This is mighty stuff, Neko, thanks for standing up for it and speaking out. I was in that I5 corridor from 1986-1997, living in Auburn when the GRK was also there right under our noses, playing shows in Seattle when Home Alive was founded, all of it. I still carry it with me too. I see its echoes in my Indigenous community today via MMIW, or MMIP, and how the predatory nature of too many men has echoed through history and plays out over and over and over again until we do something about it, and it fills me with rage. It is genocide and always has been. What I refuse to feel is powerless, about any of this. "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living" and all of that. ✊🏽
This was a powerful post, Neko. Thank you for putting your thoughts and your heart out here.
In early December I was listening to a podcast where criminologist and author David Wilson was a guest, and during the episode the typical, "What makes people kill?" question came up. His answer was the most insightful one I have heard yet. To paraphrase, he stated we already KNOW what makes these serial killers do what they do. Instead of asking that question again and again, why don't we focus on the four most vulnerable populations that serial killers regularly target: women, sex workers, the elderly, and LGBTQ people. Let's stop treating women like second-class citizens, tackle homophobia, give our senior citizens a stronger voice by actually listening to them, and have a grown-up conversation about how we police sex work.
I don't pretend to know where we go from there, but I think it is a fantastic mindset to start from.
You are correct. I was limiting to women and girls here because I was speaking specifically about the GRK. In the next half I will be speaking about young men and boys too.
Thank you for this, for so powerfully naming what it felt like to grow up female in the PNW in the 70s and 80s. Ted Bundy this, GRK that. It was terrifying -- and it extended to children, because hatred of women and girls doesn't start when they hit puberty. When I was little a girl named Heidi Peterson was abducted from her front yard a few blocks away from my house. She was 4, and lived on the steep sledding hill we called "Devil's Dip." Her body was found in a nearby ravine almost a year later. I have never forgotten her name.
And I am now friendly with a woman named Lori Poland in Colorado. She was three, and I was ten when she was kidnapped. She is now the CEO of EndCAN, the National Foundation to End Child Abuse and Neglect. I'm not going to recount her story, because it can be upsetting to people, but she has turned it in a positive direction. I highly recommend looking her up on LinkedIn. Fortunately, there are some happy endings.
The way you write about this reminds me of a film by Ursula Biemann _Performing the Border_. It focuses on the Juarez killings but contextualizes them within the rise of supply side capitalism. It is brilliant and moving in the same way you are writing about these women. I recommend it to anyone working to understand how women can become seemingly disposable in the sensationalized reports of these killings.
Thank you for being willing to be that witness, like you always have. Please know that your art is activism, and that finding your songs helps women like me who have survived to continue to survive and feel a lot less alone getting through it. I grew up feral and hunted in seventies Texas, where children are bred for pleasure and often not of any other value, the child of a middle class family who refused to see monsters right in front of them. My 7 year old cousin Dessie Mae was kidnapped and murdered, found her clothes folded under a bush in West Texas years later, and her bones years after that. No one paid. The first time I ever heard you sing a word it was Deep Red Bells on public radio and I had to pull the goddamn car over and remember how to breathe.
I remember the news making all these dead women whores in the narrative so ‘Murica could keep telling itself they deserved it and it could “never happen here” while it was happening right here, right in our fucking houses every day.
Go easy on yourself. You honor these women with your attention, with your words, with your tears, with your rage, with your songs. You are enough. You speak for them. For us. We hear you. Thank you.
This post resonates with me: there must be a specific kind of trauma that comes from growing up near serial killers who were / are targeting victims who look like you: Black kids who lived in Atlanta in the 1980’s, the girls your age along the I-5 in Washington who you write about in your post.
While I’m neither Black nor a woman--I’m a straight white man who grew up poor but privileged in every other way--a serial killer in my hometown targeted boys my age when I was twelve. Their pictures in the paper looked just like me. It was terrifying. I was the only child of a single mom and grew up in apartments, surrounded by people moving in and out a lot. Even after the killer was caught and convicted of three murders, I was really scared of adult male strangers throughout my puberty and adolescence. My mom had warned me repeatedly of the threats of child abduction, so those kinds of strangers always made me jumpy.
