Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 673: Gary Ridgway : Redux Part III - The Riverman

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

The boys conclude the story of the Green River Killer, as Ted Bundy gives investigators a disturbingly accurate profile of the man he calls “The Riverman,” Gary Ridgway tries settling into a normal life with his third wife, and the task force somehow keeps missing the killer right under their noses. But after nearly two decades of blown chances, DNA and trace evidence finally catch up with Green River Gary, leading to his arrest, his confessions to dozens of murders, and the present day, where he continues to rot away in prison. For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last hot task. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. I hope Gary can really make his way out of this one. I really, how's Gary going to get himself out of this, Jam? I really think after last week, Gary's in a lot of hot water. I sure hope he can figure his way out to get out of this one.

Come on, Gary. Give it a happy ending. Find Christ. Gary. Oh, Gary Ridgway, sure they get himself into a pickle this time. Come back after the commoosher brick, so Gera can get away from the shield. We do need more bluegrass rabbits in this story.

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Bluegrass Henry Zabrowski. Yeah. I was watching this video of a group of people finding a Japanese, I was also served that in Tokyo. That was cool. It looked awesome. They're more white than us.

I was very impressed. They don't want to sing white so well. They do. Yeah, truly so. And we've got the man who's been known as brown grass at every campsite he's ever been to. It's Ed Larson. That's right, man. I'll spray it large, dude. Is your urine like a bear where it's so ammonia-ridden

that it does kill grass? I'll tell you what, it smells. That's fucking great. My urine smells so bad it smells itself. Ew. On that note, we're here, ladies and gentlemen. Gary Ridgeway, part three, the conclusion to this series. Stinky urine.

So when we last left Gary Ridgeway, the year was 1984, and the murder spree that would make Gary one of the most prolific serial killers in American history was finally coming to a close. But while Gary had supposedly been trying to help the Green River Task Force by writing a letter to the authorities, giving tips on how to bring his reign of terror to an end, his near-eligible communication had not impacted the investigation in any meaningful way. So in February of 1984, Gary Ridgeway wrote another letter to two Seattle newspapers with the words, Very Important, written on the outside of the envelope. We're going to want to open these.

They're very important. It helped that it looked like it was written by a serial killer. It's like a big V, little I, important, spelled wrong. It looked like it was from a crazy person. But that's the incredible thing about Gary Ridgeway is not known at all as a letter writer. You know, you talk about Zodiac, you talk about BTK. No one ever mentions Gary Ridgeway as a letter writer. He can barely paint.

I legitimately believe what we're seeing here truly is the fact that they weren't cool. That there is a... That Gary Ridgeway wasn't cool? that the Gary Ridgeway letters weren't cool. No. And the Zodiac letters that make sense

because it's fascinating and it's the puzzle and it's all that kind of shit and they like all the Black Dahlia stuff is very interesting and compelling and all like The rapper.

It's compelling. It's interesting. And BTK's stuff is like as douchey as it is. It's still fucking chilling. Yes. Gary Ridgeway was such a bad writer.

He bored the investigators out of them taking his letter writing seriously. Do they get lots of like? fake letters? Sure. Yeah, no, they always have to decide whether or not the letter is actually from the killer or not. It's pretty, it's very difficult in the midst of the investigation to tell which is which. I know it's not fake the fact that they found Nancy Guthrie's cat collection right outside of the North Pole. And I'm starting to think that maybe Santa's got something to do with

Nancy Guthrie's naughty exit. Oh, she's the new Mrs. Claus. Yep. Because once he touched her, the oils, the Santa oils, means she can't. can't be touched by another man. Sure. Yeah, I heard about that. What contained in the very important envelope was a two-page letter. But while the one sent before was ostensibly meant to be helpful, this one was more about throwing police off Gary's trail. Good thing he did send it to them.

Yeah. This letter was, speaking to that point, written by a moron. So the letter written as numbered lines with all the words running together with no spaces whatsoever, it didn't have any more of an impact on the overall investigation than the one that came before. But it is still a fascinating artifact. After starting off with instructions in which Gary wrote, What You Need to Know About the Green River Man, don't throw away with no written as NO, Gary listed off 40 things to know about the Green River killer.

He's smart. Handsome. He's tall. He's Asian. Also, notice. said he called him the Green River Man and not killer. Yeah, yeah, that is true. Well, many of these things to know were

nonsensical, like number 11, you work me or nobody. But actually, now that I read it out loud, I think he's trying to say you work with me or you don't work with anybody. I don't think that Gary knows. I think that's like one of those, like, you know how, like, we don't know what the

Eggman means? Yeah. Yeah. It's so weird to like see a man right as stutter. Yeah. Nobody. But perhaps the most baffling is number 26. Realist man is one man. I can't make sense of that no matter how many times I read it. I just sat in my fucking office just going,

realist man is one man. Realist man is one man. Realist man is one man. Realist man is one man. Realist man is one man. Do you know the answer to this too real? Yeah, I do actually. I do believe.

Realist man. is one man, right? He's meaning it's one guy. It's not multiple killers. Okay, so the realist man is one man. And he's me. The most possible, the most likely possible suspect is one man. A person who is working alone.

One man. Realist man is one man. Realist man is one man. I always think of like this one guy in Tallahassee who did heroin and there's always like, you want to get real man? Yeah, I remember that. That's what he's talking about. If you're real, I'll stay over here in my fake amazing life then.

But hidden within all of Gary's nonsense were actual clues that this letter was really from the Green River killer. Gary wrote about at least four things that were never released in the press, like number two on the list, which said, one black in river had a stone in the vagina. Why? Actually, it's a whole, that is a lot of, I don't know. See, the stone detail had been kept a secret from the press for just such an occasion as this, as were some of Gary's other predilections, like what would. mentioned number eight. That one said he had sex after they dead. He smokes. Now, Gary didn't smoke, but he was indeed a committed necrophiliac, if committed is the right word here.

I actually do think that that makes a lot of sense because he's always wanted, he does want credit, which we now know in the end, right? He wants people to know the exact nature of his crimes. He was super interested in, and we know for his behavior after the fact he gets off on it. So that's him directly admitting that he's a acrophiliac and that was a part of the game but then all of the stupid

chaff he threw out of the fake cigarette butts that he was stealing from the street and stuff that's him being like now I'm thinking that's the 90 chess And when did he send this? This was in 1984

I'm sorry 1985 I believe So it did kind of work Yeah Actually it was February of 1984 Yeah so he was a capitol for another one, 18 years? Many years. Yeah.

Many, many, many years. Not in that millennium. Yeah. Gary maintained in conversations with investigators later that he would not go back and have sex with the dead bodies in the days after a murder. I've never once gone back and had sex with a corpse days after a murder. Instead, Gary said that he had sex with the bodies right after he killed them, which he supposed did technically make him a necropheliac?

Yes. 100% instead. If she's dead you're fucking her it doesn't matter what her temperature is okay

because you can put her in a fucking hot bowl of water if you want to you can run a bath and make her you can warm her up that doesn't make her

then alive enough for it to not be necrophilia also I would say that necrophiliac might be the best thing he is it's definitely

got the least amount of victims that know what's happening yes but Gary Ridgeway love to talk once you got him

going and after investigators pushed him on the necrophilia angle just a bit, he admitted that he would return to the corpses over the following days, having sex with them again and again, quote, until the flies came.

Oh, then he had a deadline. Oh, that's fine. The man has standards. Yeah, he knows when to stop. Yeah. The flies come pretty fast. Very fast. I get bitten my flies and I'm alive. Are you a fly, stale? As far as why,

Gary, had sex with some corpses and not others, Gary actually saw necrophilia as a kind of twisted compliment, but not for anything physical. Instead, Gary's necrophilia was a commentary on the victim's overall demeanor just before their murder. It's nice to know he's not shallow. Except where the graves were. Yeah, he's in love with the corpse's minds. Yeah. Gary said that the women who had made him particularly angry, those were the ones whose corpses were left alone after the murder. Because to Gary, leaving a corpse in some deserted spot by itself.

That was a punishment. A visit from the necrophilia fairy, however, was considered a reward for the corpse. Oh, that's what it is. It's a reward. I didn't know that. We should be thanking him. Did he leave quarters at least? That quarter under forehead means, I'm next.

You can leave that alone. Even though the letter said to the president. Just visit from a necrophilia fairy. It says, D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D. It's just like, I guess no one wants to fuck my corpse tonight. Really, for me, the necrophilia fairy looks exactly like the nerve-ending fairy from Norton Stimpy. It's the same guy.

It's the same exact guy. I was definitely thinking when it's Stimpy as well. Stinky weasel teeth. Even though the letter sent to the press had made mention of details that had not been released to the public, the second to last line in the letter made investigators unsure as to how seriously they should take it. At the very end, Gary wrote, there was a book lift at Denny's. I got this, a of it belongs to cop. Call me Fred. If you couldn't decipher that, the writer was trying to say that he had gotten all his information from a notebook

that a detective had left behind at a Denny's. You know, there was a book lift at Denny's, left at Denny's. I got this out of it. Okay. It belongs to a cop. So there are ideas that that's how I know all these super secrets is that I took some detective's journal from a Denny's. Yes. Is that real? No way.

