Dave Reichert (2:53)

My father bought the house on the Green River, I think when I was about 4 or 5. So that's 74. This was well before I started school. Then his father, he bought it from his father. Weren't you guys farmers? No, everyone else was farmers. I just did the hunting and fishing between the farms grandfather had like a high end auto body down there. Shop fixed up fancy cars. And then my dad worked construction. I worked on all the farms in the valley. The neighbors to the north of us were one of the originally founders of Pike Place Market and then worked on the horse track for o'. Connells.

Carolyn Osorio (3:32)

Farmers in the valley understood that the Green river matched the blue collar ethos of the area. She was a workhorse, quietly providing nourishment to the fertile lands that produced tremendous yields that were sold to local markets and along the roadside too. I remember picking strawberries for like a minute.

Dave Reichert (3:51)

I shoveled a lot of shit. That was a, that was the big money maker. I got three bucks a horse stall and if I don't know, in 8th, 7th, 8th grade, maybe even 6th grade I think because doing 15 stalls a day. So that was rolling in the cash because it's right on, it's right on the Green River. And then we have duck pond in the backyard with the other farms. And so as a kid I'd go duck hunting in the backyard and then, you know, probably about time I got to college. The city limits. People call the cops on you if you're duck hunting.

Carolyn Osorio (4:24)

The area has changed so much. I think.

Dave Reichert (4:28)

Yes, now there's nothing left. All the old barns have been burnt down by all the arsonists that were there when I was a kid. I think when I was in high school there were four or five barns burnt down in the valley. Remember watching a couple. I think it's the largest industrial park in the world now it's just warehouses for miles. That's all there is, is warehouses now. I mean the grade school I went to is paved over in a warehouse.

Carolyn Osorio (4:54)

But back in the 1980s when we were growing up, there was just this incredible wild beauty in the midst of this ever growing urban sprawl.

Dave Reichert (5:05)

I mean it just used to be all farmland. Everyone there used to work Pike Place Market. Grow everything down there. I do nothing different as a kid. Put seeds in the ground. They grow these huge plants and now I live on the hillside, middle of nowhere. They can't grow anything without gallons of manure. So yeah, very fertile ground. Just yeah, beautiful old school farmland.

Carolyn Osorio (5:28)

In the early 80s, the city of Kent was experiencing major growing pains, as were the neighboring cities of Renton, Auburn and Tukwila, which made up South King County. There was an outcropping of cheaply made apartments, low income housing, strip malls and convenience stores which sprouted around the Kent Valley to support the growth of working class families like my Own. The white collar enclaves of Bellevue and Mercer island were on the east side, and the plush neighborhoods of Seattle were up north. You can catch this hyper local class distinction on YouTube videos from the popular show Almost Live from back in the 80s. Here's a sketch riffing at the city of Renton, where I live now, which has been home to the Boeing plant since World War II. The framework for the skit is the Broadway hit.

Dave Reichert (6:18)

Brent, we work at bowling.

Carolyn Osorio (6:24)

It's South King County's magic city.

Dave Reichert (6:26)

Got a bowling alley, we got a Kmart, we got a card room or two. We got Camaros, we got strip malls.

Carolyn Osorio (6:34)

And taverns up the kazoo. Now, growing up in Kent, I'll admit there were a lot of Camaros. Guys sporting mullets and Aquanet hairspray was a staple. I can definitely attest to that. Even so, my mom says as a single parent, she moved to Kent because she hoped to make a better life for my sister and I.

Dave Reichert (6:53)

Town Kent was just really kind of adorable. You know, they had a feed store that was fun that, you know, we got ducks there.

Carolyn Osorio (7:02)

Oh, we got those ducks at the feed store.

Dave Reichert (7:04)

I think so, yeah. It was just kind of a cute, cutesy little town. And then they had, you know, all these walkways that. That you could walk. And Jeff and I used to walk. You know how he liked to walk.

Carolyn Osorio (7:20)

I forgot about that.

Dave Reichert (7:22)

Oh, yeah. And we used to walk all over the place. You know what was great is because, you know, the place we lived in was kind of cute and it was affordable for me at that time.

Carolyn Osorio (7:34)

And the Green river was just a magical, wonderful part of my childhood memories.

Dave Reichert (7:40)

Jogging that Green river over by Fragor. It was isolated and I would get moments of, like, I'd look behind me and. But I had to finish. I was doing 6.2 miles at that time. So I think I did it like three days a week. I don't think I really thought about the Green river or I had my headphones in at that time because I crank up that music. It was so beautiful.

Carolyn Osorio (8:15)

From Pie in the Sky Media. I'm Carolyn Osorio and this is the Shadow Girls. An in depth investigation into the victims of the Green River Killer. You're listening to episode two, Day of the Dead. It was around one in the afternoon of August 12th. Less than a half a mile away from Peck Bridge. Frank Lenard was puffing three quick inhales as he fired up his cigar. Frank was taking a break from his work at the slaughterhouse, where his job included mopping the fat scraps and blood from the cutting room floor sluicing that slop into a septic tank. The Slaughterhouse PD&J meets was located next to the Green river on Fraga Road. That afternoon, Frank puffed his stogie, enjoying the river view when something caught his eye. So he sharpened his focus at the river below. Hmm, he wondered, was it foam? Nah. The river was just too skinny to churn up froth this time of year. Frank brightened, clenching his cigar between his teeth as he started moseying toward the river. This could turn out to be his lucky day. He knew that the Green river was wilder upstream, nearer the Cascade Mountains, which meant sometimes an animal carcass would float down the river. This might be an opportunity. Frank knew how to skin an animal hide for money. Reading this detail from a police report almost 40 years on, I was sort of struck by how odd that sounded. Even though I was from the area, it was yet another reminder of just how rural and wild the area truly was back then. And it wasn't just with nature, but with people too. Rich, a lifelong resident of the area, and my friend Jason's dad says it wasn't uncommon living next to the Green river to have run ins with odd people who were drawn to the area.

