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Serial Killer Documentary - Gary Ridgway： The Green River Killer · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:05
Speaker 1: You're a loser, you're a coward, you're nobody, you're an animal.
0:11
Speaker 2: These are relatives of victims of the Green River Killer.
0:16
Speaker 3: May God have mercy on your pathetic soul because the
0:19
Speaker 3: rest of us who know the truth about you won't.
0:22
Speaker 2: The most prolific serial murderer America has ever known.
0:26
Speaker 4: The one thing that I want you to know, I
0:28
Speaker 4: was that daughter at home, waiting for my.
0:31
Speaker 5: Mom to come home.
0:33
Speaker 2: Whose 19-year reign of terror left the area surrounding Seattle
0:38
Speaker 2: littered with corpses.
0:40
Speaker 6: I don't wish for him to die.
0:41
Speaker 4: I wish for him to have a long-suffering.
0:44
Speaker 2: Cruel death. But who was the Green River Killer? And
0:49
Speaker 2: was he born to kill?
0:51
Speaker 7: When he went through the door and left to go
0:54
Speaker 7: to work, he wasn't the man that I knew.
1:08
Speaker 8: The old Highway 99, adjacent to Seattle's SeaTac Airport, 30.
1:41
Speaker 2: Years ago, a notorious spot.
1:44
Speaker 6: This area, back in the early 80s, had a very
1:50
Speaker 6: transient population. There were topless bars over here. There were
1:54
Speaker 6: a lot of hotels where you could rent rooms for
1:57
Speaker 6: an hour or two.
2:01
Speaker 2: Faye Brooks, then a detective assigned to sex crime cases,
2:05
Speaker 2: was regularly called to the street known simply as The Strip.
2:11
Speaker 6: There were a lot of young women who were working
2:18
Speaker 6: the streets.
2:22
Speaker 9: All the girls were young and some of them had
2:27
Speaker 9: troubled pasts, but all of them are somebody's daughter and
2:31
Speaker 9: somebody's sister.
2:33
Speaker 6: A lot of the young girls had grown up in
2:39
Speaker 6: abusive homes. That was why they were running away. And
2:44
Speaker 6: I could relate to that. I'm a survivor of child
2:47
Speaker 6: sex abuse, and there but for the grace of God
2:51
Speaker 6: were I. And so I could certainly empathize with them,
2:53
Speaker 6: and I also wanted.
2:54
Speaker 5: To help them.
2:57
Speaker 2: One such woman was Marsha Chapman, a street worker who
3:01
Speaker 2: claimed to have been raped.
3:06
Speaker 6: And the apartment building where she lived was raped.
3:17
Speaker 10: Marsha was a beautiful, statuesque black woman. She was 31.
3:22
Speaker 10: She had three children. She couldn't support them on the
3:26
Speaker 10: job she could get, and she was working as a prostitute.
3:32
Speaker 6: She was living in an apartment that was sparsely furnished,
3:38
Speaker 6: so I think she was down on her luck. Seemed
3:42
Speaker 6: to have a kind heart and was a nice person,
3:46
Speaker 6: but under the circumstances, she did what she had to do.
3:48
Speaker 11: To make ends meet.
3:51
Speaker 2: Marsha's alleged rape was typical of the hazards working girls
3:54
Speaker 2: on the strip faced. At the time, best-selling crime writer
4:00
Speaker 2: Anne Rule lived just blocks from the area.
4:02
Speaker 10: I would sometimes stop and warn them and say, do
4:09
Speaker 10: you know what I do for a living? I write
4:10
Speaker 10: about murder. and you don't have a chance out here,
4:14
Speaker 10: how do you know who you're getting in with? And
4:17
Speaker 10: usually they would just shrug and walk away.
4:23
Speaker 2: In 1982, the dangers of working the strip would be
4:27
Speaker 2: brought home by a discovery in the nearby Green River.
4:36
Speaker 6: There was a man on the water in a boat,
4:41
Speaker 6: and he saw underneath the water what he thought was
4:45
Speaker 6: a mannequin. It wasn't a mannequin, it was a human being,
4:49
Speaker 6: and there were two of them there. Well, one of
4:52
Speaker 6: the victims in the water, her hand was just waving
4:56
Speaker 6: with the current of the water. And it was like,
5:02
Speaker 6: here I am, please help me. but of course it
5:07
Speaker 6: was too late.
5:10
Speaker 2: As police investigated the crime scene, they made another grim find.
5:15
Speaker 6: Processing the scene where the victims were in the water
5:18
Speaker 6: was where we found the third victim on the banks.
5:23
Speaker 9: They were all within a few feet of each other,
5:26
Speaker 9: and so clearly the same killer had put all three
5:29
Speaker 9: of the bodies there.
5:31
Speaker 2: All three women had been picked up from around the
5:34
Speaker 2: strip by what the FBI dubbed an organized serial killer.
5:39
Speaker 12: The organized offender was more planned, more premeditated, was able
5:43
Speaker 12: to conceptualize crimes and carry them out very efficiently, mainly
5:48
Speaker 12: because of the fact that they had very little feeling
5:51
Speaker 12: for another human being. They looked at a victim as
5:55
Speaker 12: an object for their excitement. Basically, you're talking about a
5:58
Speaker 12: sexual psychopath.
6:01
Speaker 2: The victims were 16-year-old Opal Mills, 17-year-old Cynthia Jean Hinds,
6:10
Speaker 2: and 31-year-old Marsha Chapman.
