Victim of Green River killer identified after nearly 40 years

Investigators have identified a victim of the Green River Killer, one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, more than four decades after the victim was last seen alive, officials in Washington state said Tuesday.

The victim, Lori Anne Razpotnik, who was known as Bones 17 for nearly four decades after her remains were discovered, ran away from home in 1982 at the age of 15. This is according to a press release from the King County Sheriff’s Office. Her family never saw her again.

On December 30, 1985, workers from Auburn, a city in King County about 25 miles south of Seattle, were called to investigate a car that had gone over an embankment. At the scene, investigators discovered two sets of human remains which they named “Bones 16” and “Bones 17” because they could not immediately identify them.

Gary Ridgway, who was known as the Green River Killer and convicted of 49 murders in 2003, led investigators to the same location in 2002 and admitted to placing victims there. Their identity remained a mystery.

Ten years later, Bones 16 was identified through DNA testing as Sandra Majors.

To identify Bones 17, researchers recently called on Parabon NanoLabs in Reston, Virginia, to perform forensic genetic genealogy testing. King County detectives also contacted Ms. Razpotnik’s mother, who provided them with a saliva sample. The University of North Texas completed a DNA comparison and confirmed that the remains were Ms. Razpotnik’s.

Before Ms. Razpotnik, Wendy Stephens was the most recent Green River Killer victim to be identified in 2020; her remains were found in a swampy area outside a baseball field in Burien, Wash., in the spring of 1984.

Dave Reichert, a former King County sheriff who helped investigate Mr. Ridgway’s murders, told KING-TVa local news channel, that Ms. Razpotnik’s identification brought back many memories.

“Years and years of collecting dozens of bodies of young women and girls,” he said.

Mr. Reichert told KING-TV that his first reaction was to express his deepest condolences to the family. “There are still many unsolved femicides that occurred from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s,” he said. “We can only go by what Ridgway told us, that he believed he killed somewhere around 65 or 70 people.”

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Ridgway terrorized King County. Although he was convicted of murdering 49 young women and girls, he has confessed to 71 murders, and some investigators believe the actual number is even higher.

He was sentenced in 2003 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At his sentencing he apologized for his crimes. “I’m sorry I killed these ladies,” he said. “They had their whole lives ahead of them.”

Mr Ridgway also begged for his family’s forgiveness during the hearing and expressed regret for ‘the ladies who were not found’.

“May they rest in peace,” he said. “They need a better place than I gave them.”