Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - "The Green River Killer" Pt. 2 - Gary Ridgway

Episode Date: September 11, 2017

What makes someone evil? And how evil is Gary Ridgway, serial killer and necrophiliac? Greg and Vanessa discuss Ridgway’s sex addiction, how he lured his victims, and the great lengths he went to in order to evade the police for nearly twenty years.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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discretion is advised. This episode includes dramatizations and discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Evil is a word thrown around quite a bit these days. The rather loaded word is used to describe everything from movie villains to opposing political beliefs to backstabbing teenage friends. But what exactly makes something evil? Is someone evil if they commit a terrible crime but are not mentally sane enough to know it was terrible? Is a murderer unconditionally evil, regardless of intentions and personal background? Is an evil person unforgivable? Or can they ever change? Today, we continue our dissection of Gary Ridgeway, the most prolific serial

killer in the history of the United States. As the murderer of at least 49 women, Ridgeway would easily be considered evil by just about everyone. Yet, we will continue. analyzing his specific crimes as well as as retroactive claims in search of a better answer to these questions, what precisely qualifies something as evil? And exactly how evil is Gary Ridgeway? We have a scale, say, one to five, and five being the worst possible evil person that could have done this kind of thing. Gary, where do you fall on that scale? I'd say three. For one thing is, uh, I killed him. I didn't torture him. Hi, I'm Greg Polson, and welcome to serial killers, a podcast diving into the minds and motives of some of the most infamous and notorious murderers.

This is part two in our series covering American serial killer Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer. If you want to listen to any episodes of serial killers, you can find them all on your favorite podcast directory. Don't forget to subscribe. You can also listen on our website, parcast.com, spelled P-A-R-C-C-A-S-T-com. A new episode comes out every Monday. Visit our Facebook page, Parcast, to join the conversation. As we learned last week, Gary Ridgway, a serial killer, active from 1982 to 1998 in Washington State, had a, well, complex childhood.

After repeated sexual abuse from his mother, young Ridgeway fantasized about both murdering and sleeping with his own mom. Increasingly insecure and angry, Ridgeway took to violence at a young age, killing animals and even stabbing a six-year-old boy. In his 20s, two marriages came and went, and Ridgeway became obsessed with sex workers and violent sex. We left off just as a 16-year-old girl disappeared from her home. But before we continue, I'd like to welcome back my co-host, Vanessa Richardson, our resident serial killer expert.

Hi, Vanessa. Hi, Greg. It's important to note that she's not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but rather someone who has done much research and is especially knowledgeable about the trends and motivations of serial killers. Thank you, Greg. You're welcome. Let's take a deeper look into his first confirmed victim, Wendy Cofield. Yes, let's rewind to the summer of 1982, Tacoma, Washington.

Wendy Coughfield was a troubled 16-year-old girl living with a foster family. Though young, Wendy had been working as a sex worker along what is known as the C-Tax trip, a small area of Washington's Highway 99, filled with strip clubs, cheap hotels, and many sex workers. On July 8th, Wendy left her foster home, never to be seen again. She mysteriously disappeared, and her friends and foster family weren't unable to find her or contact her for days. Exactly one week later, on July 15th,

two young boys rode their bikes through King County. Right out of an 80s film, one of the boys noticed a large floating object in the river beside them. Both boys hopped off their bikes to investigate. What they found was deeply disturbing. Something far worse than anything in the movies. Wendy Caulfield laid naked, lifeless. Her clothes were tightly tied around her neck, and her body was blue.

This, of course, was the first confirmed murder of Ridgeway. First confirmed murder. Does that imply Ridgeway likely murdered other women before her? It does. Of the women Ridgeway would eventually be tried for killing, Wendy was the earliest victim. Yet even Ridgeway himself believes he previously murdered three other women. Ridgeway eventually described to police how he thinks he left these three women's bodies in the middle of public streets and parks. But when he did not hear any media reports of these killed women, he thought they must not have been dead.

Ridgeway also said it was very possible that he murdered women throughout the 70s. Vanessa, how is it that Ridgeway doesn't remember these early? murders. Surely murdering someone, especially for the first time, would be, well, a memorable occasion. Yet Ridgeway claims to not even know which decade his murder spree began in. I don't know how it happened with the first one. Maybe the first one I took like this, but I don't, I don't remember how I did the very first one. I just don't. You had said your memory when it comes to all of the women you took was gone. Our memory is not. In your words, you said that they didn't mean anything to you, but she meant everything to us.