They actually, well, that's the thing. No detective would admit that he had left a notebook back at Denny's, but they also couldn't rule that out that someone had left a notebook at Denny's but just wouldn't admit to it. How would he get it? He was at the Denny's. Oh, he just happened to be there? happened to be at the Denny's and the detective left the notebook and he grabbed it and he's like

ah, or maybe I know all this stuff because I found a notebook at Denny's. After I strangle three underage prostitutes to death the first thing honestly I want is a moon's over my hand. Yeah, maybe the cop wasn't ashamed of losing the notebook just eating at Denny's. Yes. I was like, oh fuck, no one

can know it. I had Belgium waffles for dinner. The thing was that this line, it effectively removed the letter from contention concerning things only the killer would know. Furthermore, too many people had handled the letter before it got from the press to the cops. So fingerprinting was impossible. A so-called expert at the FBI also examined the letter and determined it to be inauthentic.

So the letter was filed away as close but no cigar, even though it was absolutely written by the Green River Killer. It does often seem that the guys investigating this specific set of crimes really looked for opportunities to not do it. From what it seems, I did think about that, but these guys really did work their asses off. They did, but strongly. What it was is, yeah, they just had the worst instincts at every possible moment. And to me, it does kind of speak to Tacoma and how badly people's brains were fucked up. Everyone's brain was fucked up in Tacoma during this period of time. No one's thinking straight.

Yeah. Kirk Cobain's life should have been great. Honestly. Oh, you know, you want to know the conversations me and Carolead have had at the house of like how the Tacoma smelter may have led to the grunge movement. Dude, yes, of course it did. None of them knew how to wear a sweater. It's a possibility. It very much is a possibility.

I don't know. I mean, you can't prove it. Oh, yeah. But it's kind of funny because you very rarely, like, we see a lot. We talk about, you know, the less dead. We talk about corruption. And it's like, what do you do? if they're giving their 110%

it just happens to be a bunch of guys that got D's in Cups School. Yeah. You know, like, there's bad at the job. Yeah, and even the FBI coming in can't help them out. Like, they're just all sitting there, like the guy who gets really mad when he can't figure something out, like and it feels like it's all of them.

I mean, a bad cop can't solve a murder. I was in jail once in a really shitty town called Bluntstown, and I remember I got locked up for a night because I I got in trouble for smoking weed. Buntstown, Florida. Yeah, down in Florida.

Yeah, Blunts Town, we had a blunt. We went to jail for the night. Very funny. Yeah, fun of you, though. It makes sense. But I remember when I was in there, I was, the guy, one of the guys I was, who else was in the jail? He was like, what did you guys do? He's like, oh, we're in here for smoking weed.

He's like, man, that's the only crime you can't do in this town. Assault, rape, forgery, man, I do everything. Yeah. It's hard, though, but don't even try. a jaywalk. Now, relatively speaking, the murders tapered off in the spring of 1984.

Even though there was still a staggering amount of bodies, 10, between February and May, the deaths... Remember, that's an entire... That's some serial killer's entire output. It's many serial killers' entire output. Yeah. Especially at this point in time. Zodiac 5, right?

Yeah. Yeah. But the deaths were still coming at a slower pace. But even so, the cops were actually starting to wonder if there might have been two killers on the loose, because Gary would treat a body differently based on where he left it. The bodies left on dry land, for example, would be buried or hidden under piles of logs, sticks, or debris.

If they weren't buried, the bodies left on dry land sometimes appeared to be intentionally posed in sexually lewd positions, which is something that serial killers are known to do because of the secondary trauma causes to the person who finds the body. BTK was really big on this. But again, investigators were thinking too hard when it came to Gary Ridgeway's motivations. Instead of setting up a scene to be purposefully shocking to whoever found it,

like Jack the Ripper is the best example, Gary's bodies only appeared to have been left in lurid positions because these bodies were the ones that Gary had returned to for the act of necrophilia. And Gary had not, so to speak, cleaned up after himself following the necrophilia. He just left the bodies in a sexual position. God damn, that looks sexy. Oh, my God.

Oh my God, I got it. Wait a second. I'm a cop-up. I'm investigating this. I can't be, maybe just a couple of minutes. Sorry, boys. Boner check. Yeah.

That's a lewd sexual position. I can tell by my penis. Now, while the body count had slowed down in 1984, investigators were still looking for any help they could get in their quest to catch the Green River killer. In October of that year, special investigator Robert Keppel received a lot of the year. a letter from the most unlikely of sources. Keppel got a letter from perhaps the most notorious serial killer of the century, Theodore Robert Bundy.

See, in 1984, Ted Bundy was already on death row down in Florida, but in July of that year, guards had not only found two hacksaw blades in Bundy's cell, but they'd also discovered that Bundy had already cut through one of the bars and glued it back in place so no one would. would be the wiser. He was two bars away from escaping for what a third time? It's just a bit of an art project I'm working on.

You ever see the great escape? That's just what I'm trying to do. That's just what I'm trying to do. But in a fictional way. You know what I mean? As we all know, Bundy was a master escape artist. So it is generally believed that Bundy offered his expertise to the Green River Task Force as a way

to delay his execution so he could buy himself enough time to escape from prison. He of all serial killers too was one of those that got so juiced up talking about his own crimes and talking about the crimes of others, it's also just another sexual escape. Yes, it is. Now, as it turned out, the FBI behavioral science unit really was onto something when they started interviewing inactive serial killers so they could catch active serial killers. But the problem is that the serial killers were sometimes

better at building a profile than the FBI. Case in point, it was Ted Bundy's work on the Green River Killer. While Robert Ressler's profile on the Green River Killer have been so general that it was useless, Ted Bundy came far closer to nailing Gary Ridgeway than any other person who worked on this case. And that's regardless of Bundy's real motivations in helping the task force. Whether it was

to buy extra time, give himself a boner, didn't matter. He still did a great job. He would have been a great cop. Well, you know, he was a lawyer. Yeah. There are plenty of cops who love to murder. They really do. Yeah, they really do. Well, Bundy said that he was

only mildly interested in the case until he signed up for a subscription to the Tacoma News Tribune. After learning about the crime scenes in further detail beyond the scant national coverage, Bundy became fascinated. Keppel believed that Bundy saw a mirror image of himself in the Green River Killer, which is even more chilling when you remember that Bundy was also from Tacoma, and had grown up in the shadow of the same smelting plant as Gary Ridgeway. So Keppel replied to Bundy in a short one-page letter that agreed to hear Bundy's thoughts.

on the case. Two weeks later, Keppel received a 22-page reply from Ted Bundy regarding the killer that Bundy liked to call the Riverman. And Bundy's take on this is especially impressive when you consider that he made all of these guesses based solely on local reporting from the Tacoma News Tribune. Two things I'm very impressed by right here. First off, 1984, Bundy's in prison. Somehow he's getting a local newspaper on the other corner of the country. I'm very impressed by that. Hey, it used to be much more common. Yeah, it's second of all,

fucking Riverman's a great name. Riverman's incredible. It's so much better. It's so much better than the Green River killer. The Riverman. Yeah, the Riverman sounds like the dark musical based upon this story. Oh, the River! What the River! Oh, the River!

I took them, but they don't stay down. I rope them. But they don't get down. Oh, I love a girl when she's lying flat. I come and get her. And that is that. That's why you gotta have friends.

Yeah, just Bundy and Gary. That is great. Now, after reading the letter, Keppel flew down to Florida, where he let Bundy expand upon his thoughts. Bundy said that even though the Riverman focused on sex workers, he was only doing so because sex workers were the most vulnerable subset of women available to the killer. Check. Any woman would do, Bundy said, just so long as that woman wouldn't be missed.

He specifically said that out loud. Yeah. This had nothing to do with the killer having a particular garage against sex workers. Instead, Bundy chalked the killer's choice of victim up to laziness. I actually completely agree. They were accessible and he knew that they were vulnerable. 100%. And he, because he did kill women who were not sex workers.

In this, Bundy obviously saw himself as superior because, Bundy had admittedly evaded capture after killing pretty young coeds around the country. I mean, the murders that Bundy committed, if they were committed today, they would have been national tragedies. Yeah. Bundy was also absolutely fucking correct in how he guessed Gary Ridgeway's motivations and choosing victims. I'm going to say this in her kind of almost, this might be an appropriate analogy.

Okay. But I kind of view Ted Bundy as a sort of Morrissey-style serial killer. where he views himself as... Was he sad? Yeah. But he views himself as like a genius artist almost in a way

that elevated serial killing up to a point in which I don't think he would choose to talk about a serial killer that he would feel was at his level. I think he looked at Gary Ridgeway as almost like a factory of killing. Yeah, it's like a numbers thing.

