Deputy Mike Hagan of SAR and the Marine Unit arrived with a strong line. Police diver Bob Pedrin checked the river around the corpses, then maneuvered them closer to the river’s edge.

King County medical examiner Dr. Don Reay had also responded to the scene, as the man detectives called “Doc Reay” always did. Sadly, there was no hurry now, and they waited for him to nod and say that it was all right to move the victims. The onerous task of lifting the dead girls from the Green River and up its bank began. Not only did the investigators, divers, Reay and his deputies have to hoist what was literally deadweight up the precipitous riverbank, they had to preserve as much possible evidence as they could while they did so. Kraske and Reay stood side by side with the others, heaving to keep the rope from slipping. Still, they were all aware that the heedless river had undoubtedly washed away much of what would have helped them the most. If the victims had been raped, semen traces were probably gone now.

As the three bodies were being put into the M.E.’s baskets, Kraske noticed that someone had mixed up the tags that noted the sequential extraction identification. It mattered which girl had come out of the river first—and last. Knowing that a mistake now could cause all further records to be faulty, he ordered a slowdown until the tags were corrected.

He had also called for radio silence while his investigators worked beside the Green River. The one thing they didn’t need was a full bombardment from the media, which always monitored police calls for interesting incidents. He hoped to buy time until the next day when he knew reporters would descend on him like flies.

The two women who had floated beneath the surface of the river itself had ebony skin and were clearly African American. The girl on the bank could be either white or black. Along with Wendy Coffield and Debra Bonner, their names would become indelibly etched in the minds of the investigators, the news media, and anyone who lived in the Northwest. For the moment, however, they had no names. Hopefully, someone had reported them missing; they had been in the river for more than two days.

It wouldn’t be easy to take their fingerprints because of the skin slippage caused by long immersion in warm water and decomposition. As the body decomposes, hand and finger skin loosens so much that it can be slipped off like a glove. In order to transfer prints, pathologists sometimes have to sever the skin at the wrist, then slip their own hands into the “glove” and press the crinkled tips onto an inked pad.

MARCIA FAYE CHAPMAN was identified first, and it was through her fingerprints. She was thirty-one when she died, an attractive woman with symmetrical features and a lush mouth, so petite that she was known as “Tiny” by her friends. She had lived on the Strip with her three children, aged eleven, nine, and three, and she mainly supported them through prostitution. She had left her apartment on August 1, 1982, and failed to return.

The other woman in the river and the girl on the bank were still unidentified. Police sketches of how they might have looked in life were published in area papers, and the public was asked to respond if anyone recognized them. One was five feet three and a little chubby; the other was five feet five and very thin. The first girl had medium-length hair that had been dyed from black to red; the second had a cluster of short ringlets and a chipped front tooth.

One woman in the river had been completely nude; the other two still wore bras that had been yanked above their breasts and twisted around. They had all been strangled by ligature.

Although the medical examiner’s staff knew that the cause of death in the four latest victims was strangulation—just as in Wendy Coffield’s death—they refused to release that information. High-profile cases that receive a lot of publicity bring out compulsive confessors in droves. The more details police agencies can keep secret, the better their chance to weed out those who get a perverted thrill out of confessing to crimes they never committed. The cause and manner of death are difficult to conceal, but medical examiners and detectives try. It is absolutely essential not to reveal more specific information.

The two women in the river itself had been “raped” symbolically by their killer, perhaps after a true rape. He had inserted triangular-shaped stones into their vaginas so tightly that they had to be surgically removed. That might mean he had been unable to achieve an erection, and in his fury, the rocks were a crude substitute. It might be his way to denigrate the victims. It could even mean that a woman was the killer. But, for the moment, and for years to come, this information about the three-sided rocks would be guarded carefully.

When the last two victims were identified, one of them fit the profiles of Wendy Coffield, Debra Bonner, and Marcia Chapman. Cynthia Hinds was only seventeen, a vibrant and pretty girl who went by the name “Cookie.” She also made her living on the street. She had felt safe working the SeaTac Strip because she had a male “protector”—in reality, a pimp. He told detectives he had seen Cynthia last on August 11. Near the Pac HiWay and S. 200th, he had watched surreptitiously as she got into a black Jeep with a male driver, but he hadn’t written down the license plate and he couldn’t describe the driver. Like most pimps, he had offered her very little security. The moment Cynthia was alone with a stranger, she had no protection at all.

CYNTHIA had never been arrested for soliciting.

*The names of some individuals in this book have been changed. Such names are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time they appear.

2

DAVE REICHERT had almost tripped over the girl who lay in the reedy grass on the bank of the Green River, and he had to stand there, motionless, while measurements were taken for triangulation. He would never forget her—a petite, slightly chubby girl, with reddish hair.

AFTER SKETCHES of her face in death were published, her traumatized family realized why she hadn’t come home. At the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, they identified her as Opal Charmaine Mills. She was barely sixteen. Opal had a mother and father and a big brother who cared deeply about her. They lived on the East Hill outskirts of Kent.

Opal’s mother, Kathy Mills, told investigators that the last time she had seen Opal was three days before her body was found—on August 12. Opal had told her that Thursday morning that she was going to “work,” and called home again in the early afternoon, saying she was at a phone booth in Angle Lake State Park.

For Opal, work didn’t mean prostitution. She was excited because she was going to be painting houses with her friend Cookie.

Kathy Mills barely knew Cookie, and didn’t know her real name. She was a new acquaintance of Opal’s, and she had been to the Mills home only once. Cookie was, of course, Cynthia Hinds, whose body was found so close to Opal’s.

While it was true that Opal sometimes stayed away from home for a day or so without checking in with her family, and she had even run away once, there was no indication that she was involved in peddling sex on the highway. Her best friend, Doris Davis, had known Opal since they were both in fourth grade and they saw each other every day. She was appalled that anyone would link Opal to streetwalking. She had never mentioned prostitution to Doris. “That’s why I couldn’t believe it. She always shared her problems with me.”