Finally a breakthrough after more than 40 years: missing Lori (15) became a victim of a notorious serial killer | Abroad

Razpotnik had run away from home in 1982, when she was 15 years old. From then on, her relatives from Lewis County (south Seattle; ed.) lived in limbo for decades. At no time did she give any sign of life.

But how did investigators discover her tragic fate? By a combination of coincidence and modern research techniques, it turns out.

In 1985, a trivial traffic accident in Auburn (Washington) led to a gruesome discovery. Officers found the remains of three victims left on the roadside. Kimi-Kai Pitsor (16) could be identified fairly quickly, the two others ended up in the police archives as ‘bones 16 and 17’.

In 2002, Ridgway, who has since been arrested, designated the same location as one of his dumping sites. The perpetrator was therefore known, but the identity of his victims remained a mystery.

Until DNA research pointed to Sandra Major in 2012. The 20-year-old sex worker was last seen getting into a truck in 1982. Then she must have ended up in his clutches.

Now Razpotnik was also officially identified, based on a saliva sample provided by her mother. “This news takes me by surprise, but it also brings me some peace of mind,” responds Donna Hurley. “In the back of my mind there was always the option that Ridgway had something to do with it. But if that were the case, wouldn’t someone have confirmed that to me already? I could live more easily with the idea that she was still alive and had started a family of her own somewhere.”

“Lori was an intelligent child, she was full of energy,” Hurley reminisces. “However, things started to go wrong from secondary school onwards. She got in trouble for stealing things from stores and skipping school. She also often ran away from home.”

Ridgway was sentenced in 2003 to 49 life terms, once for each murder he was accused of. He said he mainly targeted prostitutes. He strangled them during sex. “I could kill as many of that species as I wanted without being caught,” was the explanation.

At the trial he apologized for his brutal crimes. “I’m sorry I killed all those women. They still had their whole lives ahead of them. To all the victims who were not found: may they rest in peace. They deserve a better place than where I left them.”

The ‘Green River Killer’ was nicknamed because he usually dumped his victims in the Green River in the US state of Washington. In a 2013 telephone interview, he himself indicated that he had committed many more murders. “Somewhere between 75 and 80. I say this now because I no longer want to keep families of missing ladies in the dark.”