Gary Ridgway | The Green River Killer (Part 1)
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- For an ad-free listening experience, visit patreon.com/crimehub. Sign up for a seven-day free trial and gain access to all my episodes completely ad-free. That's patreon.com/crimehub. Now let's dive into the story. The Green River is a 65-mile waterway that winds through Seattle, Washington. It rises on the West Coast in Elliott Bay and tails off southeast of the city near Eagle Gorge.

On July 15th, 1982, two teenage boys went for a bike ride along the river. They soon arrived at the Meeker St. Bridge in Kent, a small city in Greater King County. They stopped halfway across when they saw something floating downstream. They didn't get a good look at it before it moved under the bridge. When it didn't come out the other side, they knew it must be stuck on something. They parked their bikes and hustled down to the riverbed to get a closer look.

caught on one of the pilings under the bridge was the naked and decomposing body of 16-year-old Wendy Caulfield. She was still wearing her socks and shoes, but someone must have tied her shirt, jeans, and underwear around her neck before dumping her body in the river. Wendy had been missing for three days. Her sister, Patsy, remembers their last conversation all too well.

Wendy was like any other rebellious teenager, at an age where she was fighting her boundaries and trying to find out where she stood in the world. Their mother couldn't handle the stress, and Wendy wound up in foster care. On the day she went missing, Wendy came to visit Patsy. They hung out for a while until Wendy decided it was time to get going. Patsy insisted on waiting for their father. He could easily drive Wendy to the bus stop after work, but waiting around wasn't an option.

Wendy set out on her own and was never seen alive again. Unfortunately for Wendy and 48 other young women, she crossed paths with 33-year-old Gary Ridgeway, better known as the Green River Killer. Police in King County, Washington spent nearly two decades chasing what seemed like a ghost. The killer covered his tracks like a true professional. Tangible evidence was hard to come by and DNA wouldn't enter the picture until the next millennium.

Homicide detectives Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert had already made a name for themselves in Washington state, having played significant roles in Ted Bundy's first arrest. With nowhere left to turn, Keppel and Reichert leaned on Bundy for an inside look into the mind of an American serial killer. Part 1: Oedipus Rex Gary Ridgway was born on February 18th, 1949.

He was the second of three brothers born to Mary and Tom Ridgeway while living in Salt Lake City. His mother was a sales clerk at JCPenney. His father was a bus driver who often complained about the prostitutes on his route. The family moved to SeaTac, Washington, a small city south of Seattle where Gary attended junior high school. But academia wasn't his forte. He was held back twice during high school and sported a below average IQ in the low 80s.

but what he lacked in smarts, he made up for in social ability. According to former classmate Alan Sample, he never had any trouble getting a girlfriend or getting a date like most serial killers. Ridgeway's home life wasn't all smiles and family vacations. He wet the bed until he was 13 years old. After one bedwetting incident, his mother stripped him naked and washed his genitals. This experience both excited and angered Ridgeway.

He became sexually attracted to his mother, but resented her for making him feel this way. Forensic psychologist Reed Molloy of the University of California believes humiliation played a major role in Ridgeway's future. He said, "For an adolescent, having your mother wash your genitals would be highly exciting and arousing, but it would also be humiliating."

With humiliation comes rage toward the mother. Malloy believes displaced matricide is a common theme against many serial killers. Subconsciously, Gary was killing his mother over and over again. Each time he kidnapped and murdered a King County prostitute. Then there's the feeling of inferiority.

Gary lived in the shadow of his older brother, Greg, a genius compared to Gary, the eldest and favorite of Mary and Tom's three sons. According to Patty Eakes, the prosecuting attorney who helped take down Ridgeway's future confession, Gary was afraid of being put on the short bus as a kid. It was the only time he actually cried while recanting his heinous crimes. Eakes believes living in Greg's shadow forced Gary to find something he could excel at.

Gary's adolescent record was squeaky clean, but that doesn't mean he never did anything wrong. Reports indicate he dabbled in arson and even suffocated a cat to death after locking it in a freezer. His first true victim was a six-year-old boy. When he was either 15 or 16, Gary approached the first grader while walking in the woods near his home. The kid was dressed as a cowboy,

equipped with two plastic six-shooters and a toy rifle. He was playing with a stick when Gary walked up and asked if he wanted to build a fort. Gary led him deeper into the woods, saying odd things like, "You know there are people around here that like to kill little boys like you?" They never built that fort. Instead, Gary led the cowboy deeper into the woods, pulled out a knife, and stabbed him between the ribs and through his liver. He laughed as the boy bled like a stuck pig.

