Ten years ago this month, my dad caught a serial killer.

From 1984 to 2001, my father, Detective Tom Jensen, hunted one of the worst mass murderers in history, Seattle’s so-called Green River Killer, responsible for the strangulation slayings of over 48 women. At first, my father was a member of a task force of detectives. Eventually, and by choice, he became the only detective working the case full-time. He privately referred to the investigation as “The Quest” – the choice of words inspired by the song “The Impossible Dream” from the musical The Man of La Mancha. “Privately,” because Dad rarely talked about the case with the family, never told us what it truly meant to him – not until it was over. In September of 2001, my father, using DNA technology, put a proper name on the Green River Killer: Gary Leon Ridgway, a seemingly mild mannered painter of commercial trucks. Ridgway was arrested in December 2001, and  my father and his colleagues believed they had brought the Green River Killer to justice and brought an end to a nightmare that haunted Seattle for nearly 20 years. But a bizarre endgame still awaited them.

In 2008, I asked my father if I could dramatize his story in a slightly unusual fashion. I love comic books. My father, in fact, introduced me to comics when I was kid. So I wanted to write a graphic novel. The result is called Green River Killer: A True Detective Story, published by Dark Horse Comics. READ FULL STORY »