The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (86 page)

Rebecca Garde Guay was Ridgway’s living victim, who reported him to the task force in December 1984, telling them that she was the victim of someone she believed to be the prostitute killer the police were looking for.

According to Rebecca, the assault occurred in November 1982. She was hitchhiking on Pacific Highway South when a man in a truck offered her a ride. Rebecca asked him if he was dating and offered him a blow job for $20. The man agreed, and she directed him to a secluded area not far from the highway at approximately 204th Street. Rebecca questioned the man about whether he was the Green River Killer. He assured her that he was not and showed her several items from his wallet, including an ID card from the Kenworth Trucking Company.

When they arrived at the agreedon spot, the man asked her to go into the woods for the sex act. Rebecca agreed, and the two went into the woods. The man pulled his shorts down, and Rebecca kneeled in front of him and began performing oral sex. However, the man’s penis did not become erect. Suddenly, the man accused Rebecca of biting him. He knocked her to the ground, pushed her face into the dirt, and wrapped his arm around her neck in a police-type choke hold. Rebecca struggled and pleaded that all she had was her family and that she did not want to die. After ten or fifteen seconds, she broke free and ran to a nearby trailer for help.

After pulling up his pants, the man initially pursued her but then gave up. He redressed and drove out of the area. Hysterical, Rebecca told the trailer occupants how she had been attacked. Her blouse was torn, and there were abrasions on her neck. Rebecca was obviously terrified and was certain that the man had intended to kill her.

Rebecca was initially reluctant to report the assault, because she was engaging in prostitution when she was assaulted. Eventually, with the enormous publicity surrounding the Green River killings, Rebecca called the task force and reported what had happened. Rebecca gave a description of her attacker: a white male, 30 to 35 years old with light brown hair, possibly with a mustache. Although
it was November, the man was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. She thought his vehicle was a 1980 burgundy or maroon pickup truck with a white canopy.

Rebecca told the police about the Kenworth identification the man had shown her, and this information led police to link the attack to Ridgway. Her description of her assailant and his vehicle generally matched Ridgway and his pickup truck. Rebecca was shown a photographic montage of six men and immediately identified Ridgway as the man who attacked her in November 1982.

In February 1985, a task force detective contacted Ridgway and confronted him about Rebecca’s allegations. Ridgway admitted that he had dated Rebecca. He maintained, however, that he choked her as a reflexive reaction to her biting his penis. According to the detective, Rebecca told him that she did not wish to pursue the case, and Ridgway was not charged.

In 2003, Ridgway was questioned about strangling Rebecca. He admitted that he tried to kill her. He confirmed that Rebecca had selected the area for the date and that she wanted to do the date in the truck. Ridgway wanted the “date” to be outside. According to his account, it “just went bad because of the … she, ah, guaranteed sex but she would only give me, ah, oral sex.” Ridgway likened the situation to the circumstances that, he claimed, lead him to kill Mary Meehan two months earlier.

Ridgway told his interviewers that he was unable to maintain a choke hold on Rebecca, who fought and scratched him. He recalled that his shorts, which were around his ankles, prevented him from wrapping his legs around her and subduing her. He accurately recalled that she said she did not want to die and that she had a family.

Ridgway was not charged with attempted murder in this case because the statute of limitations had run out by the time he was arrested and charged in the other killings.

Ridgway pled guilty to the murders of these victims, whose cases were then closed. The prosecutor listed these cases in a rough chronological order based upon the areas from which the victims’ bodies were recovered.

In July of 1982, Gisele Lovvorn was 19 years old and working as a prostitute on Pacific Highway South. Around eleven
A.M.,
Saturday, July 17, 1982, Gisele left her apartment, saying that she planned to turn several tricks on the highway and would return later in the day. She was never seen again.

Two months later, on September 25, 1982, Gisele’s remains were found near an apple tree in a wooded area near South 200th Street and 18th Avenue South, King County, an area where Gisele was known to take her dates. She had been strangled with a pair of men’s socks that were still wrapped around her neck. Apart from the ligature, there was no clothing on the body, even though her jewelry remained in place. Gisele’s body lay on its back, with the legs flexed wide at the hip, and the knees bent at approximately 90 degrees.