Although we were poor when I was growing up, my mom made sure I had a roof over my head and food on the table. I was fortunate in ways that millions of Americans (and billions of other humans) were not. But I’ll never forget being terrified for a year while that killer was active.
I was spared the added anxiety of being a girl or a woman living through a much longer period, like when the GRK was active. I can try to empathize, but after I grew up, the visceral fear for my safety subsided because of the physical and societal power I know possess. Now I just worry about my daughters.
As always, thanks for helping me think and feel. I’m sorry you had to suffer all of that trauma, but I’m sure the work you have made from those experiences has benefitted many other listeners and readers.
I love you so hard for writing this and maintaining a tribute to the valuable lives lost of young women. It could have been any of us, but some were and are more vulnerable and exposed as you were at a time. I don't know if there are answers to be found which is part of why it haunts us/you. But, man - I'm so appreciative of you for talking about the hatred of women and their chosen or desperate ways to make a living that society judges them for as if they were born less or chose to be less. FUCK THAT weak, arrogant, disgusting narrative. Your writing absolutely has a place here. Please keep going. Love you, my friend. xo
I'm curious about the book you are writing? And always grateful for Deep Red Bells. It's a song that speaks volumes to me.
My sister was kidnapped and murdered in the 1970s. My brother was kidnapped and held as a sex slave in 1980, but managed to escape 3 days after he had been captured. Neither one was reported missing.
My brother and I spent 34 years chasing my sister's murderer. We already knew who the murderer was; the case against him was botched and thrown out of court. Long story. We had to wait until he killed two more girls to catch him permanently.
Our whole lives were sucked into this horrible case. You can look up Mary Pierce, Greeley, Colorado. My sister wasn't Mary. My sister was Christa Lea, the one whose case was never truly closed, but we did the best we could. We even had to exhume her body after 32 years. It felt awful. Her DNA did not talk.
My sister's murderer went to prison for 20+ years.
I've never laid eyes on her killer, and I don't care if I do. I used to care. But the danger has been thwarted, and those that were missing have been found.
It's not a position I would would wish upon anyone. But it does teach you patience. And cunning. You learn to think like a killer to get your loved ones back. But it takes a lot away from you.
At the same time, if I had it to do all over again, I absolutely would. Because everyone deserves to be found, and to have the truth be known about how their life was taken from them.
I'm just glad you are able to share that experience with people in a way that engages them instead of alienating them. Thank you.
I left out the part where my sister was working in a "hand job parlor", aka a trailer in the middle of nowhere, run by a Russian couple at the time that she went missing. Which is a big reason why nobody bothered to chase down her killer.
Her killer, incidentally, told the police that he had "found a body", and matched ballistics to his gun. The gun was improperly processed, so he walked. But no one cared, because she was just a "prostitute". FOR THREE DAYS. She had literally just run away from home days prior.
A recent TV drama here in the UK about the victims of Peter Sutcliffe (aka the Yorkshire Ripper), a prolific serial killer in the north of England in the 1970s an 80s. It was brilliant in that it focused not only on the women murdered, but also on the complete fuck up that was the police investigation and media reporting. A number of the women were sex workers but the police were not interested until there was an "innocent" victim (literally their words), about five murders in. The sex workers only had themselves to blame in their eyes. If you can find it, I highly recommend watching - it's called The Long Shadow. Xx
Safe Harbor legislation in WA has officially as of Jan 1 2024 fully eliminated charging juveniles for crimes of “prostitution”, so there is that for language progress. And January is National Human Trafficking Awareness Month so this post is timely.
Oh, Neko... I am so excited to read this book. I grew up along the I-5 corridor in WA at roughly the same time and I felt it, too. Your song Deep Red Bells is among my favorites because it captures that feeling of being a young, vulnerable girl in that area during that time so precisely.
When the time comes to gather endorsements for this book, I hope you'll think of me. I'm a bestselling author and I'd love a shot at reading the ARC before anybody else gets their hands on it!
