Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer

Early childhood and development

Gary Leon Ridgway, born February 18th, 1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah, His home life was some what troubled, relatives had described his mother as domineering, and have said that young Ridgway witnessed more than his fair share of violent arguments. As a young child, Ridgway tested an 82 on the IQ test, signifying below average intelligible. His teenage years were troubled, especially when he lured a 6 year old boy into the woods, stabbing him through the rib into the liver, when he was just 16. Ridgway, according to the victim and himself, walked away laughing, and saying, "I always wondered what it would be like to kill someone."

Adult life

At age 21, after graduating from high school, Ridgway married his high school girlfriend Marcia Winslow. He joined the Navy and was sent to Vietnam, where he served on board a supply ship and saw combat. During his time in the military, Ridgway began frequenting numerous prostitutes and contracted gonorrhea. This angered him, but he continued to have unprotected sex with prostitutes. Meanwhile his wife, alone and 19 years old, had an extramarital affair, and the marriage ended within a year.

When questioned about Ridgway after his arrest, friends and family described him as friendly but strange. His first two marriages resulted in divorce because of infidelities by both partners. His second wife claimed that he had placed her in a chokehold. Ridgway had become religious during his second marriage, proselytizing door-to-door, reading the Bible aloud at work and at home, and insisting that his wife follow the strict teachings of their church pastor. Ridgway would also frequently cry after sermons or reading the Bible.^[7] Ridgway continued to solicit the services of prostitutes during this marriage; he also wanted his wife to participate in sex in public and inappropriate places, sometimes even in areas where his victims' bodies were later discovered.

According to women in his life, Ridgway had an insatiable sexual appetite. His three ex-wives and several old girlfriends reported that Ridgway demanded sex from them several times a day. Often, he would want to have sex in a public area or in the woods. Ridgway himself admitted to having a fixation with prostitutes, with whom he had a love-hate relationship. He frequently complained about their presence in his neighborhood, but he also took advantage of their services regularly. It has been speculated that Ridgway was torn between his uncontrollable lusts and his staunch religious beliefs.

In 1975, his second wife gave birth to a son.

Murders

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ridgway is believed to have murdered at least 71 women (according to Ridgway, in an interview with Sheriff Reichert in 2001) near Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. His court statements later reported that he had killed so many, he lost count. A majority of the murders occurred between 1982 and 1984. The victims were believed to be either prostitutes or runaways picked up along Pacific Highway South (International Blvd. 99), whom he strangled. Most of their bodies were dumped in wooded areas around the Green River, except for two confirmed and another two suspected victims found in the Portland, Oregon area. The bodies were often left in clusters, sometimes posed, usually nude. He would sometimes return to the victims' bodies and have sexual intercourse with them. Because most of the bodies were not discovered until only the skeletons remained, three victims are still unidentified. Ridgway occasionally contaminated the dump sites with gum, cigarettes, and written materials belonging to others, and he even transported a few victims' remains across state lines into Oregon to confuse the police.

Ridgway began each murder by picking up a woman, usually a prostitute. He sometimes showed the woman a picture of his son, to help her trust him. After having sex with her, Ridgway strangled her from behind. He initially strangled them manually. However, many victims inflicted wounds and bruises on his arm while trying to defend themselves. Concerned these wounds and bruises would draw attention, Ridgway began using ligatures to strangle his victims. He killed most victims in his home, his truck, or a secluded area. In the early 1980s, the King County Sheriff's Office formed the Green River Task Force to investigate the murders. The most notable members of the task force were Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert, who periodically interviewed incarcerated serial killer Ted Bundy from 1984. 

Bundy offered his opinions on the psychology, motivations, and behavior of the killer; he suggested that the killer was revisiting the dump sites to have sexual relations with his victims, and if police found a fresh grave, they should stake it out and wait for him to come back. Also contributing to the investigation was John E. Douglas, who has since written much on the subject of the Green River Killer.

Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 on charges related to prostitution. He became a suspect in 1983 in the Green River killings. In 1984, Ridgway took and passed apolygraph test (quality control protocols later developed in the FBI after careful review determined that Ridgway actually failed his polygraph test), and on April 7, 1987, police took hair and saliva samples from Ridgway. Around 1985, Ridgway began dating Judith Mawson, who became his third wife in 1988. Mawson claimed in a 2010 television interview that when she moved into his house while they were dating, there was no carpet. Detectives later told her he had probably wrapped a body in the carpet.