The child begged for help, asking why Gary tried to kill him. Gary said he wanted to know what stabbing someone felt like. The boy ran out of the woods as blood poured down his leg. By some miracle, he made it home and spent several weeks in the hospital as doctors repaired the damage to his liver. But the boy couldn't give a clear answer when asked who stabbed him. Gary thought he knew what it felt like to kill someone, believing he left the boy to die in the woods that day. And although he technically got away with it,

Gary would never make the same mistake again. Gary graduated from high school in 1969 and took up a spray painting job at Kenworth Motor Truck Company. Later that summer, Gary joined the Navy and was deployed overseas in Vietnam. He never saw combat though, in his own words. A rat bite was the worst thing that ever happened to him. In August 1970, Gary returned home on leave and married his high school sweetheart.

19-year-old Claudia Craig. They lived with a roommate in Seattle, and Claudia had this African-American friend she'd disappear with for hours at a time. Gary thought nothing of it, but he wasn't that innocent either. He flew back overseas, this time to the Philippines, where he began soliciting prostitutes from the bars. Ridgway received an honorable discharge in July 1971, but returned home to divorce papers on the table.

Claudia had taken her friend as a lover, and Gary couldn't stand the fact that he was black. Ultimately, there was nothing he could do about it. She caught a plane to San Diego and flew out of his life for good in 1972. In his book, "Defending Gary: Unraveling the Mind of the Green River Killer," Ridgway's future defense attorney, Mark Prothero, suggests that Gary's failed first marriage unconsciously helped him determine his victims.

Gary spent the 1970s calling Claudia a whore whenever someone asked about her. More than a decade later, many real whores would go missing from King County. Laden with racial bias, Gary likely assumed that most of their pimps were black men. Thus, he was depriving those black men of the women they kept, while getting revenge against the one who, in Gary's eyes, stole the love of his life.

Gary met his second wife, Marsha Winslow, in 1972. According to A&E, they met after Gary pulled her car over as if he was a cop. Apparently, that worked, and they were married by 1973. But things weren't great between Marsha and Gary. He had a sex addiction and craved intercourse in the strangest of places. He liked having sex in public, oddly preferring down by the Green River. His wives and many girlfriends echo the same story.

that Gary expected sex several times per day. He'd disappear for hours at night, sometimes coming home dirty and soaking wet without a logical explanation. Marsha and Gary would go walking in the woods sometimes, where Gary liked to hide and sneak up on her from behind. He got really good at walking without making a sound and, on one occasion, used a police-like hold to choke her from behind.

Their relationship fell to pieces, even after the birth of their son in 1975. Gary became something of a religious fanatic in the late 1970s. He'd go door to door trying to convert people to Christianity and would often read the Bible out loud at work. He was adamant that Marsha follow God's word to the letter, all while soliciting prostitutes almost every night. Gary frequented an area called The Strip when shopping for sex workers.

The Strip was an eight-mile section of the Pacific Highway between South 272nd Street and South 139th Street. It ran along the airport south of Seattle, lined up with strip clubs, bars, and motels that book rooms by the hour, according to Time magazine. Off-duty sailors, oilmen from Alaska, and unfaithful locals drove up and down the Strip every night, window shopping for women like parents on Black Friday.

The girls liked the abandoned houses outside of SeaTac Airport. Many people moved out when the airport expanded its flight paths directly overhead. The sound of passing planes muffled any noise, something Ridgway took careful note of. His infidelity grew too much for Marcia. He contracted several venereal diseases from all the street workers he'd been sleeping with, which he likely passed on to Marcia, given his demanding sex drive.

She left him in 1980 and finalized the divorce in 1981. She gained full custody of their six-year-old son, with Gary receiving visitation rights every other weekend. Now single, Gary purchased a home a few blocks off the strip. On paper, his killing spree began on July 12th, 1982, when he picked up Wendy Caulfield after she refused a ride from her dad. Part 3, Summer of Death.

Time writer Terry McCarthy describes Detective Dave Reichert as looking like a cop from a 1950s Hollywood movie, just without the crust. He was the kind of guy who'd pop breath mints before every meeting and never left home with a wrinkle on his uniform. He maintained an easygoing demeanor and signed off on his emails with electronic smiley faces. But despite his friendly and well-kept appearance, Reichert understood the underbelly of Seattle better than anyone else.

When he was a 24-year-old rookie in 1974, Reichert responded to a domestic disturbance call at a home in the city. A man was holed up with a knife to his wife's neck, threatening to spill her guts if the cops came any closer. Reichert snuck in through a window and managed to get the woman to safety before the knife-wielding husband discovered him. They wrestled over the butcher's knife, but the husband won and slashed Reichert's throat.

