00:00:04
-Seattle, Washington,
November 5, 2003, the King County Superior Court. In front of a packed room,
54-year-old killer Gary Ridgway
00:00:18
pleaded guilty to 48 counts
of aggravated murder. -Gary Ridgway is probably
the most prolific serial killer
00:00:26
in America if not the world. -He was a killing machine. A man of extraordinary evil.
00:00:35
-When another body was found
a few years later, the terrible death toll hit 49. -He's preying on sex workers
or young women
00:00:45
who have run away from home. People who are vulnerable. He disposes of their bodies
in the Green River.
00:00:51
-Among the many victims
were young girls who'd run away from home. -She was a little girl
when she was murdered by him.
00:01:01
-She deserved
the best of everything. She deserved to have
a very happy life. -Despite police suspicions,
00:01:09
it took nearly
20 painstaking years to gather enough evidence to
convict Ridgway for the murders.
00:01:16
-I poked him with my finger
in his chest. I says, "You S.O.B. I know you did it,
and we're gonna get you.
00:01:24
-The man who became known
as the Green River Killer murdered 49 young women and is
suspected of killing many more.
00:01:35
All that makes Gary Ridgway one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ -Seattle, Washington, 1982.
00:02:06
It was here in
the Pacific Northwest where, arguably the most
prolific serial killer
00:02:13
of all time, Gary Ridgway,
aka The Green River Killer, preyed on vulnerable
young women, runaways,
00:02:21
and sex workers. -Gary Ridgway gets
a special place in the role of serial killers,
00:02:29
because we're talking
about a man who's responsible clearly for killing
at least 49 women.
00:02:36
-After he's murdered
his victims, he disposes of their bodies
in the Green River.
00:02:41
Victims bodies are found
in the river. They're found weighted down, and he hasn't just raped
and killed these women,
00:02:48
he has extended his power
and control over them. So some are found with objects
inserted inside them.
00:02:55
Stones essentially. -This was a killing machine
operating in plain sight. What could be more horrifying?
00:03:06
To walk out into the street
and say, "Good morning, Gary." You would not say,
for one second,
00:03:13
that Ridgway
was a serial killer. -Elaine Porterfield was
a young reporter with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
at the time.
00:03:22
-He was viewed as largely
unremarkable and almost, kind of, uninteresting
and maybe a little bit odd.
00:03:30
Gary was a truck painter for a famous truck-building
company here in Seattle. -With his unassuming persona,
Ridgway was able
00:03:40
to commit mass murder for nearly
20 years and get away with it. The fear across the
Pacific Northwest was palpable.
00:03:51
-I think that this case
really did have a significant impact
on the community. The biggest serial killer on
the loose for many, many years,
00:03:58
who was named
the Green River Killer. And this person
didn't have an identity. he was this faceless monster.
00:04:05
-Every time a body was found,
it was thought that it could be attributed
to the Green River Killer,
00:04:09
and that included
some cases in Oregon and all the way up
to British Columbia. And it was terrifying to women
going out by themselves.
00:04:16
-Virginia Graham's sister
Deborah Estes was one of Ridgway's victims. -You know, we're both small.
00:04:22
She's was about, you know,
my same height, and she loved the color purple. That was her favorite color,
00:04:30
and she absolutely
adored horses. She loved horses. -Deborah disappeared
in September, 1982.
00:04:40
-You cannot begin to -- Unless you've live that,
you can't begin to understand the specific Hell on Earth
that that really is.
00:04:57
-Kandice Diskin's younger sister
went missing in 1987. -My sister's name
was Roberta Joseph Hayes.
00:05:06
Bobby-Jo, that was her nickname. I think of her often. Oh, she just had a big beautiful
smile and big blue eyes,
00:05:12
and she was a funny kid. -Bobby-Jo's body was not found
for four years. All the while,
Kandice suspected the worst --
00:05:22
that her sister
had been murdered by the Green River Killer. -It was a really tough time
not knowing where
00:05:30
so many people's loved ones,
their daughters, you know -- where they were,
what was happening to them.
00:05:37
-Sergeant Frank Atchley
and his partner Bob Lamoria served jointly as supervisors
on the Green River Task Force.