 In the same interview, she described how he would leave for work early in the morning some days, ostensibly for the overtime pay. Mawson speculated that he must have committed some of the murders while supposedly working these early morning shifts. She claimed that she had not suspected Ridgway's crimes before she was contacted by authorities in 1987, and had not even heard of the Green River Killer before that time because she did not watch the news.

Author Pennie Morehead interviewed Ridgway in prison, and she said while he was in the relationship with Mawson his kill rate went down, and he truly loved her. Mawson told a local television reporter, "I feel I have saved lives ... by being his wife and making him happy.

The samples collected in 1987 were later subjected to a DNA analysis, providing the evidence for his arrest warrant. On November 30, 2001, Ridgway was at the Kenworth Truck factory, where he worked as a spray painter, when police arrived to arrest him. Ridgway was arrested on suspicion of murdering four women nearly 20 years after first being identified as a potential suspect, when DNA evidence conclusively linked semen left in the victims to the saliva swab taken by the police. The four victims named in the original indictment were Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Ann Christensen. Three more victims—Wendy Coffield, Debra Bonner, and Debra Estes—were added to the indictment after a forensic scientist identified microscopic spray paint spheres as a specific brand and composition of paint used at the Kenworth factory during the specific time frame when these victims were killed.

Victims (known)

On August 15, 1982, Robert Ainsworth, 41, stepped into his rubber raft and began his descent south down the Green River toward the outer edge of Seattle's city limits. It was a trip he had made on many occasions, yet this time it would be different. As he drifted slowly downstream, he noticed a middle-aged balding man standing by the riverbank and a second, younger man sitting in a nearby pickup truck. Ainsworth suspected that the men were out for a day's fishing. As he peered into the clear waters his gaze was met by staring eyes. A young black woman's face was floating just beneath the surface of the water, her body swaying beneath her with the current. Believing it might be a mannequin, Ainsworth attempted to snag the figure with a pole. Accidentally, the raft overturned as he tried to dislodge the figure from a rock and Ainsworth fell into the river. To his horror, he realized that the figure was not a mannequin, but a dead woman. Seconds later he saw another floating corpse of a half nude black woman, partially submerged in the water.

Opal Mills, 16

Soon after reinforcement arrived at the scene, detectives sealed off the area and began a search for evidence. During the search, a detective made another macabre discovery. He found a third body, that of a young girl who was partially clothed. Unlike the other two girls, this one was found in a grassy area less than 30 feet from where the other victims lay in the water. It was obvious that she had died from asphyxiation. The girl had a pair of blue pants knotted around her neck. She also showed signs of a struggle, because she had bruises on her arms and legs. She was later identified as Opal Mills, 16. It was believed that she had been murdered within 24 hours of her discovery.

Following an examination of the bodies at the scene, Chief Medical Examiner Donald Reay determined that all three girls died of strangulation. The two girls found in the water, later identified as Marcia Chapman, 31, and Cynthia Hinds, 17, were both found to have pyramid-shaped rocks lodged in their vaginal cavities. They were both held down by rocks in the water.

Marcia Chapman, and Cynthia Hinds

Reay further determined that Chapman, a mother of two who had gone missing two weeks earlier, had been dead for over a week. She had shown advanced signs of decomposition. However, Hinds was believed to have been in the river for a period of only several days.   The three bodies were not the only ones to be found in and around Washington state's Green River. Several days earlier, the body of a woman named Deborah Bonner was discovered. Her nude body had been found slumped over a log in the Green River. She too had been strangled to death.

Deborah Bonner

Just a month earlier, another young girl, identified as Wendy Lee Coffield, was found strangled and floating in the Green River. Moreover, six months prior to Coffield's discovery, the body of her friend Leanne Wilcox was found several miles from the river in an empty lot. It was not believed that the Green River Killer murdered Wilcox, but the opinion of the investigators has been recently challenged.

Wendy Lee Coffield

During their investigation, detectives learned that the many of the murdered girls knew each other and shared a similar history of prostitution. Investigators decided to begin their search for the killer in the area where the girls were known to frequent. They conducted hundreds of interviews with many prostitutes who worked the main strip in Seattle, stretching from South 139^thStreet to South 272^nd Street. Investigators tried to obtain information on any suspicious characters they might have encountered. However, many of the girls were reluctant to talk because of their blatant mistrust for the police.  