I agree with you, Greg. It's shocking and hard to believe that anyone could forget about someone they murdered. If we do assume that Ridgeway is telling the truth that he does not remember his first killings. In this case, I'm confident that he's telling the truth. He eventually explocates the gruesome and specific details of dozens of murders, so I don't see why he would lie about the first few kills. Yes, I agree that Gary Ridgeway does, in fact, seem to genuinely not remember his first murder. So then the question is, how? How can he not remember? Firstly, I feel we can rule out the possibility of dissociative amnesia. Amnesia, as in he forgot his crimes due to trauma?

Yes, but dissociative amnesia, specifically, refers to memory loss that is caused by psychological issues rather than physical damage to the brain. In this case, dissociative amnesia would refer to Ridgeway repressing his memories due to the psychological trauma induced by killing someone. Scientists have actually done studies on murderers who claim to have dissociative amnesia about the act they committed, and it does, in fact, seem possible for some people. However, in Ridgeway's case, we know that he does remember the vast majority of his murders. He hasn't entirely repressed memories of murder.

Instead, he's just lacking specific details, like names and dates. Yes, it doesn't seem like he blocked out a traumatic event. Rather, his memories of the murders seem to have simply faded. as normal memories do. And that leads me to my main hypothesis. Perhaps his lack of memory for his first murder is a symptom of his extreme cruelty and inhumanity. His murders were simply not a big deal to him.

Let me explain. You probably don't remember the first time you stepped on an ant or broke a branch off a tree, right? Right. Well, Ridgeway might have had such little empathy and so much disregard for human life that his first murder simply did not feel like that big of a deal.

This event naturally just faded in his mind over the course of 20-plus years. To Ridgeway, killing a sex worker may have been like stepping on an aunt. Hmm. A little disturbing that would make sense. It is odd, however, that he remembered details of his teenage years as he stabbed the six-year-old boy and suffocated the cat, but he can't recall any specifics of his first human murders. Well, that is peculiar indeed. Perhaps the big deal to him was these first acts of childhood violence.

Maybe he remembered those as his first instance of straying away from normal behavior. By the time he was an adult, he may have spent so many years living with violent fantasies and violent acts that these first murders just blended in with the rest of his life and were easily forgotten. So in sticking with your analogy, he did remember the first time he stepped on an ant, but he didn't remember the first time he killed a grasshopper. Exactly. Okay. Well, whoever his first victim was, let's take a look at what actually sparked his first kill. Ridgway oftentimes blamed his second wife, their bad divorce, and also the women he dated after this marriage.

There might have been a hell of a lot less people dying if I had a nice woman to go home, go home to. However, it seems unlikely that a rather typical divorce could have been the primary factor spawning his mass murder spree. Vanessa, what do you think sparked this first murder? Based on what we already know about Gary Ridgeway, I agree with you. In his mind, the divorce may have been the most tangible event that led to murder, but it's unlikely that it was actually the cause. I believe that, in reality, his descent into violence was gradual over many, many years. As with most serial killers, there usually isn't a singular event that incites them.

They usually have violent urges throughout their childhood that progress and progress until they just can't hold back anymore. Yes, and we do know that this was the case with Ridgeway. What started as murderous fantasies about his mom progressed into violence toward animals, then children. And even in his marriages, he became increasingly violent, demanding more violent sex. Exactly. And this theory of slow progression into murder especially makes sense if we view Ridgeway's obsession with sex and violence through the lens of addiction. Picture someone within addiction to, let's say, gambling. It may begin as casual curiosity and fun, but soon, $5.5 blackjack lose.

loses its excitement. Over time, the gambler must keep increasing his stakes. Just like a drug addict who chases the next high, in constant search of an unattainable satisfaction. Right. And in considering human sexuality, people's attractions, fantasies, and fetishes usually do not stay consistent. Rather, they change and grow in severity over time. Many people naturally become bored with routine and graduate onto more intense and extreme fantasies and sexual practices. So you're hypothesizing Ridgeway first murdered because he was bored of sex with his girlfriends. Well, to an extent, but it's more complicated than that. If we look at Gary Ridgeway's history with sex workers and affairs, those desires also

drastically progressed over the years. He first used sex workers while in the Navy in his early 20s. Married to his second wife in his mid-20s, he continued using sex workers even when he was home and sexual with his wife. He needed even more sex than previously. And then his sex drive seemingly reached a high after his second divorce as he He maintained several girlfriends simultaneously and used sex workers. He couldn't control his sex drive, and he had to keep climbing and climbing.

