Casting A Net at Green River

By Cristina Garcia/Seattle

When Waylon Nickell and Donald Seek of King County, Wash., went scavenging for aluminum cans in a ravine south of Seattle late last month, they found much & more than they had bargained for. Nestled amid the weeds and debris near the bottom of the slope was a human skull. The next day police uncovered the remains of Cindy Anne Smith, a 17-year-old King County woman who had been missing for more than three years. The grisly discovery brought to 37 the number of young women murdered in a series of slayings that has baffled police since July 15, 1982, when the first body was pulled from the county's Green River. After five years, the killer is still the object of one of the biggest and most frustrating manhunts in the country.

All the murders are believed to be the work of a single suspect, quickly dubbed the "Green River Killer," who appears to have ended his monstrous spree in March 1984. Over 20 months, the killer may have murdered as many as 46 victims, since nine local women remain missing and are presumed dead by his hand. By contrast, John Wayne Gacy, convicted in 1980 of more murders than anyone else in U.S. history, was found guilty of killing 33 boys and young men.

Even though the Green River killings seem to have ended, police are unsure whether the murderer is dead, has moved elsewhere or is just lying low. Indeed, despite the use of the most modern techniques, thwarted investigators know very little about this killer except that his primary targets are young prostitutes and that his lethal attacks may involve a repertory of strangulation, bludgeoning and sexual assault.

The hunt for the Green River Killer has pulled together police resources from throughout the Seattle area, but to little avail. A task force that currently includes 19 detectives, two FBI agents and a computer expert has already spent some $10 million and investigated 1,300 suspects. Yet an additional 6,000 names await full checking, a process that can take anywhere from an hour to six months.

One factor that has stymied investigators is the transient status of most of the victims. Many had few family ties; many were last seen alive hustling on the Sea-Tac strip, a three-mile stretch near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Cindy Anne Smith, for example, was, according to authorities, a runaway at 13 who sometimes supported herself as a topless dancer. Another victim, 15-year-old Carrie Ann Rois, was a streetwalker for three months before she disappeared in May 1983.

Some of the victims were never reported missing, and others were dead and buried for more than two years before police uncovered their remains. The result is less normal police work than what Lieut. Dan Nolan, a police task- force commander, calls forensic archaeology. Investigators have made computerized topographical maps of sites where a body was discovered, combed each area with tweezers, and sifted through tons of dirt for bits of evidence as tiny as a fingernail. The police have even scanned bird nests on the off chance that they might contain a telltale stray fiber.

In 1984 the task force spent $200,000 on a VAX minicomputer and then spent more than two years pumping more than a million bits of information into it. A specially designed software program helps detectives wade through crushing amounts of data on suspects, police tip sheets and details of similar homicides elsewhere in the country. Says Crime Analysis Supervisor Chuck Winters: "The computer is the heart of the investigation. But it's old- fashioned police work that will solve this case."

So far, it hasn't. After more than three unsuccessful years of searching for the killer, morale on the Green River task force has occasionally withered. The force has shrunk from 55 staffers last fall, its highest number, to the current complement, as personnel have been redeployed to join the fight against Seattle's growing drug problems.

Surprisingly, many Seattle residents seem unperturbed that the killer is still at large. "People hear the word prostitute and don't perceive it as their problem," says Task Force Detective David Walker. Pierce Brooks, an investigative consultant who worked on the California Onion Field killing of the 1960s and the Atlanta child murders of 1979 to 1981, believes the Green River slayer's name is already in the task force's files. Says Brooks: "The only way you're going to dig the name out is to hang on and keep going."

But another prospect concerns investigators: that the Green River Killer may emerge from his hibernation and provide fresh clues in the form of fresh victims.