick your way through the interrogation over the suspect’s psychological land mines that can explode in your face and ruin your chances of getting a confession. I know plenty of detectives who are great interviewers, but rarely have they had the opportunity to sharpen their skills against a serial killer. Unless the incriminating physical evidence was overwhelming or they actually managed to catch the perpetrator in the act, detectives usually need the suspect to confess in order to get resolution to all murders in a series. In most cases the killer is the only living witness and the interrogator may have to gain the killer’s cooperation at all costs in order to make a case. Ted Bundy recommended that the most effective approach is to get a suspect’s trust by showing him you understand what he’s been going through.

We already know from experience that there are two basic types of killers: (1) those who give self-incriminating statements because the evidence at the scene or in their car or from eyewitnesses is so overwhelming that they need you to acknowledge they are being cooperative, and (2) those who refuse to confess even though you might be shoving what you call evidence right into their faces. It is this latter category that can be the most frustrating. These killers know, like Ted Bundy and the Riverman knew that without their help you can’t find the bodies they dumped, the weapons they used, the cars they drove, or even the names of many undiscovered victims that they have killed. Without their cooperation, you might have nothing more than suspects who look promising on the basis of circumstantial evidence, but against whom the physical evidence is lacking. You have to get your suspect to work for you.

Bundy showed us ways we could get a serial killer to cooperate by sharing valuable information. Most of the long-term killers have led investigators around for years while the trail turned cold behind them. Like Bundy, they successfully escaped detection by police
while sometimes dropping victims right in the middle of heavily guarded dump sites. Like the Riverman, who operated right under our noses, they picked up victims on highly patrolled streets. They probably lived in the communities where they killed and sat just two or three seats down from patrol officers at a local doughnut shop where they listened in on cops talking about the case. Serial killers
know
they’re invisible. What would induce people like this to talk with the police and eventually confess?

Bundy demonstrated that most killers of his type, killers like the Riverman, prided themselves on getting victims under their power. Because these killers perceive themselves as power
less,
their ego trips involved spinning a net of power so broad that entire communities and police forces would be entrapped. It’s a terror tactic as well as a power trip. Many of them love to follow their crimes in the newspapers and laugh at the experts who psychoanalyze their actions and create elaborate personality profiles. Serial killers know profiles often fall well short of the target and do more to satisfy the profilers than catch the killers. Municipalities spend millions of dollars in an attempt to foil killers’ plans with elaborate surveillance techniques. All the killer has to do to avoid being seen is to park his car in a nearby parking lot, walk the streets of his contact sites, find a likely victim, smooth-talk that victim into walking him to his car, knock her unconscious, and scoop her into the car. By the time he closes the passenger door and drives away, the trap’s been sprung. The killer has rehearsed this act so many times it’s like second nature to him. Techniques like these are so simple and yet they’re capable of foiling the most elaborate surveillance procedures, and that is probably how the Riverman has slipped through our net so many times. We were only looking for a driver, but Ridgway parked his truck in a nearby lot and ran counterintelligence to make sure the coast was clear before he approached his teenaged victim.

The killer is also so well rehearsed that he can bounce off a potential victim who resists him and move on to the next without so much as a ripple in the fabric of the moment. Bundy even bragged about his ability to do this and demonstrated his skill at pulling victims right out of a crowd in broad daylight at Lake Sammamish. This type of long-term killer has become an accomplished practitioner at killing and covering it up. Do you think he’s going to break down under our accusations? Certainly not!

Ted Bundy explained and demonstrated that someone like the Green River Killer needs to exercise his power over people. He needs to, as Bundy did, have the police under his control. He needs victims. Without victims, serial killers can’t survive. If a killer is in custody, his interrogators, the psychiatrists, prison guards, and other visitors close to him will become his victims. A victim, according to Bundy’s definition, was anyone the serial killer was able to get into his power.