The identification does not affect Ridgway’s criminal case, as he already pleaded guilty to killing Stephens when she was still referred to as Bones 10. Still busy as ever, still saying his work is far from over. Technically, Detective Jensen is retired, but he calls himself a volunteer for the department. There’s a lot of answers that I’d like to have."Īs always, it’s not easy for him to be done with the case, even if now, it’s officially closed. "It was kind of frightening that we had this identification and we don’t have this record of her having ever been here.
#Green river killer victims identified serial
Wendy Stephens was just 14 years old when she ran away from home in Colorado and a short time later was murdered by one of the most infamous serial killers in Seattle, a city she had no ties to. "Somebody had to be there for her, nobody else was." She is no longer Bones 10 she is 14-year-old Wendy Stephens.įor Detective Jensen, finally knowing her name is profound, and emotional. And now, 36 years later, thanks to help from the nonprofit the DNA Doe Project and King County forensic anthropologist Kathy Taylor, she’s finally been identified. "How does somebody not miss someone that young? And that was always my question, how does somebody not miss somebody that young?" He couldn’t let Bones 10 continue to be nameless. "You’ve got to send these girls home…emotionally it was probably my number one project," says Jensen. But Detective Jensen knew his work on the case was far from over. But when it came to Bones 10, like so many of his victims, he knew nothing about her.Īfter pleading guilty to 59 murders, Ridgway was sentenced to life in prison in 2003.
#Green river killer victims identified crack
Detective Jensen submitted the DNA that would finally crack the case and give investigators the evidence they needed to arrest Gary Ridgway in 2001, someone who’d already been a suspect for nearly 20 years.Īll the while, Bones 10, estimated to be possibly as young as 12 years old, remained unidentified.Īs part of his plea deal, Ridgway was to help detectives. When former task force member Dave Reichert became sheriff in 1997, he pushed for funding for forensic testing. "We got cut, cut, and finally it was just me. Budget cuts to the Green River task force slowly dwindled the team down to one. "It did bother me that she was so young and she was unidentified." They didn’t know her name, so investigators began referring to her as Bones 10. He remembers the victim, just bones then but mainly intact, was in the fetal position. I was a burglary theft detective and I got moved into a serial murder investigation." "What you have to understand is I wasn’t a homicide detective when I started this case. "We spent the majority of 1984 recovering bodies."įor Detective Jensen, the call to the little league baseball field was his first murder case on the Green River task force. This latest victim was one of six victims who’d been found within a less than two-week timeframe 18-year-old Cheryl Wims was found the next day, less than 100 feet from her. The victim added to the overwhelming list of girls and young women who fell prey to the Green River killer.
We went over there and probably within five minutes one of the officers had spotted the rest of the remains," explains retired detective Tom Jensen. "The manager over at the little league baseball field in Burien, his dog had come home with a bone and he thinks it looks like it might be human.
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