It's the Green River, Stupid: Part 1

I am not afraid, I've had people point guns at me. ~ Rep. Dave Reichert

"He desecrated the victims. The public ought to know that." Tomás Guillén is describing Republican 8th District Congressman Dave Reichert and his manipulation of the Green River murder investigation and the arrest of Gary Ridgway to climb up into party politics.

Guillén's no political firebrand, he's a respected Seattle University journalism and criminal justice professor. As a Seattle Times reporter, he covered the Green River story from its beginnings and has  written two books on the subject.

His academic text, Serial Killers: Issues Explored Through the Green River Murders, and Ridgway attorney Mark Prothero's Defending Gary, both written after Reichert's 2004 election, tell a starkly different story than does Reichert's ghost-written autohagiography, Chasing the Devil, My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer.

Reichert's record as sheriff was exposed in last week's devastating reporting by the P-I's Lewis Kamb who found plenty of former colleagues who'd reveal him to be "an ambitious self-promoter, an inexperienced manager prone to poor decisions, even a close-minded detective more obstacle than asset to a serial murder investigation."

Reichert refused to be interviewed in person for the P-I's piece, preferring to answer the reporter's questions in writing.

(The written material, and people we've talked to use some strong adjectives to describe the former Sheriff's professional behavior: manipulative, self-serving, amateurish, ambitious, creepy, bungling, inappropriate, opportunistic, egotistical, voyeuristic, and stubborn. These are quite different from the descriptives we've been hearing for years: heroic, gracious, sensitive, muscular, chivalrous, well-mannered, brave, clean and reverent. You decide).

Sheriff Reichert became the public face of the sensational arrest of the serial killer by elbowing his way in front of the cameras on November 30, 2001 when the sensational collar was announced.

Everyone knows Reichert is the guy who caught the Green River killer, because he reminds us in every introduction; every speech, interview, and on his website.

It helped get him elected in 2004 in his race against KIRO radio host, Dave Ross; and he still flogs it every time he opens his mouth in his race against Darcy Burner.

Recently, on KUOW's Weekday with Steve Scher, (in a rare appearance in a venue where he might be seriously questioned) he referenced serial killers no fewer than three times in one hour on the local NPR talk show despite being asked no questions on the subject by Scher, who's unused to politicians who drop blood instead of names.

Here's an example: Why is Reichert against abortion? He told a interviewer recently, "I have a great respect for life. I've seen a lot of death in my career, worked Green River, seen lots of dead bodies."

Back in Washington, the Honorable Mr. Reichert is known as the Man from Green River- his longest speech on the House floor during his lackluster first term was about "capturing" Gary Ridgway.

The release of Chasing the Devil, in late July, 2004 was exquisitely synched-up with his primary campaign which was difficult with a crowded Republican field anxious to replace the retiring Jennifer Dunn.

Bolstered by both his publisher's marketing and his own political campaign, it was a perfect PR storm. Reichert's face was thrust onto the front pages of local papers. He was interviewed on CNN and Court TV in full dress uniform (and every hair present and accounted for) talking about "capturing" the killer.

"Reichert used the serial murder case to move forward," Guillén told BlatherWatch. "It was a travesty." Photos released when Ridgway was arrested show Reichert in a suit posing in the bottom of a ravine near the Des Moines Highway.

"He used the grave site of a murder victim for personal ambition," he says.

Meanwhile, his opponents, Bellevue Councilman Conrad Lee, State Sen. Luke Esser and (now GOP State Chairman) Diane Tebelius were lucky if they made page B-1 with their little coffee klatches, blah-blah press releases, and cheesy meet & greets.

(Chasing the Devil was neither a literary nor a popular success. P-I books critic, John Marshall wrote that Reichert painted himself as "muscular, charismatic, devoutly Christian, a dogged mix of Dudley Do-Right and the Lone Ranger." Not exactly a bestseller: you can now buy a like new copy on Amazon for $1.74.)

Although otherwise a failure, his book as a political instrument was inspired. Media was flooded with pictures of the sheriff in a hunky muscle shirt sifting for bones at a body dump site, or in full Sheriffian regalia sternly leaning into and staring down the cowering serial killer from across a table. Reichert won the primary easily and got a tremendous knee-up in the November election.

