On November 30, 2001, as he was leaving the Renton, Washington Kenworth Truck factory where he worked, he was arrested for the murders of four women whose cases were linked to him through DNA evidence. As part of a plea bargain wherein he agreed to disclose the whereabouts of still "missing" women, he was spared the death penalty and received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
Early life
Ridgway was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Mary Rita Steinman and Thomas Newton Ridgway. He has two brothers—Gregory Leon and Thomas Edward. He was raised in the McMicken Heights neighborhood of SeaTac, Washington.
Ridgway's homelife was somewhat troubled; relatives have described his mother as domineering and have said that young Ridgway witnessed more than one violent argument between his parents.As a boy Ridgway had a habit of wetting the bed. His mother would often be the one to discover the accidents and would bathe him immediately. She would belittle him and embarrass him in front of his family. From a young age, Ridgway had conflicting feelings of sexual attraction and anger toward her.
As a young child, Ridgway was tested with an I.Q. of 82, signifying low intelligence, and his academic performance in school was so poor that at one point in high school he had to repeat a single school year twice in order to attain grades decent enough to pass. His classmates at Tyee High School describe him as congenial but largely forgettable. His teenage years, however, were troubled; when he was 16, he stabbed a six-year-old boy, who survived the attack. According to the victim and Ridgway himself, Ridgway walked away laughing and saying, "I always wondered what it would be like to kill someone." While in high school, Ridgway joined the Navy. After graduation, he was sent to Vietnam, where he served onboard a supply ship and saw combat.
Friends and family, questioned about Ridgway after his arrest, described him as friendly but strange. His first two marriages resulted in divorce because of infidelities by both partners. Both partners, Rebecca Guay and his second wife Marcia, claimed that he had placed them in chokeholds, Marcia in 1972 and Guay in 1982.
In 1975 his second wife gave birth to his son, Matthew.
Murders
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ridgway is believed to have murdered at least 71 women (according to Ridgway, in an interview with Sheriff Reichert 2001) near Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. His court statements later reported that he had killed so many, he lost count. A majority of the murders occurred between 1982 to 1984. The victims were believed to be either prostitutes or runaways picked up along Pacific Highway South (International Blvd. 99) whom he strangled. Most of their bodies were dumped in wooded areas around the Green River (Washington) except for two confirmed and another two suspected victims found in the Portland, Oregon area. The bodies were often left in clusters, sometimes posed, usually nude. He also sometimes later would return to the victims' bodies and have intercourse with them (an act of necrophilia). Because most of the bodies were not discovered until only the skeletons remained, four victims are still unidentified. Ridgway occasionally contaminated the dump sites with gum, cigarettes, and written materials belonging to others, and he even transported a few victims' remains across state lines into Oregon to confuse the police.
Ridgway began each murder by picking up a woman, usually a prostitute. He sometimes showed the woman a picture of his son, to help her trust him. After having sex with her, Ridgway strangled her from behind. He initially strangled them manually. However, many victims inflicted wounds and bruises on his arm while trying to defend themselves. Concerned these wounds and bruises would draw attention, Ridgway began using ligatures to strangle his victims. Most victims were killed in his home, his truck, or a secluded area.
In the early 1980s, the King County Sheriff's Office 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. Their interviews with Bundy were of little help in the Green River investigations but elicited confessions from Bundy on unsolved cases. Also contributing was John E. Douglas, who has since written much on the subject of the Green River Killer.
Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 on charges related to prostitution. He became a suspect in 1983 in the Green River killings. In 1984, Ridgway took and passed a polygraph test, and on April 7, 1987, police took hair and saliva samples from Ridgway.
The DNA samples collected in 1987 were later subjected to a DNA analysis, providing the evidence for his arrest warrant. On November 30, 2001, Ridgway was at the Kenworth Truck factory, where he worked as a spray painter, when police arrived to arrest him. Ridgway was arrested on suspicion of murder of four women nearly 20 years after first being identified as a potential suspect when DNA evidence conclusively linked semen left in the victims to the saliva swab taken by the police. The four victims named in the original indictment were Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Ann Christensen. Three more victims—Wendy Coffield, Debra Bonner, and Debra Estes—were added to the indictment after Skip Palenik identified microscopic spray paint spheres at his laboratory, Microtrace LLC in Elgin, IL, as a specific brand and composition of paint used at the Kenworth factory during the specific time frame when these victims were killed.