Dave Reichert (10:24)

I remember my dogs. I'd run into his traps, and I'd always be aware that he could be around at night, but he never was.

Carolyn Osorio (10:32)

What was each this trapper, what was he trapping?

Dave Reichert (10:36)

He would trap raccoon, beaver, and then even house cats. The skins were of value then. And how the world has changed.

Carolyn Osorio (10:47)

Right?

Dave Reichert (10:47)

Yeah. So this guy is in the neighborhood.

Carolyn Osorio (10:50)

Was going along setting traps.

Dave Reichert (10:53)

He had a. He had an old pickup, painted it green, and he put Game department on it. Now, it's not against the law to have Game Department. It's against the law to have Washington Department of Game. People were coming up with Mrs. Cats and they were trying to. But they couldn't prove it was him.

Carolyn Osorio (11:15)

You know, who would want a cat skin?

Dave Reichert (11:19)

I mean, who.

Carolyn Osorio (11:20)

I mean.

Dave Reichert (11:21)

Yeah, I know it. I know it. I'm surprised he didn't get in trouble. There was no law against him.

Carolyn Osorio (11:26)

Okay, so this was back in the. In the 80s then, right?

Dave Reichert (11:29)

Yeah, 70s. Late 70s.

Carolyn Osorio (11:32)

Wow. So he could have taking some cover with this. With this guy in the neighborhood killing animals under the.

Dave Reichert (11:41)

The trapper. Yeah.

Carolyn Osorio (11:42)

Moniker or whatever. And so, just like the curious teens on Peck Bridge three weeks earlier, Frank found himself tromping through that tall river grass, heading down that sloping bank toward the river. But unlike the teens, Frank was experienced that day. He knew exactly what he was looking at as he laid eyes on the body of a young woman in the river. And instead of an afternoon shaping up to be his lucky day, it would become a day he would never be able to erase from his mind. The woman was nude. She'd been dead for weeks, her decaying body hung up on a log, her backside up, arms swaying in the slow moving current. Frank was pacing at the top of the riverbank, still recovering. A plainclothes detective arrived at the scene from the sheriff's office. The river by the PD&J meets was just outside of the city limits of Kent, which meant the King County Sheriff's office would be handling the investigation. The next up detective called to the scene was Dave Reichert.

Dave Reichert (13:00)

I was happy walking by the sergeant's desk and he had picked up a phone from the communications center and they had told him that they found a body in the Green river near Kent. And as I was walking by, he hung up the phone. He says, reichert, there's a found body and you know, in the Green river, go out and handle that case. So that's, I just happen to be walking by. So that was my fortune or misfortune. If, however you want to look at.

Carolyn Osorio (13:28)

It four decades later, I would interview Dave Reichert, the first detective on that scene, who worked that case for decades as a detective and beyond.

Dave Reichert (13:39)

Hey, I'm Dave Reichert and I'm a retired King County Deputy detectives, SWAT commander, sheriff, retired congressman and now working for Gordon Thomas Honeywell firm out of Tacoma in Central America on DNA databases.

Carolyn Osorio (13:58)

But on that day, August 12th, he was a 31 year old major crimes detective, A former college quarterback who had considered going into ministry but felt called to public service.

Dave Reichert (14:11)

There is something about people who go into law enforcement that drives them to want to protect. I'm the oldest of seven kids. I ran away from home when I was a senior in high school. I grew up in a home with domestic violence, so I sort of had that connection to, you know, to the victims in that regard anyway. Feeling like, you know, I could be one of them. Never turned out to be one of them.

Carolyn Osorio (14:34)

Fortunately, Detective Reichert took careful but confident strides through the tall grass as he made his way to the body. As the lead detective, he tasked the on scene officers to comb the riverbank for clues. Any sign of the killer's entry, victim's clothing identification, murder weapon. Media flocked to the scene. Another body being discovered in the Green river in less than a month was beyond breaking news. Seattleites Were stunned. Eventually that on scene investigation was wrapped up, as was the case in the Wendy Cofield murder investigation. Detectives left the scene. Hindsight is 20 20. Some believe an opportunity was missed because undercover officers weren't staked out along Fraga Road that night. But at the time, finding two bodies less than a month apart and near each other appeared more more as an aberration, not evidence of a serial killer at the beginning of a spree.

Dave Reichert (15:40)

And serial killers didn't have people's imaginations. And without the public's imagination, the media doesn't have the imagination that it does.

Carolyn Osorio (15:48)

Today because of social media and just.

Dave Reichert (15:50)

You know, social media and the understanding of it and how prolific they are.

Carolyn Osorio (15:53)

And how many there are.

Dave Reichert (15:54)

And you know, we really didn't, the public, the media, the police didn't really even realize what a serial killer was. I'm not even sure we had a definition for it or if we had a definition. Not everybody agreed to what it was.