    There were other prostitutes who filed reports with the police that were of special concern to the task force. It was believed that the reports could be related to the Green River murders. Interviews taken by two separate prostitutes claimed that a man in a blue and white truck abducted them and attempted to kill them.

According to one account by Susan Widmark, 21, a middle-aged man in a blue and white truck solicited her. Once Widmark was in his truck, he pointed a pistol to her head and sped off toward the highway. He took her to a desolate road, turned off the engine and proceeded to violently rape her.

Following the rape, he allowed her to dress while he began to drive away from the scene with her still in the car. While driving, he made reference to the recent river murders, while continuing to hold a gun to her head. Fearing for her life, she managed to escape from the vehicle while at a stoplight. Widmark was able to make out part of the registration number of the truck before the man sped away. 

A similar incident happened to Debra Estes, 15, who filed a report with police in late August 1982, concerning a rape. Estes told police that she was walking down the highway when a man in a blue and white pick-up truck approached her and offered her a ride. She accepted and climbed into the vehicle. To her amazement, the man pulled a pistol out and pointed it at her head. He violently forced her to give him oral sex before releasing her into the woods, handcuffed and driving off. She immediately fled the scene looking for help.

Seeing an emerging pattern that could have been related to the Green River murders, the task force decided to follow the lead and search for the truck and driver. They hoped that new information concerning the man would lead them to a break in the case.

That September, a meat butcher named Charles Clinton Clark was pulled over in his blue and white truck while driving along Seattle's main strip. After a background check was conducted, it was learned that Clark owned two handguns. Investigators believed that Clark might be the man they were looking for. They obtained his driver's license photo and showed it to both Widmark and   Estes. Both women positively identified Clark as their attacker.

Clark was arrested and his house and vehicle were searched. The police found the two handguns that were allegedly used in the assaults. After interrogation by police, Clark admitted to attacking the women. However, there was speculation as to whether he was the Green River Killer because he was known to release his victims following an attack. Moreover, Clark had a solid alibi during the time many of the Green River victims disappeared.

When Clark was being booked with the rape of Widmark and Estes, 19-year-old Mary Bridgett Meehan disappeared during a walk. Meehan was more than eight months pregnant and went missing near the Western Six Motel. The motel was located on the strip and was a frequent hangout and workplace for many of the prostitutes that fell victim to the Green River Killer.

Mary Bridgett Meehan

Based on a hunch, Detective Reichert began to suspect that one of the volunteer civilians working on the case might be the Green River Killer. A 44-year-old out-of-work taxi driver became the focus of the investigation and was vigorously interviewed by the police. They were concerned because two weeks prior to Meehan's disappearance, two 16-year-old girls, Kase Ann Lee and Terri Rene Milligan, mysteriously disappeared. They too were thought to have had a history of prostitution. It was suspected that they had fallen victim to the Green River Killer. The taxi driver seemed to fit the profile of the killer devised by FBI agent John Douglas.

Terru Rene Milligan and Kase Ann Lee 

On September 26, 1982, the decomposing remains of a 17-year-old prostitute named Gisele A. Lovvorn were discovered. She had gone missing for more than two months before a biker found her nude body near abandoned houses south of the Sea-Tac International Airport. She had been strangled to death by a pair of men's black socks. Intriguingly, at the time of her disappearance, she was blonde. Yet, when her body was discovered her hair was dyed black. Although her body was not found in the direct vicinity of the now infamous river, police believed that she was a victim of the Green River Killer.

Gisele A. Lovvorn

Between September 1982 and April 1983, approximately 14 girls disappeared. Those missing included Mary Meehan, Debra Estes, Denise Bush, Shawnda Summers, Shirley Sherrill, Rebecca Marrero, Colleen Brockman, Alma Smith, Delores Williams, Gail Matthews, Andrea Childers, Sandra Gabbert, Kimi-Kai Pitsor and Marie Malvar. Most of the girls, ages ranging from between 15 and 23 years old, were known prostitutes who frequented the strip.

On May 8, 1983, another body was discovered that was later identified as Carol Ann Christensen, 21. Her remains were found by a family hunting for mushrooms in a wooded area near Maple Valley. When Christensen's body was found, the killer displayed her corpse in an unusually gruesome way.

