In today’s episode, let’s talk about one of the most prolific serial killers in American history – known as the Green River Killer. He terrorized Washington State from 1982 to 1998, leaving a trail of terror and devastation behind him. Reports suggest that he murdered at least 49 women, but this number could be much higher, possibly as high as 71. The sheer brutality of his actions is enough to send chills down anyone’s spine.
It’s the case of Gary Ridgeway
Welcome everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Love and Murder – the weekly true crime podcast discussing relationships gone terribly wrong. Where our motto is [you’re either someone’s last love or first murder]
I am your host Ky and our show discusses true crime cases told in the form of a story with mystery and suspense.
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In today’s episode, we’re talking serial killer Gary Ridgway.
Gary had an eerie fascination with his own crimes. He even went as far as bragging about his choking ability, and explained the cold-blooded efficiency of performing necrophilia on a victim’s corpse instead of finding a new victim to rape and kill. It’s hard to believe that someone could be capable of these things.
While Gary Ridgway is not as well-known as some other serial killers like Ted Bundy, he actually took far more victims than Bundy ever did. In fact, authorities were actively seeking Bundy’s help in capturing Ridgway by the time Bundy had already been captured himself in the mid-1980s.
This brings us to a plot straight out of a thriller. Investigators used Bundy’s inside knowledge of serial killing and his familiarity with Washington state to help them form a profile of Ridgway. It’s a disturbing but fascinating tale of how one serial killer helped catch another.
In short, this is the gruesome true story of Seattle serial killer Gary Ridgway – and how Ted Bundy surprisingly helped bring him to justice.
But first, I wanted to remind you to head on over to our exclusive group at patreon.com/loveandmurder. Our last bonus episode was the case of Charles Starkweather – a horrific serial killer who actually inspired some of Stephen King’s writings. I also have a bonus of a cop interrogating a victim while they’re dying instead of getting them some help. It’s insane. In this week’s bonus, I go over Gary Ridgway’s confession. You don’t want to miss all of this. We’ll talk more about the patreon at the end of the episode.
Listen to last week’s Episode here: A Tale of Two Crimes
This episode made me cry it was so sad.
Now, on to the show…
Born on February 18, 1949, Gary Ridgway relocated to King County, Washington with his family at the age of eleven. He was the second child of Mary and Thomas Ridgway, growing up with two brothers. Unfortunately, his early life was marred by troubles at home, with his parents often engaging in violent arguments. Relatives also shared that his mother was quite domineering. As a child, Gary had a bed-wetting problem that lasted until he was 13, and his mother would wash his genitals after each episode. WTF?! Until he was 13?! He couldn’t wash his own junk?! This, coupled with his dyslexia, made for a challenging childhood. Gary had to repeat two grades in school before finally graduating from Tyee High School in 1969.
In that same year, when he was 20, he joined the United States Navy for 2 years and was sent to Vietnam to serve on a supply ship where he saw combat. The year following, having already been acquainted with and courted his future first wife for multiple years, Gary tied the knot. Serving in the Navy, he spent a stint in the Philippines where he admits to utilizing the services of sex workers. Despite being angered by contracting gonorrhea from having sex with these workers, he continued his activities unprotected. WHAT?! He got mad at prostitutes giving him the gift that keeps giving. And through his anger, he kept doing the same thing?! July of 1971 brought about his respectful departure from the Navy as well as his homecoming to King County.
While Gary was deployed abroad, his spouse engaged in a romantic relationship with another guy. After his return, she requested a legal separation, which was granted on January 14, 1972. Gary then alleged that his spouse had devolved into prostitution during his absence. Gary then joined Kenworth Motor Truck Company as a painter in August of 1971.
In 1972, Gary encountered his second wife, and after a year, they exchanged their wedding vows.
On September 5, 1975 they had a son.
Marcia, his second wife complained of physical abuse from Gary. Interestingly, Gary became religious during his second marriage, frequently crying after sermons and reading aloud the Bible at work and home, but he still continued to solicit sex workers. I don’t understand his facination with sex workers when he had women at home? Maybe a sex addiction? She also said that Gary loved doing bondage and having sex outside. She also said that usually Gary wouldn’t be home in the evenings and would come home wet and dirty. Later on in their marriage, she said that he started coming home at increasingly late hours without providing a reasonable explanation. Furthermore, while taking a walk with her in the woods, she observed that he enjoyed hiding from her, suddenly appearing and startling her. He took pleasure in mastering the skill of walking quietly.
Gary admitted to having choked his second wife at least once using a police-style hold with his forearm and upper arm. As a result, their relationship went downhill. Umm yeah. Eventually, they separated in July 1980, and their divorce was finalized on May 27, 1981. Their son was lived with Marcia and Gary would have him on alternate weekends.