Carolyn Osorio (16:08)

When I say no stone was left unturned, who knew at the time that should have included boulders heavy enough to weigh down even more bodies. The autopsy of the second river victim revealed that she too had been strangled. The medical examiner was able to lift her fingerprints and she was quickly identified as Deborah Bonner. She had been arrested multiple times for prostitution. At the time, the Kent police department was still investigating the murder of Wendy Cofield. Even so, Detective Reichert wondered, were there murders connected? And what about a murder case he caught six months before? A tragic coincidence? Detective Reichert was the investigative lead on the murder of Leanne Wilcox, Wendy Cofield's cousin. Leanne went missing on January 21, 1982. Her body was found miles away from the Green River. But Leanne, Wendy, and now Deborah had all been strangled. Were they connected? That question would have to wait. Detective Reichert knew there was the more pressing matter still at hand. Notifying Debra's parents that their daughter would never be coming home.

Dave Reichert (17:27)

Debbie, she was a very sweet girl. She was well liked by everybody. One thing that she really liked to do was write poems. I miss my daughter, Deborah, and I love her more than anyone in the world. I mean, my God, she was only 23 years old.

Carolyn Osorio (17:49)

A heartbreak Deborah's mother would never recover from. How could anyone have predicted that this notification would be the first of many, many, many more to come?

Dave Reichert (18:00)

I've been to home after home after home telling parents that their daughter is dead, that we have the remains, or telling some parents that we found a body but we don't know who it is yet.

Carolyn Osorio (18:16)

The Shadow Girls will continue after a word from our sponsors. Well, hi everybody. It's Julia Louis Dreyfus from the Wiser Than Me podcast. And I'm not going to talk about food waste this time. I'm going to talk about food resources. All that uneaten food rotting in the landfill. It could be enriching our soil or feeding our chickens because it's still food. And the easiest and frankly, way coolest way to put all its nutrients to work is with the Mill Food recycler. It looks like an art house garbage can. You can just toss your scraps in it like a garbage can. But it is definitely not a garbage can. I mean, it's true. I'm pretty obsessed with this thing. I even invested in this thing. But I'm not alone. I any mill owner just might corner you at a party and rhapsodize about how it's completely odorless and it's fully automated and how you can keep filling it for weeks. But the clincher is that you can depend on it for years. Mill is a serious machine. Think about a dishwasher, not a toaster. It's built by hand in North America and it's engineered by the guy who did your iPhone. But you have to kind of live with mill to understand all the love. That's why they offer a risk free trial. Go to mill.com wiser for an exclusive offer. In the 1980s, fear gripped the Connecticut River Valley as a serial killer stalked and murdered women in New Hampshire and Vermont. But this isn't a story about him. It's about the eight women whose lives were cut too short and one woman who survived.

Dave Reichert (20:04)

Welcome to Tell Us the Tale.

Carolyn Osorio (20:05)

I'm Jennifer Amell and this is Dark Valley, an audio docu series of my personal investigation into a series of unsolved murders that have haunted this region for decades. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. And now back to the Shadow girls. On Sunday, August 15th, Bobby Ainsworth was rafting down the Green River. A relaxing pastime and a way to earn some cash along the way. Bobby was a kind of river picker, and summertime was ideal for trolling the shallows for collectibles. He even had a special rake that he used to hook items that had settled into the muck of the riverbed. Bobby had his routine. He would park his vehicle on Fragger Road, then he'd launch his raft onto the river, float downstream to the city of Tukwila, where he would meet up with his wife who was waiting for him on that Day the current had carried Bobby near PD&J Meats where just three days before, the body of Deborah Bonner had been found. He noticed a man near the river's edge staring at him. He got the impression that the stranger was looking for a fishing hole. Why else would he be there in the tall grass? Find anything yet? The man hollered. So Bobby maneuvered his raft to the shore on the opposite side of where the stranger was standing and lifted a treasure. The stranger nodded and pointed down river. I saw an engine barred under the water over there. Might be worth something with that tidbit. Bobby shoved off in the back of his mind, noting that the stranger was disappearing through the tall grass up the riverbank. Within seconds the river had carried Bobby towards something floating just beneath the surface. He wondered, was that the car engine? As he got closer, he wondered, was it a mannequin? As he closed the distance, he reached out to grab it with his hand, then recoiled. He saw the face of a young woman peering up at him. Her nose just below the surface. Her arms were outstretched on either side of her body as if floating on an invisible cross. As he took in her face with wide eyed fear, the first thought that entered into his mind, the one that would never leave. She looked so young. Scrambling for his rig, Bobby tried in vain to reach her. But the current had other ideas and pushed him into something else. Within seconds he was looking over the side in disbelief. Bobby's relaxing river ride had become a bumper car of death. It was the body of another young woman. Help. He cried. Help. More forcefully, grinding his oar into the riverbank, trying to move upstream. His only hope was that stranger. He got back to the riverbank where he'd seen the man, stumbled to the shore and cried for help, once again hoping the stranger was nearby and could hear him. But the only response to his cries for help was the sound of a truck engine taking off fast. And then silence. Bobby had no clue that stranger was the killer himself. It would take years to find out that this wouldn't be the first time the so called Green River Killer would be just barely get away. In shock, but with a purpose, Bobby scrambled up to Fragar Road. His heart racing, his stomach lurched. He needed to find help. Detective Dave Reichert was attending church service with his family that Sunday when he was called to that stretch of river by the slaughterhouse for the second time in three days, two more bodies had been found. This would be the first of many, many times that day's family would come second fiddle to an all Consuming investigation. Reichert was competitive as a skilled athlete. He brought that do or die drive to his cases and took them personally. Especially in his quest to find a killer that would elude him for the majority of his career. During a 19 year investigation. There were times when Reichert's passion to solve the case would ruffle some feathers.

