Green River Arrest Opens New Chapter

They still haven’t met face to face, but the parallel worlds of Dave Reichert and Gary Ridgway go back to 1984.

Reichert was the first detective assigned to what would become known as the Green River killings: the murders of at least 49 women, mostly prostitutes or runaways, their bodies usually dumped in the river or in the woods.

Ridgway was a truck painter living in a Seattle suburb who was an early suspect in the case, though investigators won’t say why.

Reichert, 51, was bursting with pride Saturday. He’s the sheriff of King County now, and, after all these years, his department has a suspect behind bars. What turned the case was a new DNA test.

The suspect is Ridgway, 52, whom co-workers and neighbors describe as almost cloying in his desire to be liked. Ridgway was being held without bail in the downtown county jail, awaiting charges, expected to be filed by Wednesday, that he murdered at least four of the Green River victims.

A Familiar Face on TV

In South King County, investigators combed the four homes that Ridgway has lived in since the early 1980s. Cadaver-sniffing dogs roamed the yards. A motor home was towed away for forensics work.

And, the way it always seems when a seemingly nice fellow is hauled off to jail on horrific allegations, those who know him just shake their head.

Clem Gregurek and his wife, Sharon, were sitting down for dinner when Ridgway’s face was shown on the TV news. “Honey, I know that guy!” Gregurek told his wife. The last name meant nothing to Gregurek, a veteran resident of this suburban Auburn neighborhood of gravel streets and towering evergreens. But the face looked so familiar. “Honey, that’s Gary!” he finally blurted.

Gary, the guy who lives behind them with his wife, who loves riding his mower to cut the acre of grass surrounding their big house. Gary, with the nice motor home and the cute poodle.

“I remember when they first moved in, they cut down all the trees--the big firs and the alders,” Gregurek, 68, said Saturday. “I said, ‘If you don’t want trees, why not buy down in the valley?’ ”

But Gregurek came to like the couple, frequently walking over into their backyard to discuss which bulbs to plant. A month ago, the three talked over cans of Bud Light beer after they offered Gregurek some kindling.

“So you can see why I’m baffled,” Gregurek said. “Nice people.”

Kim and Darren Straus also live behind the Ridgway home and, like Gregurek, are having a hard time reconciling the news. Here was a guy, Kim Straus said, who would lift his poodle, Oscar, over the fence, to sniff her own dog, Coco, so they’d be friends.

“He’s always been very pleasant, very personable,” said Straus, 35. “Our conversations were just casual. Gardening, yardwork, the weather, my kids.”

A Grisly Inside Joke

Neither of them knew Ridgway’s history, that he was a suspect since 1984 in the Green River killings, which occurred over a two-year span. Nor did they know that Ridgway was asked in 1987 to chew on gauze so investigators could preserve it and later check his DNA against evidence found on the corpses.

But the guys down at Kenworth Truck Co. in nearby Renton did know about the DNA swab and that Ridgway was a suspect, and they came to refer to him coyly as “GR.” As in Gary Ridgway. Or Green River.

“It was an inside joke. The whole plant knew,” said Bob Schweiss, who worked there eight years.

But Ridgway apparently was oblivious to the teasing, longing for everyone’s friendship, Schweiss said.

“He’d go out of his way to be friendly. You’d see him coming down the hall and he’d be smiling and all happy, and if he didn’t know your name, he’d still say, ‘Hi, friend!’

“If he was standing by the coffee machine and you walked by, he’d stop you and buy you a cup of coffee,” Schweiss added. “In the cafeteria, he’d sit with groups and join in the conversations. He wouldn’t contribute much.

“He just wanted to belong; real bad.”

While Schweiss never forgot that Ridgway was a suspect, others were surprised that the nearly 20-year-old case may now be solved--and that the suspect is a lifelong resident of the region.

A Time for Patience and Persistence

“It’s really creepy. He’s been here all that time, living his life just like everyone else,” said Sara Cole, 41, a teacher shopping Saturday at the SuperMall of the Great Northwest in Auburn. “I figured [the killer] was far away from here by now.”

Doug Sullivan, a 36-year-old graphic artist, had the same thoughts as he sipped a mocha at Tully’s Coffee next to Pike Place market. “I thought if there really was one guy who was the Green River killer, he must have been long gone by now. This shows that the cops really must have kept at it all these years.”

Reichert said the investigation took persistence and patience.

Reichert remembers first investigating the murders--a woman’s body floating in the Green River on that Friday night in August 1982. That Sunday, fresh from church, he was sent back out to the river, where two more bodies were found. As he walked through the 5-foot-high river reeds, he stumbled across yet another body.

He was told to investigate all four homicides. He asked for and got help, but the other detectives were later reassigned when little progress was made.

“I felt beat up,” Reichert said. “I was swamped, overloaded.”

Then more bodies were found. Suddenly, in 1983, there was a task force, and money and computers and FBI agents, and Reichert was in charge.

All along, Ridgway was “one of our top five suspects,” Reichert said. But there was no strong evidence. Reichert left the investigation in 1990, and in recent years just one detective, Tom Jensen, was left working the case.

Among Jensen’s jobs: Keep tabs on technology developments. At some point, when the science was there, that swab of Ridgway’s saliva would be tested, Reichert had promised. They’d have one good shot at it.

Investigators gathered again six months ago to reevaluate the case, and Jensen said the time was right for a more advanced DNA test. Results showed a match between Ridgway’s DNA and evidence on three of the victims. Other “certain factors” connected him to a fourth woman’s death, investigators said.

Hoping for Links to More Killings

Reichert said his investigators are hoping to connect Ridgway to the other Green River murders.

“It was one thing for me to have led this investigation and another to be the first person in the history of this department to rise from patrolman to sheriff.

“But to solve this crime, that’s a miracle,” Reichert said Saturday. “I was so hyped up and pumped [Friday] night, I couldn’t sleep.”