COLD CASE FILES: OBSESSION: DAVE REICHERT AND THE GREEN RIVER KILLER {FIFTH SEASON PREMIERE} (TV)
Summary
The fifth season premiere in this documentary series examining the criminal investigations into long-unsolved, seemingly dead-end murders.
This episode profiles the decades-long search to find the Green River Killer, active in Washington state in the 1980s and 1990s. Detective (later Sheriff) Dave Reichert describes the shocking 1982 discovery of the first five bodies, those of young female sex workers and runaways, dumped near the Green River. The media seized on the grisly story; when taxi driver Melvyn Foster named another cabbie as a potential suspect, he himself was investigated by police, though was eventually found innocent. The case went cold, but scientist Bob Keppel reexamined the evidence and reorganized the investigation process, determining that other murders matching the killer's pattern had been discovered in locations other than the Green River. One body was posed and bizarrely arranged, leading Keppel to guess that the killer was returning to the dump site more than once.
Fourteen more bodies were found in 1983 and an additional fourteen in 1984; though the public felt that the murders were going unsolved because of the victims' "unimportant" lives as sex workers and working-class employees, Reichert and Detective Randy Mullinax found themselves obsessing over the case. They eventually accepted the assistance of an "expert": jailed serial murderer Ted Bundy. Bundy suggested that the detectives monitor the next dump site from afar, as the killer would likely return to the scene of the crime for sexual gratification, though none of the bodies were fresh enough to be used as "bait." The FBI created a profile, and by 1986, Mullinax and others zeroed in on Gary Leon Ridgway, whose pickup truck was linked to the first kidnapping/murder, that of Marie Malvar. Witnesses identified his photo, but no definitive physical evidence was found connecting Ridgway to the killings; he was eventually dropped as a suspect.
By 1990, Reichert was the last detective on the case, but advancements in DNA profiling allowed Dr. Beverly Himick to run a new test known as short tandem repeats (STR). While she did not find a match in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), she tested a piece of gauze on which Ridgway had submitted his saliva and finally made a match. Reichert, who had always suspected Ridgway to be guilty, built his case against the "boring" painter and married father of one. Fearful that he would kill again if not apprehended soon, Reichart finally arrested Ridgway in November of 2001, having definitively linked him to at least four murders. When microscopic paint chips found on many of the other bodies were also matched to Ridgway, he agreed to a plea deal; though prosecutor Norm Maleng was very reluctant to allow him to evade the death penalty, he eventually agreed out of concern for the victims' families. Ridgway pled guilty to 48 counts of murder, explaining how he used his son's photograph to lure women into his car and admitting that he felt himself to be lacking "that caring thing." Bundy's theory about Ridgway's necrophilic habits was proven accurate, and Ridgway willingly led investigators to several more bodies. Several victims' family members spoke out in court as Ridgway pled guilty to one murder after another as Judge Richard Jones read out the seemingly "genocidal" list of names. Jones assured him that he would be "haunted" by his countless crimes before sentencing him to life in prison without parole. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: A&E
- DATE: PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:44:23
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 103759
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Public affairs/Documentaries; True crime; Detectives; Serial murders
- SERIES RUN: A&E - TV series, 1999-2006; 2017-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Laura Fleury … Executive Producer
- Michael T. Harvey … Supervising Producer
- Mike West … Producer
- Nara Walker … Associate Producer
- David Huizenga … Music by
- Dave Reichert … Interviewee
- Melvyn Foster … Interviewee
- Bob Keppel … Interviewee
- Randy Mullinax … Interviewee
- Beverly Himick … Interviewee
- Norm Maleng … Interviewee
- Ted Bundy
- Richard Jones
- Marie Malvar
- Gary Leon Ridgway