The Green River Killer

I suppose I'd better get this entry done with.

By now, most of you have heard the news about the Green River Killer, now identified as one Gary Leon Ridgway.

When I was ten years old, the first known victims of the Green River Killer were found not far from where I lived. The Green River (known as the Duwamish River nearer its mouth) flows into the Puget Sound in Elliott Bay. Going upriver, it flows through Tukwila, up past Renton near the site of the old Longacres Race Track, then into Kent where it flows under the Valley Freeway, then it meanders into the fringes of Auburn and then farther away from my old haunts. I grew up on the outskirts of Renton on the other side from Tukwila. But, believe me, I knew about the killings. Every person my age knew about them.

Twenty years. By my teens, I thought that the killings would never be solved. We heard theories, that it was more than one person. I went to piano lessons in Kent and whenever we passed over the Green River on the Valley Freeway I would remember the victims and wonder if we would ever know who had killed them. For twenty years every time I saw the words "Green River" on a sign I felt a tiny spark of fear and a larger wave of sadness. Twenty years.

This is a lot harder to write than I thought it would be.

The fact that the victims were mostly prostitutes did not matter. They were young girls. I was a young girl. They lived near where I lived. Visited the same restaurants. Watched the same TV. And died at the hands of some unknown madman.

And nobody could find this guy. If it even was a guy. There were crackpot theories about it being a woman or a group of women. I heard them all. I lived in the shadow of the killer for eight years before I left home for college. Even then it didn't go away. It was a painful mystery that haunted all of us. Some more than others, I know, but it was there. It didn't go away. There was no resolution and no chance of resolution. It seemed that we would never learn who had murdered those children.

So forgive me if I don't talk much about this guy they've found. Some small part of me cannot believe it's over. Part of me thinks they couldn't have gotten the right guy. There is a bogeyman still out there, despite the news coverage and the confessions and the uproar. The words "Green River Killer" will always resonate very deeply with me, and not in a good way. And even if they were to kill Ridgway today it wouldn't change a thing.

He's confessed to 48 murders. But there were a more than that, and maybe more we don't know about. There may be another killer out there still. Maybe Ridgway hasn't admitted to every murdered he committed. He did say there were so many they blended together. In some ways, it doesn't matter. He already destroyed so much. In some ways it's terribly important to know for sure.

So forgive me. I can't talk about this issue without re-living years of fear. He took away a small part of my innocence and joy. I never met the man (for all I know, though it is possible) but I am his victim nonetheless. He victimized every girl in Seattle for twenty years. Seeing his face, hearing his plea, it doesn't move me. I'm numb to it. If you were to give me a baseball bat and put me in the same room as him, I would swing away without moral qualms and with little emotion. I don't hate him, and I don't think I really fear him, but it all seems unreal.

If I feel anything, it is deep sadness. So many lives cut short. So many chances lost. It can't be over yet. It couldn't have been one man. So unreal.

So unreal.