00:05:46
They and their fellow detectives
worked tirelessly to track down the man who was arguably
00:05:51
the most prolific mass murderer
in US history. -We were finding victims
two or three times a week
00:06:00
during certain periods of time
during the investigation. -We had victims that were
missing for over two years
00:06:08
that'd never been
reported missing. So it made it easy for
Mr. Ridgway to get away with it
00:06:14
as long as he did because we were sometimes
two or three years behind him. -This killer's story begins
nearly 70 years ago.
00:06:26
Gary Ridgway was born in
Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1949. -The middle of three sons
to a ferocious,
00:06:35
domineering mother
and a bus driver father. His parents argued relentlessly, but he always took
his mother's side.
00:06:48
The mother was to become the
most signal figure in his life. -The other thing
about his mother is this --
00:06:58
up till roughly age 13,
he had a bed-wetting problem, and his mother would deal
with his problem
00:07:05
by personally
washing his genitalia. This kind of behavior
is very unusual. It's going to inevitably lead
to a confusion about sexuality.
00:07:19
And, indeed, Ridgway admitted
to his psychiatrist that he had lustful, sexual
feelings toward his mother.
00:07:28
-As a teenager,
he was obsessed with sex. -By the time
he reaches adolescence, Ridgway has got what could be
only described
00:07:38
as a super-charged sex drive. He wants sex all the time,
everywhere, regardless.
00:07:48
-Ridgway struggled in school
and was held back two grades. -There's also problems
with his peers.
00:07:55
He's always the slow one. He's always been a bit behind. So always being the odd one out,
00:07:59
not having that sense
of belonging. And one the things
that Gary Ridgway learned
00:08:04
to protect himself
was to be violent, was to instill fear
in other people because that was
a kind of armor.
00:08:10
-Age 16, Ridgway
viciously attacked a 6-year-old boy. -He actually stabs the boy
seriously in the liver,
00:08:17
and the child survives. This episode hints that there
is some completely psychotic
00:08:24
disorganized process going on
just below the surface with him. -Ridgway was not identified
00:08:30
so was never charged
with the assault. In 1969, he joined the US Navy. The following year,
Ridgway married his first wife,
00:08:39
but his mother was ever-present
in their relationship. -This is a woman who was
so dominating
00:08:46
that even after he got married, his mother would decide
what clothes to buy him,
00:08:51
and that he should wear. -Soon after getting married, Ridgway was deployed on a tour
with the US Navy.
00:08:58
Unable to contain
his sexual urges, he regularly visited
prostitutes. -Where ever he was,
he visited sex workers,
00:09:08
and in several cases,
he contracted venereal diseases, which he was angry about,
00:09:12
and he held against
the sex workers. And I think
that just fed on itself, that anger, that hatred,
00:09:21
that depersonalization
of these women. -When Ridgway returned
the following year,
00:09:28
he found his wife
had been dating another man. The couple divorced
in January 1972.
00:09:35
A year later in 1973,
he found a new wife. While he was married, Ridgway also found new outlet
for his passions.
00:09:45
-Ridgway suddenly became
something of a religious zealot, a Bible-thumper. He would proselytize.
00:09:55
He's kind of fervent,
almost out of proportion -- his interest in religion. -Religion plays
a very interesting role
00:10:05
for some subset
of serial killers. The problem is that religion,
psychology, medications,
00:10:16
none of them have proven
more powerful than the urge to kill
in a serial killer.
00:10:23
-Ridgway and his new wife
had a son. On the surface,
they seemed like an ordinary,
00:10:29
God-fearing,
all-American family. -Part of him was still
a sex maniac, and another part of him
was very guilty about that.
00:10:42
So you have,
what you might describe as, the Jekyll and Hyde character. Dr. Jekyll -- religious,
caring, good husband,
00:10:53
and you have Mr. Hyde,
of course, who is still going
to prostitutes regularly. -Visiting prostitutes at night
and with his mother
00:11:03
ever-present
in his relationship, Ridgway's second marriage
ended in divorce in 1981.
00:11:10
Soon after, he had his first
run-in with the law when he was arrested in 1982
for soliciting a prostitute.
00:11:19
The minor charge would be
an ominous sign of the women he would prey on and the monstrous murderers
he was about to commit.
