S.D. Serial-Killer Probe Mimics ‘Error’ Pattern of Green River Slayings : Initial Investigations Into Prostitutes’ Deaths Marked by Secrecy, Jurisdictional Squabbles

When the bodies of slain prostitutes began surfacing in 1982 along the Green River here, police and local community leaders made a series of tactical errors that some in Seattle think might have cost them chances to find the psychopathic murderer.

Unsure that the deaths were related, detectives waited two years before organizing a concentrated effort to arrest the man preying on dozens of Seattle prostitutes.

The investigators also refused to release any detailed information about the series of killings. The community, uninformed about the magnitude of the slayings, was slow to cry out for the killer’s capture.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” said Ron Sims, who as chairman of the King County Council each year evaluates funding for the Green River Task Force.

Jurisdiction Fights

“This guy killed for a long time, and we didn’t take it seriously. We had a lot of police jurisdictional jealousies, and, only after the press got on it, did people get up and say, ‘No more! No more! No more!’

“So yes, we made all those mistakes.”

In 1985 the bodies of prostitutes began showing up near rural San Diego County roads and, according to some observers of the investigation, many of the same “mistakes” committed in Seattle are being repeated in San Diego.

Three years slipped by before a joint city-county task force of detectives was organized in September to investigate the apparent serial prostitute slayings in San Diego.

The task force was formed only after city and county detectives publicly disagreed on the magnitude of the slayings. The unit remains a small group of fewer than a dozen officers, who were given just six months to work on the case without significant assistance from the FBI or other outside agencies.

The San Diego task force also has worked primarily in secrecy, turning away most inquiries by the media and refusing to seek community involvement in helping track the killer. The task force refuses to allow its investigators to speak to the press or even to say where its offices are located, offering an explanation that the office might become a bombing target for the serial killer.

Sims, comparing what is happening in San Diego with the early years of the Green River investigation, said:

“Without a question, these are some of the same mistakes.”

Nobody Caught

To be sure, neither Seattle nor San Diego police seem to have caught anyone in connection with the serial killings, so neither can claim with any certainty that it has adopted the right approach. But in terms of sheer magnitude of effort, there is no question that the Seattle law enforcement authorities have gone to much greater lengths than have their counterparts in San Diego.

Law enforcement officials in San Diego insist that they have taken the right steps to solve the murders and they strongly defend the decision to maintain secrecy. The spokesman for the San Diego Metropolitan Homicide Task Force noted that the detectives already have arrested several men in connection with slayings and attempted slayings of San Diego prostitutes.

“There’s been a lot of progress,” said Sgt. Liz Foster of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. “They’ve been fairly successful.”

Cmdr. Jim Kennedy of the San Diego Police Department, who is overseeing his agency’s role in the task force, said the recent arrests do show some headway.

“I think we’ve been very successful,” he said.

In Seattle, 40 women are dead, their bodies discovered along the Green River and in other remote areas of King County from 1982 to 1984. Another eight are missing

39 Victims in County

In San Diego County, 39 women, most of them prostitutes, drug addicts and street denizens, have been found dead in isolated areas of the county. The San Diego County murders began in 1985, soon after the killing frenzy ceased in Seattle.

Green River Task Force detectives believe that their murderer, if he is alive today and still killing, may be responsible for the string of deaths in San Diego.

“Based on information in our files and in their files, the cases are similar in some respects and we could be talking about the same suspect,” said King County Detective Dave Reichert, the lead investigator in Seattle.

“Of all the cases I’ve looked at, there are about 20 in San Diego that look the most similar to ours.”

Foster would not speculate about a possible link between the two sets of slayings. She theorized that possibly two assailants working alone have snatched prostitutes off El Cajon Boulevard and dumped their strangled, nude bodies off secluded roadways.

(Officials said the San Diego slayings do not appear related to a string of prostitute murders in Los Angeles , where at least nine street women have been shot to death since 1985. Los Angeles police arrested a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy last week on suspicion of murder in three of the deaths.)

Some Seattle police and community officials worry that, if some of the same

mistakes that occurred in their city continue to be repeated in San Diego, it could seriously hamper or prolong the investigation.

One striking similarity between the Seattle and San Diego cases is how police from both cities initially limited the scope of their investigations.

In the first two years of their investigation, King County and Seattle police formed several small task forces, only to disband after short life spans. “A lot was lost during that time period,” said Reichert.