6:15
Speaker 6: When I found out that it was Marsha, I was,
6:18
Speaker 6: I don't think I had any words that I could say.
6:23
Speaker 6: It was like, oh my God, somebody killed her. It
6:30
Speaker 6: was really sad.
6:33
Speaker 10: We did not know this was only the beginning of
6:36
Speaker 10: a reign of terror, and we wouldn't know who was
6:40
Speaker 10: doing this for a very long time.
6:44
Speaker 2: On Seattle's strip, the Green River Killer had found a
6:48
Speaker 2: rich hunting ground that would enable him to amass a
6:51
Speaker 2: body count unrivaled by any serial killer in American history.
7:05
Speaker 2: By autumn of 1982, the bodies of five young women
7:09
Speaker 2: had been discovered in or beside Seattle's Green River. They
7:14
Speaker 2: had disappeared from a notorious highway known as The Strip,
7:18
Speaker 2: an area where prostitution was rife. And the Green River
7:23
Speaker 2: Killer had only just begun. On the 15th of September, 1982,
7:36
Speaker 2: 18-year-old Mary Bridget Meehan vanishes.
7:42
Speaker 10: Bridget was the much-loved daughter of a Catholic family in Bellevue,
7:47
Speaker 10: a very rich suburb of Seattle. She skipped school a lot.
7:53
Speaker 10: She joined up with a boyfriend named Ray, and they
7:58
Speaker 10: were living in a cheap motel on Highway 99. She left.
8:07
Speaker 10: I think she was still possibly turning a few tricks.
8:12
Speaker 10: And she didn't come back. Her family was so upset
8:15
Speaker 10: because she was eight and a half months pregnant.
8:20
Speaker 13: To every serial killer, human beings are objects. There's no
8:25
Speaker 13: emotional connection. There's nothing there.
8:31
Speaker 2: On the 20th of September, another girl, 15-year-old Deborah Lorraine
8:36
Speaker 2: Estes disappeared. Yet police were still unable to identify a killer.
8:44
Speaker 6: This was the area that I was working in. This
8:46
Speaker 6: is the area where the bulk of the Green River
8:48
Speaker 6: victims were.
8:49
Speaker 11: Picked up from.
8:51
Speaker 6: And we would sit here and look, you know, trying
8:55
Speaker 6: to identify who might be the suspect. We had very
8:59
Speaker 6: dedicated detectives who were determined to solve this case.
9:08
Speaker 2: On the 26th of September, 16-year-old Linda Jane Rule vanishes.
9:15
Speaker 10: Linda Rule was a slender, blonde girl who lived up
9:18
Speaker 10: in the North End. She had been working the streets,
9:22
Speaker 10: and she had a boyfriend who kind of served as
9:25
Speaker 10: a pimp. She disappeared from an area near the Northgate Mall.
9:34
Speaker 10: Like all serial killers, he seemed to have the ability
9:40
Speaker 10: to sense vulnerability in potential victims. He didn't take the
9:46
Speaker 10: streetwise girls. He was looking for the younger women.
9:53
Speaker 2: By the end of 1982, 15 girls would be missing
9:57
Speaker 2: or found dead, and pressure was mounting. on the sheriff's
10:01
Speaker 2: task force.
10:03
Speaker 14: People hoped that law enforcement would be successful. There were
10:07
Speaker 14: different rumors that were passing around of who the person
10:10
Speaker 14: might be. There was rampant speculation that it might be
10:14
Speaker 14: even a law enforcement officer because of the easy access
10:17
Speaker 14: that the individual.
10:18
Speaker 11: Had to the number and variety of women in the community.
10:21
Speaker 6: You know, the unfortunate thing is some of the women
10:28
Speaker 6: of the street felt like the sheriff's office wasn't investigating
10:33
Speaker 6: the case as hard as we could have because they
10:35
Speaker 6: were street kids and runaways, and that's not true. Everybody
10:42
Speaker 6: assigned to that investigation was committed to solving it. committed
10:47
Speaker 6: to bringing this person to justice because these were, you know,
10:50
Speaker 6: somebody's daughter, somebody's sister, somebody's mother, and we cared about them.
10:54
Speaker 6: We cared about them like they were our own kids
10:56
Speaker 6: or our own family members, and we wanted to solve it.
11:03
Speaker 2: Then on the 30th of April, 1983, a young girl
11:08
Speaker 2: was spotted being taken from the strip.
11:12
Speaker 10: Maria Malvar, with her boyfriend, We're at a restaurant on
11:18
Speaker 10: the highway. Her boyfriend went to make a phone call.
11:22
Speaker 10: When he came back, Maria wasn't in the restaurant. And
11:26
Speaker 10: he was very concerned, and he thought, well, I'll go
11:29
Speaker 10: on the highway and see if I can find her.
11:33
Speaker 10: And he realized that Maria was in the truck ahead
11:36
Speaker 10: of him. There was a man driving, and then she
11:40
Speaker 10: was talking to the man. And so he determined to
11:44
Speaker 10: follow the truck because he wasn't sure what was going on.
11:46
Speaker 10: He worried about her. And they got up to the
11:49
Speaker 10: stoplight at Highway 99 and 216th. But when he turned left,
11:57
Speaker 10: he couldn't see the car.
12:00
Speaker 2: Marie's boyfriend returned with her family to search the streets
12:04
Speaker 2: for the pickup truck she'd left in. And in a
12:08
Speaker 2: quiet cul-de-sac, just a few blocks from the strip, they
12:12
Speaker 2: found it. parked outside the modest home of a local
12:16
Speaker 2: truck painter.