Carol Ann Christensen

Christensen was found with her head covered by a brown paper bag. When it was removed, it was found that she had a fish carefully placed on top of her neck. Smith and Guillen state that the killer also placed another fish on her left breast and a bottle between her legs. Her hands were placed crossed over her stomach and freshly ground beef was placed on top of her left hand. Further examination revealed that she was strangled with a cord. Intriguingly, she also showed signs of having been in water at some point, even though the river was miles away. The task force speculated that she was yet another victim of the Green River Killer.

During the spring and summer of 1983, nine more young women, many of whom were prostitutes, disappeared. Those missing included Martina Authorlee and Cheryl Lee Wims, 18, Yvonne Antosh, 19. Carrie Rois, 15, Constance Naon, 21, Tammie Liles,16, Keli McGuiness, 18, Tina Thompson, 22, and April Buttram, 17. A majority of the girls were placed on the ever-growing list of possible Green River Killer murders. However, there were some who did not make the list because they were found outside of the parameters where the Green River Killer was known to dump many of the bodies.

That summer, several more bodies were discovered. In June, the unidentified remains, which were believed to be of a 17   to 19-year-old white woman was found on SW Tualatin Road. On August 11, the body of missing Shawnda Summers was discovered near the Sea-Tac Airport. One day later the remains of another body, which remained unidentified, was found at the Sea-Tac Airport North site. The fall and winter of 1983 would also yield as many disappearances and even more corpses.

Between September and December of 1983, nine more women went missing and seven bodies were discovered, all of whom were believed to have been abducted and murdered by the Green River Killer. The missing women, who were mostly prostitutes, included Debbie Abernathy,26, Tracy Ann Winston, 19, Patricia Osborn and Maureen Feeney, Mary Sue Bello, 25, Pammy Avent, 16,   Delise Plager, 22,   Kim Nelson, 26, and Lisa Lorraine Yates.

Those whose bodies were discovered included Delores Williams, 17, who had gone missing March 8, 1983. Her remains were discovered on September 18 at Star Lake. That same day, the remains of Gail Matthews, 23, were also discovered at Star Lake.

Over the next few months, the bodies of five more women were discovered.

On October 15, the skeletal remains of Yvonne Antosh, who was last seen on May 31, was found near Soos Creek on Auburn-Black Diamond Road. She was one of the few victims to have had a missing person's report filed on her. Twelve days later, the partially buried skeleton of Constance Naon was found in an area south of Sea-Tac Airport.

The task force investigators believed that there were probably more bodies to be found in that area, so they decided to conduct a search with the assistance of a team of teenaged Explorer Boy Scouts. On October 29, during a sweep of the empty lots surrounding the airport, one of the scouts found a skeleton covered with trash beneath some bushes. The remains were later identified as Kelly Ware, 22.     

The killer's deadly rampage claimed two more victims whose bodies were discovered before the New Year. On November 13, following an extensive search of several lots surrounding an area south of Sea-Tac near South 192^nd Street, the badly decomposed remains of Mary Meehan and her unborn baby were found. According to the Cold Serial Web site , Meehan and her child were the only victims attributed to the Green River Killer, who were fully buried. Several unexplainable items were found on or close to the body, including two small pieces of plastic, a large clump of hair near the pubic region of the body, a patch of skin attached to the skull, which contained fibers on it, three small bones, two halved yellow pencils and clear plastic tubing.

Kelly Ware 

One month later, on December 15, the skull of Kimi-Kai Pitsor was found in Auburn, Washington, near Mountain View Cemetery. It seemed as if the killer found a new burial site to place his victims. It would be the fifth known "dumping ground" used for the disposal of the bodies.

Two weeks following Pitsor's discovery, the Green River Task Force increased by more than half, due to the increasing number of murders in the area. It was feared many more murders would occur in the coming months. Their predictions would prove to be correct.

Although the "official" count of Green River victims was estimated at this time to be 11 or 12, the number has been and continues to be challenged. The precise number to this day remains unclear and it is believed to be much higher than initially estimated. Near the final months of 1983, there were approximately 18 bodies discovered in the Seattle region.  Many victims were not included on the list, even though they were killed in very nearly the same fashion as the other victims. There was no explanation given as to why the women were excluded from the list.

On February 14, 1984, the skeletal remains of a woman, who was later identified as Denise Louise Plager, were discovered 40 miles from the city close to interstate 90. She was the first victim to be found that year, but not the last. Over the next two months approximately nine more bodies would be found.