When you parallel this with his increase in violence since childhood, his first murder makes a bit more sense. So rather than a snap into violence per se, you believe it was just the next level of his increasing addiction. But how does his hatred of sex workers factor into this equation? I killed so many women. I have a hard time keeping them straight. I wanted to kill as many women I thought were prostitutes as I possibly could. Is that true? Yes.

I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught. It is clearly undeniable that Ridgeway hated sex workers and that this anger factored into his murderous rage. But in analyzing what initially set Ridgeway, way off to the point of murder, I still find it hard to believe that it was a single incident with a sex worker that made him so angry. If it was an angry outburst, Ridgeway would more likely remember it. I agree. Once his progression to murder began, it unfortunately continued at an unprecedented rate. Wendy Coffield, his first victim, went missing on July 8, 1982. And between July 8th and September 26th of the same year, as many as 10 more girls would go missing.

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All ten girls were murdered by Ridgeway. I cannot stress enough how large of a number of a number of people. 10 women is, especially in the span of a month and a half. Many famous serial killers killed five to ten people over the span of several years. This almost points to the possibility that murder wasn't Ridgeway's drug fix, but rather just a fun activity for him. It seems as if Ridgeway made no effort to restrict himself or hold off on getting his next night of entertainment. Once he started murdering, he went with full force like there would be no tomorrow. And with seemingly no conscience. All but

Two of these women were teenagers. He justified the killing of these children because they were known to engage in sex work around the Pacific Highway South, PHS area. Ridgeway would dispose of five of the first victim's bodies in the Green River. Which would, of course, lead to the infamous name he was known by, the Green River Killer.

Yes. He would, however, eventually lead the bodies in various other outdoor places in order to avoid detection. He always seemed to enjoy the outdoor settings of the body disposal. After two of his murders, Ridgeway placed rocks in the women's vaginas. And when asked why he did so, Ridgeway simply replied that the rocks were there, so why not?

He was clearly just enjoying himself and treating the entire situation with a sense of whimsical play. And not only did he view the bodies as sort of perverted toys, he also felt possessive over them. The following is a quote from an exchange between a detective and Ridgeway. When the detective asked Ridgeway what a victim's body meant to him. She meant a beautiful person that was my property, my possession, someone only I knew, and I missed when they were found or where I lost them. Back in the 80s, when the bodies were being discovered, how did that make you feel? It felt like they were taking something, something of mine that I put there.

The discovery of these first few bodies did have several notable consequences. Firstly, it led to the formation of the Green River Task Force in 1982, which was a group of detectives throughout the county who would all investigate these murders. This task force would unfortunately not catch Ridgeway for close to 20 years. Secondly, with this increased notoriety, Ridgeway quickly became feared in the community. Rumors spread and many sex workers began actively fearing this Green River. killer. But I thought I was doing you guys a favor. Killing

crossuits. Here, you guys can't control them, but I can't. Why do you think Ridgeway had such a passionate hatred towards sex workers? Where did this anger come from? Ridgeway so frequently used sex workers, so it's hard to fully comprehend how he could simultaneously despise them. I do have a possible explanation, though. I believe Ridgeway was projecting onto them. Sigmund Freud's theory about projection is, in a nutshell,

that when someone cannot deal with his own bad thoughts feelings, he instead attributes them to someone else. A classic example is the insecure bully who takes his home life anger out on a more outwardly insecure new kid at school. So in Ridgeway's case, Ridgeway refused to accept his own flaws and disturbed fantasies and desires and past criminal behavior. So rather than feeling anger and rage at himself, he instead transferred all of those negative emotions onto sex workers. Exactly. It can be challenging to view yourself through a negative lens, to be self-reflective enough to understand your own mistakes and fears. So instead, Ridgway just projected his anger onto other people and blamed the sex workers for being

murdered rather than himself. Well, that makes sense. It's almost as though he chose a single group of innocent people to be the bearers of all his pent-up anger and hatred, largely stemming from his childhood abuse. I agree. And by projecting his anger onto sex workers, he could indirectly get vengeance on his abusive mom and females in general. he could finally feel powerful and in control in a relationship with a woman. It's also worth noting that Ridgeway has offered other reasons for choosing sex workers to murder too.

He said, quote, prostitutes were the easiest. I went from having sex with them to just plain killing him, end quote. He's also stated that sex workers were good targets because police wouldn't look as hard for them. These sex workers often were already missing runaways, and due to the nature of their work, they themselves were avoiding police. So when they went missing, police would be less suspicious. Ridgeway could then more easily continue as murders.

