Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty in a Seattle courtroom on November 5, 2003, to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder. As the lead prosecutor read each victim's name aloud, he answered "yes." Most of the women and girls had disappeared between 1982 and 1984 from Pacific Highway South, the motel strip near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and from the streets of Seattle. Their bodies were found in the Green River, in ravines and in woods across south King County and in the foothills of the Cascades, and a few in Oregon. Seven years later he pleaded guilty to a 49th murder.
For almost 20 years the case was the largest unsolved serial murder investigation in the United States. Ridgway was not unknown to it. Police noticed him in 1983, questioned him more than once, gave him a polygraph test in 1984 that he passed, and searched his house in 1987. What they took from him then, a saliva sample, was what caught him in 2001, when the state crime lab could finally test it. In return for sparing his life, King County's prosecutor required him to account for every killing he had committed in the county and to lead detectives to the remains. He has claimed many more victims than the 49 he was convicted of killing, but investigators have found little to support the larger figures.
Ridgway was born in Utah on February 18, 1949. His family moved to King County when he was 11, and he grew up the middle of three sons of Tom and Mary Ridgway in a house east of the airport, in an area that is now the city of SeaTac. His father drove a bus whose route ran along the Sea-Tac strip, and friends told the Seattle Times he complained about the prostitutes there. One of Ridgway's former wives told investigators that his mother often shouted at his father and once broke a dinner plate over his head, and that the father simply got up and left. Ridgway was close to his mother and not to his father.
At school he was a slow learner and a poor reader. He was held back two grades, wet the bed until he was about 13, and graduated from Tyee High School, in what is now SeaTac, in 1969. A classmate remembered him as mischievous and often in trouble but not a boy anyone singled out. In the prosecutor's 2003 summary of the evidence, investigators recorded that as a youth he set fires and killed a cat. When he was about 15 he stabbed a first-grade boy in the side. The attacker was never identified at the time. About 40 years later prosecutors found the boy, by then a grown man, who told them the knife had reached his liver, that he had run away bleeding, and that he had spent weeks in the hospital.
Ridgway told the prosecutor's psychologists that he had never been sexually or physically abused as a child and had never thought about suicide. Prosecutors concluded that he was not mentally ill.
After high school Ridgway joined the Navy. He married for the first time in 1970, and shortly afterward he shipped out on a six-month cruise. His first wife later told investigators that she became involved with another man in San Diego while he was away. He was honorably discharged in 1971 and went back to the Seattle area; she joined him briefly, but the marriage ended. She said that his mother's influence over him, including her push for the couple to move onto the family property, was part of the reason. Ridgway told prosecutors that he first went to prostitutes while stationed in the Philippines.
He had already started work at Kenworth Truck, painting truck cabs, and he stayed with the company until his arrest more than 30 years later, first at its plant in Kent and later in Renton. Coworkers described him in 2001 as hard-working, meticulous and friendly, sometimes too friendly. He wore jeans with plaid or cowboy shirts, drank tea, read grocery fliers at lunch and combed his mustache through the day. Some coworkers gave him nicknames that included "Green River Gary." One woman who worked with him in the early 1990s told reporters that he gave her unwanted shoulder massages and asked about her marriage, and that he made her uncomfortable. Before going to Kenworth he had tried and failed to join a local police department.
His second marriage lasted from December 1973 to May 1981. The couple had a son in 1975, and Ridgway moved out before the boy was five, afterward paying 275 dollars a month in child support and seeing his son every other weekend. His second wife told investigators that from about 1976 until at least 1980 he was fanatical about religion: he went door to door for a Pentecostal church and cried during services he watched on television with a Bible open. She also said he was often gone for long evenings and came home dirty or wet, that he liked sex outdoors, sometimes at places where victims' remains were later found, and that after a party where he had been drinking heavily he put her in a police-style chokehold.
Later in 1981 he bought a small house off Military Road, a few blocks from Pacific Highway South, and lived there alone. He would tell prosecutors in 2003 that he killed dozens of women in that house, most of them in the bedroom. In 1985 he met the woman who became his third wife, Judith. Neighbors, who knew he had been questioned as a suspect but saw that he was never charged, rallied around the couple and hosted their wedding. They later lived in Kent and then, from about 1998, on almost an acre in Auburn. Neighbors described them as devoted to each other. Prosecutors said that friends, wives, girlfriends and coworkers saw no sign of what he was doing.
Pacific Highway South, the old Highway 99, ran past the airport through what was then unincorporated King County, lined with motels, taverns and bus stops. In May 1982 Ridgway was arrested there in a prostitution sting. Two months later the killings that gave the case its name began.
He told investigators in 2003 that he hunted women along the highway in Tukwila, Kent-Des Moines and Federal Way, and also in the Rainier Valley, in Seattle's Chinatown International District and along Aurora Avenue North, often for hours before and after his shifts. He said he chose women he believed were prostitutes because he hated them, did not want to pay them, and thought he could kill as many as he wanted without being caught. He called the killing his "career."
