Ridgway's close calls highlight missed opportunities

Police chased thousands of leads in the 21-year Green River investigation. From details released yesterday, these were some that pointed to Gary L. Ridgway:

• August 1982. A Port of Seattle police officer found Ridgway parked on a dead-end road, near South 192nd Street and the Alaska Airlines warehouse. It was the same night Terry Milligan disappeared and eight blocks from where Gisele Lovvorn's body was discovered a month later.

• October 1982. A friend of Denise Bush told police in the 1980s she saw Bush talking with a man the night before she disappeared. The man was looking under the hood of a green pickup truck with oxidized paint and "jerked his head around and hid it under the hood as if he did not want her to see his face." The friend provided details for a composite sketch of Ridgway, and in 2002, she picked his photo from a montage.

• April 1983. Gail Matthews' boyfriend told police he last saw Matthews riding with a man in a pickup truck turning onto South 216th Street near Des Moines. He described the truck as green or blue and with a canopy. He described the man, but the description and composite drawing did not closely resemble Ridgway, who lived just off South 216th Street.

• April 1983. The boyfriend of Kimi-Kai Pitsor told police she stepped into an older green Ford pickup truck, never to be seen again, and described the driver. Ridgway's girlfriend owned an older, light-green Ford. In 1987, Pitsor's boyfriend picked Ridgway's photo out of a montage, though he was not "1000 percent" certain.

• May 1983. Marie Malvar's boyfriend took Des Moines police to Ridgway's house four days after she disappeared. He identified the pickup he saw Malvar get into. Two Des Moines detectives questioned Ridgway, who admitted picking up prostitutes but denied picking up Malvar.

• July 1983. A Port of Seattle police officer stopped near Ridgway "just as he finished the sex act" with Kelly Ware, whom he had killed a few days earlier, in a wooded spot south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, according to Ridgway. The officer, who apparently did not see the body, "asked him what he was doing. Ridgway claims he calmly explained that he had stopped to urinate, and the officer did not investigate further," according to a summary of evidence filed yesterday by the King County prosecutor.

• February 1984. Ridgway wrote a letter to a local newspaper entitled, "What you need to know about the Green River man." It contained falsehoods to throw off police but also mentioned that some victims' fingernails had been cut, a fact unknown to police until this year. Prosecutors wrote, "The Task Force sent the letter to the FBI for analysis, and an 'expert' there proclaimed that the letter was not written by the killer."

• December 1984. Rebecca Garde Guay reported she had been assaulted in November 1982 by a man she was certain tried to kill her with a chokehold. She is the only known survivor of the Green River killer. Guay told police in 1984 and 1986 that the man showed her an identification card from Kenworth Trucking. She also picked Ridgway out of a photo montage. Ridgway, questioned by police, admitted he "dated" Guay but said he choked her when she bit him and let her go. A Green River Task Force detective said Guay told him she did not wish to pursue the case.