In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Gisele Lovvorn. He stated that he picked up Gisele on a Saturday night, while his 7-year-old son was asleep in his vehicle. Ridgway said Gisele directed him to the spot for the date. According to Ridgway, after he parked at the spot, he told his son to remain in the truck while he and the woman went for a walk. Ridgway then took Gisele out into the wooded area out of sight of his son. He and Gisele had sex “doggie style.”

Once he climaxed, Ridgway said, he told Gisele that he thought he heard his son coming. As he had hoped, she raised her head to look, exposing her neck. Still behind her, Ridgway pinned her neck between his upper and lower arm, and choked her until she stopped moving. Ridgway then took off his socks, tied them together, and wrapped them around Gisele’s neck. He used a stick to fashion a tourniquet from the socks. Then he twisted the stick, tightening the socks around her neck, until he was satisfied that Gisele would not regain consciousness.

Ridgway left the makeshift tourniquet on Gisele, put on his clothes, and returned to his truck. Ridgway’s son asked his father where the young woman had gone. Ridgway replied that the woman lived nearby and had decided to walk home. Ridgway then drove his young son back to his home.

The next day, Ridgway returned and moved the body a short distance
to a more secluded area. He collected Gisele’s clothes and tried to take the socks off her neck. The socks were cinched so tightly around the young woman’s neck that Ridgway could not get them over her head. He did not consider cutting the socks off because, he explained, he would not be able to wear them. Before he left, Ridgway engaged in sexual intercourse with the body.

Ridgway admitted that he visited Gisele’s body at least one more time. He stated that he was uncertain whether he had intercourse with the body a third time, claiming that he may have been deterred by advanced decomposition.

During the interviews, Ridgway was shown photos from the crime scene area, without being told what the photos were depicting. Ridgway accurately identified the area and the location of the body. Later, Ridgway led investigators, without assistance, to the area where he left Gisele’s body.

In the early 1980s, the task force recovered the remains of six women designated as victims of the Green River Killer along a short, approximately one-half mile, stretch of Star Lake Road, in King County. That portion of Star Lake Road runs steeply uphill from the main arterial South 272nd Street, heading south, then looping west, then north and west again. The remains were actually closer together than the serpentine road would suggest—no more than a quarter of a mile separated any of them. The area is approximately three miles southwest (less than a 15-minute drive) from the stretch of the Green River where five earlier victims were discovered and approximately the same distance southeast from Ridgway’s residence at the time.

All six were working as prostitutes at the time they disappeared. Five of the six were last seen along Pacific Highway South where Ridgway was known to “hunt” for his victims. The circumstances of the sixth woman’s disappearance are not known, but she had previously been arrested for prostitution along that stretch of Pacific Highway South.

With the exception of a blouse found on one victim’s remains, all the victims were naked when they were left at the Star Lake dump site. No biological evidence had ever been developed linking any suspect to the Star Lake cases.

It appeared that all the Star Lake victims were killed by strangulation. All six women had been killed and left near Star Lake Road before the first remains were ever found. Obviously, the same person had killed and dumped them. The similarities among the women—such as their lifestyles, place of disappearance, and time of disappearance—as well as the concentration of the bodies at the dump site, the condition of body when dumped, and the apparent cause of death, all compelled this conclusion.

Ridgway has admitted killing the women found along Star Lake Road. The steep, secluded, wooded hillside falling away from Star Lake Road greatly appealed to Ridgway. It was, he said, “downhill where I could put a woman … a bunch of women…. It was, hey, fantastic…. It was, uh, woodsy, secluded, and, uh, it was a, a, site that I figured nobody would find her at, and uh, if they did, it would be a couple years later. Wouldn’t be anything, you know, no, noth-nothing left of her…. I could go down there during the day and have sex with her. Nobody see me from, from the top. There was a road on the top and there’s a road on the bottom. They couldn’t see me. And even if it did, a car come by, I could lay down.”