Those are interesting points. They, at the least, raise the question of which came first, his hatred or his murders. As in, it's possible that Ridgeway only started hating sex workers after he murdered them, that this hatred for them was not the cause of murder. Perhaps Gary Ridgeway so desperately wanted to murder someone, anyone that he chose the easiest possible victim and then later justified his killings in his own mind. Maybe only after the murders he would tell himself and others how awful sex workers are.

That way he'd feel less guilty and dissociate from his victims as human beings. Definitely. And regardless of the root cause of his hatred, his killings continued at a disturbingly rapid rate. Over the next 12 months, 28 more girls would disappear, all presumed to be murdered by Ridgeway. With so many gruesome murders solely targeted at sex workers, surely word of this Green River killer got around. Didn't local sex workers become extra cautious? They did. In fact, Ridgeway estimated that over the years,

50 women had asked him if he was the Green River killer. I suppose that's why he had to create increasingly clever and manipulative ruses or tricks. Definitely. I'd say that his success at flying under the radar resulted from a combination of extreme caution and clever yet do. disturbing strategy. In terms of caution, Ridgeway was firstly very careful in choosing women and would

spend hours before and after work driving around looking for the perfect victims. And then, once he selected someone, he would drive by the targeted sex worker, flash money, and then notably pull off the main road onto a side street or nearby secluded parking lot before talking with the woman. He always waited for the woman to approach his isolated car so as to avoid any witnesses. In the rare cases when two women would approach, or there were other unexpected witnesses, Ridgway would not go through with the murder and rather just have sex with the woman and then let her go free. That way he could also develop a positive reputation among the sex workers.

The surviving sex worker who slept with him could return to the strip and tell her friends that Gary Ridgway was harmless. Ridgway was also highly strategic in convincing his targeted sex workers to have sex with him. To make her less nervous, he'd offer the woman a beer. And to make her more interested, he promised to become a regular customer that always paid her asking price. Of course, he'd never actually pay. And I would talk to her about that and get her mind off the anything she was nervous about. And think, you know, she thinks, oh, this guy cares, which I didn't.

I just wanted to get her in the... vehicle and eventually kill her he also had a well-rehearsed ruse that involved his young son matthew and she first she wants to see my id so i whipped out my id and with my id would be my i'd put my finger over my driver's license to hide my name but on the opposite side was um pictures and a picture of my son and then see to see the see my son and they would know I was probably normal person. In the vehicle I had some, always had some, not always, but had some of my son's stuff in it, you know,

that he left in there or some of the Star Wars or something like that. You know, so it was like a family setting. And in persuading the women to enter his home, he'd intentionally mention his son, show them his son's room and his son's belongings. A dad with a young kid naturally seemed less threatening to these women. But unfortunately, it didn't stop here. Not only did he use his stories and pictures of his son as a ruse to obtain the sex worker's trust,

but he also at one time even used his young son in person. With his eight-year-old son in the car with him, Ridgway picked up a street sex worker. Ridgeway told her that they'd go on a, quote, date while his son stayed in the car. With a little boy actually in the car, the sex worker must have felt very comfortable that Ridgway was not the green rinket. her killer. Though that's very disturbing, that's probably why Ridgeway brought his son along. Unfortunately, Ridgeway would soon take the sex worker out into the woods where he would have sex with her and then strangle her to death. All the while, Ridgeway's son was nearby waiting in the car. It was July 18th, I think it was my brother's birthday. That weekend I picked up a woman

on Pack Highway, and Matthew was next to me in the seat, and she hung up. and I took her over to South Airport area and took her into an area and my son was there and I killed her. I'm real sure my son didn't see it, but that only happened one time. But that was a pretty good, pretty good ruse. So why didn't you do it again? Well, for one thing, I didn't want my son to see it, see that happen again, because I was really killing a lot of them. And another thing, it never came to an opportunity again to do it. I didn't, I mean, I had him in my truck one time he was sleeping, I picked up another prostitute that had a date her. that endator.

On the one hand, Ridgway has somehow managed to heighten the vileness of his murders again. But on the other hand, Ridgeway also said that he didn't frequently use his son in this disturbing way. We could see this as a rare glimpse of selflessness and compassion for his loved one. Perhaps Ridgeway did, in his own contorted way, feel love for his son and seek to protect him. He also claimed that, quote, killing her with Matthew by was not the right thing to do because Matthew mighta saw something, end quote.

However, he shows a total lack of protective instincts for Matthew when he was asked. If Matthew had observed you kill one of the women, would you have killed him? No. Probably not. I don't know. Possibly, though? It's possible.

