DNA in 2001 finally linked a truck painter to the Green River killings

The paint speck was the size of a pinhead.

For nearly two decades, the Green River killer had strangled women and left them in the woods outside Seattle–Tacoma, and the case had gone cold.

The public had lived with the fear that long.

Unsolved bodies by the river, year after year, and no name to attach to the dread.

Then, in 2001, a lab matched a fleck of paint to Gary Ridgway, a truck painter from Auburn, Washington.

The paint was on his work clothes.

The DNA was on the victims.

Prosecutors said the evidence linked Ridgway to several of the Green River killings, and the investigation summary records that he was arrested in November 2001.

How did a truck painter evade capture for so long?

How did a man who lived in plain sight, who married and worked and drove the same highways, slip past one of the largest investigations in U.S. history?

How did the lead detective, Dave Reichert of the King County Sheriff's Office, carry that case for years without an answer?

The record does not specify the exact DNA sample or the testing method that broke it open.

That detail is not established.

What is established is the arrest, the paint, and the sudden end of a two-decade terror.

The speck was small.

The wait was not.

THE BODIES BY THE RIVER

The first victims were discovered in 1982, near the Green River that gave the case its name.

The bodies were found in remote, wooded places, often close to that same water.

The victims were typically strangled, often with ligatures.

Most were sex workers, runaways, and drug users.

Between 1982 and 1998, a series of women were murdered in and around the Seattle–Tacoma area.

The body count grew steadily.

Each discovery brought the same pattern: a missing woman, a search, a shallow grave.

The region learned to dread the news.

Families waited by phones that did not ring.

Investigators sorted through reports that led nowhere.

The exact number of victims is not established.

The record lists dozens of named victims, but no total count.

What is documented is the fear.

What is documented is the frustration.

The case remained unsolved for nearly two decades.

It terrorized the region.

It frustrated the investigators who had no answers.

The river kept its secret.

THE TASK FORCE AND THE PSYCHIC

In 1984, police formed a dedicated task force.

It was one of the largest investigations in U.S. history.

Detective Dave Reichert led it.

He had a list of names and a river full of questions.

The task force grew.

It took statements, it dug sites, it logged evidence.

The case went cold anyway.

Years passed.