Green River, Running Red

Many years in the making, Rule created a true touchstone in true crime here. For me, the typical true crime work is a morality tale where the sinner is punished, which happens here. Also for me I revel in the investigatory details including detailed victimology, persons of interest as part of dead ends and the final assembling of the jigsaw puzzle by hardworking detectives. Here the unfortunate victims are treated with special care including the conditions and circumstances of their general drift into prostitution. In addition, Rule's 660-odd pages are an easy read due to an engaging choreography of backstories to victims, police, Ridgway, etc.

When a serial killer is as prolific as Gary Ridgway, his victims tend to blur into one another, forming one tragic but anonymous mass. This is particularly true when the victims are prostitutes, women society finds it easy to ignore. In Green River, Running Red, Ann Rule fleshes out the victims' stories, which often include families trying desperately to save them from "the life", as prostitutes call their sad and dangerous work.

Rules also tries to lay bare the life and psyche of Ridgway himself, with limited success. The killer himself offers few clues, insisting he killed out of resentment for his former wives. His third bride, like many killer's wives before her, seems more concerned about the destruction of her secure suburban show more existence than by her husband's crimes. Disturbingly, it seems that Ridgway's shapeless banality is exactly what allowed him to elude capture for so long. show less

Years ago, I read Small Sacrifices and was impressed with how well Rule clearly laid of the case, centered the story on the victims and investigators, and kept the timeline from becoming confusing. It was an engrossing read. I read a few true crime books in subsequent years, but only just now jumped back in to the genre. I happened to have this book on my shelf and decided to give it go. It’s her 23rd book, and I’ve not read those in between. So, I can only compare it to Small Sacrifices, and it comes up lacking.

The main problem with the book is the twenty years it took to catch the Green River Killer. The murders were first discovered in the early 1980’s and almost all of the book focuses on those years. Rule outlines several show more failed suspect investigations, burial sites discoveries and introduces investigators as they join and leave the task force. But there isn’t much “investigation” after 1990. So, that leaves almost the entire book to be filled with victims – 48 known.

Rule/the publisher opted to introduce each missing woman with a small photo of her (if available) before the entry about her disappearance and addition to the GRK list. This helps to keep them from just being anonymous murder victims, but only for so long. Despite a valiant effort by the author, and me as a reader, there are just so many that they begin to blur together: another young woman, living a hard life, snuffed out by a coldblooded killer. It took me much longer to read this book than usual, because it was heartbreaking, with little to break it up. There are passages describing the killer’s life during this period – kept to a minimum so as to reveal what his nature without glorifying him. There are also passages of biographical background on the key investigators. Yet, the big catch doesn’t take place until the very end. Readers will easily surmise that he would eventually be caught via DNA, once the technology became viable, so again, no real investigation there either - just a test and then bam! The fallout from his arrest, plea bargain, police interviews and revelations about what he did are interesting, but also disturbing.

Overall, I didn’t find this as compelling as prior true crime books (by Rule or others) because it felt more like relentless tragedy. But perhaps that was the point. show less

Ann Rule isn’t the strongest writer, but this one had me hooked. I’m so glad she placed such an emphasis on remembering and honoring the memories of the victims of the Green River Killer. There are some old-hat biases about the sex work profession, but overall Rule highlights the injustices these women faced with regard to the police and pursuing justice for their deaths.

This was a really good true crime book, the main reason why I didn't give it five stars is that there was too much filler in here for me towards the end. A good 20 percent of this book could have deleted (after we get into the 1990s) since we all should know at this point that Ridgway (the Green River Killer) didn't get arrested until 2001 and was not convicted until 2003. Depending on the book I don't mind when Rule segues into the lives of the police officers who are responsible for apprehending these killers, this time though there was a lot of repetitiveness that ended up boring me to tears.

"Green River, Running Red" is a look at the Green River Killer who murdered 71 women in Washington State in the 1980s and 1990s. Rule gives us show more an intimate look at these women and in some cases teens. We find out what drove many of them to the streets and how they got involved with prostitution. I find it appalling how little people seemed to care that prostitutes were being murdered. Ridgway purposely chose women in this profession since besides hating them, he thought no one would notice them going missing and if they did, would not care. Rule manages to have you feel nothing but sympathy for these women and their family who would not know for years or decades in some cases about what happened to their daughters/mothers/sisters. I loved that Rule added in pictures before she got into the history of each woman. I also found myself hoping for a different outcome once I got caught up in all of their lives.

Rule smartly does not make Ridgway the focus of this book. Every couple of chapters or so we peek back in at Ridgway to see where he is in his life, but he is depicted as a malevolent ghost for most of the story before Rule goes into how he was finally apprehended.

I do think in this case going into the Green River Task Force could have been cut way down in this final book. They really didn't find anything to go on with Ridgway for a long time, so reading about other suspects wasn't interesting. I also thought Rule carried the water for the police a bit too much in this book. She also weirdly takes potshots at Robert Keppel who enlisted Ted Bundy who provided some insights into the Green River Killer before his death. Keppel even wrote a book about it entitled "The Riverman".

The ending of the book goes into Ridgway going out with law enforcement and finding the locations of other victims and him recounting how he murdered them. show less

In the early 1980s, the Seattle area had a serial killer running around, mostly killing prostitutes. True crime author Ann Rule, by then having published her book on Ted Bundy, lived in the area, and followed very closely what was happening. The killer wasn’t caught for almost 20 years, but when DNA testing came available, he was not only caught, but he admitted to many more murders than they would have been able to link to him via DNA.

Unfortunately, I (once again) ended up with an abridged audio. I was only a kid in the early 80s, and not in the area, so it was more recently that I heard of the Green River killer. The book was interesting, but I would have liked to have listened to the entire book. It did seem to jump abruptly from show more talking about the victims to following the killer’s life. Not sure if the book actually felt that way or if it felt such because it was abridged. show less

For some reason, we seem to have more than our share of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest: Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, the Pig Farm killer (at least he was on the Canadian side of the border). Even Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers, left L.A. long enough to strangle two women in Washington state.

Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, managed to murder at least 48 young women between 1982 and 2001, while living an apparently ordinary life and reporting daily to his job painting trucks at the local Kenworth plant. I was eager to read this book, because I lived in the Seattle area when the rampage started, and even had some dealings with that particular Kenworth facility. Ann Rule is a well-known and talented show more writer in the true crime genre, and she followed the Green River case from the beginning. Unfortunately this is not her best book. The story is compelling when the author focuses on the actual crimes and the investigation. It would have been much better with some judicious editing.

Rule provides a profile of each victim, an admirable attempt to humanize these women so many had written off. But really, given the bad choices and the similarities of their short and dreary lives, it is hard to believe that every last one was beautiful, intelligent, and popular.

The author takes up entirely too much time on her various speaking engagements and her cozy relationships with the police. Perhaps because of those relationships, the police are unfailingly described in the most glowing terms. Having encountered a few of King County’s finest, including one who stalked me at home after he investigated an accident, I have my doubts about their universal brilliance and shining moral integrity.

Perhaps I am too much of a cynic, but so many opportunities were lost. I remember the endless parade of suspects who were trotted out, merely because they were found on the SeaTac strip at the wrong time. Yet when one victim’s family actually tracked Ridgway’s distinctive vehicle to his home, and reported it to the police, they did nothing more than knock on the door, interview him briefly, and accept his denials! Although they had samples of Ridgway’s body fluids, the police didn’t bother testing them for DNA until years after the technology had become acceptable as evidence.

Bottom line – interesting story, I am glad I read it, but even happier that I found it on the remainder table and didn’t pay full price for it. show less