He got a lot of numbers, but it's one of those things like... It's like, I'll give you a sports Yeah, it's like when someone says like, yeah, they're a good team, but they're in a shitty conference. Like anybody could fucking get that. Like if I was in that fucking conference, anybody, I could get those numbers. Yes. You know, that's Ted Bundy.

That's Ted Bundy when it comes to Gary Ridgeway. Because they are very hierarchical in their brain. Zero killers, they are very, like, especially Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway was, they know true crime. A lot of times they reinvest in true crime. and because they have considered serial killing to be their job or their career. Yeah. Now, I wouldn't say Morrissey. Father John Misty.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. So Ted Bundy's the father John Misty of serial killing. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I totally get that. Well, Bundy also nailed that the Riverman was nice, easy going, and he looked like many of the men that a sex worker might hang out with safely every day.

That meant that there was nothing memorable, threatening. or unusual about the Green River killer, which described Gary to a T. Smartly, Bundy advised the Green River Task Force to keep the body locations a secret so they could stake them out because the Riverman was almost guaranteed to return to a location with another body if he thought it was safe to do so. And had the task force actually done this, they absolutely would have caught Gary Ridgeway, because Bundy also surmised that no matter how many bodies they discovered, there would always be more, even if the killing slowed down.

only way the riverman would stop, Bundy guessed, is if he died, found Jesus, or was put in jail for something else. He fucking nailed it. Because also, Gary Ridgway told him the same thing. He said, you should go to where I killed people before and you should wait until I show back up.

He literally said it. Gary's a moron. Yeah, he'd said it a year before. And Bundy's telling them, again, like, stake out the body sites. He's going to come back. He's fucking the bodies. Yeah, just put in the work. That's it. Like, just hide. Get a deer blind. Something. Talk to the flies.

Yeah. Talk to the flies. And they were like, We don't snitch. All right, I don't fucking bite the hand that feeds. All right, I know that I like better than the teddy of a dead little girl. It's my favorite thing in the world of guts or shit. Anyone else spilled copper?

Yeah. I love this place. Well, Bundy also correctly guessed that the Riverman would have dump sites close to wherever he picked up his victims. So there would be as little time as possible. between the abduction, the murder, and the disposal. Do you know that he actually said that, do you know, just recently he came out and talked about this year, Gary Ridgeway, saying that he had hit kits buried?

Really? Yeah. Wow. Yep. The only whiff Bundy had was his strong assertion that the Green River killer loved watching pornography and horror movies because Bundy became a crusader against porn and horror near the end of his life. In fact, it was Bundy's assertion that pornography and horror movies

were the main cause of the serial killer epidemic. What an asshole. I mean, we now know this is incredibly off base because the numbers of serial killers currently operating within the United States is estimated by the FBI. And this is the most incredible number of all between 25 and 50. 50 at most is ridiculously low when compared to even the most conservative 20th century estimates concerning active serial killers. Per capita, it puts us below 19. 40 levels, and there has never been a time in human history when pornography and horror have been as available, mainstream, and popular as they are today.

So Ted Bundy's claims, which were eventually picked up and amplified by the Christian media, a complete and utter horseshit. It was the fucking pollution. Full stop, question fucking answered when it comes to serial killers. Porn and horror is what makes me a good person. Yeah, that's how you get your jimmies out. Exactly, yeah. Also, though, I will say now you don't have to stop watching porn.

You don't even have to rewind the tape. You know, you just find a new one. That's the best part. Yeah, yeah, with streaming, you know, they just start another horror movie for you. You don't have to leave to kill. Yeah, and you know, also it's great about watching that porn on the internet. I love sharing it to social media. Yeah, just show people what I like.

That's my favorite. I love to put a little comment like, wish she'd be uglier. Yeah. Then I retweeted obviously because I want everybody to know. Yeah. I blame the rewinding. The rewinding, okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Because, you know, people don't like being kind. No. Being kind in the 80s and 90s was usually pretty aggravating, and you must be kind to rewind. Yeah. Exactly. Another mystery solved. Fuck.

Live from Northland. Even though Ted Buddy painted a pretty good picture of Gary Ridgewood. his contributions to the case ended up being just as meaningless as every other attempt to catch the Green River killer, mostly because the task force didn't act on any of his suggestions. In fact, as the news stories about the murders slowed to a crawl in the first half of 1985, many people had come to believe that the killer had either moved on or died. And as it turned out, Gary Ridgeway had somewhat moved on. God, they were so happy when they didn't have to investigate these murders anymore.

Yeah, well, as they slowly started getting reassigned starting in 1984. You know, that number was at 25 on the task force at its highest. And starting in 1985, once the murder slowed down, and it's not in the news anymore, and nobody's fucking talking about it anymore. Those cops just, bing, bing, bink, start getting reassigned to other cases. But nobody could have guessed, however, were the inspirations behind Gary Ridgeway slow down. See, when Gary was asked by investigators after his capture as to why he slowed down his killing so much after 1985, his eyes filled with tears, and he said that he slowed down,

when he met his third wife, Judith. And life has come along. But when you look at the timeline... Little gentle kisses with Gary. When you look at the timeline, Gary's pace had already slowed down prior to Gary's first meeting with Judith in 1985.

Because he's sort of making Gary a priority. He starts to be putting Gary first. Yeah. Well, kind of sort of. As far as what slowed Gary down first, I got two words for you. Yard work. Huh.

Gary said that whenever he got angry in the early 80s, he'd go out and murder a sex worker to alleviate the pressure. But by the mid-80s, Gary was instead funneling more and more of his anger into raking the leaves or mowing the lawn. This is seriously what he said. This is 100% what he said. This is what he told investigators. And it rings true because everyone always,

says Gary stopped because of Judith. Gary, it was when he met, no. He slowed down. He'd already started slowing down six months before he, eight months, before he even fucking met Judith. And the only other thing that Gary ever said as to what helped him with his anger,

yard work. You know, I actually wonder if there was just one time he came his pants while raking the leaves. And he said, great. Thank God. I can do this now. I fucking believe it. You know, I moved into a house not too long ago and Julie's been

working in the backyard for like nine months and she hasn't killed anyone in a while. It's hard. She's so tired. Well, what this shows you is that Gary once again proved himself to be both far simpler and far more complicated than anyone could have guessed. Because he just

dropped it as simply as he picked it up. Yeah. Now, as far as how Gary met Judith, the woman who supposedly stopped him from killing so much, Gary had continued dating women throughout his most active period as the Green River Killer by using the Parents Without Partner Support Group as his dating pool. From 82

to 84, he's still dating that whole time. He's just fucking charming. He's just a fun guy. He's a nice funny guy. This is a horrible advertisement for Parents Without Partners. It is. It is. They seem to mean well, but none of this is saying anything good about him. We all know who you meet there.

But since the Green River Killer was such a big story, Gary's alter ego became a topic of small talk conversation during one of his dates. The date who brought it up, of course, had no idea that she was indeed talking to the very subject of their conversation, the Green River Killer. This woman later recalled that when she brought up the Green River Killer on her one date with Gary, he got very serious to the point of being physically tense. He then asked her what she thought about the killer and what he was doing.

Do you like it? Yeah, actually, it's kind of interesting. So, yeah, I have been personally invested. kind of wondering, should I start killing sex workers? Great answer. She didn't really know what to say, so she kind of made a joke. She's like, well, you know, if I was prostitute, I'd be getting a new job around about now. You know, but Gary, he actually asked her if she thought that society was better off

with all these horlets fouling up the streets of C-Tac. Well, I was doing a bit, and you kind of made it serious, so I'm going to go. Thanks, though. Sensing a massive red flag, the woman decided it would be probably best to just agree with anything Gary said from that point on. Like, yep, definitely better off. Let's talk about something else. Green River Killer is definitely correct. Absolutely, Gary.

As a woman, yeah, I'm on the Green River Killer side here. They keep distracting the good men. But Gary didn't want to let it go. Later on in the date, Gary decided to be up front with this woman by telling her, Funny story I've actually been interrogated by the FBI as the Green River killer for like eight hours because one of the missing girls' phone numbers

was in my address book and when the woman said like Oh yeah Yeah yeah Gary's saying the whole thing But a big misunderstanding I'm friends with this missing girl's sister And that's why I had the address

In my notebook I'm not the Green River killer That's crazy. Yeah, I just, oh, the buzzer went off. We could go to our table now, but I don't feel very good. I'm going to go. Gary tried laughing the whole thing off, but this date did not return for a second helping of Gary Ridgeway

after that incredibly awkward night. And to think she could have been in the one sucking his dick enough for him to stop killing prostitutes. All right? The good ones always get away. It's a horrible excuse. How would the cops get your notebook to know that the, number was in it. Yeah.