Plea bargain, confessions, sentencing
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 Anthony Savage, 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 that 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.
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." 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 ...
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 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, sex, anything she was nervous about. And think, you know, she thinks, 'Oh, this guy cares'... which I didn't. I just want to, uh, get her in the vehicle and eventually kill her.
Later in a statement Ridgway said that murdering young women was his "career".
Ridgway is incarcerated at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington.
Victims
Before Ridgway's confession, authorities had attributed 49 murders to the Green River Killer. As mentioned above, Ridgway confessed to murdering as many as 71 victims.
Confirmed
At the time of his December 18, 2003 sentencing, authorities had been able to find 48 sets of remains, including victims not originally attributed to the Green River Killer. Ridgway was sentenced for the deaths of each of these 48 victims, with a plea agreement that he would "plead guilty to any and all future cases (in King County) where his confession could be corroborated by reliable evidence."
# Name Age Disappeared Found
1 Wendy Lee Coffield 16 July 8, 1982 July 15, 1982
2 Gisele Ann Lovvorn 17 July 17, 1982 September 25, 1982
3 Debra Lynn Bonner 23 July 25, 1982 August 12, 1982
4 Marcia Fay Chapman 31 August 1, 1982 August 15, 1982
5 Cynthia Jean Hinds 17 August 11, 1982 August 15, 1982
6 Opal Charmaine Mills 16 August 12, 1982 August 15, 1982
7 Terry Rene Milligan 16 August 29, 1982 April 1, 1984
8 Mary Bridget Meehan 18 September 15, 1982 November 13, 1983
9 Debra Lorraine Estes 15 September 20, 1982 May 30, 1988
10 Linda Jane Rule 16 September 26, 1982 January 31, 1983
11 Denise Darcel Bush 23 October 8, 1982 June 12, 1985
12 Shawnda Leea Summers 16 October 9, 1982 August 11, 1983
13 Shirley Marie Sherrill 18 October 20–22, 1982 June 1985
14 Rebecca "Becky" Marrero 20 December 3, 1982 December 21, 2010
15 Colleen Renee Brockman 15 December 24, 1982 May 26, 1984
16 Alma Ann Smith 18 March 3, 1983 April 2, 1984
17 Delores LaVerne Williams 17 March 8–14, 1983 March 31, 1984
18 Gail Lynn Mathews 23 April 10, 1983 September 18, 1983
19 Andrea M. Childers 19 April 14, 1983 October 11, 1989
20 Sandra Kay Gabbert 17 April 17, 1983 April 1, 1984
21 Kimi-Kai Pitsor 16 April 17, 1983 December 15, 1983
22 Marie M. Malvar 18 April 30, 1983 September 26, 2003
23 Carol Ann Christensen 21 May 3, 1983 May 8, 1983
24 Martina Theresa Authorlee 18 May 22, 1983 November 14, 1984
25 Cheryl Lee Wims 18 May 23, 1983 March 22, 1984
26 Yvonne "Shelly" Antosh 19 May 31, 1983 October 15, 1983
27 Carrie Ann Rois 15 May 31–June 13, 1983 March 10, 1985
28 Constance Elizabeth Naon 19 June 8, 1983 October 27, 1983
29 Kelly Marie Ware 22 July 18, 1983 October 29, 1983
30 Tina Marie Thompson 21 July 25, 1983 April 20, 1984
31 April Dawn Buttram 16 August 18, 1983 August 30, 2003
32 Debbie May Abernathy 26 September 5, 1983 March 31, 1984
33 Tracy Ann Winston 19 September 12, 1983 March 27, 1986
34 Maureen Sue Feeney 19 September 28, 1983 May 2, 1986
35 Mary Sue Bello 25 October 11, 1983 October 12, 1984
36 Pammy Annette Avent 15 October 26, 1983 August 16, 2003
37 Delise Louise Plager 22 October 30, 1983 February 14, 1984
38 Kimberly L. Nelson 21 November 1, 1983 June 14, 1986
39 Lisa Yates 19 December 23, 1983 March 13, 1984
40 Mary Exzetta West 16 February 6, 1984 September 8, 1985
41 Cindy Anne Smith 17 March 21, 1984 June 27, 1987
42 Patricia Michelle Barczak 19 October 17, 1986 February 1993
