In the late summer of 1983, a sense of unease was growing in the Seattle area as young women continued to disappear. Among them was Tracy Winston, a 19-year-old White female. On September 12, 1983, she was last seen at the Northgate Mall. After that day, her family and friends were left with only questions and the gnawing fear that she had met a grim fate.
Winston had recently finished a jail sentence for a prostitution conviction, and authorities soon presumed she was another victim of the elusive serial killer preying on vulnerable women in the region.
For years, Tracy Winston's case remained a painful mystery. A significant break came in March 1986 when park employees discovered human remains in Cottonwood Park in Kent. However, due to the limitations of forensic technology at the time, a positive identification could not be made immediately. It would be another 13 years before advancements in DNA technology definitively confirmed that the remains belonged to Tracy Winston. The discovery, however, was incomplete as her skull was missing, leaving a piece of the puzzle still unfound.
The final piece of this tragic story fell into place in November 2005. A man hiking on an old logging road near Tiger Mountain, miles away from where the rest of her body was found, discovered a human skull. Dental records confirmed the skull belonged to Tracy Winston. The investigation into her disappearance and death ultimately led to Gary Ridgway, the notorious Green River Killer. In a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty, Ridgway confessed to a string of murders, including that of Tracy Winston. He pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder and was sentenced to 48 consecutive life sentences. While Ridgway admitted to dumping her body in the park, he could not account for why her skull was found in a separate location, a lingering question in a case that brought both a long-awaited answer and unending sorrow.
