Green River Serial Killer Media Blitz

There is a complete treatment about the Green River serial killer in the book:

Reichert, Sheriff D., Chasing The Devil, My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer, (Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2004). Reichert was one of the more notable members of the Green River killer task force. In chapter 13, he told us about the relation between the media and the killer. He starts the chapter talking about the victims of the killer and their relation with him. 

The next paragragraps have information extracted from the book.

The author says: "National magazines and television programs practically ignored the case (refering to the Green River serial killer case). As a result, even though the Green River serial killer had become the worst in American history —he was responsible for at least forty-eight murders — our investigation was almost unknown outside the Northwest. I doubt this was because writers and producers were consciously influenced by the status of the victims, but I do think that subconsciously they placed less value on the lives of women who worked the street. The case was also easier to ignore because Seattle was not a media center like New York or Los Angeles. Though it’s a big and prosperous place, the city is still stuck on the upper-left-hand corner of the map, about as far from the centers of power as you can get while still being in the lower forty-eight.

Because we wanted to shake up the public, we began making ourselves more available to the media. One of the first interview requests we received came from an unlikely place, the Sally Jesse Raphael show. This was in the era before television talk shows had become out-and-out freak shows with daily brawls and half-naked guests. The talk show experience soured me and other task forcemembers on daytime TV, but we didn’t abandon the pressidea entirely. Sometime after the Sally Jesse Raphael programaired, we got a call from a TV producer who was interested in doing a special on the Green River murders. We didn’t make a commitment, but we kept listening as he called every few weeks to ask what we thought about one option or another. Finally he came back with a proposal to do a documentary for a series called Manhunt Live, which would reenact some elements of the Green River case and invite viewers to call a toll-free number to volunteer information. As an added inducement, the program would offer a $100,000 reward for information leading to the killer’s arrest. The best thing about the Manhunt Live proposal was that it granted us control over what would be presented. There would be no surprise experts popping up to berate us, and we could tailor the material according to our own theories and advice from profilers. The producers decided to use me as a central figure, and the show would end with me issuing a challenge to the killer to call the hotline and speak with me directly.

The Manhunt Live program offered viewers a remarkable education. In two hours they learned about the killer’s methods, his likely profile, his area of operation, and his place in history as the worst of the worst. But nothing in the program was more powerful and affecting than the voices of the mothers and the pictures of the killer’s victims as little girls and teenagers. The innocence, vulnerability, and youth of the women who had been killed were just as plain as the pain in their mothers’ voices".

There is a documentary made by A&E TV channel. The link to its firts part is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e65t3YAMJo