On July 15, 1982, two teenage boys from Kent saw a body floating against the Meeker Street Bridge over the Green River. It was Wendy Lee Coffield, 16, of Puyallup. She had last been seen on July 8 at a state receiving home in Tacoma, a placement for children in the state's care. She had been strangled.
On August 12 a worker at a meat-packing plant near the river in Kent found the body of Debra Lynn Bonner, 23, in the water. She had been missing since July 25, when she was seen near the Three Bears Motel on Pacific Highway South. In 2003 her mother, Shirley Bonner, said the case had gone on too long.
Three days later, on August 15, searchers found three more: Marcia Faye Chapman, 31, and Cynthia Jean Hinds, 17, in the river, and Opal Charmaine Mills, 16, on the bank. Chapman had been weighted down with rocks. With five dead in a month, investigators suspected that one person had killed all of them and left them from the same stretch of river, near the 25000 block of Frager Road. On August 16, King County police set up a task force.
The newspapers soon called the unknown man the Green River killer. The phrase stuck for two decades, long after the killer had stopped leaving bodies near the river.
The women and girls who died were often described in the press of the time only as prostitutes. Their families objected to that from the start, and much of what is known about them as people comes from what relatives said, in 2001 when Ridgway was charged and in 2003 when he was sentenced.
Opal Mills grew up in Kent, the daughter of a white mother and an African American father, and finished ninth grade at Kent Junior High. Her brother Garrett was her closest companion and described her as the more moral of the two of them; he called her the last best friend he ever had. She had earned a church plaque for memorizing 50 Bible verses, and she had planned to marry the year she died. She had never been arrested for prostitution, and her parents were hurt by reports that lumped all the victims together. Her father had a stroke and died after her death, and her mother later named a Christmas craft business after her.
Marcia Chapman, known to neighbors at her apartment complex near the airport as "Tiny," was the mother of three children, aged 11, 9 and 3. She was cheerful and outgoing, neighbors said. Her mother, who reported her missing on August 2, 1982, wrote on the report that Marcia had told the children she was going to the store, and described her as a good mother.
Cynthia Hinds, called "Cookie" by friends, lived in the Rainier Valley. Her 14-year-old brother told reporters that the family had not seen her for two weeks before she disappeared.
Carol Ann Christensen, 21, was born in Montana and had two young daughters. She worked as a waitress at the Barn Door Tavern on Pacific Highway South and had no record of arrests and no known link to prostitution. She was last seen in early May 1983 after her shift, and her body was found in woods near Maple Valley on May 8. Her daughter Sarah King was five when her mother died.
Debra Lorraine Estes had turned 15 only days before she disappeared from Pacific Highway South on September 20, 1982. She loved horses, her sister Virginia Graham told the court in 2003. Her skeleton was not found until May 30, 1988, at a construction site in Federal Way.
Linda Jane Rule, called Janey by her family, was 16 when she was last seen, on September 26, 1982, leaving a motel room on Aurora Avenue North in Seattle. Her father, Robert Rule of Everett, waited 21 years to learn who had killed her.
Marie Malvar, 18, was the fourth of six children. Her oldest brother, Jose Malvar Jr., remembered her as outgoing and loving, and remembered their arguments and fights and their trips to clubs together. Their father, Jose Malvar Sr., led the family's search for her.
Kelly Marie Ware, 22, vanished from a Seattle bus stop on July 19, 1983. Mary Bridget Meehan, 18, disappeared from Pacific Highway South on September 15, 1982. Constance Elizabeth Naon, 21, disappeared on June 8, 1983. Shawnda Leea Summers, 17, was last seen in downtown Seattle on October 9, 1982. Cindy Anne Smith, 17, was hitchhiking on Pacific Highway South when she was last seen, on March 21, 1984. Each of those families sent someone to speak at his sentencing.
Others who died were Gisele Ann Lovvorn, 17; Terry Rene Milligan, 16; Denise Darcel Bush, 22; Shirley Marie Sherrill, 18; Colleen Renee Brockman, 15; Alma Ann Smith, 18; Delores LaVerne Williams, 17; Gail Lynn Matthews, 24; Andrea M. Childers, 19; Sandra Kay Gabbert, 17; Kimi-Kai Pitsor, 16; Martina Theresa Authorlee, 18; Cheryl Lee Wims, 18; Yvonne Shelly Antosh, 19; Carrie A. Rois, 15; Tina Marie Thompson, 22; April Dawn Buttram, 17; Debbie May Abernathy, 26; Tracy Ann Winston, 19; Maureen Sue Feeney, 19; Mary Sue Bello, 25; Pammy Avent, 16; Delise Louise Plager, 22; Kimberly L. Nelson, 26; Lisa Yates, 26; and Mary Exzetta West, 16. Three women he pleaded guilty to killing died after the main run of killings: Patricia Michelle Barczak, 19, last seen in October 1986; Roberta Joseph Hayes, 21, last seen leaving a Portland jail in 1987; and Marta Reeves, a married mother of four, whose body was found off Highway 410 east of Enumclaw on September 20, 1990. Patricia Yellow Robe, 38, was found in a vacant lot on Des Moines Way South in Seattle on August 6, 1998. Her death certificate listed an accidental overdose until investigators told her family that Ridgway had admitted killing her.