12:18
Speaker 10: And they asked local police please to go there because
12:22
Speaker 10: they believed Maria was in that house. One of the
12:26
Speaker 10: sergeants did go there, knocked on the door. A man
12:30
Speaker 10: answered and he said, there's nobody here but me. And
12:34
Speaker 10: they didn't press it.
12:38
Speaker 13: All serial killers have the ability to appear so normal
12:42
Speaker 13: that they throw off even people who are considered experts.
12:46
Speaker 13: The serial killer is the Olympiad of the pathological liar.
12:52
Speaker 2: The man's details joined hundreds more in the task force's files.
12:57
Speaker 2: A saliva swab would later be added. Still, girls continued
13:02
Speaker 2: to vanish.
13:03
Speaker 6: And the list kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
13:07
Speaker 2: By June 1983, at least 26 girls had disappeared.
13:12
Speaker 12: They learned from their crimes. As their murders grow in number,
13:16
Speaker 12: their efficiency increases.
13:19
Speaker 6: The remains were being found in secluded, quiet, dark areas.
13:25
Speaker 2: That summer, five girls went missing.
13:29
Speaker 12: By the time they were up to five or six
13:30
Speaker 12: or ten homicides, they'd become very difficult to catch.
13:34
Speaker 11: The fear was tremendous and deep throughout the entire community.
13:39
Speaker 2: Autumn, five more vanished.
13:43
Speaker 10: Some of them were in the mountain foothills. Some of
13:46
Speaker 10: them were down in the Green River Valley.
13:48
Speaker 6: He was, you know, ahead of us. We wanted to
13:52
Speaker 6: catch him. We wanted to stop him.
13:55
Speaker 2: Winter and spring 1984, four more girls gone.
14:01
Speaker 10: There would be three or four or maybe even five
14:05
Speaker 10: in one spot.
14:07
Speaker 6: Unbelievable.
14:09
Speaker 5: He was outsmarting the homicide detectives. Everybody was looking for him.
14:14
Speaker 6: He was dumping women like they were garbage. This was
14:23
Speaker 6: a gun site. It's not far from the airport. It's
14:26
Speaker 6: not far from the strip where the young girls were missing.
14:29
Speaker 6: In the evenings, it was dark, very secluded, very few
14:33
Speaker 6: people came down here. You could come, dump something, and
14:37
Speaker 6: be gone. And that's what happened in this location here.
14:44
Speaker 6: They were just dumped.
14:51
Speaker 2: Among the dozens of bodies found was the 16-year-old Linda
14:54
Speaker 2: Jane Rule, her skeletal remains hidden under a bush. And
15:03
Speaker 2: in the scrubland south of the airport, the fate of
15:06
Speaker 2: the pregnant 18-year-old Mary Bridget Meehan was finally discovered.
15:11
Speaker 10: Someone raped her, killed her, and buried her and her
15:17
Speaker 10: unborn baby in a shallow grave on the west side
15:21
Speaker 10: of the highway.
15:25
Speaker 2: By spring 1984, the killer had amassed more than 40 victims.
15:31
Speaker 2: But then something changed.
15:33
Speaker 5: The killings continued. appeared to have stopped. Many thought that
15:41
Speaker 5: he was gone.
15:42
Speaker 15: It's incredibly unusual for a serial killer simply to stop killing.
15:47
Speaker 15: A serial killer will usually only cease murder when he's
15:54
Speaker 15: apprehended or when he dies himself.
15:56
Speaker 2: In 1985, the truck painter from The House in the
16:07
Speaker 2: Quiet Cul-de-sac, began dating 40-year-old divorced mother, Judith.
16:14
Speaker 7: When I first met him, I thought he was quite
16:18
Speaker 7: the gentleman and so polite and nice. He loved the
16:22
Speaker 7: country music and the dancing. And he was always smiling.
16:27
Speaker 7: He never got angry. And I just, Thought he was
16:34
Speaker 7: the greatest. It was like love at first sight.
16:39
Speaker 2: Within months, the house became Judith's home.
16:43
Speaker 7: He offered to help me move and that I could
16:45
Speaker 7: move in with him if I like. There was no
16:51
Speaker 7: carpet in his house, so he let me pick out
16:54
Speaker 7: some carpet. Because he had previous renters in there. And
16:59
Speaker 7: he had.
16:59
Speaker 11: Told me that....
17:02
Speaker 7: The little one had wet on the carpet. The house
17:07
Speaker 7: needed a woman's touch.
17:10
Speaker 2: After three years living together, the couple wed.
17:15
Speaker 7: We were married in 1988. It seemed like the perfect marriage.
17:22
Speaker 7: He was good to my daughters, played with my grandchildren.
17:26
Speaker 7: My dreams are coming true.
17:31
Speaker 2: Judith would enjoy 13 happy years of marriage, while most
17:34
Speaker 2: of the world forgot about the Green River Killer. Most,
17:39
Speaker 2: that is, except the men and women of the Green
17:43
Speaker 2: River Task Force. And in 2001, advances in DNA profiling
17:52
Speaker 2: enabled them to compare samples taken from the early victims,
17:56
Speaker 2: including Marsha Chapman, with swabs that had been taken from
18:00
Speaker 2: several men questioned during the investigation.
18:06
Speaker 6: This is the DNA from Marsha Chapman, and this is
18:09
Speaker 6: the DNA from the Green River Killer. And we looked
18:13
Speaker 6: at them and were like, they're the same. They're the same.