Did you think about that at the time? Yeah. Nevertheless, Ridgeway thankfully did not kill or take any steps to silence. his son. I think the broader point in all this is that Ridgeway seems to dip in and out of his empathy for others. He is not a mentally insane person trapped in his own world.

On the contrary, he clearly understands others' perspectives. He understands that he is hurting people, including both the sex workers and his own son. Now let's take a deeper look at how he actually murders these women, what exactly takes place during the kills. We've already heard Ridgeway's complex methods of soliciting the women and convincing them to have sex. But now let's enter into Ridgeway's killing field. He most often preferred killing inside his own home. There's much to be analyzed in Ridgeway's murder preferences.

Our home is clearly a very personal place, usually a space we like to feel safe and comfortable. Ridgeway, however, likes his home to be a place of violence and death. One night he may be lying in bed eating a TV dinner, and the next night he may be murdering a girl in the exact same spot. To me, that signifies how deeply Ridgeway enjoys these killings. Ridgway seemingly wants daily reminders of the murders he committed. By killing inside his own bedroom, he makes his home into a place of perverted excitement and

accomplishment. If Gary Ridgeway was a killer haunted by some addiction-like urge to murder, he would likely murder outside of his home. Ridgway, on the other hand, was clearly not haunted by his kills. Rather, he feels comforted by murder. And not only did he make the murder's personal and vulnerable inside his home, but he also had sex with the women before killing them. He told them that he could only orgasm when performing doggy style from behind. After he was finished, the women would... And so she raised her head up, and that's when I put my arm around her, my right arm, and started choking her. And as he choked them to death, they'd sometimes struggle and plead

with him, reminding him of their daughters at home, of their families. But Ridgeway didn't care. He just pulled his arm tighter around their necks. And sometimes Ridgeway would tell the women that he'd let them go if they'd stop struggling. Several of them complied, but that would only make them easier to strangle. Choking them by hand is yet another interesting preference. If we contemplate the many methods of murdering someone, firearm, knife, poison, strangulation is clearly the most personal and up close. Ridgeway clearly wanted to feel the moment, feel the death, and be as close as possible. to what he considered the excitement.

According to one study, for a serial killer, the most common method of killing is by firearm. But Gary Ridgeway, on the other hand, had no problem connecting with the women emotionally in his car, sexually in his house, and then physically with murder. This just further exemplifies his disdain for human connection.

He did eventually use ligatures to strangle the women, too. He suffocated them with everything from towels and belts to extension cords and jumper cases. But he only stopped using his hands after he had been badly scratched by some of his victims. His attacks were usually successful, except for on one occasion. In a single instance, a sex worker survived his attack.

It was November of 1982, and Rebecca Gwai was out hitchhiking on PHS. When Ridgeway pulled over and agreed to pay her for oral sex, she followed Ridgeway out into the woods. Once in the middle of nowhere, Ridgeway pulled down his pants. his pants. Rebecca kneeled down to perform oral sex, but in this rare occasion, Ridgeway could not become erect. Furious, Ridgeway knocked Rebecca to the ground, pushed her into the dirt, and began to strangle her. Rebecca desperately struggled until she finally broke free and sprinted to safety. Nobody's quite sure how Rebecca's attempts to survive differed from all of Ridgeway's other

less fortunate victims. The following is from Rebecca's own words. She said, quote, his face looked white, clammy, cold. His arms and everything was cold. His hands, he was a totally different person, and he kind of made me think that if he did kill me, since he wasn't interested in me sexually before that, he probably would have tried to have intercourse if I was dead. Rebecca did report this unknown violent man to the police,

and the police did actually interrogate Gary Ridgeway. But Ridgeway successfully lied that he only choked her in response to her biting his pants, penis. He insisted that he had no intention of hurting her. Rather, the choking was a simple instinctive response to her alleged violence. According to the detective, Rebecca did not wish to further pursue the case, so Ridgeway was not charged and the issue was dropped. As Rebecca hinted at, it was this incident of sexual dysfunction that possibly sparked Ridgeway's desire to have sex with dead bodies. Gary Ridgeway has admitted that a few days after this incident with Rebecca,

he had post-mortem sex with several of his victims in the woods. Some of these women's bodies had even been so decomposed that maggots were covering their corpses. That would be a good day, an evening or after I got off work and go have sex with her. And that'd last for one or two days till the flies came. And I'd bury them and cover them up. then I'd look for another.