At the 2003 sentencing, Judge Richard Jones told Ridgway that the women he had killed, many of them runaways or drug users, had hopes and dreams and families who loved them. Writers and advocates in Seattle have since argued that many of the youngest were, by any modern standard, children being trafficked, and that the child welfare system had failed to protect them.
What is known about Ridgway's method comes mostly from his own long interviews in 2003, which prosecutors summarized, and from the investigation's evidence. Those accounts are his, and he admitted that he was a habitual liar whose stories changed often. Some points are consistent across them.
He strangled the women, usually from behind, with his arm, a towel or a rope. He told investigators that he considered guns and knives too messy and that strangling was "more personal." He tested women to make sure they were not undercover officers. He used small ruses to gain trust, showing photographs of his young son, offering work, offering to lend his truck, or offering extra money; he told detectives he did not worry about keeping those promises. He took the women's jewelry and clothing so they would be harder to identify.
He left the bodies in groups he called clusters, often near something he could recognize, such as a large tree, a guardrail or a fallen log, so that he could find them again. He covered some with brush. He cut the fingernails of women who had scratched him. When he heard that tire tracks had been found he bought new tires. He planted false clues at some sites, including cigarette butts, chewing gum and motel pamphlets. Once, in 1984, with his son asleep in the truck, he drove remains south on Interstate 5 and left them outside Portland, Oregon, to send investigators in the wrong direction. Remains of Denise Bush, Shirley Sherrill and Tammie Liles were found near Tigard and Tualatin, Oregon, in 1985.
He left jewelry taken from victims in the women's restroom at the Kenworth plant, and he told detectives he liked seeing female coworkers wear it. He told prosecutors that the killing slowed after he met Judith in 1985, though he sometimes "fell off the wagon." He described the 1998 killing of Patricia Yellow Robe as poorly planned and said he was "rusty."
The Green River investigation pursued thousands of leads. After the arrest, the Seattle Times and the prosecutor's summary listed the times that leads had pointed at Ridgway.
In August 1982 a Port of Seattle police officer found him parked on a dead-end road near the Alaska Airlines warehouse at South 192nd Street, on the night Terry Milligan disappeared. The spot was a few blocks from where Gisele Lovvorn's body was found a month later. In February 1983 Port of Seattle police contacted him again, while he was with a woman who was later among the dead.
In April 1983 Kimi-Kai Pitsor's boyfriend saw her get into an older green Ford pickup. Ridgway's girlfriend at the time owned an older, light green Ford. In 1987 the boyfriend picked Ridgway's photo from a montage but said he was not completely certain.
On April 30, 1983, Marie Malvar got into a pickup with patches of primer on Pacific Highway South. Her boyfriend followed it to a motel lot and lost it at a traffic light where it turned onto South 216th Street in Des Moines. He reported her missing on May 3. Shortly afterward, Malvar's family and her boyfriend found the truck parked outside Ridgway's house, a block off 216th, and a Des Moines detective questioned him. Ridgway admitted picking up prostitutes but denied knowing her. He told investigators in 2003 that during that conversation he stood against a fence to hide fresh scratches she had left on his arm, and afterward burned the marks with battery acid. Her brother said in 2003 that he could never forgive the police for not doing more at the time.
In July 1983 a Port of Seattle officer came upon Ridgway in a wooded area south of the airport. Ridgway told prosecutors in 2003 that Kelly Ware's body was nearby; the officer apparently did not see it, accepted his explanation that he had stopped to urinate, and left.
In February 1984 Ridgway sent a letter to a local newspaper titled "What you need to know about the Green River man." It was full of falsehoods meant to mislead the police, but it also said that some victims' fingernails had been cut, a detail police did not know until 2003. An FBI analyst concluded that the letter had not been written by the killer.
A woman he had attacked in November 1982 told police in 1984 and 1986 that the man had tried to strangle her with a chokehold and that he had shown her a Kenworth identification card; she picked his photo from a montage. Ridgway, questioned in February 1985, admitted choking her but said he had done it in anger after she bit him, and that he had let her go. In 2003 he said he had meant to kill her and could not keep his hold because she fought back. She is the only person known to have survived an attack by him.