My house is the childhood home of a locally notorious murderer - he was a teenager at the time of the crime, and circumstances led him to being institutionalized and then imprisoned for life.
Sometimes I think about writing about what I know (I did some research when we made the connection with will attached to the deed and the strange wording of a bequest) but I'm sure the victim's family is still around and I can't. I refuse to feed into the true crime exploitation of the gory details.
I think about this a lot. I've been extremely lucky as a woman stumbling through sexual situations and relationships. I also thought about getting into sex work and have several friends who are in the 'industry'. There are too many harrowing stories though, and I had the luxury to choose another trade. Too many women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people do not. I'm so fucking lucky.
I was jolted back to my childhood in Adelaide , the City of churches, serial murder and child killers. This is my recurring memory growing up, when I was ten two girls were "taken" at a Football Match I still remember their names Kirste and Joanne and their faces on tv and the papers. I dreamed about being "taken" for years and it terrified me. The pedophile murder ring in the 70's and 80's here was horrific and those faces add to my own gallery.
I have an interest in crime and stories but shout now at the screen "They had names" etc., because so many women have to die to set up the "story"
Just to say thanks for sharing what is a wholly horrifying chapter.
This breaks my heart. I lived in Seattle and Tacoma in the 70s and 80s. I walked home in the dark in Seattle when Ted Bundy was preying on women. I had no choice. I always wondered why not me, why the other girls. But I always had a home, an apartment, a room in a house and even a house. A job waitressing. I wish I had seen you, Neko, at the bus stop, I would have taken you home with me. But that is how we go forward. Supporting women everywhere, no matter how different their lives are from our own. And remembering the dead with respect and kindness. And don’t read those horrible books.
This is mighty stuff, Neko, thanks for standing up for it and speaking out. I was in that I5 corridor from 1986-1997, living in Auburn when the GRK was also there right under our noses, playing shows in Seattle when Home Alive was founded, all of it. I still carry it with me too. I see its echoes in my Indigenous community today via MMIW, or MMIP, and how the predatory nature of too many men has echoed through history and plays out over and over and over again until we do something about it, and it fills me with rage. It is genocide and always has been. What I refuse to feel is powerless, about any of this. "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living" and all of that. ✊🏽
Amen to that! xo!
This was a powerful post, Neko. Thank you for putting your thoughts and your heart out here.
In early December I was listening to a podcast where criminologist and author David Wilson was a guest, and during the episode the typical, "What makes people kill?" question came up. His answer was the most insightful one I have heard yet. To paraphrase, he stated we already KNOW what makes these serial killers do what they do. Instead of asking that question again and again, why don't we focus on the four most vulnerable populations that serial killers regularly target: women, sex workers, the elderly, and LGBTQ people. Let's stop treating women like second-class citizens, tackle homophobia, give our senior citizens a stronger voice by actually listening to them, and have a grown-up conversation about how we police sex work.
I don't pretend to know where we go from there, but I think it is a fantastic mindset to start from.
AMEN!! CAN THE WORLD PLEASE READ THIS!
I think we need to include young men in this category. They are often overlooked as potential victims.
You are correct. I was limiting to women and girls here because I was speaking specifically about the GRK. In the next half I will be speaking about young men and boys too.
Thank you. ❤️
Thank you for this, for so powerfully naming what it felt like to grow up female in the PNW in the 70s and 80s. Ted Bundy this, GRK that. It was terrifying -- and it extended to children, because hatred of women and girls doesn't start when they hit puberty. When I was little a girl named Heidi Peterson was abducted from her front yard a few blocks away from my house. She was 4, and lived on the steep sledding hill we called "Devil's Dip." Her body was found in a nearby ravine almost a year later. I have never forgotten her name.
And I am now friendly with a woman named Lori Poland in Colorado. She was three, and I was ten when she was kidnapped. She is now the CEO of EndCAN, the National Foundation to End Child Abuse and Neglect. I'm not going to recount her story, because it can be upsetting to people, but she has turned it in a positive direction. I highly recommend looking her up on LinkedIn. Fortunately, there are some happy endings.
