Denise Darcel Bush, a 23-year-old woman, disappeared on October 8, 1982, in SeaTac, Washington. She was last seen along Pacific Highway South, an area known at the time for sex work. Denise Bush, whose ethnicity is not definitively documented in available sources, had reportedly been involved in sex work prior to her disappearance. A month before she vanished, she had been arrested along with two other women for allegedly stealing wheelchairs from a hospital.
The outcome of those charges remains unclear.
Following her disappearance, no immediate trace of the 23-year-old woman was found. It wasn't until June 12, 1985, that her skull was discovered in a wooded area in Tualatin, Oregon. This discovery was unusual, as most victims of the same killer were found in Washington state. The remains of another victim, Shirley Sherrill, were later found in the same area. Despite the recovery of her skull, the cause of death for Denise Bush could not be determined. Then, on February 10, 1990, additional remains and teeth were found in Tukwila, Washington, and were later confirmed to belong to Denise Bush. This meant that the last of her remains had finally been recovered, nearly eight years after her disappearance.
Denise Bush was eventually identified as one of the victims of Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer. Ridgway was a serial killer who targeted vulnerable women, many of whom were sex workers, in the Seattle area during the 1980s and 1990s. Denise Bush was his eleventh known victim. In 2001, Ridgway was arrested after DNA evidence linked him to several of the murders. He later confessed to killing Denise Bush and admitted to moving her skull to Oregon in an attempt to mislead investigators and hinder the investigation.
Gary Ridgway was convicted of murdering Denise Bush along with 48 other women. He was sentenced to 48 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. The case of Denise Bush, a 23-year-old woman whose life was tragically cut short, remains one of the many harrowing chapters in the Green River Killer investigation. Her story underscores the vulnerability of marginalized women and the long, painstaking efforts required to bring justice to victims and their families.
