Predator of the Pacific Northwest: Gary Ridgway "The Green River Killer"
One of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history, Gary Ridgway, preyed on sex workers and teenage runaways in Washington state. He is believed to have killed more than 50 people
Childhood
On February 18th, 1949, Mary and Thomas Ridgway of Salt Lake City, Utah, welcomed their second son, Gary Leon Ridgway. The couple had a somewhat volatile marriage, often arguing violently in front of their three sons.
As a young child, Gary had habitual problems with bed-wetting, which continued until his early teens. His mother responded to his bed-wetting issue by forcefully washing his genitals whenever it occurred.
The neighborhood Gary and his family lived in was a low-income area, and they did not have much money. Due to learning difficulties associated with his dyslexia, Gary was held back a year in high school.
He reportedly tested with an IQ in the eighties. When Gary was sixteen years old, he lured another boy into the woods and stabbed him. The boy was stabbed multiple times through his ribs, which punctured his liver.
Marriages and Military Service
Despite his difficulties with education, Gary Ridgway successfully graduated from Tyee High School in 1969. Shortly after graduating, Ridgway married his high-school sweetheart, Claudia Kraig. With no job lined up and no funding or desire to pursue higher education, Ridgway enlisted in the U.S. Navy.
He was deployed to serve in Vietnam, where he saw combat. While serving overseas, Ridgway is said to have often sought the company of prostitutes, which led to him contracting gonorrhea. Despite this, Ridgway did not cease his scandalous encounters, which ultimately resulted in the collapse of his marriage.
Ridgway began a new relationship with a woman named Marcia Winslow. The pair quickly married, and Ridgway seemingly became very religious. He often read from the Bible, both at work and home, and he was adamant that Marcia adhere to the teachings of their church.
He is said to have even gone door-to-door in his community, sharing professions of his faith with anyone who would listen. Yet, despite all this, Ridgway continued with his sexual deviancy.
Gary continued to solicit the services of sex workers during his marriage to Marcia. Though he was adamant in commanding his wife to follow religious doctrines, he also insisted that she engage in public sex with him in various inappropriate locations.
According to Marcia’s own testimony, Ridgway also put his hands on her in anger and at least once placed her in a chokehold. Though outwardly religious, Gary Ridgway was not practicing what he preached. During their marriage, Marcia and Gary had a son together.
First Murders
In July 1982, a woman was found dead in the Green River area of Washington state. Her body was discovered with clothing bound tightly around her neck. Strangely, this clothing was marked with an unfamiliar variety of spray paint, but the technology available to police at the time was insufficient to properly test the paint.
Shortly thereafter, four additional women were found dead in a similar fashion along the Green River. With five confirmed victims, local authorities formed the Green River Task Force to assist in investigation efforts.
Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert were two members of this task force, and they were conducting intermittent interviews with a then-imprisoned Ted Bundy. Bundy sent a letter to the Task Force, offering his help in cracking the case.
The team was wary, but they sent Detective Reichert and Robert Keppel to interview Bundy, and the infamous serial killer shared his thoughts on the subject. In Bundy’s expert opinion, the killer they were searching for was engaging in acts of necrophilia with his victims, and he advised that they stake out any recent dump sites they uncovered.
The Green River Killer
They say it takes one to know one, and Bundy’s analysis of the Green River Killer was accurate. However, it would take police nearly twenty years to discover the identity of their killer.
Despite starting off with five victims in rapid succession, the Green River Killer just as suddenly went dormant. In reality, this was due to Gary Ridgway being arrested on prostitution-related charges.
After his release, Marie Malvar, aged eighteen, mysteriously disappeared. During this investigation, law enforcement identified Gary Ridgway as a potential suspect, thanks to eyewitness testimony, who recognized his truck.
Ridgway was interviewed by police during the investigation of Marie Malvar’s disappearance. During this time, the Green River Task Force received multiple tips pointing to Gary Ridgway’s involvement. However, in 1984, Ridgway was given and passed a polygraph test.
With no evidence to definitively link him to the case, Ridgway was set free, but he remained under scrutiny.
The Green River Killer’s spree continued. Bodies of young women continued to turn up in remote, forested areas. Most of these women were sex workers, and given the covert nature of their livelihood, they often worked alone.
As a result, most of the victims had never been reported missing. From the first known victims in 1982 to the end of the spree, nearly fifty women were identified as confirmed victims of the Green River Killer. The M.O. was always the same- the women were strangled to death, sometimes using clothing or ligatures, and dumped in remote areas.
In many instances, there was evidence of necrophilia present in the victims. Semen was found in numerous victims, but DNA technology had not yet become advanced enough to assist law enforcement in identifying their suspect.
The dump sites were often polluted with gum, cigarettes, and even handwritten notes; these did not belong to the killer but were placed by the killer as a diversion tactic.
Though many of the bodies were found near the Green River and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a few bodies were found across the state line in Oregon. Presumably, this was another attempt to obfuscate the killer’s identity.
Sometime in 1985, Ridgway met his next love interest, Judith Mawson. The two were married in 1988. According to Gary Ridgway’s later testimony, he truly loved Judith, and his love for her is the reason his killing spree slowed to a stop.
Whether or not Ridgway is capable of an emotion such as love remains to be seen, but of his nearly fifty victims, only three were killed after his marriage to Mawson. Judith never suspected her husband had any connection to the case; in fact, Judith had never heard of the Green River Killer, as she did not watch the news.
After Ridgway’s arrest, Judith was quoted by a reporter as having said, “I feel I have saved lives… by being his wife and making him happy.”
