On November 4, 2003, the day before Gary Leon Ridgway stood up in a King County courtroom and pleaded guilty to forty-eight counts of aggravated first degree murder, the prosecuting attorney filed this. It is the State's own account of what it had on him, 138 pages of it, case by case and woman by woman.
It exists because of the plea. A man who pleads guilty never has the evidence against him put to a jury, so Norm Maleng's office put on the record what it would have proved: the first five bodies in and beside the Green River in the summer of 1982, the decades of dead ends, the tiny spheres of DuPont Imron paint from the Kenworth truck plant found twenty-one years later on the clothing of two of the dead, and the six months of interviews Ridgway gave the Green River Task Force under the agreement that spared his life.
The document opens with a warning in capitals that what follows describes the killings in graphic detail and that the families of the dead should know that before they read on. That warning is the State's, and it is accurate.
This was written by the side that wanted the convictions, and it reads that way once you know to look for it. A prosecutor's summary of the evidence is advocacy with a case number on it: what the State believed it could prove, in the order that made the strongest sense of it, filed to support a plea rather than to be tested against a defense. Nothing in it was argued over in front of a jury, because the pleas meant no jury ever heard it. Norm Maleng's name is at the foot of every page.
Ridgway himself barely appears. Across 138 pages his own speech survives as sixty-four quoted fragments totalling under seven hundred words, the longest run forty-eight words and the median two. What the document is summarizing is far larger than the document: he was interviewed by the Green River Task Force for roughly six months during 2003 under the agreement that spared his life, all of it recorded and transcribed, and none of those transcripts have been published. They are the biggest unworked body of first-person material this project has identified, and the route to them is a Washington Public Records Act request to the King County Prosecuting Attorney and the Sheriff's Office.
The warning at the top is the prosecutor's own and it is not a formality: an office that had spent twenty years on these killings put it there because it expected the families of the dead to read what followed. Take it at face value. The women are named and the manner of each death is set out in the flat, itemized register a charging office uses, page after page, and there is no narrative distance anywhere in it to soften that.
A filing in a Washington state court and a public record of the King County Prosecuting Attorney, so there is nothing to clear and no permission to seek. Our copy came from a public mirror, which is a copy host rather than a custodian; for something citable, the clerk of the King County Superior Court or the prosecuting attorney's office holds it under case number 01-1-10270-9 SEA.
This is the only clean text in the category and it needed almost nothing done to it. The PDF was produced from the original Word file rather than scanned, so there is no OCR involved and no OCR errors to repair, and we deliberately ran no spelling repair over it at all: on a file like this every odd-looking word is correct, and a repairer let loose on it will turn DuPont Imron, the paint formula that tied Ridgway to the Kenworth truck plant, into DuPont Iron. Two changes only, both for reading. The pleading line numbers down the left margin are gone, along with the prosecutor's address block that repeats at the foot of every page, and the extraction's one-line-per-printed-line output has been rejoined into the paragraphs as filed. The page numbers running through the text are the document's own.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SUMMARY CONTAINS
GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENT
CRIMINAL ACTS AND MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL
READERS. IN PARTICULAR, FAMILY MEMBERS AND FRIENDS
OF VICTIMS ARE CAUTIONED THAT THIS DOCUMENT
DESCRIBES HIGHLY DISTURBING ELEMENTS OF THE CRIMES
IN GRAPHIC DETAIL.
SUPERIOR COURT OF WASHINGTON FOR KING COUNTY
STATE OF WASHINGTON,
Plaintiff, No. 01-1-10270-9 SEA vs.)) PROSECUTOR’S SUMMARY OF
GARY LEON RIDGWAY,) THE EVIDENCE
Defendant,)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. THE VICTIMS PLACED IN THE GREEN RIVER: WENDY COFFIELD,
DEBRA BONNER, MARCIA CHAPMAN, CYNTHIA HINDS, AND
3. Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds and Opal Mills (Counts III, IV and V). 43
B. THE STAR LAKE VICTIMS: TERRY MILLIGAN, ALMA SMITH,
DELORES WILLIAMS, GAIL MATHEWS, SANDRA GABBERT, AND
C. THE SOUTH AIRPORT VICTIMS: MARY MEEHAN, ANDREA PROSECUTOR’S SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE - i 516 Third Avenue
E. VICTIMS FOUND IN OREGON: DENISE BUSH AND SHIRLEY
F. THE NORTH AIRPORT VICTIMS: SHAWNDA SUMMERS,
H. THE MOUNTAIN VIEW CEMETERY VICTIMS: KIMI-KAI PITSOR,
J. THE HIGHWAY 410 VICTIMS: MARTINA AUTHORLEE, DEBBIE
ABERNATHY, MARY BELLO, PAMMY AVENT, ROBERTA HAYES,
L. INTERSTATE 90 AND HIGHWAY 18: TINA THOMPSON,
N. INTERSTATE 90, EXIT 38: DELISE PLAGER, KIM NELSON, AND PROSECUTOR’S SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE - ii 516 Third Avenue PROSECUTOR’S SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE - iii 516 Third Avenue
I. INTRODUCTION
Beginning in 1982, dozens of young women in King County simply disappeared. Some were murdered and unceremoniously discarded, often in groups, around King County. The fate of others remained unknown.
Many of these young women were teenagers. Almost all were involved in street prostitution, and they met their fates while working the street. These disappearances and deaths remained unsolved; they terrified and intimidated the community.
For twenty years, these deaths and disappearances were attributed to the so-called “Green River killer” — an unidentified serial murderer (or murderers). Despite the efforts of scores of detectives and forensic scientists, who reviewed hundreds of items of physical evidence, and interviewed thousands of witnesses, the cases remained unsolved.
In 2001, based in large part on DNA evidence, the King County Prosecuting Attorney charged the defendant Gary Leon Ridgway with four of these murders. In the following year, additional forensic evidence led to three more murder charges. These seven charges implicated Ridgway in only a fraction of the Green River homicides. He was linked to only one of eight major areas where the victims’ remains were discovered.
Even after Ridgway was charged with these seven murders, it was speculated that another killer remained at large; little evidence connected Ridgway to any of the other forty-two (42) homicides. Now, after months of interviews with detectives and experts, Ridgway has confessed to most of the original “Green River” homicides, and to a number of other murders in King County. He admitted to killing six women whose deaths were unsolved and had never been attributed to the Green River killer. And he led the police to the bodies of four of his victims, remains that would otherwise never have been recovered.
These confessions were accompanied by evidence that only the killer would know.
Ridgway identified the sites where he left the victims’ bodies, including sites with previously undiscovered remains.
It was widely believed that the Green River killer stopped his murderous spree in 1984.
Ridgway has admitted that he did not stop killing: he continued to kill, albeit at a slower pace, until at least 1998.
The Green River killer has finally been identified. His name is Gary Ridgway.
II. THIS DOCUMENT
The purpose of this document is to provide a full account of the murders described as the Green River killings. This is as close as is known to the truth about the Green River homicides.
These crimes are unspeakably cruel and depraved and cannot be described in an antiseptic manner. Language in this document is graphic and disturbing because the crimes are horrific. The authors of this document are sensitive to the suffering of the victims, their families and survivors. With a full account of these terrible crimes, we hope that our community can find some resolution to the Green River case, and can take steps to prevent unnecessary suffering by its most vulnerable members.
III. BACKGROUND
A. THE GREEN RIVER KILLER: AN OVERVIEW In July and August of 1982, five women were strangled to death and left in or near the Green River in King County, Washington. All five had a history of prostitution and at least four had disappeared from Pacific Highway South (PHS), an area notorious for prostitution activity.
These murders were the community’s first notice that a serial killer was preying on young women. Four of the five women had been found in territory covered by the King County Sheriff’s Office, the agency that would take responsibility for investigating and solving these murders.
Over the next several years, more and more murder victims, most of them teenage girls, were found, in wooded or remote parts of King County. Most were found with no clothing or possessions. In many cases months or even years had passed since the victim’s disappearance, and all that police recovered were skeletal remains. Identification of the victims sometimes took years. Eventually, forty-nine (49) victims were listed as victims of the Green River killer; the murders spanned a two-year period from 1982 through 1984. Seven of these victims were listed as “missing;” no body had ever been found, and numerous, frequently contradictory, tips flowed in claiming they were still alive.
The King County Sheriff’s Office created the Green River Task Force (the “Task Force”), compromised of detectives from law enforcement agencies throughout the county, to investigate these murders. Its size grew as more murders were discovered. The Task Force investigated the murders, numerous missing cases, and thousands of tips. It collected evidence regarding hundreds of suspects, yet nothing definitive was uncovered that identified the killer of even one of the Green River victims.
During its investigation, the Task Force employed the most recent advances in forensic science. In 1988, detectives sent evidence associated with several victims to a private laboratory for DNA typing; however, based upon the existing technologies, no DNA profiles could be obtained.
In the meantime, budget demands resulted in a reduction of the Task Force. By 1992,
one detective, Tom Jensen, remained to handle the cases and review new tips. In 2001, Detective Jensen, hoping to take advantage of recent developments in DNA typing, sent biological evidence from several victims to the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory
(WSPCL) for DNA typing. This time a profile was developed: it matched Gary Leon Ridgway.
B. RIDGWAY: GENERAL BACKGROUND Gary Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949. When he was eleven, Ridgway and his family moved to King County, Washington. His parents’ house was a short distance from PHS, the area where he later found most of his victims.
Ridgway was held back two grades in school and graduated from Tyee High School in 1969. After he graduated from high school, Ridgway worked briefly at Kenworth Motor Truck Company. In July of 1969, he entered the military. In August of 1970, while in the military, Ridgway married his first wife, whom he had known and dated for several years. While in the Navy, Ridgway spent some time in the Philippines, where, he claims, he first used prostitutes.
In July of 1971, Ridgway was honorably discharged from the Navy and returned to King County. While Ridgway was overseas, his wife became involved with another man. When Ridgway returned, she sought a divorce, which became final on January 14, 1972. Ridgway later claimed that his first wife had become a “whore” while he had been overseas.
In August of 1971, Ridgway began working as a painter at Kenworth. He worked at the Kenworth plant located on East Marginal Way South, a few miles north of the stretch of PHS where he later picked up many of his victims. Ridgway worked continuously for Kenworth as a painter and taper for over thirty years until his arrest on November 30, 2001.
In 1972, Ridgway met his second wife. In December of 1973, they married. During their
marriage they lived in several residences in Renton, Federal Way, and West Seattle. A son was born on September 5, 1975.
His second wife reported that Ridgway enjoyed having sex outdoors and was interested in bondage. She stated that Ridgway would often be gone during the evenings for long periods of time, sometimes returning to the house dirty or wet. She said that during the latter years of their marriage, Ridgway began coming home later and later without logical explanation. She reported that Ridgway, while walking with her in the woods, liked to hide from her and then creep up behind her and frighten her. He liked to practice walking noiselessly. On at least one occasion, (as Ridgway acknowledged) he choked her, using a police-type hold, with his forearm and upper arm. Their relationship deteriorated.
Ridgway and his second wife separated in July of 1980 and the divorce became final on May 27, 1981. She took primary custody of their son; Ridgway had custody of the boy on alternate weekends.
In November of 1981, Ridgway purchased a house at 21859 32nd Place South, King County, Washington. This house was a few blocks from PHS. In 2003, Ridgway admitted that he killed dozens of women at this residence. Except for six months in 1982, when he had renters living at the house, Ridgway lived there alone until 1985.
For the next several years, Ridgway had relationships with a number of different women, many of whom he met at an organization for single parents, Parents Without Partners. He became engaged to one woman, and they planned to be married in June of 1984. The woman broke up with him after she met someone else.
In February 1985, Ridgway met his third wife. Several months later, she moved into his house, and in June of 1988, they were married.
Ridgway subsequently moved several times, though he always stayed in the south King County area. From 1989 to 1997, Ridgway owned a residence, in Des Moines, Washington. He then moved to Auburn, Washington, where he lived until his arrest in 2001.
C. THE INVESTIGATION INTO RIDGWAY
In 1983, Ridgway came to the attention of the Task Force as a result of the disappearance of Marie Malvar – a case initially investigated by the Des Moines Police Department. As discussed more fully below, a man reported that Ridgway’s truck appeared similar to the one in which he had seen Marie Malvar on the night she disappeared. However, the man’s descriptions of the driver and the vehicle were very general. Ridgway denied picking up Malvar, and with no evidence to implicate him in her disappearance, the case stalled.
Ridgway resurfaced several times as a possible Green River suspect. During the 1980’s, Task Force detectives investigated Ridgway and interviewed him on multiple occasions. He was generally cooperative. He admitted “dating” prostitutes, 1 including at least one of the missing victims. He admitted assaulting a prostitute, Rebecca Garde Guay, claiming he did so because she bit him. After one interview, Ridgway successfully passed a polygraph examination in which he denied killing any of the women.
On April 8, 1987, the Task Force served a search warrant on Ridgway’s residence, his work locker, and several vehicles. Detectives seized hundreds of items of evidence, such as carpet fibers, ropes, paint samples and plastic tarps. They submitted these items to the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory which compared them to evidence found with the The street terms “date” or “dating” are euphemisms for acts of prostitution. A “trick” is a prostitute’s customer.
victims. Detectives obtained and analyzed Ridgway’s financial records. None of the evidence collected appeared to link Ridgway with any particular scene or victim. However, one item of evidence seized would prove to be significant: a saliva sample taken from Ridgway during the execution of the warrant.
More than fourteen years later, in March of 2001, Detective Tom Jensen submitted biological evidence from several victims to WSPCL for DNA typing. In September of 2001, WSPCL Forensic Scientist Beverly Himick analyzed the vaginal swabs from victim Marcia Chapman. She discovered that a partial male DNA profile on the swab was consistent with Ridgway’s DNA profile. Himick also analyzed pubic hairs from victim Opal Mills and discovered a male DNA profile which matched Ridgway’s.
At around the same time, WSPCL Forensic Scientist Jean C. Johnston analyzed the vaginal swabbing from victim Carol Christensen. She discovered that the DNA profile obtained from the sperm fraction on the vaginal swab was consistent with Ridgway’s DNA. She calculated that not more than one individual in the entire world (excluding an identical twin) would exhibit this DNA profile.
This DNA linked Ridgway to only one dumpsite and one lone victim. As a result, the King County Sheriff’s Office made preparations for his arrest. The police put together a multiagency task force, the Green River Homicides Investigation (the “Task Force”) to prepare the cases against Ridgway and review the remaining unsolved murders.
On November 16, 2001, Ridgway attempted to pick up an undercover King County Sheriff’s officer posing as a prostitute on PHS. He asked if she was “dating,” and agreed to meet her down the road. He was arrested and released later that day. Ironically, when being interviewed at the King County Jail during his booking, Ridgway requested that they not contact
his wife. Instead, he stated, “You can contact the Green River Task Force… they know me real well.” Two weeks later, on November 30, 2001, police arrested Ridgway for murder as he left work at the Kenworth plant in Renton.
D. ARREST AND CHARGING
On December 5, 2001, the King County Prosecuting Attorney charged Ridgway with four counts of Aggravated Murder in the First Degree for the murders of Carol Christensen, Cynthia Hinds, Marcia Chapman and Opal Mills. In three of the four counts, DNA evidence linked Ridgway to the victims. The body of Cynthia Hinds was discovered within a few feet of two other victims, leaving no doubt that the same killer was responsible.
On April 15, 2002, the King County Prosecuting Attorney provided written notice that he would seek the death penalty.
Over the next year, prosecutors and detectives carefully reviewed and investigated the uncharged Green River cases for further forensic work and possible charging. Investigators sent hundreds of items from the cases to both public and private forensic laboratories for analysis. In the meantime, in an effort to insure the case against Ridgway would go to trial in a timely manner, the King County Superior Court set a charging deadline of March 28, 2003. Shortly before this deadline, a private laboratory, Microtrace, reported finding tiny spheres of sprayed paint on the clothing of two uncharged victims - Wendy Coffield and Debra Estes. The paint was identical to the highly specialized DuPont Imron paint used at the Kenworth truck plant where Ridgway worked.
A total of five murdered women were left in or near the Green River within a one month
time period in July and August of 1982. Wendy Coffield was the first, and Ridgway had already been charged with killing the last three victims: Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds and Marcia Chapman.
It was obvious that the same person who killed these four women had also killed Debra Bonner, whose body was found in the Green River a few weeks after Coffield’s, and only a few days before Mills’, Hinds’ and Chapman’s.
On March 27, 2003, the King County Prosecuting Attorney filed three additional counts of Aggravated Murder in the First Degree for the murders of Wendy Coffield, Debra Bonner and Debra Estes. Ridgway entered pleas of not guilty to the additional counts. The Court set a trial date for July of 2004.
E. THE PLEA AGREEMENT
By April, 2003, prosecutors and detectives completed their review of all cases potentially linked to the Green River killer. These reviews consisted of hundreds of witness interviews, and they were done with an eye toward any physical evidence that might yield information if subjected to state-of-the-art forensic examination. Despite extensive examination of the physical evidence, by many different laboratories around the country, there was little new evidence. The only new evidence of significance, the finding of Imron paint on the clothing of several victims, resulted in the filing of three additional counts of Aggravated Murder in the First Degree. Fortytwo (42) Green River cases remained uncharged and there was little physical or circumstantial evidence connecting Ridgway to any of them. The dearth of any evidence pointing to any suspect meant, in all likelihood, that, absent a confession, the cases would remain unsolved.
Gary Ridgway faced seven counts of Aggravated First Degree Murder, but he could not be charged with more than a fraction of the Green River killings.
Shortly after his arraignment on the amended information, Ridgway’s attorneys contacted the King County Prosecuting Attorney and asked whether the Prosecutor would forego seeking the death penalty against Ridgway in exchange for pleas of guilty to the charged counts and a number of additional cases. They subsequently prepared a proffer declaring that Ridgway was willing to plead guilty to the seven charged counts and to forty to forty-seven additional counts of murder in exchange for the Prosecutor’s agreement to forgo the death penalty. Ridgway offered to provide a completely candid account of his criminal activity in King County, and to direct investigators to the undiscovered remains of a number of his victims.
In April of 2003, the Prosecutor faced a decision. He could reject Ridgway’s proffer, and proceed to trial on the seven charged counts alone. This would allow a jury to decide whether Ridgway was guilty of the charged crimes and, if so, whether he should be sentenced to death. A jury verdict of death would create the possibility that, after Ridgway had exhausted decades of appeals, he might be executed before he died of natural causes in prison. A fraction of the Green River killings would be avenged.
Or, the Prosecutor could deprive the jury of an opportunity to sentence Ridgway to death.
If he did so, the truth about the Green River killings would be known, and the community’s most enduring nightmare would be over. The Green River killings would no longer be a tragic enigma in the history of our County. The families and survivors of the dozens of victims of the uncharged killings would find a measure of justice and resolution at last. Ridgway would be held accountable for all the murders he committed, not just a select few. He would not be executed, but his convictions could not be appealed and he would die in prison.
On June 13, 2003, the King County Prosecuting Attorney and Ridgway entered into an agreement where, in exchange for avoiding the possibility of execution, Ridgway agreed to
provide complete, truthful, and candid information concerning his crimes in King County and answer all questions during interviews conducted by the police or the Prosecuting Attorney.
Ridgway agreed to disclose the existence and precise location of all undiscovered physical remains of his victims. Ridgway agreed to plead guilty to Aggravated Murder in the First Degree for all murders he committed in King County.
The terms of the contract specifically required Ridgway to address not only the “official” list of forty-nine (49) victims, but any and all other crimes he may have committed before 1982 or after 1984. In addition to the finality this would provide the victims’ families and the community at large, the contract served another purpose: by identifying unsolved murders for which Ridgway was not responsible, police could investigate these cases with an eye toward developing other viable suspects.
The contract provided that if Ridgway was not completely candid, he could face the death penalty for any murders which he had failed to disclose. For example, if Ridgway failed to confess to a murder that he committed, and it was later learned that Ridgway was responsible, the Prosecutor would be free to seek the death penalty against Ridgway for that crime. Ridgway acknowledged this consequence during the course of interviews.
F. THE INTERVIEWS
In June, 2003, and continuing over the next five months, the Task Force interviewed Ridgway extensively. Detectives confronted him with all of the Green River murders and similar unsolved homicides. In all, Ridgway claimed that he killed over sixty (60) women in King County. As part of the process of testing his claim to be the Green River killer, Ridgway led the police to the places he left bodies and described what he did there. His memory for these
locations surpassed all the information provided to his attorneys and the knowledge of detectives who had worked on the case for decades. In addition, he identified several dumpsites on cases that were never considered Green River cases; information about these cases had not provided to the defense.
Ridgway led the Task Force to numerous sites where he claimed to have left undiscovered bodies. To date, four sets of human remains have been discovered at those sites, including three of the “missing” victims on the original Green River list: Pammy Avent, April Buttram and Marie Malvar. Detectives continue to try and identify the fourth set of recovered remains.
During more than four months of interviews, detectives questioned Ridgway about specific homicides as well as delving into Ridgway’s general habits and thoughts related to his killings. Detectives quickly learned that, as predicted by experts on serial killers, the information from Ridgway came in bits and pieces.
Initially, despite his obvious incentive to be truthful in the interviews, Ridgway greatly minimized his behavior and acknowledged that he was a pathological liar. In candid moments, Ridgway acknowledged that it was difficult for him to be truthful, after being so successfully deceptive about the killings for decades. Ridgway also suggested another reason why he would lie or minimize his conduct: he believes that a popular “true crime” author will write a book about him, and he wanted to portray himself in the best possible light.
Early in the interviews, Ridgway made a number of self-serving claims. He said that he had not planned to kill any of his victims. He claimed he killed in a “rage” when something about the encounter with the woman (e.g., failure to feign orgasm with sufficient enthusiasm, or hurrying him) provoked him. He attributed this “anger” to a variety of causes, including work
(where women used manipulation to get the easier jobs); his purchase of a home (all the light bulbs were removed before he moved in); late payments by his tenants; his divorces; poor sleep;
failure to “stick up” for himself; and child support payments. He said that killing released the “pressure” from these and other problems.
Eventually, he acknowledged that many of these claims were false, and he admitted that once he managed to get a woman to his house, he killed her, regardless of how she acted or how he felt.
Likewise, Ridgway initially insisted that he stopped killing in 1985, when he met his present wife. As the interviews progressed, the last year he killed changed from 1985 to 1987, to 1991, to 1998, to some indefinite time before his arrest in 2001.
Ridgway had a very strong incentive — avoiding the possibility of execution — to confess to every murder for which he could possibly be charged. 2 Nevertheless, he did not admit killing every victim originally attributed to the Green River killer. For instance, he said he did not kill Amina Agisheff (although this may be because he had heard that she was shot). And he denied that he killed two other Green River victims found near Portland: Tammie Liles and an unidentified woman. To date, he has provided no specific information about missing victim Becky Marrero, whom he claimed not to recognize from a photograph.
Additionally, Ridgway rejected detectives’ determined efforts to suggest that he had committed numerous other unsolved, and similar, homicides. On one such occasion he declared:
You can put her on the list of mine. But I’m not going to, I’m not going to say I killed her because I didn’t kill her….
During interviews, Ridgway claimed that he was not particularly concerned about the death penalty. He said he would rather live than die, but he told a forensic psychologist: “Well, I’ve read up a little bit about it, injection.
And, and then, uh could take seven or eight years before getting it. Plus, it, the, books say it just, it’s a process that you just go to sleep and your heart stops so there’s very little pain.”
Ridgway made it clear that he would not claim to have killed a woman unless he did so.
He explained his reasons:
Why, if it isn’t mine? Because I have pride in…in…what I do, I don’t wanna take it from anybody else.
In the end, Ridgway admitted to committing most of the murders on the official list of Green River cases and six unsolved homicides.
G. MEMORY FOR SPECIFIC VICTIMS
Ridgway claimed that his memory of specific victims is poor. Some of this is apparently a consequence of the sheer number of women he murdered. (For example, during a period of less than four weeks in the spring of 1983, Ridgway killed at least six women.) Yet Ridgway’s inability to recall the details of the killings is also the product and symptom of his psychopathy.
Simply put, the women had no meaning as individuals to him. For Ridgway, his victims existed simply to satisfy his needs. “…like I said before, they don’t mean anything to me. And I…and once I’ve killed ‘em, I didn’t kept it in memory. I just knew where they…I dumped em.” When shown photographs of the victims, Ridgway almost invariably said he did not recognize them.
“It’s…I didn’t…the women’s faces don’t …don’t mean anything to me…There were…the bodies, if they had a …had a pussy, I would screw and that was it.” He did, however, often remember where he placed his victims’ bodies and he claimed to recall the weather and time of day when he did so.
