But each family will react in different ways. “I know this is a different message-saying that we want to memorialize your loved ones. “Every family reacted differently,” Reichert says. He remembers meeting with the families in 2003 to tell them about the plea deal that would spare Ridgway’s life in exchange for the killer providing details on the locations of dozens of missing women believed to be his victims. Reichert worries that some of the victims’ relatives won’t want those psychic wounds reopened. “The struggle is, how do you do it?” he says. He’s supportive of the idea of a memorial, but cautiously so.
Congressman Dave Reichert, who worked the Green River case for two decades and was King County sheriff when Ridgway was arrested in 2001, finds himself asking many of them. Undertaking a public memorial tied to such a horrible blight on the region’s history opens up myriad questions. But money may be the least of the project’s concerns. The memorial through grants and other fundraisers. Gomez says she’s confident that OPS will raise the remaining cash needed to complete The memorial’s design and construction- phase two of the project-won’t begin until 2014.Īs of early February, OPS had raised less than $11,000 of its $225,000 goal on Indiegogo, with a March deadline.
GREEN RIVER KILLER VICTIMS SERIES
OPS will display these collected works in a series of public exhibitions and during presentations at churches and schools, to community and social groups, and “basi- cally any place that will have us come in and do a presentation,” says Qualliotine, who has led community outreach pro- grams in Seattle and Portland to dispel myths about prostitution and domestic violence for the past two decades. During phase one, which spans from January 2013 to the end of the year, OPS will hold weekly art workshops for prostitution survivors.
On the crowd-funding site Indiegogo, a virtual fundraiser for the Green River Victims Memorial outlines OPS’s long- range plans for the project. Last fall, a memorial honoring homeless people who have died in King County was unveiled downtown in Victor Steinbrueck Park-after nine years in the making and some stiff resistance to the high-profile location. This wouldn’t be Seattle’s first memorial to people who’ve fallen through society’s cracks.
memorial to women and children killed while in the life of prostitution. Gomez and OPS cofounder Peter Qualliotine believe it will be the first U.S. The Green River Victims Memorial is OPS’s pet project. And last year, she cofounded the Organization for Prostitution Survivors (OPS), a volunteer-run nonprofit that offers support groups for current and former prostitutes, as well as community education programs. She also leads a City of Seattle class for prostitutes who’ve been arrested it’s part of a diversion program that also includes community service. She’s worked with troubled youth at several Seattle children’s agencies. FOR SOME, IT’S GOING TO BE WAY TOO PAINFUL.’ ‘EACH FAMILY WILL REACT IN DIFFERENT WAYS. In addition to establishing a public space for remembering and mourning Ridgway’s victims, she hopes to change the public perception that prostitution is a way of life women and girls happily embrace and that prostitutes invite the violence committed against them. Gomez’s goal: to create a permanent memorial in the Seattle area to the victims of the Green River killer. “They were sisters, daughters, nieces, aunts, friends and mothers,” she says. Now out of “the life” for seven years, she wants to ensure that the Green River victims are recognized as whole human beings, not just as the head shots-or in some cases, mug shots- portrayed by the media for two decades. “I pretty much envisioned myself being thrown in a ditch somewhere and being Jane Doe,” Gomez says. A teen mother whose parents kicked her out of the house, she soon wound up under the thumb of an abusive pimp, turning tricks from Seattle’s Highway 99. Seattleite Noel Gomez knows how it feels to be regarded as one of society’s throwaways.
“The girls were being blamed for their deaths,” Graham says, recalling the public sentiment toward Ridgway’s victims as police recovered body after body. Many of the Green River victims had been prostitutes or runaways. At first, Graham felt too ashamed to talk about her sister’s mur- der. Debbie had been missing for six years when authorities found her remains in 1988. These are memories that never, never go away.” Graham’s sister, Debbie Estes, was 15 when Ridgway killed her. “I’ll drive by where they found my sister’s body. “I’ll drive by the corner where Gary Ridgway picked my sister up,” Graham says of her frequent trips to the Seattle area. The Seattle area is filled with difficult landmarks for Jenny Graham, who now lives in Spokane with her husband and two children.
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