Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer

1. Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer Jennifer Hutchinson Pd. 6

2. It was around the middle of July 1982 when the first body was found floating in the Green River in King County, Washington. The victim was 16-year-old Wendy Lee Coffield. Without much evidence to go on, her murder remained unsolved, and the person responsible was dubbed the Green River Killer. • The King County police department had no way of knowing that Coffield represented the beginning of a savage killing spree that would last for years, with the majority of the murders occurring from 1982 through 1984. • a savage killing spree that would last for years, with the majority of the murders occurring from 1982 through 1984. • Most of the victims were prostitutes or young runaways who worked or hitchhiked along an area of Pac Highway (Highway 99) • The victims ranged in ages from 12-15 to 31. Most had been left nude, sometimes with their fingernails clipped. The areas where the bodies were left were sometimes littered with gum or cigarette butts, food and road maps. Some of the dead bodies had been sexually abused.

3. Background • Born on February 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Gary Ridgway was the middle son of Mary Rita Steinman and Thomas Newton Ridgway. • Ridgway was a poor student, suffering from a below average I.Q. of 82 and dyslexia. Most of his teenage years were unremarkable until the age of 16 when he led a six-year-old boy into the woods, then stabbed him through his ribs and into his liver. • In 1969, Ridgway joined the Navy and later fought in Vietnam. • Between 1969 and 1985, Ridgway had been married three times.

4. Ridgway Becomes a Suspect • Gary Ridgway had landed on the suspect list because of two encounters he had with police in the early 1980s. In 1980 he was accused of choking a prostitute while having sex with her in his truck near the Sea-Tac Airport, which was an area where some of the victims had been discarded. When questioned, Ridgway admitted to choking her, but said it was more in self defense, because the prostitute bit him while performing oral sex. The matter was then dropped. • In 1982 Ridgway was questioned after he was caught in his truck with a prostitute. It was later discovered that the prostitute was KeliMcGinness, one of the serial killer's victims. • In 1984 Ridgway was arrested for trying to solicit an undercover police woman posing as a prostitute. He was brought in for questioning and agreed to take a polygraph test which he passed. • Unable to eliminate Ridgway as suspect, he moved up to the "A" list and was placed under police surveillance. The investigators scrutinized his work record and determined that he was never at work on the days that many of the victims had been reported as missing. • On April 8, 1987, Ridgway was taken into police custody where he passed a polygraph test and agreed to allow them to take hair samples and a saliva swab before he was released for lack of evidence.

5. Arrest, Plea Bargain, Confession • On November 30, 2001, Gary Ridgway was arrested for the 20-year-old murders of Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Ann Christensen. The evidence was a positive DNA match from each victim to Gary Ridgway. Later, paint samples matched up to paint spray used where Ridgway worked, and three additional victims were added to the indictment. • Ridgway knew he would be facing execution and he did not want to die. In a plea bargain, he agreed to fully cooperate with the investigation into the remaining Green River murders. For months detectives methodically interviewed Ridgway, getting details of each of the murders he committed. He took them to locations where he had left several of the bodies and disclosed how he killed each one and the evidence he left to throw off police. • In the released video tapes of Ridgway detailing the murders to investigators, he confessed once to killing 61 women and in another tape he said it was 71 women. But at the conclusion of the interviews, Ridgway could only recall 48 murders, all of which he said occurred inside King County, Washington. • On November 2, 2003, Ridgway pled guilty to 48 charges of aggravated first degree murder. He also confessed to moving body parts to Oregon to throw off the investigation and to having sex with six of the bodies after he had killed them. • On December 18, 2003, Ridgway was sentenced to 480 years without the possibility of parole.

6. Quotes "Most of the time I killed them the first time I met them, and I do not have a good memory for their faces. I killed so many women, I have a hard time keeping them straight."

7. Differential-Association Theory I believe Gary Ridgway’s deviant behavior can best described through the Differential-Association Theory. This theory states that people’s behavior is largely determined by the company they keep. It also states that by interacting with others it can allow them to learn criminal behavior by acquiring motives, drives, and attitudes. In Gary Ridgway’s case, he was sexually attracted to his mom at a very young age. This gave him an abnormally strong sex drive while growing up as a kid. Because of this sex drive he pursued prostitutes for sex. However, he felt an anger, disgust, and condensation towards prostitutes. This attitude that he developed for these women is what gave him the motive to murder them.