Polarity

Summary

Stolen Voices of Dole Valley

Episode: Polarity

Date: December 2, 2025
Podcast Host: Carolyn Osorio (for Lemonada Media / Pie in the Sky Media / KSL Podcasts)
Main Theme:
Episode “Polarity” unspools two main narratives: the controversial, tense final hunt and arrest of serial killer Gary Ridgway (the Green River Killer), through the voices of law enforcement and survivors, and a deeply personal, parallel exploration of how society’s dismissal and shaming of vulnerable girls and women casts long, often invisible shadows—demonstrated through host Carolyn Osorio’s own family trauma and her encounter with a predatory commune as a child. The episode binds historic investigation with intimate memoir, probing societal polarity—how victims are devalued, demonized, or erased.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Final Pursuit: Tailing and Arresting Gary Ridgway

• DNA Breakthrough and Cautious Tactics

  • In 2001, decades-old DNA evidence finally links Ridgway to several Green River victims ([00:00]–[04:47]).
  • Investigators face procedural obstacles: most victims were found as skeletons, limiting biological evidence; instead, they hope to tie Ridgway to physical trophies or mementos.
  • Surveillance is problematic: Ridgway’s early hours and erratic driving prevent seamless tailing ([03:41] John Urquhart: “Very difficult to surveil him... That’s not how it’s done...”).
  • The team is terrified Ridgway might catch on and destroy evidence.

• Crucial Undercover Encounter

  • On November 16, 2001, undercover officer Jeannie Walford, working on a John patrol sting, unwittingly arrests Ridgway for solicitation—without knowing he’s the task force’s primary Green River suspect ([07:41]–[11:51]).
  • Jeannie’s vivid account of the sting reveals how normal, even friendly, Ridgway seemed ([11:16] Jeannie Walford: “He was very relaxed about the whole thing. And...seemingly the most normal guy of the group. That’s the thing that was absolutely frightening once I learned later who he really was.”).
  • Ridgway’s cryptic comment upon arrest—“You can contact the Green River Task Force. They know me real well.” ([11:51])—chills in retrospect, as the GRK task force was largely dormant and secret.

• Aftermath and Realization

  • Jeannie is pulled in two weeks later—only then told her “John” was the serial killer the region had feared for decades ([13:13]).
  • She recalls removing latex gloves from his pocket and reflecting: “Had I been an actual working girl on the Strip, would I have come home that day? I don’t know” ([15:29]).
  • The law enforcement consensus: had the decoy not been a cop, she likely would have been another victim ([16:25] John Urquhart: “We think he probably would have killed her if he could have gotten her into that car…”).

• Accelerated Action

  • The task force, realizing Ridgway is still hunting, moves up the timeline for arrest from weeks to days ([17:37]).

2. The Arrest and the Aftermath

• Impact on Those Close to Ridgway

  • Detectives notify his wife Judith while others arrest Ridgway at work; her disbelief and confusion are evident ([24:00]–[36:45]).
  • Judith denies knowing of any past arrests or connections to prostitution, struggles with the reality, and insists, “He’s been the best. I love him.” ([36:20]).

• Public Messaging and Law Enforcement Strategy

  • John Urquhart (PIO) takes a hard line: don’t announce “we caught the Green River Killer” until all evidence is in ([36:57]–[39:43]).
  • The sense of momentousness—people remember “where they were”—parallels national traumas (Mount St. Helens, 9/11).

• Building the Legal Case

  • The DNA evidence mounts; further, specialized paint found on victims’ clothing is matched back to Kenworth, Ridgway’s workplace—a pivotal break ([41:46]–[44:37]).
  • The scale: 1 million pages of documentation; county spends millions on prosecution and defense.

• Death Penalty Plea Deal

  • The only way to close more cases and find more victims’ bodies: offer Ridgway a deal to avoid the death penalty if he discloses his crimes ([44:37]–[46:22]).
  • All families agree to the deal for answers/closure rather than execution ([45:16–46:11]).
  • Prosecutor Norm Maling: “When I see the face of justice in this case, it is those young women I see. They deserve to have the truth of their fates known to the world…” ([46:41]).

3. Societal Polarity: Valued and Devalued Victims

• Victims as “Bad Girls”

  • Reflecting on media coverage/attitudes, host/speakers articulate how society labels certain victims as “bad,” disposable ([48:36]–[50:05]).
  • Dr. Deborah Boyer: “That’s how society excuses this. They’re bad, they’re spoiled... You can do whatever you want to an object…” ([49:34]).

• Host Carolyn’s Childhood Trauma

  • Deeply personal memoir threads are woven in, mirroring patterns of devaluation and shaming.
  • As a child, Carolyn, her mother, and sister move to Santa Barbara in the late 1970s, join a commune (“Polarity”), seeking healing amid social isolation and disability ([55:03]–[57:21]).
  • Carolyn is attacked and sexually assaulted at age ~8 by an unknown man in the commune. The trauma, intense shame, and victim-blaming from commune leaders (“you drew this to you with your negative sexual energy”) echo how society treats marginalized victims ([61:43]–[66:01]).
  • The assault is buried in family silence, but resurfaces as Carolyn investigates the Green River murders, recognizing trauma’s impact and systemic dismissal.

• The Continuing Quest for Justice

  • Carolyn attempts, decades later, to locate her own police case files—only to find it may not have been investigated or filed ([69:16]–[71:43]).
  • Discusses the loneliness and difficulty of seeking answers as a survivor with no task force or public attention ([69:46] Jeannie Walford: “You’re a task force of one, right?”).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Ridgway’s Undercover Arrest and Chilling Nonchalance:

  • “He was very relaxed about the whole thing…seemingly the most normal guy of the group. That’s the thing that was absolutely frightening once I learned later who he really was.”
    — Jeannie Walford ([11:16])
  • “You can contact the Green River Task Force. They know me real well.”
    — Gary Ridgway, upon arrest ([11:51])

• Survival and the “What Ifs”

  • “Had I been an actual working girl on the Strip, would I have come home that day? I don’t know.”
    — Jeannie Walford ([15:29])

• On Societal Dismissal of Victims:

  • “That is right. That’s how society excuses this. They’re bad, they’re spoiled.…You can do whatever you want to an object. You can rape them, you can kill them. Nobody is really going to pay very much attention to that.”
    — Dr. Deborah Boyer ([49:34])
  • “The average citizen…didn’t see those little girls…they weren’t visible…really, the community didn’t want to see them.”
    — Jeannie Walford ([47:34])

• Personal Memoir and Familial Shame:

  • “My mom would later tell me the elders said I was sexually assaulted because she had a lot of negative sexual energy. And that negative sexual energy was transferred to me. It was our shame to own.”
    — Carolyn Osorio ([65:05])

• The Price of Burying Trauma:

  • “The blame, the shame. I tried to leave that shame in the shadows…It had left me flying blind for decades. Was it someone from the commune? Were there other victims? Were the commune patriarchs trying to hush up a larger conspiracy?”
    — Carolyn Osorio ([71:39])

• Juxtaposition of Closure and Unsolved Pain:

  • “You’re a task force of one, right?...It’s you trying to solve a crime that you seem to be the only one who wants the answers to.”
    — Podcast team, reflecting on Carolyn’s quest ([69:46])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• (00:00–07:41): DNA breaking the case, surveillance challenges, police strategies, and an unexpected solicitation arrest leading to Ridgway.
• (07:41–15:29): Undercover cop Jeannie Walford’s sting account—unknowingly encountering the Green River Killer.
• (24:00–36:45): The interview with Judith (Ridgway’s wife) as the truth is unveiled; emotional and impactful.
• (36:57–41:04): Law enforcement’s public messaging dilemma and the community’s sense of closure.
• (41:46–46:41): Evidence mounting, plea deals considered, prosecutorial statements about justice for victims and their families.
• (46:41–50:44): Societal treatment of the murdered girls, demonization of sex workers, feminist commentary.
• (55:03–71:43): Carolyn’s personal story—childhood assault in a commune, family fallout, systems of blame and shame, and a solitary, frustrating search for justice.