18:21
Speaker 11: Scary which way?
18:21
Speaker 9: MUSIC PLAYS.
18:28
Speaker 7: I just, I couldn't believe it. I was just devastated
18:39
Speaker 7: and in shock. I think I went into denial. I
18:46
Speaker 7: wasn't believing it.
18:52
Speaker 2: Only now would the world discover the shocking truth about
18:55
Speaker 2: Judith's husband, Gary Ridgeway, the most prolific serial killer in
19:01
Speaker 2: US history. During the 1980s, the mysterious Green River Killer
19:17
Speaker 2: had prowled the red light district of Seattle strip unchecked,
19:21
Speaker 2: amassing a terrifying body count. In 2001, A DNA match
19:29
Speaker 2: had connected 52-year-old truck painter Gary Ridgeway with the first
19:34
Speaker 2: few victims.
19:35
Speaker 14: He had been identified as the most prolific serial killer
19:38
Speaker 14: in the history of the United States. Each of us
19:41
Speaker 14: recognized that this would be the biggest criminal case in
19:44
Speaker 14: the history of the state of Washington.
19:49
Speaker 2: The prosecution and defense teams would now be able to
19:52
Speaker 2: interview the man suspected of over four dozen homicides.
19:58
Speaker 5: I'm walking down a corridor and I'm going to open
20:00
Speaker 5: the door and be introduced to the supposed Green River Killer.
20:07
Speaker 5: a hundred things are going through your mind and wondering
20:09
Speaker 5: what is it going to mean? Is he going to
20:11
Speaker 5: be crying? Is he going to be crazy? And I
20:15
Speaker 5: walked in and, and like, wow, this isn't what I expected.
20:23
Speaker 10: All right.
20:24
Speaker 4: Pretty good.
20:25
Speaker 9: All of us kind of looked at each other and said,
20:27
Speaker 9: that's the guy that's been eluding everybody for 20 years.
20:30
Speaker 5: What was remarkable was that he was, he was so normal.
20:35
Speaker 12: Sleep okay?
20:37
Speaker 2: No, no.
20:39
Speaker 10: Well, that didn't look like the Hilton in there.
20:40
Speaker 4: I got a glimpse of it.
20:41
Speaker 7: Well, it had a posturpedic mattress in there, so it
20:44
Speaker 7: was good.
20:45
Speaker 9: A little bit.
20:47
Speaker 5: Hot in there, but.
20:50
Speaker 5: If you did not know what he had done, you
20:54
Speaker 5: would like him. The monster within him was well-hidden.
21:00
Speaker 3: People want to ascribe extraordinary traits and qualities to these people.
21:07
Speaker 3: These are, for the most part, very ordinary individuals, except
21:11
Speaker 3: for the extraordinary crime that they get involved in.
21:18
Speaker 2: So who was the suspected Green River Killer? Gary Ridgway
21:22
Speaker 2: was born in 1949, the middle of three boys. He
21:31
Speaker 2: lived in a small house not far from the strip.
21:35
Speaker 9: His mom was kind of stay-at-home and then part-time. She
21:39
Speaker 9: worked at a department store. His dad drove a bus
21:43
Speaker 9: for the county.
21:45
Speaker 5: Gary sometimes would ride with him on the bus, and
21:47
Speaker 5: his dad would say, you know, see her, she's a prostitute, she's,
21:49
Speaker 5: you know, the scum of the earth, and would berate
21:52
Speaker 5: prostitutes and talk about how filthy and bad they were.
21:55
Speaker 5: And then there are... a couple of episodes where Gary
21:59
Speaker 5: recalls him leaving him in the vehicle while dad went
22:04
Speaker 5: and had sex with a prostitute.
22:08
Speaker 2: School friend, Terry Rochelle, recalls that Gary Ridgway was more
22:13
Speaker 2: inward than his siblings.
22:16
Speaker 16: His brother was very outgoing and, you know, a bright
22:19
Speaker 16: personality and Gary was more quiet and.
22:22
Speaker 6: Withdrawn, I would say is a good word.
22:25
Speaker 16: He was just a little pipsqueak guy, just, you know,
22:27
Speaker 16: somebody's little brother, basically, you know, you didn't pay a
22:30
Speaker 16: whole lot of attention to him. Just kind of in
22:36
Speaker 16: the shadows, I would say most of his life.
22:41
Speaker 2: At school, the struggling Ridgeway failed to make an impression. However,
22:46
Speaker 2: at parents' evenings, his mother Mary did.
22:51
Speaker 16: All the women kind of sat back and looked at her.
22:53
Speaker 16: It was strange because she would wear a big bouffant
22:56
Speaker 16: hairdo and lots and lots of makeup, short skirts, which
23:01
Speaker 16: were not really the style in those days, especially for
23:03
Speaker 16: a mom. She just always seemed like she was trying
23:07
Speaker 16: to be very glamorous and not like our moms at all.
23:11
Speaker 9: I always remember her wearing kind of the tight shorts
23:16
Speaker 9: and low-cut tops.
23:18
Speaker 6: And longer hair. She was a very, very attractive lady.
23:24
Speaker 2: Ridgeway admitted wetting the bed throughout his childhood and well
23:28
Speaker 2: into his teens.
23:31
Speaker 5: When he would wet the bed, his mother would put
23:33
Speaker 5: him in the, have him get in the bathtub and
23:35
Speaker 5: wash him and wash his genitals.
