40

ALTHOUGH Frank Adamson was doing his best to sound optimistic about the Green River investigation, it wasn’t easy. Nineteen eighty-six was almost over, and they seemed no closer to arresting the killer than they had ever been. The task force was being downsized, and Adamson had had to give the bad news to a number of detectives that they were being transferred. Twenty-five percent of the task force was gone.

The board beneath his own feet was becoming more and more unstable. He was frustrated, disappointed, sorry about the circus that the search of the fur trapper’s home had become, sad because of all the young women who were still unavenged. And he knew his time was coming.

“Vern Thomas called me in and said, ‘I don’t want any argument. The decision is made, Frank. You can remain in charge, or you can be promoted to major.’ ”

Thomas, who wouldn’t be sheriff much longer himself, offered Adamson the opportunity to command the new sheriff’s precinct that would be in Maple Valley. The unspoken alternative for Adamson was that he would be off the task force anyway.

“I took the second option,” Adamson recalled, “and Vern said ‘You made the right choice.’ ”

It felt good to get off the hot stove. Frank Adamson would be the longest surviving commander of the Green River Task Force. He had begun in November 1983, and he officially left the task force in January 1987.

Captain Jim Pompey had been with the department since 1972 and was promoted to captain in 1983, making him the highest ranking African American in the sheriff’s office. He had been in charge of the county’s SWAT Team and its marine unit. Now he moved in to head the much-reduced Green River Task Force amid rumors that it was being absorbed into the Major Crimes Unit where it would quietly evaporate. He admitted that he was not up to speed on the Green River cases, while Frank Adamson, Dave Reichert, Jim Doyon, Randy Mullinax, Sue Peters, Matt Haney, and dozens of other detectives who had lived and breathed the Green River story for years were familiar with every aspect of it.

Matt Haney had joined the Green River Task Force on May 1, 1985, replacing Paul Smith when Smith was diagnosed with leukemia. Sue Peters, the rookie who responded to the second Green River site in August 1982, was a detective by 1986 and had come on board the task force, too. Even though the number of investigators had shrunk, Jim Pompey would be commanding the cream of the crop.

As the Green River Task Force continued to shrink due to budget cuts, King County found money in its budget to “rehabilitate” the Green River itself—partially to take away the onus put upon it by the thirty-six unsolved murders and dozens of missing women. The county’s Natural Resources and Parks Division hired artist Michael McCafferty to design a master plan that would change the image of the Green River along its entire thirty-mile course. McCafferty suggested several educational stations, some bronze sculptures, reseeding to “help the fish,” and a small memorial of black and purple flowers to honor the murder victims. This last—unsolicited—suggestion from McCafferty alarmed the King County Arts Commission. “It’s inappropriate,” one member of the commission said. “This [serial killer] hasn’t yet been caught. He might think of it as a memorial to him. If he had been apprehended, we might feel differently.”

Left unspoken was the hope that the murders would be forgotten and the Green River would once again be known for its rippling waters, salmon runs, great blue herons, and serenity. Honoring the dead would keep reminding people of what had happened.

Linda Barker, speaking for the victims’ families, found the thought of a memorial extremely appropriate. “Society and the community need to say these girls were valuable people and their deaths mean something to us.”

In the end, the $10 million project went through with a bike and jogging path along the river, a golf course near the Meeker Street Bridge…but no remembrance at all of the Green River victims.

JIM POMPEY, the new head of the Green River Task Force, was a great guy with a booming laugh that was instantly recognizable. A graduate of Washington State University’s law enforcement program, he was a dedicated “Cougar.” A physical training enthusiast, he exercised several times a week lifting weights at a health club near the Burien Precinct. My son, Mike, also a Cougar, worked out with Pompey and another African-American officer, a member of the K-9 Unit.

“I remember him as being very strong,” Mike recalled. “And he was always looking to get more hats and shirts from WSU. Every time I went to Pullman, he’d ask me to bring him back something with the Wazzu cougar on it.”

Not surprisingly, Pompey was also an excellent swimmer and a SCUBA diver, skills that came in handy when he headed the marine unit. Seattle and King County have water in almost every direction and drowning rescues are common.

Pompey felt he was up to the challenge of catching the Green River Killer, although it wasn’t a job he had sought out deliberately. Like each new commander, he came in fresh and enthusiastic even though morale among the detectives still left was running low. Even Dave Reichert, who had been with the investigation since day one, sometimes wondered if they were ever going to catch the man who had eluded them for so long. It would be fair to say that it had become a personal life challenge for Reichert.

SOME of the preeminent suspects from the early days had long since been cleared; others remained in the “A” category, while a few moved up the dubious ladder to a point where it seemed prudent to look at them from another angle. And then there was always the chance that task force detectives might come across an entirely new suspect, a name they had not heard before.

One of the earliest suspects, when reevaluated, began to look much more interesting. The hard-won, state-of-the-art computer that Frank Adamson, Bob Keppel, Sheriff Vern Thomas, and former county executive Randy Revelle had fought for was a new and almost miraculous tool. It had taken time for clerks to enter the thousands upon thousands of tips and field investigation reports, the information about both the victims and possible suspects, into the computer. It continued to scan for connections among victims and connections between victims and possible suspects.

One name that caught the detectives’ attention was the mild-mannered man who drove pickup trucks and liked to watch prostitutes on the Strip. He appeared to have been intricately linked to the investigation. Sergeant Frank Atchley had always found him intriguing. Matt Haney noted computer hits on his name were piling up.

The Seattle Port Authority Police, who patrolled airport property, had listed the “street name” of a pretty woman parked with him in 1982. It was an alias for Keli Kay McGinness, the beautiful blonde who was still missing after leaving the Three Bears Motel.

He was, of course, the man who had started to strangle Penny Bristow after he said she had bitten him during oral sex. He had admitted that the incident had happened.

Jim Doyon had talked to him in front of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the Strip near the crossing where most of the dead and missing women had last been seen.

This same man lived just south of 216th off Military Road. Indeed, he lived in the house where Marie Malvar’s father and boyfriend had watched Des Moines detective sergeant Bob Fox question the owner. Fox had walked away, convinced that Marie wasn’t in his house, nor had she ever been there.

He habitually drove older pickup trucks, all of which matched the descriptions given by witnesses or women who had escaped from a man they believed to be the Green River Killer.