Twenty-five years ago, Gary Ridgway killed Arleen Williams\u2019 sister, irrevocably changing her family.<\/p>\n
In her first book, Williams tells the tale of growing up on a remote parcel of land on Tiger Mountain in the Issaquah Valley.<\/p>\n
Her sister, Maureen Sue Feeney, was killed at the age of 19, just a month after moving out of the family home and into a Seattle apartment.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike all victims of violent crime, Maureen was more than just a number,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not another book about Gary L. Ridgway. There are plenty of those out there,\u201d she said of her book, \u201cThe Thirty-Ninth Victim: A Memoir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote it not only to remember my sister, but also to understand the circumstances that led to her death.\u201d<\/p>\n
King County Court documents listed Feeney as Ridgway\u2019s 39th victim when he was sentenced in December 2003 to life in prison for killing 48 women.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy truest memories of Maureen are of this beautiful little girl,\u201d Williams said, remembering her sister\u2019s blond curls and love for nature and animals. Nicknamed \u201cMaurie,\u201d Maureen later became interested in working with young children, first in a daycare and later hoping for a career in the early childhood development.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 39th Victim\u201d was published earlier this year by Blue Feather Books, and describes Williams\u2019 life as the middle child in a family of nine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am no longer a middle child,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cWhen there is a death, of course it changes that whole structure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The writing started as a cathartic process \u2014 something Williams said she needed to do for herself and her own teenage daughter as much as for the rest of her family and the community \u2014 and, of course, for Maureen.<\/p>\n
\u201c … I tell Maureen\u2019s story, because she can no longer tell it,\u201d Williams writes in the book.<\/p>\n
Now a resident of West Seattle, she is an English professor at South Seattle Community College and has taught the English language for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n
She believes in communication \u2014 so strongly, in fact, that she believes lack of communication caused the unraveling of her large family and also that Ridgway could have been arrested decades sooner if detectives and officers had communicated more effectively.<\/p>\n
The book is an attempt to point out the vital need to clearly talk with others in our families, our community and our society at large.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A silent family<\/p>\n
Williams describes her family, her upbringing and her relationships in a level of detail that is both excruciating and addictive for the reader.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaking the decision to publish was extremely difficult,\u201d Williams said. \u201cIn publishing this book, I have broken every family rule it was possible to break.\u201d<\/p>\n
To be as conscientious of her family\u2019s feelings as possible, she tried to limit the material she included in the book to only those things that had a direct impact on her and her life. And, she changed the names of some people \u2014 no easy feat given that her parents named each of their six daughters with a name that ended in \u201ceen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Feeney family went through many difficult times, long before Maureen went missing. While Williams said she believes that her parents were doing the best they could to parent nine children in the turbulent times of the 1960s, it simply became more than they could handle. When their oldest daughter was 17 and they felt she was no longer within their control, the parents called the police and had her taken away. Two other older siblings left home or were disowned, and Williams and the younger kids weren\u2019t allowed to ask questions, talk about any of what had happened or even mention the missing siblings\u2019 names.<\/p>\n
\u201c … I don\u2019t think we ever learned to communicate among ourselves because we never learned to communicate with our parents,\u201d Williams writes in the book. \u201cWe imitated the silence that they modeled.\u201d<\/p>\n
That fact continued later on, when no one in Williams\u2019 family told her that Maureen was missing until a month had gone by. Living in Mexico at the time, Williams finally received a letter from their mother telling her of Maureen\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed to break the cycle of silence,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Intertwined with Green River case<\/p>\n
The Feeney family moved from Seattle to 10 acres in Issaquah in 1959. The land where the family plowed a road through, laid water lines and built a house sat less than 10 miles from where Ridgway left the body of Maureen Feeney near the intersection of Interstate 90 and Highway 18. The children\u2019s mother worked as a nurse at Echo Glen, just a short distance from the spot where Maureen\u2019s remains were found 31 months after she went missing.<\/p>\n
Life in Issaquah certainly wasn\u2019t all bad. In fact, some of Williams\u2019 childhood memories were quite rosy \u2014 gathering blackberries with her brothers and sisters, playing in the woods and riding horses along the Bonneville Power Administration access line among hosts of daisies. They even made chores into games.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a while, we really were that big, happy family building a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the book, Williams touches on other coincidences and oddities, such as the fact that nearly her entire family was gathered together \u2014 something that happened only a handful of times after the elder children began leaving home \u2014 to celebrate their father\u2019s 80th birthday on the day that Ridgway was arrested. They had no warning of the arrest, and woke up to see the headlines the next day.<\/p>\n
Their father died about two months later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a basketcase. My husband said, \u2018You\u2019ve been talking about writing forever. Maybe now is the time to do it,\u2019\u201d Williams said. \u201cI had put it off for so many years.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, she began researching and found a course through the University of Washington extension called \u201cTurning Journals Into Memoirs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through that class, and with the help of writing coaches and a writing group at Louisa\u2019s Cafe, the winding story of Williams\u2019 family and Maureen Feeney\u2019s early death came together about five years later into a book that invites compulsive reading.<\/p>\n
Issaquah resident Suzanne Suther, whose family were the only \u201creal\u201d neighbors the Feeney family had, lost touch with them after Maureen\u2019s funeral. She recently spotted a listing about Williams giving an author\u2019s reading at the Issaquah library, and reunited with Williams last week.<\/p>\n
The Feeney kids played with and babysat for Suther\u2019s four children, the youngest of whom was the same age as Maureen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a very courageous journey you\u2019ve been on,\u201d Suther told Williams after the reading at the library.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
First \u2014 and last \u2014 visit as friends<\/p>\n
The last time Williams saw her sister alive was when Maureen visited her in Mexico City, where she was working and living in the early \u201880s.<\/p>\n
Maureen stayed with Williams and her husband for a three-week visit. The two siblings, six years apart in age, began to get to know one another as adults for the first time. Maureen had been only 11 when Williams moved away from home.<\/p>\n
They went sightseeing in Mexico, awkward together at first but beginning to glimpse a true relationship between one another.<\/p>\n
While she does have happy memories of spending time together and watching Maureen go parasailing and swimming, Williams said she regrets not remembering their last conversations and moments together more clearly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know that she\u2019d be murdered 13 months later, or that I\u2019d never see her again,\u201d Williams wrote. \u201cSo I wasn\u2019t affixing her face, her voice, her smell in my permanent memory. I wasn\u2019t present in the moment, and the moment was lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
She does, however, have a snapshot from the day they dropped Maureen off at the airport for her return flight to Seattle. The photo shows Williams and Maureen, grins on their faces and arms thrown around one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish I had never let go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
To read more about the Feeney family and the years before and after Maureen Feeney\u2019s death, visit Williams\u2019 Web site at www.arleenwilliams.com or look for the book at www.bluefeatherbooks.com.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twenty-five years ago, Gary Ridgway killed Arleen Williams\u2019 sister, irrevocably changing her family.
\nIn her first book, Williams tells the tale of growing up on a remote parcel of land on Tiger Mountain in the Issaquah Valley.
\nHer sister, Maureen Sue Feeney, was killed at the age of 19, just a month after moving out of the family home and into a Seattle apartment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":18522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18521"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18521"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}