00:11:30
Driven by
an insatiable sex drive, Ridgway had started
to pick up street prostitutes
00:11:37
from the SeaTac strip --
the road that connects Seattle to the neighboring city
of Tacoma.
00:11:44
-This is a highway
that was frequented by sex workers at the time. -Ridgway's first victim
was just 16 years old.
00:11:52
One night after work, he picked
a sex worker up from the strip. Sergeant Frank Atchley
supervised the task force
00:12:00
assigned to catch him. -These women were in the area
of Pacific Highway South and that's where he would
make contact with them
00:12:12
and abduct them. Okay? And usually these were
after hours, during the hours of darkness.
00:12:20
How he would get them
into his car is anybody's guess. -Ridgway took his first victim
to a desolate location
00:12:31
along the banks
of the Green River just outside Seattle city limits. The body of the 16-year-old
00:12:38
was found on July 15, 1982. Detectives later determined
that she'd been murdered
00:12:46
about a week earlier. Sergeant Bob Lamoria
supervised the search at the first crime scene.
00:12:54
-The first victim had apparently
floated down the river and got tangled up
in some brush in the rocks,
00:13:01
and her body was exposed
and in plain view. -Her kidnap and killing
in July 1982
00:13:09
would set a sinister pattern that would result
in 49 confirmed murders. Ridgway typically targeted
young women drawn to the peace
00:13:19
and promise of
the America's Pacific Northwest. -He's preying
on vulnerable women.
00:13:24
So women who are either
sex workers or young women who have run away from home. -They were young women
doing the best
00:13:32
they could
in the way they knew how. They were 15, 16, 17 years old,
20 years old.
00:13:39
-After his first murder, Ridgway went on
a frenzied killing spree. In just five weeks,
00:13:45
he picked up five more women
from the SeaTac strip. By August 15, 1982,
Ridgway had kidnapped,
00:13:54
raped, and callously killed
all of them. He dumped one of the bodies
near a creek
00:14:00
and four in the Green River. The defiled bodies were found
in clusters along the banks.
00:14:07
-The homicides started
in, you know, 1982, and the publicity that was
being received or broadcasted
00:14:17
by the news media,
every member of this county, the state of Washington,
the United States,
00:14:24
were aware of these murders. -In August of 1982 a task force
was formed to catch the so-called
Green River Killer.
00:14:34
The teams scoured the area and made a series
of grim discoveries. -This was the sight
of three of the victims.
00:14:45
There were two upstream a ways
pushed into the water and weighted down with rocks.
00:14:51
A third one was left on the bank
in the tall grass. I assume that he thought
he was gonna get caught.
00:14:59
He saw someone and dumped
the body and ran because she didn't make
in the water.
00:15:03
-When the call came out, we would've dispatched
the task force. We would set up a perimeter.
00:15:08
-We'd line up and we would clip
every blade of grass looking for any hairs,
fibers,
00:15:13
anything else that might be
of investigative value. -Analyzing the bodies,
detectives quickly determined
00:15:21
a pattern
in the killer's behavior. He would head to
the SeaTac strip after work.
00:15:29
There he would pick up
a sex worker from the side of the road. The women did not know it, but,
then, their fate was sealed.
00:15:40
-His method of operation,
his M.O., was taking these women
to wooded, isolated areas,
00:15:47
sometimes along riverbanks,
along stretches of road, so that he would see
any approaching vehicles.
00:15:56
That would give him plenty
of time to avoid being seen. -Ridgway would park
and persuade the women
00:16:06
to get out of his truck. Then he would attack. -Each victim was manually
strangulated,
00:16:16
and the fact that he admitted
to the pleasure he got from watching the life
seep out of the bodies,
00:16:29
I feel that it's horrific. -What is more, Ridgway's victims
had no idea it was coming.
00:16:37
-Ridgway strangled many
of his victims from behind. It gives him, first of all,
the element of surprise.
00:16:43
It reduces the likelihood that they can effectively
fight back against him. In those few seconds before
his victims became unconscious,
00:16:52
they would be shocked, they would be struggling to
breathe, they would be in pain.
00:16:57
They're maybe
trying to fight back. In about 10 seconds somebody
would be unconscious
00:17:02
and be unable to respond to you. -He'd start off strangling
with his hands, but increasingly they put up
a fight -- bruised his arms.
