[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 23 (Thursday, March 3, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H975-H977]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H975]]
                           GREEN RIVER KILLER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Reichert) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. REICHERT. Mr. Speaker, I am a new Member of this body, and I am 
proud and humble to serve the 8th District of the State of Washington. 
I am also honored and privileged today to address this body.
  My first address is on a very serious note, but I think it is a 
necessary one for us to talk about because it affects and impacts the 
young women and children in our community. It is the future of our 
country.
  For 33 years I had the privilege of serving in law enforcement in 
King County which is the Seattle area of Washington State. And I served 
in a number of different capacities, but in one of those capacities I 
served as the lead investigator in the most notorious serial killer 
case in this Nation's history.
  Mr. Speaker, we had a monster who was stalking our young women and 
children in our community. These were young women and children who were 
lost; children who were afraid; who in some cases were driven from 
their homes by domestic violence, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, emotional 
and physical abuse. Some, though, were lured away from their homes by 
people who preyed on their weakness and their vulnerability. They were 
lured into an environment of street life where drugs and alcohol are 
rampant, where prostitution is rampant; and they were told they were 
going to live the life of luxury, fast money, fast cars, and freedom. 
Instead, their lives ended. They just ended. The promises for a better 
life by these predators were all lies.
  Our community was gripped by fear by this monster who literally 
grabbed our children by the throat and snuffed out their lives, their 
hopes, and their dreams. This monster struck at the very hearts of our 
communities: our children. And my purpose today is to stand before you, 
Mr. Speaker, to tell this story, to honor the victims so that we never 
forget the victims, to remind us of all the families who are still 
suffering the losses of their loved ones who have been sentenced to a 
life sentence without their loved ones.
  Lastly, it is to recognize, Mr. Speaker, and officially thank those 
who worked so hard and so long to solve this case. The nearly 90 
detectives in the King County Sheriffs Office which is the lead agency 
that worked this case for nearly 20 years, the Seattle Police 
Department, the Kent Police Department, the Washington State Patrol and 
the State Patrol Lab; the medical examiner's office, the FBI, 
scientists, civilian staff, volunteers, explorers, search and rescue, 
prosecutor's office in King County led by Norm Maleng, and the defense 
team.
  I would be remiss, Mr. Speaker, if I did not mention that just last 
week, as most everyone is aware, the so-called BTK killer was arrested 
in Wichita, Kansas. I think this House should also recognize and 
congratulate the community and the law enforcement/criminal justice 
system in Wichita for bringing that case to a close and bringing some 
answers to questions that the families of these victims have been 
asking for over 25 years.
  These monsters are in our communities, and I want to tell the story 
briefly. Sometimes it takes me almost 3 hours to go through this, but I 
have only an hour, so you will get a brief overview of this case. Let 
me just tell you about the numbers.