The struggle allowed his fellow officers to swarm and arrest the husband, and Reichert survived with 25 stitches in his neck. The rookie quickly grew into a seasoned street cop. He became infatuated with murder cases, believing homicide is the ultimate form of police work. Officer Reichert became Detective Reichert in 1977.

and drew his first murder assignment in 1979. On June 24th, 1982, Reichert's partner and mentor, Sergeant Sam Hicks, arrived in a rural area of King County. He was acting on a tip regarding an ongoing murder investigation when he crossed paths with the primary suspect, 29-year-old Robert Wayne Hughes. While driving down a wooden road, Hughes opened fire with a high-powered rifle, striking Hicks in the chest,

He died during surgery at the Harborview Medical Center. Hughes escaped during the gunfight. He remained on the loose three days while 115 officers, state troopers, and canine units scoured the city for him. When they finally found him, it was Reichert's job to sit with Hughes while they brought him to the station. You can imagine Reichert wanted to shoot this man in the head. Instead, he loosened his cuffs when they were too tight and offered him a drink of water.

"It's hard to help someone who just killed my best friend," he said, "but I did it by the book." Two months later, Reichert drew the biggest case of his career. Five bodies had already washed up on the banks of the Green River, all fitting the same general profile. They were known sex workers or troubled, young and vulnerable girls who'd been missing for several days, if not weeks. Deborah Lynn Bonner had prior convictions for prostitution in King County.

She'd been missing since July 25th, when a slaughterhouse worker named Frank Leonard found her body floating down the Green River on August 12th. Detectives quickly linked Deborah and Wendy, but never expected to find three more bodies in under 72 hours.

On August 15th, a man was collecting bottles in the Green River when he found the bodies of 17-year-old Cynthia Hines and 31-year-old Marsha Chapman. Both were killed by strangulation and held underwater by rocks. Marsha had been missing since August 1st, Cynthia since August 11th. Later that day, police discovered the body of 16-year-old Opal Mills, Cynthia's friend and coworker.

The two girls were known to hitchhike together and went missing only 24 hours apart. Opal's last phone call was around 1:30 p.m. on the day she went missing. She called her brother from a payphone on the strip, asking for a ride. But he worked late the night before and was trying to catch up on sleep. He asked if she could find someone else and then went back to bed. He's never forgiven himself after all these years. Opal's friend, Jacqueline McKinney, insisted that she wasn't a prostitute

She was engaged to be married and already had a wedding dress picked out. Unfortunately, her bad hitchhiking habit led her into Gary Ridgeway's trap. The sixth body of 17-year-old Giselle Ann LaVorn was under an apple tree near South 200th Street in King County. She'd been missing since July 17th when she told her roommates she was leaving to offer services on the strip. Gary drove by with his seven-year-old son in the truck and Giselle directed him toward a parking spot.

Gary told his son to stay put and that he and the nice lady were going for a walk. Gary and Giselle walked to a secluded area in the woods to have sex. After he climaxed, Gary lied and said he heard his son coming. Giselle looked up and Gary choked her from behind. Once she was unconscious, he tied his socks together and used a stick to fashion a makeshift tourniquet around her neck. When Ridgway returned to the truck alone, his son asked where the lady had gone.

He said she lived nearby and just walked home. Ridgeway returned to move and defile Giselle's body the next day. He collected her clothes and tried to take the socks off her neck, but they were wound so tightly that he couldn't slip them over her head. Cutting them off was out of the question. According to Ridgeway, he wouldn't be able to wear them anymore. Part Four: 1983. The strip produced an endless line of leads between 1982 and 1984.

Gary was already on police radar, having been picked up in May of '82 for soliciting an undercover sex worker known as a "John Patrol." His name got lost in a sea of possible suspects, and his profile didn't fit their ideal killer. He was a middle-aged white man, a single father, a veteran, and a hard worker. Sure, he liked to pick up prostitutes in his spare time, but nobody thought he could be the Green River Killer.

Instead, the Green River Task Force, the largest task force assembled in Seattle since Ted Bundy, spent most of their time looking in all the wrong places. But it's hard to blame them. With no leads and infinite suspects, ignoring tips was out of the question. They did learn that many of the missing and murdered girls knew each other from the strip. Maybe their coworkers could provide more information.

