From the Dec 13 – Dec 19, 2001 issue

News

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Former Seattle Times Reporter Tracks Green River Killer for 20 Years

by Amy Jenniges

Tomás Guillen has been living in his office at Seattle University for the past two weeks. The small room has become a makeshift studio apartment--it's an hour and a half commute to the Enumclaw house he shares with his wife and three children, and he hasn't been home much this week. His sleeping bag and his daughter's pillow are stuffed between a tall bookcase and two gray filing cabinets. He's been sleeping on the floor and washing up in a bathroom down the hall, so he can be near his accumulated files on the Green River Killer case.

"I like to keep them close to me," says Guillen, a 51-year-old Mexican American journalism professor and former Seattle Times reporter. "I turn off my computer so I don't get too much light."

Guillen (pronounced GEE-yen) sits in his cluttered office, propping up his feet on the desk. Though his office is in disarray, he's dressed neatly in a striped turtleneck and navy V-neck sweater. He talks eagerly about the Green River Killer case.

After covering the case for a decade as a reporter, he co-wrote a book about the investigation. His journalism students have heard countless stories about the investigation, and Guillen's summer course even includes a tour of the Green River.

The filing cabinets are filled with information Guillen has gathered since 1982--the bottom drawer holds reports on women missing in Washington state since the killings started, organized by county. In the top drawers, there are old printouts of every crime reported near the SeaTac strip, where most of the victims were last seen from 1982 and 1983.

"There's nobody else with those documents," Guillen says, gesturing to an overflowing file drawer. He has copies of his files at home, so they are always within reach in the event that the case breaks, as it did on November 30.

Guillen has been following the Green River Killer case from the beginning, often getting information before the law enforcement officials. After 16-year-old Wendy Lee Coffield's body was pulled from the Green River in July 1982, and four other victims were found a month later, Guillen hit the SeaTac strip to find connections between the five young women.

"I linked them," Guillen says. "[Police] didn't want to link it publicly." He went to topless clubs and mud-wrestling joints, talking to as many prostitutes and sex workers as he could, to dig up information on the victims.

"Tommy is one of the best diggers around," says Nick Provenza, the Seattle Times assistant metro editor who oversaw Guillen's work. "He latches onto something, and he doesn't let it go."

When skeletal remains of more women were found in late 1983, Guillen teamed up with Carlton Smith to cover the investigation again. The pair often talked to witnesses before police did.

Guillen went to the crime scene every time a body was discovered, often spending days at the site to take notes.

"I know the bodies intimately," Guillen says. He compiled a database with the list of women--including information on the date they were reported missing, their relatives and friends, and the date the bodies were found--trying to establish links between the victims.

His 1991 book, The Search for the Green River Killer, co-authored with Smith, publicly broke information the Green River Killer Task Force hadn't released, like the fact that two victims had triangular stones inserted in their vaginas. It also included an entire section about one particular suspect, whom Guillen and Smith didn't name. The section was on Gary Leon Ridgway.

"There were always a lot of suspects in this case--that was one of the problems. There are too many men that want kinky sex on the Strip," Guillen says. "But [Ridgway] has always been a top-of-the-list suspect."

The excerpt reads: The man worked the graveyard shift as a painter in a Seattle-area truck manufacturing plant. And the man lived on a small cul-de-sac just north of the road that led down to the Green River.

Though Guillen's involvement with the investigation officially ended when he left the Times in 1994 to take a position at Seattle University, he kept following the case.

"Green River has never really left me," Guillen says. "I'm hooked." Called back to The Seattle Times on November 30, he wrote an article entitled "Politics shadowed Green River task force" on December 6.

In the last few months, Guillen was looking into a new theory: there might be 19-year-old satellite photos taken of the dump sites around the time the killer was disposing of bodies. Guillen figured out the exact latitude and longitude of the sites, and was checking archived weather reports to pinpoint clear days before a body was found, hoping he could use the information to find old government satellite photos. Since some of the dump sites were remote, limited-access areas like the Green River and Seward Park, Guillen hoped he could discover a satellite image of the killer's vehicle in the area.

"That's what I was playing with when this thing broke," Guillen says.

After a week of radio and TV interviews, and his return to the Times, Guillen finally has a chance to sit down.

"I want to see closure on the case for everyone--victims, relatives, ourselves too," Guillen says. "I want to hear that they've linked [Ridgway] to the other cases, or he confesses. Then I'm done. I'm spent. It's off my back."

Once the case is closed, Guillen might be able to shake the amateur sleuths who hound him weekly with their theories and tips.

"The crazies find me," Guillen says. On December 7, a man walked into his office to hand-deliver an envelope with an obscure list inside. The man had driven up from Oregon. A few years ago, a man called him to say he found rocks near the Green River, brought them home, and now they were talking to him. Guillen told the man to put the rocks back.

Guillen isn't the only one ready to get past the case. His family is ready for it to be over, too.

"My wife doesn't like the word 'green,'" Guillen says. "[She] wants to know if I'm going to be home tonight."

amy@thestranger.com