The Case of Wendy Lee Coffield

Wendy Lee Coffield was 16 when she disappeared from Tacoma on July 8, 1982. One week later, two boys discovered her strangled body floating in the Green River near Kent. Her murder became the first confirmed case publicly connected to the Green River Killer investigation and marked the beginning of one of the largest serial-murder investigations in U.S. history.

Wendy Coffield was 16 years old and was living with a foster family in Tacoma when she disappeared in July 1982. She had experienced considerable instability in her young life and had spent time in foster care. Prosecutors later established that Wendy was known to work as a street prostitute along Pacific Highway South, an area that would become central to Ridgway's hunting ground. On July 8, 1982, Wendy left her foster home and was never seen alive again. At the time, there was no reason for investigators to believe that her disappearance would become the beginning of one of the largest serial-murder investigations in American history.

On July 15, 1982, exactly one week after Wendy disappeared, two teenage boys riding bicycles near the Peck Bridge/Meeker Street Bridge area of the Green River in Kent noticed something floating in the water. They discovered Wendy's body caught near the bridge. She was found naked except for her shoes and socks. Her remaining clothing had been tied around her neck and used as a ligature. An autopsy determined that Wendy had been strangled. She had suffered a fractured hyoid bone and significant hemorrhaging in the muscles of her neck. Her injuries were consistent with death occurring shortly after her disappearance.

Wendy's murder initially appeared to be an isolated homicide. However, her death immediately attracted attention because other young women had disappeared or been found murdered in the Seattle–Tacoma area. Investigators began considering whether a serial killer could be responsible. The discovery of Wendy's body was followed by the recovery of additional victims. Within a month, the bodies of Debra Bonner, Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds and Opal Mills were also found in or near the Green River. The growing number of victims established that investigators were dealing with a much larger pattern of killings. The emerging investigation eventually became known as the Green River Killer investigation. At first, investigators had no idea who the killer was. Ridgway would later become a major suspect, but police lacked sufficient evidence to charge him. In 1987, investigators obtained hair and saliva samples from Ridgway, but DNA technology at the time did not immediately produce the evidence necessary for an arrest. More than 20 years after Wendy's murder, advances in DNA testing finally changed the case. In 2001, forensic testing connected Ridgway to evidence from several victims. He was arrested on November 30, 2001. In 2003, prosecutors added Wendy's murder to the charges after forensic examination of her clothing found microscopic paint spheres consistent with paint used at the Kenworth truck plant where Ridgway worked. Ridgway subsequently admitted killing Wendy and disposing of her body in the Green River.

Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty in November 2003 to the aggravated first-degree murders of 48 women, including Wendy Coffield. He received 48 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole as part of a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty in exchange for information about his victims. Ridgway later pleaded guilty to the murder of Rebecca Marrero, bringing his known conviction total to 49.

Wendy Coffield is one of the most significant individual cases in the entire Green River Killer investigation. She is often described as Ridgway's first known victim, although investigators have never established with absolute certainty that she was his first murder. Ridgway himself suggested that he may have killed women before 1982, and prosecutors concluded that his earliest homicide remained uncertain. What makes Wendy's case historically important is that her body was the first of Ridgway's known victims to be discovered, and her death became the starting point for the investigation that eventually linked dozens of murders to the same offender. Her discovery also demonstrated the pattern that would come to define the Green River killings: young women disappearing from the Seattle–Tacoma area and their bodies being abandoned in secluded locations around the Green River corridor.