But you can imagine a sex worker's reluctance to talk with Reichert's team. A bunch of cops walking up and down the strip, asking questions about any suspicious men they've been with. The Fifth Amendment exists for a reason, but that doesn't mean the cops were going to follow it. Thankfully, some girls spoke up. One woman filed a police report saying that a man who raped her kept referencing the Green River killings.

Police caught up with the rapist, but couldn't tie him to the murders. Two other sex workers pointed police towards a white and blue pickup truck, saying the driver abducted and attempted to kill them. According to 21-year-old Susan Widmark, the driver was a middle-aged man who solicited her on the strip. When she got in the truck, he pressed a pistol against her skull and sped off toward the highway. They drove out to a deserted area where he violently raped her.

He allowed her to dress as they drove away from the scene and talked on and on about the Green River murders, all the while aiming the gun at her head. Susan made a daring escape when the truck pulled up to a red light, but only got half the license plate number before the driver sped away. Deborah Estes was only 15 years old when she encountered the same white and blue pickup in late August, 1982. She said the driver picked her up off the highway, raped her at gunpoint, and then released her into the woods.

About a month later, the task force pulled over a butcher named Charles Clark and his white and blue pickup. They learned he owned two pistols, and Deborah and Susan identified him as their attacker. After his arrest, Clark admitted to attacking both women, but his MO, his modus operandi, didn't fit with the Green River Killer. He also had a solid alibi for when most river victims disappeared. While they got a violent rapist and child molester off the streets,

The Green River Task Force was back at square one. In the time they wasted on Clark, 19-year-old Mary Meehan went missing while out on a walk. She was between eight and nine months pregnant, but was never seen again. She disappeared near the Western Six Motel, a popular hangout and workplace on the strip where many of Ridgeway's victims went missing. The task force brought in FBI agent John Douglas to build a profile on the Green River Killer.

According to Agent Douglas, the killer was an impulsive but confident middle-aged man who'd likely revisit the murder scenes to keep the crimes fresh in his head. He knew the area well and likely had deep religious convictions, hence why he targeted prostitutes, whom he perhaps saw as sinners. The killer might be interested in police work and is probably following the investigation closely. There's a chance he'll contact the police to try and help.

Based on the FBI profile and a gut feeling, Reichert began looking into a 44-year-old taxi driver. They spent the winter of '82 monitoring the taxi driver's movements, eventually naming him as the primary suspect. They arrested him on unpaid parking tickets, but couldn't connect him to the murders. He knew some of the girls, but so did every taxi driver working the strip in 1982. 14 girls went missing between September of '82 and April of '83.

Most were between 15 and 23 years old and were known prostitutes who worked on the strip. On April 30th, 1983, Bobby Woods watched his 18-year-old girlfriend, Marie Malvar, get into a pickup truck on the strip. She drove off with an older male, but Bobby didn't get a good look at his face. He followed the truck until he lost sight of it and waited for Marie to come home. She never did.

Bobby and Marie's father went looking for the truck the next day. They found a similar one parked outside Gary Ridgway's house. By then, he was living in Des Moines, a small city between Tacoma and Seattle, and out of Detective Reichert's jurisdiction. Des Moines police spoke with Gary for a few minutes, but never passed the tip along to Reichert's team. It would be another seven months and 16 missing girls before King County cops knocked on his door.

Ridgeway was 24 victims into his killing spree when police found the first strange crime scene linked to the Green River killings. 21-year-old Carol Christensen was a single mother who had recently separated from her husband. She was determined to make it on her own and landed a job waiting tables at the Barn Door Tavern in SeaTac. May 2nd would have been her second day on the job, but Carol never showed up for work. Six days later, on Mother's Day,

A family hunting for mushrooms in Maple Valley found her decomposing remains. She'd been strangled with fishing wire. A paper sack was pulled over her head. It looked like her killer had dunked her body in the water and put her clothes on backward. She had one shoe on the wrong foot. The other was missing.

There was a wine bottle clenched in her hand, two dead fish lay across her chest, and a pile of raw sausage sat nearby. The task force believed the scene was some twisted reference to the Last Supper from the Bible. Whoever did this was playing mind games with Reichert and his team. While the killer toyed with police, the murders never stopped. Between the spring and summer of 1983, nine more women went missing from the strip.

Most made the list of possible Green River victims, but some didn't fit the profile. Their remains were found outside Ridgway's boundaries, if you want to call it that. More bodies piled up in the summer, including two unidentified victims and the body of 16-year-old Shonda Summers, who had been missing since October of '82. Nine more women went missing, and seven more bodies were found between September and December of 1983.

Among them were Mary Meehan and her unborn child. According to reports, they were the only victims Ridgway ever fully buried.

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