It's a bad excuse. It's a really bad excuse. He's the Green River Killer. I think she's fucking haunted by this shit. Yeah. Well, she didn't ask any follow-up questions and she just kind of shook it off. And then got a hold of police later when they asked you know, does anybody have any information on this Gary Ridgeway guy? She came forward. Like, yeah,

yeah, it was weird. Yeah. Now about six or seven months after Gary's most active period ended, he met another woman at parents without partners. This was just after Gary's birthday on February 18th. And he told this woman after they were introduced,

actually, I'm still celebrating my birthday. It's kind of my birthday month. This woman kindly wished Gary a happy birthday. And the two of them ended up immediately bonding that very night over their many failed relationships. Gary, of course, had his two marriages behind him, but

this woman had just ended a 19-year-long marriage the year before, right after her husband had come out of the closet. Her name was Judith, and her streak of bad luck with men was set to continue because she was destined to become Gary Ridgeway's third and final wife. You left out best. They love.

That was the one that stuck. That was the one where the love came in, man. It really was. It's kind of crazy. These two little guys, just fucking, I wish them luck. Now, Pickens must have been slim in Tacoma. during the mid-80s. Yeah.

Because Judith was fucking blown away by the life that Gary Ridgeway had built for himself. You have four walls and the home is heated and this toilet works. This truck is so filthy. That's a wonderful

film over here. Judith was impressed that he had held the same job at Kimworth trucking for years on end. Oh my God. Even though everyone at work had started straight up calling Gary Ridgeway Green River Gary because of how many times he's been questioned by police in relation to the Green River killer.

I'm just sick of being single. I just want to settle down. Can you imagine meeting her after, like, you know, they all meet up for a drink? Like, yeah, you know, come out and meet my buddies from work. And they're like, oh, yeah, you're a Green River Gary now, huh? Oh, we just call him that because he loves prostitutes, you know, and he's been questioned by the FBI. Oh, I. But you must understand each time, I have been acquitted to Vinny's.

sort of crime. Good enough for me. She's the personification of if you can't beat him, join him. Literally. She's like, yeah, what about his fucking? Judith also found Gary to be kind, attractive and masculine. Both of them loved

country music, both of them loved camping, and both of them loved hunting for treasures, as Gary put it, at yard sales. They're fucking pack rats, they're hoarders. Dude, no, you know what they are. They're antique roadshow people. No, dude, antique roadshow is so far above

their radar. These are the type of people who'll go to a yard sale and haggle at like a 10 cent candy dish. Like, no, no, I give you a nickel for that. Ain't worth no more than a nickel. That's a real shopper. Judith also liked that Gary didn't have any friends. Most people, that's a red flag when someone doesn't have any friends. But for Judith, it was a plus because it meant she could have Gary all to herself.

And this whole relationship nearly died right at the beginning. But this truly was a case of a lid for every podcast. because Judith showed from the start that she was both willing and able to compartmentalize and eventually ignore Gary's predilections. See, just a few days after Gary and Judith hit it off, the Green River Task Force picked Gary up yet again after a formal complaint was filed by Penny Bristow. This was years after her near-fatal encounter with Gary. You're telling me this is just a follow-up to a follow-up. That's all this is. If you remember, Penny was the sex worker who'd gotten away from Gary,

after he'd tripped trying to chase after her because his pants were around his ankles. Penny's complaint had resulted in the aforementioned polygraph, which, as we said, Gary had easily passed. But Gary decided that it was best to be honest with Judith about his encounter with the task force. He told her what he told them, that he was innocent. It was all a misunderstanding. He didn't even know this girl. And if Gary was able to fool the cops and a polygraph machine, he was certainly

capable of fooling Judith. For her part, Judith figured that since the authorities had let Gary go, he wasn't the Green River Killer. Yeah. You know, if he was, they would have fucking arrested him. So, within a matter of months, like three months after Gary had to take a polygraph as to whether or not he was the Green River killer, Judith moved into Gary's home near the strip, a home that had up to this point been the sight of many, many murders.

You know what this tells me? if you're a single guy and you can't find a woman, move to Tacoma. That's a good place. I'll actually amend that. It's a romantic place. I'll amend that. Move near a smelting plant.

There's probably one close. You don't have to move all the way to the Pacific Northwest. It's probably one in your state. You know he turned up the dumb. Yeah. I think a lot of what Gary Ridgeway does is that he kind of turns into

that Bean Bunny version of himself where he's just like, oh, I don't know, I don't know. where he becomes real simple. And I honestly think many women in a horrific way are super interested in a form of baby like husband. That they can dress and feed and take care of and then they know he won't fuck around because he's just kind of kept in the house.

He's helpless. Like they make him helpless. Like he's a ferret. We'll talk about that later on. Hit the nail on the head on that one. I could only imagine how haunting in retrospect their conversation was when he told her about getting picked up by the cops and getting let go, and they all probably just sat there and laughed.

Yeah, like, what a crazy afternoon. Can't even believe. What to mix them up. Oh, me. This is like a Pink Panther film. Now, after Judith moved in, the two of them began building a happy, entirely normal life together. They'd take Gary's son Matthew to the zoo on weekends. They'd go on ferry boat rides. They'd have picnics.

They'd attend monster truck rallies. They'd pick over the garage sales. of the Pacific Northwest for so-called treasures to add to their rapidly growing pile of junk. A house is the design house. Do you see them like, you know, the 16 millimeter cameras? Yeah, all like, all that, you know, so excited. This is the cone heads montage. This is, yeah.

Do you, Ding, ding, ding, d'i, and... Paul Simon playing in the background. Oh, yeah. But Gary said that he didn't have the desire to kill anymore after he and Judith got together, but that's utter horseshit. Really what Gary meant was that he didn't want to get caught anymore, so the killing slowed down considerably.

See, where he'd killed at least 50 women between 1982 and 1985. Remember that. At least, at least. At least. And that's like, he had killed, provably killed, 48 women, and it's probably more. And it's all between

82 and, or mostly between 82 and 85. His body count after meeting Judith, though, was considerably lower, Between 1985 and 1998, Gary Ridgeway killed only four more times that we know of, with an increasing number of years between each kill. That's barely anybody. Right? It's like he's barely a cigarette at all. Come on, why he just fucking, it's like when I was smoking one cigarette a week.

Yeah, while Gary was trying to put the Green River killer behind him, the Green River Task Force continued their investigations. And bodies from Gary's earlier kills were contained. continuing to be found across the areas surrounding Seattle and Tacoma. In March of 1986, two members of the Parks Department found a human skeleton missing its skull sitting at the base of a tree. This was the body of Tracy Winston, who disappeared three years earlier. The head would not be found until 2005 near Isoquois, Washington, because Gary had moved the skull. He went back to the body after it decomposed, grabbed the head,

and put it near Isoquois because he thought it was clever. He thought it would confuse investigators. And that is a type of necrophilia, I think, in a way, where he would be, he was really invested in his bodies. Yeah. He loved his bodies. And he viewed them all as belonging to him. Yes, he did. Well, more bones were discovered from other victims throughout 1986.

And even though Gary Ridgway attacked another woman who survived that same year, investigators were still looking elsewhere. Their new suspect was a 52-year-old construction worker named Ernest McLean. to his friends. He'd gained the attention of the task force after he told a co-worker, hey, you know, I can't pick up a sex worker and kill her. Oh, but they're just having fun. That's just guys talk. Some guys talk. Yeah,

this is boys being boys. Boys being boys. I don't know. How many times have hurt someone around these offices. Be like, you know what I want to do later? Sometimes I want to get five or six sex workers. I want to tire them up with a rope. I want to cover them gasoline instead I'm on fire, but that's only just because I'm tired.

You know what? Fuck it. Let's just go get a sandwich. Yeah, you know what, you're right. Slow blood sugar. Yeah, I'm hungry. Well, McLean and his wife were both surveilled at great expense, but nothing was found to link him to any murder at all, much less anything connected to the notorious GRK. You know there is some talk, Gary was saying,

there's now some talk that he probably also left the county and murdered outside of the county as well. So it's quite possible during this time period if he did indeed kill more, who knows, he would have killed him outside of the area or naturally his penis wasn't as active. They also say that too. It's like with BTK is when the sexual desire starts to go down and you get older.

Low Tee. Yeah. Yeah. When the testosterone goes down, yeah, zero killers, they age out. Yeah. Oh, that's why I don't want to kill anyone anymore. Now, besides the woman I mentioned earlier who'd survived an encounter with Gary in 1986, a second woman came forward that same year after Gary.

had choked her. Again, Gary claimed that she bit his penis and drew blood. That marked the third time that Gary had used this excuse. Gary refused to believe it unless your penis is garlic parmesan flavor. Not everybody's trying to take a jerk out of it. Stop wiggling around so much.

