Serial Killer Documentary - Gary Ridgway： The Green River Killer

0:00Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at my dogs. You are a loser, you are coward. You are a nobody. You are an animal. These are relatives of victims of the Green River Killer. May God have mercy on your pathetic soul because the rest of us who know the truth about you won't. The most prolific serial murderer America has ever known. The one thing that I want you to know, I was that daughter at home. Waiting for my mom to come home. Who's 19 year reign of terror left the area surrounding Seattle littered with corpses. I don't wish for him to die. I wish for him to have a long, suffering, cruel death.

1:01But who was the Green River Killer and was he born to kill? When he went through the door and left to go to work, he wasn't the man that I knew. The old highway 99, adjacent to Seattle's C-Tack Airport. 30 years ago, a notorious spot. This area back in the early 80s was very, had very transient population.

2:06There were topless bars over here. There were a lot of hotels where you could rent rooms for an hour or two. Faye Brooks, then a detective assigned to sex crime cases, was regularly called to the streets known simply as the strip. There were a lot of young women who were working the streets. All the girls were young and some of them had troubled past. But all of them are somebody's daughter and somebody's sister. A lot of the young girls had grown up in abusive homes. And that was why they were running away. And I could relate to that. I'm a survivor of child sex abuse and, you know, there but for the grace of God, were I.

3:06And so I could certain empathize with them and I also wanted to help them. One such woman was Marsha Chapman, a street worker who claimed to have been raped. And the apartment building where she lived was raped. Here. Marsha was a beautiful, statues black woman. She was 31. She had three children. She couldn't support them on the job she could get and she was working as a prostitute. She was living in an apartment that was sparsely furnished. So I think she was like down on her luck. She seemed to have a kind heart and was a nice person. But, you know, under the circumstances, she did what she had to do to make ends meet.

4:06Marsha's alleged rape was typical of the hazards working girls on the strip faced. At the time, best-selling crime writer Anne Rool lived just blocks from the area. I would sometimes stop and warn them and say, you know what I do for a living, I write about murder. And you don't have a chance out here, how do you know who you're getting in with. And usually they would just shrug and walk away. In 1982, the dangers of working the strip would be brought home by a discovery in the nearby Green River. He was a man on the water in a boat and he saw and underneath the water what he thought was a man in the boat. It wasn't a man, it was a human being and there were two of them there.

5:06Well, one of the victims in the water, her hand was just waving with the current of the water. And it was like, here I am, please help me. But of course, it was too late. As police investigated the crime scene, they made another grim find. Processing the scene where the victims were in the water was where we found the third victim on the banks. They were all within a few feet of each other and so clearly, you know, the same killer had put all three of the bodies there. All three women had been picked up from around the strip by what the FBI dubbed an organized serial killer. The organized offender was more planned, more premeditated, was able to conceptualize crimes and carry them out very efficiently, namely because of the fact that they had very little feeling for another human being.

6:09They looked at a victim as an abdict for their excitement, basically you're talking about a sexual psychopath. The victims were 16-year-old Opal Mills. 17-year-old Cynthia Jean Hines. And 31-year-old Marsha Chapman. When I found out that it was Marsha, I was... I don't think I had any words that I could say. It was like, oh my God, somebody killed her. It was really sad. We did not know this was only the beginning of a reign of terror and we wouldn't know who was doing this for a very long time. On Seattle's strip, the Green River Killer had found a rich hunting ground that would enable him to amass a body count unrivaled by any serial killer in American history.

7:15By autumn of 1982, the bodies of five young women had been discovered in or beside Seattle's Green River. They had disappeared from a notorious highway known as the Strip, an area where prostitution was rife. And the Green River Killer had only just begun. On the 15th of September, 1982, 18-year-old Mary Bridget Mean vanishes. Bridget was the much-loved daughter of a Catholic family in Bellevue, a very rich, a suburb of Seattle. She skipped school. She joined up with a boyfriend in Bray. And they were living in a cheap motel on Highway 99.