23:39
Speaker 10: During one bath, um, her robe fell open and she
23:45
Speaker 10: was naked underneath and he felt arousal at that and
23:48
Speaker 10: at the same time knew that it probably wasn't that
23:52
Speaker 10: wasn't a good thing to feel but he felt.
23:54
Speaker 9: It he talked about having some sexual feelings towards her
23:59
Speaker 9: he described in some detail watching her when she was
24:02
Speaker 9: in a bathing suit and and looking at her and
24:05
Speaker 9: thinking that she dressed pretty provocatively this.
24:10
Speaker 13: Overly sexualized person washing her son's genitals, and you realize
24:17
Speaker 13: that most teenage boys are having an awful time with
24:21
Speaker 13: dealing with their own emerging sexuality, has to have had
24:25
Speaker 13: an impact in some way.
24:27
Speaker 3: Boys need to see their mothers as asexual. It is very,
24:32
Speaker 3: very destabilizing for an adolescent boy to see his mother
24:35
Speaker 3: in a sexual manner. It's very hard for an adolescent
24:38
Speaker 3: boy to imagine his mother having sex with anybody, including
24:43
Speaker 3: his father. And so when a mother behaves in a
24:46
Speaker 3: sexualized or hyper-sexualized way, it's very unsettling for an adolescent boy.
24:52
Speaker 2: As Ridgway got older, he started showing signs of destructive behavior,
24:57
Speaker 2: starting fires. And as a teenager, he took his first
25:01
Speaker 2: step towards murder.
25:05
Speaker 9: He approached a first grader, a six-year-old boy that he
25:09
Speaker 9: saw playing in a lot near his house. The boy
25:12
Speaker 9: was dressed up playing cowboys and Indians, and he kind
25:15
Speaker 9: of lured him into the bushes and completely unprovoked stabbed
25:21
Speaker 9: the little boy in the stomach and nearly killed him.
25:28
Speaker 9: He told the boy that he just wanted to know
25:30
Speaker 9: what it felt like to kill somebody. And after he
25:32
Speaker 9: stabbed him, he took the knife and wiped the blade
25:35
Speaker 9: off on the little boy's shoulder and just walked away. Actually,
25:41
Speaker 9: nobody ever connected him to that.
25:43
Speaker 13: Serial killers need to have some concrete proof of what
25:49
Speaker 13: they're doing. I mean, you can think about something, but
25:52
Speaker 13: until you've done it, you don't know how it's going
25:54
Speaker 13: to turn out. And so what the serial killer does
25:58
Speaker 13: is experiment. Often they will commit an act like a
26:03
Speaker 13: trial run.
26:07
Speaker 2: Ridgeway eventually finished school two years late due to his
26:10
Speaker 2: slow progress. The following year, age 21, he married his
26:16
Speaker 2: steady girlfriend and joined the Navy.
26:19
Speaker 9: When he returned from his deployment to the Philippines, His
26:23
Speaker 9: wife admitted that she had had an affair with a
26:25
Speaker 9: friend of theirs. That was when he first started kind
26:28
Speaker 9: of referring to her as a whore and using other
26:32
Speaker 9: derogatory terms. And that was kind of the beginning of
26:36
Speaker 9: a series of relationships that never quite panned out for him.
26:41
Speaker 2: During the early 1970s, Ridgway got a job spray painting
26:45
Speaker 2: at the Kenworth Truck Manufacturers. He then met and married his.
26:49
Speaker 9: Second wife, He was very much into having sex often, repeatedly,
26:55
Speaker 9: throughout the day, as frequently pretty much as women would agree.
27:00
Speaker 10: They would go out in the truck and he loved
27:03
Speaker 10: to have sex in public where they could be discovered
27:07
Speaker 10: at any time.
27:09
Speaker 2: But after having a child, their relationship deteriorated.
27:15
Speaker 5: His wife left him when his son was about five
27:19
Speaker 5: and that really hurt him. and that was when he
27:23
Speaker 5: started to go frequent prostitutes.
27:27
Speaker 2: Ridgway claimed he became addicted to prostitutes. He had in
27:32
Speaker 2: fact been quizzed by police about his activities on the
27:34
Speaker 2: strip several times during the 80s, even passing a lie
27:39
Speaker 2: detector test when grilled about the Green River murders.
27:45
Speaker 10: When you're subject to someone without a conscience, who has
27:51
Speaker 10: no regrets and no remorse and no real concern. They
27:54
Speaker 10: can pass them.
27:57
Speaker 5: He was a magnificent liar. He had an ability just
28:00
Speaker 5: to go and talk, and he would just talk and
28:02
Speaker 5: tell stories, and I, you know, for a while, I
28:06
Speaker 5: assumed they were true.
28:08
Speaker 7: And when I would go in to visit Gary at
28:10
Speaker 7: the jail, he would tell me that everything's okay. He
28:16
Speaker 7: didn't do it. He didn't hurt those women. He didn't
28:20
Speaker 7: kill them. He didn't... And... I would believe him.
28:32
Speaker 2: As he was questioned in 2001, Ridgway continued to protest
28:37
Speaker 2: his innocence.
28:38
Speaker 5: Up to this point, Gary had been maintaining that they
28:41
Speaker 5: had the wrong person, that he had had sex with
28:44
Speaker 5: many prostitutes, he hadn't killed any, and that was... essentially
28:47
Speaker 5: going to be the defense.
28:51
Speaker 2: But when forensic evidence surfaced, tying him to three more victims,
28:56
Speaker 2: Ridgeway's story changed.
28:58
Speaker 5: Myself and another attorney were in the meeting room waiting
29:01
Speaker 5: for Mr.