I'm sure you think it's you, Gary. All right? Stay in one place. Don't wrap beef jerky around. Yeah, just leave it alone. Let her get her good, let her let her get a good and wide and get it in there. Well, the victim, Rebecca Garde, said that Gary couldn't get hard after he'd picked her up for sex, so he took his anger out on her.

This, of course, was the same thing that had happened to Penny Bristow. So the pattern was staring cops right in the face. But again, Gary was questioned and released, because now the cops had that polygraph test to point towards. It's further proof that doggone it. Gary just had the worst luck on the block when it came to these prostitutes. He just can't catch a break. But this is when the cops find... These prostitutes keep dying on me.

I just want to support the women. They keep biting my penis. And I just, maybe it's just because, again, it looks like a dry Cheeto. Like, it looks like the hard ones. But again, he's not getting arrested for soliciting prostitution. No, he's not. No, he's... They have to catch you red-handed with that shit.

Yeah. How about red dick? Even better. Well, this is when the cops finally started putting the pieces. together, albeit at a painfully slow pace. The task force finally got around talking to the woman we mentioned last episode who had reported Gary as the last person seen with her friend before that friend disappeared. And the task force finally realized that this woman's report had been lost.

And so, at long last, the task force, regardless of the polygraph results, put Gary Ridgeway back at the top of their suspect list. They interviewed Gary's second wife, Marsha Winslow. who gave them even more evidence. Circumstantial evidence, yes, but definitely good evidence. She told them that Gary had loved having sex with her outdoors. And they asked her, hey, do you want to show us where he had sex with you outdoors? Incredibly, Marcia remembered.

So she took him on a ride along. And before long, the cops realized they're pretty much going on a tour body cluster sites. For Green River killer victims. And she's like, so we got him, right? She's still like here too Yeah Yeah But over here when we went on my

Birthday Yeah I think that's one You see the shovel? Yeah Oh look a skilton Yeah Wow

This however was in 1986 And even though there was a lot of circumstantial evidence They didn't have anything As far as they knew That would hold up in court Because the paint evidence was still well over a decade from even being examined, much less used. Actually, I take that back.

It's 15 years from being even examined. As a consequence, Gary continued killing, taking the life of one woman in October of 1986 and another the following February. But the biggest block the cops had was that they couldn't seem to wrap their heads around Gary Ridgeway being the killer because to them he didn't seem the type. He had a steady job. He'd had several relationships with women that had lasted years each time, and he'd passed the polygraph. I mean, at this point in time, even though you already had guys like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy,

who were obviously like men who had been in communities, men who had held jobs, men who had been married, people still thought, you know, Circular's, it's Richard Ramirez. You know, it's the night, it's the night sucker. It's this crazy, insane person with sharp teeth who, you know, lives in shitty hotels. tells and free bases cocaine. That's a serial killer. Because what happens is that if it's Gary Ridgeway then serial killers can be anybody.

You're right. It's fucking terrifying. Yes. And the cops don't like that. The cops want it to be, which you know, on one hand, I do understand. It's difficult job. Blah, blah, blah. It's harder. It's hard to investigate murders. It's harder, especially if you don't know the guy that did it. Like, because most murders are done by somebody that the person knows. You know, it's like, it's either

like for money, it's practical reasons. So it's extremely difficult to put together so I can see why every single time it gets a shade more difficult they're like well what the fuck do do we do now like what do we do now and they're just also just not great cops yeah real

cops would have picked them up and beat the shit out of them a little bit they're real guys but then the problem is Eddie is that then it ruins all the it ruins everything it fucks all the the the and fucks the investigation up unfortunately that's why God invented gloves and masks good work Eddie hit him with the fucking sock

you gotta get the sock with the soap Sok with the soap. That's why God invented sock and soap. That should be a bar. I like that. The sock and soap. Just on that there's a big, on the outside, it's just a big picture of Vincent Donopho. Vincent Donopro going, ah! Oh, comedy. I'm thinking, uh, retirement.

See, let's come on. Where's that money? So give us some seed money. Well, it wasn't until April of 19. that cops finally obtained a search warrant for Gary's homes and vehicles. But they were overwhelmed when they discovered that Gary and Judith were a couple of hoarders that were already two years into building their shared hoard. You can pick up a lot of shit if you're only spending a nickel on each fucking item. Investigators still look through everything. But because Gary never kept trophies in his most active serial killing years were far in his past,

they found no physical evidence linking Gary to the Green River killer. It is now more likely than not that he buried it. Buried the evidence. He did collect treasures. And he did have prices, but that he buried them. According to what he just said, like literally like last month, according to this. I'll get into it a little bit at the end. He had one last relationship currently from jail.

Wow. This woman seduced him. And he explained a lot of other stuff to her, apparently. Now, investigators didn't stop at the search warrant. They surveilled Gary. and found that he spent hours slowly driving up and down the streets of the strip. He would eventually turn to a parking lot and stop, just so he could watch the women standing on the curb who were trying to attract John.

You're always trying to attract the John, but none of them trying to get a Gary. I mean, what they're seeing is that this is a predator. They're watching a predator at work. Judith, meanwhile, believed Gary when he said, sometimes cops just make mistakes. They do. Clearly, they have the wrong guy here, Judith. Likewise, even though cops questioned several people at Kimworth trucking,

Gary still kept his job throughout these investigations. In fact, the guys at Kimworth, they thought the whole Green River Gary thing was fucking hilarious. Of course. It's not, though. Not when everybody thinks the guys are rape a serial killer. It's different if you all think, oh, he's the guy that's shed on Stewie's car. You know what I mean? That's a funny story.

Oh, that's the guy keeps stealing the lunch out of the fucking, the break room. That's like a funny story. I think it's a testament to how harmless he seemed. It's true. How harmless he seemed. It's all the horrible men at Kenworth. Yeah. Yeah, the horrible men in Kenworth and just how horrible things were in Tacoma at the time.

He's so far down the list. I'm sure all of these men know plenty of just, or they knew plenty of just horrific, awful people. Especially this idea that they thought that him quoting the Bible and ranting about harlots of loose women would make him less likely to be the Green River Keller. Which is hilarious to me. That's funny to me. That's why it was funny. Because Gary would sit in the break room at work. He'd read passages from the Bible out loud, going rants about harlots and loose women.

He was so passionate, Spittle would fly from his mouth. Gary was known even to his neighbors as an anti-prostitution zealot who was obsessed with the so-called wickedness of prostitutes. But they knew for a fact he used fucking prostitutes. They knew for a fact that he was addicted to him. Yeah, well, I mean, they knew and they didn't know all at the same time. Gary was so passionate that he'd even attempted to organize his block to, quote, fight prostitution in the CETAC area. But when Gary wasn't giving impromptu sermons at work or to his neighbors, he was making obscene sexual remarks to the women at Kenworth. But since this was the 80s, nobody thought that Gary was actually dangerous.

His co-workers said that while Gary engaged with everyone, he always failed in every attempt to belong. Because they said that kind of felt like he was making the sexual remarks as a way to. to fit in. To be one of the guys. To be one of the guys. But everyone's like, Jesus, Gary, no, don't fucking say that. Yeah, we're just talking about fucking or not crucifying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about this one in the first episode, is that Gary presents as a man, the way he kind of talked about it. He said he never belonged in that. It was like he almost couldn't understand what everybody was saying. It was like people talk too fast.

They didn't talk to. So he would just always fade into the background. That's a part of why he, I think in his own mind, he's like, nobody looks at me. Yeah. But despite all these huge waving red flags, the cops still couldn't come up with any hard evidence. So Gary was put back near the bottom of the suspect list for years to come. In 1988, the same year that an America's Most Wanted-style TV special aired,

focusing on the Green River killer, Gary and Judith finally tied the knot after three years together. They then moved out of Gary's former murder house and got a new place in Des Moines. Washington, just south of C-Tac. But while this was Gary's third marriage, this was the one that actually worked, and it all came down to Gary's mother, Mary Rita. She had never

left. She had been in Tacoma, controlling Gary's life from the outside this entire time. I thought she died. No! She didn't die until 2001. And she's still just like, I saw 9-11 on the television screen. Let me see if you pissed your pants.

Gary. Let me see if you pierce your pants, Barry. Check out my big stinky bag. Yeah, plop and dropping, slap it. I'll remember Mary for the rest of my fucking life. Well, Mary Rita had remained a constant in Gary's life. And in Gary's first two marriages,

Mary Rita had still controlled Gary's finances, and she had a big say in how his wives had handled the housekeeping and the kids. Both wives had therefore greatly resented Mary Rita. Mary Rita was a big reason why Gary's first two marriages failed. But Judith, the third wife, she cracked the Gary code.

Oh, wow. As it turned out, Gary really was looking for another mommy. Because Judith simply followed Mary Rita's example instead of fighting against her. Judith controlled Gary in the same ways his mother did. And Mary Rita apparently approved. She dressed him. She controlled him. She treated him like a child who didn't know what money was.