Dave Reichert (24:26)

First of all, they know that I'm pretty intense. Kirk guy knew that I was dedicated to the, to the case. But, you know, sometimes voicing your opinion in a very strenuous way versus in a calm, polite and respectful way, which they normally knew me for. And you know, the little telltale signs of stress or calling, you know, people in the middle of the night saying, hey, have you thought about, have we thought about this? We should be doing that. It was a constant 24 hours, seven day a week. When I would go to family birthday parties and events. I would not be mentally or emotionally connected. I would be detached from the whole event. I mean, I'd be there physically, but I wouldn't be engaged or involved emotionally or mentally like a birthday party, a Christmas party. I was on vacation with some relatives and my wife and a couple of times, and I get a note, get a page, I call body found. I got on the airplane, I left, left the vacation, left my wife and everybody there and flew back here. I didn't want to miss anything.

Carolyn Osorio (25:43)

Detective Reichert observed the scene critically. The two bodies in the river were pinned down with 40 pound rocks, which meant their placement wasn't accidental. What did it all mean, Reichert wondered as he took in the image of the young woman fully submerged in the water, her face looking at him, her outstretched arm moving with the river's current. That image would haunt him throughout, throughout the investigation. It would motivate him because he believed she was waving to him, calling for his help. And he wondered, had these bodies been here on Thursday? The working theory was that both bodies had been submerged. But the killer had underestimated the river's current, which had been powerful enough to push one of the submerged bodies onto a sandbar. The killer had not wanted these bodies to be found because it would not have been an easy job in a moving body of water to pin a corpse to the river floor with heavy rocks. Which meant the killer had to be strong. Or did he have an accomplice? Crime scene photos were needed to capture the state and, and the position of the bodies before they could be recovered from the river. Detective Reichert was on the riverbank with the camera 30ft away from the victims. He began slowly walking backwards in the tall grass, his eye laser focused on the aperture as he moved back one more time, trying to get both bodies inside the frame when he almost lost his footing. But he caught himself as he nearly tripped. He looked down. It was another body. Another body. He shouted, crying out for help. The young girl on the riverbank was face down, nude except for a pair of pants tied around her neck. Just like Wendy Cofield. The Emmy arrived and confirmed Detective Rikers suspicions the riverbank victim had been murdered within the past few days. But ultimately only the killer could answer the question as to whether or not he'd been there on Thursday when Reichert and the others were investigating Deborah Bonner's homicide nearby. But if the same killer was responsible for all five murders, why had he taken the time to weigh down two of his latest victims with rocks? And why did he leave his third victim on the riverbank? The questions mounted and the horror would grow still more when it was revealed during autopsy that the killer had inserted rocks into the vaginas of the two river victims so deeply they had to be surgically removed. August 15, 1982, marked a turning point for the Green river in the city of Kent. In the following days and weeks, it became a convergence zone for media onlookers, psychics, citizen sleuths, and a new task force staffed with 25 police officers from multiple agencies. There were still so many unanswered questions, but the why here? Why the Green River? Why this place was becoming clearer. PD&J Meats was less than 10 minutes from the 3 mile strip of Pacific highway by the Sea Tac Airport where both Wendy Cofield and Deborah Bonner were rumored to have last been seen and believed to be prostituted people. And that particular spot at the Green river was so secluded it had a pullout where they believed the killer had parked, using the tall river grass to conceal his heinous crimes. At night it was so dark in that area, whether he was hiding in the tall grass or pinning down his victims in the river, he would be able to see any lights coming. Even before the summer of 1982, I always felt this sort of dark presence to the area that was hard to reconcile. Evil is way too strong a word. More ominous, it was the kind of place that was so isolated it made you look over your shoulder, especially if you were alone. During the day, a person could go miles without seeing a soul, and at night it was so pitch black it was hard to differentiate the road from the river. In fact, over the years, many cars had plunged into the river below. On particularly dark nights, I can still see my mom's hands, white, knuckling the steering wheel. High beams penetrating the blackness. The once friendly Fraga Road was now lonely and the little dots of light from the neighboring farms were like north stars guiding us home. Without those lights, that darkness would have just been too thick to bear. Especially after that summer and for decades to come. The million dollar question, would the killer return? If they did, this time they'd be watching. Retired King county sheriff John Urquhart describes being on a surveillance team.

Dave Reichert (31:25)

But my partner and I were put in a for several days in a vacant apartment house up on the hill overlooking the Green river, next to the former slaughterhouse where if some perpetrator was going to come back to the crime, which in those days, and it's probably still accurate today, oftentimes they would do that. Then it was our job to radio down to other detectives who were hiding in an unmarked car and they were to go out and get the license number of that car that was going along that road which wasn't very heavily traveled. So we did that for eight hours on more than one occasion. And it was kind of a derelict, not a very well used apartment complex.

