Authorities have identified the last known remains connected to the Green River serial killer, whose victims included 49 women and girls slain before his arrest in 2001, according to authorities and KIRO-TV.
Officials began investigating the remains after confessed killer Gary Ridgway led authorities to them in 2003, the King County Sheriff’s Office said. Investigators were unable to immediately identify the remains, which were labeled Bones 20.
With the help of forensic sequencing laboratory Othram, authorities have identified the remains as belonging to Tammie Liles, who was 16 when she vanished from Seattle in 1983, KIRO reported. She had earlier been identified as a victim of the Green River Killer after her partial remains were found in April 1985 south of Portland, Oregon.
Sgt. Eric White, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told The New York Times that he was relieved that investigators were able to give “some closure” to Liles’ family.
“It’s not a good thing to lose a child no matter what age,” he said. “I would have to assume that it was a traumatic experience to hear the words of the detectives.”
Officials began investigating what would come to be known as one of the most prolific serial killers in America in 1982, after two boys found the body of 16-year-old Wendy Lee Coffield in the Green River near Kent, Washington, according to the FBI, King County officials and KIRO.
Ridgway targeted prostitutes and runaways he picked up in the Seattle area during the 1980s and 1990s. He pleaded guilty in 2003 to 48 counts of first-degree aggravated murder and got 48 life sentences without the possibility of parole.
“The decision in 2003 to take the death penalty off the table was not about Gary Ridgway,” Casey McNerthney of the King County Sheriff’s Office told KIRO. “It was not to give him mercy. He doesn’t deserve mercy. It was about the families of the victims because without that, they wouldn’t have found the victims like this young woman or many of the other victims.”
In 2011, Ridgway pleaded guilty to murdering a 20-year-old woman who vanished in December 1982, bringing his total number of confirmed victims to 49.
With the identification announced Monday, officials told KIRO that the last set of remains held in the medical examiner’s office in connection with the Green River case have been identified.
“It’s great news to hear that the last set of remains held in the medical examiner’s office has finally been identified,” Dave Reichert of the King County Sheriff’s Office told KIRO. He added, however, that Ridgway claimed to have killed “65 to 70 young women and little girls.”
“So far he’s (pled) guilty to 49 and we’ve closed 51 cases,” he said. “There are other unsolved cases out there that may or may not be connected to Ridgway.”
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