Serial Saturday #4

This is an area of Pacific Highway South that's called "the strip". It's just South of the airport, very near I-5, and it was (and still is somewhat) the center of the local prostitution trade. The only difference now is that many prostitutes have moved their business to the internet. On this Saturday evening, I only saw one working girl in the mile I drove to this spot.

After the summer of 1982 there was somewhat of a quiet period, no bodies found, I started my senior year in high school and had a new boyfriend to distract me. There were still girls going missing that September and into the fall. I had no idea one of my classmates was a part of this story at this time. I didn't know her well, I wasn't aware that her older brother had already died in a car accident or that her 14 year old sister had just gone missing. I would find that information out years later. I saw her last at the 20 year reunion, just one month before she'd courageously stand up in a court room and give Green River Gary a piece of her mind.

We would all find out later that this area was about a mile or so from where Gary Ridgeway was living, and that many times he'd park his pickup at the 7-11 parking lot that you can kind of see. He'd open the hood and appear to be working on it as he watched what was going on at this intersection. The motel sign you can see is one of the numerous seedy hotels on this strip where there were cheap weekly rates, and everyone turned their heads at the prostitutes working out of them.