Hunting a Killer
Though the vast majority of victims identified had been sex workers or runaway teens, the public was on edge with the knowledge that a prolific serial killer was in the area. With little to no leads to go on, police officers took to walking the area along the Green River and patrolling wooded regions near the airport where previous bodies had been dumped.
The police looked at every petty criminal and every John soliciting the company of sex workers, but they generated nothing that would lead them to their killer.
Having been a suspect back in 1983, Gary Ridgway was brought back as a primary suspect in 1987. In 1986, a woman had been assaulted in the local area. She came to the police with her testimony.
According to the victim, the man in question had tried to strangle her, but she was able to escape. Through her description of the perpetrator, police identified her attacker as Gary Ridgway.
They brought Ridgway in and collected samples of his hair and saliva, they were kept in storage, but nothing was done with the samples at the time.
Police were able to secure a search warrant for Ridgway’s house, work locker, and truck. Unfortunately, though they conducted a thorough search, they found no evidence to link Ridgway to any of the Green River Killer victims.
Though the true killer was right under their noses, local law enforcement was still scrambling for answers. To this point, over $10 million had been spent on the manhunt, which included some federal grant money.
Being no closer to cracking the case, local law enforcement was forced to reassign officers away from the task force. For years, nothing changed as the case went cold and the Green River Killer remained at large.
Catching the Green River Killer
Then, in 1997, Detective Reichert ran for office as the Sheriff of King County. In his newly appointed position, Det. Reichert’s first order of business was to secure DNA testing on evidence collected from the Green River case.
Semen samples collected from victim Marcia Chapman were sent for analysis through the Washington State Crime Lab. Through this testing, they were able to establish a positive ID, matching the DNA taken from the victim to saliva samples collected from Gary Ridgway.
The Washington State Crime Lab processed samples from three more victims, and they both matched the DNA found on Marcia Chapman’s body.
With definitive DNA proof linking Ridgway to at least four of the victims, police officers set out to catch their killer. Ridgway was under surveillance when he attempted to pick up a sex worker on November 30th, 2001.
Police officers on the scene moved quickly to take Ridgway into custody, arresting him initially on four counts of murder. After nearly twenty years, the hunt for the Green River Killer had come to an end.
Trial and Conviction
Immediately following Ridgway’s arrest, his defense team knew they had their work cut out for them. Fearing the prosecution would seek the death penalty, they sought a plea bargain. In 2003, Ridgway provided details of numerous other murders in exchange for removing the death penalty from the table. The prosecution agreed to this deal.
On November 5, 2003, Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder. Per the terms of his plea deal, Ridgway was expected to provide details that would lead to the location of additional victims.
During the trial, Ridgway provided details about the cases that nobody outside law enforcement could have possibly known. His testimony led police to three additional bodies they were unaware of.
Later, in 2003, three more bodies were found. In 2005, the skull belonging to a victim Ridgway identified in his plea deal was found by a hiker. Another victim’s skull had been found only three days prior by another hiker.
Even more recently, in 2023, human remains were identified through DNA testing as belonging to victim Lori Anne Razpotnik, who, at age fifteen, went missing in 1982 after running away from home.
This brought the confirmed number of Green River Killer victims to 49.
After confessing to 48 murders, Ridgway was sentenced to 48 consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole.
An additional 10 years were added for each count because of Ridgway’s evidence tampering. Ridgway was sentenced to 48 life sentences plus an additional 480 years.
In 2023, after the DNA discovery of his 49th victim, an additional life sentence was added.
No Remorse
Despite the gruesome and horrific nature of his crimes, Gary Ridgway exhibited no remorse for his actions. His actual kill count is likely higher than 49, and Ridgway admitted to murdering 65 women during a recorded interview shortly after his arrest.
In 2003, during another recorded interview, Ridgway claimed to have killed 71 victims. He confessed to engaging in necrophilia, and he stated his reasoning for targeting sex workers was that they were “easy to pick up” and he ”hated most of them.”
Today, Gary Ridgway, age 75, remains imprisoned in the Washington State Penitentiary. Of all the serial killers in America’s history, none have confessed to more murders than Gary Ridgway.
Knowing his actual kill count is likely much higher than what he was convicted for, Gary Ridgway will remain one of the most horrific monsters of all time. His victims were all women, with all but three being between the ages of fourteen and twenty-six.
Thankfully, Ridgway will remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Sources:
Cipriano, Andrea. “The 20-Year Hunt for the Green River Killer.” Uncovered, 14 June 2023, uncovered.com/green-river-killer/.
“Gary Ridgway.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 9 May 2024, www.britannica.com/biography/Gary-Ridgway.
“Gary Ridgway.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 June 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Ridgway.
Gary Ridgway: Biography, Serial Killer, Green River Killer, www.biography.com/crime/gary-ridgway. Accessed 29 June 2024.
Guzman, Alejandra. “DNA Technology Helps Identify Another Victim of ‘Green River Killer’ Gary Ridgway.” FOX13 News | Seattle & Western Washington | Formerly Q13 News, FOX 13 Seattle, 20 Dec. 2023, www.fox13seattle.com/news/green-river-killer-bones-17-identified-gary-ridgway-serial-killer-murders.
Thanks for the well written article about the horrific acts that he committed. One of the things that strikes me are the kinds of evidence that are taken as significant. My understanding is that polygraphs are not that reliable, and it is distressing to see that he was released for passing one. On the other hand it is also interesting to see the primacy that DNA evidence is given to link suspects to crimes. I do not know what the false positives and false negatives are... I imagine they do not do full genome sequencing and thus likely rely on a few markers. It is curious how different kinds of evidence have an effect on decisions to prosecute, arrest, and on how jurors think about a case.