43 Roberta Joseph Hayes 21 Last seen leaving a Portland, Oregon jail on February 7, 1987 September 11, 1991
44 Marta Reeves 36 March 5, 1990 September 20, 1990
45 Patricia Yellowrobe 38 January 1998 August 6, 1998
46 Unidentified White Female 12–17 Died prior to May 1983 March 21, 1984
47 Unidentified Black Female 18–27 1982–1984 December 30, 1985
48 Unidentified White Female 14–18 December 1980 – January 1984 January 2, 1986
49 Unidentified Female 13–24 1973–1993 August 2003
Before Ridgway's confession, authorities had not attributed the Green River Killer with the deaths of victims Rule, Barczak, Hayes, Reeves, Yellowrobe and 'victim 49'.
Ridgway's confession and directions lead police search crews to find the bodies of Avent, Buttram, and Malvar in August and September 2003.
On Tuesday, December 21, 2010, hikers near the West Valley Highway in Auburn, WA found a skull in the vicinity of where Marie Malvar's remains were found in 2003. The skull was identified as belonging to Rebecca "Becky" Marrero, who was last seen on December 3, 1982. The King County Prosecutor confirmed that Ridgway would be formally charged with her murder on February 11, 2011. On February 18, 2011, he entered a guilty plea in the murder of Rebecca Marrero, adding a 49th life sentence to his existing 48. Ridgway confessed to murdering Marrero in his original plea bargain, but due to insufficient evidence, the charges could not be filed. Therefore, there is no change in his current incarceration status.
The remains of Tracy Winston were found, without a skull, in "Kent's Cottonwood Park" in March 1986. Winston's skull was found in November 2005 near Tiger Mountain, miles away from the discovery site of the rest of her body. Police assume someone carried it to the location.
Popular culture
In 2008, the Lifetime Movie Network aired The Capture of the Green River Killer, a TV movie loosely based on his crimes. John Pielmeier portrays Ridgway.
The movie, Green River Killer, was released in 2005.
Green River was released on May 8, 2008. This non-fiction story closely parallels events with the Green River case. Directed by Sam Taybi.
The TV series, Crimes That Shook the World, featured Gary Ridgway in a biography (starring Frank Violi) (narration by Tim Pigott-Smith) of the Green River Killer.
The Seattle grunge band Green River was named after the Green River Killer, who was, at the time, at large. Green River song "Ozzie" references the killer directly.
As well as movies, many books have been written about the Green River murders and Gary Ridgway himself. Along with these known novels, there are countless numbers of books that Green River Killings are featured in. Renown thiller novelist Ann Rule wrote, Green River, Running Red.Others include: The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer by Robert D. Keppel; Chasing the Devil by Sheriff David Reichert; Case of the Green River Killer by Diane Yancey; Defending Gary: Unraveling the Mind of the Green River Killer by Mark Prothero with help from Carlton Smith; Search for the Green River Killer by Cartlton Smith with help from Tom Guillen; Green River Serial Killer: Biography of an Unsuspecting Wife by Pennie Morehead telling the story of his third wife and her struggles with the truth; Gary Ridgway: Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Murderer, Told by Reporters who covered the case from the beginning: The Green River Killer by King County Journal Staff; Serial Killers: Issues Explored Through Green River Murders by Tomas Guillen.
The Julie Ruin song "I Wanna Know What Love Is" references the Green River Killer.
Aggrotech group Combichrist made mention of Ridgway in their song "God Bless"
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