29:01
Speaker 11: Ridgeway.
29:02
Speaker 5: I don't recall what we were talking about, but we
29:04
Speaker 5: both had smiles on our faces when he walked in.
29:07
Speaker 5: And he said, oh, you won't be smiling when we're done.
29:11
Speaker 5: I've been lying to you all. I've been manipulating everyone
29:17
Speaker 5: for all these years. I killed them all.
29:22
Speaker 2: Only now would investigators discover the true shocking horror of
29:27
Speaker 2: the Green River Killers' crimes. In 2003, 54-year-old truck painter
29:42
Speaker 2: Gary Ridgway admitted he was the Green River Killer that
29:46
Speaker 2: had eluded capture for almost two decades. A man responsible
29:50
Speaker 2: for the murder of more than four dozen women. Faced
29:56
Speaker 2: with the death penalty, Ridgway offered to tell the truth
30:00
Speaker 2: about all his crimes in return for his life. On
30:06
Speaker 2: behalf of the victims' families, who wanted to know the
30:09
Speaker 2: fate of their loved ones, the prosecution agreed. Ridgway would
30:15
Speaker 2: now reveal the true horror of his crimes. Investigators now
30:23
Speaker 2: learned how the Green River Killer had so easily abducted
30:27
Speaker 2: and killed his victims. even at the height of the
30:30
Speaker 2: public terror.
30:35
Speaker 6: He came across as being a very meek and mild,
30:39
Speaker 6: safe person. As a matter of fact, in one situation,
30:43
Speaker 6: he had his child in the car with him when
30:46
Speaker 6: he picked up a prostitute.
30:50
Speaker 10: He looks like a mousy little man. He doesn't look
30:53
Speaker 10: like the kind of person that if you were a
30:56
Speaker 10: prostitute that you would be afraid of.
31:00
Speaker 6: They thought, well, he's a family man. He's safe. And
31:05
Speaker 6: it turns out he wasn't.
31:10
Speaker 5: He preferred to take them to his house. Some said
31:13
Speaker 5: no to that. And they would drive to a remote location.
31:18
Speaker 5: And he had a pickup truck with a canopy on
31:20
Speaker 5: the back. And he would convince them to go into
31:24
Speaker 5: the back of the canopy so they could have more
31:26
Speaker 5: room to have But what he would do is once
31:30
Speaker 5: he got them in the position either in his bed
31:33
Speaker 5: at home where he had pictures of his son on
31:35
Speaker 5: the wall and they felt a little more secure, or
31:38
Speaker 5: whether they were just hopping in the back of the truck,
31:41
Speaker 5: get naked, begin with oral sex. A missionary at some
31:47
Speaker 5: point convinced them that he would be able to finish
31:51
Speaker 5: sooner if they would agree to the rear entry position.
31:57
Speaker 7: When I got through having a climax with her, I
32:03
Speaker 7: jumped on her.
32:04
Speaker 5: He hit his arm around the girl's neck.
32:07
Speaker 4: How much are you pulling on her neck?
32:09
Speaker 7: I'm pulling really hard on her neck.
32:11
Speaker 4: How?
32:12
Speaker 5: Just like this.
32:13
Speaker 7: What are you saying to her?
32:14
Speaker 6: Don't, don't, don't fight, don't fight, and I'll let you go.
32:21
Speaker 5: And then choked him with his forearm.
32:23
Speaker 9: I'm feeling, I gotta kill her, I gotta kill her,
32:26
Speaker 9: I gotta kill her.
32:35
Speaker 16: You'll need to go up to kind of like on
32:37
Speaker 16: the top of the hill and pull in.
32:41
Speaker 2: Ridgeway guided the investigators to where he dumped dozens of
32:45
Speaker 2: young women.
32:51
Speaker 14: I just drove in my pickup and camper and parked
32:55
Speaker 14: it brought her body over and put it a little
32:59
Speaker 14: bit over the hill.
33:00
Speaker 5: His method of recollection was where he had left their bodies.
33:06
Speaker 11: Between this one and that one up there, you think
33:09
Speaker 11: you put like five?
33:10
Speaker 2: Five of them in there.
33:12
Speaker 11: Okay.
33:13
Speaker 9: He essentially said the victims didn't mean anything. I have
33:16
Speaker 9: no idea who they are. I don't know if they're black,
33:17
Speaker 9: if they're white, how old they are, how young they are.
33:20
Speaker 9: I mean, they really meant nothing to me as an individual.
33:25
Speaker 14: What you're getting is what you're going to get, and
33:26
Speaker 14: that's all you can get because I don't remember.
33:29
Speaker 13: To every serial killer, human beings are objects. In the
33:34
Speaker 13: homicides that they commit, they're never going to remember the name.
33:38
Speaker 13: They're never going to remember the face. They'll remember the
33:41
Speaker 13: concrete action of where.
33:42
Speaker 2: Those bodies are. One of the dump sites that Ridgeway
33:49
Speaker 2: identified was that of Marie Malvar, the 18-year-old, whose boyfriend
33:54
Speaker 2: had spotted Ridgway abducting her. He admitted that when he
33:59
Speaker 2: strangled her, she had fought back harder than any of
34:02
Speaker 2: his victims.
34:04
Speaker 6: I put battery acid in myself right here and there
34:07
Speaker 6: to cover up scratches. There's a scratch here, scratches here
34:11
Speaker 6: from a mill bar.