Every time you get money, Gary, you bring it to me. And then I'll give it back to you whatever you need. And that also did quite a bit towards removing his ability to get sex workers. Yep. You know, and to pick up, and that addiction kind of went away a little bit more. He had to sneak it a lot more. He wanted someone to take it all and change so he could be baby Gary again. Yeah.

But Judith's skills at compartmentalization, this also made her the right woman for Gary. That's all you need, girls. After years of dealing with Gary's sex worker addiction in one way or another, Judith finally asked Gary what a prostitute looked like while they were driving around one day. I remember you used to go to prostitute. What does one look like? God, he must have lit up like a fucking light bulb.

That was the happiest moment of his life. It's like finally, it'd be like if Natalie said to me, I really like Dune. I picked up Dune the other day and you're right, it is about the foibles of a charismatic dictator. Yeah. What makes this dance? so steely.

Baby, let me tell you. Marcus, what's an oscillator? There were so many sex workers in this area when Judith asked the question. All Gary had to do was point out the window at that very moment to highlight a woman wearing fishnets and high heels like, that's what one looks like.

Judith, there's one right there. Judith remembered that she was shocked that a sex worker was out on the streets and broad daylight. Yeah, I thought it was the character gem. But what this tells me, Judith was very much a woman who only saw what she wanted to see, which was perfect for Gary Ridgeway. She'd been living in the strip for years. This is 1988.

She'd been living in the strip since 1985. The strip was the center of sex work in the entire Pacific Northwest. I simply thought it was a bunch of people that love the film. who's that girl? But they were all merely fans of this prostitute named Madonna. Madonna, the exact opposite, the Jezebel, the Jezebel, Madonna.

No, she just, she saw what she wanted to see, and that's how it was with Gary. Live from North Lane. Now, as I said, Gary's murder rate slowed down considerably after Judith. After that murder that he committed in February in 1987, he didn't kill again for three years.

And he waited another eight years after that before claiming his very last victim in the late 90s. Do you think he listened to the song Glory Days and that we got him back in? Blondeurray days! Like they're just being like, you know, I'm just not getting ready anymore. Once I got married, it just stopped being me, you know?

It's like how I sometimes like will put on a corn record or let's feel young again. Just to remind everybody. Marcus is still in here. Yeah, I just want to do like, oh, let's listen. some mud vein. Yeah, everybody's mad. When Natalie knows the SDP comes on, that's my masculine, that's me working on my masculine. Well, Gary's last victim was a woman named Patricia Yellow Rove.

But her death wasn't even considered a murder until Gary admitted to it years later. He'd left her corpse in town, fully closed, and the autopsy had stopped once the coroner discovered that she'd also overdosed on opiates the night of her death. They figured, oh, just one more. a more street person who gives a shit. By the time of the Patricia Yellow Rove murder in 1998, there was only one guy still working for the Green River Task Force, a detective named Tom Jensen.

Detective Jensen, however, had rightfully decided that Gary Ridgeway was absolutely their man, but he could only arrest Gary if he could finally get some physical evidence. Luckily for Detective Jensen, the late 90s saw the advancement of forensic DNA testing and the technology to resurrect old DNA samples became available as well. But even so, it would still take another three years before Tom Jensen got access to those tests. But finally, in October of 2001, Jensen took a DNA sample that had been collected from Gary Ridgeway all the way back in 1987.

It was a piece of gauze that had just been sitting in a freezer waiting for the technology to catch up. That sample was sent away with samples collected from three known Green River victims, including the two victims that had been found pinned to the riverbed by rocks way back in 1982, that first cluster of five. At long last, when the results came back, Gary Ridgway was found to be a perfect match. And those results were delivered 7.45 a.m. Tuesday. September 11th, 2001. Perfectly perfect time

Wasn't it like the monopoly There was like one other trial that was supposed to start that day It was that monopoly fraud trial Yeah that was like a whole thing The McDonald's Molopoly game was supposed to start on September 11th They postponed it There were a few stories that went under the radar Including this one

Yeah My rise to the top of high school theater Oh yeah Trunkated by 9-11 Investigators, however, wanted Gary Ridgeway dead to rights. They're not wrong, you know. So, Detective Dave Riker, the one who tripped over the body at the riverbed scene back in 82. Oh, stubby foots.

Yeah, he decided to swoop back in to try and take credit for all of Detective Jensen's hard work. Detective Jensen had been the only one work in this case for years. No, but it's outside of me coming here. I'm going to get in here. I'm going to really wrap this up, this green lake masher man. We're going to get the hell out of it. You know what I mean? Nothing but up night.

Thinking about this. I fell over the bones. It was me that tripped over that dead prostitute. See, Riker claimed that he had continued to obsess over the Green River Killer for almost 20 years. See these bags? You see the bags under these eyes? I barely moisturize. I barely go to six flags anymore.

We only go once a month. We used to go every week. But he hadn't been a part of the task force for a long time by 2001. But he had been one of the originals. So he arranged for surveillance on Gary Ridgeway. The task force also returned to the second ex-wife, Marcia Winslow, in September of 2001. She again showed officers all the places where Gary had taken her for sex outdoors. And again, the officers are like, oh, these are all body cluster sites.

And she's like, yeah. I know. All right, but before we do it, can you get down on your fours over there in that pile? You can just kind of see what it looks like, okay? Now lay like a starfish. Okay, now flip it over like a brown starfish, yep. Yeah. What's just to remind me of?

I mean, think about this. This is the second time that they had taken her out to see these bodies. The second time was, you know, right around 9-11. The first time was during the fucking Reagan administration. Jesus Christ. Wow, she really got all of America. That's the whole story. Now, Gary and Judith had continued living the good life.

And by the summer of 2001, things were. looking better never. Of course. We're for all of us. Gary's horrible mother, Mary Rita, had finally died of colon cancer that summer. Fuck yeah. And Gary and Judith now lived in a house that was far nicer than anything Gary's parents had ever had. This is the shit that they took from you,

fucking zoomers. Summer 2001 was incredible. It really was. That was the summer I started my career in radio. I moved to Lubbock, moved out of fucking Rochester. It was one of the best summers of my life. Yeah, summer 2001 is probably one of the funest times I've ever had. I kind of remember living free with my friends and just

having so much fun and then just stop. Yeah. That's right when I started dealing weed. Great year for me too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Gary, he was actually old enough by this point where he and Judith could begin to look forward to retirement together. Wow.

But at long last... That's another thing doesn't exist anymore. But at long last, in 2001, the paint evidence was finally examined. Thankfully, a trace evidence scientist with the incredible name of Chesterine Sveakleek. Whoa! What the fuck! Yeah, it's incredible. She's still alive, too. Chesterine

Sveak leak. Wow, that was going to use that exact... What a coincidence. I'm doing another run on BG3. That was going to be my high-out. She'd been meticulous about the fibers and hairs recovered from bodies and dump sites. And those samples certainly helped in the conviction from the DNA side.

But Speakleek also admitted this is like a fucking Doctor Who alien race. SpeakLeak also sounds like one of those weird, like, sea tier porn sites. Yeah, yeah. Well, SpeakLeak also admitted that the lab had ignored the paint particles for years because they figured their best line towards catching the killer were the fibers and the hairs.

And the cum. And the cum! And don't forget about the cum! There's a lot of cum! A lot of cum! This, as we've said, many times, enabled Gary to take 50-plus victims instead of just five. In 2001, trace evidence expert Skip Palinick, a lot of great names in these fucking forensics people. He finally received the call to examine the paint dots with an infrared microscope.

And it was discovered that the paint dots found on the victims matched the paint dots on Gary's work clothes. By the way, it's not like the fucking technology didn't exist in 1982. It did. It's just a fucking infrared microscope. We're not talking about intense, crazy DNA testing and matching all the fucking markers. and building the fucking human genome here. It's looking really closely at paint. They specifically didn't care about that type of evidence.

They were not looking close. No, they weren't looking close. And they just didn't, for some reason, they just didn't think, like, ah, that's not going to lead to anything. Why bother? Yeah, they're just all covered in it. Yeah. And so, by November 2001,

nearly 20 years after the first Green River murder, the cops finally had more than enough evidence to arrest Gary Richway. At this point, they had enough evidence to arrest him on seven murders. Now, two weeks before his arrest, Gary decided to indulge himself in some old habits. And he also proved why Judith needed to be in charge of the money. Judith had given him $30 to fill up his truck with gas. But instead of spending his money where he was supposed to, Gary decided to spend that $30 on a young woman who was strolling provocatively along the Pacific Highway. It's turned out, undercover cop.

God damn it, I knew she was to a train. The sting that caught Gary was completely separate from the Green River Task Force. This, however, was almost serendipitous as far as the task force was concerned, because it was absolutely a sign that they were moving in the right direction. Ridgway, however, kept the arrest secret from Judith. When he was released, he called her and had her pick him up at the local Kmart. He claimed that he had been stopped and arrested for leaving his truck's tailgate down. And Judith, long accustomed to not asking follow-up questions like, why is that a serious enough offense to arrest you?