And soon, his necrophilic urges became even stronger. On one occasion, after a kill in the forest, Ridgeway quietly exited his truck, walked about 30 feet away to the deceased body, and then proceeded to have sex with the corpse, all while his son slept in the car nearby. I have to wonder why Ridgeway couldn't have simply waited until he dropped his son off at home.

I agree. Perhaps his urge for sex was just so strong that he felt he couldn't wait. Well, what do you think might have led Ridgeway to engage in necrophily in the first place? I think there are likely several factors at play here. For one, Ridgeway himself claims that he became sick of the hassle of finding new women to kill. He, quote, spent hours looking, looking and looking for other women to kill and a lot of gas and everything, end quote. He also said that he had a burden of having to dispose of the bodies after the murders.

So he had intercourse with dead. dead decaying bodies, just out of laziness? Uh, that seems rather irrational. I agree, and I don't believe that could be the entire reason. This is yet another example of Ridgeway's changing, progressing, sexual and violent fantasies. His fetishes and desires are constantly becoming more extreme. Like we previously discussed, he's like an addict who keeps searching for a stronger and stronger fixed to his insatiable urges.

Now his addiction takes on the form of his new disturbance. pleasure. And yet again, this pleasure involves an extreme amount of power and control. I don't think he could find a way to assert more dominance over a woman if he tried. Right. For these reasons, Ridgeway kept careful note of where he left his victim's bodies. Even years later, he maintained an uncanny memory for their locations. We've already seen how poorly he remembered the year of his first murder, how he hardly remembered his victim's faces and names, but nevertheless, he always remembered their locations.

placed most of the bodies in groups which I call clusters. I did this because I wanted to keep track of all the women I killed. I liked to drive by the clusters around the county and think about the women I placed there. And for the women that he didn't have post-mortem sex with, he found other ways of keeping them present in his mind. His routine after killing was to strip his victims of clothes and evidence and then steal their jewelry. Ridgeway would then leave this jewelry in the women's bathroom at his work.

He loved the thought of some random coworkers walking around with his deceased victim's jewelry. Disturbing. Now that we have a greater understanding of exactly what Ridgeway's gruesome murders consisted of, it seems like an appropriate time to step back and consider what his life looked like to an outsider. story will continue in a moment after the break. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band teas, but on Deepop, people are

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See full terms at mintmobile.com. And now, let's continue the story. In February of 1985, Gary Ridgeway attended a singles event at a country western bar where he met a nice curly-haired woman named Judith Lynch. Judith was fresh off a 19-year-long relationship, and she instantly felt a strong connection to Gary. She appreciated his politeness and even went so far as to describe him as a gentleman who pulled out chairs for her. It was only a matter of time before the two would move in together, and then, in 1988, get married. And after moving into a quaint new home in Des Moines, Gary Ridgway supposedly became a friendly, extroverted neighbor, who had an obsessive interest in gardening his nice little yard.

One of his neighbors claimed that if Ridgeway had any fault, it was that he was overly friendly. Vanessa, how could Ridgeway maintain such a different, fake exterior from his vicious, murderous personality? Well, it is possible that he actually did make a personality change of sorts. Clearly, he was still telling many lies, but maybe he actually did become happier, friendlier. To examine this possibility, it's important that we are first clear on the timeline of his murders. As we've heard, his first confirmed kill took place in the summer of 1982. He would then embark on an unprecedented murder spree, killing over 40 women throughout 1984. Interestingly, the frequency of his confirmed murders plummets by 1985

the same year that he met his future wife, Judith. So are you implying that meeting Judith somehow stopped his desire to kill? It could have been a factor, but another important aspect is that in 1984, the police seemingly came closer and closer to discovering him. In 1984, the Green River Task Force even gave Ridgeway a lie detector test, which he passed. I was I just was excuse me I just relaxed and took the polygraph

I mean I didn't practice or anything just relaxed and answered the questions and whatever came out came out I mean they weren't precise or I don't know what the deal was maybe I was too relaxed How did he manage to pass those?

