Gary Leon Ridgway is famous for being the serial killer who has admitted to more murders than anyone else. He is linked to the deaths of 48 young women, most of who were strangled to death around the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington areas. It took nearly 20 years for Ridgway to be caught and brought to justice. He committed the majority of his murders between 1982 and 1983, during which time the bodies of many of his victims were found near Green River in Washington. This earned the then unknown assailant the title of “the Green River Killer.” Police officers discovered the bodies of many of Ridgeway’s victims naked along the river bank. They were often placed together in groups, and sometimes the bodies were even posed. Almost all of the victims were prostitutes, so the police were able to identify a common trait that the killer looked for and used that information in their ongoing investigation. The sheriff’s department founded the “Green River Task Force” and assigned the men involved with the responsibility of tracking down the serial killer.
In 1982, Gary Ridgway was arrested on a prostitution charge. He became a suspect in the killings, but after passing a polygraph test in which he claimed to be innocent, he was no longer considered to be a prime candidate. Members of the task force held on to their suspicions and to samples of his hair and saliva. After 1983, the murders seemed to have stopped but the search continued for the killer. By 2001, investigators had DNA evidence of the murderer and it was compared to the strands Ridgway’s hair still in police custody. The samples matched. Ridgway was arrested on November 30, 2001 after being linked to the murder of four women. During the trial that followed in 2003, Ridgway plead guilty to the murders of 48 women. He claimed that there were more victims – as many as 90 in total. To avoid the death penalty, he agreed to help police officials locate the remains of his victims that had not yet been discovered. Ridgway was sentenced to 48 consecutive prison sentences. He currently resides at the Washington State Penitentiary and has no hope of parole.
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