Gary Ridgway, One Of The Most Prolific Serial Killers In American History
Photo by Josh Trujillo-Pool/Getty ImagesGary Ridgway preparing to leave the courtroom where he was sentenced on Dec. 18, 2003 in Seattle, Washington.
Gary Ridgway, known as the “Green River Killer” due to the river where he dumped his victims, is one of the most prolific American serial killers.
From the 1980s to the 1990s, Ridgway said he murdered a staggering 71 women and teenage girls. While he was only convicted of 49 of those killings, he freely admits that the actual number was much higher: “I killed so many women, I have a hard time keeping them straight.”
Not much is known about Ridgway’s life before he became one of the deadliest modern American serial killers. Born in 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and raised in Seattle, Washington, Ridgway was a poor student. Shortly after high school, he was sent to fight in the Vietnam War.
When he returned to the United States, Ridgway took a position as a truck painter. He kept the job for nearly 30 years — but according to Ridgway, killing young women was his actual “career.”
Most of Ridgway’s victims were sex workers or runaways who he would pick up at truck stops and bars along Highway 99 outside of Seattle. After initially putting his victims at ease, Ridgway would rape and strangle them, and then dump their bodies in the area around the Green River.
Ridgway often returned to the disposal sites to have sex with the rotting corpses of the women he murdered. In an effort to confuse police, he sometimes dumped bodies in locations farther away from the Green River, or he left false clues like cigarette butts and old chewing gum to contaminate the crime scene (as he didn’t smoke or chew gum).
These tactics succeeded in confusing the police, and authorities eventually turned to an unlikely source for help catching their killer: Ted Bundy.
At the time, Bundy had been imprisoned for six years and was awaiting his execution. Reasoning that other American serial killers might be able to shed light on the Green River Killer’s behavior patterns, detectives interviewed Bundy, and he ended up providing valuable information.
One particularly helpful tip that Bundy gave the authorities was that the killer was probably returning to the body dumping sites to have sex with the corpses — something Bundy had also done. He suggested that they stake out a fresh gravesite and wait for the murderer to return.
Ridgway eventually did return to one of his corpses, and the police were able to gather samples to use as evidence for an arrest warrant.
Authorities finally arrested Ridgway in 2001.
Initially, Ridgway was convicted of 48 murders and sentenced to 48 life sentences. He was given 10 additional years on each sentence for tampering with evidence, making his total 48 life sentences and 480 years. But in 2011, another body was found, causing him to receive another life sentence.
