When the cryptic letter showed up on reporter Mike Barber’s desk in February 1984, prominent FBI criminal profiler John E. Douglas (of “Mindhunter” fame) dismissed the letter as a “feeble and amateurish attempt” by someone who “has no connection with the Green River Homicides,” The Seattle Times reported. But Douglas, who with his partner, Robert K. Kessler, developed the FBI’s serial killer profiling methods in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, was mistaken about the letter being a fake. 

In 2003, after Gary Ridgeway confessed to killing nearly 50 girls and women, he also confessed to writing and sending the 1984 letter to the media. According to The Seattle Times, Douglas says he doesn’t really remember how he came to his conclusions in the analysis of the letter, but he isn’t sure it would’ve changed anything if at the time they believed the letter was authentic. 

Douglas told the Seattle Times, “Let’s say I say that is him. Now what do we do? It’s typewritten. If it was handwritten, we could release information publicly. … Did I hold up the investigation? There was never another communiqué. He never did anything again after that, other than to continue the ways of his killing.”

Yet Douglas also conceded that he made a mistake, saying, “I feel that you can’t bat a thousand, and that’s great, but I truly believe that he could have been caught sooner.”