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Flow, Language, and Tone

The episode deftly weaves institutional and personal narratives, moving nimbly from gripping cold-case investigation to intimate, often raw memoir. Law enforcement voices are procedural but colored with awe and fear at Ridgway’s unpredictability and societal indifference. Carolyn’s storytelling is brave, vulnerable, and analytical—seeking not just facts, but deeper social understanding. Discussions of trauma and victim-shaming are forthright, challenging listeners to confront the uncomfortable reality that society often “polices the worth” of victims based on circumstance, occupation, or perceived morality. The result is sobering but resolute—insistent that erasing girls’ voices is a violence all its own.

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Conclusion

“Polarity” is a landmark episode that goes beyond the cold details of a notorious serial investigation to interrogate how women and girls—both in the crosshairs of killers and the maelstrom of society’s disregard—are silenced, blamed, and left to navigate trauma alone. By paralleling the Green River case with her own survival, Osorio calls for a reckoning: not just with the crimes themselves, but the deep-rooted societal polarity that determines whose voices are heard—and whose are “stolen.”

Transcript

[Carolyn Osorio]

This message is sponsored by Greenlight. So I have five kids and as they get older I can tell you that parts of parenting get easier. Like it's really fun discussing their interest now that they've stretched beyond their favorite dinosaurs. They can grab their own snacks and they might even clean up after themselves on a good day. But I've figured out a way to improve those odds with Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app made for families pay. Parents can send money to their kids and keep an eye on kids spending and saving while kids and teens build money, confidence and lifelong financial literacy skills. That sounds fabulous and well intentioned, but in the trenches. As a parent, what I love most about the Greenlight app is that it includes a chores feature which guarantees I get some help around the house because I remember only too well. My parents tried teaching me the value of hard work, but the lesson only really stuck. Let's face it, when I got paid to do the work and as I mentioned having five kids, I only wish I would have started using Greenlight sooner because Greenlight makes it easy and convenient for parents to raise financially smart kids and for families to navigate life together. Maybe that's why millions of parents trust and kids love learning about money on Greenlight, the number one family finance and safety app. Don't wait to teach your kids real world money skills. Start your risk free Greenlight trial today@greenlight greenlight.com stolen voices that's greenlight.com stolen voices to get started greenlight.com stolenvoices. This series contains adult language and descriptions of graphic violence throughout. Listener discretion is advised 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 eight, Polarity. In September of 2001, Detective Tom Jensen had been at home working in his yard when he got that historic call from the crime lab. Nearly two decades after Wendy Cofield, Deborah Bonner, Marsha Chapman, Cynthia Hines and Opal Mills were discovered in the Green river, the DNA from the truck painter, Gary Ridgeway matched seminal fluid on three of the victims. Gary Ridgeway was physically connected to the case and the Green river task Force was was resurrected. But remember, that was on a need to know basis. Few knew because those investigators had learned the hard way what it was to be patient. That DNA was a physical link to a few of the victims, but it was far from a slam dunk. Hadn't they learned to take nothing for granted when it came to catching a killer who had eluded them for nearly two decades. They believed that Gary Ridgway was the Green River Killer, but they knew they had to get those ducks in a row before they made their move to arrest him on murder charges. They needed time, time to get more samples from the case to the lab to connect Ridgeway to the other murders. So they put a surveillance detail together to follow him, hoping he would get sloppy and lead them to some of the trophies they believe he'd be unable to stop himself from keeping.

[John Urquhart]

You know, we knew it was him because we had the. The DNA hit and we're waiting for more DNA. So we didn't want to go just on one case, wanted to build it up to three or four before we actually dropped the hammer on him. But we also wanted to know what he was doing. Was he out there still soliciting prostitutes? Problem was, he lived in Auburn, and he'd go to work very early in the morning at Kenworth, and he lived down a very long road from his house out to the main drag. Very difficult to surveil him, very difficult to follow him. You see him on. You see those when they follow on TV and they're a couple of cars back. Well, that's not how it's done, and certainly not how it's done when it's dark out at five or six o' clock in the morning. He'd make us in a heartbeat. And the last thing we wanted him to do was us to figure out that he was onto him. Because there was a school of thought. And Dave Reichert to this day believes that Gary Ridgway had souvenirs, souvenirs from his killings, whether there was earrings, whether, or clothing or whatever it was. So their fear was, if he knows we're onto him, he'll get rid of all that stuff. And we need to tie him to other crimes.

[Carolyn Osorio]

They were testing more of those 10,000 pieces of evidence, but this was a huge issue in the case. DNA technology had finally caught up. But a larger problem still existed. Despite their meticulous collection at so many locations, there just wasn't a lot of biological evidence left at the crime scenes because most of the victims that were recovered were skeletal, which meant without biological material, like seminal fluid, it would be difficult to connect Gary Ridgeway to his victims. Trophies were the hard physical evidence that could connect him to the case. Retired King County Sheriff John Urquhart was the public information officer at the time. And he says they were shocked when they realized which. What Gary Ridgeway was up to. In 2001.

[John Urquhart]

So they're trying to follow him. It's not working very well. They try to follow him home. And they would follow him home. And every now and again, they'd follow him during the. In the morning hours. And on more than one occasion, he'd drive from his house in Auburn to Pacific Highway South, Drive up Pacific highway south and go down to Kenworth in Renton. That's not the most direct route. It got something you do. So, you know, we're thinking, jesus, he is still on the prowl. More than one occasion, he would drive down a freeway on ramp and stop over the side for 10 or 15 or 20 seconds and then continue on. There's only one reason to do that. You're looking to see if you're being tailed. So that made us kind of interested. So we're going along. And we had an arrest date. And I can't remember what the day was. I think it was sometime in November, if I remember correctly. And one of the detectives, Sue Peters, drove past Ridgeway's house, old house, mother's house in the city of seatac, macminan Heights. She saw a sold sign on it, and she didn't even know it had been for sale. So that kind of got her interested. So she starts working the computer. And for whatever reason, she ran what we called seeking, which was all kinds of information about people, booking information, and. And she ran up his name, which we hadn't done before for a long time. And, oh, my God, he'd been arrested for soliciting, for solicitation on a john patrol that we didn't know about, we had never heard about, because the task force that we had then was so tightly sequestered, basically, I would, for all practical purposes, wouldn't even admit it existed. And certainly no one in the sheriff's office without a need to know, really knew what was going on. Nobody knew about the DNA hit. Certainly nobody knew we were going after Ridgeway except this very small, select group of people. And to find out that he is out there actively looking for prostitutes. We were gobsmacked by that. Absolutely gobsmacked.

[Carolyn Osorio]

According to the police report, on November 16, 2001, Ridgway waved money at the decoy through the open window of his Ford Ranger pickup truck from across the street for the very first time. That undercover decoy will share her story with us over 20 years later. Jeannie Walford, who is now a King county detective with the sheriff's office, says that bitterly cold November day in 2001 is one she will never forget because unbeknownst to her, the man she would come to arrest for soliciting prostitution on the SEATAC strip was the Green River Killer.

[Jeannie Walford]

And I remember this day keeping in mind that at the time that we did this John patrol, the Green River Killer was somebody I'd grown up in this area and somebody that you read about in the paper. He was the boogeyman of our time. But at the time in 2001, I didn't realize the Green river task force had been reformed. I had no idea they had anything going on with Green river at that time. So, you know, that day when we were running the John Patrol, nobody knew the name Gary Ridgeway was anything special at that time.

