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    Green River, Running Red
    Green River, Running Red
    Green River, Running Red
    Audiobook19 hours

    Green River, Running Red

    Written by Ann Rule

    Narrated by Barbara Caruso

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In this provocative and eye-opening classic of investigative journalism, the #1 New York Times bestselling author and “America’s best true-crime writer” (Kirkus Reviews), Ann Rule, explores the nearly twenty-year long search for America’s most prolific and horrifying serial killer.

    In 1982, the body of Wendy Coffield is discovered floating near the sandy shore of Washington’s Green River. Authorities have no idea that this tragic and violent death is only the beginning of a string of murders that will rock and terrify the Seattle area for two decades.

    With her signature riveting prose and in-depth research, Ann Rule takes us behind the scenes of the search for the Green River Killer, a terrifying specter who ritualistically killed young women and eluded authorities for years. From seeking the help of incarcerated serial killer Ted Bundy to Ann Rule’s horrifying realization that the killer she was writing about had attended her book signings, Green River, Running Red is the suspenseful and unforgettable “definitive narrative of the brutal and senseless crimes that haunted the Seattle area for decades” (Publishers Weekly).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMar 8, 2011
    ISBN9781442343047
    Green River, Running Red
    Author

    Ann Rule

    Ann Rule wrote thirty-five New York Times bestsellers, all of them still in print. Her first bestseller was The Stranger Beside Me, about her personal relationship with infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. A former Seattle police officer, she used her firsthand expertise in all her books. For more than three decades, she was a powerful advocate for victims of violent crime. She lived near Seattle and died in 2015.

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    Reviews for Green River, Running Red