Ridgway’s “memory problems,” it became apparent, were highly selective. For example, he had a detailed memory of every vehicle he had ever owned. Nor did he have any trouble describing the various residences he occupied in the first thirty years of his life. He readily
recited a detailed narrative of his employment history, including the shifts he worked at Kenworth, his various responsibilities there, and the dates during which his work there was interrupted by a stint in the Navy.
In particular, Ridgway demonstrated an extraordinary memory for those things which meant something to him — particularly, his possessions and how much he paid for them. For example, Ridgway described breaking a tail light on his pickup truck while dumping one of the bodies at Exit 38 on I-90 in the early 1980’s. He also remembered that he waited to replace the light until he was able to purchase two of them after responding to a classified ad. A review of a check registry seized in 1987 corroborated Ridgway’s account.
When frustrated investigators reminded Ridgway that he seemed to have a fine memory for virtually everything except information about his victims, Ridgway said:
That’s the way…that’s the way I…when I put that in there it’s a place where I locked in there. My mind doesn’t want to give it up.
Despite these pernicious “memory problems,” Ridgway correctly identified a large number of areas where the remains of his victims were discovered and led investigators to four sets of undiscovered remains.
IV. GENERAL ADMISSIONS
During interviews, Ridgway explained his general methods of finding and killing his victims. In virtually all the murders he committed, Ridgway claimed, he used the same techniques for hunting, killing and hiding the bodies.
A. CHOOSING VICTIMS
Ridgway acknowledged that he devoted considerable time and effort to finding
appropriate victims. He would spend hours before work and after, driving through areas of prostitution. Ridgway referred to these efforts as “patrolling.” Among the areas Ridgway “patrolled” regularly were:
• The “Riverton” area – The Tukwila area along PHS (according to Ridgway, the area where he found most of his victims) • The Kent-Des Moines area of PHS • Rainier Valley • Seattle’s International District • Downtown Seattle • North Seattle along Aurora Avenue • PHS south to Federal Way One of the areas Ridgway found many prostitutes was PHS, 3 between his house at 218th and South 188th. Ridgway estimated that he picked up and killed around fifteen women from that stretch of the highway. Ridgway would back up his truck into the parking lot of the 7-11 store on PHS, where, as he said, he could watch “the traffic.” Sometimes, as a ruse, he would raise the hood of his truck. This allowed him to pretend to work on his truck while he watched the highway.
Ridgway claimed that he only killed street prostitutes. There may be psychological reasons that explain why Ridgway elected to kill prostitutes, but his principal reason was the relative ease with which these women could be murdered:
Uh, prostitutes were the, the easiest. I went from uh, havin’ sex with ‘em to just plain killing ‘em.
Ridgway claimed that he also picked these young women because he believed the police would not look as hard for a missing prostitute. Also, he claimed that because prostitutes were On May 11, 1982, he was arrested on PHS for Offering and Agreeing to an act of sex for money with an undercover King County Sheriff’s officer. In 1987, he was placed under surveillance by the Task Force and observed driving up and down PHS, obviously looking for prostitutes.
frequently on the move, it was more difficult for police to determine where and when they had been killed. Ridgway’s assessment was correct – police were often delayed in their investigation because no missing person report was filed, and, even when a disappearance was reported, it was difficult for investigators to pin down where the victim had last been seen. Complicating matters were numerous alleged sightings of the “missing” victims long after they had been killed.
Ridgway denied killing any men. He claimed there was a simple reason: “…’cause they didn’t give no sexual gratification to me.” Ridgway appeared indifferent to the race of his victims. Most of his victims were white, but he also killed many African-American women and several Asian women. He declared, “I’d much rather have white, but black was fine. It’s just… just garbage. Just somethin’ to screw and kill her and dump her.” Most of Ridgway’s victims were in their teens. Ridgway seemed to prey on the younger women. According to Ridgway, these girls – they were not adults — were relatively innocent, and less likely to “con” him than women in their early twenties. On the other hand, he seemed to suggest, they may have pled more earnestly for their lives.
… I talked to them before I had sex with them and she’d say, “I’ve only done this a few times before.”…I mean if she’s 13 or 14 years old…you figure that’s true. If you get one that’s 20 and 25 that talks the slang and everything and they say “I’ve only done this a few times,” they probably got an arrest record and they’re lying.
But the young ones stood out more when they talked when they were dying.
Ridgway made it clear to investigators and prosecutors that these were carefully planned, premeditated killings, not sudden impulses:
When I get in the truck, when I’m driving and, ah, might pick up a woman, ah, wanna be in the mood to kill. I…I don’t have the mood, ah, like I don’t get her in the truck and drive down the road and all of a sudden, you know, ah, jump on her and start chokin’
her, no.
Ridgway was fully committed to killing any woman he could. “I always…I always had it in my mind to kill them.” During his most active period, Ridgway said, he killed virtually all the prostitutes he could.
During the…during the killing spree there were a few women I didn’t for some reason I didn’t kill, but they were few and far between.
Ridgway said that during this period, he slept only a couple hours a night, and devoted the rest of his free time to hunting for victims, killing them, and disposing of their bodies.
Ridgway was not always able to kill a victim he selected. He invested considerable time and energy on victims that he was ultimately unable to murder and failure enraged him, and fueled his desire to kill.
…I’m really mad at some of ‘em because I…I didn’t get a chance to pick ‘em up, they want too much, they, ah, they were, ah, the pimp was followin’ me or somethin’ and so I’m…I just lost one, the next one I’m gonna do everything I can to sweet talk her… I’m gonna talk her into getting her out so I can…kill the bitch, kill the…first one I didn’t get a chance to kill today, I’m gonna kill this one and I’m gonna strangle her head…strangle her neck so it…it breaks…
B. GAINING THE CONFIDENCE OF THE WOMEN
Ridgway developed a number of ruses to gain the confidence of his victims. These methods, although simple, enabled him to continue killing long after news of the Green River killer had reached the street.
Ridgway admitted that many of the women he contacted asked him if he was the Green River killer. Ridgway said he used his small stature to suggest that he could not be the killer.
DET: Did any of ‘em ever ask you whether you were the Green River killer?
GR: All the time. They’s [sic] always ask. Even the ones I didn’t kill. Uh, a lot of ‘em did.
DET: What’d you say?
GR: No, I’m not. Uh, do I look like the Green River killer?
And says no, you don’t. They always thought it was a big tall guy, about 6’…b-big guy. So, 6’3”, 185 pounds or some’n like that.
Ridgway estimated that fifty (50) women asked him if he was the Green River killer. He never told any of them he was, although he admitted telling a couple of his victims, as he strangled them, that he was going to kill them.
In contrast, some prostitutes were reluctant to “date” Ridgway because they suspected that he might be an undercover police officer. To allay these concerns, Ridgway carried beer with him in the truck, which he would offer to the women, who would then “…know I wasn’t a cop, relax with me.” Ridgway developed a number of ruses to get the women to trust him. He offered to become a regular customer, to lend them his vehicles, to get them jobs, to feed them. He didn’t have to worry about keeping these promises, because, as he said, “they were already dead.” And I would…talk to her about that and get her mind off of the, uh, anything she was nervous about. And think, you know, she thinks, oh, this guy cares, and which I, I didn’t. I just wanted to uh, get her in the vehicle and eventually kill her.
Even when conditions were not right for killing a particular woman (if, for example, the woman was with a companion), Ridgway would often give the women a ride. He was investing in the future, “to get ‘em used to me in case I see one of ‘em at a time [alone].” If a woman was afraid to go with him to a remote location, Ridgway would sometimes go
through with the “date,” hoping to exploit her increased sense of security at their next encounter.
Ridgway’s methods enabled him to get his victims in situations where he could kill them without arousing their suspicions. He would offer a prostitute more than she might usually make on a “date” to get her to go to a remote location with him. After all, he knew he would not lose money – and, in fact, might turn a profit if the woman had any cash.
First thing you do is we talk about, ah, what I want, how much I’m gonna pay, um, knowin’ I was gonna kill her. I, ah, agreed on whatever she wanted ‘cause I had the money.
When Ridgway planned to kill a woman, he was faced with having to convince the woman to leave the cab of the truck for the “date.” Ridgway explained that he would carry the spare tire in the front seat area, and claim that there was no room to have sex there.
Another way Ridgway lulled his victims into trusting him was by using his son in a variety of ways to gain the confidence of the women he killed.
…so every time I opened up my wallet there would be a picture a’ my son on one side, uh, you know, behind my I.D. Here’s my I.D., I hi-hide my name….
…flip it over and there’s my I-I.D., and uh, my son’s picture on the back side. And they’d see that and then would uh, lower any big defenses.
And just, you know, kids’ toys…eight-year-old toys in the, on the dash.
Ridgway preferred to kill the women at his home. When he managed to persuade a woman to come to his house for a “date,” Ridgway said, he would use his son’s room as a means of reassuring the woman that he was not dangerous:
…They look around and everything, they’re getting more secure as you go. They look in the bedrooms, nobody’s in there, nothin’s, you know, there’s my son’s room, hey, this guy has a son, he’s not gonna hurt anybody. His name’s written on the door and it’s empty and it’s got his bunk bed there, toys on the floor…
Ridgway acknowledged that he sometimes had to hide his emotions about a missed kill.
There were times when he was unable to persuade a woman to have sex with him in a situation where he could kill her, and had to release her unharmed. He would become so frustrated and angry and so eager to kill that he would have to calm down before he could begin hunting for another victim:
I couldn’t all the sudden pick up another woman and still be in that frustration. I’d be in the mood then right to get her in the car and choke her. But with the…I had to calm down to get…so I wouldn’t look like I was, you know, scared and shaking.
If traces of that anger and frustration remained, Ridgway said he would offer the women a non-threatening explanation:
Well sometimes like I…I’d be anxious because of the frustration with the first one and I’d be shaking but I’d have to bring in on the side that I just got arrested a couple of weeks ago for prostitution and you can see I’m a little bit nervous.… …I’ve just been arrested awhile back and they can see any kind of nervousness is because of that instead of nervousness in wanting to be strange.
C. KILLING THE WOMEN
Ridgway claims he negotiated with the women to give him “half and half”—oral intercourse followed by genital intercourse. He wanted them as naked as possible.
When Ridgway took women to his house, he would encourage them to use the bathroom before they had sex. This was not for their benefit: he knew from experience that victims of strangulation frequently become incontinent.
I don’t, I was in the idea of getting them in there and killing them.
I didn’t want them to shit in the bed. So that was the main reason.
Ridgway related that he murdered virtually all his victims with the same simple but
effective method. During the sex act, he would tell the woman that he could only have an orgasm while entering her from behind. When the woman was on her knees —“doggie style”— he would get behind her. At the appropriate time, Ridgway claimed, he would wait for his victim to raise her head, and attack. As Ridgway told a psychiatrist:
And after I got behind them, penis/vagina, I would climax and usually the woman would raise her head because, you know, the guy’s through, I can get dressed. Usually when she raised her head up, I would wrap my arm around her or put something around her neck and choke her.
Other times, he employed a variation on that ruse:
I’d tell ‘em “here’s a car coming” so guess what, she lifts up her head like that…She’s not thinking anything of it. Her hands are down normal and it’s my time to wrap my arm around her neck and to choke her and not have…get in the way of her mouth. I got bit in the hand with a mouth one time…But it’s my idea to get her head up so I could get a clear shot of her neck to kill her.
Ridgway described one technique he said was particularly effective. When he began to strangle the women, he told them that if they stopped struggling, he would let them go.
Apparently, a number of women ceased to struggle when he said this, and were easier to kill.
But I wasn’t gonna let her go. It was just my way of lying to her to keep her from fighting. She stopped fighting and I just kept on chokin’.
Ridgway arrived at this solution to the “fighting” problem by trial and error. If they sensed that he was going to kill them, he said, his victims often would plead with him to spare their lives. Among the entreaties they used, he said, were: “Don’t kill me;” “I’m too young to die;” “I’ve got family I’m taking care of;” “I’ve got a daughter at home;” “I don’t want to die.” These pleas did not persuade him, but, Ridgway said, he soon settled on telling the women that if they stopped struggling, he would release them.
Ridgway denied ever using a firearm to kill his victims. Similarly, Ridgway explained, he did not use a knife because “it would have been messy,” and because his victims still might be able to scream.
When asked why he chose to choke his victims, Ridgway replied: “Cause that was more personal and more rewarding than to shoot her.” Most often, Ridgway reported, he strangled women by compressing their necks in the crook of his arm, using his other arm to add leverage. On many occasions, he demonstrated his technique for the detectives. He started with his right arm, he said, because he is right-handed.
Sometimes, he said, if his right arm got tired and the victims were not struggling too much, he would switch arms.
To prevent the women from writhing around in his grip, Ridgway said, he would wrap his legs around them. Some of the struggles were protracted, Ridgway said, and he had to roll over onto his back while squeezing the women with his legs and his arms. Sometimes, to finish the woman off, he would roll them on their backs and stand on their throats.
According to Ridgway, these struggles never lasted more than two minutes. He claimed that whether or not the women struggled had no effect on his gratification.
Later, after some of his victims had scratched him while he strangled them with his hands or arms, Ridgway said, he used ligatures. Ligatures included towels, a belt, a bathrobe tie, extension cord, rope, necktie, socks, jumper cables, a “tieback” for a curtain, and his T-shirt.
According to Ridgway, he killed his victims at his home, in the back of his pickup truck (under a canopy) or outdoors. He said that of the women he killed in his house, all were killed in his bedroom with the exception of one woman who escaped long enough to reach the front door.
Ridgway said he killed her there, in the living room.
Ridgway denied that he ever tortured his victims, or caused them any unnecessary pain.
He admitted that he once attempted to set one of his victims’ hair on fire after her death (he said he abandoned this “experiment” when he became concerned that someone might see the smoke).
Ridgway admitted that once, after killing a woman in the back of his truck, he “tried to bring back to life, you know, pumping on her chest and…” These efforts, he said, were unsuccessful.
Had he been able to revive her, Ridgway said, he “might’ a tried some, some kind of torture and, and uh, be limited in the back of the truck.” Ridgway denied experimenting with novel ways of murdering his victims. When an interviewer asked him why he did not, he had a simple answer: “I didn’t because my method’s working pretty good.” He explained: “Choking is what I did, and I was pretty good at it.”
D. NECROPHILIA
In 1986, the only known survivor of an attack by the Green River killer described her experience to a Task Force detective. Rebecca Garde Guay (whom Ridgway admitted, in 2003, that he attempted to murder) recounted that although Ridgway took her into the woods for a “date,” and removed all his clothing, he had no apparent sexual interest in her at all, and showed no signs of sexual arousal. Rebecca said she could not even understand why he had removed his clothes. Then he attacked her. At that point, she said, his personality “clicked”:
…his face looked white, clammy, cold. His arms and everything was cold. His hands.… He was a totally different person and uh, he kind of made me think that if he did kill me, since he wasn’t interested in me sexually before that, he probably would have tried to have intercourse if I was dead.
Initially, Ridgway adamantly denied having post-mortem sexual contact with the women.
A few days into the interview process, he acknowledged that he might have ejaculated “right
after” choking them to death. A few days later, he admitted that he had post-mortem intercourse with some of his victims. Soon thereafter, he admitted that a few of these women had been decomposed enough that maggots had begun to appear on the bodies.
Ridgway described his feelings about having sex with one of his dead victims:
That would be a…uh, that would be a good day, an evening or after I got off work and go have sex with her. And that’d last for one or two days till couldn’t…till the flies came. And I’d bury ‘em and cover ‘em up. Um, then I’d look for another.… Sometimes I killed one, one day and I killed one the next day. There wouldn’t be no reason to go back.
Ridgway’s desire for sexual intercourse with a corpse was apparently so strong that he would engage in risky behavior to accomplish it. Ridgway described an occasion where he drove back to visit the body of a woman he had killed, with his son in his truck. While his son slept in the truck, Ridgway got out, had intercourse with the body some thirty feet away, and returned to the truck. Ridgway assured the detectives that his son was a “hard sleeper.” Ridgway claimed that he only had post-mortem sex with ten or so of his victims. But, as he explained to a psychiatrist, this was partly a matter of convenience because their bodies were close to his home.
Ridgway’s motives for post-mortem intercourse were, according to him, simple: “Just wanted sex. And it was free. I didn’t have to pay for it. I killed her.” Ridgway implied that having sexual intercourse with a dead woman was not his preference; rather, it was a matter of economics and convenience.
DR: … What was it about having sex with a dead body that you preferred over just going out and getting another woman to kill?
GR: Well, for one thing you’d have to pay for it and she was already dead.
DR: So you weren’t going to be paying for…if you went out and got another woman, killed her, you weren’t going to be paying.
GR: That’s what…I spent hours looking, looking and looking for other women to kill and a lot of gas and everything looking for more people to kill and… Ridgway admitted that it was more difficult for him to reach climax with a cold dead body than with a live victim. Eventually, Ridgway said, he stopped having sex with his victims after killing them because it became less satisfying.
DR: You wanted a fresh kill?
GR: Something fresh instead of someone who is cold and hard to get a hard on with a cold body.
Ridgway described one episode where he killed a woman in the back of his truck, then drove to work. At lunch, he said, he drove the back to the site where he had “dated” her earlier with the body still in the back of the truck and had intercourse with the body in the back of the truck. Then he drove back to work, with the body still in the truck.
Ridgway did not seem to spend much time reflecting upon his own motives. When asked, for example, why he inserted rocks into two women’s vaginas after he had killed them, he replied by saying that the rocks “were there.” On another occasion, Ridgway seemed to suggest that he inserted the rocks to “plug” up his victims. According to Ridgway’s second wife, he had threatened to “sew up” her vagina to prevent her from having an affair.
The full extent of Ridgway’s activities with his victim’s bodies will likely never be known. Certainly, the interviews provided hints that Ridgway may have experimented with inserting other items into the vaginas of the women he killed. Otherwise, Ridgway only
admitted what he could not deny — that he placed the rocks in the vaginas of Marcia Chapman and Cynthia Hinds.
E. DISPOSING OF THE BODIES
Ridgway claimed that he remembered few personal details about his victims, but one thing he seemed to remember quite well: where he placed their bodies.
He resented having to dispose of his victims after killing them.
GR: I have a burden of having to find a place to put it.
DET: You have a burden.
GR: A burden, yes.
Ridgway claimed that when he killed a woman in his house, he quickly disposed of her body, usually within half an hour of killing her.
In particular, Ridgway said, he had to be careful moving the victims out of his house.
Ridgway dragged the bodies through his house on a rug or a sheet of plastic; soon this became routine:
The girl is in the bedroom and then I’d pull her off the bed on to the rug and grab her by the feet and drag her around the corner so uh it was easy on the plastic ‘cause it slid so easy and I could wrap…wrap the plastic around her and take her out that way… He would back his truck right up to the door of his house, open the tailgate, and load the body into the back and close the canopy. Ridgway said he would unscrew the light by the window in his kitchen door during this process. Once, he said, he sneaked a body out of his house in his son’s footlocker.
Most of Ridgway’s victims were naked when he dumped their bodies. He explained that
he did so to get rid of any potential evidence that might be on them, and that he never kept any of their clothing: “they were just rags to me. Just rags.” In addition to their clothes, Ridgway almost always stripped his victims of their jewelry. Ridgway explained that this was his routine:
“They die. I take their jewelry.” Ridgway said that he left some twenty or more items of jewelry he had taken from his victims in women’s bathrooms at the Kenworth truck plant where he worked. He got a certain thrill thinking about women at work wearing the jewelry. “And my favorite thing was maybe if someone’s walking around with a piece of that jewelry that they found in the bathroom.”4 Ridgway explained a simple but effective method of dumping the bodies. He would drive, usually at night, to a secluded spot, park his truck, and quickly pull the body out of the vehicle and dump it just off the roadway. Then, he would drive up the road and park just far enough from the body so that if the vehicle was approached by a police officer, the body would not be discovered. Then, making sure no motorists could see him, he would walk back through the woods to the body, and drag it farther from the road.
Ridgway was concerned that a victim might regain consciousness while he transported the body in the back of his pickup truck. He tied ligatures around the necks of some of these victims before putting them in the truck, and he would watch his mirror for any signs of movement.
Of all his secrets, the most precious to Ridgway were the as-yet undiscovered bodies of his victims. When talking to a forensic psychologist, Ridgway explained what a victim’s body meant to him:
Detectives interviewed several Kenworth employees who confirmed that they had found jewelry, including earrings, watches and rings, in women’s restrooms at Kenworth during the early 1980’s.
GR: She meant, she meant tha uh, um, a beautiful person that was my property, my…uh, possession. Some’n only I knew and, I missed when they were found or wh-where I lost ‘em.
DR: How did you feel back, Gary, back in the 80’s when the bodies were found and taken away by, those times they were discovered? How did that feel?
GR: It felt like they were takin’ som’n, some’n a’ mine that I put there.
Ridgway’s sense of ownership and his need to retain possession of these bodies drove him to pin his third “river” victim beneath the surface of the Green River. It was an ordeal to hold the body at the bottom of the river and cover it with large rocks, but Ridgway did so because:
…you had already found two of ‘em by then. And she… I wasn’t going to let this other one get away.
Ridgway told a defense psychiatrist about a recurring dream he had, about being unable to recall the location of one of “his” bodies, and thereby losing control of her:
I had control of her when I killed her and I had control over if she hasn’t already been found, I’d have control over her where she was still in my possession.
Ridgway explained to a detective why he had elected the drastic step of transporting victims’ remains to Oregon to “throw off” the Task Force: “Cause the…bodies were already being found and I didn’t want any more to be found.” Prosecutors and detectives had speculated for years about the significance of the positions in which the Green River killer had left the bodies of some of his victims. They appeared deliberately posed, on their backs, with their legs spread in unnatural positions. This mystery was resolved when Ridgway acknowledged that he had post-mortem intercourse with a number
of his victims, and often had to forcibly spread their legs apart to accomplish this. Ridgway simply left the victims in the position as they were when he was done with them.
Ridgway explained that he covered many of the victims with brush, branches, or whatever was at hand. Sometimes, this was just miscellaneous debris, Ridgway said, “…she’s garbage, so I put, ah, stuff over her that was garbage.” Ridgway buried only a few of his victims (at least, the ones that have been found). He explained that he placed some of them in shallow graves, because he continued to use the general area (South Airport) to “date” prostitutes, and did not want the smell of the decomposing victims to lead to their discovery.
Ridgway appeared to favor dumpsites that were remote, heavily wooded and steep.
Many of the victims’ bodies were found in locations where a person casually walking by would not discover them. At some of these sites, detectives used ropes to lower themselves to the remains and to recover them. Ridgway explained to the detectives how he managed to take the bodies down these slopes:
…I’d have one hand on her leg while using the tree for stable, to keep me stable. Wrap my arm around a tree and pull her down.…Uh…go to another place and put my arm on a…grab a bush and hold on to it, while I am pulling her down… Ridgway was asked if he was ever injured while killing or disposing of a victim. He acknowledged that he had reported some injuries, such as shoulder pain to the infirmary at work, “…if I got hurt like pulling her because of her weight and it bothered me I’d just blame it on work so State Industrial pay for it.” Prosecutors and detectives had long noticed that the Green River killer would often dump consecutive bodies at different sites, and wondered if there was some method to Ridgway’s decision to dump a body at one site or another. Ridgway said his decision on what site to use
was “random,” but later explained he did not want to frequent one site consecutively for fear that he would be seen and associated with it.
At any given site, Ridgway explained why he did not dump the bodies in the same place:
“…uh, the reason why I put ‘em so far apart is because if I wanted to go back, there wouldn’t be any smell. “ Ridgway complained about the time and cost of moving the victims’ bodies: “I had to take them all the way out there, waste of my time and gas.” He suggested that he might have killed more women if disposing of the bodies had not been so much trouble:
Then [if] I could uh, take ‘em and drop ‘em in the bottomless mine shaft, uh, uh, every, every one of ‘em, and I could’a had uh, then I would have a uh, much clearer mind at, at, at killing more women, not spending the time finding locations was the, was a big burden.
Took the time away from killin’.
Ridgway confirmed what investigators and prosecutors had long suspected: he often placed the bodies near physical objects visible from a distance — large trees, guardrails, hills, large fallen logs — which served as landmarks.
It was useful for Ridgway to put the victims in dumpsites for another reason. It made it easier for him to determine whether or not the bodies had been discovered, and, thereafter, to avoid those sites:
Clusters so I won’t forget where they…where they are…So, I’ve done it before and, ah, just easy. When…if I drive by and think somebody’s been..you know, found ‘em then that way I would stay away from them.
