Shawnda Leea Summers, a 17-year-old Black female, was last seen in Seattle, Washington, near Yesler Way on October 9, 1982. For nearly a year, her whereabouts remained unknown, a period of agonizing uncertainty for her loved ones. The grim discovery of her remains came on August 11, 1983, at the base of an apple tree in a vacant lot near South 146th Street and 22nd Avenue South, just north of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Her case became intertwined with a string of
disappearances and murders that instilled fear throughout the King County area. Investigators would eventually link her death to a serial killer who preyed on young women, dubbed the Green River Killer. This individual was responsible for the deaths of dozens of women throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The investigation into these brutal crimes became one of the longest and most complex in American history.
A major breakthrough in the case came years later with advancements in DNA technology. This allowed investigators to definitively link a suspect who had been on their radar as early as 1982 to the murders. On November 30, 2001, Gary Leon Ridgway was arrested. In a plea agreement to spare him from the death penalty, Ridgway confessed to numerous murders. On November 5, 2003, he pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder, including the murder of Shawnda Summers. Ridgway was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, bringing a conclusion to the long search for the person responsible for Shawnda's death.
