Bill Haglund continues to aid in identifying victims of terrorist slaughters in foreign countries.

Danny Nolan, Paul Smith, Ralf McAllister, Jim Pompey, Dr. John Berberich, and Tonya Yzaguerre are deceased.

Matt Haney is the chief of police of Bainbridge Island, Washington. Robert Keppel is a professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, teaching criminology and investigative techniques.

Judith Ridgway lives in seclusion, but has told friends that she plans to write a book about her marriage to Gary Ridgway.

Chad Ridgway is in the marines in California.

Judy DeLeone, Carrie Rois’s mother, broke her ankle a few years after Carrie’s remains were found. An undiagnosed blood clot formed, and she died suddenly from a pulmonary embolism.

Mertie Winston suffered a stroke shortly after Tracy Winston’s remains were identified, but has fought her way back to complete recovery.

Suzanne Villamin lives with her little dog in an apartment in downtown Seattle, surrounded by memories of her daughter, Mary Bello.

Looking through a two-foot-high stack of emails, letters, and phone notes I received over twenty-two years, I was once more amazed at the diversity of Green River Killer suspects: doctors, lawyers, psychologists, cops, pilots, writers, blue-collar workers, students, cultists, salesmen, cabdrivers, bus drivers, parolees, ministers, teachers, politicians, actors, and businessmen. In the end, it came down to the realization that the Green River Killer could have been almost anybody.

Almost anybody but a boring little man of seemingly predictable habits, a penny-pincher, miser, a collector of junk, and a target for jokes and demeaning nicknames. And yet it was Gary Ridgway’s protective coloration that let him stay free for more than twenty years. That and his uncommon ability to mask what lay beneath his bland facade and to hide his rage and frustration from his ex-wives, numerous girlfriends, his family, and even the woman who became his third wife. Judith Ridgway appeared to have truly believed that she and Gary “did everything together.” She was confident that neither of them had a need for friends or other diversions.

Gary Ridgway was good at only one thing. He was an efficient killer who was so inept at everything else that it was easy for him to hide in plain sight. In a way, he achieved what he had sought for most of his life. At last, people noticed him and he got his name and picture in the paper and on television.

For six months, he spent his time with detectives who, although they were much smarter than he, were obliged to come to him for answers. He got to go on field trips, and if their body site searches continued over a mealtime, he got to order fishwiches or hamburgers and french fries at fast-food drive-throughs.

In January 2004, when Ridgway was transferred, secretly of course, to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, he fully expected that he would continue to be a celebrity. He was taken first to the M.H.U.—the Mental Health Unit—where he would stay until May undergoing various tests.

“He had a cocky attitude,” an observer said. “You could tell that he thought he was superior to the other prisoners—that he was special.”

He soon learned that he was not. The stream of detectives he had expected to visit him did not appear, although he was flown once to Snohomish County, just north of King County, to go on field trips there. Nothing significant was found. The media was unaware of the quick trip.

Ridgway is considered prey in the Walla Walla prison for several reasons: most prisoners despise him for his crimes against women—rapists and child abusers are on the very bottom rung in the penitentiary; some convicts are related to the victims or their friends and would jump at the chance to wreak vengeance. Perhaps most of all, the prison hierarchy would reward any man who killed Ridgway. It would be a real feather in the cap of the con who managed to accomplish such a difficult feat. Wisconsin serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t survive long in prison; he was murdered in the shower room. In 2003, a Catholic priest convicted of child abuse was strangled shortly after he entered the General Population.

During Ridgway’s first few months in the M.H.U. in Walla Walla, one prisoner managed to get very close to him before he was spotted, quickly restrained, and hustled away. Ridgway will, indeed, have to keep his back to the wall—even when he is in solitary.

In May 2004, Ridgway was transferred to the I.M.U.—the Intensive Management Unit—where the most dangerous and difficult prisoners are housed in single, boxlike cells, shut off from the General Population of the prison. There, he is confined to his cell twenty-three hours a day. His accommodations are spartan, and it is rare to see a woman in the I.M.U. He is housed with the worst of the worst: women killers, sexual perverts, convicts whose crimes once made sensational headlines but who have long since been forgotten—shut off from the world with no hope of parole.

One of the other inmates on his tier laughed as he told a visitor about Gary Ridgway’s first night in the I.M.U. He had activated the emergency signal. When a guard responded, Ridgway complained loudly that there was a “hole in my blanket.”

“Then put your toe in it,” the guard responded. “And never ring that alarm again unless you have a real emergency.”

Just before Ridgway was sentenced to forty-eight life terms, he said that his worst fear was that he had forgotten some of his victims and the places where he left them. There is every likelihood that he has not yet revealed everything he has done. He knows full well that his plea bargain will be voided if it can be proved that he purposely held back information. And he has no plea bargains with other jurisdictions; he has admitted to leaving bodies or parts of bodies in Oregon, but insists that he committed all his murders in King County, Washington.

The geographical location of murders still undiscovered may yet see Gary Ridgway die in the death chamber.

Acknowledgments

OVER the past twenty-two years, scores of people have helped me with various aspects of my research, writing, and preparing this book to go to the printer. I am so afraid I will forget someone, but I’m going to try to go back to July 1982 and thank everyone who played a part. In some instances, I will use an alias or only a first name. The reasons, I think, will be obvious, and I know readers will understand.

It hasn’t been easy for grieving families to answer some of the questions I asked them, and I am forever grateful that they were willing to talk to me about the good days and the sad days of their lives.

Bill Aadland, Frank Adamson, Mike Barber, Linda Barker, David Bear, Brook Beiloh, Moira Bell,* Bren and Sharon, Marilyn Brenneman, Darla Bryse,* Lorrie C.,* Lynne Dickson, Gerald “Duke” Dietrich, Val Epperson, Families and Friends of Violent Crime Victims, Gene Fredericksen, Betty Pat Gatliff, Bill Haglund, Matt Haney, Ed Hanson, Jon Hendrickson, Maryann Hepburn,* Edward Iwata, Robert Keppel, Jean Knollmeyer, Dick Kraske, Katie Larson, Pat Lindsay, Lorna, Cherisse Luxa, Rebecca Mack, Norm Maleng, Josh Marquis, Al Matthews, Bruce McCrory, Dennis Meehan, Garrett Mills, Randy Mullinax, Kevin O’Keefe, Princess Oahu, John O’Leary, Sue Peters, Charlie Petersen, Barbara Potter, Don Reay, Barbara and John Reeder, Dave Reichert, Robert Ressler, Elizabeth Rhodes, Cheryl Rivers, Ruby, Mike Rule, Austin Seth, Paul Sherfry, Norm Stamper, Anne Stepp, Tenya, Kay Thomas, Kevin Wagner, Don White, Don Winslow, Mertie Winston, Chuck Wright, Suzanne Villamin, and Luanna Yellow Robe.