Carolyn Osorio (32:15)

Undercover cops were equipped with high powered binoculars and they scanned Fragger Road and the Green river below for any suspicious activity, taking down the license plate numbers of any lingering vehicles. 24 7. These cops were out there waiting, watching, hoping, maybe even praying that the killer would come back, that they would have answers to all of their questions. But these prayers would ultimately go unanswered. That investigative watch would end prematurely with the sound of a news chopper overhead circling the Green river for a live shot for the 5 o' clock news. Top story, cops staking out the river, hoping the so called Green River Killer would return. This media invasion of the stakeout was something I discussed on a recent ride along with retired King county sergeant Steve Davis.

Dave Reichert (33:11)

Basically they reported on the news. Tom actually, you know, started quoting, they're on the surveillance, things like that. And they had helicopters up and he never came back to that area again. Because guess what? Bad guys watch the news too. By the way. I was on that surveillance. I was gonna get stuffed into a car with one of my partners.

Carolyn Osorio (33:30)

And what do you remember from that, from that experience? Like, can you remember setting it right?

Dave Reichert (33:36)

Basically you just sit there and you watch and you're waiting for someone to come in and they never did. And eventually they just canceled their surveillance. Where were you? Were you right by on the Green River? On the Green River.

Carolyn Osorio (33:45)

And you were just sitting in an unmarked car.

Dave Reichert (33:47)

Yep. Just sitting in the car, watching to see if anybody comes down.

Carolyn Osorio (33:52)

And do you remember what you were thinking at the time?

Dave Reichert (33:54)

Like you're on a surveillance. You're watching all the cars that are coming and going. You're watching people, you're looking around to see what's going on. Right. You're busy. You're bored out of your mind, too. Just because you sit there for hours, but you're busy, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, of course.

Carolyn Osorio (34:09)

Yeah. It just. I can't imagine the level of frustration that you guys must have felt because just.

Dave Reichert (34:15)

Well, the task force felt it, especially because they were getting killed every time they turn around.

Carolyn Osorio (34:19)

News reports revealing that surveillance was underway at the river was just the beginning of what would be described as a circus like atmosphere surrounding the investigation. The media's desire to get the story left investigators feeling bruised. Longtime Green river task force detective Tom Jensen.

Dave Reichert (34:40)

They ruined the chance, any chance of surveillance on the Green river by flying their helicopter over and pointing out the fact that we had the river flying on their surveillance. And so there was just, there was no trust. You couldn't trust what they would put out because like you say, you're, you want to be the first one to say something and so you're going to do that. It became kind of a, I don't know, adversarial relationship with, with, with the news media.

Carolyn Osorio (35:08)

As it would turn out, the killer had absolutely no intention of returning to the Green river, but not because he stopped killing or he was worried about law enforcement. The GRK knew he'd been sloppy. Bobby Ainsworth, that river picker, had seen him on his return trip back to the body that he'd left on the riverbank. In fact, the GRK had been back multiple times to take Polaroid pictures of the women in the river, have sex with their corpses, and to insert those rocks into their vaginas. Investigators would find out later that the placement of the rocks inside his victims was something he wanted to do for himself. It was something that he would share with investigators, especially Dave Reichert. It was something only they would know about. The GRK had been watching the news, too, and he'd seen Detective Reichert on the riverbank in one of the many news reports. He knew about the task force coming to find him. This excited him. Messing with the task force was another dark thrill. The JRK had returned that afternoon to have sex with the body of the teenage girl that he'd left on the riverbank. He had then planned to insert a rock into her vagina and then pin her body down in the river with rocks because he believed they were his possessions now and he could do anything he wanted to them. But watching the news, he had no intention of stopping his killing spree. He was just getting started. Next time he'd pick a better spot. We'll be right back with the Shadow Girls after a word from our sponsors. And now we continue with the Shadow Girls. Linkage blindness is a term in police work where detectives are unwilling to see patterns that point to the work of a serial killer. As the King County Sheriff's office scrambled to get together a cohesive task force to find the so called Green river killer, many in law enforcement still weren't convinced that the river victims were murdered by the same killer, Even though it had been determined that they had all been strangled. This wasn't the first time that a serial killer had terrified the greater Seattle area. Local boy Ted Bundy had begun his murder spree against mostly college co EDS in the area eight years earlier. The serial killer naysayers were like, look, Ted Bundy had a type. And if this was a serial killer, wouldn't they have a type too? Pointing out that Wendy and Deborah were, were white and the three women found on Aug. 15 were black. The three latest victims had yet to be identified. Another thread that connected the first two river victims, Wendy Cofield and Deborah Bonner, were both prostituted people and were last seen on Pacific highway south, which was highly publicized. So called linkage blindness hurt the investigation from the get go, but so did linking the victims to protect prostitution because it impacted the way that the victims were portrayed.

Dave Reichert (38:22)

Everybody knows Ted Bundy, but if you travel around, they'll ask about Ted Bundy. And then you say, well, I worked on a case called the Green river case. There'll be some people go, never heard of it. And then you say, well, it was 49, you know, young girls who worked in the. In human trafficking versus college students. So that's, that's sort of what I'm saying, that there is a, there's sort of a. I would say it's changed today, but there's sort of this part of society who wants to kind of ignore that seedy underground life that exists out there.

Carolyn Osorio (38:58)

Despite wall to wall news coverage, no one had come forward to help identify the three victims. Again, authorities reached out to the public for help. Duff Wilson was a crime reporter in those days.

