Cade Barker's Oct. 29 article ("The Cedar Creek Ghost Mill") was an exercise in thoughtlessness and insensitivity that should not have been published. It deals with the 1974 murders, by a Battle Ground resident and convicted murderer, Warren Forrest of 17-year-old Martha Morrison, whose remains were found in Dole Valley, and Krista Blake, 20, whose remains were found on Tukes Mountain, as well as the murder of another suspected victim of Forrest's, Barbara Ann Derry, 18, and the disappearance of 14-year-old Diane Gilchrist.
Forrest is also considered the prime suspect in the rape, torture, and murder of other local girls and women, including Jamie Grissim, 16, Gloria Knutson, 19, and Carol Valenzuela, 20, and has confessed to a total of 16 crimes against women.
Barker's article is accompanied by a lurid and cartoonish full-page graphic that includes the bust of a skeleton wearing a press badge and a wraith-like woman in the Cedar Creek Grist Mill (Derry's body was found at the bottom of a silo at the mill) and captioned, in part, "HELLO MY ROWDY READERS OF THE REFLECTOR. WELCOME TO THE NEXT CHAPTER IN THE TERRIBLE-TALE [sic] OF THE UNEXPLAINED, HORRIFIC, [sic] HAUNTINGS OF YOUR VERY OWN CEDAR CREEK GRIST MILL. READ ON, IF YOU DARE. . . ."
The story of each of these violent deaths is indeed a terrible tale, and truly horrific. Surely Barker and the Reflector editors must realize that friends and family members of these murdered girls and young women still live in this area. Trivializing their pain with a full-page Halloween cartoon was callous and cruel.
Carolyn Schultz-Rathbun
Hockinson
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