THE GREEN RIVER KILLER - Serial Killer Gary Ridgway’s 20 Years of Terror - Real Locations & Graves

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Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), known as the Green River Killer or the Green River Strangler, is an American serial killer who was convicted of murdering forty-nine women between 1982 and 1998 in the northwestern United States. At the time of his arrest in 2001, he was believed to be the most prolific serial killer in United States history, according to confirmed murders.

Most of Ridgway's victims were alleged sex workers or other women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. Before his capture, media outlets nicknamed him the Green River Killer or Green River Strangler due to his first five victims being found at the Green River in Washington State. Ridgway strangled his victims, usually by hand, but sometimes using ligatures. After strangling them, he would dump their bodies in forested and overgrown areas, often returning to the bodies to engage in acts of necrophilia.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ridgway is believed to have murdered at least 71 teenage girls and women near Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. In court statements, Ridgway later reported that he had killed so many that he lost count. A majority of the murders occurred between 1982 and 1984. The victims were believed to be either sex workers or runaways, whom he picked up along Pacific Highway South. Ridgway sometimes showed the women a picture of his son, to trick them into trusting him. They would engage in sexual activity, and after minutes of intercourse from behind, Ridgway would wrap his forearm around the front of their necks and use the other arm to pull back as tightly as he could, strangling them. He killed most victims in his home, his truck, or a secluded area. Most of their bodies were dumped in wooded areas around the Green River, Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, and other "dump sites" within South King County.

There were also 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 engage in necrophilia with their bodies. Ridgway later explained that he did not find necrophilia more sexually satisfying, but having sex with the deceased reduced his need to obtain a living victim and thus limited his exposure to being caught. 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.

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.

In April 1987, police took hair and saliva samples from Ridgway. The samples collected were later subjected to DNA profiling, providing the evidence for his arrest warrant.

On November 30, 2001, he was at the Kenworth truck factory where he worked as a spray painter when police arrived to arrest him. 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 time when these victims were killed.

On December 18, 2003, King County Superior Court Judge Richard A. Jones sentenced Ridgway to 48 life sentences without the possibility of parole to be served consecutively. He was also sentenced to an additional 10 years for tampering with evidence for each of the 48 victims, adding 480 years to his 48 life sentences. Later he was given another life sentence after the remains of his 49th victim were found.