Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer

Okay so let’s dive into Gary Ridgway’s backstory, to hopefully give some insight into what may or may not have caused him to eventually lash out violently and kill. Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18^th 1949 in Salt Lake City Utah, although he was raised near Seattle’s Pacific Highway in an impoverished neighborhood near the SeaTac Airport. Ridgway was the middle son to Mary and Thomas Ridgway. Ridgway’s father Thomas worked as a bus driver and would often complain to Gary about the presence of prostitutes in and around his neighborhood and on his bus route. Family members described Ridgeway’s mother Mary as “domineering” and also stated that Ridgway witnessed several violent arguments between his parents while growing up. Ridgway was not known as a very good student, and it is said that he has an IQ of only 82. When Ridgway was 16 years old, he stabbed a 6-year-old boy after luring him into the woods, where he stabbed him through his ribs and into his liver, apparently wanting to know what it felt like to kill somebody [unfortunately I could not find any sources that clearly stated whether or not Ridgway got into any trouble for this.] Ridgway graduated High School in 1969, and married his High School sweetheart, Claudia Kraig Barrows on August 15^th 1970.  Ridgway joined the Navy and was subsequently sent off to fight in the Vietnam War.

While in the military, Ridgway began sleeping around with multiple prostitutes and eventually contracted Gonorrhea. Ridgway became angered after contracting the STD, however this did not keep him from continuing his frequent, unprotected sex with multiple prostitutes. While Ridgway was in Vietnam, his wife had also slept around and upon his return, they got a divorce on January 14^th 1973. Ridgway soon took a job painting trucks for Kentworth Factory where he continued to work for 30 years.

Ridgway married again on December 14^th 1973 to Marcia Lorene Brown, this marriage lasted until May 27^th 1981. It was during this marriage that he became a religious fanatic, and would often to go door to door preaching, and was known to frequently read the bible out loud at work and at home and it has been said that he would cry after reading or hearing sermons. Ridgway insisted that his wife at the time also follow the strict teachings of the pastor of their church. Although Ridgway found religion during this marriage, he would continuously seek prostitutes out for sex. Ridgway also demanded sex multiple times a day from his wife or girlfriend at the time and would demand the sex be in public and other inappropriate places, some of which ended up being where the bodies of his victims were later discovered [this sentiment was stated by all 3 of his wives and his many girlfriends.] Ridgway later admitted to having a fixation with prostitutes and continuously solicited them for their services all throughout his life… despite the fact that he [like his father] often complained about their presence in and around his neighborhood. There is much speculation that Ridgway was torn between his uncontrollable feelings of lust for prostitutes and his staunch religious beliefs. Unsurprisingly enough, Ridgway chose to target prostitutes once he started committing murders.

            Now, we know that he used prostitutes often, and at some point in 1982 he chose to pick up a prostitute with the intention of killing her. His killing ritual always started with picking up the targeted prostitute [which he would watch from afar before deciding she was the one] along the Pacific Highway South [International Boulevard 69.] Ridgway would either take the women to his home or keep them in his truck and park somewhere secluded. Ridgway would then rape them and afterwards, strangle them and dump their bodies in the woods near the Green River [hence his nickname.] He initially strangled them manually, however he kept receiving defense wounds on his arms and decided it would be better to use ligatures and strangle all his victims from behind. Wanting to elude detectives, who had started trying to find the Green River Killer, Ridgway decided to transport two of his victims across state lines into the Portland, Oregon area. Other than those two victims however, he dumped the rest of his victims in clusters in the woods, posing them nude and in various provocative manners. Ridgway enjoyed frequently returning to his dumping grounds and practicing necrophilia with his freshest of victims. Ridgway decided to also contaminate his dumping grounds with gum, cigarettes, and random written materials from other individuals, with the idea to once again elude detectives to the true identity of the killer.

 In 1985 Ridgway started dating Judith Lorraine Mawson, and the pair married on June 12^th 1988 and divorced on September 5^th 2002, she was his third and final wife. During a TV interview in 2010 [7 years after his eventual arrest], she stated that when she first moved in with Ridgway, that there had been no carpet inside his house, and that later detectives had told her it was likely that he had wrapped one of his victims in the carpet before transporting her to one of his many dumping sites. During this same interview, Judith also stated that during their relationship, Ridgway would often leave early for work, claiming to be receiving overtime; however Mawson speculated that he must have committed some of his murders during this time. Although, during an interview conducted by Pennie Morehead, Ridgway stated that his relationship with Mawson caused a major decline in his killings, due to the fact that he “truly loved her.” In fact, out of Ridgway’s confirmed victims, only 3 were killed after he married Mawson. Mawson also claims that she had no suspicion of his crimes before she had been initially contacted by detectives, and had not even heard of the Green River Killer due to the fact that she did not watch the news or read any newspapers.

            Okay, so now that we know his backstory, and how he killed his victims, let’s discuss how this creep got caught shall we? Three bodies were initially found on August 5^th 1982 near the Green River, and then just a few days later three more bodies were found, this made the King County Sheriff’s office decide they had a serial killer on their hands. This revelation caused the Green River Task Force to be put together; Notable task force members were John E. Douglas, who has since written on the subject, and also Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert, who used their resources to periodically interview prolific serial killer Ted Bundy. Keppel and Reichert wanted Bundy’s opinions on the motivations, psychology and behavior patterns of the killer. Bundy suggested that the killer was revisiting his dump sites to have sex with the victims [which was true, I guess it takes one to know one] Bundy also told Keppel and Reichert that if they were to find a fresh corpse, to stake out the location of that particular dumping site and that the killer was sure to return.  

            The beginning of the end of Gary Ridgway’s life of crime began when he was arrested on charges related to prostitution in 1982 [he became an official suspect in the Green River Killer investigation in 1983] and even more so when he was arrested again under the same type of charges in 2001. Ridgway was then given a polygraph in 1984, at which point in time it was determined that he passed, although a quality control test done later by the FBI revealed that he had actually failed. Then in 1987 detectives took both hair and saliva samples from Ridgway, which were later subjected to DNA analysis, which then provided detectives with enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant. So it was, on November 30^th 2001, while Ridgway was at work, that detectives came to arrest him. Ridgway was initially arrested for the suspicion of the murders of only four women: Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Ann Christensen. Three more victims: Wendy Coffield, Debra Bonner, and Debra Estes were added to his indictment a short while later after forensics revealed microscopic paint spheres that happened to be a specific brand and composition used by Kenthworth factory during the time frame of which these women had been murdered.

Fast forward to August 2003, Ridgway’s lawyers [led by Anthony Savage] were closing a plea bargain designed to spare Ridgway the death penalty in exchange for his confession to more of the Green River Killings.  So it was on November 5^th 2003 that Gary Ridgway finally pled guilty to 48 counts of aggravated 1^st degree murder, and on December 18^th 2003 that judge Richard Jones sentenced Ridgway to 48 life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole.

            Ridgway has made multiple claims since his imprisonment that he has murdered 71 prostitutes altogether, although he has also said that he killed so many women that he “lost count.” He has tried desperately to help detectives find and identify more bodies since his incarceration with the hope that he may reach a higher notoriety. A 49^th victim was confirmed in 2011, but that remains the only addition to his known victims.

            So, what are your thoughts, dear reader, on this particular maniac? I hope that you enjoyed the first installment of this blog, and please feel free to share this post, and subscribe!