Nearly four decades after her disappearance, Lori Anne Razpotnik, a victim of the infamous Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, was identified. The King County Sheriff’s Office announced on December 19 that the identification came through advanced DNA forensic genealogy testing.
Razpotnik, who was only 15 when she went missing from her home in Lewis County, Washington, in 1982, was never seen by her family again.
The breakthrough in Razpotnik’s identification came thanks to the efforts of Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based DNA technology company. Their cutting-edge forensic and therapeutic products, leveraging DNA sequencing and analysis, played a pivotal role in solving this cold case.
On December 30, 1985, city employees in Auburn, Washington, stumbled upon potential human remains while investigating a car that went over an embankment on Mount View Drive Southwest.
The Green River Task Force, established to probe the series of bodies found along the Green River, was called in. They found a second set of remains in the area. At the time, these remains could not be identified and were referred to as Bones 16 and Bones 17.
The identification of Bones 17 as Lori Anne Razpotnik was a significant advancement, bringing closure to a case that had remained unsolved for decades.
The process was aided by Razpotnik’s mother, who provided a saliva sample for DNA comparison, conducted by the University of North Texas.
The first set of remains, known as Bones 16, was identified in 2012 as Sandra Majors. A forensic anthropologist’s examination had revealed that Bones 16 was an African-American woman aged 20 to 25, while Bones 17 was a Caucasian female aged between 14 and 17.
Gary Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, was arrested in 2001 and confessed to the murders in 2003, pleading guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder, including the murders of Bones 16 and Bones 17. He is currently serving 49 (he pleaded guilty to an additional murder in 2011) consecutive life sentences at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.
The King County Sheriff’s Office continues its efforts to identify other young women and girls who were victims of the Green River Killer.
