By Serial Killer Magazine
Under the plea agreement that spared him the death penalty, Gary Ridgway spent roughly six months in 2003 answering questions daily. King County detectives, FBI profilers and prosecutors took him through every killing he had committed and out into the woods to find what was left of the women. He was required to tell the truth. The sessions ran to hundreds of hours of videotape. He pleaded guilty to forty-eight murders in November 2003 and was sentenced to life without parole in December.
Portions were released in early 2004, and on February 18 that year CNN gave an hour to them. The panel included his own attorney Tony Savage, King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, Detective Tom Jensen and the FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole. Reichert and Jensen had both questioned him. O’Toole had interviewed him during the same period.
What follows is the fourteen excerpts of his own recorded questioning that CNN transcribed and played that night. They are among the very few passages of that enormous body of material ever put into publicly accessible text.
They are also the most disturbing thing in this archive, and the reason is the register. He is not performing for a journalist and he is not talking about redemption. He is being walked through his own method by detectives checking his account, and he answers like a man describing work.
What this is, and what it is not. This is not the interview. It is fourteen excerpts from hundreds of hours, chosen by a television producer, and there is missing material before, between and after every one of them. What is inside each excerpt is verbatim question and answer between Ridgway and his interviewers, reproduced exactly as CNN transcribed it, including its (UNINTELLIGIBLE) markers, its [DELETED] and (EXPLETIVE DELETED) substitutions, its (ph) phonetic markers and its typographical errors. Panel discussion, narration and victim-family statements from the same programme are not reproduced.
Who holds what. Two layers. The underlying recordings were made by the King County Sheriff’s Office in the course of a criminal investigation and released publicly, which makes them Washington State and King County government records and the cleanest rights position of any modern material in this archive. The transcription and the assembly of the broadcast are copyright Cable News Network. The excerpts are reproduced here as a matter of record with the source named and linked, and the full King County tapes have never been published as text.
What has not been verified. The tapes were not watched and the broadcast was not seen. CNN’s published transcript was retrieved and read in full, and the excerpts were extracted from it.
Most of the interviewers are unidentified. Only Reichert is named in the excerpts CNN used. The rest appear as UNIDENTIFIED MALE and UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, which is CNN’s transcription rather than any concealment by King County.
A few of the exchanges carry specific weight. He describes refining the method, from manual strangulation to a ligature he could tie in a knot and leave in place so the woman could not revive while he moved her. He is goaded into ranking himself among serial killers and settles on second or third, offering Bundy for first, which sits oddly against the flatness of everything else he says. He concedes forty-eight murders and then haggles over whether he was a rapist. And in the last excerpt a detective catches him in a contradiction about whether he would have killed his own son.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... doing when you're doing this to this lady?
GARY RIDGWAY, CONVICTED OF 48 MURDERS: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not still angry?
RIDGWAY: I'm still angry (UNINTELLIGIBLE) but I'm tired, too. I put all my effort in choking them, and then the rest of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is putting my foot on them so there's no way they ever could come back to life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So what are you thinking as you're sitting there, thinking, Jeez, I just killed this lady? What are you thinking? What's going through your head?
RIDGWAY: You made me do it, you bitch, you whore, you worthless piece of garbage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But you're not saying this, are you.
RIDGWAY: I'm not saying it out loud, no. It's in my mind.
RIDGWAY: I got in to perfecting it, where by using a ligature, that was good because I could bring it up there, and once she starts (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I could wrap it around her neck and concentrate on that, wrap it around again because she's already unconscious and just tie it in a knot and then just -- she -- tied it in a knot, and when I go to the spot, I just untie it and she's dead. She's not going to get up and jump out the back of the truck.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you just told me you were an 8 on a 10 of serial killers, right?
RIDGWAY: Yes, but...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's -- that's pretty damn good, isn't it?
RIDGWAY: That's pretty good, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where would you rank yourself? Do you think you're one of the best of all time?
RIDGWAY: I...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't worry -- I don't think you need to worry about being immodest. Just honestly, what do you think?
RIDGWAY: Well, according to the number, probably one of the best, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. 1.
RIDGWAY: Probably No. 2 or No. 3, probably.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who do you think is No. 1 and No. 2?
RIDGWAY: I don't know. Maybe Bundy. I don't know how long he was doing it, but...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You might have gotten away longer than him, did you?
RIDGWAY: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think that might make you No. 1?
RIDGWAY: It might make me...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In your mind.
RIDGWAY: In my -- yes...
RIDGWAY: This is one I took to work and I killed her in the morning on the way to work. And that's where I killed her.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So back off the back side of the foundation.
RIDGWAY: Yes. No, not on the back side, up to the foundation, not -- you could get behind it.