F. AVOIDING DETECTION
Ridgway’s success at eluding police can be attributed in part to his remarkable ability to remain silent. For decades, Ridgway gave no one who knew him – relatives, spouses,
girlfriends, co-workers, acquaintances — any hint that he was a murderer. Until his arrest in 2001, it seems, Ridgway told absolutely no one that he had killed. And he never anticipated that he would find himself in a situation where he would divulge his secrets. He believed he would never be caught.
1. Being Careful Ridgway was extremely careful. Every step of the killing process – from picking up his victims to disposing of them – was deliberately calculated to reduce the risk of detection.
Ridgway was careful to avoid witnesses to the pick up — he was concerned about the police, and about any witnesses (prostitutes, pimps and coworkers in particular) who might later be able to associate him with a woman’s disappearance. If another prostitute was present when he picked up his potential victim, he did not go through with the murder. Ridgway explained that he rarely picked up a woman up at the curb where she was working. Rather, he would make eye contact with them and sometimes flash money at them, as he drove by. Then he would pull off the road into the parking lot of an adjacent building, where there would be fewer witnesses, and wait for the woman to approach him. 5 If there was a witness to the pick up and conditions were not right for a kill, Ridgway might “date” the woman anyway. This practice had the added benefit of establishing that he was a “good date” with the prostitutes. He reasoned that, should he ever be caught, these women would serve as “references” to say that he had not hurt them. Ridgway also offered that another benefit to not killing every prostitute he “dated” was they served as a sort of “alibi” for him.
Ridgway’s behavior which led to his 2001 arrest for soliciting prostitution fit this pattern exactly.
Apparently, Ridgway believed this sort of evidence would bolster a claim that he “dated” prostitutes but did not kill them. 6 Ridgway took several steps to avoid picking up undercover police officers posing as prostitutes. He would usually watch women from a distance to see whether or not they were picked up by other "tricks.” He often waited to agree to pay for a sex act until a woman got into his own vehicle. Ridgway would also request prostitutes to show him their breasts or vagina before he would agree to pay for sex, believing that undercover officers would refuse to do so.
Despite his precautions, Ridgway said, he made some mistakes. By his account, twice, he killed women after witnesses had seen him with them. Once, he said, he mistakenly took a “date” – whom he intended to kill – back to a scene where he had previously left a body.
According to Ridgway, his “date” became quite disconcerted when she saw the body, and insisted that they leave at once. Ridgway gave her a ride from the scene, then returned and buried the body.
For a man who barely graduated from high school, Ridgway had what appeared to be an innate understanding of forensic evidence. He took precautions to leave no evidence at a scene.
If one of his victims scratched him, he would cut her fingernails before disposing of the body.
He was able to elude detection precisely because he had left so little evidence behind:
Well I was in a way a little bit proud of not being caught doing…like removing the clothes. Not leaving anything…any fingerprints on it, using gloves…. Not bragging about it. Not talking about it.
His cunning extended to other types of forensic evidence: once, when he feared that he might have left tire tracks near a dumpsite, Ridgway replaced the tires on his truck. He threw the Ridgway’s attorneys later suggested this would be their defense at trial.
old ones in the river, at two separate locations. Ridgway’s bank records confirm that he purchased new tires for his truck shortly after the discovery of Carol Christensen’s body.
Ridgway’s efforts to avoid detection did not stop after he had dumped a body. He explained that if he killed a woman after arranging a “date” with her pimp via the telephone, he had a special technique. Using the same false name he employed to set up the “date,” he would telephone the pimp to arrange another “date.” In this way, he figured, if the police ever figured out that Ridgway had “dated” the victim, Ridgway’s subsequent calls for the woman after her death would suggest he thought she was still alive and, therefore, could not be the killer.
Ridgway’s commitment to what he called his “career” was considerable. One woman – Marie Malvar – left deep scratches in Ridgway’s forearms before he was able to strangle her to death. Ridgway disguised the long scratches by burning his flesh with battery acid. The scars are visible today.
2. Flying Under the Radar One reason that Ridgway avoided detection for so long was that he did not fit popular preconceptions of a serial killer. He was not a “loner,” he controlled his anger, he had no significant (known) juvenile or violent criminal history. He was either married or had a steady girlfriend during all of his adult life. He had steady employment at Kenworth for thirty years, and received awards for perfect attendance. Even after his arrest in 2001, long-time co-workers, former girlfriends, and family members expressed sympathy for him and doubted that he could be a killer. His wife claimed their relationship was excellent. Even after his brother learned that Ridgway had admitted killing dozens of women, the brother insisted that Ridgway had never displayed any abnormal behavior in his presence. Those who thought they knew Ridgway best
did not know him at all.
Ridgway deliberately cultivated the innocuous aspects of his personality — his nonthreatening, unimpressive appearance, meek demeanor, and small stature. In this way he conned scores of victims who had survived years using street-smarts.
…the women they underestimate me for…I look like an ordinary person, … I, ah, acted in a way with the…with the prostitutes to make ‘em feel more comfortable…. And, um, got on, ah,…got in their comfort zone, got into the…ah, here’s a guy he’s not really muscle bound, he’s not, ah, look like a fighter, just an ordinary john, and that was their downfall is…is they…my appearance was different from what I really was.
Ridgway killed for twenty years before he was charged with any of the Green River murders. He adopted the same unremarkable, non-threatening affect he used to lull his victims into complacency to avoid bringing himself to the attention of law enforcement.
When interviewed by the Task Force, his apparent forthrightness and willingness to cooperate was disarming. Ridgway would admit everything he believed the Task Force already knew about him, and just a little bit more. For example, when he knew he had been observed by a witness, he usually admitted that he had “dated” some of the victims. By admitting that he was “addicted” to prostitutes, Ridgway explained away a huge body of otherwise suspicious evidence. Unlike many serial killers, he seemed immune to an ego-driven desire to keep “trophies” of his kills, and searches of his residence yielded no evidence of any criminal activity of any kind. By agreeing to be interviewed without an attorney, and to take a polygraph examination, Ridgway avoided suspicion all the more.
Ridgway’s psychopathy carried him through the polygraph examination, a test designed to detect stress. In 1984, when he passed the polygraph examination, Ridgway already had killed
scores of women. He explained that he was completely unperturbed about taking a “lie-detector” test:
I just was, (yawned) excuse me, I just uh, relaxed and took the polygraph. I mean, I didn’t practice or anything. …just relaxed and answered the questions and whatever it came out, came out. I mean, they weren’t precise or, I don’t know what the deal was.
Uh, maybe I was too relaxed.
3. Active Deception As Ridgway became more successful, he moved from “passive” efforts to avoid detection (e.g., arousing no suspicion) to active steps to confuse and mislead investigators.
Ridgway placed “evidence” at the dumpsites which was deliberately intended to mislead police – cigarette butts, chewing gum (he neither smoked nor chewed gum). At one scene, he scattered airport motel pamphlets and car rental papers to imply that the killer was a “travelling salesman.” He tossed a hair-pick at one scene, hoping that, if the body were discovered, investigators would suspect a “pimp.” He left one victim’s driver’s license at SeaTac airport, to suggest that she had left town.
One more elaborate scheme eventually led to some highly incriminating evidence against him. In February of 1984, Ridgway wrote a letter to a local newspaper. The poorly-typed letter was entitled “What you need to know about the Green River man."
The letter contained a myriad of references to the killings, and a number of falsehoods about the killer’s identity designed to “throw off” the Task Force. The letter suggested that the killer was a travelling salesman or a long-distance trucker, and that the killings were motivated by profit or revenge. The letter mentioned that the victims’ fingernails had been cut (a fact not known to investigators until Ridgway told them this in 2003).
The Task Force sent the letter to the FBI for analysis, and an “expert” there proclaimed
that the letter was not written by the killer. In 2003, Ridgway provided details about the crimes which he had included in the letter, providing additional confirmation that he was indeed the Green River killer.
Ridgway also devised a plan to mislead the Task Force by suggesting that the Green River killer might be operating in another state. As he admitted in 2003, the idea was “[t]o throw you guys off think’ the bodies were down here in Oregon and killed in Oregon.” In the spring of 1984, a few months after the Task Force had been dramatically expanded, Ridgway drove to the Portland area with his son, and the partial remains of Denise Bush, Shirley Sherrill, and, he claims, another woman (these latter remains have not been recovered). Ridgway deposited the remains of Denise Bush and Shirley Sherrill in Tigard, outside Portland, where they were found in 1985. While in Oregon, Ridgway left no record of the trip: he used cash for all expenses. He later claimed that he hoped the remains would be found, leading the police to believe that the killer had moved south. Indeed, when the remains were found a year later, there was considerable speculation that the Green River killer was operating in Portland, and Task Force detectives went there to investigate.
G. THE FIRST VICTIM
During interviews, considerable effort was devoted to interrogating Ridgway about his first murder. He adamantly insisted that he could not remember his first kill. He variously claimed that Wendy Coffield was his first victim and that he killed someone several months before her. And he admitted that there “might ‘a been” victims before that.
As the interviews went on, Ridgway vaguely described two or three incidents in which, before he killed Wendy Coffield and the other original “Green River” victims, he “thought” he
had killed women. According to Ridgway, he left the bodies in places (the middle of a street, against a fence in a well-traveled park, lying against a newspaper shack beside the road) where he expected them to be discovered. Ridgway said that because he did not hear reports in the media about these murders, he concluded that the women regained consciousness after he left them, and walked away. His logic was: "...you figure she'd wake up if she wasn't dead."
In October of 2003, Ridgway told detectives that it was “very possible” that he killed women in the 1970’s, while living in Maple Valley with his second wife. He described one incident, claiming that he could recall no detail except that “some’n went wrong, uh, with the date and I, I killed her.” Even after rigorous interrogation and a review of potentially relevant cases, Ridgway’s first homicide(s) remain unknown.
Although he never described his first murder, Ridgway acknowledged that his interest in killing began early. He told interviewers that when he was fifteen or sixteen years old, he approached a first-grade boy near some bushes on a street corner, and stabbed the boy in the side with a knife. According to Ridgway, he never learned what happened to the boy, who ran off clutching his side.
Ah, he was playin’ with a stick like, cowboys and Indians or somethin’ like that. And, ah, he, ah, bent…bent down to pick up somethin’ or somethin’ and I just took the knife outta my pocket and stabbed him in the ah, side. He grabbed his side and ran away, and I ran up the hill… According to Ridgway, he simply “wanted to see how to stab somebody.” Ridgway said the boy “cried and ran,” but he seemed remarkably unperturbed about the consequences to the boy or his own responsibility for the stabbing. Instead, he took a fatalistic view, and suggested that the incident was a coincidence:
He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I was at the right place at the right time I guess what you’d call it.
A Task Force detective managed to locate the person Ridgway stabbed some forty years ago. Now living in California, the man confirmed Ridgway’s account of the incident without any prompting from the detective. He said that he was six years old at the time, and in the first grade. He was playing near a wooded area close to his house and an adjacent school. He was wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, two “six-guns” and a toy rifle — and he was playing with a stick.
The victim said he was approached by a boy whom, he estimated, was eight or ten years older than he was. This boy asked him if he wanted to build a fort, and the victim agreed.
According to the victim, the boy who approached him said, “You know, there’s uh, there’s people around here that, that like to kill little boys like you.” He led the little boy to the wooded area behind the school and stabbed him through the ribs and into his liver. The victim reported:
…and I asked him why he, why he killed me…I watched too many cowboy movies, you know!… And the, you know, and I saw all the blood pumpin’ out a’ me.… It was, it was profusely. I mean, it was already runnin’ down my leg into my boots…And uh, with every heart beat it was just pumpin’ out…It was the whole front a’ my shirt was soaked.… And he uh, started laughin’, and he had a smile on his face and he stood there for a minute and he had his knife in his hand, and I didn’t want him to stab me again, but he reached towards me and he just wiped the knife off – both sides of the blade, so he wiped it once across my shoulder and twice across my shoulder on the other side a’ the blade.… Folded [the knife] back up, and he says, “I always wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody.” According to the victim, Ridgway seemed rather pleased with the experience:
Then he started walkin’ down that knoll and he was laughin’, you know, kinda puttin’ his head in the air, you know, and laughin’ real loud.
The victim told the detectives that he was taken in an ambulance to a hospital, where he remained for several weeks. He said the incision required to repair his liver was about a foot long. His assailant was never found, and he never returned to the grade school: he was tutored at home for several months, and then moved to California.
H. RIDGWAY’S LAST VICTIM Ridgway claimed that he could not recall his last victim, either.
Initially, Ridgway acknowledged killing two women in 1985 and then stopping completely. He acknowledged the killing continued only after he was confronted with unequivocal evidence to the contrary. He had informed detectives of a number of places on Highway 410 where, he said, he had dumped bodies that he was not sure had been recovered. At one of these sites — marked on a map drawn by Ridgway for the detectives — a body had been previously recovered. That victim (who was never part of the “official” list of Green River victims) was Marta Reeves, who disappeared in 1990. As soon as he was confronted with this evidence, Ridgway readily admitted killing the woman — and admitted that he had continued to kill into the 1990’s.
Later, when speaking to a psychiatrist, Ridgway suggested that this was an isolated incident. “In 1990, I…went off the wagon and killed.” Ridgway admitted later that he killed a woman in 1998, but he said that she was an aberration. He admitted to a forensic psychologist that the urge to kill persisted into the 1990’s, although he said he could resist it for months at a time. He acknowledged that he continued to seek out prostitutes until his arrest in 2001, and agreed that this was “kinda like a hunt.” He admitted that the sight of prostitutes was, for him, “like candy in a dish.” Indeed, even after he
was transferred in the late 1990’s from the Seattle Kenworth plant near PHS to the Renton plant, Ridgway continued to drive PHS and Rainier Avenue, before and after work, looking for prostitutes. The crack epidemic had arrived, and Ridgway found that sex with cocaine-addicted prostitutes was cheaper than ever.
Ridgway finally admitted that, although he slowed down, he never stopped killing altogether until his arrest in 2001.
According to him, his last killings were, in comparison to those of his more prolific period, the work of an “amateur.” In the 1990’s, Ridgway said, he was “semi-retired.” …It was, like I said, like I was back starting all over again and I wasn’t a well-greased machine. I was…I was rusty.
Although he admitted that his last kill was relatively close in time to his arrest in 2001, Ridgway insisted in 2003 that he could recall absolutely nothing about it. Ridgway professed an inability to understand why he was withholding information from his interrogators. He alternatively suggested that he remembered the murder, but did not want to disclose the details, or that the facts were locked away in his head and he could not access them. Ultimately, Ridgway said that the last murder he could recall committing was in 1998.
V. VICTIMS OF PREVIOUSLY CHARGED CASES
A. THE VICTIMS PLACED IN THE GREEN RIVER: WENDY COFFIELD,
DEBRA BONNER, MARCIA CHAPMAN, CYNTHIA HINDS, AND OPAL
MILLS Ridgway is currently charged with seven counts of Aggravated First Degree Murder.
Five of the seven charged victims were found at the first known dumpsite: the Green River.
1. Wendy Coffield (Count I) In July of 1982, sixteen year old Wendy Lee Coffield was living with a foster family in Tacoma, Washington. She was known to work as a street prostitute along PHS in King County.
On July 8, 1982, Wendy left her foster home and was never seen alive again.
One week later, on July 15, 1982, two young boys bicycling along the Peck Bridge in Kent, King County Washington, noticed an object floating below them in the Green River. On further inspection, they discovered Wendy’s body caught along one of the pilings under the bridge. Wendy was naked, with the exception of her shoes and socks. The remainder of her clothing – jeans, underpants and shirt – were knotted around her neck like a ligature.
An autopsy confirmed that Wendy had been strangled. She suffered a fractured hyoid bone as well as significant hemorrhaging in her neck muscles. In addition, her left humerus (the upper arm bone) was broken. The condition of her body was consistent with death having occurred shortly after her disappearance on July 8, 1982.
As noted above, in March of 2003, a private forensic laboratory, Microtrace, reported that it had discovered tiny paint spheres on the jeans which formed the ligature around Wendy’s neck. The paint composition of the spheres was identical to the DuPont Imron paint used at the Kenworth truck plant where Ridgway worked in 1982.
In March of 2003, the State charged Ridgway with the murder of Wendy Coffield. In subsequent interviews with the Task Force, he has admitted to killing her and placing her body in the Green River.
2. Debra Bonner (Count II) Debra Bonner was last seen alive on the evening of July 25, 1982, when she left a motel
on PHS in King County to “catch some dates.” Debra was twenty-two and had a history of prostitution; during the previous 30 days, she had been arrested two times for prostitution on PHS.
Two and a half weeks later, on August 12, 1982, Debra’s body was discovered in the Green River. Debra’s body had apparently floated down river until it was caught in a logjam.
There was no clothing on Debra’s body.
In March of 2003, Ridgway was charged with the murder of Debra Bonner. In subsequent interviews with the Task Force, he admitted to killing her and placing her body in the Green River.
3. Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds and Opal Mills (Counts III, IV and V) In August of 1982, thirty-one year old Marcia Chapman was living with her three children in an apartment near PHS. She was involved in prostitution. On August 1, 1982, Marcia left her apartment and was not seen again.
Ten days later, on the night of August 11, 1982, seventeen year old Cynthia Hinds was out on PHS working as a prostitute. Her pimp last saw a man driving a black Jeep picking her up. She was never seen again.
One day later, on August 12, 1982, at approximately 1:00 p.m., sixteen-year-old Opal Mills placed a call to her parents from Angle Lake State Park, just off PHS. After that call, she was never heard from again. Friends later reported Opal had been involved in prostitution.
On August 15, 1982, a man rafting down the Green River spotted two bodies in the water, approximately 600 yards from where Debra Bonner’s body had been found a few days earlier. The police responded and discovered Marcia Chapman and Cynthia Hinds. They were a
few feet apart in the river, pinned to the bottom by several boulders, and nude. Police found Opal Mills’ body on the banks of the river a short distance away. All three women had been strangled.
As recounted above, in 2001, an analysis of DNA evidence linked Ridgway to Opal Mills and Marcia Chapman. He was charged with the murders of Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds and Opal Mills in December of 2001. During interviews with Task Force detectives, Ridgway admitted killing all three women and placing them in the Green River.
B. DEBRA ESTES (COUNT VI)
On September 20, 1982, fifteen year old Debra Estes disappeared. At approximately 3:00 p.m. that day, Debra was last seen near the Stevenson Motel on PHS. She was known to engage in prostitution.
Nearly six years later, on May 30, 1988, construction workers, digging holes for a playground, discovered Debra’s remains in a shallow grave in Federal Way. Buried with Estes were two items of clothing: a brassiere and fragments of a black knit sweater/shirt with metallic threads. An acquaintance of Debra’s confirmed that she was wearing this sweater/shirt on the afternoon she disappeared.
In March of 2003, Microtrace reported that it had recovered tiny paint spheres from the clothing found with Debra Estes’ remains. The paint composition of the spheres is identical to the DuPont Imron paint that was used at the Kenworth truck plant where Ridgway worked in 1982.
In March of 2003, the State charged Ridgway with the murder of Debra Estes. In subsequent interviews with the Task Force, he has admitted to killing her and burying her body.
C. CAROL CHRISTENSEN (COUNT VII)
On May 3, 1983 at approximately 2:30 p.m., twenty-one year old Carol Christensen left the Barn Door Tavern in SeaTac where she worked as a waitress. She was due to return later that day but never came back. Carol was known to hitchhike.
Five days later, on May 8, 1983, her body was found in a wooded area in Maple Valley.
She was still dressed, and her body had been posed. She was lying on her back, with two trout placed on her upper torso, an empty bottle of wine across her stomach and sausage on her hands.
She had been strangled with a ligature.
In 2001, semen from Carol’s body was matched to Ridgway. In December of 2001, he was charged with the murder of Carol Christensen.
In interviews with Task Force detectives, Ridgway admitted that he killed Carol. He said that he posed her body to “throw off” the Task Force. Ridgway explained:
And then they had these experts come in and say it was, uh, for the last supper. And it was just, it was, uh, basically, uh, just a, uh, you know, the woman I killed, put clothes back on her and, uh, posed her.
It was, uh, it was basically a posing.
He claimed that the items he left with her had no deeper significance; they were items that he happened to have in his house when he killed her which were of no value to him.
VI. THE VICTIM WHO ESCAPED — REBECCA GARDE GUAY In December of 1984, Rebecca Garde Guay reported that she had been the victim of a violent assault. According to Rebecca, the assault occurred in November of 1982. She was hitchhiking on PHS when a man in a truck offered her a ride. Rebecca asked him if he was “dating” and offered him a “blow job” for $20. The man agreed, and she directed him to a
secluded area not far from PHS at approximately 204th. Rebecca questioned the man about whether he was the Green River killer. He assured her that he was not and showed her several items from his wallet, including an ID card from the Kenworth Trucking Company.
When they arrived there, the man asked her to go into the woods for the sex act. Rebecca agreed, and the two went into the woods. The man pulled his shorts down, and Rebecca kneeled in front of him and began performing oral sex. However, the man’s penis did not become erect.
Suddenly, the man accused Rebecca of biting him. He knocked her to the ground, pushed her face into the dirt and wrapped his arm around her neck in a police-type chokehold. Rebecca struggled and pleaded that all she had was her family and that she did not want to die. After ten or fifteen seconds, she broke free and ran to a nearby trailer for help. The man initially pursued her but then gave up. He redressed and drove out of the area. Hysterical, Rebecca told the trailer occupants how she had been attacked. Her blouse was torn, and there were abrasions on her neck. Rebecca was obviously terrified and was certain that the man had intended to kill her.
Rebecca was initially reluctant to report the assault, because she was engaging in prostitution when she was assaulted. Eventually, with the enormous publicity surrounding the Green River killings, Rebecca called the Task Force and reported what had happened. Rebecca gave a description of her attacker: a white male, thirty to thirty-five years old with light brown hair, possibly with a mustache. Although it was November, the man was wearing shorts, t-shirt and tennis shoes. She thought his vehicle was a 1980 burgundy or maroon pickup truck with a white canopy.
Rebecca told the police about the Kenworth identification the man had shown her, and this information led police to link the attack to Ridgway. Her description of her assailant and his vehicle generally matched Ridgway and his pickup truck. Rebecca was shown a photographic
montage of six men and immediately identified Ridgway as the man who attacked her in November of 1982.
In February of 1985, a Task Force detective contacted Ridgway and confronted him about Rebecca’s allegations. Ridgway admitted that he had “dated” Rebecca. He maintained, however, that he choked her as a reflexive reaction to her biting his penis. According to the detective, Rebecca told him that she did not wish to pursue the case, and Ridgway was not charged.
In 2003, Ridgway was questioned about strangling Rebecca. He admitted that he tried to kill her. He confirmed that Rebecca had selected the area for the “date” and that she wanted to do the “date” in the truck. Ridgway wanted the “date” to be outside. According to his account, it “... just went bad because of the... she, ah, guaranteed sex but she would only give me, ah, oral sex.” Ridgway likened the situation to the circumstances that, he claimed, lead him to kill Mary Meehan two months earlier.
Ridgway reported that he was unable to maintain a chokehold on Rebecca, who fought and scratched him. He recalled that his shorts, which were around his ankles, prevented him from wrapping his legs around her and subduing her. He accurately recalled that she said she did not want to die and that she had a family.
Ridgway cannot be charged with the attempted murder of Rebecca Garde; the statute of limitations for the crime has expired.
VII. NEW CHARGES
The following section sets forth the facts supporting the filing of forty-one (41) additional counts against Ridgway. The victims are listed in rough chronological order based upon the area
where their bodies were recovered.
A. GISELE LOVVORN (COUNT VIII)
In July of 1982, Gisele Lovvorn was nineteen years old. She worked as a prostitute on PHS. Around 11:00 a.m., Saturday, July 17, 1982, Gisele left her apartment, saying that she planned to turn several tricks on PHS and would return later in the day. She was never seen again.
Two months later, on September 25, 1982, Gisele’s remains were found near an apple tree in a wooded area near South 200th Street and 18th Avenue South, King County – an area where Gisele was known to take her “dates.” She had been strangled with a pair of men's socks that were still wrapped around her neck. Apart from the ligature, there was no clothing on the body (although her jewelry remained in place). Gisele’s body lay on its back, with the legs flexed wide at the hip, and the knees bent at approximately 90 degrees.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Gisele Lovvorn. He stated that he picked up Gisele on a Saturday night, while his seven year old son was in his vehicle. Ridgway said Gisele directed him to the spot for the “date.” According to Ridgway, after he parked at the spot, he told his son to remain in the truck while he and the woman went for a walk. Ridgway then took Gisele out into the wooded area out of sight of his son. He and Gisele had sex “doggie style.” Once he climaxed, Ridgway said, he told Gisele that he thought he heard his son coming. As he had hoped, she raised her head to look, exposing her neck. Still behind her, Ridgway pinned her neck between his upper and lower arm, and choked her until she stopped moving. Ridgway then took off his socks, tied them together, and wrapped them around Gisele’s neck. He used a stick to fashion a tourniquet from
the socks. Then he twisted the stick, tightening the socks around her neck, until he was satisfied that Gisele would not regain consciousness. Ridgway left the makeshift tourniquet on Gisele, put on his clothes, and returned to his truck.