‘Underestimated Things’

Capt. Robert Evans, commander of the Green River Task Force, said: “We underestimated things. We had no similar cases to fall back on, and it impacted on how we went about investigating it.”

He said, “There was a good likelihood we could have caught this guy. We knew he was taking victims like crazy. He was working real hard, sometimes he was taking two victims in one week.”

Describing the situation in San Diego today, Evans said, “I have tremendous hope in the San Diego investigators. Their opportunity is outstanding at this point in time because the killer is leaving some fresh bodies.”

In 1984, two years after the first round of bodies was discovered, King County officials organized a major task force that over the years has brought in as many 60 investigators, many of them from the FBI and law enforcement agencies throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Today, the Green River Task Force, which has spent about $15 million in taxpayers’ money, is widely known for its expertise in computerizing crime details and analyzing outdoor crime scenes, having reviewed 8,000 items of evidence and 22,000 tips on possible suspects.

Customers Targeted

The task force detectives, armed with state and federal grant funds, began targeting male customers of prostitutes along the so-called Sea-Tac Strip near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Soon afterward, the killings ended. But the identity of the killer remains unknown.

“It’s true that, as a result of the task force, the deaths stopped and something happened to the murderer,” said Randy Revelle, the King County executive who pushed through the legislation to start up the Green River Task Force.

“Whether he went south, I certainly don’t know. But at least the killings in Seattle stopped.”

Revelle, now a private attorney campaigning for mayor of Seattle, said he knew at the time that the chances of catching the killer were slim.

But he appointed a new sheriff with the top priority of assembling the massive task force and welcoming any and all outside assistance.

“We had outside experts coming in every month, and every time somebody suggested we try something new, we did it, “ he said. “We did all that we reasonably could.”

Officials in San Diego also lost critical time in their investigation. From 1985 through late last summer, county sheriff’s detectives routinely trudged to remote and isolated parts of the county where the decomposing bodies of prostitutes were found. During much of that time, San Diego police and sheriff’s homicide officials disagreed over whether the deaths really constituted a serial pattern.

Finally, in September, the 11-member San Diego task force was formed. Except for a visit to the Green River suite of offices, the city-county investigators in San Diego have spent most of their time tracking leads and working alone.

Foster said no FBI agents have been assigned to work with the task force, as was the case in Seattle. But she said some FBI services, such as forensic sciences and other crime lab techniques, have been offered and accepted by the San Diego detectives.

“The FBI gave us a presentation on what they can do and their services,” she said. “And we have utilized some of that.”

Other local expertise has been turned away.

San Diego County Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Baxter, who led the original investigation into the prostitute murders, was not included on the task force. And sheriff’s Detective Tom Streed, who through his experience on the cases became a counterpart to Seattle’s Reichert, was removed from the task force soon after it was created.

“He was transferred out and that was a personnel matter,” Foster said. “I can’t really talk about that.”

Now, the task force is facing a deadline of Wednesday, when the group’s six months are up.

Steve Casey, a spokesman in the San Diego County district attorney’s office, and Kennedy, the San Diego police commander, said the unit probably will remain in existence.

On Saturday, Foster said that all three San Diego agencies have informally decided to keep the task force operating, and that officials will draft a new working agreement this week spelling out the duties of the task force members and the duration of the unit.

“This decision, of course, was based on the progress of the task force and the numerous arrests that they made, along with the continuation of ongoing cases and investigations,” Foster said.

Two arrests by the San Diego task force, one on suspicion of murder and one on suspicion of attempted murder, received substantial media coverage. But most of the work of the task force has gone unreported, just as happened in Seattle in the early years of that investigation.

Normal Procedures

The Seattle investigators at first followed normal police procedures in releasing very few details about their string of deaths.

Seattle reporters remember when investigators only released sketchy three-paragraph reports each time a body was found, a situation they found frustrating.

But, as the years wore on, reporters became more adroit at obtaining information and began earning the trust of many of the Green River investigators. Today, Evans said he understands how use of the media could help his task force detectives solve the serial killings.

Tried to Be Open

“I’ve tried to be open with the press,” he said. “I’ve tried to answer every question I can. Sometimes, it’s smarter to deal right up front with the press.

“And I know some law enforcement people don’t care for that. Some people even in this task force don’t agree. But I think it’s important. Somewhere out there is somebody who can help us.”