Additionally, Gary had a fixation and love/hate relationship with sex workers, often complaining about their presence in his neighborhood while still taking advantage of their services. Well I guess that answered my question. Later, he would claim to hate prostitutes and that he didn’t want to pay them for sex. Could his overbearing mother have caused conflicting feelings of anger and sexual attraction toward women? It’s not clear, but we do know that he had an insatiable sexual appetite and demanded sex several times a day from his ex-wives and girlfriends.
Later, Gary would tell a psychologist that he struggled with an intense sexual attraction towards his own mother, which made him want to kill her. Some experts suggest that this could have been part of a larger pattern of inappropriate behavior on his mother’s part. Although, surprisingly, Gary never did end up killing his mother. Some believe that his killing spree was an unconscious act of “displaced matricide,” as if he was killing his mother over and over again. This is insane.
Gary engaged in many relationships with various women over the course of several years, finding many of them through “Parents Without Partners,” a group for single parents. One woman really caught his eye; they dated and he proposed to her. She accepted and they looked forward to getting married in the summer of 1984. However, the woman ended things with Gary when she found another love interest. In February of the following year, Gary met his third wife, Judith Mawson.
In June 1988, they tied the knot after she moved into his house a couple of months earlier.
After she moved into his house while they were dating, she noticed there was no carpet, which isn’t weird unless it was like some untreated floor there.
In the 1980s and 90s, a serial killer terrorized Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. The killer targeted teenage girls and women, mostly sex workers and runaways, whom he picked up along Pacific Highway South.
The killer’s modus operandi was brutal. He would deceive the women into trusting him by showing them pictures of his son. After engaging in sexual activity, he would strangle them from behind, often with a forearm around their necks. He killed most of his victims in his home or truck, and he would then dump their bodies in wooded areas around the Green River, Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, and other “dump sites” within South King County.
Some of the victims’ remains were discovered in clusters, sometimes posed, usually nude.
Because of these murders, The King County Sheriff’s Office formed the Green River Task Force to investigate. The task force included members like Robert Keppel, Dave Reichert, and FBI Special Agent John E. Douglas. Ted Bundy, who was incarcerated at the time, offered his opinions on the motivations and behavior of the killer. He suggested that the killer was revisiting the dump sites to have sex with his victims, which turned out to be true.
During the year 1983, Gary got the Task Force’s attention due to the disappearance of Marie Malvar. The Des Moines Police Department conducted an initial investigation into the case. Subsequently, a man shared that he had seen Marie Malvar on the same night she vanished, travelling in a truck that matched the one owned by Gary.
The driver and vehicle descriptions provided by the man were vague, leading to a lack of evidence implicating Gary in Marie’s disappearance. As a result, the case came to a screetching halt. Gary’s name came up several more times as a potential Green River suspect. Throughout the 80s, detectives from the Task Force examined him and questioned him quite a few times and He was typically compliant.
He told them that he “dated” sex workers, and at least one of them was one of the missing victimes. One time, he even admitted to assaulting Rebecca Garde Guay, a sex worker. He said he did this because she bit him.
However, he was arrested multiple times between 1982 and 2001, once for charges related to prostitution.
Within the span of one month in the summer of 1982, five women were found murdered in or around the Green River. The first victim was Wendy Coffield, and Gary Ridgway had already faced accusations of killing the three most recent victims: Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Marcia Chapman.
The murderer who took the lives of the four aforementioned women was without a doubt the same individual who ended Debra Bonner’s life. Her body surfaced in the Green River merely weeks after Coffield’s remains were discovered, but right before Mills, Hinds, and Chapman were found.
In 1984, police gave Gary a polygraph test with questions focused on the murders. He denied killing anyone and passed the test. Wow! That’s why you can’t really go by these polygraph tests. If HE didn’t believe this was murder or killing or whatever word or feeling he put in his head about what he did to them, this could help in passing the polygraph.
On April 8, 1987, the Task Force served a search warrant on Gary’s residence, his work locker, and several vehicles.
Investigators confiscated carpet fibers, ropes, paint samples, and plastic tarps as hundreds of pieces of evidence. They were later taken to the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory where they were cross-referenced with evidence discovered at the crime scenes. The detectives meticulously scoured Gary’s financial records, but no proof was found indicating his involvement at a specific scene or with a victim.
A critical piece of evidence was obtained during the warrant execution – Gary’s saliva sample.