                              {time}  1515

  Now, I was 31 years old when I started this case back in 1982 with 
the first victim. But 48 guilty pleas, 44 recovered victims; four of 
the victims are unidentified, four are still missing. This case was 
open for 7,500 days. Over 90-plus King County detectives worked on this 
case. 15,500 photographs were taken. Over 1,500 cassette tapes, over 
10,000 items of evidence were collected. Over half a million pieces of 
paper were put together.
  Twenty to 30 people worked full-time once the arrest was made in our 
office for about 6 months to complete the document imaging process that 
cost us nearly $1.2 million. There were 40,000 suspect tips, almost 
13,000, actually 40,000 tip sheets on a variety of different leads, but 
almost 13,000 tips on different people as suspects.
  Imagine working one murder case, having 10 suspects and trying to 
figure out who out of that 10 is that one person who committed the 
murder. We have 50 murders and nearly 13,000 suspects. And they ranged 
from attorneys to police officers to people who worked for the post 
office and truck drivers and iron workers and every walk of life that 
you could think of.
  King County Sheriff's Office spent $2.8 million in 2002 on this case. 
The prosecutor's office spent a million and a half. The defense spent 
$2.5 million. There were 12 prosecutors that worked on this case, a 
combined team. There were almost 20 King County sheriffs deputies and 
detectives and civilians who worked on that case. After the arrest was 
made, the defense team had about 16 team members to their effort. And 
all of this for one monster, one defendant, one person who pled guilty 
to 48 lives. And it is, in my opinion, he has killed nearly 75, 
probably more than that.
  King County, if you do not know, is in the State of Washington right 
on Puget Sound. The city of Seattle is the county seat. Green River 
runs south of Seattle through the countryside and toward the foot hills 
of the Cascade Mountains.
  This case started on July 15, 1982, when the first body, Wendy 
Coffield, was found floating in the river south of Seattle with a 
ligature around her neck, a 15-year-old girl from our community.
  On August 12, 1982, I was called to the river for the second body, 
for the first body was in the sheriff's jurisdiction. Debra Bonner was 
found floating in the river, and she had been strangled.
  Three days later, I was called back to the river once again. A rafter 
had been floating down the river. He looked on the shore line and 
thought he had found two mannequins. And as he floated down the river, 
he got closer and discovered that these mannequins, these images, were 
not mannequins but human bodies.
  And as he looked up on the river bank there was a man standing there 
and there was a pickup truck parked at a turn-out. And the man on the 
river bank waved at the man on the raft. And they exchanged 
pleasantries. The man on the river bank walked up the bank, drove away 
in his truck as the man on the raft waved goodbye.
  The man on the raft then called the Police Department. I showed up, 
and as I was processing the scene, I found a third body on the river 
bank that we did not know about, that the rafter had not seen.
  That man on the river bank was the man that we eventually arrested. 
And I am not going to say his name today, because I do not want to 
honor him by having his name mentioned in this very historical place 
and place of honor.
  The evidence we collected off of Wendy Coffield and some of these 
early victims was very important. This evidence was collected in 1982. 
It came together in 1987. In 1987 we finally got enough evidence 
together where we were able to search the home of the person that we 
finally arrested. A lot of things, pieces of the puzzle started to come 
together. We collected hundreds of lists. We collected lists of people 
who were arrested for patronizing prostitutes. We arrested people, or 
we actually gathered lists of people who were arrested for assaulting 
women during that period of time. We collected lists of people who were 
known to fish in the Green River, who had fishing licenses. We 
collected lists of people who worked in the area, who lived in the 
area, who were stopped by the police in that area. So we collected list 
after list after list.
  And back in those days we had no computers. You think about 1982 when 
I started this case, we had no computers. There was no such thing as 
DNA. There was no automated fingerprint identification system, which is 
an automated system that compares fingerprints today. Most people are 
aware of that. In fact, in 1982 I was managing this case on 3 by 5 note 
cards on a Rolodex file. And a lot of times when I mention the Rolodex 
file, especially in junior high or high school classes, a hand usually 
goes up and the question is asked, Sheriff, what is a Rolodex file? 
That is how far technology has come.

[[Page H976]]

