The search for the Green River killer

Between the Summer of 1982 and Spring of 1984 someone, almost certainly a man, picked up at least 40 and perhaps as many as 60 young women, mostly prostitutes, strangled them and disposed of their bodies in various locations in the Pacific northwest, predominantly in southern King County, Washington. Despite the efforts of a special police investigative unit that developed a proficiency in forensic techniques that would later prove useful in countless other investigations, and that had the lessons of Ted Bundy nearly a decade before to draw upon, this killer was never caught, and to this day his identity and final fate remains unknown. This book is an essentially journalistic account (in the modern sense, in which a description of the facts is coupled closely with a subjective evaluation of them) of the investigation of the "Green River" murders (so named because the first victims found were disposed of in the Green River, though most others were found elsewhere). Thus we read about the victims, who they were and in some cases how they drifted into prostitution and/or drug use, when they were last seen and with whom, when their absence first came to the attention of the police or the Green River investigators. We read of the detectives themselves, of the leads they followed, the manner in which they were forced to learn about the lives of prostitutes and the violence routinely directed against them, the political conflicts that occasionally helped but more often hindered their investigation, the forensic approaches they learned and perfected, the mistakes they made, the attempts to find links between the Green River murders and similar slayings occurring elsewhere, such as Portland and San Diego. We read of the occasional suspects, the coincidences or other apparent evidence that led the police to them, and the frustrating regularity with which they were always exonerated.