The way you write about this reminds me of a film by Ursula Biemann _Performing the Border_. It focuses on the Juarez killings but contextualizes them within the rise of supply side capitalism. It is brilliant and moving in the same way you are writing about these women. I recommend it to anyone working to understand how women can become seemingly disposable in the sensationalized reports of these killings.
https://vimeo.com/74185298
I grew up in the SF Bay Area in the shadow of the Zodiac. I drove by rest stops and parks where he killed weekly. It changes you.
Thank you for being willing to be that witness, like you always have. Please know that your art is activism, and that finding your songs helps women like me who have survived to continue to survive and feel a lot less alone getting through it. I grew up feral and hunted in seventies Texas, where children are bred for pleasure and often not of any other value, the child of a middle class family who refused to see monsters right in front of them. My 7 year old cousin Dessie Mae was kidnapped and murdered, found her clothes folded under a bush in West Texas years later, and her bones years after that. No one paid. The first time I ever heard you sing a word it was Deep Red Bells on public radio and I had to pull the goddamn car over and remember how to breathe.
I remember the news making all these dead women whores in the narrative so ‘Murica could keep telling itself they deserved it and it could “never happen here” while it was happening right here, right in our fucking houses every day.
Go easy on yourself. You honor these women with your attention, with your words, with your tears, with your rage, with your songs. You are enough. You speak for them. For us. We hear you. Thank you.
This post resonates with me: there must be a specific kind of trauma that comes from growing up near serial killers who were / are targeting victims who look like you: Black kids who lived in Atlanta in the 1980’s, the girls your age along the I-5 in Washington who you write about in your post.
While I’m neither Black nor a woman--I’m a straight white man who grew up poor but privileged in every other way--a serial killer in my hometown targeted boys my age when I was twelve. Their pictures in the paper looked just like me. It was terrifying. I was the only child of a single mom and grew up in apartments, surrounded by people moving in and out a lot. Even after the killer was caught and convicted of three murders, I was really scared of adult male strangers throughout my puberty and adolescence. My mom had warned me repeatedly of the threats of child abduction, so those kinds of strangers always made me jumpy.
Although we were poor when I was growing up, my mom made sure I had a roof over my head and food on the table. I was fortunate in ways that millions of Americans (and billions of other humans) were not. But I’ll never forget being terrified for a year while that killer was active.
I was spared the added anxiety of being a girl or a woman living through a much longer period, like when the GRK was active. I can try to empathize, but after I grew up, the visceral fear for my safety subsided because of the physical and societal power I know possess. Now I just worry about my daughters.
As always, thanks for helping me think and feel. I’m sorry you had to suffer all of that trauma, but I’m sure the work you have made from those experiences has benefitted many other listeners and readers.
I love you so hard for writing this and maintaining a tribute to the valuable lives lost of young women. It could have been any of us, but some were and are more vulnerable and exposed as you were at a time. I don't know if there are answers to be found which is part of why it haunts us/you. But, man - I'm so appreciative of you for talking about the hatred of women and their chosen or desperate ways to make a living that society judges them for as if they were born less or chose to be less. FUCK THAT weak, arrogant, disgusting narrative. Your writing absolutely has a place here. Please keep going. Love you, my friend. xo
I'm curious about the book you are writing? And always grateful for Deep Red Bells. It's a song that speaks volumes to me.
My sister was kidnapped and murdered in the 1970s. My brother was kidnapped and held as a sex slave in 1980, but managed to escape 3 days after he had been captured. Neither one was reported missing.
My brother and I spent 34 years chasing my sister's murderer. We already knew who the murderer was; the case against him was botched and thrown out of court. Long story. We had to wait until he killed two more girls to catch him permanently.
Our whole lives were sucked into this horrible case. You can look up Mary Pierce, Greeley, Colorado. My sister wasn't Mary. My sister was Christa Lea, the one whose case was never truly closed, but we did the best we could. We even had to exhume her body after 32 years. It felt awful. Her DNA did not talk.