00:17:12
And he didn't want to have
to explain that to his friends or to his son, and so he started using
ligatures because it meant
00:17:21
he didn't have to put
his hands on their throat. -By the end of the summer
of 1982, Ridgway had kidnapped,
00:17:30
murdered,
and then raped 9 young women. -He would pick up sex workers,
murder them,
00:17:37
and then dispose of
their bodies in clusters. So there would be dumpsites where there were several bodies
of his victims.
00:17:44
-The next group that we found
was on the Star Lake Road. He would park on a curve so that
he could see in both directions,
00:17:53
and then he would carry
the bodies out and deposit them. -Ridgway later confessed
to having had sex
00:18:01
with the bodies after death. In some cases, long after. -The necrophilia, having sex
with dead person
00:18:13
is extraordinarily rare, and it's one of the pieces
of the puzzle to suggest true psychosis.
00:18:21
To engage in necrophilia
you have to be completely out of touch with reality. -Ridgway would often revisit
the bodies
00:18:30
of his victims multiple times. He would move them. he would have sexual relations
with the bodies.
00:18:36
It's absolutely ghastly. -Debra Estes was one of the many
runaways that Ridgway targeted.
00:18:44
Virginia Graham was 16. A year and a half older
than her sister Debra when she disappeared
in the summer of 1982.
00:18:53
-We were so close in age,
but she had shorter blonde hair. -Like many who take to
the streets,
00:19:00
Debra ran away from what was
an abusive family situation. In Debra's case, her father
was the alleged abuser.
00:19:11
-You're literally
living with a rattlesnake. That rattlesnake can be calm
one second
00:19:18
and can just absolutely -- If you are not hyper-vigilant
around watching and you drop your guard
for just one minute,
00:19:27
you can seriously get hurt
or even die. -On one fateful night
in July of 1982, home life became too much
to bear for 14-year-old Debra.
00:19:39
-Probably 2:00, 3:00 maybe,
somewhere around there, my mom woke up and noticed
that my step dad,
00:19:46
Debbie's biological father, was coming out of my sister's
bedroom and my mom asked him,
00:19:52
"Well, what are you doing?" And he said, "Well,
I'm just checking on her like any good father would do."
00:19:57
So, and -- No, he wasn't. He was there for
a totally different reason, and she left the next day.
00:20:07
Early.
Very early. -For Virginia, it's a moment
that she still struggles with. -I would've grabbed her
and I would've held on to her.
00:20:20
And I don't know.
I don't know what
we could've done because she was 14 years old.
00:20:25
-Debra's mother
reported her as missing to the Seattle police
soon after. On September 20, 1982,
00:20:34
Debra was brought
to a police station. She'd reported that she'd been
raped by client a week earlier
00:20:41
and was there to see
photos of the suspect. It turned out that the man
who attacked Debra
00:20:47
was another serial rapist that was also active
in the area. Just after she talked
to law enforcement,
00:20:54
a detective dropped her off
at the motel that she was living in. Debra was never seen again.
00:21:01
She was just 15 years old. -Well, the same day that she got
dropped off by the detective,
00:21:08
investigating
the serial rape cases was the same day
the Gary Ridgway picker her up.
00:21:14
-Debra's desecrated body
was found nearly six years later. She'd been dumped in the debris
of a building site
00:21:22
just down the road
from where she'd been abducted. -From where he picked her up to
where he took her to kill her,
00:21:30
she maybe would've lived no more
than an hour, hour and a half,
from the time he picked her up.
00:21:37
By the time, you know,
they drove and everything took place, and he buried her
no more than an hour and a half.
00:21:45
So... Um... Boy, that's a sobering thought. -By the end of 1982,
the death toll wrought
00:21:58
by the Green River Killer
had reached 11. By dumping the bodies
in the river and in the woods,
00:22:06
hard evidence
was difficult to come by. -If a body is disposed in water, then quite clearly
a few things will happen.
00:22:16
Evidence can be washed away. Trace evidence, DNA,
bloodstains, and blood patterns
will be washed away.
00:22:23
So it reduces
the forensic opportunities. If the body is there
for a long time, decomposition will hamper
the examination.