[Carolyn Osorio]

When Jeannie stepped out that day as an undercover officer pretending to be a prostituted person, she had four years under her belt as a patrol officer, and she'd been tapped for a special assignment. This was about the third time that she'd worked as a decoy for the vice squad on a john patrol.

[Jeannie Walford]

So this particular day, I remember just wearing pretty much street clothes, jeans. In fact, I bought a coat at Goodwill. It was a, you know, true 80s style, stonewashed Jean jacket. I still have the thing because it's kind of my souvenir from this day. It was more believable, I guess. It didn't. Nothing fancy. I'm not shopping at Nordstrom. I'm getting stuff from Goodwill. Because the bottom line is these girls live a hard life, and it's going to reflect in every part of them. Usually within five minutes of stepping out, we had at least one or two people driving up and approaching us. It didn't take long.

[Carolyn Osorio]

One of these johns made it crystal clear what he was after.

[Jeannie Walford]

I remember looking across the street and this red pickup truck, it pulled off to the shoulder. So on the other side of the street from me, across those four lanes, and I see this driver roll down his window, and he had cash in his hands, and he was waving cash at me. And I thought, wow, that was pretty obvious. I'd never had anybody do that before. And as soon as that happened, he suddenly sped away. So in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, that was a little odd. And not a minute or two later, I see the same truck gone down the street and turned around somewhere. And now he's pulling into the parking lot at Motel 6. Parks kind of near me, but not right next to me. And he gets out of his truck. This man was by himself. And he goes back to the tailgate of his truck and Pulls the tailgate down. But the strangest thing was, is he wasn't making eye contact with me, and he wasn't saying anything to me or indicating anything.

[Carolyn Osorio]

The man waited for Jeannie to walk over. Jeannie asked him if he wanted a date, that she had a motel room. He said he wanted to date, but not there because he spotted an undercover officer nearby. But that didn't mean he wasn't interested in buying sex.

[Jeannie Walford]

He said, well, how about you meet me down at the bank of America, which was like a block or two away and out of view of that chaser car, I may add, and that we would do a car date. I remember reading him his Miranda rights. You know, you had the right to remain silent. But he was very relaxed about the whole thing. And in fact, of all the Johns we had that day, he was seemingly the most normal guy of the group. That's the thing that was absolutely frightening once I learned later who he really was.

[Carolyn Osorio]

That man was Gary Ridgeway. And during that arrest, one sort of odd thing stood out. Just one. It was really just a kind of shake your head thing. But later, it would chill the arresting officers to the bone. When Ridgway was arrested for soliciting, and given the opportunity to make his one phone call, he responded with, you can contact the Green River Task Force. They know me real well. In retrospect, that officer thought the comment was odd, but it didn't ring any alarm bells. Remember, from their point of view, that day that he'd been arrested? The task force had been dismantled over a decade before. Very few knew of its existence. Or that Gary Ridgway's DNA had come through connecting him to multiple victims in the GRK investigation. And after that, John Patrol Genie went on to life as usual. But that all changed two weeks later when she was on her day off and received a very strange and crazy cryptic phone call from a colleague, Detective John Matson. He told her that she needed to come to the Regional justice center right away. When she met up with Detective Matson at the Regional justice center, she would describe him not as giddy per se, but electric. Something big was happening, and Jeannie had somehow become a part of that.

[Jeannie Walford]

I remember he opens the door to their bullpen area of offices, and I see the poster of the Green River Girls. Like, you know, picture after picture from all the Green River Killer killings from the 80s. And I. I kind of. It starts to sink in on me what this is about. The room is just energized. People were excited.

[Carolyn Osorio]

In an interview room, Detective Matson laid down the mugshot of Gary Ridgeway. The photo was from his solicitation arrest from way back in 1982. She recognized him right away. Detective Matson asked her to detail everything related to her encounter with this John that she just arrested two weeks before. He told her that he believed this man was the grk. The first thing that ran through her mind was the latex gloves that she had fished out of his pocket.

[Jeannie Walford]

You know, when they brought out his photo, I realized, oh, my. He had latex gloves in his pocket too. I don't know what that means, but there you go. When they got me on tape, that wasn't in my actual written report because at the time it didn't seem significant.

[Carolyn Osorio]

After Jeannie's interview with Detective Madsen, she was brought into the fold under the strictest of confidence.

[Jeannie Walford]

This is the first time I've told this story publicly. After this was told to me at that night, I was really kind of scared and a little in awe. Once I kind of was interviewed at that time, Sheriff Reichert showed up and a lot of important people started filing into the office. And they had a big roundtable meeting that I was sitting there at. And it was like, okay, the arrest is going to happen on Friday. And so we have a lot of work to do. Again, everybody is, just has my reaction. They're, they're amazed, surprised. They're excited because nobody realized he was active.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Still, Jeannie says over the years, she's lost a lot of sleep thinking about what could have happened that night if she hadn't been an undercover officer with a gun surreptitiously hidden on her body.

[Jeannie Walford]

I feel like, you know, had I been an actual working girl on the Strip, would I have come home that day? I don't know. The idea that if I was a real working girl on the Strip, that I would have gotten in a car with him and driven somewhere. It's frightening to think of now. Lots of, lots of what if scenarios went through my mind, of course. So I was scared. And that's, I think, you know, for those three days before he was arrested. You know, blinds down, doors locked, and gun close by. I was really nervous because the only name he had was mine. I mean, if he realized he was being tailed, my name was on the John report, the arrest report that had just happened to him. I was the person who was fresh in his mind then.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Public Information Officer John Urquhart says they absolutely believed that the GRK was looking for more than a so called car date with Jeannie. That Night.

[John Urquhart]

Then we read her case and not only had he waved money at her, but he tried to get her to go around the corner where his truck was parked. And the decoys there is. They have signals and there is no way they are ever going to get into a car with a customer or go around the corner or go out of the sight of all these people that are watching them because, you know, it's a very, very dangerous scenario. We think he probably would have killed her if he could have gotten her into that car, which wasn't going to happen. But had it been someone that wasn't a police officer, that certainly could have happened. So he's still out there. I mean, we were just. Our jaws were down to here over this. And I was at the meeting that they all. Riker was there and all the task force members. So I know about this firsthand. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? We got a week or 10 days, whatever it was, until we plan to make this arrest. And the consensus was, and everybody agreed, no, we'll give it two days, three at the most. He's got to get. We got to get him off the street. We've got to get him arrested. And so we did.

[Carolyn Osorio]

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.

[Jeannie Walford]

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[Carolyn Osorio]

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[Jeannie Walford]

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[Carolyn Osorio]

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[Jeannie Walford]

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[Carolyn Osorio]

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[Jeannie Walford]

You were, you were upset when we came to the door and, and you mentioned there had been something that just recently happened to Gary. Yes. Out on Pacific Highway. What do you know about that, Judy? He told me that he stopped and had to close the window on it, the door on his truck, the back one, and they came over and arrested him. Did he tell you what he was arrested for? Well, he didn't exactly, but the officer that called and talked me on the phone said that it was okay. What was your, what was your feeling about that or your reaction when the officer told you that? I said that can't be. I didn't sound like him. What did the officer actually tell you? Well, that some people's husbands go out and do things. Is that the wives that the wives don't know about. Did that upset you? Well, yes, I got a little shook, but I didn't. He wouldn't do anything like that. He's friendly. Did. He's a friendly person. So he probably looked at somebody and smiled. And you think the officer might have just arrested him because of that? He's always friendly. Even when you're walking by somebody, like, in the store or you're shopping and, you know, smile and say hello. Did you ask Gary what happened? I asked him if he was okay. He said he's okay. He said he didn't do anything. Did you pick him up from jail, or. No, I talked to him on the phone. Okay, so did he call you from jail? Yes. Okay. And did he tell you why he was arrested? Did he tell you it was for loitering? No, not exactly. I just asked him if he was okay. Okay. He said he was okay, and he didn't do anything. Would it. Would it surprise you if he was trying to date a girl on the highway? A prostitute? Yes, it would surprise me. Would it hurt you? It would hurt me. And, you know, wonder what. What did I do wrong? Or. Or what did he do wrong? Not necessarily you. Right.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Judith would tell detectives that she and Ridgway never discussed prostitution.

