Tragedy Strikes A Mother Twice -- Hopes Dimming For Green River Victim's Sister

At first glance, she seems no different from the other women who disappear periodically from Pacific Highway South.

She's young, a prostitute, a vagabond and she has a criminal record longer than most professional resumes.

What sets her apart is her last name: Wims.

Her full name is Deborah Yvonne Wims, and her sister was Cheryl Lee Wims, who was 18 when she was murdered in 1983 by the Green River killer.

Tragically, the past appears to be repeating itself for Ruth Wims, the women's mother. Cheryl Wims will never come home. And police believe Deborah Wims, last seen in 1990 when she was 31, should have turned up by now.

So devastated was Rainier Valley resident Ruth Wims over Cheryl's disappearance and death nine years ago, she could hardly discuss the ordeal. Today, she flatly declines inquiries about Deborah.

It's too painful, she says. She simply wants to be left alone.

Two sisters, two disappearances astoundingly similar.

Cheryl vanished on her 18th birthday, May 23, 1983, while on her way from Seattle to Pacific Highway South in what is now SeaTac to pick up a birthday gift.

Although there is no record of Cheryl ever being arrested for prostitution, her brother and King County police have said she dabbled in it.

In fact, explained police Detective Tom Jensen, the woman Cheryl was on her way to see the day she vanished was a prostitute. That woman's pimp, Jensen said, was the brother of Deborah Wims' pimp.

Repeatedly during the 1980s, the Green River Task Force was called out to recover victims' remains. With each find, Ruth Wims dreaded getting a call from the medical examiner's office.

"Every time a body was found, I went into shock," she said years ago.

In March 1984, she dreamed she was happily playing with Cheryl. A few days later, her daughter's skeleton was finally found, just north of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport near a Little League field. More remains were found nearby, but those still have not been identified.

Shortly after the discovery, Wims said of Cheryl, the youngest of two boys and two girls: "She was just getting ready to be a woman."

In the end, Cheryl became one of 49 young women believed slain by the Green River killer between the summer of 1982 and 1984. The serial murderer has not been caught. It's believed that for some reason he has stopped stalking women - at least in metropolitan Seattle.

That makes Deborah Wims' disappearance eerily coincidental, years after the last known date of disappearance - March 1984 - of a victim on the official Green River list.

Deborah Wims' arrests for auto theft, grand larceny and prostitution began in the late 1970s as she meandered through Seattle, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Santa Ana, Calif., and Wichita, Kan.

Despite her younger sister's death, Deborah continued working as a streetwalker.

Her last two prostitution arrests occurred on Pacific Highway South on May 10 and June 15, 1990. In the June arrest, she also was booked for resisting arrest after allegedly striking an undercover officer.

Deborah last was seen Oct. 25, 1990, on her way to a supermarket on Pacific Highway South and South 216th Street, an intersection where several Green River victims disappeared. She wore blue jeans and a green bomber jacket.

King County police are unsure what to make of Deborah's disappearance - how it fits in the Green River case or a more current string of deaths in the county - but they feel enough time has elapsed to suspect she was the victim of foul play.

Is she dead?

Ruth Wims doesn't want to talk about losing her second daughter to the streets.

"I personally don't like the looks of it," said Jensen, the only detective still working on the Green River investigation. "It's not encouraging."

His boss, Capt. T. Michael Nault, is more blunt: "We presume she's dead."