(There's his hair. It's magnificent. Dave Ross told us: "He's got great hair, he's acknowledged he's got great hair." He's known in legal circles as "Sheriff Hairspray."  [Reichert's hair]... is always ready for the next photo opportunity," says Prothero).

"My standing orders were that we were going to campaign on issues," says Dave Ross. "Rumors I got about Dave or the Green River killer or the release of the book- we weren't going to touch them."

But there's more than a little résumé inflation going on in Chasing the Devil. There's some obfuscatin'. Reichert had been "lead detective" in 1982 as the first bodies surfaced in and around the Green River. His book, however, would let you believe he held the title until 1990, never mentioning that several other detectives led in later murders.

The book is more than three quarters done before he makes passing reference to the fact that the task force had commanders over the "lead detectives." Former Detective Bob Keppel told the P-I, Reichert was "one detective among many," and never led discussions about the direction of the task force as a true leader would have.

Actually, he had little to do with the investigation having left the task force in 1990 to climb the bureaucratic ladder in the Sheriff's Department. What's more, these new accounts show how Reichert's tremendous ego was responsible for early police blunders that stalled the investigation and let Gary Ridgway continue killing for decades.

But great hair or not, "He got elected based on Green River, when in fact, he didn't solve it and he didn't win against Gary Ridgway," says Guillén."

The fact is: technology caught the killer, not Detective Reichert's dogged shoe-leather sleuthing as his press so dramatically implies. Even then, on Sheriff Reichert's watch, the saliva sample that could have busted Ridgway as early as 1996 when the DNA technology became available, was not tested until 2001.

Women died in that interim.
~
Read the creepiest parts in the next installment here.

Comments

[Scrilla]

I've forgotten...remind me what the qualifications are to be a politician ?
I think we need this baseline befire I buy your thesis that he's done nothing to hang his hat on.

[Scrilla]

before

[sparky]

Qualifications? If you read the news the past few days, the slimier and creepier the better, apparently.

[cinco]

Have you ever hezrd this guy speak without a speech propared? he sounds like my grandma on a sugar high.

[Scrilla]

Spsrky,
Thanks for making my point.

[sparky]

If you say so...

[chucks]

As a Republican living in western Washington, I accept that I may never have representation in state or federal government. I do not completly understand the thinking of my neighbors but do believe in the concept of majority rule.
I do not however understand or see what Darcy Burner brings to the table. She has no credible political experiance or stable work history. She has taken on major educational chalenges only to quit. The only thing she has is being a Democrat. Not enough.
At least Reichert has a long career with success. Seems valuable to me in this era when half the world wants to kill us.
Granted much of his career may have been kissing butt to get ahead. That is the same as it takes to get anything done in congress.

[coiler]

Why does half the world, as you put it, want to kill us? Isn't it more the policies than the people they hate?

Is Reichert going to run down 5th ave chasing Kim Jong Il?

Reichert didn't do anything extraordinary, other than posing with Big Gay Mark Foley in a 'family values' moment.

[chucks]

I do not know.
Was it the policies of Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton or Bush 2 that created Irans hate for us?
Was it the policies of Clinton or Bush that caused North Korea to build a bomb?
Why is ethnic "cleansing" going on in Africa?
Why are France, Denmark, Spain Etc fighting Islamic radicals at home.
Why did that man in Seattle have to pull a gun to defend himself in downtown Seattle?
I really do not care why. Nearist I can tell the world is full of assholes that want to hurt people who do not believe as they do.
It is not Bush's or Clintons fault.
It is not congressman hairsprays fault.
It is not Americas fault.
Does not mater anyway. I just want
the President, the Congress, The Senate, The Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, the CIA, FBI, the Border Patrol, Dept of Homeland Security, the auto club to handle it.
Too much concern about some pervert in Florida, or the "economy."
My wife, children and grandkids security is what is important.

[cowpotpi3]

Well, Chucks, it sounds like you have a severe case of "hear what you want to" going on. If you think that somehow this guy is going to keep you safe, you have another thing coming. Based upon that logic you should be against the guy, after all due to his 'leadership' (if we are to believe the artilce) he allowed a serial killer to go on killing for years. How does that make you more safe?