Yeah, like what in the living fuck are you talking about? She just said, all right. Okay. Do you get that $30? Do you fill up your truck? She's not wrong. You know, I think on some level it's just like, fine, sure. It's so odd that she's incredibly overbearing but also overlooks extreme, like, just things that don't make sense.

It's because it's the baby she fucks. Yeah. It's the baby she fucked. I mean, it's the way, you know, some people, like, treat their children. They can be super overbearing, but then they can completely ignore, like, say, like, someone can be very overbearing with a kid, but completely ignore their kid's a bully. Yeah. You know, it's that same type of thing.

It's like how I was able to convince my mom that my bong was a face. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's literally just. Super overbearing, but she believed you. No, it's because her brain just decided that you don't smoke weed. Yeah. My son doesn't smoke weed. I remember she found, like, a whole.

giant bag of mushrooms in my backpack and she's like, what are these? I'm like, oh, yeah, we should throw those out. They're probably bad. Yes, I'm easy. She's like, oh, yeah. That's right, like you're a Jedi. So what time of night was it when you went and fucking sifted through the garbage can?

Get those mushrooms back. I mean, early. I mean, I was selling them. It was fun. But yeah, I think with Judith, the biggest thing is that, you know, she just, it's incredible what someone will ignore when they just don't want

to deal with something. You suppose something as big as being the Green River killer. Yeah, they already got enough on their plate. They already got enough to worry about. I don't want to deal with that. So I'm just going to choose to not think about it. I've also seen so much body cam footage

of very sad women going down for their men and they should not be doing that. No, they should not be. No, never go down for a man. Never go down for a woman. Never. Never go down for anybody. Never go down for anybody. Stick yourself. I go down for dog. Yeah, sure. Yeah, if a dog commit a bunch of serial crimes, I would fucking,

I'd lie for it. Yeah. Depends on if it was my dog. Yeah. I'd go down for Frankie or Georgie. Not for, like, I mean, I love your dogs, but I wouldn't go down for, like, Henry's dogs. No, there's no reason to. I wouldn't go down for Frankie, but I'd go down for Kermy. Yeah, I get it. And so, Gary, after

the arrest, Gary returned. What about you, Eddie? You got any dogs you'd go down for? I'd say, I'd go down for Frankie. I like Frankie a lot. Thank you. Did she appreciate it? Well, she is the sweetest dog in the world. Georgie, on the other hand, Giannerone. She wouldn't fight.

Georgie would flip on you in a fucking second. In a second, I don't trust any of them. Georgie would not hesitate to make a deal to put your ass in prison for 30 years. Oh, I know that. We all know that. And so, after the arrest, Gary returned to his life as normal,

painting trucks and thrifting with Judith. Two task force detectives, however, had gone to Kimworth trucking after Gary's arrest, and they'd asked his supervisors to surveil Gary for any hints that he might be On to their investigation. And thankfully, Gary ain't that observant.

Gary ain't paying attention. They were no hints that Gary knew anything, that anything was out of the ordinary at all. So on November 30th, 2001, just after Thanksgiving, the task force made their move. Gary Ridgeway showed up to work as he had every day for decades. They said Gary was never more than two or three minutes late, and even then that happened a handful of times. but on this day his boss asked him to come into his office because there were people there who wanted to talk to him

again and they just thought this was the funniest thing on the face of the planet that's fucking cops you're here to talk to fucking Green River Gary dude look at the Green River Killer or whatever go look at their Green River Gary! I mean serial killer all yeah

just fucking shut up guys I'm so sad about 9-11 yeah I bet we all are man we're gonna fucking go win a war War! Let's go to the war! Well, the people who were waiting to talk to Gary were two members of the Green River Task Force, who questioned Gary specifically about Carol Christensen. That was the woman that Gary had left in the woods and covered in various foods and gutted trout after he'd murdered her. I remember her.

Yeah. Now, Gary leaned on his demeanor one more time, and he happily chatted for two hours with investigators while offering up his own theories as to why Christensen was killed. Finally, investigators asked Gary if he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Christensen. Gary, of course, said no. But the task force knew that was a lie because Gary had been quite loose with his DNA in this particular case. Loose with the DNA is kind of a rough term. You know what I mean?

And say, hey, oh, hey, you get something. You get something. It's the best that I could do. It's true. He was. Yeah. What do you want me to say? Like, because there was a whole bunch of common or fucking pussy.

Is that what you want me to say? Yes. Gary's fucking spooge was filling up her fucking glory hole. Now I understand what's happening. Yes. He came back and did it again and he ate a hot dog and left the other half on top of it. I remember, man, again, it's hard. It's big dogs at Costco.

Well, after Gary lied to the police, detectives thanked him and they left. They actually let him finish out his last day at work. That is another, like, cop, fucking. looking like, what the fuck do you mean? You just let him work all day, and then you came back and got him later. At this point, I think it's something like they've been hunting him for so long. Yeah. Yeah, give him one more day.

Yeah, let's let him really. I saw what he was doing to that Chevy. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I wouldn't want. I wouldn't need someone. Someone's going to need to get that rap of Dale Earnhardt with his dick out. I imagine they probably just let him go back to work, went back, and like, just confirmed everything one more time. threw some high fives around and then went back.

Yeah, he's going to be there until the end of the day. Yeah, he definitely wouldn't have been tipped off of the fact that they were talking to him and they've ran during that time period. Absolutely not, right? They're just lucky he's a fucking moron. Yeah, well, I think at that point, they just sort of sat outside

and just waited until the workday was over. Didn't want to make a scene. These fucking cops make me so angry. It's so fucking stupid. Well, I could see a copy, like, I've been chasing him for 20 years. I can wait two hours Yeah, I want to see him eat lunch

I was going hailing hardy Actually, I could go for a soup as well Saul eating lunch together When Gary Shift ended at 3pm As it always did The task force finally At long fucking last Arrested Gary Ridgeway

For murder Wow 1982 to 2001 Good job everybody Oh, you're a good run! Really good run, Gary. Gary was formally charged with four murders in early December owing to DNA evidence, and the paint dots added three more charges.

So Gary made a plea deal. He'd show the task force where the undiscovered bodies were located and admit to all the other Green River killings. In exchange, the state wouldn't kill him. Now, it took a little while for all this to get worked out, so it wasn't until the summer of 2003. Two years later, that Gary Ridgeway, after a lifetime of being a non-entity at best or a joke at worst,

he finally found out what it was like to be the bell of the ball. Once Gary started talking, he found that he fucking loved the attention. And it was said by investigators that Gary Ridgeway would have gladly talked for 18 hours a day if they let him. But nobody wanted to listen to him for that long. It was interesting. Originally, when the first cops were talking to him, he was being kind of cagey and they didn't know what to do with him,

So they actually had a really good idea in that moment. And they brought a lady in. And a lady cop, Mary Ellen O'Toole came in. And she was like a psychiatrist. And she started talking to him. And she profiled, she's from the FBI. She profiled him so well because she was like, no one's ever asked Gary how he feels. It's like all this hadn't thing.

And so she mothered him in a compassionate way. And he was so excited to talk to a compassionate woman. somebody that's not, like, has nothing connected to it. And so he just spilled his fucking guts. So she showed up with a bathrobe and her tits out? I just want to remind you of somebody you love very much. Now, after the conversational floodgates opened, investigators finally discovered that Gary Ridgway was, as I said earlier,

both far simpler and far more complicated than anyone could have guessed. Gary said that he'd picked up somewhere, by his estimate, somewhere between six and seven hundred sex workers over the course of his life. But when he searched his memory, he sincerely couldn't remember which ones he'd killed and which ones he hadn't. While he could remember a violent act, he couldn't ever remember the person involved in said act. Likewise, Gary could recognize locations like fences or trees to remember when and where he'd killed a woman, but he never knew names. Instead, he made up his own names based on details surrounding the murder, like the Water Tower Lady.

or the one, he actually had one that was actually called The Log Lady. No. Crazy considering I was the Pacific Northwest. He also, I don't think he watched Twin Peaks. I doubt he was a Twin Peaks guy. I think it was a bit intense for him. I think he's more of like a stage coach. He's like a Bonanza guy.

Yeah. You know, you should see my phone list in my phone. It's always like, yeah, the lady from McDonald's and like the dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how you do it. Cross-eyed Frank. Yeah. He's bad with names.

What are you going to do? Is that his biggest crime? Yes. Now, as the conversations went on, Gary made the choice that so many other serial killers make during confessions by separating himself from the killer. Gary began talking about the other Gary. The other Gary was stronger and angrier.

