Investigators have confirmed the identity of the last known remains of a victim of Gary Ridgway, The Green River Killer. According to The New York Times, the final remains concludes the massive effort to identify each of the 49 women and girls Ridgway was convicted of slaying.
According to NYT, the final remains were called Bones 20 after their discovery in 2003. Investigators couldn’t confirm the identity at the time and DNA testing only recently broke through to close the book on the known victims of the Green River Killer.
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The final victim has been identified as Tammie Liles, a 16-year-old who disappeared from Seattle around 1983 and was later identified as one of the killer’s victims in 1988 after another set of remains traced back to her.
King County Sheriff’s Office noted on Monday that these remains confirmed her as one the victims at least and now it has finally led to all of the victims being uncovered. Ridgway operated as the Green River Killer throughout the ’80s and ’90s, named such due to the river near Seattle that he used to dump his victims.
It had been a suspect in 1984, but he denied any knowledge the killings and passed a polygraph, which gave him his freedom until 2001. He was arrested for the homicides after DNA technology advanced to gather more evidence to tie him to the long string of murders. He was sentenced to life in prison for killing 48 people. He pleaded guilty to a 49th murder in 2011 and has confessed to a reported 71 murders total. He may have also killed even more if investigators are to be believed.
Ridgway is currently being held in Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, cooperating with authorities to hunt down his known victim’s remains. He led them to Lile’s body in 2003, which allowed them to use a DNA sample and upload it into the system, though no match was found at the time.
“I was very elated that in this case, which has taken over 40 years, we were able to put a name to these bones,” Sergeant Eric White told the media. “It’s not a good thing to lose a child no matter what age. I would have to assume that it was a traumatic experience to hear the words of the detectives.”
After contacting a lab in Texas that deals with DNA forensics, the team helped create a new DNA profile from the remains and use that to find distant relatives of the victim. After finding the common ancestor, eventually leading to Ms. Liles and an alert to the police in Washington.