Well, to this day, lie detector tests are inadmissible in court because it is, clearly, very possible to deceive them. Li detector tests use various measurements to sense an increase in nerves, stress, and anxiety. Gary Ridgeway has already shown that he hardly felt any anxiety when brutally murdering many women, so it's doubtful that a few simple questions would spike his nerve levels. Sociopaths and people with antisocial personalities, specifically,

can typically pass a lie detector test, even if they are lying. That's interesting. Either way, Ridgeway clearly knew that the police were increasingly suspicious of him. Yes, and with his budding new relationship with a loving woman, perhaps Ridgeway decided he liked his life as is. Maybe he sought to stop, or at least slow, his murder spree, so as to maintain his current free life. From my understanding, it was not that Gary Ridgeway necessarily realized his wrongdoings

or wished to become a better person, but rather he just gained a new set of priorities, and now he cared more about his freedom than he did about murdering. Especially because he did continue to murder post-1984. Though at a much slower pace than before, he did still murder at least four women after meeting Judith. Two women in the late 80s, one woman in 1990, and a fourth and final confirmed victim in 1998.

Thus, Judith was not only married to a man who murdered countless women before they met, but she was also living with a man who continued to murder. Vanessa, how could Judith be so unaware of the disturbing truth about the man she spent every day with? It is rather shocking, especially for Judith, as you can imagine. To Judith, they had lived a nice quiet life in which her husband simply left early for his job as a truck painter and then returned late at night. That was nothing abnormal and she was pleased he had such a great job.

And unlike with his past relationships, Ridgeway was also always caring and effective. towards Judith, supposedly never showing her his violent side. So it does seem possible to an extent that any person in Judith's shoes might have trusted Ridgway, a practically professional liar who even deceived a lie detector test. Nevertheless, I think there was also an undeniable level of denial from Judith. She has said that she was partially aware of Gary Ridgeway's deeper, mysterious issues, as he occasionally lacked affection and retreated inwardly. And beyond that gut instinct, she knew for a fact that detectives were investigating Ridgeway as a suspect in the Green River murders, and also that the police had even searched his home in 1987. According to Judith, she justified this in her mind by telling herself that Ridgeway must have just looked like somebody. Regardless, if one thing is for sure, Ridgeway was unfortunately a master liar and manipulator. He also managed to deceive the police for decades. That's right, and with the police more than with anyone, Ridgeway had to use intent.

intensive, clever tactics. For starters, he showed a deep comprehension of forensic evidence as he disposed of his victim's bodies. If a victim scratched him, he would cut her fingernails before disposing of her. And also, on one occasion, when he noticed that his truck left tire marks near his dump site, Ridgway went so far as to replace all of his tires. That's such an interesting fact, and we can see the links that Ridgway went to so he could avoid capture for so long.

And beyond that careful planning, Ridgway managed to make himself appear to be innocent. He never fit the profile of a serial killer as he remained in relationships with a steady career with perfect attendance. And even when the police searched his house, they found no signs of trophies of his kills. Ridgeway kept no lasting evidence from his murders, likely because he planned ahead so as not to be caught. He also engaged in more active deception of the police as he even planted evidence. At the dump sites of his victims, he scattered cigarette butts since he never smoked. At one crime scene, he scattered airport motel pamphlets, implying he was a traveler. And in hopes of convincing the Green River Task Force that the killer had continued traveling south to Oregon,

Ridgeway even drove the remains of several women from the spot of their murder in Seattle all the way to Portland. Once again, his son was in the car with him as he transported these women's dead bodies. His son, however, remained clueless to the true point of their road trip. After Ridgeway dumped their bodies in Portland, he drove himself and his son back to Seattle. And in the coming months, as Portland police found these murder victims, they alerted Washington's Green River Task Force. The task force then gave extensive consideration to the idea that the Green River killer had just moved to Oregon. Of course, this assumption was not true and would just waste the task force time and effort,

all while Ridgeway could freely continue. to kill. Despite these setbacks, Ridgeway would eventually be caught due to DNA evidence. That's right. In March of 2001, Detective Tom Jensen submitted evidence from some of Ridgeway's earliest victims to DNA testing. Forensic scientists soon discovered several matches between the DNA found on various victims and Ridgeway's DNA, which have been collected during the search of Ridgeway's house 14 years earlier in 1987. We were actually looking for blood types and we got blood types but we saved the samples and saved the evidence and fortunately for us science developed DNA and we were able to make matches on three of the

bodies found here in Seattle and then on November 30th of 2001 Ridgeway was arrested and soon charged with four counts of aggravated murder in the first degree DNA evidence for three of these counts was to be used in his trials detectives from the Kane County Sheriff's Office arrested a 52-year old man for investigation of homicide. Detectives have probable cause to believe he is responsible for the deaths of four women, and all of whom were found in the Green River on August 15th of 1982. That, of course, was only four of his many murders.

