In the late summer of 1983, Maureen Feeney, a 19-year-old White/Caucasian woman, had just embarked on a new chapter in her life. Only a month after moving out of her family's home on Tiger Mountain in the Issaquah Valley into her own Seattle apartment, her journey was tragically cut short. On September 28, 1983, Maureen disappeared, leaving her family to grapple with her sudden and unexplained absence.
She was a young woman with a love for nature and animals, affectionately known as "Maurie," and had aspirations of working with young children.
For nearly three years, Maureen's fate remained a mystery. Her family held onto hope, but the silence was finally broken in the spring of 1986. On May 2nd of that year, her remains were discovered near the intersection of Interstate 90 and Highway 18, a location alarmingly close to where she had grown up. The discovery confirmed the family's worst fears and plunged them into a grief that would be compounded by the horrific truth of her killer's identity.
Maureen Feeney was one of the many victims of Gary Ridgway, the notorious Green River Killer. It wasn't until years later, through advances in DNA technology, that investigators were able to definitively link Ridgway to a string of unsolved murders that had haunted the Seattle area for decades. In 2003, as part of a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty, Ridgway confessed to killing numerous women, including Maureen. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Maureen was officially listed as his 39th victim. The arrest and conviction of Ridgway brought a measure of justice for Maureen's family and the families of his many other victims, but it could never erase the profound loss of a young life filled with promise.