34:15
Speaker 2: Ridgway claimed he was filled with rage and had wanted
34:18
Speaker 2: to hurt his victims even after their deaths. he admitted
34:23
Speaker 2: he'd tried to set the lifeless 16-year-old Linda Rule's hair
34:26
Speaker 2: on fire.
34:28
Speaker 9: You know, he seemed throughout the interviews to try to
34:33
Speaker 9: blame a lot of what had happened on the women
34:34
Speaker 9: in his life, that the women that he actually killed
34:38
Speaker 9: were kind of an extension of all the women before
34:41
Speaker 9: who had disappointed him in some way.
34:45
Speaker 2: All the pressure just built and built and built and built.
34:48
Speaker 2: My releasing was killing women.
34:57
Speaker 9: He did talk about a number of the victims that
35:00
Speaker 9: he would go back and have sexual relations with them
35:04
Speaker 9: for a number of days after he killed them.
35:08
Speaker 13: Gary, did you.
35:09
Speaker 6: Revisit any of these?
35:11
Speaker 2: I revisited at least one of them.
35:13
Speaker 6: And when we say revisit, what did you come back
35:15
Speaker 6: to do?
35:16
Speaker 2: Have sex with her.
35:17
Speaker 9: He's like, oh, yeah, you know, but then the flies
35:19
Speaker 9: would come and the maggots, and then I'd be like, oh,
35:22
Speaker 9: I don't, you know. Like he didn't want to do
35:24
Speaker 9: it after that. You know, you were just, I mean,
35:25
Speaker 9: that's the thing. He said it in this, like I'm
35:28
Speaker 9: talking to you, but as if it's totally normal.
35:36
Speaker 3: Now, why do individuals do this? The standard explanation for
35:42
Speaker 3: necrophilia had been sex with someone dead. You can have
35:47
Speaker 3: total control over it. There's no resistance at all. And
35:50
Speaker 3: so you can live out those sorts of feelings with
35:55
Speaker 3: a dead, lifeless body.
35:58
Speaker 5: He's not the one that you're going to turn to
35:59
Speaker 5: and ask, why did you do this? And get the
36:01
Speaker 5: deep psychological answer. But one of the things that frequently
36:05
Speaker 5: came up was that he wouldn't have to pay for
36:07
Speaker 5: the sex.
36:13
Speaker 2: Ridgeway's murderous spree had continued unabated until he met his
36:18
Speaker 2: third wife, Judith, in the mid-80s.
36:23
Speaker 7: Gary was so straight, normal, and loving and gentle. He
36:32
Speaker 7: was so kind around me all the time. He didn't
36:37
Speaker 7: get mad or upset about anything. Seemed like the perfect marriage.
36:45
Speaker 5: When he first met her, he stopped patronizing prostitutes and
36:48
Speaker 5: stopped killing. And then, as he put it, he fell
36:52
Speaker 5: off the wagon.
36:55
Speaker 7: Gary would call home and say that, you know, he's
37:03
Speaker 7: going to be late coming home, so he's going to
37:06
Speaker 7: grab a bite to eat, grab a hamburger, and he'll
37:09
Speaker 7: be late. When I think back now, that was probably
37:13
Speaker 7: one time when he was out picking up someone off
37:17
Speaker 7: of the.
37:20
Speaker 7: Off of the Highway 99 strip.
37:22
Speaker 5: And then he killed again.
37:26
Speaker 6: Right in here is where I killed her.
37:28
Speaker 11: Right in here.
37:30
Speaker 13: How far.
37:32
Speaker 9: In?
37:32
Speaker 16: 20 feet.
37:34
Speaker 7: He would tell me he'd call home and say he's
37:36
Speaker 7: going to stop at the junkyard on my home from work.
37:40
Speaker 7: And then when he got home, he didn't really have
37:42
Speaker 7: any parts from that. So that may have been another occasion.
37:47
Speaker 5: And so after having killed maybe 60 girls from 82
37:55
Speaker 5: to 85. From 85 to when he was caught in 2001,
38:01
Speaker 5: the number of victims was more like 10 or 11.
38:09
Speaker 12: Mr.
38:09
Speaker 14: Ridgeway, how do you plead to the charge of aggravated
38:12
Speaker 14: murder in the first degree as charged in count one?
38:15
Speaker 11: Guilty.
38:19
Speaker 2: In 2003, Gary Ridgway made his plea to the 48
38:24
Speaker 2: charges of murder that investigators could conclusively tie him to.
38:28
Speaker 14: How do you plead to the charge of aggravated murder
38:31
Speaker 14: in the first degree as charged in count five?
38:33
Speaker 11: Guilty.
38:35
Speaker 7: When he confessed, and I sat when I sat and
38:39
Speaker 7: listened to him say guilty.
38:42
Speaker 4: Mr.
38:42
Speaker 14: Ridgway, how do you plead to the charge of aggravated
38:44
Speaker 14: murder in the first degree for the death of Marcia Chapman?
38:48
Speaker 6: Guilty.
38:50
Speaker 7: After every one of the names that they had said.
38:52
Speaker 11: For the death of Mary B. Meehan.
38:55
Speaker 9: Guilty.
38:56
Speaker 7: I just sat there and cried, and that's when it
39:01
Speaker 7: finally sunk in that.
39:04
Speaker 17: This is real.
39:06
Speaker 7: He did it. There's someone else inside of him. When
39:11
Speaker 7: he went through the door and left to go to work,
39:15
Speaker 7: he wasn't the man that I knew.
39:17
Speaker 11: Count 19 for the death of Linda Rule.