The first task force, formed in August 1982, made an early mistake. In mid-September a taxi driver from Lacey contacted police offering a theory about a fellow driver, and within days he had become the prime suspect. He was kept under round-the-clock surveillance into November, his home was searched twice, and the case against him dragged on for years until the FBI told detectives in late 1985 that he was almost certainly not the killer. A Seattle Times investigation in 1987 concluded that while police watched him, the real killer went on killing. That first 25-member task force was disbanded at the turn of 1983, and from March to late June 1983 at least 10 more women disappeared. The man was never charged.
Vern Thomas became sheriff in April 1983 and told the county executive, Randy Revelle, that the case needed far more resources. A new Green River Task Force of 43 officers was unveiled in January 1984, led at first by Frank Adamson. It reviewed every case, put undercover officers on the strip, and for the first time systematically stopped and questioned men who picked up prostitutes. By December 1984 the official toll had risen to 42, with 28 identified bodies and 14 women missing. The investigation cost about 15 million dollars, drew on the FBI and the detective Bob Keppel, and ran through tips from thousands of citizens and psychics. Public criticism was constant; Sheriff Dave Reichert later recalled a cartoon that called it the "Green River Task Farce."
One unusual consultant was Ted Bundy. In October 1984 Keppel received a letter from Bundy, then on death row in Florida, offering his analysis of the Green River killings. Keppel began talking with him in Florida in November 1984, and he and Dave Reichert, then a King County detective, met Bundy in a series of sessions. Bundy's main prediction was that the killer would return to the places where he left bodies, and that police should watch them. After Ridgway's arrest, Keppel said that prediction had proved right, although he believed much of Bundy's theory was a picture of Bundy himself. Keppel told the story in his 1995 book The Riverman, the name Bundy gave the unknown killer.
Ridgway's name came back to the task force again and again. In 1984 he contacted the task force himself to offer information about a prostitute he knew, which detectives later read as an attempt to find out what they knew. On April 12, 1984, Detective Randy Mullinax interviewed him about Keli McGinness, who had disappeared on June 28, 1983. Ridgway admitted picking her up on Pacific Highway South the summer before and said he had seen her on the strip since. He also volunteered a story about a man he had seen handcuff a woman and put her in a car. That year he took a polygraph test and passed. In 2003 he explained the result simply: he relaxed and took the test.
In 1986 task force investigators said they had no evidence against him. Then, on April 8, 1987, under a search warrant, the task force searched his house, his vehicles and his work locker, and had him chew on a piece of gauze to provide a saliva sample. Investigators had found that he bought large amounts of gasoline in the weeks when women disappeared, though they could not tie the purchases to specific dates; the affidavit filed in 2001 added that he had not been at work when 27 of the women disappeared. Two witnesses put him with at least two of the victims. The search found no hairs, fibers or other evidence that could be tied to any crime, and prosecutors did not have enough to charge him. Because an acquittal could never be retried, they did not try.
The killings appeared to stop. In July 1991 the task force was cut to one investigator, Detective Tom Jensen, who had joined it in 1984 and computerized its files. For most of the 1990s he worked the case alone, concentrating on putting names to the unidentified remains. In 1999 a new DNA process identified one set of bones found in 1986 as Tracy Ann Winston, 19, who had disappeared in 1983. "I always felt like if I never accomplished anything else," he told the Seattle Times, "I would like to have at least given names to those girls."
Dave Reichert, who had been one of the first detectives at the river in 1982, became sheriff in 1997 and reopened the investigation. In 1987 the task force had tried DNA testing on a tiny evidence sample; the technology of the time gave no result and used up much of the material. In March 2001 officials decided that testing had improved enough to try again. Jensen sent small samples of the old evidence to the Washington State Patrol crime laboratory. "We knew we would have one shot at whatever material we had left," he said later.
That year the forensic scientists Beverly Himick and Jean Johnston of the State Patrol lab found DNA linking Ridgway to several of the killings. Later that year Jensen brought Sheriff Reichert four pages of results: profiles from semen evidence taken from Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman and Cynthia Hinds, and the profile from Ridgway's 1987 saliva sample. They matched.
Detectives watched him for a time. About two weeks before his arrest, Ridgway was picked up again in a prostitution sting, this time in Auburn; he pleaded guilty and was fined 700 dollars. On November 30, 2001, at about 3 p.m., detectives arrested him as he left work at the Kenworth plant in Renton. He was 52. He was booked into the King County Jail and held without bail, and police cordoned off his Auburn home and searched a former home in Kent. Sheriff Reichert called it one of the most exciting days of his career, but cautioned that he could not say Ridgway was responsible for all of the deaths.
