On December 3, 1982, 20-year-old Rebecca Marrero, an African-American female, vanished from Seattle, Washington. Known to her loved ones as Becky, she was the mother of a young daughter. On the day she disappeared, she was last seen leaving a motel on Pacific Highway South. For years, her family held onto the hope that she might still be alive, even as investigators began to suspect she had become a victim of a serial killer who was terrorizing the area.
Her mother officially reported her missing on July 20, 1984, and her case was soon investigated by the Green River Task Force.
For nearly three decades, Rebecca's fate remained a painful mystery. The break in the case came on December 21, 2010, when teenagers playing in a wooded ravine in Auburn discovered a human skull. Using dental records, authorities were able to identify the remains as those of Rebecca Marrero. The location of the discovery was near an area where another victim of the notorious Green River Killer had been found years earlier. The confirmation that the remains belonged to Becky brought a sad but welcome sense of closure to her family, who had waited 28 years for answers.
The prime suspect in Rebecca's disappearance and murder was Gary Leon Ridgway, the man known as the Green River Killer. Ridgway had been arrested in 2001 and, as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, had confessed in 2003 to an overwhelming number of murders. He had admitted to killing Rebecca, but at the time, there was not enough evidence to charge him with her murder, primarily because her remains had not been found. Following the discovery of her skull, the King County Prosecutor's Office officially charged Ridgway with her murder.
On February 18, 2011, Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to the aggravated first-degree murder of Rebecca Marrero. This became his 49th murder conviction, and he received another life sentence to add to the 48 he was already serving. In court, Rebecca's sister spoke of the devastating impact her sister's disappearance had on their family. While Ridgway's plea brought a legal conclusion to the case, it did little to ease the profound loss felt by Rebecca's family, who finally had the chance to lay her to rest after decades of uncertainty.