My sister's murderer went to prison for 20+ years.
I've never laid eyes on her killer, and I don't care if I do. I used to care. But the danger has been thwarted, and those that were missing have been found.
It's not a position I would would wish upon anyone. But it does teach you patience. And cunning. You learn to think like a killer to get your loved ones back. But it takes a lot away from you.
At the same time, if I had it to do all over again, I absolutely would. Because everyone deserves to be found, and to have the truth be known about how their life was taken from them.
I'm just glad you are able to share that experience with people in a way that engages them instead of alienating them. Thank you.
I left out the part where my sister was working in a "hand job parlor", aka a trailer in the middle of nowhere, run by a Russian couple at the time that she went missing. Which is a big reason why nobody bothered to chase down her killer.
Her killer, incidentally, told the police that he had "found a body", and matched ballistics to his gun. The gun was improperly processed, so he walked. But no one cared, because she was just a "prostitute". FOR THREE DAYS. She had literally just run away from home days prior.
A recent TV drama here in the UK about the victims of Peter Sutcliffe (aka the Yorkshire Ripper), a prolific serial killer in the north of England in the 1970s an 80s. It was brilliant in that it focused not only on the women murdered, but also on the complete fuck up that was the police investigation and media reporting. A number of the women were sex workers but the police were not interested until there was an "innocent" victim (literally their words), about five murders in. The sex workers only had themselves to blame in their eyes. If you can find it, I highly recommend watching - it's called The Long Shadow. Xx
I watched that. It was nuts!
Yep. A fucking disgrace
I remember that era. The polis mishandled that whole thing horribly.
Safe Harbor legislation in WA has officially as of Jan 1 2024 fully eliminated charging juveniles for crimes of “prostitution”, so there is that for language progress. And January is National Human Trafficking Awareness Month so this post is timely.
I grew up on that same I-5 corridor (in PDX), and I'm not sure one can overstate the large shadow the GRK cast over the area and the era.
Oh, Neko... I am so excited to read this book. I grew up along the I-5 corridor in WA at roughly the same time and I felt it, too. Your song Deep Red Bells is among my favorites because it captures that feeling of being a young, vulnerable girl in that area during that time so precisely.
When the time comes to gather endorsements for this book, I hope you'll think of me. I'm a bestselling author and I'd love a shot at reading the ARC before anybody else gets their hands on it!
My house is the childhood home of a locally notorious murderer - he was a teenager at the time of the crime, and circumstances led him to being institutionalized and then imprisoned for life.
Sometimes I think about writing about what I know (I did some research when we made the connection with will attached to the deed and the strange wording of a bequest) but I'm sure the victim's family is still around and I can't. I refuse to feed into the true crime exploitation of the gory details.
I think about this a lot. I've been extremely lucky as a woman stumbling through sexual situations and relationships. I also thought about getting into sex work and have several friends who are in the 'industry'. There are too many harrowing stories though, and I had the luxury to choose another trade. Too many women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people do not. I'm so fucking lucky.
I was jolted back to my childhood in Adelaide , the City of churches, serial murder and child killers. This is my recurring memory growing up, when I was ten two girls were "taken" at a Football Match I still remember their names Kirste and Joanne and their faces on tv and the papers. I dreamed about being "taken" for years and it terrified me. The pedophile murder ring in the 70's and 80's here was horrific and those faces add to my own gallery.
I have an interest in crime and stories but shout now at the screen "They had names" etc., because so many women have to die to set up the "story"
Just to say thanks for sharing what is a wholly horrifying chapter.
Look after yourself.
Chris
This breaks my heart. I lived in Seattle and Tacoma in the 70s and 80s. I walked home in the dark in Seattle when Ted Bundy was preying on women. I had no choice. I always wondered why not me, why the other girls. But I always had a home, an apartment, a room in a house and even a house. A job waitressing. I wish I had seen you, Neko, at the bus stop, I would have taken you home with me. But that is how we go forward. Supporting women everywhere, no matter how different their lives are from our own. And remembering the dead with respect and kindness. And don’t read those horrible books.