10chancefirstoneblackmaledhim

11youworkmeornobody

12thinkchangedhismo

bussnessmanorsellman

13carandmotelreservation

14manseenbiglugageoutofmotelwasheavyneededhelp

keysidcardatroad18whos

15wheresolosesomeringandmisc

16outofstatecop

17don’tkillinnoonarealookinoutside

18onehadoldscarse

19momaplehadredwinelombroscsomefishanddumpedthere

20anydurgsorselling

21headfoundwhofountitwhereisrest

22whendietheydiedayornight

23whatourntheremouthsoreisitatrick

24whytakesomeclothesandleavereast

25thekillerwheresatleastonering

26realestmanisoneman

27longhaultruckdriverlastseenwithone

28somehadropemarksonneckar.dhands

29oneblackinriverhaddoraononly

30alstrangledbutwithdefermetheds

31oneblackinriverhadworkedformetro

32mosthadpimpsbettingthem

33escortmodelingforcedthemofffearofdeth

34maybepimphatergetbackatthem

34whofindstheboneswhatareththerefor

35manwhithgunorknife

36someonepaidtokilloneothersarethideit

37killwhotheyareorisitwhattheyare

38anydeaddiferthenrestt

39itcouldamanportladsomeworkedthere

40ehatkindofmanisthis

therewasabookliftatdenneysignotthisotof

itbilongstocop

The letter was signed: “callmefred.”

“Call me Fred.” Well, that was clear enough, although it was unlikely that the tipster was really named Fred. The letter had probably been written by someone who wanted to play detective. He was offering motives that anyone might think of, but he was also giving a lot of information that wasn’t generally known. After Barber finished trying to separate the words into some kind of sense, he turned the letter over to Dave Reichert.

At the request of Bruce Kalin, a task force evidence specialist, Tonya Yzaguerre, a latent print examiner for the sheriff’s office, examined it for fingerprints. Using the Ninhydrin process—which uses chemicals and heat and can bring up prints left even decades before—Yzaguerre found one that would be saved in the hope that someday they would glean prints from a Green River crime scene or body site. And then she sent the letter on to the F.B.I., both for John Douglas to evaluate for its content and in the hope that the typewriter used might be identified.

The F.B.I. lab felt that the typewriter was probably an Olympia style with a horizontal spacing of 2.60mm per character, and it had a fabric ribbon.

Despite the fact that the letter writer had referred to heretofore unpublished information like “One black in river had a stone in the vagina. Why?” and “Mom maple had red wine lombrosco some fish and dumped there,” John Douglas wrote to Bruce Kalin that he didn’t feel the real Green River Killer had written the letter.

“It is my opinion that the author of the written communiqué has no connection with the Green River Homicides. The communiqué reflects a subject who is average in intelligence and one who is making a feeble and amateurish attempt to gain some personal importance by manipulating the investigation. If this subject has made statements relative to the investigation which were not already released to the press, he would have to have access to this information [via] Task Force.”

As for calls that had come in telling the task force where bodies might be found, Douglas was also skeptical. “Your caller is not specific enough to establish himself as the ‘Green River Murderer.’ However, he does have the capacity to imitate and be a ‘copycat’ killer.”

Douglas said that the Behavioral Science Unit of the F.B.I. had found that very few serial killers of this type had communicated with the media or an investigative team. When true serial killers had called, they gave very specific details to establish their credibility. “That is part of their personal need,” he pointed out. “Having feelings of inadequacies and lacking self-worth, they must feel powerful and important.”

Douglas advised the task force detectives to demand that the man who called them give more precise directions to any alleged body site. Then they were to deliberately stay away from that location. “This will anger him and demonstrate that you are stupid and ignorant and cannot follow simple instructions. [He] will be compelled to telephonically admonish you and/or oversee your investigation at the ‘wrong’ crime scene location.”

Douglas still doubted that either the letter writer or the phone tipster were the real GRK. But there was the threat of a deadly copycat.

That was all the Adamson task force needed. Another serial killer. The real question was how many people not on the task force itself knew about the triangular stones placed in the vaginas of some of the first victims, and also about the wine bottle—indeed, Lambrusco—and the fish left on Carol Christensen’s body? I knew, but I never told anyone what someone on the task force had told me. Some Seattle Times reporters found out, too, but they did not publish it. These pieces of information were definitely not generally known, and they hadn’t been mentioned in newspapers or on television.

It was almost impossible to tell if the letter Mike Barber received was the real thing. In retrospect, I believe it was. But there were so many tips coming in—to the Green River Task Force, to well-recognized journalists, and, yes, to me.

In 2003, as I went through the huge stacks of material I’d saved for twenty-two years, I came across an envelope virtually identical to the one Barber got. It is addressed to

Mrs Ann RULE

c/o POST-Intelligencer

6th & Wall

Seattle, Wasjington

98121

With a Seattle postmark of April 24, 1984, it had been sent two months after the first letter. This address for the P.I. was correct. The mistake in the spelling of Wasjington had been corrected with a pen. On the back flap, it said,

“Andy Stack”

GREEN RIVER

and in ink:

G-R (209)

Someone at the P.I. had scribbled my box number on it and forwarded it. There is nothing inside the envelope now, and I cannot say for sure that there ever was by the time I got it. I don’t know who wrote “Andy Stack” on the back of the envelope, but that was the pen name that I used for almost fifteen years when I wrote for True Detective and her four sister true-crime magazines. Very few people knew that at the time. The “209”? I have no idea who wrote that or what it meant. Was it the 209th tip the P.I. had received? Or did it mean something to the person who mailed it?

The mystery envelope was sent at a time when I was receiving so much information from readers and people interested in the Green River cases that I could barely keep up with it. As always, I passed on the most likely sounding information to the task force.

One thing I had not known was that there was someone who kept track of my public appearances, someone who often stood eight or ten feet away from me, watching. Over the years, I gave scores of lectures in the Seattle area, and people always asked about the Green River Killer. I often commented about my feeling that I must have sat in the next restaurant booth from him, or stood behind him in line at the supermarket. But that was only logical, deductive reasoning. Most of his victims had been abducted within a mile or so of where I lived, and many of their bodies had been found that close, too. All of us who lived in the south King County area had an eerie sense that we might know him, or, at least, that we must have seen him without realizing who he was.