On December 5, 2001, King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng charged Ridgway with four counts of aggravated first-degree murder, for Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds and Carol Christensen, a charge that could carry the death penalty. The 29-page affidavit filed to support search warrants described his history with prostitutes, the accounts of his former wives and girlfriends, and his habit of outdoor sex near places where remains were later found. Searches of his parents' home, his current home, his vehicles, work lockers and a safety-deposit box produced hundreds of items for analysis. On December 18, 2001, he pleaded not guilty. His court-appointed lawyers included Anthony Savage and Mark Prothero.
The case was expected to be enormous. By the fall of 2002 the defense had received more than 375,000 documents. A trial was set for March 2004, and defense costs alone were estimated to pass 5 million dollars by the end of 2003. Judge Richard Jones appointed a special master to oversee defense spending.
Prosecutors were looking for more. In 2003 Skip Palenik, a forensic microscopist at the private laboratory Microtrace, reported microscopic spheres of sprayed paint on evidence from several crime scenes and on items seized from Ridgway in the 1980s. The paint was DuPont Imron, a specialized commercial paint used in the Kenworth paint shop where Ridgway spray-painted truck cabs. Traces were found on Wendy Coffield's jeans and Debra Estes's sweater, and on the clothing of Debra Bonner. On March 27, 2003, shortly before a court-imposed charging deadline, Maleng filed three more counts of aggravated first-degree murder, for Coffield, Bonner and Estes. Ridgway pleaded not guilty to those as well. Savage said the defense would be that someone else had committed the murders. His relatives, who had stood by him, asked whether the paint could have come from somewhere else, such as a Boeing plant. His lawyer Michele Shaw said later that it was becoming harder to explain away.
Seven counts were the most prosecutors believed they could ever charge, since no further forensic breakthroughs were expected. In late April 2003 Ridgway's lawyers made a proposal: he would accept responsibility for most of the Green River homicides and help find the missing remains, if the state did not seek his execution. Maleng's office had a policy of never trading the death penalty in plea bargains. He said no at first, then spent three weeks considering it.
He agreed. The plea agreement was signed on June 13, 2003, the same day as Ridgway's first interview with detectives. Under its terms Ridgway had to account truthfully for his killings, help locate remains, and plead guilty to every murder he had committed in King County, including any that came to light later; if he refused to plead to a later case, he could face the death penalty for it. He would serve life without release.
Maleng explained his reasoning in a statement published by the Seattle Times. A trial on seven counts, he wrote, would have left doubt about all the other deaths. The agreement offered the truth, and remains that families could bury. He said Ridgway did not deserve mercy and that the decision was meant as mercy for the families and the community. He insisted it was a decision of principle and not of cost. Maleng, an Episcopal lay minister whose daughter Karen had died in a sledding accident in 1989, told the Associated Press that he felt at peace with it. "I know the greatest loss anybody can sustain is for a parent to lose a child," he said. Sheriff Reichert called the decision bold. Some relatives disagreed strongly, and so did some supporters of the death penalty, who warned that the deal would make it harder to seek death for killers of fewer people.
Ridgway was moved secretly out of the King County Jail in mid-June 2003 into the custody of the sheriff's office. For nearly six months he lived in a small office at the task force's headquarters, sleeping on a bare mattress. Every day he sat in front of a camera and answered questions from detectives and prosecutors, with his own lawyers in the room. The interviews, later released on 109 DVDs, ran to hundreds of hours. Forensic psychologists also interviewed him.
He could not remember many of the women's faces, so detectives showed him photographs and records. He told them he had killed at least 47 women and possibly as many as 53. He said he thought he was "solving the prostitute problem." Detectives took him on field trips to the places he said he had left bodies, often arriving before dawn without warning. Detective Jon Mattsen went on every one. Tom Jensen called him "a serial killer savant." Randy Mullinax, who had worked the case from the start, called it the strangest experience of his 25 years in law enforcement.
The searches found remains that had been lost for 20 years. On August 16, 2003, crews searching near Highway 410 east of Enumclaw found the remains of Pammy Avent, 16, of Seattle, who had disappeared in October 1983. In late August and early September they found the bones of April Dawn Buttram, 17, in woods near Snoqualmie. On September 28 and 29, in a ravine near Auburn, they found Marie Malvar. More bones turned up in woods in Kent. Ridgway also told detectives about killings no one had connected to the case, among them Patricia Yellow Robe in 1998 and Marta Reeves in 1990. Reeves's family supported the plea deal.
Snohomish County investigators questioned him about unsolved killings in their county and concluded he was not responsible for them.
On November 4, 2003, prosecutors filed their summary of the evidence, a document of well over 100 pages built from the interviews. The next day, before Judge Richard Jones in a courtroom where seats were by reservation only, Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder. A 16-page statement in his name was read into the record. Lead prosecutor Jeff Baird read each victim's name, and Ridgway answered yes to each.
The pleas covered 42 of the 49 deaths that had been attributed to the Green River killer and six that had not been: Linda Rule, Roberta Hayes, Marta Reeves, Patricia Barczak, Patricia Yellow Robe and one set of unidentified remains. Four of the 48 counts were for women whose remains had not been identified, entered as Jane Does B-10, B-16, B-17 and B-20. Seven deaths on the Green River list were left out: those of Amina Agisheff, Kassee Ann Lee, Rebecca Marrero, Tammie Liles, Keli McGinness and Patricia Osborn, and one other set of unidentified remains. Ridgway was not charged with them, and he remained a suspect.
When he pleaded guilty, he became the most prolific convicted serial killer in the United States, the Seattle Times reported at the time.
On December 18, 2003, Judge Jones called for 48 seconds of silence, one for each victim. Over about four hours, more than two dozen families attended and about 20 people spoke, each allowed 10 minutes. The hearing was broadcast in full on the county's cable channel.
Carol Estes, Debra's mother, said he had destroyed her life and her daughter's. Sarah King said death would be too good for the man who had killed her mother. Vicky Ware, Kelly's sister, wished him a long and cruel death. Jose Malvar Jr. said he was angry and always would be, and that the killings had broken his family apart. Helen Dexter, Constance Naon's mother, criticized prosecutors and officials for failing the families, and the mother of Shawnda Summers said there should have been no plea bargain. Joan Mackie told him he had broken her heart. Tim Meehan said he had had no right to decide who lived and who died.
Two parents forgave him. Kathy Mills said she forgave him and was through with him. Robert Rule, a big man with a white beard who played Santa Claus at the Everett Mall, told him he pitied him because he would have no Christmas and none of the love people need. Ridgway wept for the only time in the hearing. "I showed him love and he cried," Rule said afterward.
Judge Jones made Ridgway turn to face the families. He then sentenced him to 48 consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of release, and fined him 480,000 dollars, 10,000 dollars for each count. Ridgway said he was sorry for killing "all those young ladies" and for the fear he had caused, and said he had tried to help detectives find them. His lawyer Michele Shaw read a letter from his family, who did not attend, saying they were shocked by what he had admitted and had known a dependable man.
He was to be taken to the state prison at Shelton for evaluation. The sheriff's office said the task force would be largely disbanded by April 2004, with one or two detectives left to follow tips.
On December 21, 2010, three teenagers exploring a ravine in Auburn found a skull. It was Rebecca "Becky" Marrero, who had been 20 and the mother of a three-year-old when she disappeared on December 3, 1982. That evening she had taken a phone call, asked her mother to watch her child, and left a motel at South 168th Street and Pacific Highway South. Her remains lay about 100 feet from where Marie Malvar had been found in 2003. Ridgway had confessed in 2003 to killing her but could give no details, so prosecutors had not charged him.
King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg charged him on February 7, 2011, with aggravated first-degree murder. "The Marreros have the right to face the man who killed Becky," he said. Under the 2003 agreement there could be no death sentence. On February 18, 2011, his 62nd birthday, Ridgway was brought in shackles to the Regional Justice Center in Kent and pleaded guilty before Judge Mary E. Roberts, who gave him a 49th consecutive life term. Becky's sister, Mary Marrero, told the court she did not agree with the deal that spared his life. "It makes me sick to my stomach that he beat the system," she said. When Ridgway began to apologize, family members told him no one wanted to hear it. "I can find no compassion," Judge Roberts said.
Since 2003 Ridgway has spent nearly all of his sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. In 2011 his former lawyer Mark Prothero described his life there: alone in a small cell without windows, allowed out alone for one hour four days a week to shower or make collect calls. "He's adapted to his bleak existence," Prothero said.
In May 2015 the Department of Corrections moved him, without notice to the governor or to the families, to the federal prison complex at Florence, Colorado. The department said the Walla Walla penitentiary lacked the security and staff to hold him and asked the federal Bureau of Prisons to consider him for its ADX supermax prison. Victims' families, Mary Marrero among them, protested, and critics worried that he might mix with other prisoners or qualify for a prison job there. On September 18, 2015, the department told the Bureau of Prisons it wanted him back at Walla Walla, after law enforcement said investigators needed easy access to him. The corrections secretary, Bernie Warner, promised to notify families before any future move.
Ridgway has repeatedly said there were more. In six telephone interviews in 2013 with Charlie Harger of KOMO Newsradio, he put his total at 75 to 80, said some killings came before 1982, and said at least 20 bodies were still undiscovered, including six or seven in south King County and one near North Bend. He complained that Ted Bundy was better known than he was. He blamed detectives for keeping him in the van during the 2003 field trips, although recordings showed them asking whether he wanted to get out. A volunteer searcher had followed his tips for five years without finding anything.
Authorities were not persuaded. Sergeant Katie Larson of the sheriff's office said they had heard it all before, many times, and that some remains were simply unrecoverable because buildings now stood on the sites. A spokesman for the prosecutor said his comments appeared to be aimed at attention. Dave Reichert said he believed the real number was 65 to 70. In 2024 Reichert said that 49 killings had been pleaded to and 51 cases closed.
The four Jane Doe counts in his 2003 pleas left families without answers, and the sheriff's office kept working on them.
The first was named in 2012. In December 1985, Auburn city employees checking on a car that had gone over an embankment on Mountain View Drive Southwest found human remains, and the task force found a second set uphill. They were known as Bones 16 and Bones 17. Kimi-Kai Pitsor's skull had been found about 250 yards away two years earlier. In 2002 Ridgway showed investigators the site and admitted leaving women there, though he could say only that he thought he killed one before Kimi-Kai and one after her. DNA testing identified Bones 16 as Sandra Majors in 2012.
In January 2021 the sheriff's office announced that genetic genealogy, worked on with the forensic anthropologist Katherine Taylor and the volunteer DNA Doe Project, had identified another of the unidentified victims as Wendy Stephens, a 14-year-old runaway from Denver who had left home in 1983. Her remains had been found in 1984 near the airport. She is believed to be the youngest of his victims.
In December 2023, after Parabon NanoLabs built a new DNA profile from Bones 17 and the University of North Texas compared it with a saliva sample from her mother, the sheriff's office named Lori Anne Razpotnik. She had been 15 and living with her family in Lewis County, about 75 miles from Auburn, when she ran away in 1982. Her family never saw her again.
The last was Bones 20, a set of bone fragments and teeth found in 2003 on Kent-Des Moines Road after Ridgway led detectives to the place. On January 22, 2024, the sheriff's office announced that the Texas laboratory Othram, working with the University of North Texas and a DNA sample from her mother, had identified them as Tammie Liles, 16, of Everett. She had last been seen in June 1983. Partial remains found in Oregon had been identified as hers through dental records in 1988, and her death had been one of the seven left out of the 2003 pleas; Ridgway, who at first denied killing her, later admitted moving remains from King County to the Tigard area. With her identification, the sheriff's office said, no unidentified remains connected to the Green River case were left.
Three women on the list are still missing: Kassee Ann Lee, 16, last seen on August 28, 1982, near South 200th Street and 30th Avenue South; Kelly Kay McGinnis, 18, last seen on June 28, 1983, at South 216th Street and Pacific Highway South; and Patricia Ann Osborn, 19, last seen on October 28, 1983, walking to a restaurant from Aurora Avenue North in Seattle. Their cases are listed as Green River homicides, but Ridgway has never been charged with them. The sheriff's office is also looking for a few other women, including one known only as "Angie," a friend of Tammie Liles last seen in downtown Seattle in the summer of 1983.
On September 9, 2024, Ridgway was quietly booked into the King County Jail on an institutional hold, and on September 13 he was returned to Walla Walla. The transport documents were sealed for six months, the first new filing in his case file since 2017. When a judge unsealed them on March 7, 2025, they showed that sheriff's detectives had taken him to places where he said he had left remains that were never recovered. Earlier efforts based on his descriptions from prison had failed, prosecutors said, and he believed he could find the places in person. The trips took several days because of his age and health. The sheriff's office would not say whether anything was found and said only that the cases remained open. Prosecutors acknowledged that development, animals and the passing decades had probably destroyed some evidence. His lawyer Michele Shaw said he was "presenting with aging issues."
In December 2025, KIRO Newsradio reported court documents showing that nothing had been found, and that some investigators believed he had made the locations up. Reichert said that a misleading trip of that kind was typical of him and did not surprise him.
On December 1, 2025, KIRO Newsradio reported, citing five unnamed sources, that Ridgway was receiving end-of-life care. The Department of Corrections' deputy communications director, Rachel Ericson, called the reports "inaccurate rumors" and said Ridgway had had no change in his medical condition; the department also denied that he was being considered for compassionate release. Reichert said he had seen a photograph of Ridgway in a wheelchair about a year earlier. King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion's office declined to discuss his health and warned that such reports reopen wounds for victims' families.
At that point Ridgway was 76 and held at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, serving 49 consecutive life terms without the possibility of release. A March 2026 report in the South Seattle Emerald said he was receiving palliative care in the King County Jail, but no corrections or law enforcement statement was reported to support that, and no other outlet reported any move.
Norm Maleng died in 2007, and Ridgway's lead lawyer, Anthony Savage, in 2012. Dave Reichert ran for governor of Washington in 2024; he wrote about the case in his book Chasing the Devil. Ridgway once said the story should be called "Technology Caught the Green River Killer," a remark KUOW described as a jab at Reichert. He told prosecutors in 2003 that technology, not any detective, had caught him. The evidence that did it had been kept for 14 years by the investigators who stayed on the case. The prosecutor Jeff Baird later told a meeting of forensic scientists that without DNA the Green River killings would never have been solved, and that Ridgway's methods had left remarkably little physical evidence in most of the cases.
