For more than a quarter of a century, the story of Michael Lloyd Riemer Jr. was a painful question mark, a ghost story whispered in the dense forests of Washington state. A 36-year-old Male, he was known as a roofer and a skilled animal trapper who knew the woods of Pierce and Lewis counties intimately. That deep familiarity with the wilderness did not save him; instead, it became the setting for the final, terrifying chapter of his life and left his family grappling with decades of
uncertainty.
On the morning of December 12, 1985, Michael, his 21-year-old girlfriend Diana Robertson, and their two-year-old daughter, Crystal, left their home in Puyallup. They planned to venture into the forest to find a Christmas tree and for Michael to check the traplines he ran along the Nisqually River. It was a day that began with holiday preparations but ended in a mystery that would haunt the region for years. Later that afternoon, their daughter Crystal was found wandering alone and silent outside a Kmart store in Spanaway, 30 miles from the woods they had driven into. When asked where her parents were, the toddler could only repeat the chilling phrase, "Mommy is in the trees."
An intensive search began for the missing couple. For two agonizing months, there was no sign of Michael or Diana. Then, on February 18, 1986, a man walking his dog along a remote logging road south of Elbe discovered Michael's red pickup truck. Nearby, partially buried in the snow, was the body of Diana Robertson. She had been stabbed 17 times, and a tube sock was tied around her neck. In the truck, investigators found a manila envelope on the dashboard with the words "I love you, Diana" written on it.
With Michael nowhere to be found, suspicion immediately fell upon him. The Lewis County Sheriff's Department named him a person of interest in Diana's brutal murder, speculating that he had killed her, abandoned their child, and fled. The couple had a troubled history, with reports of domestic disputes, which seemed to support the police theory. Michael’s family, however, never believed he was a killer. His father, Lloyd, pointed out that his son had left his coat and his last paycheck behind and that his bank account was untouched—actions inconsistent with a man on the run.
The case grew colder with each passing year, featured on television shows like "Unsolved Mysteries" in 1989, which generated tips but no concrete answers. For 26 years, Michael Riemer was officially a missing person and a murder suspect. That official narrative shattered in March 2011 when a hiker discovered a human skull in the woods near Mineral, less than a mile from where Diana's body had been found. Dental records confirmed the remains belonged to Michael Lloyd Riemer Jr.
The discovery of his remains fundamentally changed the investigation. Michael was no longer the suspect but the fourth known victim of a serial predator dubbed the "Tube Sock Killer." His and Diana's deaths were officially linked to the murders of another couple, Steven Harkins and Ruth Cooper, who were killed four months earlier in August 1985 in a nearby area. Ruth Cooper was also found with a tube sock tied around her neck. The killer, who targeted couples in remote, wooded areas, was believed to have used shooting and stabbing as their methods.
Though his remains were found, a cause of death for Michael could not be determined. The partial skull offered no definitive clues to how he was killed, only that he had met a violent end in the same woods he knew so well. The case of the Tube Sock Killings remains unsolved, a dark piece of Pacific Northwest history. The discovery of Michael's remains brought a painful resolution to his family's long search, clearing his name but leaving the identity of the person responsible for these four deaths a mystery that endures in the shadows of the Washington forests.