Some of those found included those of Cheryl Wims, 18, Lisa Yates, 26, Debbie Abernathy, Terry Milligan, 16, Sandra Gabbert, 17, and Alma Smith, 22. The other victims remained unidentified. Most of the girls had one primary thing in common, a history of prostitution. 

In mid April, a volunteer task force worker and psychic, Barbara Kubik-Pattern, had a vision that another woman's body would be found close to Interstate 90. Kubik-Pattern immediately contacted the police and told them about her vision, but became increasingly frustrated when they failed to act on the new information. Taking matters into her own hand, she and her daughter set out to find the woman.

Following the leads revealed by her vision, Kubik-Pattern and her daughter eventually came across another body. Immediately after the discovery, the two women drove to a nearby search area that was patrolled by the police. When she informed one of the officers of her discovery, she was rebuffed and even threatened with arrest for obstruction of the guarded perimeter.

Angered, Kubik-Pattern informed reporters that were stationed nearby of her discovery. Finally, members of the task force approached her as she talked with the reporters and asked her to show them the body. Shortly thereafter the police were confronted with the gruesome discovery.

The decomposing remains were that of Amina Agisheff, 36. She was last seen on July 7, 1982 walking home from her work at a restaurant in downtown Seattle. Agisheff did not fit the description of many of the other victims.

She was older than the other victims and a waitress, not a prostitute. Agisheff was also in a stable relationship at the time of her disappearance and was a mother of two. Although there were obvious differences between Agisheff's lifestyle and those of the other victims and the location of where her body was disposed, investigators believed that she was the victim of the Green River Killer. Moreover, she was listed as one of the killer's first victims, even though several murders prior to her disappearance matched the M.O. of the killer.

On May 26, two children playing on Jovita Road in Pierce County were shocked when they discovered a skeleton. The police and task force were immediately alerted to the new finding. Following a medical examination, it was discovered that the remains were that of fifteen-year-old runaway Colleen Brockman. Investigators still had no new leads to the identity of the killer, apart from the location of the bodies and the shoe print. After almost three years, the murderous killing spree continued.

 Several months later, the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy offered from his prison cell on death row to assist Keppel and the task force in finding their man. Bundy offered his old antagonist a rare glimpse into the mind of a serial killer, an offer that Keppel could not refuse. The two men conversed mostly via letters, where Keppel asked detailed questions that he hoped Bundy could answer.

Much of the information that Keppel received greatly interested Keppel and the task force investigators. Bundy suggested that the killer knew his victims, probably even befriending them before he lured them to their deaths. According to Keppel's book The Riverman, Bundy suggested that the killer likely disposed of even more bodies where they found the more recent ones. Moreover, he believed the disposal pattern of the bodies led closer to the killer's home.

Bundy was able to give unusual insight from a killer's prospective, much of which was helpful to the case. The information received from Bundy assisted the detectives in their general understanding of serial killer behavior. In fact, Bundy became one of the primary consultants, next to Douglas and Keppel that contributed to the build-up of the killer's profile. Despite this unusual advice, the task force remained stymied as to the identity of the Green River Killer. 

Although the murders seemed to have slowly diminished, they did not cease altogether. Between October and December 1984, two more bodies, identified as Mary Sue Bello, 25, and Martina Authorlee, 18, were discovered. Both bodies were found off of Highway 410. The total body count had climbed to 31, although only 28 of the victims actually made it on the ever-growing "official" Green River murder list. Fourteen women were still believed to be missing.

On March 10, 1985, another partially buried body was found near Star Lake Road. The victim was eventually identified as Carrie Rois, 15. She disappeared during the summer of 1983.

In mid June, a man bulldozing a patch of land in Tigard, Oregon, discovered the skeletal remains of two more women. The remains were later identified as Denise Bush, 23, and Shirley Sherrill, 19. Both girls were known prostitutes in Seattle. The discovery of the two women confirmed the fact that the Green River Killer's parameters had extended out of state. It seemed as if a new dumping ground had been revealed.

To make matters worse, that summer the skeletal remains of three more women were discovered off of I-90, east of Seattle. The remains were those of Maureen Feeney, 19, Kim Nelson, 26, and another unidentifiable young woman. Feeney was the only one of the three that investigators were able to link to a career in prostitution. The number of victims was quickly climbing toward a staggering 40. 