  This case was one of hard work, dedication, commitment, and let me 
tell you, just pure frustration. The detectives, investigators, 
scientists, and the community involved in helping to solve this case 
never gave up. They were dedicated to solving this case, to finding the 
person responsible for this case.
  There were so many great suspects in this case. We followed one 
suspect for nearly 3 or 4 months. We discovered that as we looked at 
each one of these suspects that fit the profile that the FBI had 
provided to us to a certain degree were so interesting and were such 
good suspects that they would use and could use our resources for weeks 
or months at a time.
  In 1982, after we found the three bodies on Sunday, on that following 
Monday, August 16, we formed the first task force of 25 detectives 
within the sheriff's office. We thought we had six victims and we 
worked through 1982. And by the fall of 1982 the administration already 
started to talk about cutting back and reducing our effort because they 
felt we had identified the suspect.
  By the end of 1982, when we thought we had six victims, we actually 
had 16 young women killed. We did not even know about the other 10 yet.
  In 1983 we spent most of our time collecting bodies, sad to say. 
Reports of found skeletal remains were coming in continuously. And so 
we fell behind in following up our tips. And finally, by the end of 
1983, a new sheriff was appointed and he decided, you know what, it is 
time to do something. It is time to investigate this case properly.
  He brought a task force together in January of 1984. It was called 
the enhanced task force. Because by the end of 1983 we thought we had 
13 victims, when in reality we had 27 women killed. So we put together 
a task force made up of the FBI and some of the agencies that I had 
listed earlier, to nearly come to a number of 80 investigators and 
personnel who were working on this case together almost 24 hours a day, 
7 days a week for years.
  And as this case went on, we discovered more bodies. We discovered a 
body of a young woman who was 9 months pregnant who met this killer on 
the streets. And here, stop and think about this for a minute. Some 
people ask why in the world was this case so hard to solve?
  Let me just give you some of the reasons. Men who are preying on 
young women and young girls on the streets for prostitution have picked 
the most vulnerable victims in our community, in our society.
  The only thing they have to do is to drive up on a street corner, 
roll down the window, open the door and make a deal for sex, and it 
only lasts a matter of seconds. And the victim is in the car. There is 
no struggle. There is no screaming. There is nothing that calls 
attention to the exchange that just took place.
  And this young girl gets in that car and drives away into the night, 
never to be seen again. And in some cases, the victim's body was not 
found for months and, in one case, 6 years later, the body is finally 
found.
  And so when you find the victim, you identify the victim. And then 
now as an investigator, as the team continues to move forward and 
investigate this case, they have to go backwards in time to figure out 
where this victim was last seen.
  And if you are lucky enough to figure out that this was the street 
corner that this person disappeared from, then you have to determine 
who the witnesses were, who was there to watch this happen, to watch 
her drive off into the night; who might have a description of the 
suspect vehicle or the suspect.
  And when you get back to that street corner, you discover that your 
witnesses are street people, homeless people who are just trying to 
take care of themselves, who are paying attention to their own lives, 
who in some cases were drug addicts and alcoholics themselves.
  The victims that we needed to identify and learn a lot about in most 
cases had more than one name, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 
different names. Sometimes we really did not know which was their true 
name until months later. They had different birth dates, different 
addresses, different vehicles and license plates associated with them. 
They changed their appearance.
  The witnesses, if we were lucky again to find those witnesses, all 
fell into that same category. It would take us months, sometimes years, 
to track down a person that we knew as a certain name and discover a 
year later or 2 years later they were actually another person, and they 
had ID belonging to someone else, and they had a totally different 
appearance.
  So again, I want to stress how patient and how diligent and how 
persistent the investigators were in this case. And as we moved forward 
through 1984, still in a mode, really, of collecting human remains, and 
we were working also on the leads, still falling behind with every 
discovery of a new body, but hoping that each time we found a new human 
being, a human remain, hoping that that would be the case that would 
supply us with the evidence that we needed to solve this case, to break 
this case open.
  Now, I want to mention too that we were quite organized during those 
days. And I think too, Mr. Speaker, like the BTK case, I heard the 
chief of police of Wichita say the other day that sometimes the news 
media was quite critical of the efforts and questioned the capability, 
ability, and talents of the law enforcement agencies in that region.
  We were no different. We were questioned and criticized and 
ridiculed, and in some cases to the detriment of the investigation. In 
fact, there is one political cartoon that calls the Green River task 
force the Green River task farce.
  And what happened when that kind of media attention and that 
criticism would be directed at us, it did not instill a lot of 
confidence in the community in our ability, when what we wanted was the 
people in the community to cooperate with us and have confidence that 
if they called us, their leads would be followed up and they would be 
followed up.
  But they almost got to the point where they were hearing that so much 
that they said, why call? They are never going to catch the guy. They 
do not know what they are doing. And they may have had that one little 
bit of information.
  Just to give you a little tip too on some information on how devious 
this killer was, in one case, he killed a young girl, another teenager, 
left her body near Sea-Tac Airport.