The Green River detectives today welcome reporters from around the country to tour the task force’s suite of offices on top of the King County Courthouse.

But not so in San Diego, where even the task force’s office location in Mission Valley remains a carefully guarded secret. Foster said one reason for not disclosing the address of the task force is that the assailant or assailants might try to bomb or destroy the unit’s investigative files.

The memorandum of understanding that created the San Diego task force stipulated that no members of the task force could speak publicly about the investigation, and that all media information would go through Foster.

Few Details Released

But Foster has released few details about the probe, and she said she has resisted several formal requests for access to public records--including questions about the cost of the task force--filed by San Diego newspapers.

“They don’t want to be inundated with the constant press inquiries,” she said of the task force members.

Further limiting public knowledge of the case, county Coroner David Stark has sealed the autopsy reports of six of the victims, after detectives advised him that public dissemination of those reports could hamper their investigation.

“If the task force is disbanded, if they resolve some of these cases, then of course the reports will be released,” Stark said.

Foster maintains that as much information is being released about the serial killings as in any regular homicide case. The only difference, she said, is that the press is demanding more because of the magnitude of the series of prostitute deaths.

“More information is desired and the press is requesting more,” she said. “But there isn’t any less information going out.”

Another sharp contrast between the Seattle and San Diego investigations can be seen in how the communities became involved in the cases.

Protest Marches

Women’s groups in Seattle conducted protest marches and candlelight vigils as they pushed their demands that Green River detectives never give up the hunt for the slayer. Local business officials rallied around the cause, providing money and manpower to bolster the Green River Task Force.

“I think we had an impact,” said Noreen Lee, who as a member of the National Organization for Women helped stage the community drives. “This was a serious matter, and it affected everyone.”

Several rewards also were posted by Seattle community groups, and, even today, five years after the last body was found, many government leaders say it would be political suicide to disband the task force.

Plea on Television

Investigators took the unusual step late last year of releasing a large amount of their information to an international television audience. Partly as a ploy to seek fresh leads, the “Manhunt Live” program was an appeal to the community--through the media--for help in solving the Seattle deaths. About 3,400 tips were called in.

Police Detective Myrle L. Carner, regional coordinator of the Seattle-King County Crime Stoppers program, said several Seattle businesses, including the Boeing Co. and the Pemco Foundation, donated money, resources and manpower. He said local hotels and transportation companies donated services to accommodate out-of-town detectives in Seattle for the broadcast.

“On the week of the show, the community just pitched in like you couldn’t believe,” Carner said. “It’s still a hot topic in this town. All you have to do is call a press conference on the Green River, and you’ll get an instant audience.” There has been no similar outcry in San Diego, no rewards offered, no outpouring of community concern in finding the killer.

But Foster said that intense community involvement could actually produce false leads for detectives in San Diego and slow the police investigation.

“It could also scare off any possible suspect the task force is trying to follow up,” she said. “We’d like the opportunity to follow up on tips and information we’ve already got before we start a last desperate move of seeking anything from the public.”

San Diego had a limited role in the Manhunt Live special, and Carner said the show produced 110 tips relating to the San Diego deaths. As with most aspects of the San Diego investigation, officials have declined to discuss those leads.

20 or 30 Tips

Police officer Ralph Boelter, who was the only San Diego area officer to participate in the Manhunt Live program, said another 20 or 30 tips were phoned into police in San Diego shortly after the show aired. Now, only one tip comes in every two weeks or so.

“We’re in a real lull,” he said.

Officer Linda Zweig, who works with the San Diego Crime Stoppers program, said that, although she has offered Crime Stoppers’ assistance to the San Diego task force, her offer so far has gone wanting.

“We originally looked into it, and I contacted the sheriff’s office, and they said they didn’t want to move on anything,” Zweig said. “But, in fairness, many times added publicity about a crime might hinder the investigation.”

Still Operating

But Sims, the King County Council chairman whose district includes the Sea-Tac strip where many of the Seattle prostitutes disappeared, said the public’s involvement has kept the Green River Task Force operating all these years, even though there has been no breakthrough.

He said he would like to see a regional homicide task force created to help prevent tactical errors such as those committed during the early years of the investigation into the Green River killer.

“That guy got away with it because there was something wrong with the system,” Sims said. “If the system is not working effectively, then the murderer will continue to kill.”