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    • 4/5
      For some reason, we seem to have more than our share of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest: Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, the Pig Farm killer (at least he was on the Canadian side of the border). Even Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers, left L.A. long enough to strangle two women in Washington state. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, managed to murder at least 48 young women between 1982 and 2001, while living an apparently ordinary life and reporting daily to his job painting trucks at the local Kenworth plant. I was eager to read this book, because I lived in the Seattle area when the rampage started, and even had some dealings with that particular Kenworth facility. Ann Rule is a well-known and talented writer in the true crime genre, and she followed the Green River case from the beginning. Unfortunately this is not her best book. The story is compelling when the author focuses on the actual crimes and the investigation. It would have been much better with some judicious editing. Rule provides a profile of each victim, an admirable attempt to humanize these women so many had written off. But really, given the bad choices and the similarities of their short and dreary lives, it is hard to believe that every last one was beautiful, intelligent, and popular. The author takes up entirely too much time on her various speaking engagements and her cozy relationships with the police. Perhaps because of those relationships, the police are unfailingly described in the most glowing terms. Having encountered a few of King County’s finest, including one who stalked me at home after he investigated an accident, I have my doubts about their universal brilliance and shining moral integrity. Perhaps I am too much of a cynic, but so many opportunities were lost. I remember the endless parade of suspects who were trotted out, merely because they were found on the SeaTac strip at the wrong time. Yet when one victim’s family actually tracked Ridgway’s distinctive vehicle to his home, and reported it to the police, they did nothing more than knock on the door, interview him briefly, and accept his denials! Although they had samples of Ridgway’s body fluids, the police didn’t bother testing them for DNA until years after the technology had become acceptable as evidence. Bottom line – interesting story, I am glad I read it, but even happier that I found it on the remainder table and didn’t pay full price for it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Ann Rule is the queen of true crime writing. The time dedication put into this book is felt in every page. She goes into to every tiny detail about the victims lives that you feel like you knew them. I really appreciate that the bulk of the book focuses on the victims in life.
    • 3/5
      The book itself was wonderful, the narrator however, has some flaws. Another amazing Ann Rule book filled with detail and honesty as well as respect for the victims. I learned a great deal from this book and now wonder why bundy overshadowed Gary. Now, on to the negative : The Narrator. While her voice is nice and pleasing to the ear, her mispronounced words are really noticeable. Spelling out each letter of V.I.C.A.P instead of the commonly used "vicap", saying See-Cree-Ted instead of secret-ed, and a few other words. She also pauses unusual times in places where there obviously isn't a pause or comma. She often placed emphasis on a word that didn't need it, and raised her tone at the end of non-query sentences as if they were questions. A bit annoying and pretty noticeable after listening for a long period of time.
    • 5/5
      My first Ann Rule story. And I have to admit that now I'm hooked. She ranks as one of my favorite authors. I love this story; it's very thick and long, but it's a good telling of one of the worst serial killers.
    • 5/5
      You can never go wrong with Ann Rule, and the narration was a delight. 5 stars all the way!
    • 5/5
      Is a good book. Nice to listen to. But you can't go wrong with ann rule anyway so haha.
    • 5/5
      Greatly detailed book! A true crime classic by Ann Rule.
    • 5/5
      Well told story. Lots of detail and engaging. Any true crime fan will be very interested in this story. The killer was such an ordinary guy, even his work mates joked that he was the killer because they didn't actually believe that he could be. Its a real eye-opener that you never know the person next door / work colleague etc. I found myself yesterday looking at strangers with suspicion, a must read.
    • 5/5
      Really really sad and scary not for the squeamish at all
    • 4/5
      The book is unique because the majority of the content is victim focused, allowing you to get a real sense of the victims as individuals, sisters, mothers, daughters, girlfriends, wives. Rule writes in a unique voice that is equally respectful and informative. However if I have to offer one criticism, Rule has inadvertently victim blamed.
    • 3/5
      In the early 1980s, the Seattle area had a serial killer running around, mostly killing prostitutes. True crime author Ann Rule, by then having published her book on Ted Bundy, lived in the area, and followed very closely what was happening. The killer wasn’t caught for almost 20 years, but when DNA testing came available, he was not only caught, but he admitted to many more murders than they would have been able to link to him via DNA.Unfortunately, I (once again) ended up with an abridged audio. I was only a kid in the early 80s, and not in the area, so it was more recently that I heard of the Green River killer. The book was interesting, but I would have liked to have listened to the entire book. It did seem to jump abruptly from talking about the victims to following the killer’s life. Not sure if the book actually felt that way or if it felt such because it was abridged.
    • 5/5
      There is a reason Ann Rule is so famous - this book is just plain excellent. The author explains intricate crime clearly and relatively cleanly. I was hesitant to read this book because I thought I'd get weary of reading gory details but Ann Rule is able to include death descriptions that don't overly disgust.
    • 4/5
      Years ago, I read Small Sacrifices and was impressed with how well Rule clearly laid of the case, centered the story on the victims and investigators, and kept the timeline from becoming confusing. It was an engrossing read. I read a few true crime books in subsequent years, but only just now jumped back in to the genre. I happened to have this book on my shelf and decided to give it go. It’s her 23rd book, and I’ve not read those in between. So, I can only compare it to Small Sacrifices, and it comes up lacking.The main problem with the book is the twenty years it took to catch the Green River Killer. The murders were first discovered in the early 1980’s and almost all of the book focuses on those years. Rule outlines several failed suspect investigations, burial sites discoveries and introduces investigators as they join and leave the task force. But there isn’t much “investigation” after 1990. So, that leaves almost the entire book to be filled with victims – 48 known.Rule/the publisher opted to introduce each missing woman with a small photo of her (if available) before the entry about her disappearance and addition to the GRK list. This helps to keep them from just being anonymous murder victims, but only for so long. Despite a valiant effort by the author, and me as a reader, there are just so many that they begin to blur together: another young woman, living a hard life, snuffed out by a coldblooded killer. It took me much longer to read this book than usual, because it was heartbreaking, with little to break it up. There are passages describing the killer’s life during this period – kept to a minimum so as to reveal what his nature without glorifying him. There are also passages of biographical background on the key investigators. Yet, the big catch doesn’t take place until the very end. Readers will easily surmise that he would eventually be caught via DNA, once the technology became viable, so again, no real investigation there either - just a test and then bam! The fallout from his arrest, plea bargain, police interviews and revelations about what he did are interesting, but also disturbing.Overall, I didn’t find this as compelling as prior true crime books (by Rule or others) because it felt more like relentless tragedy. But perhaps that was the point.
    • 4/5
      In her book Green River, Running Red, renowned true crime author Ann Rule chronicles the murder of over fifty women in the Seattle area, as well as the police department’s agonizing search for their killer – a search that began in 1981 and ended 20 years later in 2001, with the arrest of Gary Ridgway.Green River, Running Red is both a fascinating insight into a high-profile murder investigation, as well as a horrifying portrait of a real-life serial killer that goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen in the movies. In the last part of the book, Ann Rule also includes transcribed portions from Ridgway’s confession, when he explains why he killed all those women. It’s guaranteed to send chills down your spine.I might even go so far as to say this was one of the most unsettling books I’ve ever read. The book contains photographs of many of the victims, as well as photos and mug shots of Ridgway himself, which made the story that much more realistic for me. As a true crime novel, this is one of the best, and I guarantee that if you read Green River, Running Red, you will never look at your friends and neighbors the same way again.
    • 4/5
      on Saturday, December 17, 2005


