Rather than give him the death penalty for seven solved murders and leaving the remaining dozens of mysteries go unresolved and the victims' families without closure, the State Prosecution decided to spare him the axe and get as many answers as they could. However, Ridgway came forward with a plea bargain - he will lead the detectives to the bodies of as many of his victims as possible. When, finally, DNA technology made it possible to conduct more reliable tests, Ridgway was formally arrested and charged with seven murders. The killer, Gary Ridgway was arrested twice on charges of prostitution, but no one had any concrete proof to link him to the killings. Most of the murders occurred between 19, and the bodies were disposed off in the Green River area in Seattle, hence the name. Green River Killer is, as the title says, about the Green River Killer, the serial killer who raped and murdered a possible 90+ women, many of them prostitutes. And in that respect, I think the writers/illustrators did a genuinely wonderful job in bringing forth a lot of emotions and issues related to the case. But I needn't have worried much - this book was less about the killer and more about the detective who took charge of the investigation. Not that there's anything just or right about killing - but to understand why a killing happened, I find it necessary to understand the killer himself. Even in writing, it's hard to present two sides justly. With pictures, there's usually only one side that's presented. Sometimes, it helps to be judgmental when you read - seeing the picture of a tragedy breaks open some vulnerable part in you, and can affect your perception of an incident. How sensitive would it be? Words in reference to psychopaths can make me queasy, but pictures, even more so. I prefer reading non-graphic nonfiction about true crime, I wasn't sure how the graphic medium was going to handle that.

But I wasn't very sure about the subject itself.

It's very rare that I see non-comic graphic books getting some much needed hype, so I was quite thrilled to see Green River Killer featured. Early last month, there was a new graphic nonfiction book getting a lot of buzz.

Green River Killer by Jeff Jensen