“That’s stupid,” he said.

“Just as stupid as your asking me.”

Now he stood up and said “Let’s go,” and headed for the door. But as they drove the few blocks to her house, he brought up the subject of the Green River Killer again, and she tensed inwardly. He stressed that whoever was killing the girls was doing the city a favor.

“I brought up their families, saying how sad it was that some of them had small children who would grow up without their mothers,” Nancy remembered. “He said this was something the prostitutes should think about before hitting the streets and he asked me if I’d changed my mind and ‘agreed’ with the prostitutes.

“Of course not! I just think it’s sad when you think about the families. Mothers and fathers who’ll never see their daughters again. Kids who won’t get to know their mothers. I just feel sorry for them.”

“They’re better off without them,” he told her flatly.

Nancy took a chance. “Do you really think that?”

He stared at her intently as they pulled up in her driveway and then said, “No! Of course not. Nobody deserves to die. Right?”

But he kept returning to one subject, as Nancy edged toward the passenger door. “Wanna hear something funny?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“I’ve been picked up by the F.B.I. and questioned for eight hours about the Green River Killer.”

“I was shocked and said, ‘What?’ But he seemed to be kind of proud about that, and just laughed and said, ‘Yeah. Can you believe that?’ ”

He explained that the police had found one of the missing girls’ phone number in his phone book, but he only happened to have it because he was a friend of her sister’s. He was quite calm at this point, and acted as if it was funny that he’d been a suspect.

He said he’d called his mother to come and pick him up at the sheriff’s office. “At the time, I didn’t connect the dots,” Nancy said. “He was always nice to me, always well mannered, opened doors for me, and never took a step out of line. When I first saw his picture on the news [years later], I couldn’t believe it.”

Long after she sold her house and moved to Hawaii, she would be grateful that she’d given him the right answers on the last night he drove her home.

Part Two

36

AFTER HE MOVED out of Darla’s West Seattle home in December 1981, he apparently had only a few lonely weeks. It was Christmas Eve when he appeared at a Parents Without Partners party at the White Shutters Inn on Pac HiWay and joined a woman named Sally Cavetto.* He seemed somewhat emotional and upset, a rarity for him. Sally would recall that he muttered several times that he had “just nearly killed a woman.” She assumed at the time that he meant he had almost hit a pedestrian.

Sally wasn’t concerned about it because nothing really bad had happened. She dated him until May or June of 1982, until another woman in PWP told her that she had caught herpes from him, and suspected that he was frequenting prostitutes. Sally broke up with him.

Hardly deterred, he continued to select dates from the endless source of single women in PWP. He became engaged to another woman and they actually set a wedding date—for June 1984. But once again he was dumped. Many of his girlfriends soon realized that he was seeing several women during the same time period. Moreover, he was apparently picking up prostitutes.

His stamina for sexual encounters was well known. All of his girlfriends knew he wanted sex several times a day, and he preferred to do it outdoors in an exhibitionistic way. Indeed, the fact that he demanded intercourse so often had led each woman to believe he was being faithful, at least at first. And then they realized he had a seemingly infinite capacity to perform sexually. But emotionally, he seemed shallow, unwilling or unable to show any real affection.

And then he met a woman named Judith in early 1985. They shared a common history of failed relationships. After nineteen years, her first marriage had turned out to be a shocking disappointment. She had finally accepted that her first husband, whom she divorced in 1984, was bisexual and leaning heavily toward being totally gay. She couldn’t live with his suggestions that he bring men home to share their marital bed. She was forty, and wasn’t that sure of her attractiveness to begin with. Having a husband who preferred men damaged her ego even more. Her family seemed to be disintegrating around her. She wasn’t sure what her older daughter was doing for money, and she was afraid to ask. She didn’t want to know the answer.

Judith was living in an apartment close to the Pac HiWay with a woman friend and her younger daughter, who was eighteen. All she had ever wanted to be was someone’s wife, a good mother, and keep a nice house. She hoped to remarry one day and she joined a group called Seattle Singles, but she didn’t meet anyone there who seemed to be a likely prospect. There were always more single women than single men. Besides, the men gravitated toward the younger, slimmer women in the group.

Judith’s roommate convinced her to attend one of the PWP country-western nights at the White Shutters, and she finally agreed to go even though she was shy and figured nobody would talk to her or ask her to dance. It was February 1985. She would always remember the date because she met a man that night who would change her life radically. It was his birthday and he told her the company he worked for had given him a couple of days off to celebrate it.

She was impressed by his job stability when he said he’d worked at the same place since he got out of high school—fifteen years. He mentioned that he was single, owned his own home, and even though he was driving an older brownish pickup truck with some rust spots on it, it was clean and had a camper on the back. He seemed pleasant enough, and he was definitely interested in her. They both liked country-western music, and when she left the White Shutters that night, she felt happier than she had in a long time.

He was four or five years younger than she was, but that didn’t seem to bother him. Judith had met his ex-wife, Dana, even before she met him and there appeared to be no bad feelings between them. That was a good sign, she thought. He persuaded her to join Parents Without Partners, and Judith was soon enjoying an active social life.

She had never worked and her skills were as “a homemaker.” When she met him, she was taking care of a woman and her two children, and also cleaning houses to make ends meet. She hadn’t planned on facing life alone at forty, and it wasn’t easy for her financially. She missed having her own house to take care of. Maybe her older daughter wouldn’t be running wild if she had a place to come home to.

This man’s kindness and his masculinity impressed Judith. She found him attractive, although she didn’t consider looks the most important attribute in a man. He was quiet, but he was fun, too. At first, she only saw him once a week at the PWP meetings, but then he started calling and asking her to go out with him. He was working the swing shift in the spring of 1985, so their dates were mostly for dinner in the late afternoon.