Dave Reichert (39:11)

I was a young police reporter for the Seattle PI Right. I was just a couple years out of grad school. And I think it was my first beat at the PI So I was covering the police.

Carolyn Osorio (39:26)

Duff describes how it was a race in the newsrooms across the Pacific Northwest, all vying to be the first to identify the victims.

Dave Reichert (39:34)

I got these pictures, right? And then I go down to the airport strip and to Tacoma, the red light district, then at Tacoma to see if I could identify these people. I went to this one strip bar, went in the booth. You know, I don't know if you've ever been in one of those places where they raise the window and there's a stripper in a room. Like, I'm a reporter for the Seattle PI do you recognize this person? She's a murder victim and we're trying to identify who she is. And the woman behind the glass, as you could imagine, screams and runs the other way, and so do I.

Carolyn Osorio (40:16)

These were morgue pictures.

Dave Reichert (40:18)

And then, no, they were the first pictures that the police released. So you could maybe identify them if you knew them. But at that point, they were unidentified to us. The police were trying to identify them as well. They didn't identify right from the start.

Carolyn Osorio (40:34)

Duff says it was clear that the women he was trying to identify were extremely vulnerable. I find that now, you know, we know so much more about not exploiting people. And, you know, we have. It's a completely different paradigm than it was I feel, back then.

Dave Reichert (40:53)

There's hookers around now, like there were then on the street and in clubs and stuff, right? Or so I've heard and so I've seen in some cities, probably drug addicted then, as they are now. And it's very sad and awful, obviously. But I'm a cop reporter. I'm trying to identify these women who were probably sex workers, Some of them, I don't think all of them by any means, but some of them. What was that like? I haven't interviewed very many prostitutes in the course of my career, but this was a time that that's who I had to go to because they might know who these people were. I mean, I was a naive young guy. And another one, I don't think I asked her into my car. I think I just asked her at the bus stop. So I was like approaching women who might know other women in the CTAC strip. So that was weird, right? But I'm just a reporter doing my shoe leather work. That's what I did in a lot of the police stories I had at that time was knock on doors and try to be ahead of the police or with out there at the same time as the police doing canvassing. And I was doing canvassing.

Carolyn Osorio (42:15)

This is a good place to pause for a moment. In the 1980s, police prostituted women and young girls were commonly referred to as hookers, ladies of the night, prostitutes, working women, and many other derogatory names. In this podcast, you will hear those words at times, but it's important to know that we recognize how perpetuating language is a way to victim blame and shame while at the same time perpetuating a false and hurt, hurtful narrative. Noel Gomez from the Organization for Prostitution Survivors. We understand that words matter, and that's something important to us. But this is what they called it at the time. These are what these reports said at.

Dave Reichert (42:59)

The time, and it gives you a flavor for what the time was.

Carolyn Osorio (43:03)

It's a different generation now, but this is what was being said. So then I say sex worker. And when I talk about in other podcasts where that might be relevant, to say it like sex work or sex worker, but to me, that just seems like, yuck. I don't want to say that.

Dave Reichert (43:21)

It just assumes that all these girls or people would want to do this. Just say prostituted people. Okay, like, well, you said sexually exploited people. Or. Or, okay, so there's cc, which is commercially sexually exploited. Children, which is csac, and then there's cse, which is commercially sexually exploited, and that's for anybody. So there's CSAC and cse. You know, a lot of people don't know those terms. So a prostituted person, that is a prostituted person. That person that makes it. That doesn't put the blame on them. You know what I mean? It just says what it says. I mean, this person's being prostituted.

Carolyn Osorio (44:05)

In this race to find out who the latest victims were, news packages at the time featured images of the strip at night, seedy motels and scantily clad young women and teens flagging down cars from the street.

Dave Reichert (44:22)

It is a world of shadows, a world in which women are victims of the desperate, often hopeless circumstances of their lives. Women who are twice victimized because they scramble for survival in the places where a killer walks.

Carolyn Osorio (44:35)

These sounds are more likely the background music that was the reality for so many of the girls and young women out there who needed help, not judgment.

Dave Reichert (44:46)

And I started young, and I didn't get out of it until I was 34 years old. Nothing changes when you turn 18 but your age. If you don't get services, nothing changes. Like people think, oh, well, she's over 18. She should know better. No, she was trafficked as a young person or somebody, something happened to that girl, you know what I mean? The majority of these girls have been sexually molested as children. Like they already are set up for this crazy life, you know, and when a trafficker comes along and there's a lot of them and they're good, they're very convincing, it just, it happens all the time and it happens to vulnerable young people, you know, and there's a lot of them out there.

Carolyn Osorio (45:34)

Cultural anthropologist, Dr. Deborah Boyer. And do you think that the Green River Killer case changed perceptions in our region and that's a legacy that they can.

Dave Reichert (45:47)

Yes, I think, I think that it helped. It was so gross, it was so extreme that people had to pay attention. We shouldn't have to go that far. Even one case of a 14 year old in prostitution should be enough for us to wake up and say, what do we need to do to stop this? And we need to stop sex buying. We need to do whatever we can to increase the penalties against sex buyers.

Carolyn Osorio (46:13)

As an anthropologist in this region for four decades, what do you think the Green River Killer did to kind of society at large? Because it is kind of, you know, it doesn't happen everywhere, you know, to have the most prolific serial killer over to, you know, from the media. Do you have a thought on that?

