The Story Of Gary Ridgway And Green River Killings

When Gary Ridgway was a child, his mother, Mary Ridgway, was the one who ran the house. It had been rumored that she had very odd ways of parenting, and her husband never had the courage to stand up to her. His father never seemed to play a huge role in Gary’s life. When Gary was a kid, his father worked in a mortuary. His father would often come home with stories about how his colleagues engaged in necrophilia, and these stories infatuated Gary. He loved the idea of having sex with dead bodies because you couldn't get caught, there would be o feelings involved, and the body wouldn’t feel it.

When Gary was a child, he was a chronic bedwetter. Whenever he would wet the bed, she would make a very big deal, and rudley criticize him in front or his brothers and other. After she would do that, she would make him stand in the shower, and give him a cold bath. During these baths, she would pay extra attention and time in cleaning his genitals, which she considered the dirtiest parts. Typically when she gave him these baths, she would have barely any clothing on herself. Mary worked in a men's department store, and she would often tell her sons story about how when she would measure the men for clothing, they would get aroused. She would go into such great detail, and as Gary started growing into his adolescence years, he started having these fantasies about having very violent sex with his mother. In high school, Gary was a D average student, and he did not graduate high school until the age of 20. Throughout these years, he started killing animals, became obsessive over true crime stories, and starting fires.

After school one day when he was 16, he stabbed a young boy in the woods. The young boy had survived the stabbing, but Gary was never arrested nor did he get in any trouble for it. When he was caught for the Green River killings, he said that he was unaware if he had killed before. He said that he had vivid memories of browning a boy in a lake, but he couldn’t remember if they were real or not. After Gary had graduated, and gotten married, he then enlisted in the Navy. He has stated that during this time, is when he gained an obsession for prostitutes. When he got home from the Navy, he learned that his wife had cheated on him while he was gone. He immediately divorced her. Not too much longer later, he was married to Marcia. After they got divorced, she stated that he would often take her out to the green river to have sex outdoors. They had a kid together, and after the divorce she had custody of him, and Gary had to pay child support. When he learned that he had to pay, he was so angry that he had contemplated Marcia.

After his second divorce, Ridgway started engaging with prostitutes. Each time he was with one, his hatred for prostitutes grew. It eventually got to the point where he could no longer have sex with a living body. When he got to that point, he started raping the still warm corpses. Occasionally, he would get the urge, and he would go back to where he had buried the corpses, and would clean them off, and have sex with them. Eventually he started burying the bodies further away from his home so that he would stop getting this urge. During this time, he met his third wife, Judith, and while he was married to her, is when most of his murders occured. July 1982, the first body had been found by a couple of children playing by the river. Later on the body had been identified as Wendy Lee Coffield. Mid August of ‘92, 4 more bodies had been found. All five bodies that had been discovered were all females who were believed to be prostitutes that worked the SeaTac Strip. The two first bodies had been so badly decomposed, and were completely skeletonized. Because of this, there was no semen that was able to be collected from the victims. At this point, there were no suspect, no motive, and no evidence. As these bodies were being discovered, a task force was being put together that contained over 25 detectives.

August 13, a cab driver, Malvyn Foster, had called the police on another cab driver saying that he thought this other driver was the killer. The more he had explained his reasoning to the police, the more suspicious they got of him. Foster had taken the case very public. He knew he wasn’t guilty for the murders of the girls, and he wasn’t scared because he knew he wasn’t the one who did it. 1982 had come to a close and no more bodies had been found. Detectives knew that the killings were not over though, and they probably had never even stopped. In the summer and fall of 1983, that’s when bodies started littering the countryside of the town. By the end of 1983, 14 more bodies had be discovered, with 23 still missing. At this point, they were able to figure out the profile that he went for because they all fit within it: prostitutes and runaways. The murders were occurring so rapidly, and there were so many victims, and they knew they weren’t going to stop. Eventually, a second task force was created.

In 1984, 14 more bodies had been discovered, and that brought the death toll up close to 30. October of 1984, they received a letter in the mail, like they often do. This letter had something different about it though. The author of this letter had plenty of experience with killing. The author was Ted Bundy. Bundy knew this area quite well, because he had killed 8 people in this area himself. Detectives were very hesitant to go talk to him. They weighed the pros and the cons, but they figured they had nothing to lose by going to talk to him.

