Gary Ridgway murdered my baby sister. Now known as the Green River Killer, Ridgway murdered at least forty-eight women during the height of his killing spree from 1982 to 1984. He continued to kill through the 1990s. Today, no one, not even the killer himself, knows the gruesome total. My sister Maureen was the thirty-ninth victim of his slaughter.
My writing mentor insists that to write Maureen’s story, I must understand Ridgway. I must see, feel, express this story from all points of view. I must be Gary Ridgway. But I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. I can’t write about Ridgway, or Ridgway’s motives, or Ridgway’s point of view about murder, because to do that, to be Ridgway, I have to try to understand why a man kills, what motivates a man to pay for sex, to promise to pay for sex, knowing that he’ll never pay.
He won’t have to pay. The girl will be dead.
On a Thursday in late September 1983, Ridgway left work at Kenworth Truck Company in Renton, Washington, and cruised fourteen miles into Seattle with the intent to kill. Where did he find my sister? I don’t even know. No one knows, not even Ridgway. “I killed so many women,” he has said, “I have a hard time keeping them straight.”
They meant nothing to him. They were garbage to him. Maureen was garbage. Not human. Not a girl with family, dreams, potential. Ridgway knew nothing about, cared nothing about these girls, about Maureen.
Where did he kill Maureen? In the canopy on the back of his truck, the police now know. But where was the truck parked? The International District? Under an Interstate 90 overpass? Lower Beacon Hill? Near Seattle University?
All of these areas I knew well, both before and after the murder. As a student at Seattle University in the early 1970s, I worked at Todd Chemical Company on Rainier Avenue. I walked to and from my dorm room in Campion Tower, clutching a small can of mace in my pocket. Always aware of who was in front, beside, behind. Aware of doors, alleys, danger spots. I was a farm girl, just like Maureen, living in the big city for the first time.
Was I just born streetwise, and she wasn’t? Was I born lucky, and she wasn’t? How can I be Ridgway? How can I understand his motives, his desires, his needs? How can I imagine the thoughts that went through his mind as he cruised for prostitutes? He called it “patrolling.” Later, he told the Green River Task Force that he was helping the police clean up the streets of Seattle by getting rid of prostitutes. As if they were rats.
The Task Force suspected Ridgway early on, while Maureen was still alive. They questioned him on May 4, 1983, four days after victim twenty-nine, Marie Malvar, disappeared, but they said that they had no hard evidence connecting Ridgway to her disappearance. I have to wonder: how hard did they look before writing him off as a suspect?
They had a chance when Marie Malvar vanished. Following her disappearance, two police detectives stood at Ridgway’s door to question him about Marie. Then they left. Marie’s body lay in the woods, only a few miles away. Ridgway took them to the spot in September 2003, twenty years later.
Victims thirty through forty-eight were still alive the day the police questioned Ridgway about Marie Malvar. Maureen was still alive. So it nags me: how hard did they look?
How can I pretend to be the man who stood in his yard chatting with two cops, knowing that the body of his most recent victim was still warm in her shallow grave? A good old white boy passing the time. An average Joe. How can I be the man so devoid of human emotion that he passed a lie detector test with flying colors?
I can’t. So I tell my story—mine, not his—and I tell Maureen’s story, because she can no longer tell it.
Maureen was nineteen when Gary Ridgway murdered her. It is impossible to believe, even harder to accept, that my sister got lost in the world of prostitution. For twenty years, there was no proof that she had. But with Ridgway’s confession, denial was no longer an option. Denial does not honor Maureen. The truth must be examined and understood. It must be accepted.
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The Thirty-Ninth Victim (Chapter One - Chrysanthemums)
No FicciónThe Green River murders were headline news throughout the 1980s. By the time the perpetrator was sentenced in 2003, at least 48 young women had met an untimely death at his hands. What started as a string of local killings in Seattle became a nation...