[Jeannie Walford]

Do you remember him ever before that search warrant incident and the police talking to you? Do you ever remember him telling you he'd been arrested earlier in his life, prior to that. Prior to meeting him? Well, did he ever say in the early 80s, prior to this search warrant in 87, that he'd been picked up and arrested for picking up prostitutes? No. So if I were to tell you today he's been arrested before, back in the 80s. Which 80s? May 1982. May 1982. Would you remember that incident? I didn't know him. Okay. So that's new information that you've never known. Is that correct? Mm. Has he ever said anything to you about prostitutes, like, you know, they're garbage, or he likes talking with them, or, you know, they're just ordinary people, or what's your feeling? What do you think he thinks? A prostitute or what has he told you he thinks of them? We've never talked to them that much. So it's never come up any of your conversations? No.

[Carolyn Osorio]

The interesting thing here is that detectives know that Gary Ridgeway is going to be arrested if he wasn't already arrested at that time, and they'd already been talking to her for over an hour. They're trying to get information they know they don't have Much time left on the clock before they will tell her why they are really there.

[Jeannie Walford]

Back in the 80s when the task force did a search warrant, there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that made the investigators back then think Gary could be responsible for Green river victims being killed. Are you familiar with Green River? Do you know how many women. Oh, I have. You followed that for the years? How many? And you know, it's sad. Do you have any information in your house about Green River? I mean, is there any books or readings or. Yes, I have kept it tucked away, you know, in the bottom of the drawer. Put away. Okay. Articles or magazines or. It's not Gary's choice. It was my choice. I just kind of kept them there and folded them up and stuffed them away. Excuse me. Okay, I'm going to shut the tape off real quick.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Did you catch the doorbell ringing in the background? Listen closely to this next clip because a bombshell is about to go off.

[Jeannie Walford]

There was a probably a one or two minute break. Is that correct? Yes. And it's 1642 hours. We're back on tape. Are you aware this is still being recorded? Yes. Where was I? Oh, okay. We were talking a little bit about Green River. If you can we continue? You don't have to answer that. Okay. She just had a brief phone call and she hung up on the person, told him to call back. Right. Okay, so can we continue here? We need you to shut that off real quick. Sweet can talk about this, please. Okay. Tina, my sister in law. Okay, that was Tina, your sister in law. Excuse me.

[John Urquhart]

Yeah.

[Jeannie Walford]

Okay. You know we're still being recorded. The tape's gone. Yes, yes. Back in basically 1982-84, there was quite a few females that were missing from Pacific highway and suspected of being killed. A lot of them were actually killed. And Gary was a focus to the task force back then and that's why the search warrant was at your residence. Okay. There's been a lot of technology that has come out. DNA. Do you understand what that is? Those are tests. Yes. Boy, that's annoying. Anyway, a lot of those victims that were found back then, when there's an autopsy. When there's an autopsy from the victims, samples are collected which are preserved. Okay, so a lot of those females. What is going on? I'm trying to get to that right now, but it's very annoying with the phone keep brain. Is it all right.

[John Urquhart]

It'S your choice.

[Jeannie Walford]

We'd like to. You want to explain to you. Hello? Are you ready? Okay. Phone rang again. Okay. We're back on tape. Okay. Don't I have a right to know what's going on? I'm going to get right to that point. Now, Gary was a suspect back then, and we sent recently a lot of samples from these women to the crime laboratory for DNA purposes. It turns out we have three cases now confirmed that Gary's DNA was left inside of them, meaning he had sex with them. His DNA was left on three of the prostitutes. So again, he is the focus of an investigation by Green River Task Force, who has just recently been activated up again. And now we have the recent incident that just occurred on Pacific highway on the 16th. And it was an undercover police decoy, and Gary was trying to. Trying to meet up with her again for sex for $30. Okay. And I know a lot of this is probably shocking to you, but we have these facts now before us, and that's what we need to talk about. He is, again, a suspect in those cases, and we know you're probably sitting here as an innocent part party, and we want to help you through this. Has he ever talked to you about harming any of these women? No. Is it feasible that he had sex with these women? I mean, do you believe that, or do you. No, I don't believe that. He's always been so. So gentle. And there might be another side to him that you don't know. After almost 18 years, a lot of this happened prior to you being married to him. Has he ever done any reading on the Green River Tillings? I mean, do you have a book here, actually. Mm. Well, you can sit here. You can just tell me about them. You don't have to get them for me. It's some of the articles and different things, and they're in an envelope. And where are those at? In the bottom drawer of. You're pointing to this desk. Okay. And who cut those out? Did Gary cut those out? I probably cut out maybe one or two, and he might have cut them out. Okay. How many articles? I don't know. It's in an envelope, and there was a book, but it's always been in the drawer. Where did the book come from? I don't know if it came from the store or the swap meet or someplace or. I. I don't know. Is that something you brought in the house or he brought in the house? He probably brought it in. Okay, so you didn't bring it in. He didn't read it. It just. We just put it in the drawer. Okay, but is that something he brought to your home? That book when it. When that was happening and going on, you know, we'd seen. We probably seen the book at the someplace and picked it up.

[John Urquhart]

I don't.

[Jeannie Walford]

I don't exactly remember. So it's. It's pretty serious and there's going to be a lot of media here. Do you want to go off tape for a second? Yes, please. Okay. She's going to use the restroom. And the time is 14:47 hours after.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Judith is told that her husband, Gary Ridgeway, has been arrested as a suspect in the Green River Killer investigation.

[Jeannie Walford]

When we followed him recently and back in 1987, when the original task force people followed him, he did a lot of U turns. I mean, drive down the highway. U turn, go back. Are you sure it was him? Positive it was him. We've. We've been following him recently and he's doing the same type of driving. Has he ever done U turns while you've been in the car? Like, constant. Like, go down Pacific highway, do a U turn, drive a little ways, do another U turn. We did it when we'd missed a yard sale or something. But what about just normal driving? When you rode down pack highway with Gary, does he do that while you're in the car? No. So that surprises you that we have observed that? Is that what you're saying? Yes. That's abnormal. Did you ever find condoms, you know, new condoms in the house? No. No. So it would surprise you if we said we did the warrant on the pickup and we found condoms, actually brand new ones, placed in different locations in this pickup. Up underneath the fenders in 1987. Under the fenders, inside the.

[John Urquhart]

Up inside the fender?

[Jeannie Walford]

Well, wedged in by the frame, still in the packages, like they were ready to be used, but hidden. You look surprised. What about now? Anything in there? I have no idea. The truck hasn't been searched yet. Is there any condoms around the house or. No. Has he ever used condoms with you? No.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Before the interview is over, Judith is asked if she will testify against Gary Ridgeway.

[Jeannie Walford]

I know you care a lot about him and you didn't know him in the early 80s. If this ever went to trial, how would you feel about testifying to what you told us? I'm saying what I've said.

[John Urquhart]

Yeah.

