The DNA match that ended a 20-year manhunt for a killer the police had already cleared

He passed the polygraph.

The truck painter from Auburn, Washington sat for the test early in the Green River Killer investigation, and the machine said he was telling the truth.

He was cleared.

In 1982, remains of two women were found in the Green River, and the search for their killer began.

More bodies surfaced in the following years, discovered by hunters, hikers, and police searches across the remote, wooded areas south of Seattle.

The victims were typically strangled, their bodies dumped near the water that gave the case its name.

The investigation grew into one of the largest and longest-running serial murder inquiries in American history.

For nearly two decades, it went unsolved.

The man who passed the polygraph kept painting trucks.

He kept living in Auburn.

And the case kept collecting names without a suspect who stuck.

The exact number of victims is not established.

The true number is believed to be higher than 48, but the record does not settle it.

That would require evidence the case has not produced.

How does a man sit across from a detective, answer the questions, and walk away clean?

How does the machine say truth when the truth was strangulation?

How does a cleared suspect become the killer the DNA would eventually name?

That would require the polygraph to be wrong.

It would require the investigation to have missed what was in front of it.

It would require twenty years.

THE TASK FORCE YEARS

The King County Sheriff's Office formed a dedicated task force.

At its peak, it included dozens of investigators.

The lead detective had previously worked on the Ted Bundy case.

He applied similar profiling and forensic techniques to the Green River killings.

The case was marked by numerous false leads and suspects who were later cleared.

The specific number of false leads or cleared suspects is not in the record.

Ridgway was among those questioned early.

He passed a polygraph test.

So he was cleared.

Remains continued to be found by hunters, hikers, and police searches throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Each discovery reopened the same questions.

Each new find added another name to a list that kept growing.

The task force chased tips that dissolved into nothing.

It interviewed witnesses whose stories shifted.

It held suspects who could not be tied to a single victim.

Not because the leads were worthless.

But because the evidence did not connect.

The polygraph said Ridgway was telling the truth.

The investigation accepted that answer.

It moved on to other names, other theories, other dead ends.

The years passed in that rhythm.

A discovery.