Local photographer looks to take attention away from serial killer and put it back on his victims
Aug 20, 2026, 2:48 PM
(Photo courtesy of KIRO 7)
(Photo courtesy of KIRO 7)
A local photographer is daring you to look at places you may be tempted to ignore.
Laura LeMoon’s latest project is shining a light on innocent victims that one man tried to keep in the dark.
Gary Ridgway, one of the most prolific serial killers in United States history, earned the moniker “The Green River Killer,” a nod to the location where he left the bodies of his victims.
LeMoon walks those same banks decades later and thinks of his first known victims: Wendy Coffield, Gisele Lovvorn, Debra Bonner, Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds, and Opal Mills.
“No matter how much time goes by, I will always remember what took place here,” LeMoon told KIRO 7’s Monique Ming Laven.
His killing spree spanned over 15 years, and more than ⅔ of his victims were teens. When they disappeared, few people searched for them at the time. Most were just found dead weeks, months, and even years later.
After his arrest, Ridgway told investigators that he chose his victims
“I wanted to go around and visit as many sites as possible of where the victims were either murdered or last seen alive,” LeMoon said.
LeMoon took KIRO 7 to some of these locations: some were spooky, many mundane.
“There is negative space here that needs to be filled,” LeMoon said.
The space was once filled by evil no one else witnessed, except for the land itself.
For that reason, she is calling her photography exhibit “What The Earth Knows.”
“What The Earth Knows” has appeared everywhere from local businesses in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood to galleries in Tokyo and Milan.
“The focus has been on Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, and not enough on the victims,” LeMoon said. “These are complex human beings. These are not just prostitutes. These are not just sex trafficking survivors. These are not just, you know, dot, dot, dot, fill in the blank, anything.”
She wants to draw attention to the spaces they couldn’t leave, capturing their heartache and her own.
LeMoon herself was trafficked and did sex work, and knows what happens in these places that people don’t want to see.
She is hoping the photos do justice for his victims — to make the viewer see the danger for girls like them instead of waiting until they disappear.
“It’s about the invisible being made visible around us every day,” she said.
You can see her photography at the Revelry Room (4547 California Ave SW, West Seattle) on Oct. 15.