Not only was Star Lake secluded, it was remarkably convenient to Pacific Highway South and to his house. Ridgway said he managed to dump all the bodies there within an hour of when he killed them. Ridgway was familiar with the area; his second wife reported that they would go swimming in Star Lake.

Ridgway said he did not keep track of exactly how many bodies he placed at the Star Lake site. His estimates ranged from five to seven. Once he said that all the Star Lake victims had been discovered; another time he said that there was a seventh victim still along the road. He said, “Once I started dumping, I didn’t care about the count.”

Sixteen-year-old Terry Milligan disappeared on August 29, 1982. Terry was last seen at approximately six
P.M.
She—like victims Denise Bush, whom Ridgway murdered less than six weeks later, and Martina Authorlee—was living at the Moonrise Motel at Pacific Highway South and 144th Street, and working as a prostitute on the highway. Ridgway did not work that day, which was Sunday. He was two hours late to work the following morning.

On April 1, 1984, Terry’s skeletal remains were discovered near the northern, downhill end of Star Lake Road, shortly after the discovery nearby of the remains of Delores Williams. A striped blouse, with buttons, was still around the neck and upper arms. This blouse matched a description of the one Terry was wearing when she was last seen. Both hips were flexed at nearly a 90 degree angle, and both knees were bent inward at approximately the same angle. This unusual position led investigators to conclude that her killer deliberately posed the body.

In 2003, Ridgway provided investigators with a detailed account of murdering Terry Milligan and dumping her body. Typically, he did not recall her by name or appearance. He knew he killed her in 1982, and thought it was in August or September of that year. Ridgway correctly recalled Terry’s race and said that she was his first victim after Opal Mills. Moreover, he correctly recalled that when he killed Mary Meehan two weeks later he had already placed one body at Star Lake.

Ridgway said that he killed Terry where he had killed and left Giselle Lovvorn the previous month. Ridgway was in the area that night—a Port of Seattle police officer contacted him some eight blocks from where Lovvorn’s body was discovered. He said that two boys had seen him in the area during his date with Terry, so he decided that he had to dump her body elsewhere.

Ridgway correctly recalled that, of all the victims he subsequently dumped there, her body was the closest to the bottom of the hill as the road ascends. Ridgway said that he recalled leaving a blouse with buttons on one of his early victims and guessed that she was the first woman he left at Star Lake.

When he was shown a photograph of the blouse found with Terry’s remains, he said he recognized it. He said that he “didn’t bother” to take the blouse off the body, and suggested that he did not because he was in a hurry to leave the area where he killed her because he had been seen there with her earlier. Ridgway said he returned the following day to the place where he dumped Terry and had sexual intercourse with her body. He said that the body had developed rigor mortis, and that he had to pry her legs apart. When he was shown a photograph of Terry’s skeletal remains, with the hips spread wide and the knees completely bent, he said that he was sure that he left her in that position.

On March 3, 1983, at approximately nine
P.M.,
Alma Smith disappeared from the street outside the Red Lion Inn at 188th Street and Pacific Highway South. Two other victims, Delores Williams and Constance Naon had also disappeared from this location. Alma was working as a prostitute at that location with her roommate, who was her closest friend. Her roommate left the location with a john to turn a trick; by the time she returned some 40 minutes later, Alma had disappeared. A bystander told her roommate that Alma had left with a man meeting Ridgway’s description, in a blue pickup truck.

While the roommate remained outside the Red Lion Inn, waiting for Alma to return, a man parked a blue pickup truck in the hotel parking lot. He got out, and tried to persuade her to date him. He asked about her “blonde girlfriend.” Alma Smith was blonde. Her roommate was already anxious about Alma’s disappearance, and the man so spooked her, she refused to date him. He drove off. On that day Ridgway got off work at 3:20
P.M.
His home was less than three miles from where Alma was last seen.