get away with the crimes -- and for nearly two decades, Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, did. Ridgway murdered at least 49 people in and around Washington state’s King County, a number that, according to CNN, makes him the most prolific known serial killer in American history.
Early Troubles
Born in Salt Lake City in 1949, Ridgway’s family moved to the state of Washington in 1958. In the prosecution’s summary of evidence, Ridgway told investigators he was sexually attracted to his mother and also fantasized about killing her. While in his mid-teens, he approached a first-grader on a street corner and stabbed him in his side without provocation.
Ridgway joined the Navy in 1969 and visited a prostitute for the first time while serving a tour in Vietnam -- it was a practice he would continue. Court records show that during his second marriage, he tried to strangle his wife with his bare hands. He also said he might have committed his first murder sometime in the 1970s, though the claim has not been confirmed.
In July 1982, the bodies of Ridgway’s first victims were discovered in and around Washington’s Green River, prompting authorities to dub the then-anonymous culprit the Green River Killer. Ridgway approached prostitutes and runaways along a segment of Pacific Highway South near his King County home. He would typically have sex with the women, kill them via strangulation and dump their bodies. He murdered at his greatest frequency in 1983, killing at least 24 women that year alone.
According to Ridgway’s statement, filed with the Superior Court of Washington for King County, he targeted prostitutes because he thought their disappearances would go unreported. The prosecutor’s summary of evidence says Ridgway partially blamed his 1981 divorce from his second wife for the killings, though a New York Times article indicates that Ridgway’s last confirmed murder took place in 1998 — well into his third marriage.
Tracking Down a Killer
In 1984, the Green River Killer Task Force was established to investigate the murders. And while Ridgway was named as a suspect on several occasions, Time Magazine reports police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. By the early 1990s, the task force had dissolved. In 2001, four years after former Green River Killer detective David Reichert was elected sheriff of King County, Reichert and other investigators from the Green River Killer case decided to re-examine the evidence. The New York Times reports state-of-the-art DNA tests matched DNA from a saliva sample obtained from Ridgway in 1987 with evidence obtained on bodies of the victims. Police arrested Ridgway on Nov. 20, 2001, and soon after charged him with seven murders.
Avoiding the Death Penalty
In 2003, Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 murders and agreed to provide detailed information if prosecutors would forego pursuing the death penalty against him. It was a controversial agreement that the prosecution said was intended to provide closure for the families of the victims and hold Ridgway accountable for all of the killings. In December 2003, Ridgway received 48 consecutive life sentences. After the remains of another victim were discovered in December 2010, Ridgway pleaded guilty to an additional murder that occurred in 1982, writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. There could be more charges to come: according to The News Tribune of Tacoma, Ridgway claims to have committed more than 70 murders.
Academically, Gary performs poorly and is entirely forgettable to everyone in his class though he has a girlfriend and he later marries her. He joins the Navy and is sent to Vietnam. It’s there that he first regularly uses prostitutes. His one year marriage ends when his wife has an affair. His second marriage will produce a son but his unrelenting sexual demands will wear out many girlfriends and in total, three wives. His proclivities include outdoor sex. Even sometimes close to where some of the Green River victims are dumped.
And he’s obsessed with prostitutes. The religious part of him hates them soliciting on his street. But his relentless sexual needs mean he frequently uses them. In fact, he uses everybody. His murder victims will be a logical extension of this attitude. Once he’s raped and killed them, he’ll forget they ever existed.
That’s why he doesn’t make much effort to conceal or bury his victims. He doesn’t bury rubbish. He just chucks it away.
“Most of the time I killed them the first time I met them and I do not have a good memory of their faces. I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight”
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