Ridgway’s son asked his father where the young woman had gone. Ridgway replied that the woman lived nearby and had decided to walk home. Ridgway then drove his young son back to his home.
The next day, Ridgway returned and moved the body a short distance to a more secluded area. He collected Gisele’s clothes and tried to take the socks off her neck. The socks were cinched so tightly around the young woman’s neck that Ridgway could not get them over her head. He did not consider cutting the socks off because, he explained, he would not be able to wear them. Before he left, Ridgway engaged in sexual intercourse with the body.
Ridgway admitted that he visited Gisele’s body at least one more time. He stated that he was uncertain whether he had intercourse with the body a third time, claiming that he may have been deterred by advanced decomposition.
During the interviews, Ridgway was shown photos from the crime scene area, without being told what the photos were depicting. Ridgway accurately identified the area and the location of the body. Later, Ridgway led investigators, without assistance, to the area where he left Gisele’s body.
B. THE STAR LAKE VICTIMS: TERRY MILLIGAN, ALMA SMITH,
DELORES WILLIAMS, GAIL MATHEWS, SANDRA GABBERT, AND
CARRIE ROIS
In the early 1980’s, the Task Force recovered the remains of six women designated as victims of the Green River killer along a short (approximately one-half mile) stretch of Star Lake
Road, in King County. That portion of Star Lake Road runs steeply uphill from South 272nd Street (a main arterial), heading south, then looping west, then north and west again. The remains were actually closer together than the serpentine road would suggest – no more than a quarter of a mile separated any of them. The area is approximately three miles southwest (less than a 15-minute drive) from the stretch of the Green River where five earlier victims were discovered – and approximately the same distance southeast from Ridgway’s residence at the time.
These six women were murdered during a ten-month period, from late August of 1982 until mid-June of 1983. All six were working as prostitutes at the time they disappeared. Five of the six were last seen along PHS where Ridgway was known to “hunt” for his victims. The circumstances of the sixth woman’s disappearance are not known, but she had previously been arrested for prostitution along that stretch of PHS.
With the exception of a blouse found on one victim’s remains, all the victims were naked when they were left at the Star Lake dumpsite. No biological evidence has ever been developed linking any suspect to the Star Lake cases.
It appeared that all the Star Lake victims were killed by strangulation.
All six women had been killed and left near Star Lake Road before the first remains were ever found. Obviously, the same person had killed and dumped all six women. The similarities between these cases (victim lifestyle, place of disappearance, time of disappearance, concentration of bodies at dumpsite, condition of body when dumped, and apparent cause of death) compelled this conclusion.
Ridgway has admitted killing the women found along Star Lake Road. The steep, secluded, wooded hillside falling away from Star Lake Road greatly appealed to Ridgway: it
was:
…downhill where I could put a woman…a bunch of women…. It was, hey, fantastic.… It was uh, woodsy, secluded, and uh, it was a, a, site that I figured nobody would find her at, and uh, if they did it would be a couple years later. Wouldn’t be anything, you know, no, noth-nothing left of her. …I could go down there during the day and have sex with her. Nobody see me from, from the top – there was a road on the top and there’s a road on the bottom – they couldn’t see me. And even if it did, a car come by, I could lay down.
Not only was Star Lake secluded, it was remarkably convenient to PHS and to his house:
Ridgway said he managed to dump all the bodies there within an hour of when he killed them.
Ridgway was familiar with the area; his second wife reported that they would go swimming in Star Lake.
Ridgway said he did not keep track of exactly how many bodies he placed at the Star Lake site. His estimates ranged from five to seven. Once he said that all the Star Lake victims had been discovered; another time he said that there was a seventh victim still along the road.
He said, “…once I started dumping, I didn’t care about the count.”
1. Terry Milligan (Count IX) Terry Milligan disappeared on August 29, 1982. Terry was last seen at approximately 6:00 p.m. She (like victims Denise Bush, who Ridgway murdered less than six weeks later, and Martina Authorlee) was living at the Moonrise Motel at PHS and 144th, and working as a prostitute on PHS. She was sixteen.
Ridgway did not work that day, which was Sunday. He was two hours late to work the following morning.
On April 1, 1984, Terry’s skeletal remains were discovered near the northern, downhill end of Star Lake road, shortly after the discovery nearby of the remains of Delores Williams. A striped blouse, with buttons, was still around the neck and upper arms. This blouse matched a description of the one Terry was wearing when she was last seen. Both hips were flexed at nearly a 90 degree angle, and both knees were bent inwards at approximately the same angle.
This unusual position led investigators to conclude that her killer deliberately posed the body.
In 2003, Ridgway provided investigators with a detailed account of murdering Terry Milligan and dumping her body. (Typically, he did not recall her by name or appearance.) He knew he killed her in 1982, and thought it was in August or September of that year.
Ridgway correctly recalled Terry’s race and that she was his first victim after Opal Mills.
Moreover, he correctly recalled that when he killed Mary Meehan [two weeks later] he had already placed one body at Star Lake.
Ridgway said that he killed Terry where he had killed and left Giselle Lovvorn during the previous month. Ridgway was in the area that night – a Port of Seattle police officer contacted him some eight blocks from where Lovvorn’s body was discovered.
He said that two boys had seen him in the area during his “date” with Terry, so he decided that he had to dump her body elsewhere.
He identified the area along Star Lake Road where he dumped Terry’s body. Ridgway correctly recalled that she was the first victim he dumped at the Star Lake site. He also correctly recalled that, of all the victims he subsequently dumped there, her body was the closest to the bottom of the hill as the road ascends.
Ridgway said that he recalled leaving a blouse with buttons on one of his early victims and guessed that she was the first woman he left at Star Lake. When he was shown a photograph
of the blouse found with Terry’s remains, he said he recognized it. He said that he “didn’t bother” to take the blouse off the body, and suggested that he did not because he was in a hurry to leave the area where he killed her because he had been seen there with her earlier.
Ridgway said he returned the following day to the place where he dumped Terry and had sexual intercourse with her body. He said that the body had developed rigor mortis, and that he had to pry her legs apart. When he was shown a photograph of Terry’s skeletal remains, with the hips spread wide and the knees completely bent, he said that he was sure that he left her in that position.
2. Alma Smith (Count X) On March 3, 1983, at approximately 9 p.m., Alma Smith disappeared from the street outside the Red Lion Inn at 188th and PHS. (Two other victims, Delores Williams, and Constance Naon disappeared from this location). Alma was working as a prostitute at that location with her roommate, who was her closest friend. Her roommate “turned a trick.” When she returned some 40 minutes later, Alma had disappeared. A bystander told her roommate that Alma had left with a man meeting Ridgway’s description, in a blue pickup truck.
While the roommate remained outside the Red Lion Inn, waiting for Alma to return, a man parked a blue pickup truck in the hotel parking lot. He got out, and tried to persuade her to “date” him. He asked about her “blonde girlfriend” (Alma was blonde). Her roommate was already anxious about Alma’s disappearance, and the man spooked her. She refused to “date” him, and he drove off.
On that day Ridgway got off work at 3:20 p.m. His home was less than three miles from where Alma was last seen.
In 1986, this roommate was shown a photographic lineup and picked a photo of Gary Ridgway as the person who “looked like” the man who tried to pick her up the night that Smith disappeared from PHS. Her identification was tentative – she said she thought the man had “longer hair and thinner lips.” In early 1987, she identified (not positive) a photo of Ridgway’s pickup truck as the one driven by the man she saw on the night of Alma’s disappearance.
Ridgway did not own a blue pickup truck at the time. However, his brother, who lived nearby, owned a 1969 one-half ton Dodge pickup that was painted turquoise. Gary’s girlfriend during this time confirmed that Ridgway would use his brother’s truck. In 2003, Ridgway admitted that he borrowed the truck and took at least one of his victims to Star Lake in that vehicle. 7 Another woman claimed that she knew one of Alma’s regular “tricks,” and said she “dated” him at his residence with Alma. She said the “trick” lived east of PHS (Ridgway lived east of PHS at 216th S. and Military Road at the time) and drove a red pickup with a white canopy (Ridgway drove a maroon pickup with a white canopy). In 1986, this woman picked Ridgway’s photograph out of a “trick book” shown to her by a detective. She said the photo resembled Smith’s “regular trick.” Smith’s remains – a scattered skeleton — were discovered on April 2, 1984, in the woods along Star Lake Road. The remains were approximately 50 yards off the road, 200 yards southwest of Gail Mathew’s dumpsite, and 200 yards northeast of the site where the remains of Sandra Gabbert were discovered.
In 2003, Ridgway told detectives that he remembered the night he killed Alma Smith and Contrary to Ridgway’s own admissions, in 1987, Ridgway’s brother claimed to detectives that he never loaned the truck to Ridgway.
dumped her at Star Lake. Ridgway recalls these events, he said, because that was the night when he tried to kill two consecutive women.
Ridgway said he picked up a woman one night near the bus stop at the corner of 188th and PHS. This is the location of the Red Lion Inn where Alma was last seen. He said he took the woman to his house, killed her, and dumped her at Star Lake.
Ridgway said that killing Alma went smoothly. He recalled that she did not become incontinent when he strangled her, which meant that he did not have to put his bedding in the washing machine before leaving to dump the body. He said it only took him an hour or so to pick Alma up, take her to his house, kill her, dump the body, and return.
Ridgway correctly recalled that he had already dumped “at least” one victim at the Star Lake site before he left Alma there. He incorrectly believed that he had dumped Alma just uphill from Milligan — he placed Delores Williams, the third victim, there.
Ridgway said that things went so smoothly that he decided to kill another woman that same night. According to Ridgway, as soon as he dumped Alma’s body, he returned to the same place where he had picked her up, and parked in the lot by the Red Lion Inn. He said he approached another woman and tried to “date” her. She refused, and, he told investigators, he was unable to find a second victim that night.
A psychiatrist asked Ridgway whether there were times when his urge to kill overcame his customary caution. Ridgway said that this had happened on a night when he tried to kill two women. He told the psychologist that he picked up a woman, killed her, dumped her body, and then returned to the same spot where he picked her up and tried to “date” another woman. This was a mistake because, he said, a witness at that spot had seen the first woman get into his truck.
3. Delores Williams (Count XI) Delores Williams was the third victim that Ridgway dumped along Star Lake Road. She was seventeen years old when Ridgway murdered her.
Delores disappeared sometime between March 8 and March 17, 1983, within two weeks after Ridgway killed Alma Smith and dumped her body at the Star Lake site. The exact date of Delores’ murder is not known, but roommates with whom she was sharing an apartment on PHS at the time recall the night she disappeared. Just like Alma Smith, the woman who preceded her to the Star Lake dumpsite, Delores vanished while working as a prostitute near the bus stop outside the Red Lion Inn at 188th S. and Hwy 99. There were no witnesses.
Ridgway was in King County, working the day shift at Kenworth, during the week or so in which Williams disappeared.
On March 31, 1984, Delores’ skeletal remains were discovered near the Star Lake Road.
It appeared to investigators that Delores’ body – like many of the “Green River” victims at the Star Lake dumpsite and elsewhere – had been covered with branches and debris. No clothing was found with the body. A rock was found in the area of the pelvis.
In the fall of 2003, Microtrace, a nationally renowned private forensic laboratory, reported that, even after multiple analyses, paint fragments recovered with Delores’ remains are indistinguishable from paint recovered with the remains of Cheryl Wims (disappeared May of 1983, found at North Airport dump site) and Tina Thompson (disappeared July of 1983, found at Hwy 18.)
Ridgway claimed he had no specific recollection of Delores Williams. He knew that her body was the second or third body he left at Star Lake. He “guessed” incorrectly that she was white. He knew that he had dumped her at Star Lake before he dumped “the lady by the log,”
Sandra Gabbert.
4. Gail Mathews (Count XII) On April 10, 1983 — one month after Ridgway murdered Delores Williams and dumped her body at Star Lake — Gail Mathews disappeared. Like the women whose bodies preceded and followed hers to the Star Lake dumpsite, Gail was working as a prostitute on PHS. She was the oldest of the Star Lake victims — Gail was twenty-three.
Gail’s boyfriend last saw her at approximately 6:00 p.m. on April 10, 1983. (That was a Sunday; Ridgway did not work that day.) When her boyfriend saw Gail, he was walking along PHS, and she was sitting in the passenger seat of a pickup truck on that street. The truck, in the southbound lanes of PHS, was stopped at the traffic light at the intersection of PHS and South 216th. The driver of the pickup was a man. Gail’s boyfriend watched as the light changed and the pickup truck turned left (East) onto South 216th. He waved at Gail, trying to get her attention, but she did not appear to notice him. He never saw her again.
At the time, Ridgway lived one block south of South 216th, on Military Road. Military Road is east of PHS. Ridgway lived a little more than half a mile from the intersection where Gail was last seen in the pickup truck. South 216th is the most direct route to Ridgway’s house from that section of PHS.
Gail’s boyfriend said the driver of the pickup truck was a white man. He said the man had “blondish, curly- ish hair.” This description, and the composite drawing he subsequently created, does not particularly resemble Ridgway.
Gail’s boyfriend variously described the color of the pickup truck in which he last saw her as pastel green, greenish, and blue. He said it had a canopy. While Ridgway did not own a
blue pickup truck at the time, his brother, who lived nearby, owned a turquoise pickup. In 2003, Ridgway told investigators that he used his brother’s truck to take at least one of his victims to Star Lake. Indeed, a color sample selected by Gail’s boyfriend in 1984 closely matches the color of Ridgway’s brother’s pickup truck at the time of Gail’s disappearance. After Gail disappeared, Ridgway painted his brother’s truck a different color.
Gail’s mostly skeletonized remains were discovered near Star Lake Road on September
19, 1983.
In 2003, Ridgway told detectives that he did not recognize Gail Mathews from a photograph. But he recalled a time when, contrary to his usual careful practice, he killed a prostitute even though a witness had seen him with her shortly before. He described picking a woman up on PHS, taking her home, and killing her. He remembered that, en route to his house, as he waited to turn left onto South 216th, a man standing on the street saw the woman in his truck and waved at her. Ridgway said the woman did not notice, but it appeared to him that the man knew her.
Ridgway said he took the woman to his house, murdered her, and took the body somewhere in the pickup truck and dumped it. He said he could not recall where he dumped the body. However, when he later discussed the Star Lake site with the detectives, Ridgway said that one of the women he dumped there might have been the one who had been seen in his truck at PHS and South 216th.
5. Sandra Gabbert (Count XIII) Sandra Gabbert disappeared on Sunday, April 17, 1983 — one week after Gail Mathews.
Like Gail, Sandra was working as a prostitute along PHS. Like Alma Smith and Delores
Williams, who were killed and dumped at Star Lake before her, Sandra regularly worked at the bus stop outside the Red Lion Inn at 188th and PHS.
At the time of her death, Sandra and her boyfriend/pimp were living in a motel on PHS.
That day, she returned to the motel room in the early evening and gave him $70 she had earned.
She said she was going back out to catch two more “dates” at the covered bus stop nearby. He last saw her at the 7-11 store at 142nd and PHS (this is also where, according to both Ridgway and a witness, Ridgway met Denise Bush before killing her). He never saw her again. That night, when Ridgway murdered her, Sandra was seventeen years old.
Sandra’s body was discovered on April 1, 1984, in the woods just 100 feet below Star Lake Road. The body was lying on a steep hillside, in a small depression between a large log and the uphill side of the slope. The body had been covered with brush and branches.
Joel Hardin, an expert tracker, analyzed the scene. After carefully examining the area around Sandra’s body, Hardin reported in 1984 that the body had been concealed by one man, who made repeated, calm, and organized trips from the body to a brush pile and back.
According to Hardin, the man made no wasted movements, and showed no signs of panic.
A man who regularly jogged along Star Lake Road reported in 1984 that one morning in the spring of 1983 he ran past a pickup truck parked along the road just as a man stepped out from behind the truck into his path. His description of the man he saw by the pickup truck was generic. His description of the pickup truck is remarkably consistent with Ridgway’s brother’s truck.
As with virtually all his victims, Ridgway said he did not recognize Sandra Gabbert from a photograph.
However, when Ridgway was taken to the Star Lake site in 2003, he remembered
dumping a woman where Sandra’s remains were recovered. He recalled “rolling” the body down the hill, and said that it came to rest against a large log. He said he camouflaged the body by covering it with brush (“yard waste”) that someone had thrown down the slope. He said he made several trips from the brush pile to the body and back. He also said he did this during the daytime. (All these facts are consistent with deductions Hardin made at the scene 20 years earlier.)
Ridgway also correctly recalled that the woman he placed by the log was the “next to the last” woman he dumped at the Star Lake site. Moreover, he recalled that he placed her by the log before he killed Kimi-Kai Pitsor (whom he killed within a day of Sandra), and that during that same time he was also using the Mountain View Cemetery dumpsite.
Ridgway was asked if he recalled a jogger who might have encountered him returning to his truck along Star Lake Road. He said that there “might have been” such a man, but that it did not “faze” him because he had already dumped the body by that time.
6. Carrie Rois (Count XIV) The last known victim left near Star Lake Road, Carrie Rois, disappeared sometime between May 31 and June 15, 1983. The circumstances of her disappearance are not known.
Earlier that year, she had been arrested for prostitution on PHS, outside a motel at South 144th.
According to a friend of hers, Carrie frequented the two-block area between South 144th and South 142nd on PHS. This area includes the 7-11 where, according to both a witness and Ridgway, he met Denise Bush before he murdered her. It is the location of the sheltered bus stop where Sandra Gabbert was working when Ridgway killed her and dumped her at the Star Lake site less than two months before he did the same to Rois. Tina Thompson, Martina Authorlee,
Yvonne Antosh, and Kim Nelson were all staying in motels at this location when they “disappeared.” While under surveillance in 1987, Ridgway was observed cruising for prostitutes at this location.
Carrie was the youngest Star Lake victim. She was fifteen.
Carrie’s remains were found on March 10, 1985, in a relatively flat, swampy area approximately fifty yards downhill from Star Lake Road, and only about twenty-five yards downhill from Sandra Gabbert’s remains.
Two acquaintances of Carrie’s reported that she said she had an odd experience in the Spring of 1983 with a man who, she said, took her up to Snoqualmie Pass. Both of these individuals saw Carrie return from this trip in a pickup truck. One of these witnesses provided investigators with an extremely detailed description of the truck, which closely resembles the pickup truck owned at that time by Ridgway’s father (who lived in south King County). A credit card receipt shows that Gary Ridgway bought gas for this truck in March of 1983.
As was almost inevitably the case, Ridgway failed to recognize Carrie from a photograph. He did, however, describe placing one of his Star Lake victims at the bottom of a hill below Sandra Gabbert’s remains. He did not recognize that scene in photographs, he said, because he placed her there at night.
C. THE SOUTH AIRPORT VICTIMS: MARY MEEHAN, ANDREA CHILDERS,
CONSTANCE NAON, AND KELLY WARE
Ridgway alternated between using several dumpsites. After placing his first victim at Star Lake, he began another dumpsite: an area that would be called South Airport (or “Tyee,” for a nearby golf course). This site would become the first “dumpsite” discovered after the five women in the Green River. With this discovery, it became clear to law enforcement and to the
community that a serial killer was operating in King County.
In late October of 1983, on a stretch of land just south of the Seattle-Tacoma (Sea-Tac) International Airport, some citizens made a grisly discovery. On October 27, 1983, two people riding their bikes in the area of 25th South and South 192nd stumbled across a body buried in a shallow grave. Police responded and began processing the scene. It was decided, in light of the growing number of dead and missing prostitutes in the county, that an extensive search of the area was warranted. Using volunteer searchers and cadaver dogs, police began a methodical grid search of the vacant land surrounding the body. Two days into the search, one of those volunteers found what police suspected – this was another one of the Green River killer’s dumpsites.
This second body was approximately one hundred feet from the first, again buried in a shallow grave. As police undertook the task of processing that scene, they continued their search. Approximately two weeks later, directly across the street from the two buried bodies, a search dog uncovered a third grave. The two previously discovered victims had been found in shallow graves, but this third set of remains was different. The killer had gone to a lot of effort to fully bury this victim. The only parts of her anatomy that protruded from the ground were her teeth.
Six years later, in October of 1989, investigators discovered that they had missed one victim during the 1983 searches. This fourth body was approximately 40 feet north of the spot where the bike riders had made the first discovery. Like the others at South Airport, this victim had been concealed from view. Her remains, remarkably intact, had been covered by a car fender and a wooden tabletop.
In all, the killer left four women at 25th South and South 192nd. Each was naked, each
had been strangled, each had been hidden from view, and each had been engaged in prostitution at the time of her disappearance. They were (in the order in which they were found): Constance Naon, Kelly Ware, Mary Meehan, and Andrea Childers.
In 2003, Ridgway readily admitted responsibility for all four murders and, recounted in detail what he recalled about killing and dumping each of those young women. Ridgway was taken to the area where the bodies were found and accurately pointed to the locations where these four sets of remains were found. He also correctly identified the position of each body in relation to the others.
1. Mary Meehan (Count XV) Mary Meehan disappeared some time after 8:30 p.m. on September 15, 1982. Mary was living at the Western Six Motel at 165th and PHS. She was known to engage in prostitution along PHS. She was seven months pregnant at the time of her disappearance. According to her boyfriend, Mary’s pregnancy was not so obvious as to deter potential “dates.” She was nineteen years old.
On November 13, 1983, Mary’s remains were found, directly across the street from Constance Naon and Kelly Ware. Her grave was approximately 18 inches deep and long enough to accommodate her entire body. She was lying face up. She was missing her clothes, her jewelry and the purse she was seen carrying the night of her disappearance.
During interviews in 2003, Ridgway had a distinct memory of picking Mary up and killing her. According to Ridgway, she was the first victim he killed at South Airport and the first victim he ever buried. Although he could not pinpoint exactly when he killed her, Ridgway said he began using the airport site after his first dumpsite, the Green River. He said it was a
summer night some time after 9:00 p.m. when he contacted Mary on PHS. They agreed to “date,” and he drove to the Sandstone Motel. Ridgway parked his truck there and persuaded Mary to walk several blocks to the area of 25th South and South 192nd so the two could have sex outdoors. Ridgway claims Mary agreed to this arrangement.
Ridgway said that when they arrived at the wooded area, Mary would only agree to engage in oral sex, not vaginal intercourse. This apparently angered him. Ridgway repeatedly told investigators in 2003 that he was “paying for the vagina,” not for oral sex. Ridgway described Mary performing the act. Ridgway said that he was “not getting hard,” so he quickly jumped behind Mary and began choking her.
After killing Mary, Ridgway said he was concerned that the body was too close to the road. He decided to bury her, and retrieved a shovel from his truck. He dug a shallow grave, undressed Mary, and laid her down. He then covered her with the soil, put the grassy sod back on top and pressed down on it. Ridgway said he placed Mary somewhat on her side, with her face pointing up toward the sky. (This is exactly how she was discovered.) He then collected her clothes and jewelry and left.
Ridgway was vigorously questioned about Mary’s pregnancy. Throughout interviews, Ridgway maintained that he did not know she was pregnant. He claimed she was not naked until after her death and that by that time he said it was dark and he could not see her body clearly.
Ridgway did say, however, that even if he had known she was pregnant, he would still have killed her.
2. Andrea Childers (Count XVI) On April 14, 1983, nineteen year old Andrea Childers disappeared. She was last seen in
Seattle at a bus stop located at 21st and Union and was reportedly headed to Southcenter Mall.
Not much is known about her disappearance although she was known to engage in prostitution and had been arrested for this offense by Seattle Police just one month earlier.
Six years after the discovery of the remains of Mary Meehan, Constance Naon and Kelly Ware at the South Airport site, a Port of Seattle employee stumbled on the remains of Andrea Childers. Her body was found only 40 feet from the remains of Constance Naon. Like the others, she had been covered to conceal her from view. Her skeleton was remarkably intact because it was beneath a car fender and a large piece of wooden tabletop, which had protected her from the elements and animals. In the area of her body were numerous blackberry bushes and garbage. On the skeleton itself were pieces of rotted twigs and branches. She had been positioned face down, with her legs spread wide.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Andrea Childers. He correctly recounted that he killed her within months of Constance Naon and Kelly Ware. Ridgway could not recall where he met Andrea but said that he drove her to the South Airport location where they walked to a place to have sex. Ridgway recounted that he later killed and buried Constance Naon at the spot where he had sex with Andrea.