By the end of 1986, the staff had been reduced by 40 percent and Adamson was reassigned to another project. Captain James Pompey became the new leader of the Green River Task Force. Pompey immediately began to reorganize the team and the data related to the investigation. 

Just as Pompey was beginning to get started, two more bodies were discovered in December. This time the bodies were found much further away than expected in an area north of Vancouver, British Columbia. Yet again, the killer seemed to be taunting investigators. Even more intriguing was that the partial remains of several other women had been scattered along side the bodies of the two women. Even though the bodies were located a great distance from the others, there was no doubt in the investigators' minds that the work was that of the Green River Killer.

In the beginning months of 1987, investigators had a new suspect in relation to the Green River murders. Previously known to police, the newest suspect had been picked up for attempting to solicit an undercover police officer posing as a prostitute in May 1984. However, the man was released after he successfully passed a lie detector test. When investigators looked deeper into the man's past, they discovered that he had been accused of choking a prostitute in 1980 near the Sea-Tac International Airport. Yet, the man pleaded self-defense after claiming the woman bit him and he was soon after released from police custody.

One of the task force detectives, Matt Haney, was highly suspicious of this suspect and decided to dive even further into the man's history. He discovered that the police had at one time stopped and questioned the man back in 1982 while he was in his truck with a prostitute. The investigator learned that the prostitute he was with was one of the women on the Green River murder list, Keli McGinness.

Moreover, the police approached the man again in 1983 in connection with the kidnapping of murder victim Marie Malvar. A witness, Malvar's boyfriend followed the truck to the suspect's house after recognizing it as the one that he last saw his girlfriend in. Haney believed he might be on to the Green River Killer.

Haney learned from the man's ex-wife that he often frequented the dumpsites, where many of the bodies had been discovered. Also, several prostitutes claimed to have seen a man matching the suspect's description regularly cruising the strip between 1982 and 1983. It turned out that the man passed the strip almost daily on his way to work. Some of the most damaging evidence discovered was that the man, who worked as a truck painter, was found to have been absent or off duty on every occasion a victim disappeared.

Finally, on April 8, 1987, the police obtained a warrant and searched the man's house. According to the Seattle Times, the police also took "bodily samples" of the suspect so that they could compare them with the evidence they had from the Green River victims. However, there was insufficient evidence to arrest him and the man was released from police custody. The suspect was identified as Gary Ridgway.

Several weeks following Ridgway's release, Captain Pompey died from a massive heart attack related to a scuba-diving accident. The unfortunate event was picked up by the media and sensationalized. It was suggested that the Green River Killer was actually a police officer that murdered Pompey, regardless of the fact that there was absolutely no substantiating evidence to support the theory. One newspaper even called for an official investigation into the death of Pompey. It seemed as if the public's nerves had become raw after so much death in the city.

The task force, which was now led by a Captain Greg Boyle, was called once again in June. Three boys stumbled across the partially buried skeletal remains of a young woman, while searching for aluminum cans. The girl, who was identified as Cindy Ann Smith, 17, was found in a ravine behind the Green River Community College. She had been missing for approximately three years before her discovery.

Debra Estes

  More bodies of missing young women were discovered in the year that followed. Some of which included, that of missing runaway Debbie Gonzales, 14, and Debra Estes, 15, who disappeared six years earlier. Their deaths were attributed to the Green River Killer. Although there were still bodies being discovered, there were no recent killings attributed to the Green River Killer in the Seattle region.

In 1988, the discovery of more than 20 bodies of prostitutes in San Diego led to the belief that the Green River Killer moved and continued his murderous rampage in California. Detective Reichert and the new task force commander Bob Evans temporarily joined forces with the San Diego police department in an effort to find the killer. In December 1988, investigators had a new suspect.

A man named William J. Stevens caught the attention of the police after several callers phoned him in as a potential suspect during the airing of the popular true crime detective show "Crime Stoppers." Stevens was a prison escapee who was on the run for eight years, after a two-year stint behind bars for burglary. At the time he was rediscovered by police, he was enrolled at the University of Washington as a pharmacology student.

As task force investigators delved into Stevens' past, they learned that he was already a suspect in the Green River killings. It was also learned that Stevens had a blatant contempt for prostitutes and was known to have on several occasions talked about murdering them. When police searched his home they found masses of firearms, several drivers licenses, credit cards in assumed names and sexually explicit nude photos of prostitutes. Stevens was highly involved in robbery and credit card fraud, which he used to survive.