[Jeannie Walford]

I mean, the man that you know, the man that you know, the man that I know is wonderful. So would you mind testifying to that in court? The things you know about Gary? I would tell him everything that's good about him. He's been the best. I love it. Okay. I'm gonna end this statement. Today's date is 11:30 of 2001. Time is 17:25 hours.

[Carolyn Osorio]

King County Sheriff Dave Reichert was about to announce the capture of the so called grk. But according to John Urquhart, who was the public information officer at the time, even that announcement was complicated.

[John Urquhart]

So now I knew what was going to be coming. And I can tell you there's no way they would have had to pry me out of there with a crowbar out of that job. I wanted to be there because I wanted to manage it. This was going to be a huge worldwide operation from a public information standpoint, and I wanted to make sure it was done right. To protect the sheriff's office, to protect Dave.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Well, what's interesting too is that it happened right September 11th. You know, up against that, do you remember how you felt about here, this historic case, it's solved and yet the most horrific thing on American soil, some may say happened.

[John Urquhart]

You know, I don't even remember. If you hadn't told me, I never would have put those two together.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Because you were right in the storm of it.

[John Urquhart]

Clearly it was horrible. You know, September 11th and all of that. And I had the same reaction everybody else did, but I'd never equated the two. It was doing what we were. What we were doing. The other thing that happened, I think at that same meeting is we're talking a little bit about the press aspect of it and how we're going to. They wanted to tout that we'd caught the Green River Killer. I said, no, absolutely not. And the detectives were pretty much pretty me upset with me for saying that. Why not? We've caught the Green River Killer. No, I says, you caught someone who killed the first three or four victims of that, but you have no probable cause to believe that he committed all the rest. And they're going, but he did. But he did. I says, I don't disagree. He probably did. But I don't think we should go out there touting that we caught the Green River Killer. After all this publicity over all these years, when we can't say definitively that he killed all of them or even some of them. All we know is he killed these. I think it was three at the time. We know that. So I don't think we should do that. And Sheriff Reichert says, no, I agree with Urquhart that we shouldn't do that.

[Carolyn Osorio]

So if you'll notice now that you're saying that. I remember that if you read the.

[John Urquhart]

Statement that he read, which I wrote 100% and he didn't change a word of it. It doesn't say that we caught the Green River Killer. I told him, if they ask you, is this the Green River Killer, don't go there, because we don't know yet. And the worst thing, that's one of the reasons I wanted to manage all this. The worst thing that could happen is a year or six months or whenever down the line and we find out somebody else killed 10 of them or 20 of them or 50 of them opens the door. We just didn't know. It just destroys our credibility. I says, the others will come as time goes on, but let's just do these first ones first and see what happens.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Yeah, I think that as you were saying, that I feel like the confusion with 9, 11. And then I remember because I lived in Renton. I mean, I remember where I was because it just felt full circle, like, oh, my gosh, the Kenworth Plant is literally right down the street.

[John Urquhart]

Exactly.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Sheriff Dave Reichert.

[Jeannie Walford]

I still meet people today who say, I know exactly where I was when you were on tv and you said, we caught the Gring of a killer, which I didn't really say, but everybody knew because we only had them on four. And then a couple, three or four weeks later, we ended up with three more charges on paint evidence. But that shows to me that, you know, the impact was sort of like, now there'll be some people not old enough to remember this, but in 1980, I think. Right. Mount St. Helens erupted.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Yes, yes.

[Jeannie Walford]

Right.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I know where I was.

[Jeannie Walford]

There you go. And it's that same. It had that same sort of an impact on people. When we made the announcement that he had been arrested, that that killer had been taken off the street. People who watched that, who heard that, who were here, remember exactly where they were when that announcement was made. And. And that just shows you the power of, you know, that that case held over the community for so long.

[Carolyn Osorio]

On November 30, 2001, investigators showed up at the Kenworth plant 14 years after that search warrant had been executed in 1987. But this time, Gary Ridgway wasn't given a ride to Mommy and Daddy's house. This time, his legs were spread apart and he was frisked, handcuffed, read his Miranda rights, and taken away to the King County Regional justice center, just a few miles away from Peck Bridge. There it was explained to him that his DNA, taken from that gauze chew matched material collected from Carol Christiansen, Marsha Chapman, Cynthia Hines and opal mills.

[Jeannie Walford]

The DNA got even better after that. Dr. Hemmick did this brilliant thing. She had basically just a partial profile on Opal Mills. At some point in time, the lab.

[John Urquhart]

Had mounted one of our pubic hairs on a slide.

[Jeannie Walford]

She took that slide, and she put it in some kind of wash and.

[John Urquhart]

Did something with it.

[Jeannie Walford]

And she found one sperm, and she made a positive match to Opal Mills. Now we had two positive matches. And then another scientist then linked Ridgeway to a third victim, Carol Christiansen.

[John Urquhart]

And so now we had three positive matches based on DNA.

[Jeannie Walford]

And then there was the linkage from Opal Mills, Marsha Chapman, to Cynthia Hines, who was found in the same little cluster. So that's how we ended up with our first five charges.

[Carolyn Osorio]

The murder of Deborah Bonner was also added to those charges. Officials believe they had finally collared the grk. But the daunting reality of bringing a case of this magnitude to trial began to sink in. There was an estimated 1 million pages of documentation related to the investigation. All of those pages would need to be turned over as discovery to Ridgeway's lawyers. And a trial would cost the county millions. Not just to prosecute, but the county was also on the hook for millions more to pay for Ridgeway's defense. After Ridgway was arrested, his family had hired Tony Savage as his lead attorney. Not long after, his attorney claimed that Ridgeway was indigent. A month after Ridgeway's arrest, a King county judge approved additional attorneys, two defense investigators, two paralegals, and money for the defense to do its own DNA testing. $300,000 was approved for DNA testing and 290,000 for a defense forensic pathologist and a computer tech to help with all that evidence. For the next two years, the county continued to build its case, which included an appeal from Sheriff Reichert to elected officials to allocate them more resources for the expensive DNA testing that could possibly link Ridgeway to other cases. And all the while, Gary Ridgeway sat in his cell, feigning innocence. He pled not guilty to the murder charges. A turning point in the case came in March 2003. Paint globules sent to a private laboratory found tiny spheres of sprayed paint on the clothing of Wendy Cofield and Deborah Estes. This paint was identical to the highly specialized brand used at the Kenworth trucking plant. It was a game changer. Then PIO John Urquhart explains how the King county prosecutor, Norm Mailing, and Sheriff Dave Reichert reconsidered their position.

[John Urquhart]

Dave says, you know, to Norm, we've got A lot of other victims out there that we haven't identified. We don't know how many of these he's good for. We don't know where their bodies are. Norm says, dave, I'm going to stop you right there. Going to stop you right there. I am not going to plea bargain the death penalty, period. And Dave says, that's the only way we're going to solve these cases. You know, we need to be able to question him. We need to be able to. Says Dave, don't even ask me. It's not going to happen. Well, of course it did happen after they got the paint transfer and Tony Savage saw, Yikes, this guy's going to get executed. And he went to Norm Mehling.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Is this the defense attorney?

[John Urquhart]

Defense attorney, one of the two or three that he had. But the main defense attorney, been around forever, great reputation, and said he will spill his guts. He will tell the detectives everything he knows if you take the death penalty off the table. Norm went back to Dave, said, okay. Dave says one condition. All of the victims families have to agree to it. And they went to almost, he says everyone, but virtually every family member that he could. This is what the your options are. We can either go for the death penalty with Ridgway, who's in jail, of course, or we can not, and he will. Hopefully we can find the remains of your victim or at least find out what happens. And they, every single one of them, agreed. So that's how Ridgway got out of facing the death penalty.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Making a deal with the devil to get the truth would be controversial. Martha Linehan from OPS said, crushingly, the victims of the Green River Killer can't tell us what happened to them.

