GREEN RIVER KILLER
Aka Gary Ridgeway
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Early LIFe
Ridgeway was born and raised in SecTec, Washington. His father was a bus driver for the local schools, and his mother was a sales clerk. Ridgeway would later say that he witnessed his mother would do crazy inappropriate things. Ridgeway was a bedwetter in his early years and even up to his early teens, and his mother took showers with him and “washed him” up. He admitted to a friend that he fantasized about killing his mother throughout his teen years. When he was a junior in high school, he stabbed a boy in the back. When he graduated high school in 1969 at the age of 20, he served in the United States Navy for a two-year stint. When he got out of the navy, he went to Seattle and became a truck painter. In the next 30 years, he will be married three times and only have one son. In 1980, Ridgway was placed in custody for choking a prostitute nearly to death. The charges of murder officially brought no charges against him because the women bit him and felt that he learned his lesson. Three years later, he was arrested for solicitation of a prostitute. The murders were speculated that Ridgway had started his killings shortly after this incident. His first victim was a 16-year-old girl walking out of her foster home to go to school, and she just disappeared in July of 1982. She was found a week after she went missing in the green river. Over the next two years, he would kill 40 women, most of which were runaways and prostitutes. A lot of the early victims were found along or in the Green River. This is how Ridgway got the nickname Green River Killer. The other victims were found in remote wooded areas. The last known murder was committed in 1998(Gary Ridgway).
VIctims
The green river killer had over forty confirmed victims and an additional ten suspected. Ridgway killed a total of six women and placed their bodies along the green river. His first confirmed victim was Wendy Coffield; she was a16 year old who was last seen on July 8, 1982. Her body was found on the green river underneath the Peck Bridge (Gray Ridgway).
Investigation
In August of 1982, after the Green River Killer had been running loose for at least a decade, the police were finally on Ridways tail and created a task force to investigate. In 1983 Ridgway was brought in for questioning in the disappearance of a prostitute who people have claimed to see her getting into Ridgway’s truck. The police asked him to take a polygraph, and he passed with flying colors. Detective Twoovered a police report that stated the officer saw Ridgway in a car with a prostitute, and two years later the body was found near the area the police witnessed Ridgway with the women. In 1987 the detectives were able to get a warrant for Ridgway’s home and for his work. The police were also able to obtain a DNA sample from Ridgway that matched it from the crime scenes’ DNA. Then a sophisticated test was conducted in 2001 that would lead to his arrest later that year.
Sophisticated testing is a series of tests run on an individual to assign a person's mental state and see if a person can commit these crimes or actions. While trying to catch the green river killer, the investigators had to employ another serial killer named Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy was on death row at the time for committing numerous rapes and brutal murders. The lead detective at the time, Dave Reichert hired him for intel on the mentality of a serial killer and how a serial killer thinks. The lead detective flew down to Florida to interview Ted Bundy and bring him all the evidence and have his own opinion on what happened and who this person could be. The most significant piece of advice that Ted Bundy was able to give to the investigators was that the green river killer went back to the places he committed the murders in order to gain sexual pleasure at these locations. Then the police instructed these psychological tests on Ridgway and placed him into police custody, where he at first remained innocent until he confessed. Richard confessed to these crimes and said that he was killing all these prostitutes because no one would miss them. He wanted to kill as many sex workers as he could before getting caught. In 2003, he accepted a plea deal in which he was convicted of 48 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. He also agreed to show detectives where the missing bodies were to bring peace to the families. He later admitted to killing 80 women in 2013 (Gary Ridgway).