00:22:32
-Even though they found
many bodies during the summer of 1982,
the Seattle-based task force
00:22:38
had no idea who
the perpetrator might be. -Our suspect pool was basically
every male
00:22:47
over 17 or 18 years old
in the entire world, and we didn't know
whether he was coming
00:22:55
from someplace else --
flying in or driving in or what. -With the news of 11 women
now murdered,
00:23:02
and their mutilated bodies found
by the banks of the Green River as well as in the local woods,
00:23:08
fear spread across
America's Pacific Northwest. A mysterious mass murderer known
as the Green River Killer
00:23:16
was still on the loose. A truck painter by day,
and a serial killer by night, 34-year-old Gary Ridgway
was hiding in plain sight
00:23:27
and living in a quiet
Seattle neighborhood. ♪♪ -The police in the area
were struggling
00:23:39
because who would suspect
Gary Ridgway's inoffensive, talkative, plain,
ordinary looking man.
00:23:48
There was no horn. No tails. He wasn't wearing
a great black cloak. Gary Ridgway was the man
next door.
00:23:56
You would not have noticed him. -He's your average Joe.
He's somebody who fits in.
00:24:03
He's somebody who you wouldn't
be scared of because he doesn't
look like a monster.
00:24:09
-The killer was preying
on young vulnerable runaways, who work the streets
near the Sea-Tac Airport.
00:24:16
-He knows that he's got
an easy target group here. So that's gonna allow him
to get away with it
00:24:21
an awfully long time. -Ridgway would simply
pick young women up on the side of the road as they
solicited sexual services.
00:24:31
-I don't think any of them
would've believed that somebody who looked
as inoffensive and
00:24:36
as Joe-average as Gary Ridgway
would be capable of murder. -After what seemed
a lull over the winter
00:24:43
when no new bodies were found,
in the spring of 1983, Seattle's serial killer
struck again.
00:24:53
In the evening
of April the 30th, Ridgway drove
to the SeaTac strip where he picked up
18-year-old Marie.
00:25:01
Like so many of his victims,
she sold sex to survive. She also had a boyfriend
who acted as her pimp.
00:25:09
When he saw her
get in Ridgway's truck, his gut feeling
told something was not right.
00:25:15
So he decided to follow them. -The boyfriend saw her
get into the car and he was trying
to go to her rescue,
00:25:23
but he couldn't because
he got stopped at an electrical signal light. -When she didn't return home
a few days later,
00:25:31
Marie's anxious boyfriend and her father desperately
searched the area. -The boyfriend and the girl's
father drove around the area
00:25:40
trying to find it, and they were worried
about the girl because they were also aware
of the Green River murders.
00:25:51
-The two men made
a remarkable discovery. -Well, patrolling, or, well, driving around
checking the areas
00:25:58
for their girlfriend
and daughter, they found this truck
that matched the description
00:26:03
that the boyfriend had seen, and it turned out
to be Gary Ridgway's. -Ridgway distinctive truck sat
in the driveway as detectives
00:26:12
questioned the 34-year-old
car painter at his house. With Marie nowhere to be seen,
00:26:20
the officer did not
pursue the lead. Marie's badly decomposed body
would be found 20 years later.
00:26:29
However, Ridgway would remain
on the police's radar. But in the spring of 1983, the
killer slipped through the net.
00:26:40
Just a few days later
on May the 3rd, he killed again. This time,
he radically changed his M.O.
00:26:49
He attacked 21-year-old
Carol Ann, a local waitress and single mother. -Carol Ann was somebody
who wasn't a sex worker.
00:26:59
She was somebody
who knew Gary Ridgway. And the two of them had had sex, and afterwards,
Gary Ridgway had strangled her.
00:27:08
But it wasn't enough for him
to just kill her. He engaged in some rather
bizarre behavior
00:27:14
with Carol Ann's body. So he put a grocery bag
over her head. He left two gutted fish
on her body.
00:27:22
He drapes an empty bottle
of wine over her torso, and he left ground up
sausage meats on her hands.
00:27:32
-Carol Ann's body was found
some 20 miles east of the SeaTac strip
in Maple Valley, Washington.