Task force investigators exhaustively interviewed Stevens about the Green River murders and searched the premises of his home throughout the summer and fall of 1989. Investigators even searched Stevens' father's home for clues tying him to any of the murders. However, nothing was found linking him to the murders.

Moreover, credit card records and photographs produced by Stevens' brother provided a tight alibi against his involvement with the crimes. According to the numerous records and receipts, Stevens was traveling across the country during the summer months of 1982, when many of the murders occurred. Eventually, Stevens was cleared of all involvement in the Green River murders.

Andrea Childers and Denise Bush, victim

 In October 1989, two more skeletal remains of young women were found. One of the victims, identified as Andrea Childers, was found in a vacant lot near Star Lake and 55^th Ave. South. Like many of the young women found before her, the cause of death remained unclear due to the state of decomposition. In early February 1990, the skull of Denise Bush was found in a wooded area in Southgate Park in Tukwila, Washington. The remainder of Bush's body was located in Oregon five years earlier.

Once again, it seemed as if the killer was purposely moving the bones around in an effort to confuse investigators. Task force investigators were beginning to believe that the killer had defeated them. Morale among the officers was at an all-time low. 

According to the Seattle Times, in July 1991 the task force was reduced to just one investigator named Tom Jensen. After nine years, roughly 49 victims and $15 million dollars, the task force still had not caught the Green River Killer. The investigation became known as the country's largest unsolved murder case. The case remained dormant for 10 years.

The Big Break

In April 2001, almost 20 years after the first known Green River murder, Detective Reichert, who had become the sheriff of King County, began renewed investigations into the murders. It was a case he refused to let go of and he remained determined to find the killer. This time the task force had technology on their side.

Reichert formed a new task force team initially consisting of six members, including DNA and forensic experts and a couple of detectives. It wasn't long before the force grew to more than 30 people. All the evidence from the murder examination was re-examined and some of the forensic samples were sent to the labs.

The first samples to be sent to the lab were found with three victims that were murdered between 1982 and 1983, Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman and Carol Christensen. The samples consisted of semen supposedly taken from the killer. The semen samples underwent a newly-developed DNA testing method and were compared with samples taken from Ridgway in April 1987.

  On September 10, 2001, Reichert received news from the labs that reduced the hardened detective to tears. There was a match found between the semen samples taken from the victims and Ridgway. On November 30, Ridgway was intercepted by investigators on his way home from work and arrested on four counts of aggravated murder. 

The charges included that of the three girls and also Cynthia Hinds, in which circumstantial evidence was also found connecting him with her death. The man that investigators had sought for 20 years was finally in police custody. This time they wouldn't let him go.

Ridgway, originally born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on February 18, 1949, worked for a computer company at the time of his arrest. During the time of the murders, he was employed as a truck painter for 30 years at the Kentworth truck factory in Renton, Washington. Ridgway owned many trucks during that time, one of which was of special interest to investigators. According to Seattle's KING5 television station, a 1977 black Ford F-150 owned by the suspect, allegedly was connected with some of the victims. Today, the truck remains under investigation.    

According to Time Magazine's Terry McCarthy, Ridgway had an unusual sexual appetite. His three ex-wives and several old girlfriends told the reporter that he was sexually insatiable, demanding sex several times a day. Often times, he would want to have sex in a public area or in the woods, even in the areas where some of the bodies had been discovered.

Ridgway was also known to have been obsessed with prostitutes, a fixation that bordered on a love hate relationship. Neighbors knew him to constantly complain about prostitutes conducting business in his neighborhood, but at the same time he frequently took advantages of their favors. It was possible that he was torn by his uncontrollable lusts and his staunch religious beliefs. McCarthy states that according to one of his wives, he became a religious fanatic, often times crying following sermons and reading the bible. 

Today, evidence continues to be gathered from Ridgway in connection with the Green River murder case. Although he has pleaded not guilty on all counts in the preliminary hearings, it is suspected that evidence will prove otherwise. Ridgway's attorney Tony Savage expects a trial sometime in the year 2004. Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty. Ridgway remains interned in jail awaiting his fate. Millions around the world wait for one question to be answered: Is Ridgway the only Green River Killer?

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