As to your other questions, it seems to me that yourself and a lot of Republicans are trying to deflect from the incompetance, scandal and outright failure their leadership has provided over the past 6 years. Take ownership of your party and lose the inept leaders.

Your comments on "some pervert in Florida" are so droll that I doubt you mean it, or if you do you lack an understanding of what you just said. First off, the Republicans look down on all others as immoral and such...then they go out of their way to cover up a pervert who is praying on kids in order to make sure they hold on to that seat. What if it was YOUR kid or grandkid? What would you be saying then?

Last question: If that scandal was a Democratic one, would you feel the same way? I think, if you are intellectually honest, you would have to answer no.

[chucks]

If when the evidence comes in and shows Hastert is culpable, than screw him. He goes along with anybody else that proves to have protected Foley. As a teen growing up in Lomita, CA in the sixtys, I was molested by gay men on two seperate occasions. And I will admit that it took years to figure out that not all homosexual men are "faggots". That not all straight men molest girls. Those who hurt children come in all stripes and must be condemed.
The war in Iraq is not going as well as any of us had hoped. So what is the sollution. A long term solution. Not just something to benifit the Republicans over the Democrats or Democrats over Republicans.
I do not know, but I am open to ideas. Please no bs, just honest ideas.
I have never been accused of being intellectually anything.The reason I read this sight as well as HA is because I can not get all sides from Big Pants or Hannity or Olberman. Try hard to pick through and make up my own mind (Besides I weirdly love talk radio babel and this sight is king of Seattle talk).

[cowpotpi3]

The Iraq war is not going well as you had hoped? Do you really think we were told the truth in the run up? Again, if you're being intellectually honest and actually have done something other than eat what Bush has spoon-fed you, then you might have some serious questions, like all right thinking Americans should. Do you know what the OSP is? Do you know who Curveball is? Do you know what the Future of Iraq Project was? Do you know that all the things they told us about Iraq, from the aluminium tubes, to the mobile bio labs, to the terrorist training camps at Salman Pak, to the support for Zarqawi, to the supposed meeting of Atta with the Iraqi agent in Prague, to the yellow cake uranium in Niger were LIES?

Have you bothered to fact check any of that information (which has been proven to be false and uncoroborated BS) or have you stuck your head in the sand and went "oh well things don't go so good sometimes?"

If you don't know what most of what I asked you means and have never heard of it, I rest my case: you simply don't have the information to develop a full understanding of what went on. I really hope you dig into some of that information and educate yourself, because as confident as you sound about what you know about the world, you seem to have a truly narrow view.

[y2k1]

"...November 30, 2000 when the sensational collar was announced." I remember it was really in 2001, because it was overshadowed by world events such as Winona Ryder's arrest.

[blathering michael]

you're right, y2k1
thanks!

[cowpotpi3]

Chuck wherefore art thou? Did you cut and run?

[chucks]

Good Afternoon cowpotpi3
Sorry, this stupid thing called a job distracted me from life. It is very dificult to pull my head out of the sand. Damn cat keeps kicking more on.
Do not know much about the OSP except one of them pricks wrote me a ticket in 1973 for going 57 in a 55 on I5 near Grants Pass at two AM. Never will forget that one. Just something about George Tenant and the CIA and filtered and nonfiltered info to the Whitehouse, the press, congress etc.
That curveball fellow really had me swinging at air. I still do not know if he was a genious or an idiot.
The future of Iraq Project is a mystery as well. I will be very old by the time I get through reading that project. I fall to sleep about every 10 pages.
But you are correct about one very important point. I do have a narrow view of the world. The mortgage, the transmission, paying back the lawyer for her help in getting custody of my Grand daughter, the doc, dentist and that damn grocer, the rta tax, where the hell is my Social Security I've been paying for the last forty years, that damn Darcy chick and her friend Maria wants to cancel my meager tax break etc.... In the mean time, I have no clue what the D's are going to do to make the Muslim terror groups go away. They still want you, me and the old Jewish lady down the street dead and will do anything to make it happen.

[coiler]

Jesus had something to say about the OSP
"And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."
- Acts (ch. IX, v. 5

[sparky]

Verily I say unto coiler...Amen

[joanie]

Chucks, you oughta try writing fiction. I think you gotta knack . . . might increase your income as well.