According to Ridgway, he had sex with Andrea, then strangled her. Ridgway said he believes that Andrea may have defecated when he killed her, and that he “cleaned her up” and removed her clothes and jewelry. Once she was dead, Ridgway dragged Andrea’s body about 50 feet, toward a fence, where he began digging a grave. While doing so, Ridgway realized he could be seen. He filled in the hole and dragged the body 50 yards or so to the east, near some blackberry bushes. Ridgway said he covered her body with dead brush, tree limbs and other garbage he found there. Ridgway also recalled that he may have had sex with the corpse.
Ridgway recalled correctly that Andrea’s body was the one he dumped farthest to the east at the South Airport site.
3. Constance Naon (Count XVII) Less than two months later, Ridgway returned to South Airport with the woman who would become his third victim at that location. In June of 1983, Constance (“Connie”) Naon was working at Obertos, a local sausage factory. She had an expensive cocaine habit that she funded by engaging in prostitution. According to her friends, Connie would drive her prized Camaro to the Red Lion Inn at 188th and PHS, park in the lot at the hotel, and then find “customers” by walking from car to car and soliciting the drivers. When she had earned enough to purchase her cocaine, Connie would quit for the day. Connie had been working as a prostitute for just a few months prior to her disappearance. She was twenty years old.
On June 8, 1983, Connie left work, returned to the apartment she shared with her boyfriend, changed her clothes, and told her boyfriend that she was going to a friend’s house to buy cocaine. She left some time around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. She called about an hour later and said that she would be home in about 20 minutes. She never arrived. Several weeks later, her family and friends found Connie’s Camaro, still locked, in the parking lot of the Red Lion Inn.
(It appears that Connie disappeared from the area of PHS near the Red Lion Inn. Ridgway has admitted killing three other women who disappeared from that location a few months earlier — Alma Smith, Delores Williams and Martina Authorlee.)
Over four months later, on October 27, 1983, some bicycle riders discovered Connie’s body at a vacant lot at 25th South and South 192nd. Her remains were partially buried in a shallow grave, beneath three to four inches of soil that had been covered with some dirt and
leaves. In the pelvic area of the skeleton was a small triangular-shaped rock – reminiscent of the rocks found in the vaginas of Marcia Chapman and Cynthia Hinds, found in the Green River the previous year. Her clothing and jewelry were missing.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted that he killed Connie Naon. He recalled meeting her at the Red Lion Inn. They agreed on a “date” and Ridgway drove in his truck to the vacant lot south of the airport, where he parked. Ridgway said they had sex some 20 feet from the truck. Ridgway claimed that Connie would not allow him to touch her breasts. He said this angered him, and that immediately after he strangled Connie to death, he bit her on the breast.
After killing her, Ridgway used a shovel from his truck to dig a shallow grave – he estimated only three inches of dirt covered the body. When asked why he buried Connie, Ridgway claimed that he did so to suppress his “urge” to return and have sex with the body.
Ridgway also admitted putting a rock in Connie’s vagina after she was dead.
Ridgway claimed to recall that she had a Camaro (although he could not remember whether he saw it, she told him that she had one, or he saw a Camaro emblem on her key ring.)
He said he considered stealing the Camaro but rejected the idea.
Ridgway accurately described the location of Naon’s remains, which were found between those of Kelly Ware and Andrea Childers.
4. Kelly Ware (Count XVIII) In July of 1983, a little over one month after Constance Naon was killed, the next victim found at South Airport, Kelly Ware, disappeared. Kelly had worked as a prostitute for several years. Her sister reported that Kelly was afraid to work downtown or the Sea-Tac area but was “very comfortable” working Chinatown and Aurora.
On July 18, 1983, Kelly called her parents’ home and was never heard from again. In December of 1984, her sister reported her missing. Kelly Ware was twenty-two years old when Ridgway killed her.
Kelly’s remains were discovered in late October of 1983, two days after those of Constance Naon. Like Connie, Kelly was covered with a thin layer of soil. Her remains were approximately 100 feet west of Connie’s. Kelly’s body was lying on its back with the arms outstretched and the legs extended straight down. Kelly’s remains went unidentified for over a year.
In 2003, Ridgway correctly recalled that Kelly Ware was the last of the South Airport victims. He stated that he picked her up on a weekend, and “dated” and killed her near the other bodies at that site.
Ridgway said that he returned to Kelly’s body a few days after killing her. He recalled that it was night, and that his son was sleeping in the truck. Ridgway said that he believed that this occurred when he and his family were celebrating his son’s birthday. (Kelly disappeared on the weekend of Ridgway’s brother’s birthday.) Ridgway said that he returned to have sex with the body.
Just as he finished the sex act, Ridgway said, he heard and saw a police car. According to Ridgway, a Port of Seattle police officer pulled up and asked him what he was doing.
Ridgway claims he calmly explained that he had stopped to urinate, and the officer did not investigate further. Ridgway said it was this police contact that caused him to stop using the South Airport dumpsite. This contact with Ridgway cannot be verified through police records.
(However, one year earlier, a Port of Seattle police officer contacted Ridgway one hundred feet from where Kelly’s body was subsequently found.)
Ridgway said that within a day or two after this police contact, he returned to the site. He moved Kelly’s body, had sex with her yet again, and then dug a shallow grave and buried her.
Ridgway claimed he was most proud of killing Kelly Ware because of the “fine” way he hid the body. In his writings, Ridgway noted that he “would have” covered Kelly’s grave with grass from the site because she was close to the road.
D. LINDA RULE (COUNT XIX)
Sixteen year old Linda Rule was last seen on Sunday, September 26, 1982, around 2:30 p.m. She was on her way to the K-Mart at Aurora and 130th Street, in north Seattle. She worked as a prostitute on the Aurora strip and was known to “date” at the parking lot of Northwest Hospital in Seattle.
Four months later, on January 31, 1983, construction workers found Linda’s skeletal remains in a wooded area at Northwest Hospital. All of her clothes and property were missing.
Though Linda was never included as a victim of the Green River killer, her murder had all the characteristics of a Green River case and occurred during the period of the Green River murders. Like most of the official Green River victims, she was involved in prostitution, and her body was both unclothed and outdoors when discovered.
That Sunday, Ridgway was in the county and withdrew $50 from an ATM machine. In 1984, Ridgway admitted to a Task Force detective that he “dated” prostitutes he picked up on north Aurora Avenue.
In June of 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Linda Rule. During the first day of interviews with the Task Force detectives in 2003 — and prior to any questioning about her case —
Ridgway announced that he had killed a woman and dumped her body at Northwest Hospital. 8 He recalled meeting Linda on Aurora Avenue during the day and driving to a field near Northwest Hospital. “We were just drivin' around and found a vacant lot in front of the hospital and had a date and I killed her there, outside the... truck.” He choked her from behind.
After killing Linda, Ridgway claimed that he went through her pockets and found matches. Twice, he lit the back of her hair on fire. He was afraid that someone would see the smoke, and extinguished the fire. When Ridgway was shown Linda’s picture, he stated that she looked familiar.
On July 10, 2003, Ridgway was taken to Northwest Hospital. He was unable to pick out the exact location where he left Linda’s body; construction since 1982 had changed the campus.
There is now a parking lot where the body was found.
E. VICTIMS FOUND IN OREGON: DENISE BUSH AND SHIRLEY SHERRILL Denise Bush and Shirley Sherrill, both known to work as prostitutes, disappeared within two weeks of each other in October 1982. Denise disappeared from PHS on October 8th; Shirley disappeared from the Chinatown area near downtown Seattle between October 20th and 22nd.
Nearly three years later, in June of 1985, incomplete remains of both women were found off a rural road in Tigard, just south of Portland, Oregon. This discovery led to speculation that the Green River killer had moved south. Ridgway would later admit that he killed these women and moved their remains in an effort to confuse the Task Force.
Linda is the only unsolved female homicide victim whose remains were found outside, on the Northwest Hospital campus, in recent memory.
1. Denise Bush (Count XX) On October 8, 1982, Denise Bush, disappeared from PHS. She and an acquaintance were staying at the Moonrise Motel, located across the street from Larry’s Market and 7-11, at 144th and PHS. (At the intersection is the sheltered bus stop where Sandra Gabbert and Kim Nelson were working when Ridgway picked them up and killed them. Tina Thompson, Martina Authorlee, and Yvonne Antosh were all staying in motels at this location when they “disappeared.”) Denise left the Moonrise for a pack of cigarettes around midday and never returned. She was twenty-three years old.
That day, Ridgway was off work for a claimed eye ailment and purchased $26 worth of gas from a station near the Moonrise Motel, where Denise was last seen.
On October 7, 1982, the night before Denise’s disappearance, she met a girlfriend across the street from the Moonrise at the 7-11. When her friend arrived, Denise was talking to a man who appeared to be working on his pickup truck. Denise’s girlfriend described him as being 5’10”, between 29 and 30 years old, wearing a blue plaid shirt and boots. The friend thought the man was driving a dirty or dull green GMC truck with oxidized paint. The hood of the truck was up and something about the man made Denise’s friend suspicious. She later told police that when the man saw her looking at him, he jerked his head around and hid it under the hood as if he did not want her to see his face. She thought he looked like he had something to hide.
Denise’s friend asked Denise who the man was. Denise dodged the question, but did say that she was going to meet him later.
While the truck that Denise’s friend saw did not match anything owned by Ridgway at the time, it was similar to his brother’s turquoise truck.
In the 1980’s, police interviewed Denise’s friend about the man she saw at the 7-11. She
provided enough detail to create a composite sketch of him. Twenty years later, in 2002, the friend selected Ridgway’s photo from a montage and said he was the man whom she had seen talking to Denise the night before she disappeared.
In June of 1985, a construction crew discovered Denise’s skull in Tigard, Oregon. Police secured the crime scene, but allowed construction to continue on the far side of the lot. Search crews also recovered Denise’s femur and pelvis. (A few days later, a worker discovered more remains at the site – those of Shirley Sherill – discussed in the next section).
Five years later, in February 1990, a citizen discovered more of Denise’s remains near PHS in Tukwila. Among the remains found in Tukwila were her mandible and a shunt that had been placed in Denise's skull six months prior to her disappearance. Her skull (without the shunt) had been found in Oregon five years earlier. The presence of the shunt and mandible in Tukwila proved that Denise's body had decomposed in Tukwila and that the killer came later and took some of her bones to Oregon.
During interviews with Task Force detectives in 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Denise and transporting her remains to Tigard, Oregon. He correctly recalled that Denise was African- American and correctly estimated her height.
Ridgway told detectives he picked Denise up on PHS and killed her where her remains were found in Tukwila. He thought that Denise had chosen the place for them to “date.” He said that the site was “an easy location” and that he probably had been there in the past. (The Tukwila site is a minute or so drive from the intersection of PHS and 144th where Ridgway picked up other victims). Ridgway said he used his arm to strangle Denise and told her that if she did not scream, he would let her go. After he killed Denise, he covered her body with some type of plastic.
While Ridgway did not admit that he was the man talking to Denise at the 7-11 on the day before she disappeared, he acknowledged that at times he would park there, open the hood of his truck, check the oil, and look for a prostitute. He believed that the people at 7-11 knew him by sight (“a steady customer”) and knew that he was picking up prostitutes. He said he would meet the women there and make arrangements to meet them at another location, where he could pick them up without drawing attention to himself.
Ridgway acknowledged that, in an effort to throw off the Task Force, he moved Denise’s remains and those of Shirley Sherrill to Oregon in the spring of 1984. One weekend, he took his son on what he described as a “camping” trip to Oregon. He transported the remains, with son’s clothes and bicycle, in the trunk of a Plymouth Satellite. Ridgway paid cash for his food and gas on this trip and was careful not to leave any record linking him to Oregon.
Based on Ridgway’s statements and financial records, investigators determined that he most likely went to Oregon the first week of April 1984. In 2003, his son recalled taking a last minute trip with his father to Oregon in the Satellite.
In June 2003, Ridgway led detectives to the site in Tukwila where he killed Denise Bush and left her body. According to a detective familiar with the crime scene, Ridgway led the Task Force right to the spot where Denise’s remains were found. Ridgway did this despite changes to the area since 1982.
2. Shirley Sherrill (Count XXI) Shirley Sherrill began working as a prostitute in Portland and Seattle in the summer of 1982, just a few months before she disappeared. Around this time, she also worked at the Goodwill store in Seattle on Dearborn Street. She was eighteen years old.
Shirley was last seen sometime between October 20th and 22nd, 1982. Her pimp, who could not recall the precise date, reported that he last saw Shirley when he dropped her off in Seattle’s International District in the morning. A fellow prostitute reported that she last saw Shirley at approximately 4:00 p.m. talking to two white men in a black pickup truck with a canopy. The pickup was “big, possibly a Ford” circa 1977 or 1978. The other prostitute left on a “date” and when she returned, Shirley was gone.
In June of 1985, construction crews found most of Shirley’s remains, including her skull, along with Denise Bush’s in Tigard, Oregon.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Shirley. He claimed he could not remember any details about killing her other than transporting her remains to Oregon. Ridgway initially claimed that he had left Shirley at a site in King County and later returned and quickly picked up her skull and a few bones to take to Oregon. In 2003, the Task Force searched the site and did not find any remains.
Most of Shirley’s bones were found in Oregon; not simply the “few” that Ridgway initially claimed he picked up. When confronted with this, Ridgway equivocated on whether he just took Shirley’s bones to Oregon or whether, after killing her, he transported her entire body there.
F. THE NORTH AIRPORT VICTIMS: SHAWNDA SUMMERS, JANE DOE “B10,” AND CHERYL WIMS In the 1980’s, the Task Force discovered another dumpsite used by the Green River killer: an area directly north of the SeaTac Airport. Three victims were found there: Shawnda
Summers, Cheryl Wims and an unidentified Caucasian female, designated Jane Doe “B10.”9 Two of the women were found 200 yards apart and the third was one-half mile away. In the early 1980s, the road near where the women were found was largely undeveloped, aside from a few vacant lots, baseball fields and a tow yard.
Shawnda and Cheryl both worked as prostitutes and disappeared within eight months of each other. The background and circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the unidentified woman are, of course, unknown. The remains of all three women were found unclothed. The cause of their deaths was unspecified homicidal violence.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing all three women. He referred to the North Airport site as one of his “clusters” — an area in which he grouped multiple victims — so he would not forget where he placed them. He was familiar with the area. A former girlfriend said that she and Ridgway had sex near the site and police had contacted him “dating” a prostitute nearby. He also stated that he took advantage of the frequent flights overhead, and acknowledged that “I used that noise for advantage for one thing, you know, cut down any, ah, noise in case she screamed.” The North Airport site has undergone significant development since the early 1980’s. A Boeing Company warehouse is now located where the police found Shawnda’s remains. The water tower is still there, and the baseball fields where Cheryl and Jane Doe “B10” were found still exist. A fourth baseball diamond has been added. The vacant lots are all gone and much of the surrounding area has been either paved or developed.
The Task Force designated unidentified remains in the order in which they were discovered, e.g. “Bones 10.” In this document, this victim is referred to as “Jane Doe B10.”
1. Shawnda Summers (Count XXII) Seventeen year old Shawnda Summers was last seen alive sometime during the first week of October 1982. She was known to work as a prostitute along PHS. There were no witnesses to her disappearance. Shawnda’s step-father filed a missing person’s report just weeks after she disappeared. Her mother traveled from California to search for her. They never saw her again.
At the time of Shawnda’s disappearance, during the first week of October of 1982, Ridgway was working at the Kenworth plant. During that time, he killed another woman he picked up on PHS: Denise Bush.
On August 11, 1983, Shawnda’s remains were found near the northwest corner of South 146th Street and 24th Avenue South. She had been placed in a shallow grave underneath an apple tree. Across the street and to the south of the dump site was a large, circular, water tower. A vacant lot, where homes were frequently placed on blocks before they were moved elsewhere was located to the south, between her body and South 146th Street.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted murdering Shawnda and placing her body by a water tower near SeaTac airport. Though he recalled that she was black, he was unable to recognize her photograph. Ridgway said that he took Shawnda to the North Airport site, had sex with her and then choked her with his arm. While killing her, he wrapped his legs around her to keep her from moving. He then took off her clothes and jewelry and left. Ridgway could not recall whether he covered Shawnda’s body. He believed he killed her at night and remembered that there was a house on blocks in a vacant lot near where he killed her, approximately four to five feet up off the ground.
In June 2003, Ridgway led Task Force detectives to the location where he killed Shawnda and left her body. According to a detective familiar with the crime scene and present
with Ridgway during the visit to the North Airport site, Ridgway pointed out and described the specific area in which Shawnda’s body was found.
2. Jane Doe “B10” (Count XXIV) On March 21, 1984, a dog belonging to the Highline Baseball Field caretaker brought home a human femur. The caretaker called police, and a search began of a swampy, wooded area behind center field at the western-most baseball diamond, just west of the intersection of 16th Avenue South and South 146th Street. This was one-half mile from where Ridgway killed Shawnda Summers and dumped her body in October of 1982.
Over the next few days, police recovered the skeletal remains of Jane Doe “B10.” As searching began on the second day, a bloodhound found the remains of yet a third victim, Cheryl Wims, 200 yards to the north of the crime scene.
Repeated attempts by investigators to identify Jane Doe “B10” have been unsuccessful;
to this day, the identity of Jane Doe “B10” remains a mystery. A forensic anthropologist concluded that the remains were those of a left-handed Caucasian female. She stood about 5’2” to 5’7” and had a healed fracture in her skull. She was about fifteen years old.
On the first day of interviews with Task Force detectives, Ridgway admitted killing a woman near the baseball fields off Des Moines Way. He thought she was Caucasian, in her early 20’s, and had brown hair. He thought he picked her up in the Riverton (Tukwila) area. He said he killed her during the day and wanted to make certain she was dead, because he had attempted to kill another woman nearby, but she had escaped. (This woman was never identified.)
Over the course of interviews, Ridgway made contradictory statements about whether he
returned to have sex with the unidentified woman’s corpse. Police took Ridgway to the North Airport site in June 2003. After some initial confusion, he pointed to the area where Jane Doe “B10” was found.
3. Cheryl Wims (Count XXIII) Approximately seven months after Ridgway killed Shawnda Summers, on May 23, 1983, Cheryl Wims disappeared from the streets of central Seattle near Judkins Playground. According to her friends, she was involved with prostitution. She would also frequently hitchhike and was not particularly careful about the people from whom she accepted rides. Cheryl Wims was murdered on her birthday. She had just turned eighteen.
Ridgway was on strike from Kenworth during May of 1983. He was very active; he killed a number of other women during that month, including Carol Christensen, Carrie Rois, Martina Authorlee and Yvonne Antosh.
On March 22, 1984, police discovered Cheryl’s remains a few hundred feet from Jane Doe “B10” and one-half mile from Shawnda Summers.
In 2003, Ridgway first claimed that he dumped only one victim near the baseball fields near Des Moines Way. This was Jane Doe “B10.” After a Task Force detective informed Ridgway that there was a second body found at the ball fields, he admitted that he did not keep track of the number of victims he killed there.
Detectives took him to the dumpsite. Ridgway said the visit had jogged his memory and admitted he had killed and left another woman near the baseball fields.
Ridgway later recalled walking with a prostitute on the black-top road just north of the ball field, stopping at a spot off the road, and killing her there. Aerial photos of the crime scene
from March of 1984 show a paved road slightly north of the baseball field running east to west.
Cheryl was found underneath a large spruce tree just off this road. When shown these photos, Ridgway correctly identified where Cheryl’s body had been found.
Ridgway said the woman was white (Cheryl was a light skinned African American), but he was unable to remember anything specific about her. As with virtually all the victims, Ridgway claimed not to recognize Cheryl’s photograph. He explained that, after killing 60 women, he could not describe her. He had a better memory for garbage that he noticed strewn along the road while walking with his victim than for the woman he killed there.
In the Fall of 2003, Microtrace, a nationally-renowned private forensic laboratory, reported that paint fragments recovered with Cheryl’s remains are indistinguishable, even after multiple analyses, from paint recovered with the remains of Delores Williams (disappeared March of 1983, found at Star Lake) and Tina Thompson (disappeared July of 1983, found at Highway 18.)
G. COLLEEN BROCKMAN (COUNT XXV)
On December 24, 1982, Colleen Brockman, a frequent runaway involved in prostitution, made plans to meet an acquaintance near the Greyhound bus depot in downtown Seattle.
Colleen and her friend had checked into a motel in downtown Seattle the night before. They last spoke to one another around 9:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve and had planned to meet around noon.
She never showed. Colleen was fifteen.
A year and a half later, on May 26, 1984, three youths found Colleen’s remains near Jovita Boulevard in north Pierce County. The King County Medical Examiner confirmed Colleen’s identity through dental records – her braces were still on her teeth.
Colleen’s remains were found about 10 yards north from Jovita Boulevard in thick undergrowth. The remains were between the boulevard and a creek that paralleled the road.
Also near Colleen’s body was a ditch that carried water from a culvert that passed underneath Jovita Boulevard. A piece of broken concrete culvert, approximately twenty-four inches in diameter and three feet long, was nearby.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted he killed a sixteen year old girl in Seattle around Christmas and dumped her body near Jovita Boulevard. He incorrectly identified the year, saying he believed he killed her in 1983 (it was Christmas Eve, 1982).
Ridgway recalled that Colleen was white, and that she had about $20 on her. Detectives showed Ridgway a photo of Colleen, and he said he remembered the face and was 80 to 90 percent certain that it was the girl whom he killed and dumped near Jovita Boulevard. He said he could not recall whether she wore braces.
Ridgway said he picked up Colleen in downtown Seattle, north of Chinatown, and killed her in the back of his truck. He remembered that as he strangled her, she begged for her life. He told her, "Don't fight I'm not gonna...I'll let you go." Then he put his foot into her neck and finished killing her.
Ridgway said he drove to Jovita Boulevard, parked, and pulled the body 20 feet off the road. He recalled the culvert passing under Jovita Boulevard and described it as twenty-four inch “tunnel.” In June 2003, Ridgway led detectives to the Jovita Boulevard site. According to detectives accompanying him on this trip, Ridgway was able to direct them to within 150 feet of where Colleen’s remains were found.
H. THE MOUNTAIN VIEW CEMETERY VICTIMS: KIMI-KAI PITSOR, JANE DOE “B16,” AND JANE DOE “B17”
1. Kimi-Kai Pitsor (Count XXVI) On December 14, 1983, a man walking along Mountain View Drive made a frightening find – a human skull. The skull was lying along the shoulder of the road. Beneath the skull was a pile of leaves, yet none covered the top, suggesting that the skull had only recently come to be in that location. The man called police. An extensive investigation followed, and an identification was made: it was Kimi-Kai Pitsor.
Eight months earlier, in April of 1983, sixteen year old Kimi-Kai disappeared. She was last known to have been in downtown Seattle area with her boyfriend. According to the boyfriend, he and Kimi-Kai had a disagreement over their relationship, and she ran off and jumped into an older green Ford pickup truck. The boyfriend hinted that Kimi-Kai was intending to engage in prostitution with the driver of the truck. He waited in the area for her to return. She was never seen again.
After her skull was found, Task Force detectives were dispatched to the scene, determined that the skull was found some two feet inside the King County line and assumed responsibility for the case. By that time — December of 1983 — the local law enforcement agencies were fully aware that a serial killer was working in the area – targeting prostitutes and leaving their bodies in remote outdoor areas. Despite a further search of the area, no additional bones were found.
Two years later in December of 1985, the rest of Kimi-Kai’s remains were discovered, along with the remains of two other victims, in a dumpsite down a steep slope across from Mountain View Cemetery.
Kimi-Kai’s case was added to a growing number of victims of the Green River killer.
Her case, however, was different: a witness might have seen the killer.
Kimi-Kai’s boyfriend provided detectives with a description of the man last seen with her. In 1987, when Task Force detectives began focusing on Ridgway as a suspect, the boyfriend was shown a photographic montage that included Ridgway’s photograph. With some uncertainty, the boyfriend identified Ridgway as the man driving the pickup truck. However, he qualified his identification: he was not “1000% percent” sure. Moreover, none of Ridgway’s trucks matched the description of the truck seen by the boyfriend.