RIDGWAY: Took her to -- drove around, and that was a good place to go because -- where I took her up, in Seward (ph) Park.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did she suggest it or did you?
RIDGWAY: I don't know who suggested it. I think I did because I had been there before. I'd been in the park...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You used the park for prostitution before?
RIDGWAY: No, I don't think I used -- no, I had been to the park years before with Marsha (ph), and other times, you know, before that. But that was just a place I'd been, and I figured it'd be a good place to have a date and kill a woman.
REICHERT: It's rape and murder.
RIDGWAY: It's rape and murder and... (CROSSTALK)
REICHERT: Rapists are the lowest on the totem pole when it comes to prison population. Did you know that?
RIDGWAY: I know that.
REICHERT: So you're -- you'll be known as a rapist and a murderer.
RIDGWAY: I'll be known as the Green River killer that killed them for the money and...
REICHERT: They don't give a [DELETED] about that. You think those guys in prison care give a [DELETED] about you as the Green River killer?
RIDGWAY: No, they don't.
REICHERT: That doesn't mean anything to them.
RIDGWAY: They don't mean anything to...
REICHERT: No. You're going to be a rapist.
RIDGWAY: I murdered them (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
REICHERT: But you're also a rapist. Is that so hard to say? Yes, I raped them.
RIDGWAY: Technically, I did it for murder -- for money and for -- no, I wouldn't be a rapist.
REICHERT: Not technically, no. You took the money away from them.
RIDGWAY: That'd be robbery then.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we want you to do, Gary, is we're going to walk in the woods here and we'd like for you to try to find the spot where you put this one.
RIDGWAY: I sure will.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gary, from here, where did you place the body?
RIDGWAY: I just placed her on the side of the hill.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you place it on the side of had hill?
RIDGWAY: Yes, I did.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Face up or face down?
RIDGWAY: Face up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Clothed or unclothed?
RIDGWAY: Unclothed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How sure are we, Gary?
RIDGWAY: 100 percent sure. This hill and down from this area.
RIDGWAY: These are women I killed up here and -- in this area. One up here or two, back there, at the time it was cleared, four or five. Between there and here...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four or five different victims?
RIDGWAY: Four or five different victims. At least, because this is a place -- I lived right up there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So why did you kill? That's the million-dollar question, a lot of people are asking why in the hell did he do it?
RIDGWAY: Because they were prostitutes and I killed them because I wanted to kill them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did you want to kill them?
RIDGWAY: I was mad at women and prostitutes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?
RIDGWAY: Because I didn't -- didn't want to pay for sex. I was having all kinds of problems and my ex-wife...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you've got all kinds of excuses why, right?
RIDGWAY: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You think she'll come to visit you?
RIDGWAY: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why not?
RIDGWAY: Because she's starting a new life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She is? What do you mean? I don't know anything.
RIDGWAY: I think she's seeing somebody else. She needs somebody else.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did she get a divorce?
RIDGWAY: No, not yet. It's in the process.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
RIDGWAY: And then she doesn't want to have any more pain of it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, if she did come to visit you, would you see her? You would?
RIDGWAY: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But you don't think she'll stop by. Do you think your son Matthew will be there?
RIDGWAY: Eventually, yes.
RIDGWAY: I dumped a women off, forget her name, at the park and in the last couple days I thought it was on the other side but it was at the park and I don't think I went back and got her head. The head was missing. I don't think I went back and got her head. I placed it on the park side by the river.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Park side by the river.
RIDGWAY: Yes. Like I said, last time I thought it was over near the other side.
RIDGWAY: You put your arm around here like this so this is doing all the pressure. By leaning back like that you're not really choking them in the back, it's just the front. If I had a (UNINTELLIGIBLE), I'd be pulling back and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) knobs on the end of her, some were (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I could pull on it like that and cut into it once she passed out and maybe I pulled around there and tightened it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are you feel when you're doing this to this lady?
RIDGWAY: Kill, kill, kill, kill.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you say you would kill him if you thought he was a witness?
RIDGWAY: I could have killed him if he was a witness, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Isn't that something. Kill your own son -- if he was a witness. So, you're trying to tell me that you couldn't put a rock in the back of someone's head if they were a witness, you could kill your own son? Bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED), Gary. I got you again. I got you again. You kill your own son if you think he's a witness.
RIDGWAY: If I had to -- If I had to kill him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said you would.
Ridgway pleaded guilty to a forty-ninth murder in 2011, that of Rebecca Marrero, whose remains were found in December 2010. He is serving life without parole.
The complete set of King County tapes has never been published as text. These fourteen passages are what a television producer selected from them in 2004, and they remain most of what is publicly readable.