November 17, 1984, 2 detectives flew out to the Florida prison that Bundy was in to sit down and have a conversation with him. They interviewed him for 2 days and within those days. During the interview, they asked him if they thought the Green river Killer would contact police, bundy said, “He doesn't want to get caught. So he’s going to make changes in his behavior both to, you know, stay ahead of you and to avoid publicity. He may not be a sophisticated type to sit down and analyze this. He knows it like a fox knows his stuff. He knows it like and predator seems to know his victim. Not in an analytical way but in sensory, and intuitive way. ” Bundy also informed the that “The dumpsite, the site where the bodies are left are significant. There’s no underestimating that. In fact, that is really all you have right now. I mean, there may be some other evidence, but these are certainties. No question that the victim and the guy were there. That’s the tremendous advantage. That’s where I would focus. ” the way the killings were happening, Bundy believe that he was returning to each dump site. He believed he would return to have sex with the bodies, or do whatever he wanted to do with them. “If it’s a good site that has a fresh body or remains there, you’re going to get more than a drive-by, you’re going to get the guy coming up to the site, on foot or in his car. ” The detectives agreed that his was a good method. The problem with it though was that when they found the bodies, they were normally so decomposed and skelontonized. They had not found a fresh body yet. By 1986, over 50 detectives worked the case and the FBI had came in with the profile of the killer. They believed for him to be a white male, mid-30s, and a loner. At this point they were at a lose for what to do. They had no suspects, and barely any evidence. That’s when two detectives started going through old files. As they were going through them, they started making multiple connections. These connections were between the victims and a local truck painter, Gary Leon Ridgway. They could directly connect him to multiple of the victims, and the deeper they look, the more connections they made. These connections were enough evidence to get a search warrant of Ridgways car and house, and to take bodily fluid samples. Thousands of items were taken from his home, but none of them were connected to the killings. He was never arrested, and the case then went cold. With no leads, and nowhere to go, the case slowly started getting shut down. Millions of dollars were being spent, and they were getting nowhere. One detective stated that they knew the cost of the investigation, but they did not know the value.

By 1991, there was only one detective left working the case. August of 2001, the detective gave permission to the Washington State Crime Lab to test the semen and paint chips found on the victims clothing. After they weren’t able to find Ridgway guilty, they made sure to keep eyes on his every move. He often drove around the areas of prostitution, and he was arrested for trying to pick up an undercover police officer. Soon after he was released, on November 30, 2001, cops confronted him as he was leaving work and arrested him. They told him that they were arresting him for 4 of the murders connected to the Green River killings, and the only thing he said back was, “Oh, okay. ” After the 14 years that the case was stalle, it had finally been revived. The crime lab had sent the paint chips on the clothing to a microtrace lab. The lab found that the chips were a special kind of spray paint that you were not able to just go out and buy. The type of paint was Dupont Imron, and is used very exclusively for commercial painting. It just so happens, that this is the same brand the Gary Ridgway used at his work. So far, there were four deaths tied to him by DNA or the location, and three others were tied through the paint chips. Because of this, it is very likely that he is guilty, and that it isn’t just a coincidence. With all the evidence piled against Ridgway, his lawyers sat him down and explained to him that he really has no chance to win the trial, and he is most likely be placed on death row. This made him completely break down, and he agreed to start cooperating. His lawyers extended an offer to the state that Ridgway will take the police to the dumpsites of the women who were still missing if he can avoid being put on death row. The prosecutors immediately denied. They believed that he deserved no mercy, and that he did not deserve to live. The mercy should not be going out to him, it should be going out to the victims and their families. June 13, 2003, the plea deal is signed. He pleads guilty to 48 murders, and he agrees to tell the investigators the whole story. For five months after the plea, he is incomplete isolations and he is questioned daily about the murders. When Ridgway picked up these women, he would promise them anything and any amount of money just to get them in his truck. He stated, “I would talk to her, get her mind off of anything she was nervous about, and you know, she thinks this guy cares, which I didn't. I just wanted to get her in the vehicle and kill her. ” For each person he saw, he went through a list of questions in his head. The first question he would ask himself would be “Can I get some kind of sexual gratification out of this person?’ and if the answer was yes, then he would then go onto the next question. The next question he would ask himself would be “Can I kill this person?”, and if this answer was yes then he would ask “If I kill this person, will I get away with it?”. If he was to get three yeses, then he would kill. He lured women in by showing them a picture of his son. His process of thinking about this was that the women wouldn’t believe he was killer if he had a family. Ridgway could not remember the faces and names of most of his victims, but he did remember where he had put them, because he would like to go back so that he could have that power and control one last time. Like Ted Bundy had said, Ridgway would go back and have sex with the bodies. The detectives asked him why he would rather have sex with corpses when he could just pay to have sex with a woman. He responded with, “Well, for one thing, you’d have to pay for it, and she was already dead”. They would often take him on what they called “field trips” to the dump sites. These field trips triggered many memories, and all the bodies started surfacing.

November 5, 2003, a judge read a role call of all the women, and he would state if he was guilty or non-guilty for that woman's murder. At this same hearing, many of the victims families and friends spoke. Ridgway broke down from hearing what all they had to say, but his emotions did not fool the judge. Six weeks later, the sentencing came. He was sentenced with 48 consecutive life sentences.