                              {time}  1530

  He came back later. He removed her skull and transported her body 
part to Portland, Oregon. This is a man who had no respect for human 
life whatsoever. It also points out the complications of this case when 
you have a person with that kind of a mind trying to play tricks on the 
community and the police department, interrupting their abilities and 
throwing them off in their attempts to solve this case.
  Now, the case went on from 1982 through 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 
1988, 1989 and 1990 and, finally, the task force is down to one person 
and we are waiting for that one piece of evidence; the evidence we 
collected in 1982 from a ligature of one of the victims floating in the 
river, some paint spheres; the evidence we collected from the three 
bodies that I talked about near the river bank and the one on the river 
bank, the DNA.
  Actually, back then, it was bodily fluids. We had no concept of what 
DNA was. It was never talked about. It had not even been discovered yet 
as a possible tool in this sort of investigation until the late 1980s.
  In 1987, we searched the home of the man we finally killed. And 
during that search we collected everything we could in that home, in 
the yard, and we asked him to chew on a piece of gauze. We took that 
gauze and we put it in a test tube. And when DNA science finally 
evolved to the point where we felt it was safe enough to test the 
samples that we had collected over the years, we submitted the gauze, 
we submitted the DNA samples from the victims that I described, and we 
submitted other DNA samples of five top suspects. We submitted those 
samples and we came back with a match, a DNA hit from evidence that was 
taken in 1987 compared to evidence that was collected by the 
investigators and saved; frozen, preserved and stored.
  We had over 10,000 items of evidence, and all of that evidence has 
been accounted for over these many years.

[[Page H977]]

