Their names, faces, stories

Wendy Stephens, 14 years old.

In late 2001, I was a staff photographer for the Associated Press based in Seattle. One of my reporting colleagues decided to follow up with the lone detective still working on the murders of the serial killer known as the Green River Killer.

Detective Ted Jensen was the one person still working the case in Kent, Washington, a case investigating the murders of young prostitutes and runaways that stretched back to 1982-1984. The women had been abducted, some raped, and murdered.

The reporter and I spent time with Jensen as he showed us the room full of files and explained the new DNA testing that might lead to a new lead.

The reporter and I then visited some of known crime scenes, yellow tape, if it’d ever been there, now long gone. Nature, then used for cover-up and as camouflage, now flourished; the river the only thread running through the scenes.

Within a month or two, I’m in a helicopter, circling over the man’s backyard, where forensic crews and investigators had cordoned off the soil and were sifting through the grids looking for evidence.

Police arrested him on Nov. 20, 2001. Two years later, in December 2003, he was found guilty and sentenced to life for 48 murders, though he was/is suspected in more.

For decades, the murders went unsolved and many women’s bodies still undiscovered. The unidentified were known only as Jane Does or by the numbers of their boxed bones, Bones No. 10.

The arrest and subsequent trial were national news, international news. The photo editor at the Los Angeles bureau called me every week or so and asked for a file photo of the killer, a mug shot. I sent him the mug shot; I also sent at least a dozen photos of the women he’d allegedly murdered (since this predates his conviction, alleged in the proper usage.)

After I’d sent the women’s photos a few times, the editor called me from Los Angeles. Cheryl, he said, we don’t need the photos of the women. Just send the mug shot.

I responded. Every time you request this man’s photo, I will send you the photos of a dozen women. You need these photos, their faces, their names. If you are running his photo, you need to run the faces of the women. If his face and name are filling headlines, you need to remember these women, the murdered, the victims.

He said, just send the guy’s photo. I did, and I kept sending the photos of the women, too.

A couple months might have passed and the editor from Los Angeles called me again. Cheryl, I’ve thought a lot about what you said. You’re right. We do need to see the women’s photos. Keep sending them.

As journalists, we have had to learn to name the victims of mass shootings and not focus so fiercely on the shooter. We have had to learn to remember and honor the black and brown lives taken by police officers, to #SayTheirNames. I’ve recently heard reporters correct themselves on the air. It’s not the George Floyd trial. Mr. Floyd is dead. He’s the victim. It’s Derek Chauvin who’s on trial for murder, two counts of murder, second-degree unintentional murder and third-degree murder. 

When I saw the first news stories about the murders in Atlanta on March 16, 2021, I noticed the suspect’s face and name were featured first and prominently. The names and faces of those murdered were missing, including six women of Asian descent.

There are some valid reasons for withholding names, including time needed for identification and notification of next of kin; however, we need to proceed with thoughtfulness and caution, so that pause doesn’t lead to a saturation and glorification of the suspect/murderer in the early news cycles.

Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong Ae Yue, 63, Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Tan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44.

When I saw the first news stories showing only the suspect’s name and face, I immediately remembered the teenage girls and women the Green River Killer had murdered. I had to sit with those memories and my reflections before I could write about them.

Before I wrote this blog, I went online to reread old stories, to check my memory and verify the information about the murders.

I found a story dated January 24, 2021, nearly 20 years since my work as a photojournalist on the story. The reporter on this story is a young woman working for a Seattle TV station. In her reporting, I learned that the youngest victim of the serial killer had recently been identified.

She named the killer in the lead, the first paragraph, in the second sentence of the story. The top visual is the footage of the killer in court. In the fifth graph, she names retired detective Tom Jensen, who’s still working as a volunteer on the cases.

It isn’t until near the end of the story that we learn the name of the victim; 24 paragraphs into the story, Bones 10, is identified, Wendy Stephens. According to the story, she was 14 years old when she ran away from home in Colorado and the killer murdered her near Seattle.

As I wrote that last line, I went to the top of this blog post and put Wendy’s name there. Wendy’s name should be the lead, in this blog post and in that reporter’s coverage.

We need to know their names, their faces, their stories.

NOTE: You can follow this link to find the faces and names of the women murdered by the Green River Killer.

This essay in The Guardian, “From colonialism to Covid: Viet Thanh Nguyen on the rise of anti-Asian violence,” will provide insights for consideration. Nguyen is a Pulitzer prize-winning writer and author of “The Committed.”

As I prepared to post this blog, I stopped to listen to this excellent and moving discussion on “The Chauvin Trial and the Re-traumatizing Experience of Remembering” on On Point on WBUR.

Copyright 2021 Cheryl Hatch, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED