Latest / Heroes Behind the Badge / Dave Reichert — Hunting the Green River Killer | Part 1

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Dave Reichert — Hunting the Green River Killer | Part 1 · Heroes Behind the Badge

0:00
This episode includes graphic descriptions of murder,
0:03
sexual violence, and the recovery of human remains.
0:06
Listener discretion is advised.
0:08
As he gets closer, he realizes that these are actually
0:12
real live, uh, bodies submerged under water.
0:17
And as he looks up on the bank, he sees this guy
0:19
standing there and the guy waves at him and says, Hey,
0:23
I hope you have a great rafting trip.
0:25
Yeah, you have a good day too.
0:27
And this guy gets in his truck and drives away.
0:29
(Music)
0:41
the Green River Killer was, uh, but you could never
0:45
prove it. 49 women were dead.
0:48
The man you suspected blended
0:50
into society for two decades.
0:53
He was interviewed, searched.
0:56
He even passed a polygraph.
0:58
Dave Reichert, you were on this
1:00
case from the very beginning.
1:02
What was the first step that
1:04
finally brought the killer to justice?
1:08
Well, yeah, that's a good question.
1:09
The first step really was,
1:12
um, a little bit of, uh, luck
1:17
and, uh, yeah.
1:19
And, uh, and a lot of hard work too.
1:21
I think, you know, we find that
1:22
in a lot of police work, right?
1:23
You, you, you have to put the hard work in too, but you
1:26
have to pray that you have some, uh, you have some good
1:30
luck and you have some guidance and, and, uh, um,
1:35
sort of, you know, led by the Lord is
1:37
kind of how I like to think about it.
1:39
But, you know, at, at the early crime scenes, um, we
1:44
did a real good job and some of the, some of the
1:46
techniques that we developed back in the eighties
1:48
actually, you're, they've been refined a little bit,
1:51
but they're still being used
1:52
today, uh, throughout the country.
1:54
Uh,
1:56
but it was good, uh, good detective work at the crime
1:59
scenes, hands and knees, uh, through tall brush and
2:03
blackberry vines down to the river and then, and then
2:07
taking the bodies out of the river, uh, in a way that
2:11
protected, uh, any, any kind of forensic evidence.
2:16
And thinking back, of course, in 1982,
2:19
um, we didn't have DNA science.
2:22
Uh, there was no discussion about DNA science, but, um,
2:27
you know, as we worked with the medical examiner's
2:30
office, uh, in the autopsies in collecting evidence,
2:35
very thorough in collecting some spermatozoa and a
2:40
couple of the victims that were in the river.
2:42
So you never can assume that because there have been in
2:46
the river, you know, or out in the weather for two or
2:49
three weeks, that evidence has
2:50
been all evidence has been destroyed.
2:53
That evidence was still there and,
2:56
um, collected and frozen in 1982.
3:01
And then of course, in 2001, as, as the state lab
3:06
progressed in their science of DNA, that 1982
3:10
spermatozoa collected
3:12
connected with the science in 2001.
3:15
And that was the first nail in the coffin for Ridgway.
3:19
And there was a second one to come a little later.
3:22
I understand Bundy had something
3:25
to do with the solving of this case.
3:27
Tell us about
3:28
us about
3:28
Yeah.
3:29
So I, I was really good friends with Bob Keppel and a
3:33
lot of your listeners may recognize that name.
3:35
He's written a couple of books and kind of a
3:38
compilation of Green River and, uh, the Ted Bundy cases
3:42
together because Bundy did insert
3:45
himself into the Green River case.
3:50
And he did this.
3:51
So, so Bob, uh, and I worked as partners in the
3:55
homicide unit in the King County sheriff's office.
3:58
Bob went on to work in the attorney general's office.
4:02
And then, uh, he came back to the task force as an
4:05
advisor because of his
4:07
experience with the Bundy serial murders.
4:10
So he and I received a letter from Bundy.
4:14
I think it was in 1986
4:17
and the letter from Bundy was really, um, you know, his
4:21
opportunity to bring his name into the light again
4:24
because Ridgway was getting all
4:26
the press here in Washington state.
4:28
And his pitch was, uh, look, uh, Bob and Dave, um, I am
4:35
kind of an expert in this field and I sort of know kind
4:39
of without admitting anything, you know, he just says,
4:41
I might be able to help you understand
4:43
how the mind of a serial killer works.
4:46
So Bob and I flew to, uh, Starke, Florida and visited,
4:53
uh, Ted Bundy for three days, uh, in prison there.
4:57
And so I guess the first thing that I think of about
5:00
that is, is exactly what you said.
5:02
Is he just trying to get in the headlines again and,
5:06
and make himself more relevant or was he just that
5:12
obsessed with his own persona that, that he couldn't
5:16
help himself or, or was he actually a value to you?
5:22
Well, I think, um, and the
5:23
first question is an absolute yes.
5:27
He was definitely, it's like, okay, he's piling up all
5:31
of these, um, victims, these bodies
5:34
and, uh, he's getting all the press.
5:38
And then of course he's a smart guy.
5:39
So, you know, he can be of help to us too.
5:42
think a lot of the investigators, uh, who might listen
5:46
to this program, who've been involved in serial murders
5:50
or interested in have read about them, understand and
5:53
know that one of the traits of a serial killer is the
5:56
fact that they, they really
5:58
want to be, it is about them.
6:01
They want to have the attention.
6:03
And, uh, you know, with, with Ridgway, for example, uh,
6:09
he left little clues for us
6:10
here and there along the way.
6:12
So he would dump a body and then he would take the
6:15
skull and put it right next to a, uh, a sign that was a
6:20
city limits of Auburn and place it right inside the
6:23
jurisdiction of King County Sheriff's office.
6:27
And of course, if we walked down the hill and we find
6:29
the rest of the body, we didn't know it was Ridgway at
6:31
the time, but it's his effort
6:34
to bring notoriety to himself.
6:36
Uh, he reads about it in the newspaper.
6:39
Well, Bundy was the same way.
6:41
And so he's inserting himself into this investigation
6:44
with his knowledge of serial killers.
6:47
The second question, uh, as it relates to whether or
6:51
not he was helpful, um, I think in a, you know, in a
6:55
minimal way he was and that he just sort of confirmed
6:58
some of the things we already knew about serial killers
7:02
and maybe knew about Ridgway.
7:04
And that is that he would go back to the crime scenes.
7:07
He would have sex with the dead bodies.
7:09
Um, but, um, it's also confirmed
7:13
what we were thinking about Ted Bundy.
7:15
So as Bundy talked to us, he was really talking about
7:19
himself in the third person
7:22
and he would do it this way.
7:23
And he called our guy, uh, Ridgway, the Riverman.
7:27
So he would say, and that's the title of Bob Keppel's.
7:29
One of Bob Keppel's books is The Riverman.
7:32
And he would say, the Riverman
7:35
will go back to the crime scene.
7:37
The Riverman probably had a connection to
7:40
pornographic, uh, material and movies.
7:44
You might want to stake out a downtown area where these
7:47
pornographic, uh, movie theaters are,
7:50
he might find him in those theaters.
7:52
Well, Ridgway didn't do that, but Bundy did.
7:55
The last question that I asked Ted Bundy was, I said,
7:58
do you think that, because he was talking in the third
8:00
person, I, my, I posed the
8:02
question in the third person.
8:04
And that was, do you think that Ted Bundy will ever,
8:08
uh, tell us, tell the police, uh,
8:12
what really happened in Washington state?
8:14
And he just sort of smiled and, and, um,
8:18
uh, nodded, you know, kind of, well, you never know.
8:22
So we know that the only
8:26
reason that he did talk, right?
8:28
Is that
8:29
he was going to be executed and he played a little game
8:32
with all of the detectives, the FBI,
8:34
Bob Keppel and others who are down there.
8:36
He played this game.
8:37
How long can I play this out to keep myself alive?
8:40
And they finally said, okay,
8:41
you're done.
8:42
Right.
8:42
Right.
8:43
Let me set the stage here.
8:44
Have you set the stage?
8:46
So you, uh, just going back to something that you
8:48
mentioned about, you know, where he left the skull just
8:51
outside of the jurisdictional boundaries of one of the
8:54
municipalities there or the County.
8:57
So.
8:59
Were you a detective at the time?
9:01
Were you in homicide?
9:03
Was it a multi-agency task force?
9:06
How did it cross jurisdictional boundaries?
9:09
Who all was involved in that
9:11
investigation from the get-go?
9:13
Yeah, that's a,
9:16
uh, boy, that brings back a lot of memories because
9:19
that was part of the struggle.
9:21
Uh, right.
9:22
I think anyone who's involved with, you know,
9:25
multi-jurisdictional investigations, you know, there's
9:27
always this struggle as to who's in charge.
9:29
And, uh, yeah, I went into homicide in 1979.
9:34
Um, and, uh, I, I was assigned the first case, uh, in,
9:39
in the Green River case in, in July of 1982.
9:43
And, uh,
9:44
uh, what happened is in, in, uh,
9:49
July of 82, Wendy Coffield
9:51
is found in the city of Kent.
9:53
They started their
9:54
investigation August of 82, August 12th.
9:58
Um, I was assigned the Debbie Bonner,
10:00
uh, case and immediately called Kent.
10:04
So now we have two jurisdictions working together.
10:07
Three days later, August 15th, the rafters floating
10:10
down the river, he sees what he thinks
10:12
are mannequins, uh, submerged under water.
10:15
As he gets closer, he realizes that these are actually
10:19
real live, uh, bodies submerged under water.
10:24
And as he looks up on the bank, he sees this guy
10:26
standing there and the guy waves at him and says, Hey,
10:30
I hope you have a great rafting trip.
10:32
Yeah, you have a good day too.
10:34
And this guy gets in his truck and drives away.
10:36
Well, that was Gary Ridgway because on the bank we
10:39
found a body that he was taking down to the river.
10:43
Uh, but because he was caught by the rafter, he just
10:46
left it up on there on the river bank.
10:49
Well, again, that was Sunday, August 15th on August
10:52
16th, we started an internal
10:54
investigation with about 25
10:56
detectives, uh, that were gathered up from the
10:59
precincts on the King County Sheriff's office that were
11:03
robbery, burglary, those sorts of detectives who could
11:06
follow up all the leads that we were collecting.
11:09
As we move forward into, uh, the end of, uh, 1982, uh,
11:15
we had developed a suspect that kind of looked kind of
11:18
good, but, uh, other cases were going unsolved.
11:21
So the administration disbanded the
11:24
internal task force and left me with six unsolved
11:28
murders, put me in what we call back then the Ted Bundy
11:31
room, which is where Bob Keppel
11:33
worked on his cases all along for a while.
11:36
So I was up in this, this office, uh, next to the vice
11:41
unit working these six unsolved by the end of 1983.
11:47
We were beginning to find more bodies.
11:49
I was able to get five more detectives to help me.
11:52
And then in the 1984, we got a new
11:54
sheriff who said, okay, this is enough.
11:56
We're going to, we're going to get
11:57
down and dirty on this, on this case.
11:59
So he formed a, an enhanced task force, which, um, then
12:05
we went into a separate vacant school building.
12:09
We included, uh, places, uh, uh, police departments
12:13
like the Seattle police department, Pierce County
12:15
Sheriff's office, Tacoma PD, Kent PD those places that
12:19
we were finding bodies and or
12:21
that victims were missing from.
12:23
So then we had this multi-agency,
12:26
we weren't making a lot of progress.
12:27
So then of course the newspapers start putting a lot of
12:30
pressure on us to, to bring in the
12:33
people that really can solve the case.
12:35
And that's the FBI.
12:36
So, yeah, right.
12:38
So right.
12:39
So we bring in the FBI where the
12:42
sheriff does with a lot of pressure.
12:44
The FBI said, we're not going to do
12:45
this unless we're running the case.
12:47
Sheriff says that ain't happening.
12:48
So they said, okay, we'll give you agents, but we have
12:52
to have our own supervisor because they're not
12:54
reporting to the lowly King
12:55
County Sheriff's office sergeants.
12:57
So they had their own FBI supervisor with the, and we
13:00
had agents from all over the country that didn't even
13:03
know what rigor mortis was or
13:04
lividity or any of those things.
13:06
So we had to teach them some homicide investigation,
13:10
techniques and some knowledge and they
13:13
stayed, they, they develop a suspect.
13:16
They searched the guy's place.
13:17
It falls apart.
13:19
They then say, okay, we're out of here.
13:21
They leave.
13:22
And
13:26
in 1990, March
13:29
the, the County council says we're
13:31
spending $2 million a month on this case.
13:35
We're not going to solve it.
13:37
So they disbanded the task force myself, detective Tom
13:42
Jensen, detective Jim Doyon
13:44
were the last three to leave the,
13:47
um, sexual crimes unit, sexual assault.
13:50
And I was fortunate enough to be on the sergeant's list.
13:53
I was promoted to the area and work the area where all
13:56
the bodies were being found.
13:57
Most of the bodies were being found.
13:59
And most of the victims were being found.
14:01
And so I was still taking tips, graveyard shift,
14:04
sergeant and still looking for
14:06
the killer while I was out there.
14:09
These two detectives were taking
14:11
tips and the major crimes unit.
14:14
Then I fast forward.
14:15
I became the sheriff in 1997.
14:19
The DNA science came together with, I mentioned the
14:22
1982 science and that's where
14:25
we started surveillance on him.
14:27
And then we also had some science
14:30
around, um, microscopic paint spheres.
14:34
He was a painter at Kenworth trucking and we connected,
14:38
uh, three bodies through
14:39
microscopic paints, paint spheres.
14:41
one victim that was buried for six years.
14:45
Uh, a construction crew was at a site and uncovered some
14:49
human remains and stopped immediately.
14:52
We went out and processed that scene.
14:54
We were able to recover a piece of clothing worn, which
14:59
we think was her, uh, top that she was wearing.
15:03
Of course it had a decomposed because it was cloth, but
15:06
in the decomposing material,
15:08
we were able to protect that.
15:10
And the other thing that we had to look into and attach
15:11
to it was, um, microscopic paint spheres that the lab
15:18
discovered and they had a new way of comparing, um, the
15:23
Mike, those microscopic paint spheres to his coveralls,
15:27
which were recovered in a 1986 search
15:30
warrant of Kenworth trucking from his locker.
15:35
So they match those two.
15:36
We charged him with three more.
15:38
So we had now seven cases, um, to charge him with, and
15:42
then we went forward from there.
15:44
I want to remind our, our viewers, our listeners, uh,
15:47
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So let's continue now with Dave Reichert.
16:20
I think Craig Floyd has some questions.
16:23
Um, Ridgway, as I understand it, became a suspect, a
16:27
strong suspect in the case, maybe as early as 1983.
16:32
Now you pointed out that obviously some of the evidence
16:35
against him was not, uh, relevant at that time because
16:38
you didn't have the forensic science, but, but tell us
16:41
how Ridgway became a suspect.
16:44
And, uh, and then I think he
16:45
even passed a lie detector test.
16:47
Talk to us about
16:48
us about that.
16:49
Yeah.
16:49
He actually passed two, uh, polygraph tests and, and,
16:54
uh, yeah, he, so, so what we did early on in the case,
16:58
uh, we began to collect, um, lists.
17:01
So we collected, uh, because pickup truck was one of
17:06
the, I mean, one of the only things really we could
17:09
target as for sure we knew our suspect was probably
17:12
driving a pickup truck, but we had so many
17:15
descriptions, you know, gray,
17:17
blue, red canopy, no canopy cover.
17:20
Uh, we, we got a list of all registered pickup owners,
17:25
uh, because the bodies were found, uh, a lot of them in
17:30
and near the Green River, which is a steelhead, uh,
17:33
fishing, uh, hole for a lot
17:36
of people in Washington state.
17:37
We got a list of all people with fishing licenses.
17:40
Uh, we had, we had a list of everyone who was arrested
17:44
for assaulting, uh, women, uh, not just
17:48
prostitutes on the street, but all women.
17:51
So we were collecting all of these, these lists.
17:54
We didn't have a computer in 1982, but by 1986, we had
17:59
what they called a VAX computer, which would take up,
18:03
uh, you know, the size of a classroom in a school.
18:08
And we had 20 people who volunteered to enter the data
18:13
that we had collected on hard copy documents.
18:17
And as they entered the data,
18:19
we could extract the data only.
18:22
Uh, and that was it.
18:23
The computer was not able to make any comparisons.
18:26
Well, we printed out, for example, the people who were
18:29
arrested for, um, assaulting
18:32
women and who own pickup trucks.
18:35
And then we would take those lists and put them down
18:37
the length of a hallway at
18:39
the school our offices were in.
18:41
We'd have two to three detectives
18:43
or four assigned to those lists.
18:44
We'd be calling out addresses, license plates, numbers,
18:47
names, et cetera, uh, and see
18:50
if we had matches on both lists.
18:53
So if we had matches of at least three, um, on three
18:57
lists, that was a priority a suspect priority B
19:00
priority C if they were on one list.
19:03
And so Ridgway was one of those on the priority a list.
19:09
And, um, and he, so he also had an arrest, uh, a few
19:14
months prior to the beginning of our finding the bodies
19:18
for patronizing prostitutes, one arrest only.
19:21
And, uh, and so he became a suspect in that way.
19:25
But during the time we were looking at him, we had a,
19:28
uh, one, uh, prostitute who at the time was not
19:33
considered to be very credible.
19:35
Come in and say that she had escaped from someone was
19:39
able to pick him out of a montage.
19:41
Uh, we put him in with some others and
19:43
she was able to pick him out of a montage.
19:45
And this was the basis for our search warrant.
19:48
And then we went into the, his home and into his
19:51
workplace, search both, both places.
19:54
And I mean, we ripped that house apart.
19:58
And, and we know now afterwards that he did kill, uh,
20:02
some of his victims in the house.
20:05
You know, what's really curious to me
20:07
though, is, is this went on for 20 years.
20:10
And, and, uh, and, and clearly you've bet you're
20:14
dealing with him over those, over those years, you went
20:16
to his house, you went to his business.
20:19
How did this guy continue to function in society?
20:22
I mean, did, did he lose his job
20:25
because he was under investigation?
20:27
I know he had a family, he had a wife, he had a, uh, at
20:31
least a son that I'm aware of.
20:33
And how did in the neighborhoods and, and just be, you
20:37
know, how people talk and word gets out in the gossip,
20:40
how did he continue working or functioning at
20:44
all?
20:44
Yeah.
20:45
I think that's one of the most interesting questions.
20:48
Uh, you know, the first thing that people, uh, assume
20:51
is that he was highly intelligent and, uh, he, he's
20:56
not, he, he's a little rat.
20:59
For, you know,
21:01
he's a weasel weasel.
21:03
And, and, uh, he knew how to
21:06
maneuver in that street, um, life.
21:11
And he basically just went unnoticed.
21:14
He was just sort of incognito.
21:17
One of those people who moved in the shadows that
21:19
nobody really paid attention to.
21:21
Nobody really thought of him as a threat because he's
21:23
just this little, like you say,
21:25
let's just use this little weaselly guy.
21:28
Did he lose his job?
21:29
No, he actually worked.
21:31
And that's the other interesting thing because the FBI
21:33
profile of course is, um, in most of these serial
21:38
killer cases, they're, they're moving from job to job
21:41
or they're a person who is
21:43
transient, doesn't stay in one place.
21:45
Usually might be a truck driver, for
21:47
example, and move from state to state.
21:49
for, uh, for 30 years.
21:51
And when we first arrested him and brought him in and
21:53
searched his house and searched his locker, um, then
21:57
the people at Kenworth trucking
21:59
began to call him a Green River Gary.
22:02
And, um, people always knew at
22:05
Kenworth that he was a little bit odd.
22:07
He would cover his tracks, um, kind of, by, um, at
22:16
lunchtime at Kenworth, he would go
22:19
off in the corner and read the Bible.
22:22
Uh, but we know that later on, once he started
22:25
collecting, he did collect souvenirs from the victims.
22:29
He would walk by the women's restroom at Kenworth and
22:33
toss, uh, some of those little trinkets in.
22:36
So for, you know, bracelets, little rings.
22:39
And then he would get excited when he saw the women who
22:42
found those in the restroom
22:44
wearing those items at work.
22:47
So pretty strange.
22:49
And nobody at work, like the supervisors or the bosses
22:53
ever like flagged this or said,
22:55
we got to get rid of this guy or
22:58
no.
22:58
I mean, like I say, he's just, you
23:00
know, he's just a truck painter and,
23:05
yeah.
23:05
That's
23:06
just weird.
23:07
Now how many wives did he have?
23:09
He had several, right?
23:10
Yeah.
23:11
Three.
23:12
So he had three.
23:12
So what happened with the first two?
23:15
Uh, the first two, um, I'm so my memory is a little bit
23:19
foggy on, on this, but both of them grew.
23:22
Uh, my memory recalls a little bit suspicious.
23:26
I know that one of them, I think it was the second
23:28
wife, um, was the one who he had actually took to one
23:35
of the sites down at Green River and tried to, uh, he
23:38
wanted to make out and he was strangling her.
23:43
And, um, uh, she said, look,
23:46
like, you know, let's go home.
23:47
And, and so that marriage ended his last wife, Judith.
23:51
Um, she, all three of these women were women that, that
23:57
you might say were, um, had a very low self esteem.
24:03
We're just looking for, uh, someone who had a good job
24:06
who could take care of them,
24:07
provide a home, provide food and shelter.
24:10
And Judith was told by, by Ridgway,
24:13
look, don't ask me where I'm going.
24:16
And when I leave work early in the morning, don't ask
24:19
anything about if I come home
24:20
late, it's none of your business.
24:22
Just know that I'm going to work and everything else I
24:24
do is, is none of your business.
24:27
So she didn't ask any questions.
24:29
this is what he would do.
24:30
So, um, one morning on the way to work, he would drive
24:34
down Pacific highway south from his house,
24:37
sorry, 10 miles north of Tacoma.
24:39
And he would drive down Pacific highway south.
24:42
Prostitutes were out all the time, picked up a
24:45
prostitute early in the morning, had sex with her in
24:48
the back of his pickup truck with a canopy on it,
24:51
killed her, left her in the back of the truck, went to
24:54
work, uh, worked four hours and at lunchtime went out
24:58
to his truck, drove to a dead end street, had sex with
25:01
the dead body in the back of his truck, drove back to
25:04
work, finished out his four hours, drove, drove home on
25:08
the way home, had sex with the dead body, buried or
25:11
dumped the body and then went home to his wife and son.
25:15
Wow.
25:16
I mean, that's just so incredibly bold or, that you
25:22
would leave a murder victim in your vehicle while you
25:26
go into work and think that, uh,
25:29
maybe that's the safest place.
25:31
Who would ever think
25:32
that
25:32
you did mention his son.
25:35
And so he did have a child and, and, uh, you know, I
25:38
saw some, something else that came up about that.
25:41
He, uh, was apparently taking his son on a camping trip
25:45
or something to that effect.
25:47
And at the same time he had body of a body or bodies in
25:51
the vehicle, then disposed of them.
25:54
Yeah.
25:54
Well, the story that I, um, that I share is one that's,
26:01
you know, it's sad, obviously, uh, because someone's
26:05
killed, but sad because this eight year old kid is in
26:08
the car, in the truck with his
26:10
dad and they pick up a prostitute.
26:13
Uh, and, um, he tells his son that he's just picking
26:18
her up to give her a ride home.
26:22
And then they stop in a secluded area and he says,
26:26
yeah, I'm just going to walk her home.
26:27
She lives through the woods here.
26:29
You stay in the truck.
26:30
So they go out into the woods.
26:32
He has sex with, uh, Giselle Lovvorn was this victim's
26:36
name, just south of, of, uh, SeaTac airport.
26:40
There's a road that goes, uh, east and west.
26:43
He pulls into a secluded area there, uh, walks into the
26:47
woods, has sex with her, um, and he, he
26:53
actually tied his socks around her neck.
26:56
That was the ligature he left there.
26:59
And we, we believed, I was, um, leading the efforts on
27:04
recovering that, uh, those remains,
27:07
she was pretty decomposed, but I recall there was a
27:10
pyramid shaped rock in the area of her vagina, where
27:14
her vagina would have been in her pelvic area.
27:17
The two victims in the river had a pyramid shaped rocks
27:21
inserted, uh, inside of them, and he said he did this
27:25
to prevent others from having sex because with, with
27:29
these bodies, because they were his.
27:32
Now he does this to Giselle Lovvorn.
27:35
He goes back to the truck and the son
27:37
asks where, you know, where is this?
27:40
Where did this girl go?
27:42
And he said, well, she decided to walk home by herself.
27:44
And then they just
27:45
home.
27:46
Wow.
27:48
We've, we've talked about
27:50
serial killers on the show before.
27:51
And at one of the questions that, that just confuses me
27:55
and I'm sure a lot of people is our, you know, a guy
27:58
like Ridgway kills 49 women that we know of.
28:01
And he claims to have maybe killed more than 70.
28:04
Are you born a serial killer?
28:08
I mean, is there just something a miss in your brain
28:11
that, that ends up you going there
28:13
and killing people to this degree?
28:15
Or did he have a troubled childhood?
28:18
Was there some abuse involved?
28:20
I mean, what created this monster?
28:22
monster?
28:22
can only speak about Ridgway really, uh, from my
28:26
experience with, uh, interviewing him
28:29
and, and watching all the interviews, um,
28:33
uh, that we did with him for six months after we, after
28:36
we arrested him and his pled, wanted to plead, uh,
28:41
guilty, uh, and, and they agreed to talk to us.
28:44
But I think with him, um, my, my own personal, uh, you
28:50
know, unprofessional opinion
28:53
really is that I think that he was, uh,
28:57
he was born on, he was born with, I think the, the
29:02
ability to be easily influenced and, um,
29:08
traumatized by whatever happened in his childhood, but
29:12
also think that he was, yeah, he was, he was born with
29:14
some sort of a defect because
29:17
when he tells us at 12 years old,
29:21
that he went to play with a friend who was a little bit
29:24
younger in the woods and when they had a knife and he
29:29
stabbed this younger boy and, uh, we thought that he
29:33
was just making that story up, but we actually found
29:37
the victim through going back and looking at, uh, and
29:40
this is where, you know, when people say that we
29:43
didn't, the task force, you
29:45
know, really wasn't doing their job.
29:48
Uh, can you imagine decades later, us tracking down a
29:53
eight year old boy who was stabbed in the woods.
29:56
Um, we, we got a, uh, class, uh, uh, yearbook and we
30:02
were able to track this kid down in California, who's
30:05
now a grown man, obviously.
30:07
And he relates the same story that he was stabbed with
30:10
a knife by Gary Ridgway, um, in the woods.
30:15
And the reason, so we asked Gary why he did it.
30:18
And he says he, he's always felt like he wanted to know
30:21
what it was like to kill someone.
30:24
So he believed that he killed this
30:25
little boy, but he, but he didn't.
30:28
So he had to obviously have some sort of a propensity
30:32
toward that kind of crime at a,
30:35
you know, at a very young age.
30:37
um, he had a very unusual relationship with his mother.
30:41
Uh, I wouldn't go into detail, uh, about that, but he
30:44
did say that he saw his mother, uh, his sunbathing
30:49
nude in the backyard, um, at a very young age and
30:55
started having fantasies about having sex with his
30:57
mother, his mother, uh, according to Ridgway, uh,
31:02
showered him until he was in his teens.
31:06
She's the one who, who washed him and scrubbed him and,
31:09
you know, until he was 14, 15 years old.
31:13
And, um, she, he was very upset with her because he
31:18
felt like she was cheating on his dad because she was
31:22
very friendly and flirting with men at, uh, the
31:26
clothing store that she worked at
31:28
and it was a men's clothing department.
31:31
And he saw her interacting with him.
31:33
So she felt, he felt that
31:35
she was unfaithful to his dad.
31:38
So he got pissed off at that.
31:40
And then his first marriage, um, he went into the Navy
31:45
and he, uh, learned that his wife was cheating on him.
31:49
And so then he, he just had this bad attitude.
31:53
All women are bad and I'm going
31:56
to, I'm going to kill prostitutes.
31:58
Did he ever
32:00
have any remorse, Dave, that you know of?
32:03
I mean, you're talking about a guy who, who doesn't
32:06
sound like all is altogether.
32:08
Obviously.
32:09
Was there any remorse at all?
32:11
at
32:12
Well, and that's the, you know, that's the
32:13
psychological, um, uh, identifier here too.
32:18
Right.
32:18
He's a, he's a definitely a psychopath.
32:20
There's, there's no, no remorse at all.
32:24
But with a psychopath, the way I understand it, you
32:27
know, in my unprofessional opinion, uh, they have, uh,
32:31
no remorse, but they, they know the
32:34
difference between right and wrong.
32:37
They know what they were doing.
32:39
Uh, you know, it is wrong and therefore they can't
32:42
plead, of course, insanity.
32:44
So he's not insane.
32:46
He just, he just knows what he's doing is wrong, but
32:49
he's going to purge the world of prostitutes.
32:52
And in fact, uh, you know, one of the things he said
32:55
was he, he really hated men who
32:59
were, um, uh, uh, abusing children.
33:05
And so one of the things I said to
33:07
him is I said, well, you know what?
33:08
That you should hate yourself then
33:10
because you, you abused children.
33:13
And he got this shocked look on his face.
33:16
Like,
33:17
Oh,
33:19
you might be right.
33:21
But he again, yeah, no remorse whatsoever.
33:24
He had more guilt, I think, in taking the jewelry items
33:28
that I mentioned before and
33:31
stealing, uh, things than taking a life.
33:36
In fact, he, he took the life
33:37
and felt they belong to him.
33:40
And he would place some of those victims
33:42
who actually meant were special to him.
33:46
Uh, he would put in specific places.
33:49
If they really pissed him off, they fought.
33:51
One of the victims fought him hard and bit him, uh,
33:55
real bad bite mark on his eye on his forearm.
33:59
He was so, he said, so pissed off at her that he put
34:03
her all by herself in the woods.
34:10
In 1982, a sample was collected from a victim in the
34:14
Green River and frozen. 19 years
34:16
later, it was about to give up a name.
34:19
That's part two.
34:20
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