[Jeannie Walford]

Yeah, they're children. They were children. So for us, it was very important for us to bring the focus and to amplify, just to give voice to the girls and women who could not speak for themselves because they're dead.

[Carolyn Osorio]

That weighty decision had fallen on the shoulders of the King county prosecutor, Norm Maling, who would later explain that the plea was not for the killer, but a path toward healing for the families and the community. He would later say, when I see the face of justice in this case, it is those young women I see. They deserve to have the truth of their fates known to the world. I see each family impacted by these crimes. They deserve to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones. And the families who have endured decades not knowing the whereabouts of their daughters. They deserve to have a proper burial. Finally, the face of justice reflects our whole community. We have all suffered this terrible trauma known as the Green River Murders. We deserve to know the truth.

[Jeannie Walford]

The average citizen driving to and from work or to the shopping center, to the store and back home again didn't see those little girls. Although there were hundreds of them out there, they weren't visible to the community because, you know, part of it was they lived in an underworld, didn't want to be seen. But the other part is when they were seen, really, the community didn't want to see them. They were there, but they wanted to pretend like they weren't there.

[Carolyn Osorio]

We'll be right back with the Shadow Girls after a word from our sponsors. In the 1980s, fear gripped the Connecticut.

[Jeannie Walford]

River Valley as a serial killer stalked and murdered women in New Hampshire and Vermont. But this isn't a story about him.

[Carolyn Osorio]

It's about the eight women whose lives were cut too short and one woman.

[Jeannie Walford]

Who survived to tell us the tale. I'm Jennifer Amell, and this is Dark Valley, an audio docu series of my personal investigation, investigation into a series of unsolved murders that have haunted this region for decades. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Carolyn Osorio]

And now we continue with the Shadow Girls. When we started this series, I shared how those two words, little girls, had so resonated with me. But really, it was the recognition that some girls are valued over others. That truth became the fuel for this series. How I remembered the victims of the Green river killer being portrayed, I didn't realize then, but it was an old wound that I had unwittingly been reacting to since I was a little girl. The origin became clearer and clearer as I began looking through the Green river victim files, read about their lives, what they'd been going through, through what they might have been running away from. And Dr. Deborah Boyer helped put this further into perspective. I mean, I will say my impression as a young person was they were bad girls. They were doing bad things. You didn't want to do that or that could happen to you.

[Jeannie Walford]

That is right. That's how society excuses this. They're bad, they're spoiled. It comes out of a lot of cultural references and religious references that are 10,000 years old. So you can do whatever you want. They become objectified, which is a term that we've learned through feminism, what that means for women in all walks of life to be objectified. This is the most extreme example. You can do whatever you want to an object. You can rape them, you can kill them. Nobody is really going to pay very much attention to that.

[Carolyn Osorio]

What does that do. When that message gets across.

[Jeannie Walford]

The issue of prostitution affects all women. Even though we believe now we have advanced and progressed in our thinking because of. Of the women's movement and the feminist movement, we have to understand this is a very short time period. And the good woman has really stood on the shoulders and on the backs of the. Of the women who have been. Who were raped and murdered and violated and prostituted, that somehow we had to be separated. We had to create this pool of bad women to serve as normal men. And that is still reflected in the laws.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I know now that I had received this messaging and internalized it as a young girl. All the verbal and nonverbal cues about the importance of being good, not bad. And if through no fault of your own, you found yourself on the bad side, don't talk about abuse. Otherwise you could be labeled as damaged goods. As a child, watching the news with my mom, deep down, I knew. Knew that what had happened to the victims of the Green river killer wasn't their fault. Like many shadow girls, I understood that bad things did happen to little girls. Whether they were good or bad had nothing to do with it. The GRK's horrendous and grisly murder spree played and replayed as breaking news night after night for so long, it had fueled my own nightmares. And in a different but similarly twisted way, that messaging had been level against me, my mom, and my sister two years before that summer of 1982, when Wendy Cofield's body had been found, that I had deserved what had happened to me when I was 8 years old. From my work on the GRK investigation, I realized that I had fused the faceless shadow man, the unknown stranger who had broken into our house, and attacked me while I slept with the grk, who was murdering women and girls seemingly without consequence. Back then, neither the GRK or my attacker had been caught. Unlike the victims of the grk, I survived the shadow man who attacked me. But the terror of him coming back to finish the job wasn't just a figment of my imagination.

[Jeannie Walford]

Before, I'd never locked the doors. So after that happened, I made sure I locked all the doors. And the person. Somebody came. I was frozen. I couldn't believe. I couldn't move. I was so scared because something must have happened. I just couldn't believe. I was so scared that I couldn't move for my daughter to find out who it was. What was it?

[Carolyn Osorio]

Was it a sound? Was somebody jiggling the door lock?

[Jeannie Walford]

No. Somebody was trying to get in.

[Carolyn Osorio]

When I was 8 years old, my mom, my sister and I drove from Seattle to Santa Barbara in a brown Plymouth Duster. Well, the Duster that had the. That literally had the holes in the.

[Jeannie Walford]

That's the one. We drove to California.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Yeah, yeah, the Duster.

[Jeannie Walford]

That's how desperate I was to drive without having the friggin car looked at, which I knew it probably wouldn't pass anything. I just wanted to get out of there.

[Carolyn Osorio]

You mean out of Washington?

[Jeannie Walford]

Yeah, I wanted to get my. My thought was I always felt like I got looked over because of my muscular dystrophy, which at the time they.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Didn'T even know what it was, right.

[Jeannie Walford]

And I felt like if I would only do this, I'd get more money. If I only did this, I would get more money. Polarity was an opportunity for me to. I thought I would be healed. I thought I would have more confidence, I thought I would have more, you know, work better physically, you know, with my hands. All these things I did thinking that would help me get better.

[Carolyn Osorio]

The excitement of a road trip fizzled in record time when Rust Bucket's radiator kept rising into the red zone. My mom's tension palpable. Come on, girl, you can do it, she would say while tapping the dashboard. But her voice betrayed the truth of her feelings. She wasn't convinced, but my mother was nothing if not determined. Every half hour or so we'd pull over, crossing our fingers that we'd make it to a gas station before she blew. What I remember most about that journey was my mom flagging down random guys to help her twist the radiator top off because her hands didn't have the strength. My sister, who was three years older and I slunk to the back seat, set up our briefcase, which was a backgammon set, and commenced playing round after round. Anything to occupy our minds from our mother's desperation. It all felt like an omen for our destination in Santa Barbara, a commune called Polarity. My mom's mysterious illness and her contentious divorce from our dad had brought us to this place. Didn't Dad's family think you were faking it with your disease?

[Jeannie Walford]

Oh, yeah, definitely. Everybody thought I was. Joe was the worst. At least he verbalized it. The worst.

[Carolyn Osorio]

What did he say, Carolyn?

[Jeannie Walford]

I don't even remember. It was just. Did you say you're faking it? And what I remember is the isolation, the loneliness.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I understand now that my mom was looking for an escape hatch. The fear of her prognosis that she'd be in a wheelchair by the time she was 30, my dad's gaslighting and her own family's rejection.

[Jeannie Walford]

When I told mom, when I came home and told mom I had, at that time they thought I had multiple sclerosis, she turned and walked away from me. We were living in the house on Gove Street. She was living across the street actually, and she, I think she was babysitting. But that was just another situation where she, you know, she just couldn't handle it because of her own, you know.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Why did she just turn away from you?

[Jeannie Walford]

I don't know.