For the families, the deal Maleng made has never been simple. Some, like Robert Rule and Kathy Mills, found a way to forgive. Others, like Mary Marrero and Jose Malvar Jr., said the man who killed their sisters should have died. "There is never closure for the families," Reichert said in 2025. In 2026 the photographer Laura LeMoon exhibited 49 photographs, made over four years at places connected to his victims, in Seattle's Columbia City.
Proven by final judgment, on his guilty pleas: 48 murders in King County between 1982 and 1998 (November 5, 2003) and the murder of Rebecca Marrero (February 18, 2011). Four of the 48 counts were for women unidentified in 2003; they have since been named as Sandra Majors, Wendy Stephens, Lori Anne Razpotnik and Tammie Liles.
Never charged: the death of Amina Agisheff, 36, whose remains were found near North Bend in April 1984 and whom the Seattle Times listed in 2001 as the first victim on the Green River list, and the disappearances of Kassee Ann Lee, Keli McGinness and Patricia Osborn. They are not convictions.
Claimed, not proven: totals of 65 to 70, or 75 to 80, killings, and killings before 1982. Authorities have said they do not take his claims at face value.
Points on which sources differ: the length of the prosecutor's 2003 summary (133 pages in the Seattle Times, 138 elsewhere); the age of Debra Estes (15 in the charge and plea lists; 17 in one sentencing report); when Colleen Brockman's remains were found (May 26, 1984, in the plea list; May 1986 in another Seattle Times report); the spelling of several names (Keli McGinness or Kelly McGinnis; Patricia Osborn or Osborne; Razpotnik or Ratzpotnik; Yellow Robe or Yellowrobe); and Marta Reeves's age (36 or 37). His age at the childhood stabbing is given as about 15.
February 18, 1949: Gary Leon Ridgway is born in Utah; the family later moves to King County, when he is 11.
1969: graduates from Tyee High School; works at Kenworth Truck.
1970: first marriage; serves in the Navy and is discharged in 1971.
December 1973: second marriage; a son is born in 1975; divorced May 1981.
1981: buys a house off Military Road near Pacific Highway South.
May 1982: arrested in a prostitution sting.
July 8, 1982: Wendy Lee Coffield, 16, last seen in Tacoma; found in the Green River July 15.
August 12 and 15, 1982: Debra Bonner, then Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds and Opal Mills, are found in and beside the river; a task force is formed August 16.
September 1982: police focus on a taxi driver who is later cleared.
April 30, 1983: Marie Malvar disappears; Des Moines police question Ridgway, who denies knowing her.
May 8, 1983: Carol Christensen is found near Maple Valley.
January 1984: the 43-officer Green River Task Force is unveiled.
February 1984: Ridgway sends a misleading letter to a newspaper.
April 12, 1984: interviewed by Detective Randy Mullinax; passes a polygraph test that year.
November 1984: Bob Keppel begins talking with Ted Bundy in Florida.
December 9, 1984: the official toll reaches 42.
February 23, 1985: admits choking a woman in 1982.
1985: meets his third wife, Judith.
April 8, 1987: his house, vehicles and locker are searched; he gives a saliva sample.
September 20, 1990: Marta Reeves is found near Enumclaw.
July 1991: the task force is cut to one detective, Tom Jensen.
August 6, 1998: Patricia Yellow Robe is found in Seattle.
November 2, 1999: Tracy Ann Winston is identified by DNA.
March 2001: the state crime lab begins new DNA testing of Green River evidence.
November 30, 2001: Ridgway is arrested at the Kenworth plant in Renton.
December 5, 2001: charged with four counts of aggravated first-degree murder; pleads not guilty December 18.
March 27, 2003: charged with three more counts after paint evidence.
June 13, 2003: plea agreement signed; interviews begin.
August to September 2003: remains of Pammy Avent, April Buttram and Marie Malvar are found.
November 5, 2003: pleads guilty to 48 counts.
December 18, 2003: sentenced to 48 consecutive life terms without release.
December 21, 2010: Becky Marrero's skull is found in Auburn.
February 18, 2011: pleads guilty to her murder; 49th life term.
2012: Bones 16 identified as Sandra Majors.
September 2013: claims 75 to 80 victims in KOMO interviews.
May 2015: moved to federal custody in Florence, Colorado; Washington asks for his return September 18, 2015.
January 2021: Wendy Stephens identified.
December 2023: Lori Anne Razpotnik identified.
January 22, 2024: Tammie Liles identified as Bones 20.
September 9 to 13, 2024: taken to King County to search for remains; documents unsealed March 7, 2025.
December 1 to 2, 2025: the Department of Corrections calls reports that he is dying "inaccurate rumors."
October 20, 2026: serving his sentences; no later development found.