If you had chosen to be either a prostitute or a runaway anytime between 1982 and 1998, living in the Seattle / Tacoma area in Washington was really not a good idea. If you did so, you stood a really good chance of being abducted and killed by the most prolific American serial killer of our time: Gary Leon Ridgway aka The Green River Killer.
Ridgway trolled the Sea-Tac Airport Strip for more than twenty years, picking up young women, allaying their fears by showing them pictures of his son and then strangling them and dumping their bodies along the Green River. He is said to have killed more than 90 women, a number that far exceeds the body count of even the legendary Ted Bundy. His was a shadowy and mysterious presence that haunted young women for many, many years and the police were hard pressed to find even a trace of him.
One of the reasons why clues were so scarce was that the majority of the corpses were merely bare bones by the time they were found. It would often prove impossible for the police to collect sufficient evidence to identify a victim let alone a suspect. In fact, to this day, some of the women killed remain unidentified. The Green River Task Force even went so far as to interview Bundy, whose crimes were remarkably similar to Green River’s, to try to gain an insight into the mind of the new killer. Little did they know that the man they were so industriously seeking was living and working quietly nearby and was watching their investigation unfold with great interest. And he was also contaminating the crime scenes by swapping physical evidence between various body dumping sites.
Gary Leon Ridgway has been described by friends and acquaintances as a quiet man…’friendly but strange’ they said. He survived a traumatic upbringing that involved incidents like his mother beating him for wetting the bed right up until the age of 14 and his attempting to stab a friend in the woods when he was 16. He was married multiple times but also frequented prostitutes. In fact, he frequented prostitutes so much that he became a suspect in the Green River slayings as early as 1983. In 1984 he took a polygraph test relating to the murders but he must have possessed iron self control because he passed this test with flying colors. In 1987, his odd behavior once again came to the police’s attention and, this time, they took hair and saliva samples. Unfortunately, they still could not link him to any of the crimes and another 14 years would pass before anything positive happened on this case.
By November 2001, the police had finally amassed sufficient evidence and they were successful in forensically linking Ridgway to four murders through the DNA contained in the hair and saliva samples that he had given in 1987. He was arrested and charged with these four murders, and also with three further murders when the results of further DNA testing came in. No evidence could be found providing a conclusive link between Ridgway and the many other murders attributed to Green River, however, and it therefore seemed that closure was not going to be possible for the families of the majority of those killed.
A solution was reached when Ridgway entered – and the state accepted – a plea bargain confirming his guilt in respect of 48 charges of aggravated first degree murder and requesting that he be spared the death penalty for his crimes. Of all known American serial killers, Ridgway is the one that has, to date, confessed to the highest number of confirmed killings. He also received the longest sentence: 480 years for tampering with evidence plus 48 consecutive life terms…all without the possibility of parole.
The Green River Killer is known to have said that ‘murdering young women was his career’.
Sources:
Gary Ridgway Wikipedia
Green River Homicides Investigation King County Sheriff
Rachael Bell Green River Killer: River of Death TruTV Crime Library