Dave Reichert (46:34)

Well, I don't think that there's anything particularly special about Seattle or the Green River Killer. Prostitution is lethal. We can't even count the number of indigenous women in prostitution who have been killed. There's research going on around that now. Melissa Farley and the First Nations People of Canada published the Garden of Truth. There have been serial killings of prostituted women across this country for hundreds of years. It did make people open up as far as understanding what their lives were like. They were so young that they couldn't be held responsible for their own victimization. And I think that allowed us to move forward with services. And also this law finally, where minors are exempt from being prosecuted for prosecution. Their directed services, I think it did contribute to that.

Carolyn Osorio (47:42)

After eight long days of uncertainty and speculation, the latest three victims were identified. Reporters, desperate to advance the biggest true crime scoop since Ted Bundy began digging into the victims backgrounds.

Dave Reichert (47:57)

I don't think that I ever identified one before the police did, but that's what it was like in the first day or two trying to identify these women. And then not long after that, it was trying to find their families to talk to.

Carolyn Osorio (48:11)

And Duff remembers speaking with a lot of the families and the stories of the victims were Often similar.

Dave Reichert (48:17)

The family members that I talked to, which I think there were just a couple. It was like their sister or their mother was, you know, was a wonderful person that needed money and was working. So it was sad. That's what it was like.

Carolyn Osorio (48:36)

This pressure to get the story was often at odds with the investigation. Generally, it is believed that the first interview with potential witnesses are often the most reliable. If a potential witness speaks with reporters first, or if that witness hears something on the news that may or may not muddy their statement. This added another layer of uncertainty to the tips and interviews. Investigators were accumulating what was fact or a regurgitation of information that had inadvertently been given by a reporter or heard on the radio, read in print or watched on television. I can only imagine, just from my experience of being in the newsroom, how it was like, you need to get the story before somebody else gets the story. And I know in talking to detectives, it was really frustrating for like the sheriff's office because they were doing like undercover things at Green river. And then the helicopter was going over and then they were reporting on it and it was just like. It sounds like it was just. And this is the 80s before serial killers are even kind of in the parlance. What is your take on that?

Dave Reichert (49:45)

I was out there canvassing. I didn't have a helicopter, but I was at and those areas that I've said and talking to people. But that's what I did as a cop reporter. I went and knocked on doors in houses around crime scenes to see if people had seen anything. I did this on numerous cases, some of which are well known. And I was only a cop reporter for two years, but that's what you did as shoe leather at that time. People didn't have cell phones. You can't really find their phones. You went out there.

Carolyn Osorio (50:24)

This feeding frenzy of publicity would further strain the relationship between media and law enforcement.

Dave Reichert (50:30)

It did seem to me that they were very aggressive and they were very ticked off. They couldn't know everything that we were doing.

Carolyn Osorio (50:40)

Before Interstate 5 was constructed, Pacific highway south was the main artery that connected Seattle to Tacoma. Ten miles to the south of downtown Seattle was the SeaTac Strip. The strip, as it was called, was three miles of taverns, low rent motels, strip clubs, rental car companies, and convenience stores. Near Sea Tac airport, there were a network of side roads off of Pacific highway, which meant in no time at all, locals could access these side roads that would take you from a busy strip to extremely rural and heavily forested pockets. It became clear the commonality between all the victims was the strip and prostitution. The thinking of law enforcement was that whoever was killing these women and young girls was picking them up from Pacific highway south and bringing them down to the Green river on a side road. The public's response to the news that their community was under siege by some unknown killer now widely referred to in headlines as the Green River Killer sold a lot of newspapers at 10 years old. I didn't realize then how deeply I was taking it all in. Trying to process all the headline news about a shadow man called the Green River Killer who was on the loose killing women and teens and looking at all that through the lens of my own experience at the time. My mom was struggling to support my sister and I as a single parent. And I can see myself sitting on the carpet of our shabby low income duplex hearing the river victims being described as low income runaways, street girls, hookers, prostitutes who shouldn't have been out there, who chose to be out there. The live shots from the Green river news packages that featured the grittiness of the Strip and the family members grief on display like an open wound. I don't recall sharing my thoughts and feelings with anyone about my growing anxiety that a serial killer was murdering young girls by our house or my confusion about how these victims were being portrayed. Surely they didn't believe that these girls deserved to die and the victims themselves.

Dave Reichert (52:54)

May be helping their murderer avoid capture. Their lifestyle, their personalities, the people they associate with, are into illegal activities or on the fringe of illegal activities that is frustrated to some extent our attempt, if you will, to get information. If these victims were a middle class housewife, the suburban neighbor, if you will, it would be a wholly different type of case.

Carolyn Osorio (53:18)

I was starting to remember as I was investigating this case that it was around this time that, that I began carrying that knife around at night. But I didn't share this with anyone either. So many years later I was curious to hear how my friend Jason, who lived next door to the Green river felt about the murders during these tumultuous times.