In June of 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Kimi-Kai. He said that he had picked her up in his girlfriend's truck. Ridgway’s girlfriend at the time owned a light green colored 1970’s Ford pickup truck with a silver canopy.
Ridgway had a fairly clear memory of the events surrounding the murder of Kimi-Kai.
On the night he killed her, Ridgway said, he was frustrated because he had a strong desire to kill a woman and “couldn’t find one.” When he spotted Kimi-Kai, he also saw her boyfriend.
Ridgway said he was so desperate for a kill that he broke his cardinal rule – never pick up a victim in the presence of a witness. Ridgway said he drove around the corner, and, as he hoped, Kimi-Kai came to his truck. He said she agreed to “date” him at his house in south Seattle after he promised her he would drive her back downtown after the “date.” This was a hollow promise:
There’s no way I’m going to waste my time having sex with her, pay her $40, or $30 or $60 or whatever. And then drive her all the way back into Seattle. That’s something I wouldn’t do. I would get her there and kill her. I’m not going to waste my money driving all the way back.
True to his priorities, Ridgway said he had sex with Kimi-Kai at his house, killed her, put her body in the truck, drove to Mountain View Cemetery, and dumped her body.
Ridgway provided conflicting explanations for the discovery of Kimi-Kai’s skull by the
side of the road in December of 1983. First, Ridgway suggested that he picked up her skull intending to take it to Oregon with the remains of Denise Bush and Shirley Sherrill. While retrieving Kimi-Kai’s skull, Ridgway said he dropped it and could not find it in the dark Later in interviews, Ridgway acknowledged that he had not intended to take the skull to Oregon, but that he had moved it simply to “throw off” the police. After retrieving the skull, he said, he accidentally dropped it while making his way back up the steep hillside. When he tried to locate the skull, his flashlight batteries died. Although he felt around on the ground, he could not find the skull. Eventually, Ridgway said, he gave up the effort and left.
Questioned further about his motives for moving the skull, Ridgway explained that if the skull was found in a place like someone’s yard, the Task Force would waste time and manpower searching the area for the remaining, missing bones. “[T]hey’ll waste all kind of man hours thinking the rest of the body’s in there.”
2. Jane Doe “B16” and Jane Doe “B17” (Counts XXVII and XXVIII) On December 30, 1985, two years after Kimi-Kai’s skull was found, Task Force detectives returned to Mountain View Drive. A car had gone off the road and down a steep embankment several hundred yards from the place where Kimi-Kai’s skull had been found. Two men employed at the cemetery went down to look at the wrecked car and discovered what appeared to be human bones. When the Task Force detectives arrived, they immediately realized that this was another dumpsite. The bones found by the cemetery workers were obviously not those of Kimi-Kai Pitsor (they found another skull).
For the next week, detectives scoured the hillside in search of further evidence. When the search was over, they had found a total of three sets of skeletal remains. One of the remains
proved by radiographic examination to be the rest of Kimi-Kai Pitsor. The other two bodies, despite extensive efforts, remain unidentified. They have been designated Jane Doe “B16” and Jane Doe “B17.” 10 Although these skeletal remains have not been identified, both were young women. A forensic anthropologist’s examination revealed that Jane Doe “B16” was an African-American woman between the age of twenty and twenty-five. She was approximately 5’1” to 5’4” tall.
Her body had been placed along a large fallen log.
Some 40 to 50 feet uphill east from Jane Doe “B16” were the remains of Jane Doe “B17.” She was lying at the foot of a very large rotten stump on the peak of a ridge. The forensic anthropologist concluded that she was a Caucasian, between 5’4” and 5’8” tall. She was between fourteen and seventeen years old.
Two hundred and fifty yards to the west of these two young women, detectives found the remains of Kimi-Kai Pitsor. She was located about 100 yards from Mountain View Drive and approximately 100 yards from where her skull was found.
Over the course of the next fifteen years, numerous attempts were made to identify the two young women found along Mountain View Drive. Leads relating to Kimi-Kai’s disappearance were likewise investigated but never led any further than the tentative identification of defendant Ridgway. The cases remained open, but “cold.” In 2003, as recounted in the previous section, Ridgway admitted murdering Kimi-Kai Pitsor and dumping her at the Mountain View site. When he was questioned about the other two unidentified remains, he claimed that he could not recall any specifics about them other than to 10 The Task Force designated these unidentified remains in the order in which they were discovered as: “Bones 16” and “Bones 17.” In this document, these victims are referred to as Jane Doe “B16” and Jane Doe “B17.”
say that he thought he killed one of the women before Kimi-Kai and one after her. Ridgway said that he staggered their bodies along the hillside – which was consistent with the way the remains were found.
Ridgway was asked why and how he chose the Mountain View site. He said that he drove up the road and thought, “there’s a fantastic bank and trees. Just an excellent place to dump a woman and I can see ahead when I drop her off.” According to his ex-wife, Ridgway knew the road well: during their marriage the couple lived in the Twin Lakes area, and Ridgway drove past the cemetery on his way to work at the Kenworth plant.
Investigators asked Ridgway to direct them to the location where he placed the bodies at Mountain View. Ridgway did so and identified the precise location where investigators had found the three sets of remains. Ridgway correctly recalled that he placed two of the bodies closer together and a third some distance away.
I. MARIE MALVAR (COUNT XXIX)
In April of 1983, Marie Malvar lived in Des Moines, King County. On April 30, 1983, she went out to PHS to work as a prostitute. Marie's boyfriend saw her get into a dark-colored pickup truck, occupied by a single adult male driver, at a bus stop near a 7-11 store at South 216th and PHS. After Marie got into the truck, the boyfriend got in his car and followed the truck as it traveled northbound on PHS. The truck pulled over into a motel parking lot, turned around, and headed southbound on PHS. The truck then turned left going eastbound onto South 216th. The boyfriend lost track of the truck at that intersection.
Marie was never seen again. She was eighteen.
The intersection at South 216th and PHS where her boyfriend last saw Marie in a pickup
heading eastbound is exactly where, just a few weeks earlier, on April 8, 1983, Gail Mathews’ boyfriend saw her for the last time. Exactly like Marie, Gail was in a pickup truck heading eastbound on South 216th.
At the time, Ridgway lived one block south of South 216th, off of Military Road.
Military Road is east of PHS. Ridgway lived a little more than half a mile from the intersection where Gail and Marie were last seen, and South 216th is the most direct route to Ridgway’s house from that section of PHS.
Three days later, on May 3, 1983, Marie’s boyfriend reported to the Des Moines Police Department that she was missing. Initially, he lied to police — reporting that he had last seen Marie at their residence and that she was on her way to a phone booth on PHS.
The next day, on May 4, 1983, the boyfriend admitted that he knew Marie was working as a prostitute and that he last saw her being picked up by a “trick.” He described the “trick” as a forty-two year old Mexican or Indian male driving a black pickup truck.
Later that day, the boyfriend returned to the police station and reported that he had searched the neighborhoods around South 216th and PHS and thought he had found the truck that Marie had entered. The truck was Ridgway’s maroon 1975 Dodge pickup. When Marie’s boyfriend saw the truck, it was parked outside Ridgway’s house at 21859 32nd Place South.
Two Des Moines detectives went to Ridgway’s residence that day. The detectives noticed Ridgway's Dodge pickup in the driveway, and contacted him. He admitted that he had been arrested for picking up prostitutes in the past, but denied picking up Marie. He also claimed that he had been unemployed for the last year. Ridgway was actually on strike from Kenworth.
Several weeks later, on May 27, 1983, an airport worker discovered Marie’s driver’s license at the SeaTac Airport. In the years following Marie’s disappearance, (as in the cases of many of Ridgway’s victims) there were many reported sightings of her. Tips came in that Marie had moved to Hawaii and dyed her hair blonde or that she was working in Hollywood. In February of 1985, her family reported that they had heard the rumors that she was in Hollywood, Long Beach or Tacoma and expressed their belief that she was still alive. In 1986, one tipster claimed to have been with one of Marie’s brothers when Marie had called from California.
Despite investigation, none of these tips were ever confirmed.
Marie’s boyfriend later provided several statements concerning Marie’s last day, and even underwent hypnosis by a psychiatrist retained by the Task Force, in an effort to recall additional details about the man in the truck. None of the later descriptions or details provided any further connection to Ridgway.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Marie. He said he picked her up, drove her to his house and killed her there. Ridgway said that Marie fought him, scratching him badly and leaving scars on his inner left arm that are still visible today.
Ridgway recalled that he was worried about the scratches when the Des Moines detectives came to his house on May 4, 1983. He said he stood against the fence in his yard to conceal them from the police. Ridgway later attempted to disguise the scratches by burning his arm with battery acid. (Ridgway first claimed that he received the scar from some pimps, but quickly retracted this lie).
Ridgway admitted taking Marie’s driver’s license and putting it on the floor in the airport. He said he did so to make it look like she left the state.
Ridgway claimed he dumped Marie’s body on the same day he killed her. He had planned to place her body near Mountain View Cemetery. He was on his way there when he saw an area that looked like a good place to dump a body. He left Marie’s body in a wooded ravine near 65th Avenue South in Auburn.
Ridgway said he parked his truck, pulled Marie’s body out, re-parked the truck a short distance away and pulled her body 20 to 30 feet into the ravine.
After the Des Moines detectives’ visit to his house on May 4, 1983, Ridgway said, he went back to the site to bury Marie’s body. He spent about three hours unsuccessfully looking for her. He then planted leaflets from airport motels around the area, so that, Ridgway explained, if the body was found, the Task Force might think that someone like a travelling salesman was involved in the murder. Ridgway never again returned to the site because soon thereafter he saw a co-worker driving in that area and learned that the co-worker resided nearby. He insisted that he did not put any more bodies in this area because he knew, after the Des Monies detectives’ visit, that he was linked, however tenuously, to Marie Malvar’s disappearance.
Task Force detectives spent several days searching the area identified by Ridgway. On September 28 and 29, 2003, they recovered over 60 human bones, including the skull and mandible. A ligature was found with the bones. Dental records confirmed the remains are those of Marie Malvar. The ligature appears to be a woman’s pantyhose; it was found near several neck vertebrae.
J. THE HIGHWAY 410 VICTIMS: MARTINA AUTHORLEE, DEBBIE
ABERNATHY, MARY BELLO, PAMMY AVENT, ROBERTA HAYES, AND
MARTA REEVES
In the early 1980s, the Task Force discovered the bodies of three women along a short,
rural stretch of Highway 410. Investigators soon realized that they had discovered another dumpsite. Several years later, after the Green River killer had purportedly stopped killing, the bodies of more women were found along the same stretch of roadway.
Ridgway did not stop killing in 1984, and he did not stop using Highway 410 as his dumping ground. In fact, he continued to use Highway 410 after that dumpsite was discovered.
Ridgway has admitted killing two women, never attributed to the Green River killer, one in 1987 and one in 1990, and placing their bodies along Highway 410.
In August of 2003, Ridgway led the Task Force to an area along Highway 410 where they recovered the remains of an original Green River “missing” victim - Pammy Avent. She disappeared in 1983.
1. Highway 410 Highway 410 generally runs in an east/west direction between the cities of Tacoma and Yakima, Washington. A sixteen mile stretch of the highway runs through King County between the towns of Enumclaw and Greenwater. The stretch begins at milepost 26, just east of the Enumclaw city limits, and ends at milepost 42, just west of the town of Greenwater.
The terrain along this stretch of highway is hilly and heavily wooded, alternating between thick underbrush and large evergreen and deciduous forests. A well-developed gravel road known as the Weyerhaeuser Mainline runs just south and parallel to this entire sixteen mile stretch of 410. The White River runs south and parallel to the Weyerhaeuser Mainline and serves as the border between King and Pierce Counties up to the town of Greenwater. Dozens of gravel and dirt logging roads spur off of the highway and the Weyerhaeuser Mainline throughout the sixteen-mile stretch.
Ridgway was extremely familiar with this sixteen mile stretch of Highway 410. During interviews with the Task Force in 1987, Ridgway’s second wife told detectives that Ridgway regularly traveled the stretch of Highway 410 between the towns of Enumclaw and Greenwater.
She and Ridgway camped in the Greenwater area many times. Ridgway later confirmed his familiarity with Highway 410. He told detectives that he could remember freely traveling the forest access roads, roads that were later blocked when he returned to the sites. Ridgway also stated that he and his third wife camped in the Greenwater area throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s.
In 2003, before the Task Force interviewed him, Ridgway prepared several documents that purported to detail the victims he left along Highway 410. Ridgway listed eight (8) victims at different locations on this map; all but one of these victims was placed along the southern edge of Highway 410, between the highway and the Weyerhaeuser Mainline.
Once the Task Force began interviewing Ridgway, he provided additional details about killing and dumping as many as eleven (11) victims along Highway 410. He was taken on many trips to point out the actual dumpsites of the victims that had already been found and to locate missing remains. To date, the remains of six (6) women murdered by Gary Ridgway have been recovered from Highway 410.
2. Martina Authorlee (Count XXX) Martina Authorlee disappeared on the night of Sunday, May 22, 1983. Martina had a troubled childhood, which included time in foster homes and several encounters with law enforcement. At fifteen, Martina ran away from home and into a life of prostitution. She was murdered when she was eighteen.
In early May of 1983, police arrested Martina for prostitution in downtown Seattle. After her arrest, Martina moved into the Moonrise Motel, on PHS, in Tukwila. Like victims Terry Milligan and Denise Bush, Martina was living at the Moonrise at the time of her death.
On May 22, 1983, Martina and a fellow prostitute left the Moonrise Motel to work PHS.
After working the highway separately for a period of time, her companion last spoke with Martina in front of the “My Place” Tavern sometime between 10:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. Martina told her companion that a “date” was picking her up in 20 minutes. The woman left Martina standing in front of the tavern. Martina was never seen again.
Ridgway did not work on the day of Martina’s disappearance. According to financial records, Ridgway was in south King County, selling items at a swap meet.
On November 14, 1984, two elk hunters discovered Martina’s remains just off Highway 410, near milepost 36. The remains were found on the southern side of the highway just before a curve, near a fallen cedar log.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Martina. Although he claimed that he could not identify her or recall any details of her murder, Ridgway accurately described her physical appearance. He remembered that she was African-American, 5’7” or 5’8” and full figured. He claimed that he picked her up one night between 1982 and 1984, and that he killed her in his house.
Ridgway correctly described the area where Martina was found. Ridgway drew several maps that purported to depict where he dumped victims along Highway 410. On the maps, he described Martina as a “Black Lady” buried next to a log. He wrote that he placed her body at the eastern end of the stretch of highway, very close to a large southeasterly curve in the roadway. His map correctly showed the road, the location of the log in relation to the road, and
the correct position of the log and Martina’s body.
Ridgway also said that he pulled Martina’s body 60 to 100 feet off of the roadway, over a fallen redwood log that was approximately three feet in diameter. His description not only matched the geographic location of Martina’s remains, he even knew the diameter of the log near her body.
3. Debbie May Abernathy (Count XXXI) Debbie May Abernathy moved to Seattle from Texas with her boyfriend and their young son just four weeks prior to her disappearance. During that period of time, Debbie worked as a prostitute, mainly at the corner of 8th and Pike in downtown Seattle.
On September 5, 1983, at approximately 1:00 p.m., Debbie left her residence near Rainer Avenue, south of Seattle, to work the downtown area as a prostitute. Her longtime boyfriend never saw her again. She was twenty-six.
On the day of Debbie’s disappearance, Ridgway was off work due to the Labor Day holiday. He gassed up his truck and withdrew cash from an ATM machine the day Debbie disappeared.
On March 31, 1984, an elk hunter discovered Debbie’s skeletal remains approximately 0.2 miles east of milepost 37 on Highway 410. The remains were found next to the Weyerhaeuser Mainline, near the White River.
During interviews in 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Debbie. Although Ridgway claimed that he could not identify her, he gave the Task Force specific details of her dumpsite.
Ridgway told the Task Force that he carried a victim into the woods from Highway 410 and placed her very close to the Weyerhaeuser Mainline, so close that he could see it. He
correctly recalled that Debbie was one of the first women dumped along 410. He said he hoped placing her next to the Weyerhaeuser Mainline would confuse the police into thinking she was a Weyerhaeuser employee.
Although Ridgway struggled to identify the exact location of the dumpsite when taken to Highway 410, he accurately described a gated entrance nearby that led to the location on Weyerhaeuser Mainline where Debbie was found. He also correctly recalled the terrain between the two roadways; he described the difficulty he had taking her body into the woods. Ridgway admitted that he threw the driver’s license of one of his victims out of his truck window while traveling on Highway 18. Debbie’s Texas driver’s license was found along Highway 18 in 1983.
As with many of his victims, Ridgway claimed to remember little if anything about killing Debbie. When reminded that her disappearance fell on his son’s eighth birthday, Ridgway told the Task Force that the date had no significance to him. Ridgway admitted that the times and circumstances of his killings were simply motivated by “opportunity.”
4. Mary Sue Bello (Count XXXII) Approximately one month after Ridgway killed Debbie Abernathy, he killed Mary Bello and placed her body along that same stretch of Highway 410.
Mary Bello lived a troubled life, with an extensive history of prostitution and drug use.
She was known to work as a prostitute along PHS. (She contacted the Task Force on a number of occasions with information on possible Green River suspects.) On October 11, 1983, at approximately 5:00 p.m., Mary left downtown Seattle to work as a prostitute. She was never heard from again. She was twenty-five.
Ridgway was in south King County on the day of Mary’s disappearance. On October 11,
Ridgway worked until 6:35 p.m. On the day of Mary’s disappearance, Ridgway filled up his truck at the Texaco Gas Station at South 172nd and PHS, and withdrew forty dollars from a cash machine in Sea-Tac at 7:51 p.m..
A year later, on October 12, 1984, a mushroom picker discovered Mary’s skeletal remains approximately 200 feet west of milepost 34 just off Highway 410. The area in which the remains were found was heavily wooded, with large evergreen trees and sparse surface vegetation. The only distinguishing landmark in the area was the milepost.
During interviews, Ridgway claimed that he could not identify Mary. However, he did provide an accurate description of where he left her body. After some initial confusion about the precise milepost, Ridgway told detectives that milepost 34 brought back memories. He described parking his truck in front of a milepost and pulling a victim into the woods without having to drag the body over a guardrail. He said he then got back into his truck, drove down the road, made a U-turn, and parked the truck on the opposite side of the road, facing west. Then, he said, he returned to the body and dragged it farther into the woods. Ridgway’s description matched the dumpsite where Mary’s body was found.
When taken to the dumpsite, Ridgway first struggled to identify it. After he was informed that the area had recently been clear-cut, Ridgway suggested that he killed a woman in the early 1980’s and pulled her body into the woods down the hill in this location. After reviewing historical photographs depicting the dumpsite, Ridgway confirmed this statement.
Ridgway told detectives that after he dumped the woman’s body, he threw her clothes out of his truck window, “as soon as he could.” In the 1980’s, the Task Force recovered a “mixed print sundress with small straps,” located approximately three miles west of Mary’s dumpsite.
Mary’s grandfather later told detectives that the dress was similar to the one Mary wore on the
day of her disappearance.
5. Pammy Avent (Count XXXIII) Approximately two weeks after killing Mary Bello and placing her body on Highway 410, Ridgway killed Pammy Avent, and left her body along the same stretch of road. Avent’s remains were not discovered until August of 2003 — only after Ridgway directed Task Force detectives to them.
Pammy Avent worked as a prostitute in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle. On October 26, 1983, at 7:30 p.m., she left her mother’s Rainier Valley home in Seattle to work as a prostitute. She was never seen again. She was sixteen. Pammy’s mother reported her missing four days later.
For several years after her disappearance, the Task Force received many tips suggesting that Pammy had run away from home. Tips claimed that Pammy was living in Hollywood, that she had run away to Denver and given birth to a baby girl, and that she was working as a prostitute out of a local area motel. The Task Force investigated the tips, and, despite their efforts, could not locate Pammy. For twenty-one years her fate remained a mystery.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Pammy Avent and led the Task Force directly to her body.
Task Force detectives took Ridgway to Highway 410 in an effort to identify dumpsites of undiscovered victims. On one trip, Ridgway asked to stop at a pullout on the south side of Highway 410 across the street from the Corliss Gravel Pit, just east of milepost 26. Ridgway told the Task Force that he placed a body across the street from the gravel pit in a gully.
Six days later, the Task Force found Pammy Avent’s remains in the location identified by
Ridgway. Her body had been placed up against a fallen cedar log that lay parallel to the highway, approximately 50 feet from the edge of the dirt road. The remains were largely intact, due to their position next to the fallen cedar log. A significant amount of the remains were found under three to six inches of dirt, bark and other debris.
As with most of his victims, Ridgway claimed not to recognize Pammy’s photograph. In fact, his description of the woman he thought he placed in this location was not Pammy.
Ridgway thought that the victim left at this particular site had a deformed leg; Pammy did not.
No additional victims were found in the area.
6. Roberta Hayes (Count XXXIV) Twenty-one-year-old Roberta Hayes worked as a prostitute and traveled back and forth between Portland and Seattle on a fairly regularly basis. She disappeared sometime in early 1987. The last known sighting of Roberta was on February 7, 1987, when she was released from the custody of the Portland, Oregon, Police Department after an arrest for prostitution. It was believed that she was headed back to Seattle.
On September 11, 1991, more than four years after she was last seen, a Washington State Parks employee discovered Roberta’s skeletal remains at the end of a dead-end dirt road, located north of Highway 410 between mileposts 36 and 37. The remains were to the east of the road, near piles of debris. A Weyerhaeuser security official later told detectives that the road had been blocked with boulders sometime between September, 1986 and April, 1987.
Roberta Hayes is the only victim found on the north side of Highway 410.
During interviews in 2003, Ridgway provided a detailed description of Roberta’s dumpsite. Ridgway described a white woman that he killed and placed on the north side of
Highway 410. Ridgway repeatedly stated that he only placed one victim on the northern side of
410. He accurately described Roberta as having blonde/brown hair, being 5’7” and skinny.
Ridgway’s description of the dumpsite matches the location where Roberta’s remains were found. He accurately described the end of a dirt road just past a large curve to the east in the highway: a dead-end with both man-made and natural debris. He correctly recalled the slope of the terrain and the curvature of the road. He also knew that Roberta’s dumpsite was just east and across the highway from the dumpsite of Martina Authorlee.
When taken to Highway 410, Ridgway identified the general vicinity of the roadway, but initially struggled to identify the precise road. The road had changed significantly since the murder. But once the changes in the road were described to Ridgway, he correctly identified the road upon which he dumped Roberta’s body. Ridgway was later shown unmarked photos of the roadway, which he immediately identified as the dumpsite for Roberta.
Roberta was not listed as a Green River victim. Niether Ridgway nor his attorneys received any information from detectives and prosecutors about her death prior to his admission to killing her and placing her body on Highway 410.
7. Marta Reeves (Count XXXV) In the early spring of 1990, Marta Reeves lived apart from her estranged husband and four children. She had moved out in May of 1989 due to her cocaine addiction and began prostituting herself. She spent most of her time in the Central District of Seattle and had twice been arrested for prostitution. She was thirty-six.
Marta’s husband last heard from her on the evening of either March 5th or 6th, 1990.
Marta called him looking for money. When he rejected Marta’s request for money, she told him
that she would have to work all night. He never heard from her again.
A month later, Marta’s husband received an envelope in the mail from the U.S. Postal Service containing her driver’s license. Her husband showed the license to numerous people while looking for his missing wife. He reported Marta missing on April 13, 1990. The driver’s license was later tested for fingerprints with negative results (the license was printed after it had been handled by Marta’s husband and shown to many people).
On September 20, 1990, a couple of mushroom pickers found Marta’s skeletal remains approximately 600 feet east of milepost 33 on Highway 410. The remains were halfway down a looping dirt road that spurred off of the southern side of the highway.
The police later recovered several pieces of clothing. The clothing was examined for physical evidence with negative results. The remains were identified as Marta’s in January of 1991.
Ridgway’s maps of Highway 410 listed a body he left at the location where Marta was found. He drew a looped road on the south side of the highway where he placed a body.
Ridgway accurately described the location of the body some 20 to 30 feet into the woods.
During the course of Task Force interviews, Ridgway provided more detailed descriptions of Marta’s dumpsite. Ridgway described the road dropping down below Highway 410 with heavy foliage on either side. He remembered the foliage rubbing up against the side of his truck as he drove down the road. He told the detectives that he drove about halfway down the road and then pulled the body into the woods about 30 feet. When Ridgway was shown unmarked photos of the dumpsite as it appeared in 1990, he immediately identified it as the “lower loop road” off of Highway 410. Photographs confirmed Ridgway’s descriptions of the scene, including the fact that the loop road was so narrow that foliage struck the sides of vehicles
traveling upon it.
