50th Green River victim?: Help sought to ID remains

By Ian Ith
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Green River Task Force detectives acknowledged yesterday that they may have found a 50th victim of the Green River killer.

Unless someone in the public comes forward with the name of a woman who disappeared as long as 30 years ago — a woman who may never have been reported missing — no one may ever know who she was. Or whether she really was a victim of the serial killer.

The task force yesterday issued a call to the public to help identify bones discovered in August near Kent during a flurry of searches all over King County that turned up remains of three of the missing women on the Green River victims' list.

The bones found about Aug. 21 in a ravine off the Kent-Des Moines Road have remained a mystery.

Yesterday the task force learned that the DNA in the bones doesn't match any of the 49 women whose disappearances have been attributed to the Green River killer. And it doesn't match the DNA of 18 other missing women who were never added to the Green River list.

Gary L. Ridgway is charged with seven of the Green River slayings and is reportedly directing investigators to long-hidden remains in exchange for a plea deal to spare his life. Since August, investigators have found and identified the remains of Pammy Avent, April Buttram Manuel and Marie Malvar.

As usual, investigators won't address the reports of Ridgway's cooperation. But when asked whether they believe the unidentified remains found in Kent are those of a serial killer's victim, they answer optimistically.

"If we can tie it to Green River, we will have a 50th Green River victim," said Detective Kathleen Larson, the task-force spokeswoman. "We don't know who she is. But common sense would dictate that the Green River Task Force was there (to discover her) for a reason."

The Green River victims list has always been the center of debate, even in the 1980s when detectives were adding names to it as quickly as bodies were turning up in South King County. Some investigators thought the task force was adding too many names. Others said that many other missing women were not being added to the list for political reasons. Everyone agreed the list was an estimate at best.

When he was arrested in November 2001, after police said DNA evidence tied him to some of the Green River killings, Ridgway reportedly told detectives that "not all of them are mine," sources have said. But he wasn't specific.

The best that the King County Medical Examiner's Office can determine is the woman found near Kent was between 18 and 24 years old and died between 1973 and 1993. Police found 23 pieces of bone, none large enough to lend more than trace DNA evidence to the identification effort, Larson said. No clothing or jewelry was found at the site.

Investigators hope someone will call with the name of a woman who vanished back then, even if they think another family member or friend reported the disappearance. Maybe a sister or brother who was just a child then, and always assumed their parents reported the disappearance, will call just to be sure.

They even hope that a former streetwalker might remember a young woman who was there one day and gone the next, and no one knew where she went — nor cared much.

The task force said it already had received several calls yesterday, but it was too early to tell whether any would pan out.

Investigators hope that if they get a promising tip, they can find the woman's relatives and get DNA samples to compare to the remains.

"If she had ties to prostitution or street life, she may have come from out of state," Larson said. "Some of our victims weren't reported missing for a year, and some of our victims were never reported missing at all."

The Green River Task Force tip line is 206-296-7575.

Ian Ith: 206-464-2109 or iith@seattletimes.com

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