[Carolyn Osorio]

After all the investigative work I had done as the co host of the Scene of the Crime podcast, which included research related to cult investigations, I saw our road trip to that Santa Barbara commune with fresh eyes. A different perspective. Because through my work talking with experts on cult mind control, I had learned that there is a process to occult leaders leader's ability to woo a potential devotee. First, they zero in on a vulnerable person and build them up, promising to help them solve all their problems. Then once they have the person under their control, they break them down, but promise them all the solutions to their problems. In this case, healing. For my mom, all it requires is doing exactly what the cult leader says to do. Looking back, I realize just how vulnerable we were to this commune. My mom was a woman with two young children without a safety net who had sold all of her possessions to go on this quest to find healing and acceptance. Collectively, we were like lambs to the slaughter. The way I can describe it now was that, I mean, it was the typical cult, weird cult situation stuff, right? Where they basically woo you in and build you up and everybody's kind of a part of that, you know, like, we're going to do this, you know, we're going to give you healing, we're going to give you strength.

[Jeannie Walford]

Their apparent purpose was all about healing, you know, changing your diet. So people were coming from all walks of life. A lot of it was, you know, healing from some kind of horrific disease like myself that wanted to be healed, right.

[Carolyn Osorio]

But they also had this energy, this energy stuff. And I remember when we first got to California, we were assigned as a single mom. We were assigned a surrogate father.

[Jeannie Walford]

Oh, right.

[Carolyn Osorio]

And I remember them trying to crack my neck. Do you remember that? And I wouldn't let them crack my neck. And Cheryl and I were like, crack your neck?

[Jeannie Walford]

Why?

[Carolyn Osorio]

I don't know.

[Jeannie Walford]

I don't remember that.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I don't remember why.

[Jeannie Walford]

Well, the energy is part of the healing process. You know, if you have like their Basis, polarity is the basis of the healing is if you have like, say if you have stiff joints or you have pain in certain areas of your body, kind of like acupuncture. If you press on those meridians, you have energy points and they're called meridians. And if you press on those certain meridians where the pain is, you press it until the pain goes away.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I know, but Cheryl and I weren't afflicted with the same energy problems that you were.

[Jeannie Walford]

Knock on. Right.

[Carolyn Osorio]

So the fact that they were trying to. This surrogate father was trying, I feel like, was trying to establish dominance and wanted to crack our necks like some kind of like.

[Jeannie Walford]

That's a good point. That could be, yeah.

[Carolyn Osorio]

So it was just weird from the beginning. We had no choice but to make the best of it. As we settled into one of the bungalows on the property, I remember the kitchen was in the middle and then.

[Jeannie Walford]

Your bedroom was in the front. I slept in the front. I think it was probably more like a living room bedroom type. I mean, these are all small beach bungalows, you know, from when people would come down to Santa Barbara and, you know, vacation. But it was a whole complex of bungalows.

[Carolyn Osorio]

There are so many unanswered questions about what happened that night. But one thing is clear. My mom is absolutely convinced that the perpetrator was a member of the commune.

[Jeannie Walford]

I am convinced that you were being. It was somebody within polarity and somebody had been watching you. They knew what door to go in. They knew that I would be in another room that night.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I was wearing a flannel nightgown with little pink flowers. I had a special blanket that I couldn't sleep without. And my stuffed pink panther, who fit perfectly tucked under my arm. I had both of those things. As my 11 year old sister turned out the light and we went to bed. I remember feeling a stabbing pain between my legs. It woke me up. And yet I didn't believe I was awake. I felt like I was in a nightmare. I have the sense that I kept thinking I needed to wake up. I had no frame of reference for the physical pain that I was feeling in the dark in my bed that night. No, I said. I remember saying stop. I tried to push whatever was causing the pain away. And that's when I felt a hand. The more I tried to push it away in the darkness, the harder it clenched down, jabbing, churning, ripping my insides. It wasn't stopping. It was getting worse. Fear finally loosened my lungs. I screamed a guttural sound. I didn't even recognize as my own. I pushed to get away and the thing latched on, started pulling me towards recorded in the dark. I just kept screaming and kicking, trying to free myself from the shadow man. Then he was gone. Intense brightness illuminated the room, momentarily blinding me. Then I saw bright red blood on my sheets, on my legs, on my pushed up nightgown. My underwear were gone. What had just happened to me? There were large wet footprints on the carpet. And I have a vague memory of a police officer gun on his hip. To this day I don't know if that was real or just wishful thinking. My dad was a police officer back home in Washington. My last memory of that horrible night was being wheeled on a gurney toward the double doors of an emergency room. Someone putting a mask over my mouth, telling me I was going to taste strawberries. 10, 9, 8, 7. Lights out. I woke up in a hospital room. A doctor telling me that they had put 10 stitches down there, that I was lucky, they were invisible stitches that would magically disappear. I would be good as new as a healer. I'm sure he didn't mean any harm by this language. But that was the precursor to the total burial of what had happened to me. After that came the blame.

[Jeannie Walford]

What I remember is I was just mortified and I was scared the next night.

[Carolyn Osorio]

But hold on, mom, go to that night. I know it's painful, but go to that night.

[Jeannie Walford]

Well, no, I blocked it out. I don't remember.

[Carolyn Osorio]

But I think you can remember. I know it's there. You must have heard me screaming because you came and turned on the light and I remember you turning on the light and there was blood on the sheets. And I remember I was wearing like Little House on the Prairie like type nightgown because that's what Cheryl and I loved to wear back then. And I just had no idea what had happened. And then I remember being somehow taken to the emergency room. I don't know if it was in an ambulance or what. And then I remember being strolled on a gurney and they're saying it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. You know, you're just going to go to sleep. And then literally they were like 10, nine, and then I was asleep and then I woke up and I remember.

[Jeannie Walford]

Kind of talking to people about it.

[Carolyn Osorio]

About what had happened and then having that feeling that coupled with the polarities, you having some kind of weird toxic sexual energy that had.

[Jeannie Walford]

Oh, they completely blamed me.

[Carolyn Osorio]

But let's talk about how that went down. So you don't remember at this point, you don't remember what, anything that happened that night?

[Jeannie Walford]

No, I remember. What I remember is the next day, or I think it was the next day, you know, they had a meeting and we were outside and they were blaming me. They being the hierarchy of polarity.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Let me guess. All men.

[Jeannie Walford]

No, they were a lot of. Well, you're right. It was the men that were. I think that they were. Which was totally crazy. But they said I had so much sexual energy. I drew this to you.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Did you believe that at the time? I hope not. You know, I mean, that's obviously why you can't remember what happened, because they dished it out on you.

[Jeannie Walford]

Right. And I was just another blaming thing where I was being blamed for something that, you know, kind of like how your dad was, you know, blaming me for all kinds of stuff.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Well, didn't they say. I don't want to get off topic. So let's stay on this topic, because I feel like we're almost to the end of it. I know it's painful, but, you know, it's. It's kind of a really important piece, especially if we can't.

[Jeannie Walford]

Well, I'm sorry. I just. I have blocked it out. I just remember them blaming me, you know, for all. And I felt so bad for my daughter.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Soon after the attack, polarity leaders kicked us out of the commune. My mom would later tell me the elders said I was sexually assaulted because she had a lot of negative sexual energy. And that negative sexual energy was transferred to me. It was our shame to own.

[Jeannie Walford]

It was my fault. And I drew, you know, all this sexual energy.

[Carolyn Osorio]

And what did you say to that? Did you just sit there crying or. Like, what?

[Jeannie Walford]

Did you. No, I just. Well, I think I was stunned that they would, you know, I mean, I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't drinking. I wasn't partying. I wasn't, you know, I was trying to heal myself. I was doing colonics all the time.

[Carolyn Osorio]

What's that?

