Gary Ridgway

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Gary Ridgway

Mugshot of Gary Ridgway from his arrest in 2001.
Background information
Birth name: Gary Leon Ridgway
Alias(es): Green River Killer
Born: February 18, 1949
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Penalty: Life
Killings
Number of victims: 48
Span of killings: 1982 through 1998
Country: United States
State(s): Washington
Date apprehended: November 30, 2001

Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), known as the Green River Killer, is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. On November 30, 2001, as he was leaving a Renton, Washington factory where he worked, he was arrested for the murders of seven women whose deaths were attributed to the "Green River Killer". Four murders were linked to him through DNA and three through paint he used at his job. Two years later he pled guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder, although he says he killed 71. Ridgway has been married three times and has one son. He carried his son's photo in his wallet to lure most of his victims into his pickup truck.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Ridgway was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to Mary Rita Steinman and Thomas Newton Ridgway. He was raised in McMicken Heights, Washington. His mother reportedly dominated the household and was especially controlling towards her son. Relatives remember that she was never content with him and was constantly yelling at her husband. Friends and family, questioned about Ridgway following his arrest, described him as friendly but strange; the same man who went door to door for his Pentecostal church was also obsessed with prostitutes and had dysfunctional relationships with women; His first two marriages were both riddled with infidelities by both partners. Both a prostitute and his second wife testified that, in 1982, he had placed them in choke-holds.

In his childhood Ridgway was what can be best described as 'unremarkable.' He tested with an IQ of 80. His classmates remember him as congenial but also point out that he never stood out while at Tyee High. His teenage years, however, were troubled: Ridgway was 16 when he stabbed his first victim, who was 6. The police later ignored the victim when he fingered Ridgway as his attacker.

Ridgway also talked to and tried to make his victims comfortable before he committed the murders, in his own words,``I would talk to her ... and get her mind off of the, uh, anything she was nervous about. And think, you know, she thinks, `Oh, this guy cares,' and which I, I didn't. I just want to uh get her in the vehicle and eventually kill her."

Later in a statement Ridgway said that killing young women was his "career."[1]

[edit] The murders

During a two-and-a-half-year period in the early 1980s, the Green River Killer is believed to have murdered as many as 50 women near the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Most of the victims were either prostitutes or teenage runaways picked up along Pacific Highway South (State Route 99) and strangled. Most of their bodies were dumped in and around the Green River in Washington, except for two victims in the Portland, Oregon area.

In the early 1980s, the King County Sheriff Department formed the Green River Task Force to investigate the murders. The most notable members of the task force were Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert, who periodically interviewed incarcerated serial killer Ted Bundy from 1984 and got him to confess to some unsolved murders he was suspected of having committed.

Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 for charges related to prostitution. He became a suspect in 1983 for the Green River killings. In 1984 Ridgway took and passed a polygraph test, and on April 7, 1987, police took hair and saliva samples that were later subjected to a DNA analysis, which provided the evidence for his arrest warrant.

On November 30, 2001, nearly 20 years after first being identified as a potential suspect, Ridgway was arrested on suspicion of murder for four deaths after DNA evidence linked him to multiple victims. The four victims named in the original Ridgway indictment included Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds and Carol Ann Christensen.

Early in August 2003, Seattle television news reported that Ridgway had been moved from a maximum security cell at King County Jail to an undisclosed location. Other news reports stated that his lawyers, led by Brian Hochstetter, were closing a plea bargain that would spare him the death penalty in return for his confession to a number of the Green River murders.

On November 5, 2003, Ridgway entered a guilty plea to 48 charges of aggravated first degree murder as part of a plea bargain, agreed to in June, that would spare him execution in exchange for his cooperation in locating the remains of his victims and providing other details. In his statement accompanying his guilty plea, Ridgway explained all of his victims had been killed inside King County, Washington, and that he had transported and dumped the remains of the two women near Portland to confuse the police.

Public opinion remains divided on whether a confessed murderer of 48 people should be spared execution in a state that has the death penalty and imposes it on people who have killed far fewer victims. Deputy prosecutor Jeffrey Baird noted in court that the deal contained "the names of 41 victims who would not be the subject of State v. Ridgway if it were not for the plea agreement."[citation needed] King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng explained his decision to make the deal:

"We could have gone forward with seven counts, but that is all we could have ever hoped to solve. At the end of that trial, whatever the outcome, there would have been lingering doubts about the rest of these crimes. This agreement was the avenue to the truth. And in the end, the search for the truth is still why we have a criminal justice system ... Gary Ridgway does not deserve our mercy. He does not deserve to live. The mercy provided by today's resolution is directed not at Ridgway, but toward the families who have suffered so much ..."[citation needed]

On December 18, 2003, King County Superior Court Judge Richard Jones sentenced Ridgway to 48 life sentences with no possibility of parole and one life sentence, to be served consecutively. He was also sentenced to an additional 10 years for tampering with evidence for each of the 48 victims, adding 480 years to his 48 life sentences.

