Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer by Sheriff David Reichert

Author:Sheriff David Reichert [REICHERT, SHERIFF DAVID]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: TRU000000, True Crime
ISBN: 9780759511965
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 10116693
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Published: 2004-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

The letdown we felt when the Horsetail Falls attack became a dead end was made even worse by the changing political mood in King County. While we had been working with Helen and the authorities in Oregon, the county budget office was asking questions about the cost and effectiveness of the Green River Task Force. Tim Hill also happened to be running for county executive against Randy Revelle, the man who had appointed Sheriff Vern Thomas and backed the task force.

By questioning our effectiveness, Hill could make a play for two types of voters who occupied opposite ends of the political spectrum. The first group included the men and women who attended the “Take Back the Night” rally and believed we were both ineffective and callous toward the Green River killer’s victims. The second group were conservative, anti-tax voters who resented that we had spent about $2 million per year chasing a serial killer who was still on the loose. This group may have also believed that the killer had stopped, and may even have moved away, so there was no longer a crisis.

Fortunately, the politicians who might exploit the Green River case were limited by basic common sense. No one could come right out and say we shouldn’t seek justice for the dead and missing. At the same time, it was impossible to argue that we deserved a blank check. Responding to these two imperatives, Revelle did what a lot of politicians do when they need to address an issue but want political cover. He appointed an outside expert to review the case and make recommendations.

The consultant Revelle chose was a pioneer of serial killer investigations named Pierce Brooks. Once a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, Brooks had begun investigating serial killers in the 1950s. He was the first to realize that many of these killers left behind “signature” clues at crime scenes. He had been the first to advocate a national crime data system to help cops catch killers who moved from place to place, and he had been the leading figure in Joseph Wambaugh’s book The Onion Field.

Not the type to sit down and write a report, Pierce eventually delivered his findings to us in a meeting that was tape-recorded. He said that county leaders should set aside any thoughts of cutting back the task force. He believed that the answer to the case was in all the data we were collecting, but it would not be found if we didn’t have the personnel to continue gathering facts and analyzing them. The only other possibility for a big break—such as a patrol officer stopping the killer with a body in his vehicle—would require a whole lot of luck.

When he talked about the challenge of finding the Green River killer, Pierce kept returning to the way the man had selected the disposal sites for the bodies. (He and I had visited many of them and talked about the killer’s activities.) The ones he used the most, like the riverside itself, involved steep terrain and heavy underbrush.

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