Eventually, he came to refer to the other Gary as Old Gary. See, old Gary wanted to talk about the more disgusting aspects of the crimes, like the necrophilia, while New Gary wanted to. in Gary's words, candycoat the murders. New Gary was reasonable and cooperative, while old Gary was standoffish and mean. He definitely thought he was way smarter

than he was in this moment of trying to throw everybody off being like he's a collection of personalities when he barely has one. Yeah. I don't want to nitpick here, but technically in that moment, he is old Gary. And when he was doing the killings,

he was newer Gary. You are netpicking, but you are correct. You're correct. I mean, that's the thing. Even fucking, you know, John Wayne Gacy came up with at least an alias, Jack Hanley. Yeah. That's who, he said that his alter ego, Jack Hanley was the one who had committed all the murders. And what did Ted Bundy call him, like, the shadow or something like that?

It was like one of those names? The shadow, the demon. Something like that. Yeah, the entity. The entity. Yeah, Bundy called it the entity. But all Gary Ridgeway is like, Oh, Gary and New Gary. New Gary's nice.

Old Gary's mean. You know. Oh, Gary, Ridgeway claimed, was the one who'd killed 50 plus women. While New Gary was the wimp who'd only killed four. women after meeting Judith. But eventually, investigators got old Gary to confess to murder after murder until the number reached 71. Because that's the thing. Gary Ridgway was charged with 48 because 48 was all they could prove. He confessed to 71. So his body count could very well be far higher than what we actually think. Because that's the thing. Once you think about it, he probably did forget

about, you know, the locations of 20 or so women. Dude, he absolutely did. And if you listen to this one woman that Bill took sort of relationship with him while he was in jail, this, honestly, it sounds like, to be honest, I don't like how they do it. But this, her name was Maria Di Lorenzo. And she essentially started writing to him, flirting with him, because she was super interested in his stuff. And he started talking about all of this other stuff.

This is 2026. Yeah. He's already saying stuff like, you're not. There are dozens, dozens that I didn't even get to. Better there. But who knows if he's telling it. At this point, who fucking knows? At the end of his life.

He's ready to confess because he almost died in December. He's about to be dead. Yeah. No, he's near death. But we'll get to that in a second. In one example of how Gary would change when he became old Gary, he once told investigators, and this, please Henry, do this exactly as Gary, as the quote says. I had sex with the dead body. Did you, Gary's all screwed up.

If you want to know what I did, talk to me. I'm the one who did it. I'm the one with the devil in my head. You know what I believe him. Yeah, you know what? You might be. Yeah, when a guy tells you I'm the one with the devil in my head, believe him. You're like, sure, okay, great.

But as to whether there really was an old Gary and a new Gary, it really didn't matter. Because by the end of it, Gary Ridgeway had pled guilty to 48 counts of murder with no remorse, nor any regret. because 48 was all they could prove. He was given 48 consecutive life sentences as a part of his plea deal. But even though Gary has been in solitary confinement at the state pen in Walla Walla Washington since 2004, Gary Ridgeway is incredibly enough

still alive today. He gets great health care in prison. Yeah, he does. How excited were you to say Walla, Walla, Waushington? Very, very. So incredibly, I've been waiting for, like, literally weeks to go, walla, wala, wala, Washington.

I come to the next hit by the Sonics on a Wala Wala Wala. It's Psycho. Are the Sonics at a Wala? No, they were out of Seattle, but it just...

It's fun of Shia. I'm sorry, I didn't even stop before. Actually, no, I think the Sonics are Tacoma. Not that I think about it. Makes lots of sense. I'm almost positive the Sonics of Tacoma. It does make a lot of sense. You know, like songs like...

I can see Garage Rock is sort of like a smelting plants version of music. I mean, yeah, when you... Shit. you think about it, yeah, because like Psycho, the Witch, Stricknine, that's all like 1965, 66.

Stricknine's a great song. It's the same time that all these fucking guys are getting fucked up by this Oh my God. Notepunk was created by the Tacoma smelter. We did it! That's a positive. It is. That first Sonic's record is one of my favorite records in existence. Wow. Okay,

well, some good, some bad. That's how it is. That's life. It was rumored about six months ago that Gary Ridgway was receiving end-of-life care in prison. But Gary apparently ducked the grim reaper. He's currently 77 years old, living a life completely

separate from the rest of the prison populations. Why, there's not really any post-script stories here, because Gary's been in solitary for decades now. But while Gary is alive, many of the men who chased him as a part of the Green River Task Force are long dead. Actually, a lot

of them died before Gary was even caught. Because you remember, Gary was in his 20s when he was in all this shit, and he's being chased by, you know, Tacoma cops who smoke in their 40s. Yeah. You know, those guys don't live long. It's a lot of stress. But even though Gary should have been arrested half a dozen times before he was finally

taken down in 2001, there were still plenty of members of the Green River Task Force who believed until the end of their days that they had done everything they could to catch the Green River killer. But I would say that 71 possible victims, they would. would probably disagree with that assessment. Yeah. Yeah. And that's Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer.

So I think one of the big lessons we've learned from this to keep it simple. You don't want to put a lot of stank on it when you're killing many, many, many people. Your goal is to kill a lot of people. Not everyone needs to be a showstopper. 71 is such a fucking big number. It is. That's a big number for a soldier. It is.

You know, like that. My grandfather killed two. 10 people in World War II. Yeah. Not just a soldier. Those are big numbers for a sniper. Yeah. Whose only job is to shoot people in the head. Yeah.

Yeah. That's huge numbers. It's pretty cool. It's not cool. But you know what I mean, if you think about it, no, that's like, oh, you're right. I'm sorry. There is a couple times during this episode that I had to hold back from saying the word cool. And so I understand where you're coming.

You can always replace cool with interesting. You're right. Fascinating. Right. Well, I do One day it will lead us to Because I got into a little bit of a hole of like The people that killed the most

Humans by hands Sure And there's like a couple of guys Like obviously ones are Nazi One's in from a Soviet From Stalin's time But it is wild to just think It was just like

One guy killed 2,000 people Yeah That's crazy Oh yeah It's crazy Yeah it's real fucking nuts And it turns into a statistic

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You also can see last stream on the left live every Tuesday 5 p.m. PSD and also see movie stories. You can go watch the video of movie stories and I'm going to say go check it out because I'm really liking the work that we're doing on an eddie. It's a lot of fun.

I'm having a good time with you. We're in the middle of our John Carpenter series right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fucking sweet. Oh, and also, I will say tonight, July 17th, when this comes out to the general public, is our second to last J.K. Ultra show in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And then tomorrow, we're going to be in Oklahoma City. But if you can't make it out, don't worry, you haven't missed JK. Ultra just yet.

Go to LPOTL.kiswe.com. That's K-I-S-W-E. And you can watch a live stream of our final show in Oklahoma City. and that'll be available for two weeks. So check it out, go watch it, and then we're going to fucking put this baby to bed. That's right. And we're going to be coming back in March

with a brand new last podcast on The Left Show. But before that happens, y'all are going to be on the road with side stories over the next few months. We haven't got those date yet, but they will be on Last Podcast on The Left.com. And go see us Midsummer Scream Sunday, August 9th. Last panel on the left.

We are going to be there doing a panel about horror and all this types of our place sent it in the last 15 years of last podcast and left and go visit. We're going to have a whole ass booth. Grab a shirt. Grab a comic. Bring your album if you got it. Yeah, because we will sign it.

And we're going to be there all weekend. It's going to be a lot of fun. Also, I went to Midsummer Scream for the first time last year. It's fucking fun. It's fun. Even if we're not there, it's fucking awesome. Make sure you go check out this Oricon. It's one of the best in the nation.

I can't get enough. And also, you want to see me on the road. Just go to eddytunes.com to find out where I'm going to be next. I got a lot more dates coming at you. Fuck yeah. Yeah, you botch. I'm going on YouTube. It's your fucking shot.

Go to LPN TV. Also, we have a brand new. No Dogs in Space video essay. Go check it out on YouTube. No Dogs in Space. It's based on our Maxis Kansas City episode. And we put in a bunch of cool visuals and show like that. It's stuff we've recorded before.

But it is very cool. But we are three episodes or no, we're six episodes into the new season. So that's actually going to be coming out very soon. Yeah. The LPN YouTube. universe keeps expanding. Page 7 has their own channel now. Yes, it does. Brighter side does. Yeah, yeah. No dogs and we got

you know, who's the bee, all that stuff. If it exists as a show, it's there. Even Nurtamouth. Even Nilsbodies. We have somehow contained all of that masculinity on camera. I love to see it. Those men

just, hmm, God damn. Sometimes I just watch, just stills of them talking, man. get so hard just thinking about it, man. I think about it. Yeah.

Just thinking about Mike. Yeah. Fuck yeah. God. We gotta get out of here. Yeah. I'm gonna come. All right.

See you guys. Hell Satan. Huggie. Hell, uh, the guys who caught this fucking guy. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, Detective Jensen did a pretty,

he did actually a pretty fucking good job, even though Riker tried taking the credit. So, Hale Jensen. Hail Jensen. Hell Jensen.