      Wow. I am really shocked reading about this wanker.
      Especially when you consider they could have caught him so much earlier.
      There was 1 witness when he took off with Marie, a girl who was prostituting herself, her parents not knowing, with the help of her boyfriend. He saw her going in a car, and thought she looked scared when she was in the car so he followed them. The driver ( who later turned out to be Gary Ridgeway)managed to shook him off.
      Not much later the boyfriend and Marie's family did a search and they found the car parked in a driveway of a house. The police asked the owner of the house if there was a girl there, he said no, of course, and that was the end of it. I wished they could have done more, I say could, cause I understand they can't just go in the house, but on the other side, it was during all the murders, so to bad it didn't ring a bell.


      While reading this book I was also reading The search of the Green River Killer by Carlton Smith and The Riverman by Robert D. Keppler, one of the detectives on the case.

      This gave me a good insight in what happened during all those decades.

    • 4/5
      Excellent true crime book. Eager to read more of her books. It's morbid and scary and twisted, but yet fascinating and I just can't seem to put them down.
    • 3/5
      When a serial killer is as prolific as Gary Ridgway, his victims tend to blur into one another, forming one tragic but anonymous mass. This is particularly true when the victims are prostitutes, women society finds it easy to ignore. In Green River, Running Red, Ann Rule fleshes out the victims' stories, which often include families trying desperately to save them from "the life", as prostitutes call their sad and dangerous work.Rules also tries to lay bare the life and psyche of Ridgway himself, with limited success. The killer himself offers few clues, insisting he killed out of resentment for his former wives. His third bride, like many killer's wives before her, seems more disturbed by the destruction of her secure suburban existence than by her husband's crimes. Disturbingly, it seems that Ridgway's shapeless banality is exactly what allowed him to elude capture for so long.
    • 3/5
      What drives a person to kill, and then repeat it over and over again for decades? Rule delves into this them by examining the life of this killer. By examining everything about the killer's life, you get a better understand what lead him to kill all those women. She also discusses the victims, and tells their story also. A detailed look into one of America's deadliest serial killers.
    • 4/5
      Ann Rule’s Green River, Running Red is a quasi-insider’s take on the most prolific serial killer in US history, the so-called Green River Killer. A long-standing true-crime writer who got her start working next to Ted Bundy, Rule was perfectly placed to observe and write up the GRK case. He operated right in her home town, i.e. the south suburbs of Seattle, and she had ongoing access to police and media contacts as the investigation exploded in the early and mid-80s, then dragged on for almost 20 more years to its rather pathetic climax.The result is a good crime read, but not a great one. In spite of the GRK’s outrageous kill total, he turned out to be an extraordinarily dull character, unlike the racy image of serial killers based on Bundy and the Hannibal Lecter stories. Rule does her best to bring some drama to the story, but it’s hard at times to keep the narrative momentum, meaning the book drags at points. One point in Rule’s favor is her compassion for the victims of her subject. Yes, reading about serial killers certainly is good for a vicarious thrill, but Rule doesn’t let you forget the enormity of what they do, the gross, brutal pain they inflict on their victims and their families. Rule skirts the hagiographic at times here, as she portrays nearly every victim of the GRK (they were predominantly prostitutes) as pretty, vivacious, loving girls just gone a bit misguided. But I can’t blame her for that. Their crimes were nothing in comparison to the evil of their killer, and Rule is to be commended for reminding us readers of that single essential fact over and over again.
    • 3/5
      Interesting and off-putting at the same time.