Dave Reichert (53:39)

Remember watching all the news, I mean every night it was on the news and I'm like, holy shit, there's our house right in the middle of all this. There's, I mean it wasn't necessarily the neighborhood, but all the fields and, and farms around us were always on the news. Like wow. It wasn't just the local news, it was the national news. It was always, always in the news because there's a new body every couple months it seemed like, or a Couple weeks in some cases. So yeah, it was, it was really weird seeing that, you know, as a kid, you know, being in the, not necessarily being in the spotlight, being on the edge of the spotlight and you know, what, what's next or you know, because at first I don't believe they really understood if it was the working women that were being killed or who was his target audience. It really knew at first, yeah. And you know, that was, that was the scary part. You know, as, you know, it evolved. We understood it was the, the working women that were, that he was targeting, but at first it was a little more scary. But then as we understood his profile, you know, it wasn't as scary as much. And then I was also older and a male and so that didn't bother me as much. You know, the fear aspect as I got older went away because of who he was going after and who I was. But I'm sure if I was a female, my feelings and thoughts would be 100% different. Growing up right there.

Carolyn Osorio (55:03)

My feelings and thoughts were different from Jason's. As I was sitting in front of the TV soaking it all in. I was at a pivotal age for girls. According to a recent post on the Mighty Girls website. A recent study of 1300 girls found that starting at the age of eight, a girl's confidence plummets by 30%. And one of the things that increased girls anxiety was the expectation of being a good girl. Eight days later, after the bodies of the three women were found, they were identified as 31 year old Marsha Chapman, 17 year old Cynthia Hines and 16 year old Opal Mills. According to the PDFs under Marsha's name in that box, my source had shared with me her nickname was Tiny because of her small stature. But when it came to her three small children who were waiting for her to come home the night of her murder, she was fierce. A friend would later tell police that Marsha had been unequivocal when it came to relying on a pimp for protection, saying she would never give money to a man that was needed for her own children. Marsha lived with her 11 eight and three year old children at the Portavilla Apartments near the Strip. Just weeks before her murder, she'd been raped and beaten by a neighbor at her apartment complex. That neighbor wasn't charged and according to her file, when asked about raping Marsha, he said, as if put upon how do you rape a prostitute? On August 1, Marsha told her children she was going to make a quick trip to the grocery store. Her children waited for her to return that night. They would never see her alive again. Later, beat cops would describe Marsha as a novice at prostitution. The reporter Duff says going to interview victims families during this time was heart wrenching.

Dave Reichert (57:01)

They lived in a kind of a rundown motel complex a mile so from SeaTac. I think there's a South 188th street exit there, and they lived at a complex there. And I think I talked to a sister and there were some kids and, and things like this. So. So it was sad and awful.

Carolyn Osorio (57:23)

On August 11, Cynthia Hines, who was also known as Cookie, was last seen on Pacific highway at a convenience store on the strip. This was about a mile from the last place that Marsha Chapman had been seen. Cynthia's brother explained that her family didn't file a missing persons report because two weeks before her death death, she had come home, packed a bag, and left with a man in a red Cadillac thought to be her pimp. In 1982, street prostitution on the C tax strip had exploded. Hundreds of women and young girls were out, many of whom had run away from abusive homes. Noel Gomez, who helped start the organization for prostitution survivors, or ops, says she, she had been abandoned by her own family, which made her a perfect target for a pimp looking to exploit the.

Dave Reichert (58:14)

Most vulnerable, like so many other young people, was abandoned by my family at a very young age. And you know, those people end up in foster care or wherever, and those are the people that traffickers look for. So I was a perfect victim for a trafficker, right? I didn't have family that I could turn to. I didn't have. I was pretty much just living couch to couch, whatever, staying with people. I didn't have any, you know, idea what was going to happen with me. And I had a child, right? I was only. I got pregnant when I was 15, so I had my child when I was 16, but I didn't have a home. So he went and lived with his father's family, right? Well, traffickers are very, very good at what they do, and they specifically look for girls like me. So, you know, looking back, I remember when I met my trafficker for the first time. Some of the questions that he asked me, I looked, you know, didn't think about at the time. At the time, I thought he just cared. But now looking back, you know, first questions he said was, where's your family? What's your situation like? You know, he was feeling me out to see what I needed so that he could fill that void.

Carolyn Osorio (59:47)

On Wednesday, August 11, Opal Mills called her parents and left a message. Over the summer, she'd gotten a job painting apartments, and her brother had asked if he could help to make some extra money. Records retrieved by Detective Reichert revealed that that call was made from a payphone on Pacific highway at 12:55pm Opal had told her brother that there wasn't any more work, and that was the last time anyone heard from her again. In Opal's file, I read that she had dreams of being a veterinarian. And her mom would say she loved to write.

Dave Reichert (60:22)

Opal like to write stories. She was a real happy person and let it show because if Opal was for you, you really had a friend. Well, I've kept Opal's room pretty much like she did. Her dolls are still on her bed just like she kept them. You have to go down and you have to identify your child, and she's there with us. A big silent scream on her place. And you try to understand why anybody could do something like that.

Carolyn Osorio (60:54)

Next time on the Shadow Girls. Detectives would learn firsthand how prophetic Opal Mills Reverend would be when he preached at her funeral. Let what happened to Opal Charmaine Mills rest on the minds of other girls. Because what happened to Opal, Opal could happen to them. A seemingly faceless monster, ten steps ahead of law enforcement, preying on vulnerable teens and young women. The Shadow Girls is a Pie in the sky production in association with KSL Podcasts and Lemonada Media. Our executive producer is Brandon Morgan. Post production supervisor is Casey Wheland. Supervising sound editor is Victoria Chang. And edited by Joey Jordan. For Pie in the Sky Media, I'm Carolyn Osorio.