00:27:40
-This woman was different
than the other victims. It was maybe the only time
or the first time
00:27:47
that he killed a non-prostitute. And what do we know
about Ridgway's response to doing this?
00:27:54
He did something that
I've almost never heard of in a serial killer. He lays beside the body
and he cried,
00:28:06
and crying is something
serial killers don't do. And what I would like to suggest
this tells us,
00:28:13
what it teaches us,
is that even the Devil himself has a moment
where he sees clearly enough,
00:28:23
what depravity and evil
reeks in his soul, to be touched humanly. -By the end of the year,
the desecrated bodies
00:28:35
of 24 women had been found
by shocked passersby. Many more had been
reported missing,
00:28:44
and the suspicion was that
they too were the victims of the Green River Killer. Body part were scatted
all of the Pacific Northwest.
00:28:57
-He's been dumping bodies
up and down the Green River, taking some of them to
the neighboring state of Oregon.
00:29:05
-The Green River Task Force
spent countless hours and days carefully gathering
all the fragments of evidence
00:29:13
they could
from across the Northwest. -The task force investigators
were spending a lot of time
00:29:20
on bone finds. We would launch the whole
entire task force and spend a lot
of investigative time
00:29:28
only to find out at the end
that it was an animal bone. -All the while, the killing
of young women continued.
00:29:35
By the end of 1984, the toll
of victims had reached 42. Sadly, the police were nowhere
00:29:43
nearer to stopping
the Green River Killer. -Believe me, all of the
investigators wanted so much
00:29:49
to solve this case and prevent
somebody else from being killed. -Frank Atchley was brought in
to supervise
00:29:57
the Green River Task Force
in May of 1984 in the hope of finally
solving the case.
00:30:04
-These detectives,
each and every one of them, put their heart and soul
into solving this investigation.
00:30:10
For every victim that was found, it impacted the morale
of the detectives who were hoping
that there would be
00:30:18
no more victims
of the Green River Killer. -The next year, 1985,
Ridgway met the woman
00:30:26
who would become his third wife at a Parents Without Partners
meeting. -They seem to have quite
an idyllic relationship.
00:30:35
She thinks very highly of him. He's somebody who is a, kind of,
pillar of the community.
00:30:41
His third wife provided quite
a lot of assistance to Gary in terms of looking after his
finances and that kind of thing
00:30:46
So things that he wasn't particularly capable
of doing himself. -At the same time,
the killing spree
00:30:53
seemed to slow. -His third wife
was later to say, "I think I saved many lives
because I loved him."
00:31:05
It's a most poignant remark. And one that strikes
to the heart. You embrace a serial killer
and you save lives.
00:31:17
I don't think for a moment she
thought he was a serial killer when she married him,
00:31:22
but my goodness,
I find it heartbreaking. -But Ridgway's urge to kill
could not be stopped for long.
00:31:31
The man who had now killed
46 women, picked up 21-year-old Bobby-Jo Hayes in February 1987.
00:31:41
Her sister Kandice recalls
those trying times. -In 1991,
her remains were found.
00:31:50
So four year
after she went missing, her remains were found
on Highway 410 outside of Seattle in Auburn.
00:31:58
So that was terrible
for the family, as you can imagine. -Like so many of the young women
that Ridgway kidnapped
00:32:09
and killed,
Bobby-Jo sold sex to survive. A single mother of 5,
she was known to frequent
00:32:16
the SeaTac strip --
Ridgway's hunting ground. Bobby-Jo also worked the streets
of Portland
00:32:23
two and half hours
south of Seattle. -I would see her,
you know, downtown. I would see her on Aurora Avenue
near where we grew up.
00:32:33
-Though they shared the same
mother, Kandice's sister Bobby-Jo lived
with father and his new wife.
00:32:41
-She wasn't treated very well. There was a lot
of drinking involved, so she pretty much ventured out
on her own at about age 12.
00:32:48
Hit the streets. You know, I would see her
with her johns. I would see -- and, you know,
my heart just broke.
00:32:53
She deserved the best
of everything. She deserved to have
a very happy life. And that I'm sorry for not
being able to help her more.
00:33:04
That's probably all. -When Bobby-Jo's remains
were finally found, it ended years of torment
for Kandice and her family.