Over a decade later, Detective Tom Jensen sent biological evidence from multiple victims to WSPCL for DNA typing, which was analyzed by Forensic Scientist Beverly Himick in September of 2001. Himick also specifically examined vaginal swabs from victim Marcia Chapman. The swab revealed a male DNA profile which partially matched Ridgway’s genetic profile, according to her findings. Additionally, they examined pubic hairs from Opal Mills and confirmed a male DNA profile that was consistent with Ridgway’s. Concurrently, another Forensic Scientist, Himick, analyzed the vaginal swabbing obtained from Carol Christensen. The DNA extracted from the sperm fraction found on the vaginal swab matched with Ridgway’s DNA, leaving little doubt to who the culprit was. The probability of finding the same DNA in another human being was non-existent, excluding the possibility of an identical twin. This led to Gary being linked to a singular location and victim, compelling the King County Sheriff’s office to make arrangements for his detainment.
At this point, another task force was assembled. This was comprised of a team of multiple agencies, and they again called themselves the Task Force. This new task force was formed by the police to assemble cases against Gary and examine the other murders that remained unsolved. On November 16, 2001, Gary tried to solicit a prostitute who was actually an undercover King County Sheriff’s officer. On being questioned if she was dating, he consented to meet her further down the street.
In an ironic twist, Ridgway requested that the King County Jail not contact his wife during his booking, but instead suggested they contact the Green River Task Force as they knew him well. Despite his confident statement, two weeks later on November 30, 2001, Ridgway was arrested for murder while leaving work at the Kenworth plant in Renton.
Ridgway was accused by the King County Prosecuting Attorney on December 5, 2001. The accusations consisted of four counts of Aggravated Murder in the First Degree, involving the deaths of Carol Christensen, Cynthia Hinds, Marcia Chapman, and Opal Mills. DNA evidence connected Ridgway to three out of the four victims in the accusations.
It was evident that the same perpetrator had killed Cynthia Hinds as she was found near two other victims. The King County Prosecuting Attorney had given written notice on April 15, 2002, that the death penalty would be sought. Detectives and prosecutors analyzed uncharged instances related to Green River cases over the subsequent year for more research and potential charging.
This research was composed of of hundreds of witness interviews and any physical evidence that would be sent to state-of-the-art forensic examination. However, even though there was a extensive review of all of the physical evidence, by so many different labs from around the country, nothing new came to light and nothing substantial that they could use.
To ensure a prompt trial for Ridgway, the King County Superior Court mandated a charging deadline of March 28, 2003. Meanwhile, investigators dispatched numerous items from the cases to public and private forensic labs for thorough analysis.
Microtrace, a private laboratory, discovered minute paint spheres on the apparel of Wendy Coffield and Debra Estes just before the deadline. The sprayed paint appeared to be similar to the exclusive DuPont Imron paint that was being used at the Kenworth truck factory where Ridgway was employed.
Ridgway was accused of committing seven counts of Aggravated First Degree Murder, however only a portion of the Green River killings could be attributed to him. Upon his arraignment, Ridgway’s lawyers approached the King County Prosecuting Attorney and proposed that they drop the pursuit of the death penalty in exchange for Ridgway confessing to the charges and also admitting to several other cases.
In an effort to avoid the death penalty, Ridgway’s legal team made a proffer stating that he would admit guilt to the seven counts he was charged with, as well as an additional forty to forty-seven counts of murder. They requested that the Prosecutor agree to waive the death penalty. In exchange, Ridgway offered to provide a complete and truthful account of his criminal activity in King County and direct investigators to the locations of undiscovered victim remains.
Ridgway’s proffer could be declined by the Prosecutor in April 2003, giving way to a trial solely on the seven charged counts. The verdict of the jury on whether or not Ridgway is responsible for the crimes and whether he should face capital punishment would be determined.
If the jury decides on the death penalty, there’s a chance that Ridgway may face execution before dying from natural causes in prison, after many years of appeals. This could act as partial retribution for the Green River killings. Alternatively, the Prosecutor could prevent the jury from giving Ridgway the death sentence.
Revealing the truth about the Green River murders would finally put an end to the community’s long-lasting nightmare, should he choose to do so.
Ridgway and the King County Prosecuting Attorney reached an agreement on June 13, 2003. To avoid the possibility of execution, Ridgway promised to reveal truthful information about his crimes in King County. He also agreed to answer all questions posed by the police or the Prosecutor’s office and show complete candor during his interviews. In addition, Ridgway pledged to disclose the exact location of any undiscovered physical remains of his victims.
It enabled the police to look into unresolved murder cases that were not linked to Ridgway so they could identify other possible suspects. The agreement stated that if Ridgway was found to be withholding information, he could potentially be sentenced to death for any murders he had failed to reveal.
