Task Force Sought to Link Suspect to Deaths

Following an arrest in the nation’s worst unsolved serial killings case, the King County sheriff is proposing a regional task force to investigate the deaths of more than 90 women.

Sheriff Dave Reichert has approached sheriffs in neighboring Pierce and Snohomish counties about jointly investigating more than 40 area deaths since the last of the 49 official victims in the Green River killings case went missing in March 1984, sheriff’s spokesman John Urquhart said Tuesday.

“We will be very interested in other [deaths] in other jurisdictions that might turn out to have a common suspect,” he said.

Authorities won’t say whether they think the Green River Killer is responsible for any deaths beyond 1984. But the arrest last week of Gary Ridgway in connection with four Green River deaths has prompted investigators in San Diego and Vancouver, British Columbia, to pore over files on scores of slain women for possible links to the suburban Seattle truck painter.

Urquhart said his department expects to receive more money this week to cover the costs of investigation, including processing evidence taken from Ridgway’s current home and three previous homes in suburban Seattle.

He declined to name the source of the funds but said the department had scheduled a Friday news conference on the money with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.).

Ridgway was to be charged today, King County prosecutor’s spokesman Dan Donohoe said. Ridgway, 52, was arrested Friday in the deaths of four women whose bodies were found in 1982 and 1983 in or near the Green River in Kent.

Detectives said DNA and other evidence linked Ridgway to the four victims, and court documents from 1987 say at least three other women on the list of dead or missing were last seen with him.

Investigators are seeking links between Ridgway and the dozens of other Green River victims whose skeletal remains were found in and around greater Seattle and Portland, Ore.

In San Diego, where 44 prostitutes and other women were slain from 1985 to 1988, investigators were cracking old case files and beginning to look for possible links to Ridgway, Police Capt. Ron Newman said.

The San Diego County sheriff’s office would probably try to locate a DNA sample to be tested for a match with Ridgway, Sheriff’s Lt. Jerry Lewis said.