ANOTHER VICTIM OF GREEN RIVER KILLER ID’D

Investigators have identified a victim of the Green River Killer, one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history, more than four decades after the victim was last seen alive, officials in Washington state said Tuesday.

The victim, Lori Anne Razpotnik, who was known as Bones 17 for nearly 40 years after her remains were discovered, ran away from home in 1982 at age 15, according to a news release from the King County Sheriff’s Office. Her family never saw her again.

Donna Hurley, Razpotnik’s mother, said Wednesday that the news of how her daughter died was “overwhelming, but at the same time it just brought a sense of peace.”

As a child, Razpotnik was energetic and intelligent, Hurley said, but in the seventh grade she began to get in trouble for shoplifting and leaving school. Razpotnik would run away and return home repeatedly over several years, until she left home at 15 and never came back.

On Dec. 30, 1985, Auburn law enforcement was called to investigate a car that had gone over an embankment. At the scene, investigators discovered two sets of human remains that they labeled “Bones 16” and “Bones 17” because they could not immediately identify them.

Gary Ridgway, who was known as the Green River Killer and was convicted of 49 murders in 2003 — though he confessed to killing 71 and investigators believe the actual number is even higher — led investigators to that same location in 2002 and admitted to placing victims there. Their identities remained a mystery.

A decade later, Bones 16 was identified as Sandra Majors through DNA testing.

To identify Bones 17, investigators recently tapped Parabon NanoLabs in Reston, Va., to conduct forensic genetic genealogy testing. Detectives also contacted Razpotnik’s mother, who provided them with a saliva sample. The University of North Texas completed a DNA comparison, confirming the remains were Razpotnik’s.