39:20
Speaker 9: Guilty.
39:22
Speaker 7: I would think back and think about all those years
39:24
Speaker 7: that I was with him. Were they real? Or was
39:29
Speaker 7: he just using me?
39:30
Speaker 6: Me?
39:30
Speaker 14: How do you plead to the charge of aggravated murder
39:32
Speaker 14: in the first degree as charged in count 48?
39:36
Speaker 2: Guilty.
39:38
Speaker 11: I lived.
39:41
Speaker 7: With him all those years. He could have killed me.
39:46
Speaker 7: He could have killed my daughters. He could have killed
39:48
Speaker 7: my grandbabies.
39:53
Speaker 2: So what made the monster? Was it his unusual upbringing?
39:58
Speaker 2: Or was Gary Ridgway born to kill?
40:03
Speaker 10: I still don't believe that any child is born to kill.
40:07
Speaker 10: But I think some children have a predisposition to violence.
40:12
Speaker 10: If the child grows up in a safe place for them,
40:17
Speaker 10: where they feel loved, where they attach, we're never going
40:20
Speaker 10: to know that that predisposition for violence is there. But
40:24
Speaker 10: if that child is born into a home where they're afraid,
40:28
Speaker 10: where they're neglected, where they're abused, then you have the
40:31
Speaker 10: perfect soil to grow a serial killer.
40:36
Speaker 16: I think that a boy and his mother have a
40:39
Speaker 16: certain relationship, and when that relationship is different, then I
40:45
Speaker 16: think that's when we start seeing those kind of switches
40:49
Speaker 16: turning on and off.
40:52
Speaker 3: This is one of my ominous signs. She was somewhat
40:56
Speaker 3: seductive and so on. These sorts of unhealthy relationships with
41:01
Speaker 3: a maternal figure.
41:03
Speaker 9: People that I've encountered that have prosecuted for murder, I
41:06
Speaker 9: think that their circumstances have driven them to do what
41:10
Speaker 9: they have done in the majority of cases that I
41:14
Speaker 9: have handled, I would say. I did not see that
41:18
Speaker 9: in Ridgeway. I truly believed that he was worn that way,
41:23
Speaker 9: hardwired that way, whatever you want to say.
41:26
Speaker 13: The Green River Killer was definitely born to kill. He
41:30
Speaker 13: was an individual who.
41:31
Speaker 17: Has this changed gene and culminated in a tremendous number
41:41
Speaker 17: and intensity of homicides.
41:43
Speaker 5: His brain is definitely wired differently. He's a psychopath. That
41:48
Speaker 5: has to be a brain miswiring from the beginning.
41:54
Speaker 6: I don't know about the nurture nature piece. I think
41:58
Speaker 6: at some point it's a decision. And I think we
42:01
Speaker 6: all have some propensities for violence, but you can decide.
42:04
Speaker 6: You can control it. And he decided how he wanted.
42:09
Speaker 11: To control it.
42:13
Speaker 2: Nineteen years after Marsha Chapman's body was discovered beneath the
42:17
Speaker 2: surface of the Green River, Gary Ridgway was sentenced to
42:20
Speaker 2: serve 48 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
42:29
Speaker 10: In the end, Marsha got her justice because it was
42:32
Speaker 10: DNA found on her that they could match with Gary Ridgway.
42:40
Speaker 10: And Marsha got her day.
42:42
Speaker 6: That was a good day.
42:44
Speaker 11: It was a good day.
42:46
Speaker 2: Before Ridgeway was led away, Judge Richard Jones instructed him
42:50
Speaker 2: to face the victim's families.
42:52
Speaker 14: There's a tremendous amount of emotion that these family members
42:55
Speaker 14: wanted to pour out for Gary Ridgeway to hear.
42:59
Speaker 1: I can only hope someone gets the opportunity to choke
43:02
Speaker 1: you unconscious so you can live through the horror that
43:06
Speaker 1: you put our daughters, our sisters, our mothers through.
43:10
Speaker 11: The pain would not go away. but it brought them closure.
43:13
Speaker 4: The one thing that I want you, Jerry Ridgeway, to know,
43:20
Speaker 4: I was that daughter at home, waiting for my mom
43:24
Speaker 4: to come home.
43:27
Speaker 9: I think for all of us, as we brought the
43:30
Speaker 9: families up and introduced them, it was really emotional.
43:36
Speaker 11: I recall Linda Rule's father. There are people here that
43:41
Speaker 11: hate you I'm not one of them. A very sympathetic,
43:49
Speaker 11: very compassionate individual. What God says to do, and that's
43:53
Speaker 11: to forgive all. So you are forgiven, sir.
44:01
Speaker 5: On one hand, I'm sitting next to a person who's
44:03
Speaker 5: done the most inhumane things to other human beings, and
44:08
Speaker 5: then 15 feet away is a person doing the most
44:12
Speaker 5: humane and merciful thing.
44:14
Speaker 14: I wanted him to look out see the pain, see
44:18
Speaker 14: the anger, and see all the agony that he had
44:21
Speaker 14: caused in his lifetime. I wanted him to take that
44:23
Speaker 14: visual image with him back to prison. So for the
44:27
Speaker 14: balance of his life, that would be the last public
44:30
Speaker 14: image that he had.
44:31
Speaker 6: You took from me my firstborn child. May her soul
44:35
Speaker 6: and the soul of the other 47 victims rest in peace.
44:46
Speaker 8: I think that's a good thing. I think that's a
44:54
Speaker 8: good thing.