When taken to Marta’s dumpsite on Highway 410, Ridgway was unable to locate the roadway, but he did point out the correct stretch of highway where the original road, now blocked off and completely overgrown, had been.
Ridgway claimed that he could not recall any details about Marta or her murder. Ridgway first told detectives that the victim was black and that he killed her in the early 1980s. When told that Marta went missing in 1990 and that she was white, not black, Ridgway acknowledged, “I killed the one on the loop road. And I just, you know, I killed so many of them, so I had to kind of guess if she was white or black.” He later added, “I get screwed up on time frames.” Finally, Ridgway admitted placing a woman’s driver’s license in a mailbox on one or two occasions. When asked to explain why he did this, Ridgway could only respond, “I don’t know, get back at the family or somethin’, I don’t know.” Marta was not listed as an “official” Green River victim. Ridgway and his attorneys were not provided with any of the police reports concerning her case prior to his confession to her murder.
K. YVONNE ANTOSH (COUNT XXXVI)
On May 31, 1983, at about 11:00 p.m, Yvonne “Shelly” Antosh, was last seen when she left the Ben Carol Motel on PHS. She and a childhood friend had come to Seattle from Vancouver, British Columbia. The two were staying together on PHS. Shelly had been involved in prostitution for a just a few weeks. She was nineteen.
Ridgway was on strike for most of May 1983, and he devoted this time to what he called his “career.” During that month, he killed Shelly, Carol Christensen, Carrie Rois, Martina
Authorlee and Cheryl Wims. The night Shelly disappeared, Ridgway made a cash withdrawal for $20 on PHS at 11:44 p.m.
In October of 1983, two boys discovered Shelly’s remains about 25-30 yards downhill from the Auburn-Black Diamond Road, south of Big Soos Creek, in King County. She had been placed between two large alder trees. The area was heavily overgrown with swamp grass and other thick vegetation.
On the first day of interviews in 2003, Ridgway informed detectives that he had killed a woman and dumped her body along the Auburn-Black Diamond Road. He believed the Task Force had found the body. Ridgway indicated there were two bodies on the Auburn-Black Diamond Road, one of which he had placed “down a hill.” In 2003, police took Ridgway to the Auburn-Black Diamond Road. According to detectives who were with him on this trip, Ridgway directed them to almost the exact location where Shelly’s remains were found.
Ridgway could not provide any specific details concerning Shelly. He recalled that she was “just a white woman…picked her up on Highway 99…or uh, maybe uh, the Central District.” Ridgway also said he picked her up and killed her at night. He said he killed her in his bedroom of his house. Ridgway was vague on exactly how he killed her and vacillated between claiming that he killed her with his arm and that he used a ligature.
L. INTERSTATE 90 AND HIGHWAY 18: TINA THOMPSON, APRIL
BUTTRAM, AND MAUREEN FEENEY
Ridgway admitted that he dumped three victims (Tina Thompson, April Buttram, and Maureen Feeney) near the intersection of Interstate 90 and Highway 18. All three women worked as prostitutes and were killed within a span of approximately two months. In the 1980’s,
the Task Force recovered the remains of two of the women —Tina Thompson and Maureen Feeney. Their bodies were found across the street from each other. In 2003, based upon information provided by Ridgway, the police recovered remains of the third woman, April Buttram – she had been missing for twenty years.
1. Tina Thompson (Count XXXVII) Tina Thompson disappeared on or around Monday morning, July 25, 1983. She was staying at the Spruce Motel on PHS and working as a prostitute. A fellow prostitute reported that their pimp had talked to Tina in the early hours of July 25, 1983 but was unsuccessful in reaching her again later that day. Tina was never reported missing to the police. She was twentytwo.
Ridgway did not work Sunday, July 24, 1983 and arrived at work on July 25, 1983 at approximately 6:45 a.m.
On April 20, 1984, Tina’s remains were discovered near the intersection of Highway 18 and Interstate 90. Her clothing was missing, and her body was wrapped in sheets of plastic. She remained unidentified until June of 1986.
During interviews with the Task Force in 1986, Ridgway’s second wife reported that she and Ridgway had been to the area where Thompson’s body was later recovered. She recalled Ridgway stopping his vehicle and urinating there.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Tina Thompson and leaving her body near Interstate 90 and Highway 18. He recalled killing her at night. He initially stated that he could not recognize her photo or remember exactly where he killed her.
Ridgway later recalled a victim who almost escaped him and suggested she was Tina. He
said he was trying to strangle her in his bedroom, as was his practice, when she slipped away from him. He said he caught her at the front door, and killed her there, just inside the front door.
Ridgway recalled dumping a body at night at the location where Tina’s remains were found. In June of 2003, Ridgway directed the police to the “Leisure Time” dumpsite (where, as recounted immediately below, the remains of April Buttram were subsequently discovered).
While at that scene, Ridgway offered to lead the detectives to a nearby location where, he said, he dumped two other bodies. Ridgway accurately directed the police to the area where Tina’s body had been discovered. He recalled correctly that he put her under some plastic that he found at the site.
Microtrace, a nationally renowned private forensic laboratory, reported in the Fall of 2003 that paint fragments recovered with Tina’s remains are indistinguishable, even after multiple analyses, from paint recovered with the remains of Cheryl Wims (disappeared May of 1983, found at North Airport dumpsite) and Delores Williams (disappeared March of 1983, found at Star Lake).
2. April Buttram (Count XXXVIII) In July of 1983, April Buttram left her home in Spokane and headed to Seattle. She shortly became involved in prostitution. Approximately one month later, she became a victim of the Green River killer; in late August of 1983, she disappeared and was never seen again. She was seventeen.
A significant obstacle to the investigation of April’s case (and many others) was the inability to determine the exact date of her disappearance. She was arrested for prostitution on August 4, 1983, and released from juvenile detention on August 10, 1983. The police contacted
her on Rainier Avenue South on August 18, 1983. Her pimp stated that he last saw her on Rainier Avenue South and believed that it was sometime before September 1, 1983. He never reported her missing, claiming that he thought that she had run away.
April’s mother reported her missing in March of 1984. Though her body had not been found, due to the circumstances and timing of her disappearance, she was added to the list of Green River victims. As with other “missing” victims, numerous tips trickled in to the Task Force, claiming that she was still alive. In July of 1984, after a news release that April had been added to the list of victims, several individuals claimed that April was working as a prostitute in Tacoma and California. All these tips were investigated; none were ever confirmed.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted killing April. He claimed he recognized her picture. He thought he picked her up on Rainier Avenue.
Ridgway was not completely certain where he placed April’s body. He suggested that he buried her under a fern near Lake Fenwick. However, he also stated that she might be the victim he placed at a site north of the intersection of Interstate 90 and Highway 18 (referred to as the “Leisure Time” site because Leisure Time Resorts has a camp nearby). He also suggested that the woman he dumped at Leisure Time was someone other than April. Ridgway said he recalled dumping a woman at the Leisure Time site after picking her up on Rainier Avenue.
Ridgway claimed that he returned to the Leisure Time site in the spring of 1984, some eight months after dumping a body there. He said there were only a few bones left at the site, and he picked up the skull. He said he transported the skull (along with bones from Denise Bush and Shirley Sherrill) to Oregon on a weekend trip with his son in 1984. Ridgway reported that he left the skull near an exit off Interstate 5. He said he moved the bones because he thought
they would be found and this discovery would confuse the Task Force. This skull has never been recovered.
Ridgway later joined Leisure Time Resorts specifically because he knew he had placed a body nearby.
I, um, talked my parents into buying a membership, uh, of the campground there because I could always go up and walk that road and, uh, knowing that there’s a woman there.
He said that he and his current wife would camp in the area several times a year and walk their dogs on the road near the dumpsite. His son also recalls family walks along that road.
In June of 2003, Ridgway was taken to the Leisure Time site, and he identified an area where he was “one hundred percent” certain that he left a body. He claimed that the area was “grown up” and that the trees had been “baby trees” at the time he dumped a body. Historical aerial photographs from the early 1980’s confirm that the area had been clear-cut before Ridgway dumped the body in 1983.
In late August and early September, 2003, Task Force detectives conducted an extensive search of the area identified by Ridgway and recovered two human bones. A mtDNA profile was developed from the bones: the profile is April Buttram’s.
3. Maureen Feeney (Count XXXIX) In August of 1983, Maureen Feeney moved from Bellevue to an apartment in Seattle, and her lifestyle began to change dramatically. Maureen was working at a daycare, and around the time of her move, her co-workers had noticed a change in her attitude and behavior.
While in Seattle, Maureen became involved with a new boyfriend. The boyfriend eventually admitted that Maureen became involved in prostitution though he (implausibly)
denied knowing any details of her activities.
On September 26, 1983, two infractions were written to “Kris Ponds,” a probable alias for Maureen; “Ponds” had the same physical description, birth date, telephone number, address and employer as Maureen. “Ponds” had been cited in Seattle for jaywalking, a common citation written to suspected prostitutes. The next day, on September 27, 1983, Maureen quit her job at the daycare. The following day, on September 28, 1983, Maureen’s boyfriend reported that she left her apartment sometime in the afternoon and never returned. She was nineteen.
Ridgway’s work records reveal that he left work around 3:20 p.m. that day and returned to work the next day.
Maureen’s family learned of her disappearance from her boyfriend and, on September 30, 1983, they reported that she was missing to the Seattle police. Her family went to considerable efforts to find her.
Nearly three years later, on May 2, 1986, an Echo Glen (juvenile detention center) employee was looking for an escapee when he came across some of Maureen’s remains. They were found on the west side of Highway 18 at 105th, a short distance south of the intersection of Highway 18 and Interstate 90. A pull-out and utility shed were near the area. Tina Thompson’s remains had been found two years earlier on the other side of Highway 18. The Task Force subsequently recovered Maureen’s remains, which were spread out over some distance. Some bones were found near a barbed wire fence.
During interviews with the Task Force in 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Maureen. He recalled that he picked her up in Seattle. He claimed that he killed her at night in the back of his truck. He recalled that Maureen was a white woman, had brown hair, and thought she was between eighteen to twenty-two years old.
In June of 2003, while directing Task Force detectives to the as-yet undiscovered Leisure Time dumpsite (described above in the section concerning April Buttram), Ridgway suggested that he show detectives where he dumped two other bodies nearby. He pointed out the area where he left Tina Thompson’s body and also said he had dumped a body across Highway 18 next to a fence and near a shed – where Maureen was found. Ridgway recalled that he dropped her off around midnight, and, while he was there, a work crew came by and some lights came on.
He also admitted that he had sex with the body after he placed her near the fence.
M. TRACY WINSTON (COUNT XL)
In September of 1983, Tracy Winston was staying with her boyfriend at the 99 Motel on Aurora Avenue in the north end of Seattle. She finished serving a jail sentence for prostitution on September 12, 1983 and returned to the 99 Motel. Later that day she called a man whom she had previously “dated” and asked him to meet her and give her money to pay her rent. The man drove to the 99 Motel and gave Tracy some money. After paying rent, Tracy asked for and received a ride to the Northgate Mall. The man dropped her off around 6:00 p.m. Although another acquaintance reports seeing Tracy three days later on September 15, 1983, it is believed that Tracy disappeared on the night of September 12, 1983. She never returned to the 99 Motel and her family had no further contact with her. She was nineteen.
In March of 1986, two park employees discovered human remains at the base of a large tree in Cottonwood Park in Kent. The park is a relatively small piece of land along the banks of the Green River. The remains were approximately one-quarter (¼) mile from the Peck Bridge where Wendy Coffield’s body was found in July of 1982. The remains essentially consisted of a human torso. Despite an extensive search, detectives were unable to find either the skull or any
other portion of the skeleton. Without the skull or mandible, an identification of the remains could not be made.
Thirteen years later, in 1999, advances in DNA analysis made identification of these bones possible. The mtDNA profile of the bones revealed that they were the remains of Tracy Winston.
In June of 2003, Ridgway admitted he killed the woman found at Cottonwood Park. Like many of his victims, Ridgway has little memory of killing Tracy. Despite his lack of specific memory, Ridgway has convincingly maintained that he was responsible for her death – including her on a list of his victims that he provided to investigators shortly after interviews began in June of 2003.
Ridgway recalled that he killed Tracy at night and that he dumped her body in or near the park. He previously visited the park multiple times and had sex with one of his wives and a girlfriend, not far from where he left Tracy. He explained why he chose the park as a dumpsite.
“Like Cottonwood Park was a good place, along the river and it was a while after the other ones were found, so that’s why I chose it.” Cottonwood Park is within a quarter mile of where Ridgway dumped the bodies of six other women he murdered: the five women left in the Green River and the unidentified woman found just off the Kent-Des Moines Road: (Jane Doe “B20”).
Ridgway equivocated on the exact location where he placed the body – eventually deciding that it was not far from the road and likely in the park itself. He was unable to account for those parts of Tracy’s skeleton that have not been found.
N. INTERSTATE 90, EXIT 38: DELISE PLAGER, KIM NELSON, AND LISA YATES Ridgway has admitted that he killed three women, Delise Plager, Kim Nelson, and Lisa Yates, whose bodies he dumped near Exit 38, off Interstate 90. All three women were prostitutes, and they disappeared from Seattle or PHS within approximately three months of each other. The bodies of Delise Plager and Lisa Yates were left on different sides of the Exit 38 road, not far from each other. Ridgway placed the body of Kim Nelson a few miles up a dirt road.
1. Delise Plager (Count XLI) Delise Plager, twenty-two years old, worked as a prostitute in downtown Seattle. At the time of her disappearance, Delise was living with a friend in Seattle. On Sunday, October 30, 1983, at approximately 3:00 p.m., she was dropped off at a bus stop in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle. She promised to return with a Halloween costume for her friend’s child. She was never seen again.
Ridgway was off work the Sunday that Delise disappeared.
Almost five months later, on February 14, 1984, Delise’s remains were discovered at Exit 38 off Interstate 90. Her body was found underneath a pile of logs. At the time the bones were not identified; Delise had not yet been reported missing. In April of 1984, a friend reported her missing because she thought Delise matched the Green River victim profile. A year later, the King County Medical Examiner identified Delise’s remains through a comparison of medical records.
During interviews, Ridgway stated that he killed and placed three women near Exit 38.
He correctly recalled that he placed two women on opposite sides of the Exit 38 road (the old
Interstate 90). Delise Plager and Lisa Yates were on opposite sides of the road from one another.
Ridgway recalled that he placed Delise on the south side of the road between two logs. He further recalled that it was raining and that he was in a hurry to dump her. He has suggested that he went back and had sex with the body.
Ridgway claimed to remember virtually nothing about killing Delise other than where he dumped her body. He mistakenly said she was black; Delise was white.
Ridgway said he was angry during this period of time because he was forced to work the night shift at Kenworth beginning on November 1, 1983.
In 2003, the Task Force took Ridgway to Exit 38. He had difficulty pointing out precisely where he placed his victims. He accurately recalled that Delise was on the other side of the street from Lisa Yates. He also accurately recalled that the women were left on different sides of a bridge; the Exit 38 road also bridges a stream near the dumpsites.
2. Kim Nelson (Count XLII) Less than two days after Delise was killed, Ridgway picked up and killed another woman, twenty-one year old Kim Nelson. Kim worked as a prostitute in several cities on the West Coast. She was distinctive in appearance; she was nearly six feet tall with very short, bleached blonde hair.
Kim came to Seattle in August of 1983, and was arrested numerous times. On October 30, 1983, she was released from the King County Jail. She and fellow prostitute Paige Miley began staying at the Ben Carol Motel at South 144th and PHS.
Two days after Kim’s release from jail, on the morning of November 1, 1983, at approximately 11:00 a.m., Kim and Paige went to the bus stop in front of the car wash at South
144th and PHS. Shortly after arriving at the bus stop, Paige got a “car date” and left Kim alone at that location. Paige turned a quick “car date” nearby and returned to the bus stop to find Kim gone. Kim never returned. This was the only time the two had been on PHS together.
Several nights later, while Paige was working on PHS, a man driving a red pickup truck approached her and asked for a “car date.” Paige later described him as a white man, late twenties to early thirties, with brown hair and a wispy moustache. The truck had a white, cabhigh canopy over the bed. (This description matches the truck Ridgway was driving at the time.)
The man asked Paige where her tall blonde friend was – an obvious reference to Kim Nelson.
Knowing that she and Kim had only been together on PHS for a very short time on the day that Kim disappeared, Paige correctly suspected that this man was involved in Kim’s disappearance, and she refused to go with him.
A few days later, Kim was reported missing. Paige told police about the man who had asked her about Kim.
In April of 1984, Ridgway was interviewed about his contacts with prostitutes on PHS and admitted that he had seen Kim and had contact with her “roommate” shortly after her disappearance. Ridgway claimed that the “roommate” had told him she believed the Green River killer had gotten Kim.
In June of 1986, almost three years after she disappeared, Kim’s skull and a few bones were recovered in a deeply wooded area off I-90 and Exit 38. Two other murdered women (Delise Plager and Kim Yates) had been found near this location a couple miles away.
In 1987, as the investigation into Ridgway progressed, Paige was re-contacted and shown a montage containing Ridgway’s photo. Paige quickly identified Ridgway as the person who approached her on PHS and inquired about Kim Nelson.
In 2003, Ridgway admitted that he killed Kim. Ridgway provided a fairly detailed description of killing Kim and disposing of her body. Ridgway recalled that he just went on the night shift and that he picked up Kim during the morning hours. He stated that he picked her up near a car wash on PHS on the day after Halloween. He recalled that she was tall and blonde.
Ridgway admitted he approached Paige Miley and asked her for a “date.” When asked why he mentioned Kim Nelson to her, Ridgway claimed that he had not given it much thought and was simply trying to “date” Paige Miley.
Ridgway claimed that he took Kim to his house and killed her in his bedroom. He thought that she fought with him and noted that she was taller than he was. After he killed her, he took her clothing and jewelry. He wrapped her body in a rug, pulled his truck up to his front door and swung her over into the truck bed. He covered the body with his green rug and drove out to Exit 38. He recalled driving up a long dirt road because it was in the middle of the day and he wanted to take her where no one could see him. He pulled her out and placed her on the left side of the road, which sloped downhill. He said the dirt road ran parallel to Interstate 90.
Ridgway’s description of where Nelson’s body was found was accurate. Although he had difficulty recognizing the area in 2003, Ridgway claimed it was due to the fact that trees had grown significantly since he deposited Kim’s body.
3. Lisa Yates (Count XLIII) Nineteen-year-old Lisa Yates worked as a prostitute on Rainier Avenue in Seattle and on PHS. According to her pimp/boyfriend, he last saw Lisa sometime in December of 1983. She left at approximately 11:00 a.m. to work on Rainier Avenue. She was never reported missing.
Three months later, on March 13, 1984, a soldier in a convoy that stopped at Exit 38
discovered Lisa’s remains. The body was north of the road, lying between two large logs that are the remains of an old logging skidder. She was not far from the stream that ran next to the road.
Ridgway admitted killing a woman and leaving her in the area where Lisa’s remains were found. He recalled that he killed her at night in the winter and that it was cold and wet. He recalled that he was in a hurry when he dumped her body at Exit 38. He thought there was a bridge near the dumpsite (there is a bridge nearby). He correctly recalled that he killed this victim after he killed Kim Nelson. He claimed not to recall any details about killing Lisa and could not remember where he picked her up.
Ridgway had a new roof placed on his house on or around December 17, 1983 - the same period of time Lisa Yates disappeared. He distinctly recalled picking up and killing a woman on the day the roof was being worked on. After picking up the woman, he drove her to the house, but the workers were still there. He then took her to the Levitz parking lot near the Southcenter Mall and strangled her in the back of his truck. Though this murder would have occurred close in time to when Lisa disappeared, Ridgway equivocated on whether Lisa Yates could be this victim.
Ridgway was taken to Exit 38 while being interviewed by the Task Force in 2003.
Initially, he had difficulty pointing out the precise locations where he placed his victims. He accurately recalled that Delise Plager was on the other side of the street from Lisa Yates. The Exit 38 road bridges a stream near the dumpsites, and he also accurately recalled that the women were left on different sides of the bridge.
O. MARY WEST (COUNT XLIV)
Mary West worked as a prostitute in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, along Aurora Avenue North and in downtown Seattle. On February 6, 1984, around 11:30 a.m., Mary left her aunt’s house, located several blocks west of Rainier Avenue. She was last seen a few hours later on Rainier Avenue. She was sixteen.
Mary had been punctual in her comings and goings, and her aunt reported her missing to the police two days later on February 8, 1984.
Over a year and a half later, on September 8, 1985, a teacher on a fieldtrip found Mary’s skull in Seward Park. A later search recovered her entire skeleton, which was lying near the base of a large fir tree. No clothing or other items were found with the body.
During interviews in 2003, Ridgway admitted killing Mary West. He remembered that she was black and under 20 years old. When shown her photograph, he acknowledged that she looked “familiar.” Ridgway said he believed he killed Mary on a weekday in the morning. He claimed not to remember where he picked Mary up but speculated it would have been in the Rainier Valley area.
Ridgway had been to Seward Park before. 11 He told investigators in 2003 that he “figured [it was] a good place to have a date and kill a woman.” According to Ridgway, he and Mary walked up a trail and put down a blanket. Ridgway claimed that he killed Mary after having sex with her. He said he distracted her by suggesting that a car was coming and, when she raised her head, he grabbed her neck and strangled her. When she fought him, he told her that if she would stop fighting he would let her go. Ridgway said she continued to struggle and that he had 11 Ridgway’s first wife confirmed that Ridgway was familiar with the park and they would hike there.
scratches on his back after killing her. When she was dead, he said, he pulled her farther into the park and covered her body with debris. He took her clothes and jewelry and later disposed of them.
In 2003, Ridgway was able to direct the Task Force to Seward Park and, while in a van, correctly pointed out the area where Mary West’s body had been found.
P. HIGHWAY 18: CINDY SMITH AND PATRICIA BARCZAK
1. Cindy Smith (Count XLV) In March of 1984, Cindy Smith called her mother from California and told her she wanted to come home to Seattle. Cindy grew up in Seattle but had recently moved to California with a boyfriend. For the past couple of years, Cindy had been involved in topless dancing and prostitution. When she called her mother, she told her that she was ready to get away from the boyfriend and the life they had been leading. Her mother immediately arranged for an airline ticket, and Cindy flew home a few days later.
Cindy spent her first few hours in Seattle, with her family. Around 11 a.m. on March 13, 1984, Cindy left her parents’ home in Des Moines and headed toward PHS. According to her family, Cindy intended to go to Seattle and visit her sister or apply for a job at one of the topless dance establishments located along PHS. She disappeared that day and was never seen again.
She was seventeen.
Ridgway did not begin work until 4:00 p.m. on March 13, 1984.
On June 27, 1987, two children were playing in a ditch alongside SE 312th Way. This roadway is a turn off from Highway 18 leading to the Green River Community College campus.
They began exploring a pile of garbage and debris. Using a stick, they poked at the garbage pile
and out rolled a human skull.
Task Force detectives quickly located the remainder of the skeleton under the pile of garbage. A piece of old wood, likely from a door, had been placed over the body, shielding it both from the elements and scavenging animals. The investigation revealed that the victim was naked with the exception of a piece of material, later determined to have been a tube top that was wrapped around the clavicle area. The Medical Examiner quickly identified the remains as those of missing person Cindy Ann Smith.
Like most of his murders, Cindy’s case remained unsolved until June of 2003 when Ridgway began talking to detectives about his crimes. Although Ridgway claimed not to recall the specifics surrounding Cindy Smith’s murder, he was insistent that he did kill her and described the dumpsite. Ridgway stated that he placed her off a small road that exited to the left from Highway 18, near the community college. Ridgway also recalled that he placed the body very close to the road and that he covered it with some debris he found at the site. Ridgway correctly recalled that one piece of debris was “a piece of wood.” He expressed surprise that it took three years to find Smith; he expected since she was close to the road she would be found quickly. In fact, Ridgway considered his placement of this body, close to the road, as a “mistake” he made and that he should have put her further out so she would not have been found.
During one of the many trips taken with Ridgway, detectives asked him to show them where he left Cindy’s body. Ridgway was unable to direct detectives to the correct location, and was unable to find the exit he used the night he dumped the body. In fact, the exit that Ridgway took to gain access to SE 312th no longer exits, and the area has changed significantly. When shown aerial photos from 1984 depicting Highway 18, Ridgway quickly pointed to the exit he had taken to access SE 312th.