00:33:15
-Not knowing can be
just as hard as knowing. It's bittersweet. Nothing good about it,
but I no longer
00:33:21
have to drive Aurora Avenue
looking for my sister because that's what
I did for years.
00:33:26
I'd be driving and I was just
constantly aware of myself looking for her. Hoping to see her with a john,
00:33:34
or in somebody's car
or something. -By the spring of 1987,
the death toll wrought
00:33:41
by the Green River Killer
had reached 46. When some green carpet fibers
were found
00:33:48
among the remains
of several of the victims, a warrant was issued
to search the home
00:33:52
and workplace of Gary Ridgway, who was already
on the police's radar. -The fibers, as it turned out,
00:33:59
showed that some of the victims
had been in the same environment before or after
they were killed.
00:34:07
-One month after Bobby-Jo
disappeared, on April 8, 1987,
the Green River Task Force
00:34:14
searched the home
of Gary Ridgway. A young couple renting rooms
above Ridgway's garage
00:34:20
helped with their inquiries. -They showed us photographs that
they had taken inside the house
00:34:27
that showed it had green,
credible type carpet in there. -Frank Atchley and a team
00:34:33
of detective
entered Ridgway's home. -I saw Ridgway at the house,
and he was smug.
00:34:42
And his mother was there, and
she was screaming and hollering that we had the wrong guy
and so on and so forth.
00:34:49
That's when I poked him
with my finger in his chest. I says, "You S.O.B. I know you did it,
00:34:55
and we're gonna get you
one of these days." -April 8, 1987,
was not that day. -We found no remnant
or anything of that carpet.
00:35:06
It had all been removed,
replaced, and even the vacuum cleaner didn't reveal anything
that helped us.
00:35:14
He had really
cleaned up the place. -Detectives also search
Ridgway's job site in Renton, Washington,
00:35:22
where he worked
as a truck painter. -It was '87. We serviced search warrants
on his place of employment.
00:35:31
When we got him back
to the precinct, we took a swab of his --
had him chew on piece of gauze,
00:35:40
which was ultimately
his coup de grâce. -It would take 14 more years
and breakthrough in technology,
00:35:50
but the saliva soaked gauze
with the killer's DNA sealed in promised to reveal
the true identity
00:35:57
of the Green River Killer. Seattle, Washington state, 2001. Since 1982, the serial killer
had taken at least
00:36:10
48 young lives with impunity. But thanks to groundbreaking
advances in forensic technology
00:36:18
at the turn of the 21st century,
the net was finally closing in on the man next door,
52-year-old Gary Ridgway.
00:36:30
-Arguably the most prolific
serial killer the United States has ever seen. Outranking even Bundy
or Jeffrey Dahmer.
00:36:41
He looks inoffensive
but is, in fact, dreadful. A man of extraordinary evil. -At the Washington State
Crime Labs in 2001,
00:36:55
Dr. Beverly Himick took
advantage of a new technique in forensic technology. -It takes a breakthrough
in DNA technology
00:37:10
to finally trap Gary Ridgway. A man who's been getting away
with murder for close to 20 years.
00:37:19
-Called short tandem repeat
or STR DNA testing, the detectives re-examine
the saliva that was in the gauze
00:37:28
they'd asked Ridgway
to submit 14 years earlier. -When we started
the investigation,
00:37:33
DNA was just coming on the scene
in the United States and the thing that we finally
got Ridgway on,
00:37:42
the DNA, had been submitted two, three, four times
previous for processing, but it kept coming back
inconclusive.
00:37:50
It wasn't until 2001 that we got
a positive hit on him. -As they were gathering evidence
in the autumn of 2001,
00:38:01
Gary Ridgway suddenly reemerged. -While Gary Ridgway might
have stopped killing for period of time,
he has not completely
00:38:09
turned around his behavior
or his lifestyle. In 2001, he is picked
by a police officer
00:38:15
as he is soliciting
a sex worker. -He makes the mistake
of picking up an undercover
00:38:23
whom he mistakes
for a prostitute, and that lead to his arrest. -Alerted to the incident
and concerned
00:38:30
that he might kill again,
law enforcement decided to act. On November 30, 2001,
they arrested Gary Ridgway.