Ridgway led prosecutors to three bodies in 2003. On August 16 of that year, remains of a 16-year-old female found near Enumclaw, Washington, 40 feet from State Route 410, were pronounced as belonging to Pammy Annette Avent, who had been believed to be a victim of the Green River Killer. The remains of Marie Malvar and April Buttram were found in September. On November 23, 2005, The Associated Press reported that a weekend hiker found the skull of one of the 48 women Ridgway admitted murdering in his 2003 plea bargain with King County prosecutors. The skull of Tracy Winston, who was 19 when she disappeared from Northgate Mall on September 12, 1983, was found by a man hiking in a wooded area near Highway 18 near Issaquah, southeast of Seattle.

Ridgway confessed to more confirmed murders than any other American serial killer. Over a period of five months of police and prosecutor interviews, he confessed to 48 murders: Forty-two of the 48 murders on the police's list of probable Green River Killer victims and six more murders.[2] On February 9, 2004, county prosecutors began to release the videotape records of Ridgway's confessions. In one taped interview, he told investigators initially that he was responsible for the deaths of 65 women, but in another taped interview with Reichert on December 31, 2003, Ridgway claimed to have murdered 71 victims and confessed to have had sex with them prior to killing them, a detail which he did not reveal until after his sentencing.[3] He also confessed that he had sex with his victims' bodies after he murdered them, but claimed he began burying the later victims so that he would resist the urge to revisit them.[4]

Ridgway is incarcerated at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington.

[edit] Victims

# Name Age Murdered Found
1 Wendy Lee Coffield 16 July 8, 1982 July 15, 1982
2 Gisele Ann Lovvorn 19 July 17, 1982 Sept. 25, 1982
3 Debra Lynn Bonner 23 July 25, 1982 Aug. 12, 1982
4 Marcia Faye Chapman 31 Aug. 1, 1982 Aug. 15, 1982
5 Cynthia Jean Hinds 17 Aug. 11, 1982 Aug. 15, 1982
6 Opal Charmaine Mills 16 Aug. 12, 1982 Aug. 15, 1982
7 Terry Rene Milligan 16 Aug. 29, 1982 April 1, 1984
8 Mary Bridget Meehan 18 Sept. 15, 1982 Nov. 13, 1983
9 Debra Lorraine Estes 15 Sept. 20, 1982 May 30, 1988
10 Linda Jane Rule 16 Sept. 26, 1982 -
11 Denise Darcel Bush 22 Oct. 8, 1982 -
12 Shawnda Leea Summers 17 Oct. 9, 1982 Aug. 11, 1983
13 Shirley Marie Sherrill 18 between Oct. 20 and Nov. 7, 1982 -
14 Colleen Renee Brockman 15 about Dec. 24, 1982 May 26, 1984
15 Alma Ann Smith 18 March 3, 1983 April 2, 1984
16 Delores LaVerne Williams 17 March 8, 1983 March 31, 1984
17 Gail Lynn Mathews 24 April 10, 1983 Sept. 18, 1983
18 Andrea M. Childers 19 April 16, 1983 Oct. 11, 1989
19 Sandra Kay Gabbert 17 April 17, 1983 April 1, 1984
20 Kimi-Kai Pitsor 16 April 17, 1983 -
21 Marie M. Malvar 18 April 30, 1983 Sept. 29, 2003
22 Carol Christensen 21 May 3, 1983 May 8, 1983
23 Martina Theresa Authorlee 18 May 22, 1983 Nov. 14, 1984
24 Cheryl Lee Wims 18 May 23, 1983 March 22, 1984
25 Yvonne Shelly Antosh 19 May 31, 1983 Oct. 15, 1983
26 Carrie A. Rois 15 May 31 to June 13, 1983 March 10, 1985
27 Constance Elizabeth Naon 21 June 8, 1983 Oct. 27, 1983
28 Kelly Marie Ware 22 July 19, 1983 -
29 Tina Marie Thompson 22 July 25, 1983 April 20, 1984
30 April Dawn Buttram 17 Aug. 18, 1983 Aug. 30 and Sept. 2, 2003
31 Debbie May Abernathy 26 Sept. 5, 1983 March 31, 1984
32 Tracy Ann Winston 19 Sept. 12, 1983 March 27, 1986
33 Maureen Sue Feeney 19 Sept. 28, 1983 May 2, 1986
34 Mary Sue Bello 25 Oct. 11, 1983 Oct. 12, 1984
35 Pammy Avent 16 Oct. 26, 1983 Aug. 16, 2003
36 Delise Louise Plager 22 Oct. 30, 1983 Feb. 14, 1984
37 Kimberly L. Nelson 26 Nov. 1, 1983 June 14, 1986
38 Lisa Yates 26 Dec. 23, 1983 March 13, 1984
39 Mary Exzetta West 16 Feb. 6, 1984 Sept. 8, 1985
40 Cindy Anne Smith 17 March 21, 1984 June 27, 1987
41 Patricia Michelle Barczak 19 October 1986 -
42 Roberta Joseph Hayes 21 Last seen leaving a Portland, Ore., jail in 1987 -
43 Marta Reeves 37 Disappeared 1990 -
44 Patricia Yellow Robe 38 Disappeared 1998 Aug. 6, 1998

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Green River Killer
  2. ^ Anitra Mulwee. karisable.com. Retrieved on 2008-03-19.
  3. ^ Cold Case Files: "Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer (Original Air Date: 12/15/2005) on A & E.
  4. ^ Ridgway Reveals Gruesome Details In Chilling Confession - Video - KIRO Seattle

[edit] External links