Ridgway was also shown photos of the scene where Cindy was found. He was not told the location, but rather asked if he recognized what was depicted in the photographs. Ridgway correctly identified the photographs as the location where he placed her body.
2. Patricia Barczak (Count XLVI) In 2003, while discussing Cindy Smith, Ridgway also disclosed that he placed another victim nearby. He referred to this victim as “SIR (Seattle International Raceway) Lady.” Ridgway considered this body and Cindy Smith’s a sort of “cluster” (his word for a dumpsite with numerous bodies) because the two were less than one-half mile apart. Ridgway believed that this woman’s body had not been found. 12 Ridgway claimed that he placed her body in the area “where people take short cuts into SIR” and that he expected she would be found. Ridgway was shown a historical aerial photograph that depicts the Seattle International Raceway. He pointed to a spot where he left the woman he killed. The area identified by Ridgway was the location where the remains of Patricia Barczak had been found in 1993.
Patricia Barczak had disappeared on October 17, 1986 - several years after the Green River killer had purportedly stopped killing. She had been staying at the Airporter Motel on PHS, went out to engage in prostitution, and never returned. Patricia was nineteen years old when she disappeared. She had dark brown hair and was slightly overweight.
Ridgway began working the swing shift at Kenworth in October of 1986 and did not report to work until late afternoon on October 17, 1986.
12 Because Patricia Barczak was not one of the official 49 victims of the Green River killer, neither Ridgway nor his attorneys were provided with any information related to her murder prior to Ridgway’s confession.
Six and a half years after Patricia’s disappearance, in February of 1993, a road worker found her skull just off Highway 18 between milepost 8 and 9. This area was commonly used by people sneaking into the Seattle International Raceway.
Ridgway incorrectly thought that he killed Patricia prior to 1985 and that she was either black or “black-haired.” He correctly recalled that she was approximately twenty years old and a little bit overweight. Ridgway further remembered that he killed Cindy Smith prior to killing Patricia.
Q. PATRICIA YELLOWROBE (COUNT XLVII)
On Tuesday, August 4, 1998, at approximately 1:30 p.m., the owner of a South Park, King County business, “All City Wrecking,” located at 9328 Des Moines Way South, closed his office and locked the fence surrounding the wrecking yard. He returned on the morning of Thursday, August 6, 1998 and discovered the body of Patricia Yellowrobe, lying just outside the fence on the east side of the tow yard, in a gravel parking lot west of an entrance ramp to the southbound lanes of Highway 99.
Patricia had a history of prostitution and chronic alcohol abuse.
The body lay at the margin of the parking lot, near some tall bushes. It was fully clothed, in a bra, T-shirt, underpants, jeans, socks, and boots.
An autopsy was performed at the Office of the King County Medical Examiner. No evidence of significant injury was found. No spermatozoa were seen on vaginal, anal, or oral swabs. High levels of alcohol and controlled substances were found in the blood.
Patricia’s vaginal swab, and pubic hair were subjected to DNA typing at the WSPCL.
The vaginal swab showed a low amount of semen that was insufficient to obtain a profile. A
partial male profile was developed from the pubic hair; Ridgway can be excluded as a source of this DNA profile.
The Autopsy Report concluded:
The cause of death is acute combined opiate and ethanol intoxication. The circumstances, scene investigation and postmortem examination, which did not reveal evidence of significant injury, indicate that the manner of death is probable accident.
Because Patricia was believed to have died from an accidental drug overdose (and because she died in 1998) she was never considered a “Green River” victim. No documents, photographs, or other material on her death were ever provided to Ridgway or his attorneys before he began discussing her death with investigators.
However, during interviews in 2003, Ridgway confessed to killing Patricia and leaving her body at that location. His admissions came slowly, but, in the end, he provided details to investigators that only the killer would have known.
His statements concerning this homicide unfolded as follows:
On June 26, 2003, Ridgway said he never killed anyone in South Park, the neighborhood where Patricia’s body was discovered.
On July 3, 2003, Ridgway said that he had not killed or even hurt any of the prostitutes he “dated” in the 1990’s.
On July 7, 2003, Ridgway said “…I don’t think I killed anybody in South Park.” On July 9, 2003, detectives took Ridgway to various sites in King County where they had found bodies associated with the Green River killer, and others (like South Park) where they had not. The purpose of the trip was, in part, to determine whether Ridgway could recall sites where he had dumped bodies some twenty years before. Some of the sites visited were considered “false sites” where no homicide victim had been found, to test Ridgway’s veracity. Investigators
chose a South Park site as one of the “false sites,” even though the victim of an apparent drug overdose had been found at that location in 1998.
The scene had changed dramatically; new buildings had been erected. While at that location, Ridgway told detectives that he had “dated” nearby, but only once, and that he had never assaulted anyone at that location. (At the other “false” locations, Ridgway maintained that he had not left any bodies there.)
Then, on July 22, 2003, toward the end of a lengthy interview session which ranged over a number of topics (having nothing to do with South Park), the following exchange took place between Ridgway and a detective:
DET: What else? There anything else I should talk to yo u about?
GR: … I, ah, promised I wouldn’t lie but…and I…it… DET: You know, if you told me a lie, I don’t care.
GR: I…I know.
DET: I just wanna know the truth.
GR: I thought and thought about that site at South Park, and I told you I’d never been there before and everything, you know, you got it on tape.
Ridgway recounted a vague memory of killing a woman in South Park. He said he was not certain that he had murdered someone there, but he had been thinking about the murder, and it had been “bugging” him for days. The memory, he said, involved killing a black woman after struggling with her on the ground at “a site next to the freeway that was, ah, surrounded by blackberry bushes, and a road going in and it was like a u-turn.” (This describes the site where Patricia’s body was found; Highway 99 is a divided freeway at that location.)
Ridgway said he could not recall whether she was naked or clothed, which was unusual,
since most of the victims were unclothed when he dumped them. He said he could not recall what vehicle he had driven to the spot, or the decade in which the murder took place. He said he believed that she “seemed to be pretty easy” to kill.
Ridgway told detectives that he thought he remembered “a lot of glass on the ground” where he struggled with the woman. Crime scene photographs taken of the parking lot where the body was found depict numerous glass fragments.
Detectives did not ask Ridgway any questions about this incident during the following week. On July 30, 2003, a forensic psychologist interviewing Ridgway was addressing the issue of Ridgway’s last victim when the following exchange took place:
DR: So who…all right. Who was next after her?
GR: …Uh, I vaguely remember uh, killing a woman over in South Park.
DR: Where…and tell me again. In South Park? That doesn’t mean anything to me.
GR: Uh. South…is a South Park and uh, right next to the freeway I…first thought I’d…I killed her and she was naked. But I’ve been thinking about it. And I think I was havin’ sex with her in the back of the truck and um, was ready to… Uh, walked out to the passenger side to, to um, open the door for her. And I didn’t wanna pay for the sex.
And uh, I choked her. And she was fully clothed, I think.
And I don’t remember if she uh…one of the women uh, when I choked her, she wet her pants. But I don’t know if that one was the one or not.
It cannot be determined whether or not Patricia urinated at the time of her death.
However, according to Ridgway, the vast majority of his victims were naked when he murdered them, and therefore could not have “wet their pants.” During the rest of the psychologist’s interview, Ridgway occasionally protested that his memory about the incident was vague. However, he provided considerable detail about the
murder. He said he had sex with her in a parking lot “right next to the freeway on a, um, dead end driveway.” This, he said was also where he left the body. He explained: “I left her in the..in the park…in the, ah, dead end circle you drive around. I think I just left her on the ground.” The parking lot where Patricia’s body was found was, indeed, a dead end.
Ridgway also told the psychologist that he had sex with the woman in the back of his truck at that location, but did not kill her then. He said he killed her after she redressed and was standing at the passenger door of the truck, preparing to get in the passenger compartment.
Asked to describe her, Ridgway said that she was “…a little skinny and, um, um, hundred and a…maybe a hundred and thirty-five pounds, hundred and forty.” According to the Autopsy Report, Patricia was five feet ten inches in height and weighed 132 pounds.
Ridgway told the psychologist that the murder at South Park was somewhat abnormal for him. This killing was not as well-planned as the others; he said he became enraged when Patricia’s sexual performance failed to meet his expectations: “I just didn’t wanna pay for somebody just layin’ around.” On the following day, July 31, 2003, detectives showed Ridgway an aerial photograph depicting the wrecking yard, the parking lot, and Highway 99 as they appeared in 1998. He pointed to the location where Patricia’s body was discovered. When the detectives showed him a photo of her body lying at the scene, he said, “Yeah, that looks, looks like her, yeah.” (Ridgway could not identify Patricia from a photograph taken of her while alive.)
Ridgway also told detectives that he recalled that the business nearby was not open and the gate was closed. Detectives later interviewed the owner of the fenced business (the wrecking yard) adjacent to the parking lot where Patricia’s body was found. The body was left in the parking lot on a Wednesday, when the fenced gate to that business had indeed been locked.
On August 8, 2003, Ridgway’s memory of killing Patricia Yellowrobe seemed to have improved:
I remember that one. Uh, uh, the one at South Park, yeah.…she wouldn’t, uh, she wouldn’t, uh, let me get behind her and, uh, and screw her. And so, uh, I got madder and madder. And when we got out, uh, the back of the truck, I opened the door for her and I started choking her.
Later, he contended that Patricia was responsible for her death:
She didn’t want to spend an extra three or four minutes to, to uh, have me climax and be, have a customer. She just uh, said “you’re over with,” you know, some’n like that, and uh, got dressed and when we got out I was still angry at her, and ch-choked her and I, after that I panicked. I didn’t, I didn’t put her in the back ‘a the truck and, and take her some place. I just left it there.
Later still, Ridgway told detectives again that he did not “climax” during intercourse with Patricia.
Ridgway’s admissions were brought to the attention of the King County Medical Examiner. According to the Medical Examiner, manual strangulation can be accompanied without any physical findings whatsoever. It is possible that Patricia Yellowrobe’s level of intoxication compromised her ability to withstand even a few seconds of asphyxia.
R. JANE DOE “B20” (COUNT XLVIII) On June 13, 2003, the first day of interviews with the Task Force, Ridgway described a site off the Kent-Des Moines Road and stated that he was “100 percent certain” that the victim’s remains were still there. He stated that he drove by frequently and always remembered it as a dumpsite. He stated that this victim was not on the list of missing “Green River” killer victims and described her as white, sixteen to twenty years old, skinny, approximately 135 pounds with
brown or blonde shoulder length hair. 13 When Ridgway made this disclosure, no remains had been found at that location.
Ridgway gave inconsistent accounts of when he killed the girl or young woman he said he dumped at that location. He stated that the murder occurred during 1982 and 1983, but he also acknowledged that it could have occurred in the 1970’s.
In August of 2003, Ridgway visited the site and pointed to the exact area where the Task Force then recovered approximately twenty-three human bones. No skull was found. To date, the victim has not been identified. A mtDNA profile confirms that the victim, is female, but the profile does not match that of any of the official missing “Green River” killer victims. A forensic anthropologist with the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, has opined that the bones are consistent with a thirteen to twenty-four-year-old female. The age of the bones is estimated to be at least ten years old but likely much older (as much as twenty plus years).
Task Force detectives continue to attempt to identify this victim.
VIII. UNCHARGED VICTIMS
There are a number of murders that Ridgway claims to have committed which, in the view of the King County Prosecuting Attorney, are not supported by sufficient evidence to warrant a charge of Aggravated Murder in the First Degree at this time. It is likely that Ridgway killed these women, given their lifestyle, the circumstances of their disappearance, and Ridgway’s prolific killing spree. In none of these cases has the woman’s body been recovered.
Ridgway has not been particularly accurate in associating dumpsites with the victims that he placed there. As noted elsewhere, to date, he has led the Task Force to the remains of three other victims, and he was incorrect about the identity of two of the three victims.
Moreover, Ridgway’s claim that he killed these women has not been corroborated.
Based upon Ridgway’s statements, investigators believe or strongly suspect that he is responsible for at least three women on the “Green River” list who remain missing: Keli McGinness, Kase Lee, and Patricia Osborn.
Keli McGinness was a prostitute who worked in Seattle, Portland and California. She disappeared on June 28, 1983, after checking into a motel on PHS. Ridgway was known to have “dated” Keli several months before she disappeared. During interviews in 2003, he claimed that he killed her. He has suggested multiple sites where he may have left Keli’s body and has been inconsistent about the circumstances of her murder.
Ridgway also suggested that he killed Kase Lee. Kase, who also worked as a prostitute, disappeared on August 28, 1982, after leaving her apartments near PHS. Ridgway has suggested that Kase Lee may be a woman that he killed and left in south King County. However, he was unable to recognize a photograph of her, and it is impossible to search the site because of development.
Ridgway also thought that he may have killed Patricia Osborn. Patricia worked as a prostitute and disappeared from Aurora Avenue in October of 1983. Ridgway could not, however, provide any details about her or where he placed her body.
Investigators continue to work on these cases.
In addition to these three missing women, Ridgway has claimed that he left victims at a number of locations. In some cases, he has provided a general description of the victim; in others, he claims to remember virtually nothing other than the act of placing a victim in that location. The Task Force has searched all of the areas where subsequent development has not made it impossible. To date, no remains or other evidence has been found other than those
described above. The investigation continues.
IX. A COLD-BLOODED KILLER
As Ridgway himself admits, the forty-eight victims described above represent only a portion of the women he killed. Why did he kill so many young women? We cannot answer that question. However, some of Ridgway’s admissions reveal a deeply rooted psychopathy.
It is readily apparent that Ridgway does not suffer from any mental disease or defect that would absolve him from responsibility for his crimes. 14 Nothing in Ridgway’s history, apart from his crimes recounted here, suggests serious mental illness. As a child, Ridgway said, he wet his bed until age thirteen or so. He was a “slow learner,” and a poor reader. According to him, as an adolescent he also dabbled in arson, paid a child to let him fondle her genitals, committed a number of minor property offenses, and killed a cat by suffocating it. He stabbed a six-year-old boy (as recounted above). He said he was never sexually molested or physically abused, and denied contemplating suicide.
When a forensic psychiatrist asked Ridgway if he thought he had a mental illness, Ridgway replied that he used to have a problem with “killing women.” Asked why he thought that this was an illness, Ridgway responded “… I don’t, I don’t know if it was an illness, or just uh, I just wanted to kill.” Asked if there was any additional evidence of mental illness, Ridgway cited his propensity to have sex with the women after they were dead. Asked if there was any evidence of mental illness apart from homicide and necrophilia, Ridgway replied: “No, I don’t think so.” 14 Ridgway expressly rejected any suggestion that intoxication of any kind played a role in his homicides. He claimed (there was no evidence to the contrary) that the only drugs he ever used was marijuana, and this very rarely.
A forensic psychologist asked Ridgway:
DR: Okay. In addition to or aside from any memory problems have you ever been concerned about other mental problems or psychological problems that you might have or have had?
GR: Ah, might be the, um, well it…ah, somewhere along the line maybe a, ah, um, forget what they call it, ah, take tell the difference between a lie and a truth maybe, that mighta been somethin’.
DR: …let me be more concrete. I think some people might think that, ah, ah, killing a whole lot of women reflects a problem. Did you ever think this is a…this is suggestive that I might have some mental health issues?
GR: Yeah, ah, hatred to women, hatred to prostitutes, or… DR: So, did you ever say to yourself, Gary I think, ah, you got a mental problem here?
GR: Yes.
DR: And when did you…when do you recall first being concerned about that general issue?
GR: I don’t know, ah, I never really, never really thought about it.
According to Ridgway, he never gave a thought to how the victims felt while he was killing them. Asked by a forensic psychologist if he thought there was something missing in him that was present in other people, Ridgway replied: “caring.” Hints of his later obsessions were apparent in Ridgway’s accounts of his youth. When Ridgway first told a forensic psychologist that he had stabbed a young boy when he was in his mid-teens, the following exchange occurred:
DR: Had you been fantasizing about stabbing people before that happened?
GR: No, other than maybe stab my mom, stab my mom.
Ridgway admitted that he was sexually attracted to his mother. Ridgway’s feelings toward his mother during this time in his life seem an admixture of lust and humiliation.
Ridgway, who was a bed-wetter until his early teens, seemed to have vivid memories of having his genitals washed by his mother. This imagery may have contributed to his sexual development: Ridgway fantasized about showering with prostitutes.
Ridgway’s attraction to his mother was accompanied by homicidal thoughts about her; he entertained thoughts of mutilating her, killing her, burning down the house with her inside. “I thought about stabbing her in the chest or in the heart maybe uh… um… maybe uh…cut her face and chest.” Later, Ridgway tried to minimize the fantasy of cutting his mother:
Just, you know, just a little whim of just you know cutting her just to you know take a knife and slicing her, not the whole defile… Ridgway admitted he had begun stalking his peers in elementary school. He described surreptitiously following girls home while in junior high school, in a state of sexual arousal.
…I’d have a…a hard on and… think of the woman as a goal and be on the opposite side of the street. And find out where she lived… Ridgway described an incident which took place, he said, in the late 1960’s, where he “tried forcing sex on” a young woman. He said he picked the girl up at the Seattle Center and offered to drive her home. He pulled off to the side of the road, asked her to have sex with him, and fondled her breasts. According to Ridgway, he allowed the girl to leave his car.
Ridgway said that he felt mixed emotions after murdering one of his early victims in his bedroom. He was scared, he said, because he had to find a place to put her body. But he was relieved because he did not need to drive her back to Seattle, where he picked her up — and because he did not have to pay her. And, he said, he felt “a little bit of power.”
When describing one victim (whom he killed before all but one of the women he placed in the Green River), Ridgway admitted: “…she didn’t piss me off for any reason, I just killed her because I wanted to.” Ridgway’s admissions frequently seemed motivated by a pride in his criminal accomplishments. He opined that a popular Seattle true crime writer would write a book about him. Ridgway told a forensic psychiatrist that he did not want to die, but that he thought he should be executed “for killing that many women.” He expressed pride in being able to hide bodies that the Task Force never found. He was pleased that the detectives had to use ropes and ladders to recover the bodies he placed at Mountain View Cemetery. He felt that no investigator had caught him; rather, he was the victim of new technology: “…what got me caught was technology got me caught.” Ridgway once described his homicidal behavior as his “career.” He said that he was “good in one thing, and that’s killing prostitutes.” His urge to kill extended beyond just prostitutes. Ridgway acknowledged that he had to struggle with the temptation to kill his current wife and other family members. Ridgway reports that he rejected these thoughts because he recognized that he was likely to be caught if he did so.
Ridgway adamantly insisted that he was not a rapist.
I go with the, uh, a person that volunteers to have sex to, and then kill ‘em. Where if I went and raped somebody and killed ‘em, uh, that is uh, not what I would do…would be low on my uh, category of, of people. I am not a rapist, no. No, I’m not a rapist.… I’m…I’m not a rapist I’m a …I’m a murderer I’m not a rapist.
Periodically during the interviews, Ridgway would use the word “remorse.” It appeared to investigators and prosecutors that Ridgway really meant something more like “regret.” On one occasion, when Ridgway appeared to cry for his victims, a forensic psychologist challenged
him:
DR: …I mean if you killed these women before 1990 why are you crying about it now rather than… GR: Well because of how I screwed up. How I screwed up on killing them. Maybe leaving too much…mostly on… DR: Did you say leaving too much?
GR: Too much… DR: …evidence.
GR: Evidence at the time.
Another time, Ridgway said that he felt “a little bit of remorse” after killing a woman while his son was nearby in Ridgway’s truck. Ridgway further explained:
GR: Killing her with Matthew by was not the right thing to do.
DR: Why was that wrong?… GR: Because Matthew mighta saw somethin’.
DR: Why would that be a problem?
GR: Well he’d have that…have that memory for his life.
DR: Maybe he would be a witness against you.
GR: And maybe he would be a witness against me too.
DR: If you had…if he had observed you kill one of the women, would you have killed him?
GR: No, probably not, I don’t know.
DR: Possibly, though?
GR: It’s possible.
DR: Did you think about that at the time?
GR: Yeah.
Occasional expressions of what appeared to be empathy for a victim usually transformed into something else when Ridgway was encouraged to elaborate. Ridgway told a forensic psychologist that he once departed from his usual method of killing his victims from behind, and faced a sixteen-year-old girl while he strangled her. He said that looking at her face while killing her was “painful to see.” GR: …the…the way she was lookin’ at me and…and beggin’ for her life.
DR: Yeah.
GR: And that taught me a lesson not ever to choke ‘em… DR: I bet it did.
GR: …with my hands ‘cause the sixteen-year-old or seventeenyear…it would be…I didn’t want them to…I didn’t want that part to be memorized in my mind, I wanted the…the back of the head ‘cause I couldn’t see their face.
DR: So she’s looking at you look at he r.
GR: She’s looking at me and..and..tryin’ to get me to stop, “Please, please don’t.” But I still kept on chokin’ her, I couldn’t let go. She was…she’d turn me in and I wouldn’t be able to kill anymore. And that meant a lot to me…to kill.
Ridgway also suggested that some of the responsibility for the murders should be attributed to his second wife, from whom he separated shortly before the first of the “Green River” victims were murdered. Frequently during the interviews, Ridgway attempted to “blame” his second wife for his current situation. According to Ridgway, if he had only killed his second wife when he had the chance, things might have turned out better for the community too:
…If I would have killed her then it’s possible that it might have changed my life. I’d only have one instead of 50 plus.
Ridgway said he considered killing her. A divorce would be costly and, because he had already been divorced once, he “didn’t want another one that’s, label myself as, you know, a loser.” Another problem was, Ridgway said, that he would be an obvious suspect in her death — his wife’s father knew that Ridgway had assaulted her in the past.
I couldn’t even you know set the house fire with her. I couldn’t arrange any kind of accident or something like that….Because it had been obvious. Her sister or mother, dad knows I choked her.
Ridgway expressed similar sentiments about the woman he was dating after his second divorce (he referred to her as his “girlfriend”) during 1982 to 1984, when he killed dozens of women. Ridgway speculated that there might have been “a hell of a lot less people dying if I had a, a nice woman to go home, go home to.” Ridgway had little regard for his wife and his girlfriend, he had no empathy at all for the women he killed. Moreover, he seemed to find this perfectly normal. In the midst of an interview about stealing money from the victims after killing them, Ridgway said:
…And, like, uh, uh, um, uh, not trying to go off the subject, but I w-, thought I was doing you guys a favor, killing, killing prosititutes, here you guys can’t control them, but I can.
…You can’t hurt anybody. You can’t you can arrest them and put cuffs on them, might be a little bit rough on them a little bit. But you can’t, uh, you can’t stop the problem.….
…I was doing uh, like I said, doing you a favor that you couldn’t, you guys couldn’t do. You couldn’t uh, I mean if its illegal aliens, you can take ‘em to the border and fly ‘em back out ‘a there. But if it’s a prostitute, you’d arrest ‘em, they were back on the street as soon as they get bail and change their uh, name, and you guys, you guys had the problem. I had, I had the answer.… Ridgway did not judge himself too harshly.
DET: …You’re obviously a serial killer, obviously you’ve killed many, many people.
GR: Un-huh (yes).
DET: And now we have the scale say one to five, and five being the worst possible evil person that could have done this kind of thing.
GR: Un-huh (yes).
DET: Where do you wanna fall on the scale?
GR: I’d say a three.
DET: Three?
GR: Un-huh (yes). For one thing is, ah, I killed ‘em, I didn’t torture ‘em. They went fast. … Even when Ridgway claimed to feel remorse, his expressions of this sentiment were patently false:
…I’m sorry for doing it but, um, it just I wasn’t killin’ a person, I was killin’ a…a…ah, I don’t know how I …how I’m gonna say it but, ah, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The women he murdered were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? This is a man devoid of human sentiment. He preyed upon a community’s most vulnerable members, and attributes their deaths to fate.
Why did Ridgway kill? He suffered from no mental illness that would absolve him of responsibility for these crimes. He murdered his victims deliberately, methodically, and systematically. He was uninhibited by any moral concerns. In five months of interviews, he displayed no empathy for his victims and expressed no genuine remorse. He killed because he wanted to. He killed because he could. He killed to satisfy his evil and unfathomable desires.
X. CONCLUSION
For two decades, citizens of King County were terrorized by the nation’s most prolific serial killer. This nightmare is over. Gary Ridgway will never kill again.
Dated: _____________________ Respectfully Submitted, Jeff B. Baird, WSBA 11731 Patricia A. Eakes, WSBA 18888 Brian M. McDonald, WSBA 19986 Ian M. Goodhew, WSBA 29304 Sean P. O’Donnell, WSBA 31488 Deputy Prosecuting Attorneys King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office