On November 5, 2003, Gary pled guilty to a 48 charges of aggravated first degree murder, as part of the June plea deal. Like I said, in order to avoid execution, he cooperated in locating the remains of his victims and providing other details in the investigation. While he was giving his guilty plea statement, Gary said that he had done all of his murders in King County AND THEN had moved the bodies and dumped them near Portland, Oregon to throw off the cops.
Also, what Ted Bundy had said years earlier was spot on; Gary would occasionally return to the dump sites to have sexual intercourse with the deceased. He said that he did not find necrophilia to be more sexually satisfying, but having sex with the dead helped him reduce his need to obtain a living victim and thus limited his exposure to being caught.
Remember when Judith said that when she moved in, Gary didn’t have a carpet? Detectives later told her that he had probably wrapped a body in the carpet. Judith speculated that he must have committed some of the murders while supposedly working early morning shifts. She claimed that she had not suspected Gary’s crimes before she was contacted by authorities in 1987, and had not even heard of the Green River Killer before that time because she did not watch the news.
Despite his heinous crimes, Gary said that marrying Judith led to a reduction in his body count. He claimed that while he was in a relationship with his third wife, Judith, he genuinely loved her, and his kill rate dropped. Of his 49 known victims, only three were killed after he married Judith. Later, while interviewing with a local television station, Judith said she believed that she saved lives by being his wife and making him happy.
If you want more details in what he confessed, you can join our exclusive LaM group at www.patreon.com/loveandmurder at $5 tier or above as I’ll be reading it out in its entirety over there.
In December of 2003, Gary was sentenced to 48 life sentences without the possibility of parole by King County Superior Court Judge Richard Jones. The life sentences were to be served consecutively, meaning there was no chance of release. On top of this, Ridgway was given an additional 10 years for tampering with evidence relating to each of the 48 victims, adding a further 480 years to his already monumental sentence. Later in that same year, Ridgway was given his 49th life sentence after the discovery of the remains of his final victim.
In January 2004, Ridgway, was placed in solitary confinement at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. It’s no wonder that he was given special treatment and isolated from the other inmates, given the severity of his crimes.
The remains of two other victims, Marie Malvar and April Buttram, were later found. Then in 2005, hikers came across some disturbing items on their trail, which led to two further life sentences for Ridgway.
Ridgway had confessed to being responsible for the deaths of 48 young women, the majority of whom were prostitutes. Confirmed as the most prolific American serial killer, he eventually admitted to 71 killings, with 42 of the victims on a police list of Green River Killer suspects. He discussed details of his crimes, revealing his hatred for prostitutes and that he had sex with his victims’ bodies after killing them. As part of his sentencing process, video recordings of his confessions were released, including one where he claimed that murdering young women was his “career.”
Ridgway’s physical appearance was unremarkable, besides his thinning hair, glasses, and sandy mustache. But what truly set him apart was his chilling and matter-of-fact admission to murdering an astounding number of women. For half an hour in court, he sat expressionless, confirming the details of how he picked up each victim and where he dumped their body, responding with a quiet “yes” over and over.
Ridgway’s statement read aloud in court by a prosecutor was truly disturbing. He admitted to wanting to kill as many women as he thought were prostitutes, leaving some bodies in “clusters,” and even stopping to have sex with their bodies. He shockingly said, “I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight.”
In 2010, hikers discovered the skull of yet another victim, Rebecca Marrero, who was last seen leaving a motel in 1982. Ridgway pleaded guilty to Marrero’s murder in 2011, but he was already serving consecutive life sentences and his decision did not impact his current incarceration status.
On May 14, 2015, he was transferred to USP Florence High- a high-security federal prison located east of Cañon City, Colorado.
However, this transfer didn’t sit well with the public, especially those in Washington where his crimes were committed. After a public outcry and discussions with Governor Jay Inslee, Corrections Secretary Bernie Warner announced that Ridgway would be transferred back to Washington to be “easily accessible” for open murder investigations. The transfer by chartered plane took place on October 24, 2015, returning Ridgway to the very same prison he was initially isolated in- Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.
It’s clear that the authorities were taking Ridgway’s crimes seriously, going to great lengths to ensure justice was served. The fact that he was being moved back and forth across state lines demonstrates the level of investigation and precautions that needed to be taken in order to keep both Ridgway and the public safe.
Over the years, he is believed to have murdered at least 71 victims, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.
And that is the case of Gary Ridgway. LaMs what do you think of this case? Please let me know in the comments below or go over to www.murderandlove.com and shoot me an SOS.
Also, I want to apologize that the episodes are coming out on different days. I want to ask you to be patient with me as I transition from having co-hosts to doing everything solo. Episodes will still be weekly; just not on the same day until I get my new schedule together. I want to thank each and everyone of the LaMs for your dedication and support throughout these 3 years.
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