That evidence came together and identified a suspect and we arrested 
this man on November 30, 2001. We had him on four counts.
  When we arrested him, we drove up to his place of work, where he 
worked for 31 years. He was married for over 13 years to the same 
woman. He was a member of the community. People were shocked, 
surprised, and amazed that he was identified as the person responsible 
for around 50 deaths. We arrested him. We drove up to him and we said, 
you are under arrest for the murder of four women connected with the 
Green River cases, and he shrugged his shoulders and he said, okay. He 
got into the police car and we took him to jail. He was not upset. It 
was not a big deal.
  I share this with you to share a little of his personality. He is a 
psychopath, a pathological liar, and has no remorse whatsoever about 
the lives that he took. The women he killed, he killed because he 
could, and that is what his answer was to that question. When we 
arrested him, we spent 6 months interrogating him to try to pull out 
every piece of evidence and all information that we could.
  There were three other cases we were able to charge him with, and 
that evidence came from microscopic paint spheres. Those paint spheres 
were collected in 1982. Let me give one example.
  I mentioned first the body that took 6 years to find. In September of 
1982, a young woman was missing. We found her body 6 years later. And 
as we were processing that scene, we found a piece of cloth at that 
site where she was buried. It was decomposing, and it decomposed to the 
point where if you were to try and lift it with your fingers, it would 
crumble between your fingertips and onto the ground. We collected that, 
put it together, and we saved it.
  In 2002, when the science again was to the point where they could 
find those microscopic spheres and compare them to the paint at a 
trucking company where this suspect worked as a truck painter for 31 
years, we were able to take that paint from that decomposing piece of 
cloth and the paint spheres from a ligature that was on a victim who 
was floating in the river. One might assume that the evidence on the 
victim had been washed away, but it still had microscopic paint 
spheres. We were able to collect those, have them examined by the 
scientists.
  Those microscopic paint spheres in 1987 were also discovered in his 
locker. So we have a connection between three victims who had 
microscopic paint spheres attached to them, and we also had microscopic 
paint spheres that were found in his locker at work, which connected 
him back.
  Once we had seven cases on him, his attorneys quickly came to us and 
said we want to talk to you. We were hoping for that, and I will tell 
you why. Most people might say this man, if anyone, and I would agree 
with this, if anyone deserved the death penalty, this man deserved the 
death penalty. But one of the things that had happened over the years 
as we worked with the families is we had become friends with the family 
members. We were their link to their loved ones.
  They had questions: Where is my daughter? Is she alive? People were 
still hoping their daughter could be found. If my daughter is dead, who 
killed her and why? And, Mr. Speaker, I would say that every one of us 
in this room today would say I want to know. I would want to know. I 
would want someone to talk to the guy and find out; find out why and 
where my daughter is buried. So we did.
  We had choices of going forward with seven cases and following that 
through the court system. We had seven strong cases. But what if he was 
found not guilty? Stranger things have happened. What if he was found 
guilty and we went to the penalty phase and the jury decided to give 
him life in prison without parole. We only had seven cases solved.
  We decided to take a chance and interview this monster, and we spent 
6 months, as I said before, 6 months interviewing him and pulling out 
every piece of information and fact that we could about every one of 
these cases. The last day that I talked to him was on December 31, 
2003, before he was sent to prison. I spoke to him for about an hour, 
and I will never forget what he said to me, the last thing he said. He 
said, I have killed 71 and you are too stupid to find the others. And 
it is my belief, as I said earlier, he has probably killed near 80.
  So now you have an idea of the difficulty of this case. I have really 
only scratched the surface of how tough this case was. But the 
importance of bringing this case to the floor today, Mr. Speaker, is 
that we must never forget the victims. We must never forget the 
families whose pain still is being endured today, and we must always be 
able to say thank you to the men and women in law enforcement, the 
criminal justice system, and those who are in the forensic science 
field coming up with new and innovative ways every day to help law 
enforcement solve these cases, cases like the BTK case.
  And then, as a reminder, we need to stop and think about why these 
young ladies are on the street? I mentioned earlier some of the 
reasons, but what can we do about it? Are we willing to do anything 
about it? Yes, there are people out there working with young people on 
the street, working with young people who are on drugs and alcohol, and 
we are trying to make a difference there, but it has to start earlier.
  One of the places that does that in Seattle, just south of Seattle in 
a small town called Kent, where I grew up, is a place called the 
Pediatric Intensive Care Center. This facility takes in babies who have 
been born to drug-addicted mothers, some of these mothers who have been 
on the street. These babies are placed into homes where they have a 
chance to live a life, a real life, the life that I talked about 
earlier: A life of hope, a life with dreams for those little girls who 
have dreams.
  And you know what, it is our duty, Mr. Speaker, every one of us in 
this Nation, to protect those dreams, to make sure that the hopes and 
dreams of our children are not stolen away by something we might do at 
home and not stolen away by someone who lures them out of our homes 
with the promise of a better life somewhere else. It is our 
responsibility to step up and act.
  People talk about human trafficking, and it is an international 
problem. Human trafficking is a problem right here in this country. It 
happens on our Nation's streets every day. I hope to join with my 
colleagues here in Congress to begin to make a difference in the lives 
of our children so that we can protect them and they can enjoy a life 
of freedom and safety.
  I want to end, Mr. Speaker, by reading a list of each of the victims 
whose lives were taken by this monster in the northwest:
  Marcia Fay Chapman; Cynthia Jean Hinds; and Opal Charmaine Mills. 
She's the one I found on the river bank.
  Carol Ann Christensen, Wendy Lee Coffield, Gisele Ann Lovvorn, Debra 
Lynn Bonner, Marcia Fay Chapman, Cynthia Jean Hinds, Opal Charmaine 
Mills, Terry Rene Milligan, and Mary Bridget Meehan. She was the one 9 
months pregnant.
  Debra Lorraine Estes, Linda Jane Rule, Denise Darcel Bush, Shawnda 
Leea Summers, Shirley Marie Sherrill, Colleen Renee Brockman, Alma Ann 
Smith, Dolores Williams, Gail Lynn Mathews, Andrea Childers, Sandra Kay 
Gabbert, Kimi-Kai Pitsor, Marie Malvar, Carol Christensen, Martina 
Authorlee, Cheryl Wims, Yvonne Antosh, Carrie Rois, Constance Elizabeth 
Naon, Kelly Marie Ware, Tina Thompson, April Buttram, Debbie Abernathy, 
Tracy Winston, Maureen Sue Feeney, Mary Sue Bello, Pammy Avent, Delise 
Plager, Kimberly Nelson, Lisa Yates, Mary West, Cindy Smith, Patricia 
Barczak, Roberta Hayes, Marta Reeves, Patricia Yellow Robe.
  And then there are four others who have not been identified: 
Unidentified victim number ten, unidentified victim number sixteen, 
unidentified victim number seventeen, and unidentified victim number 
twenty.

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