That would be Seattle’s Freeway Park. What originally may have seemed a triumphant merger of Modernism and the then nascent Urban Ecology movement has proven itself to be an ideal site for crime that includes murder and rape. In Montreal our version of this was probably the notorious Pine/Park Interchange, the demolition of which has been one of the brightest projects in the city in recent decades.
Topography of Terror
Seattle’s Freeway Park is a garden of earthly delights–for the city’s crazed murderers and inhuman rapists! A sprawling maze of dark corners, towering
by Charles Mudede
On Friday, January 18, 2002, four women walked into the public restrooms in the heart of Freeway Park and found a dead body on the floor. It was 10:15 a.m. The raw energy of the violent murder–the victim, RaeAnn Champaco, was stabbed several times in the chest–had not dissipated; it was still fresh and vivid. The women ran out of the restroom screaming. As they headed toward the north part of the park, they saw, first, a person of interest–a white man who pulled his blue London Fog-style trench coat over his head and fled–and then a red panic button. The police entered the park with tracking dogs, and tried to hunt down the killer. He got away because, as Seattle Police Department spokesperson Officer Fish explained in a press release, the park’s “maze of pathways” hindered their search. (more…)