[Jeannie Walford]

Cleansing of your intestines. Oh, okay. You know, eating good food, trying to be, you know, make a better life for us. You know, I dragged us all down here and I was trying to heal my body because I wanted to be. Always wanted to be a better person, better so I could earn more money, you know, because I was always broke.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I vaguely remember speaking with the detective about what had happened, but the overall experience as a small child was that this was somehow my fault, that I deserved what had happened to me because we were living an alternative lifestyle because my mom had given them all her money and worldly possessions to join the commune, which included selling our family home back in Washington. We were on the streets and a little part of my sister died inside. When my dad said I had a one time offer to come live with him, Just me. My mom awaited my reply, her green eyes barely visible beneath a blur of tears. I knew choosing to take that one way ticket would be the last brick on her back before being tossed overboard into the sea. I would never leave my mother or my sister. The reactions of the adults to the news of the the assault were painful. Whispery teachers and administrators at school looking at me with pity, teetering towards something new. It was like I was dirty. What had happened at the hands of someone else had somehow made me a bad girl. My response was to bury it. If no one knew that it happened, it didn't happen. I told my mother and my sister to never speak of it again, referring to the incident only as when that happened to me. And we collectively buried it.

[Jeannie Walford]

And it's so traumatic for both of.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Us in different ways that we can't even remember or pinpoint exactly when it happened. I mean, I feel like I was 8 or 9, which would have been 1979.

[Jeannie Walford]

I don't think you were that old.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I mean, we're trying to find the date and we just can't. My attacker was never caught. The fact that he tried to come back has haunted me throughout my childhood.

[Jeannie Walford]

You know, I wonder if that person, he didn't finish his deed. So he came back the next day, next evening.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Talk about what happened the next night.

[Jeannie Walford]

Well, before, I'd never locked the doors. So after that happened, I made sure I locked all the doors. And the person, somebody came. I was frozen. I couldn't believe. I couldn't move. I was so scared because something must have happened. I just couldn't believe. I was so scared that I couldn't move. For my daughter to find out who it was. What was it?

[Carolyn Osorio]

Was it a sound? Was somebody jiggling the door lock?

[Jeannie Walford]

No, somebody was trying to get in.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Oh my gosh.

[Jeannie Walford]

And I was too scared to move. Literally. I mean, I still remember. I just couldn't believe. I couldn't move, you know, to find out who did this to my daughter. But I was so scared.

[Carolyn Osorio]

And what happened? They went away.

[Jeannie Walford]

They went away and they never came back. Never came back.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I mean, that is truly frightening. And maybe I heard that too. And that's why I've never. The person always coming back. And that this person has never been found. And then when I saw, you know, all these girls being pulled from these green spaces in the lake.

[Jeannie Walford]

I mean, you remember?

[Carolyn Osorio]

It was in every newsroom, and you loved watching the news.

[Jeannie Walford]

I know.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I can't remember a specific time. Oh, that's when I saw it. I just feel like it was always, always there. Always there in the news. I mean, do you remember that?

[Jeannie Walford]

Yeah, of course.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I had no idea that researching the GRK investigation would lead me to investigate my own case. One of the most challenging things I've ever done in my life was submitting a public disclosure request to the Santa Barbara Police Department. As a reporter, I've done this hundreds of times, but this was the first time I had done this with my own case. This feeling of vulnerability was something I spoke to the producer of this show, Brandon Morgan.

[Jeannie Walford]

You're a task force of one, right?

[John Urquhart]

When it comes to the Carolina Sorio.

[Jeannie Walford]

Case, Not like the thousands that they had in the green and yellow jackets up in Seattle.

[John Urquhart]

You know, it's.

[Jeannie Walford]

It's you trying to solve a crime that you seem to be the only one who wants the answers to. So it's Sisyphean at best. Yeah.

[Carolyn Osorio]

When I was calling to get the information, and it was like. It sucked.

[Jeannie Walford]

Yeah.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Because I couldn't. I was approaching it like a reporter, and there's so much safety there for me. And then to be treated like a victim, it was like, ooh.

[John Urquhart]

Oof. Wow.

[Jeannie Walford]

Wow. Yeah.

[Carolyn Osorio]

It hasn't gotten easier for me to say that I was sexually assaulted. I am damn lucky to have survived that attack. And I know that it could have been so much worse. He had come back. And deep down, I always knew that he had. I had heard the jiggling of that door. I had buried that, too. That was the reason I was carrying around that knife. The GRK news reports confirmed what I already had. A taste of. The ultimate price a girl could pay for a man's lust and violence. Had my attacker come to finish what he had started? To drag me out into the night? I lived in fear that he would come back. And I'd been carrying that butcher knife like a yoke around my neck for decades. The blame, the shame. I tried to leave that shame in the shadows. And the burial of it came at a high price. I see now how damaging burying that attack had become without resolution. It had left me flying blind for decades. Was it someone from the commune? Were there other victims? Were the Commune patriarchs trying to hush up a larger conspiracy?

[Jeannie Walford]

What?

[Carolyn Osorio]

Was it even possible to find justice after so many years?

[Jeannie Walford]

Hi. This Is Veronica.

[Carolyn Osorio]

Hey Veronica, this is Carolyn Osorio and I reached out to you a couple of months ago regarding looking for some old records related to an incident that happened to me when I was a child.

[Jeannie Walford]

Yes, I think. Oh, now I recall. I did email you back to your email and I let you know that we couldn't find anything with the information that you provided.

[Carolyn Osorio]

I'm not done researching but what will make me really sad and mad is if a case was never filed. Next time on the Shadow Girls we go back to the Green river where the GRK finally tells investigators what he did to the so called river victims. And it would turn out more twisted and grotesque than anything we could have imagined after Cofield and Bonner was hung up underneath.

[Jeannie Walford]

I don't think she was being fought for a long time until somebody saw her and there'd be no evidence.

[John Urquhart]

And when they started putting rocks on.

[Jeannie Walford]

Them and that kept people from finding my women. So by the time you started putting rocks on them, had your point of view, was your point of view shifting to the not wanting to be found. Not wanting to be found in more of my position. So you were then feeling more possessive about them and wanting to be able to visit them. And so did you go back and visit the women in the river?

[John Urquhart]

Well, like for instance, I pulled one in the river. Bonner.

[Jeannie Walford]

I didn't go back because I knew.

[John Urquhart]

I was going to kill another one.

[Jeannie Walford]

In the next days. You knew already you were going to kill one the next day?

[John Urquhart]

Yeah. And that was going to be where.

[Jeannie Walford]

My rest of my women were going.

[John Urquhart]

To be dumped off.

[Jeannie Walford]

Knew at that point you were going to go out the next day?

[John Urquhart]

I was always going out the next day no matter what.

[Jeannie Walford]

But no, I was going to plan put another woman in that same area.

[John Urquhart]

So by that point what you're saying.

[Jeannie Walford]

To me was in the matter of a few months you were had gone from going over the line from thinking about killing to actually killing. And then you went from killing the first time and having a little bit and the second time and having a little bit of conflict inside of yourself about whether you wanted to get found or not to going over the next line of knowing that you were going to kill the very next day.

[John Urquhart]

Is that correct?

[Jeannie Walford]

What was your feeling, what were your feelings like at that time at the time you went over the line to knowing that you were going to be killing the next day. What does it feel like to have those kind of feelings describe?

[John Urquhart]

They were feelings of possession for the bodies.

[Jeannie Walford]

They're my women and I'm in control.

[John Urquhart]

Of their being found and I was getting more twisted. Like with Cofield, I didn't go back.

[Jeannie Walford]

And have sex with her with the three in a cluster there. I went back and had sex with two of them. Didn't get a chance to have sex with the third one.

[Carolyn Osorio]

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's 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.