Ridgeway's lawyer, however, offered the prosecution a tempting deal. Gary Ridgeway would plead guilty to those four charges as well as many additional murders if the prosecution would forego the possibility of the death penalty. Hoping to end the decades-long search for the unknown murderer, the prosecution accepted the deal. Ridgeway would have to provide complete and truthful information during extensive interviews with the police. He would confess as much as he could remember,

much of which we have heard over these two episodes, and it even lead investigators to numerous sites with previously undiscovered victims. He couldn't, however, be sentenced to death. It's a bit surprising to me that after so many decades of deception, Ridgeway was seemingly so willing to reveal all of his murderous secrets. Well, he knew he didn't have a choice. With the new DNA evidence, he would surely be convicted and receive the death penalty. At this point, his only hope at survival was being honest. Nevertheless, he did lie several times in his early interviews.

Ridgeway himself eventually even admitted to interrogators that he found it difficult to be honest after he had spent so many years lying. At times he minimized his behavior and portrayed himself in the best possible light, claiming he didn't plan to kill the victims. And in the beginning of the interviews, Ridgeway insisted that he stopped killing in 1985 upon meeting Judith. However, in future interviews, he continuously changed this detail. The last year that he killed someone became later and later. He'd finally reveal that he did, in fact, murder in 1998. The following is a news update, as the public anxiously. tracked Ridgeway's confessions.

Since Ridgeway reportedly began cooperating, searchers have found four sets of decades-old human remains in brushy areas around Seattle and identified three of them. A source says Ridgeway also confessed to a killing as recent as 1998 and another in 1990. Moreover, Ridgeway would eventually be completely honest, fully admitting to his cold-blooded murder of countless young women. Yet even as he confessed, he clearly still felt proud of his murders.

You can put her on the list of mine, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to say I killed her because I didn't kill her. Why, if it isn't mine? Because I have pride in what I do. I don't want to take it from anybody else. It was only a matter of time before Ridgeway would be charged for the murder of 48 women and one more at a later date. You wish to plead guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder as charged.

in the second amended information. Is that true? Yes, I do. Gary Ridgeway was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in jail with no possibility of parole. To this day, Judith can hardly believe that she loved the man guilty of such heinous crimes. She has faced an unthinkable amount

of public shaming, embarrassment, and pain. After Gary confessed, she stopped visiting him in jail and ceased all contact. She even changed her appearance, her name, and went into reclusive hiding. for several years. Now she lives a quiet life, and she has said that she's unsure if she could ever trust a man again, let alone fall in love again. And so we're brought back to my initial questions. Exactly how evil is Gary Ridgeway. Is someone evil ever forgivable? The following is

Ridgeway's short statement during his trial. I'm sorry for killing these ladies. They had their whole lives ahead of them, ahead of them. I'm sorry for causing so much pain to so many families. Many family members of victims spoke as well, some of which we heard last episode. This is the father of one of Ridgeway's victims. Mr. Ridgeway, there are people here that hate you. I'm not one of them. you've made it difficult to live up to what I believe, and that is what God says to do, and that's to forgive. You are forgiven, sir. So according to this one man, someone as evil as Ridgeway is in fact forgivable.

However, many, if not the vast majority of his victim's families, seem to disagree. He's an animal. I wish for him to have a long, suffering, cruel death. He's going to go to hell and that's where he belongs. And the judge does not seem to buy his apology either. Usually, when I sentence an individual, even for the most serious of crimes, I reach out with some humanity. In this case, I cannot. I can find no compassion.

The victim's family members have undoubtedly been put through unimaginable suffering, and it's impossible to fully understand. their feelings on forgiveness. But given that, what's your opinion, Vanessa? Well, Greg, after we've dissected his many motives, methods, and personal issues, I'd say Gary Ridgeway is pure evil, as profoundly terrible as humans come. I think Ridgeway is, in fact, worse than a heartless sociopath or psychopathic murderer. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew the vast consequences of his actions, and more so he proved that he was capable of loving his wife. He that he was seemingly able to empathize with people's pain,

yet he continued to make violent, murderous, horrific choices nevertheless. In my book, someone who actively knows kindness and actively understands the pain-inflicting violence of his actions, yet continues to act so anyway, well, Greg, that is the definition of evil. I could not agree more. Thank you for joining us over the last two weeks as we trace the life of Gary Ridgeway.

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Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and developed by Ron Cutler. It is a production of Cutler media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Ron Shapiro, with production assistance by Joel Stein and Maggie Admeyer. Serial Killers is written by Ryan Elkins and stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. The amazing cast of voice actors includes by Alphabetical Order, Mike Caposi and Steve Pinto. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up.

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