00:38:40
-It was unbelievable. I think at that point, people didn't believe
that he would ever be caught.
00:38:47
It was absolutely stunning
and gratifying. There was a giant,
collective sense of relief
00:38:54
that a monster
was off the street. -The Green River Killer
was suspected of killing
00:38:59
at least 48 women. The problem was that
with the evidence they had, the police could only charge
Ridgway with four murders,
00:39:09
and that was enough
to warrant a death penalty. For the prosecution,
it was a bargaining chip.
00:39:15
-Gary Ridgway's attorney
contacted the prosecutor and agreed to waive
the death penalty
00:39:26
in exchange for
a complete confession on all the women that he killed
in the King County jurisdiction.
00:39:35
-To try and help all
the affected families find out what had happened
to their loved ones,
00:39:41
the deal was made. In 2003, Gary Ridgway confessed
to the dozens of murders he had committed.
00:39:50
The investigators then contacted
the families of the deceased. That was a day --
You know what PTSD is?
00:40:00
That's a day that I could feel
the emotion because I was at work
and the phone rang
00:40:05
and my heart started beating,
and they said, "You know we have
this person in custody.
00:40:11
He has confessed to the murders
of so many women." Honestly, I thought
I was gonna faint.
00:40:19
It was shocking. I never thought in
a million years that I would be getting
a phone call like that.
00:40:24
-On November 5, 2003,
Ridgway appeared in front of a packed King County
courthouse in downtown Seattle
00:40:33
and made his plea. -The first time I saw him,
it was disappointing. He was kind of a mouse of a man.
00:40:42
In the mind's of so many
in the Pacific Northwest as some sort of superhuman,
that it was just shocking to see
00:40:48
what a little worm of a man
he actually was. He tried to apologize
at one point,
00:40:55
but the father of one
of the victims interrupted him with sort of
a torrent of emotion,
00:41:03
and Ridgway was unable to speak. The father obviously just had
to address him. Eventually, you know, he was
gaveled to order by the judge,
00:41:16
but it was
a very intense moment. -The only time Gary Ridgway
was affected by any words
00:41:25
that anyone spoke
were when he was forgiven. Interestingly enough, that made
me more angry when I saw that.
00:41:34
It's like, "I just poured
my heart out to you, what you've done to our family
by taking my sister,
00:41:41
and nothing." He had no facial
expression whatsoever. I didn't get it. The first time that
they sentenced Gary Ridgway
00:41:53
in 2003, I couldn't cry. I was numb.
There just was nothing there. -Virginia Graham went
to the court
00:42:01
to try to understand why Ridgway
had killed her sister Debra over 20 years earlier.
00:42:08
-I don't know how a human being
could do to somebody else what he put these girls through.
00:42:16
Being in the court that day,
there were no pictures of who these victims were. It was just names
on a piece of paper,
00:42:22
so I wanted him to know
that she wasn't just a thing -- that she was my sister
and that she was loved.
00:42:29
So I had that picture
that I showed to him. She was a little girl
when she was murdered by him.
00:42:38
-In November 2003, Gary Ridgway
was convicted of 48 counts of aggravated murder.
00:42:47
He was sentenced to 480 years
in prison. When a 49th body was found
in December 2010,
00:42:57
dumped in Washington, Ridgway was given
an additional life sentence. -They found Becky's body.
00:43:06
Her remains were found
by accident. That was my sister's
best friend. -There are so many names,
so many victims,
00:43:14
and I think it's important
that we and try and remember all of those women. -In his final statement,
an admission of guilt, he said,
00:43:22
"I wanted to kill as many women I thought were prostitutes
as I possibly could."
00:43:29
If anyone truly deserves
the title of an evil killer it is unquestionably
Gary Ridgway.
00:43:38
-The Green River Killer murdered
49 young women. They my be gone, but for
the loved ones left behind,
00:43:47
they will never be forgotten. -I can always see her face.
She was very fun, very bright.
00:43:52
Big beautiful,
you know, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, angelic, little girl. -Sentenced to life in prison
00:43:59
without the possibility
of parole, the Green River Killer
will never be free again.
00:44:05
Arguably the most prolific
serial killer in ever known. Gary Ridgway is without doubt
00:44:11
one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