8:20She left. I think she was still possibly turning a few tricks. And she didn't come back. Her family was so upset because she was eight and a half months pregnant. To every serial killer, human beings are objects. There's no emotional connection. There's nothing there. On the 20th of September, another girl, 15-year-old Deborah Lorraine Estes, disappeared. Yet police was still unable to identify her killer. This was the area that I was working in. This is the area where the bulk of the Green River victims were picked up from. And we would sit here and look, you know, trying to identify who might be the suspect. We had very dedicated detectives who were determined to solve this case.

9:20On the 26th of September, 16-year-old Linda Jane Rool vanishes. Linda Rool was a slender, blonde girl who lived up in the North End. She had been working in the streets and she had a boyfriend who kind of served as a pimp. She disappeared from an area near the North Gate Mall. Like all serial killers, he seemed to have the ability to sense vulnerability in potential victims. He didn't take the streetwise girls. He was looking for the younger women. By the end of 1982, 15 girls would be missing or found dead and pressure was mounting on the sheriff's task force. People hoped that law enforcement would be successful.

10:22There were different rumors that were passing around of who the person might be. There was rampant speculation that it might be even a law enforcement officer because of the easy access that the individual had to the number and variety of women in the city. The community. You know, the unfortunate thing is some of the women of the street felt like the sheriff's office wasn't investigating the case as hard as we could have because they were street kids and runaways. And that's not true. Everybody assigned to that investigation was committed to solving it, committed to bringing this person to justice. Because these were, you know, somebody's daughter, somebody's sister, somebody's mother, and we cared about them. We cared about them like they were our own kids or our own family members and we wanted to solve it. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now.

11:23Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire. Try them all only at my dogs. Then on the 30th of April, 1983, a young girl was spotted being taken from the strip. Maria Melvar with her boyfriend were at a restaurant in the highway. Her boyfriend went to make a full call. When he came back, Maria wasn't in the restaurant. And he was very concerned and he thought, well, I'll go out in the highway and see if I can find her. And he realized that Maria was in the truck ahead of him. There was a man driving and then she was talking to the man. And so he determined to follow the truck because he wasn't sure what was going on. He worried about her. And they got up to the stoplight at 99 and 2.16.

12:25But when he turned left, he couldn't see the car. Marie's boyfriend returned with her family to search the streets for the pickup truck she'd left in. And in a quiet cul-de-sac, just a few blocks from the strip, they found it. Parked outside the modest home of a local truck painter. And they asked local police, please, to go there because they believe Maria was in that house. One of the sergeants did go there. Not in the door. A man answered and he said, there's nobody here but me. And they didn't press it. All serial killers have the ability to appear so normal that they throw off even people who are considered experts. The serial killer is the Olympiad of the pathological liar. The man's details joined hundreds more in the task forces files. A saliva swab would later be added.

13:30Still, girls continued to vanish. And the list kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. By June 1983, at least 26 girls had disappeared. They learned from their crimes as their murders grow a number, their efficiency increases. The remains were being found in secluded, quiet, dark areas. That summer, five girls went missing. By the time they were up to five or six or ten, homicides would become very difficult to catch. The fear was tremendous and deep throughout the entire community. Autumn, five more vanished. Some of them were in the mountain foot hills, some of them were down in the Green River Valley. He was ahead of us. We wanted to catch him. We wanted to stop him. Winter and spring 1984, four more girls gone.

14:32It would be three or four or maybe even five in one spot. Unbelievable. He was outsmarting the homicide detectives. They were everybody was looking for him. He was dumping women like they were garbage. This was a gun site. It's not far from the airport. It's not far from the strip where the young girls were missing. In the evenings, it was dark, very secluded, very few people came down here. You could come dump something and be gone. That's what happened in this location here. They were just dumped. Among the dozens of bodies found was the 16-year-old Linda Jane Rule. Her skeletal remains hidden under a bush. And in the scrubland south of the airport, the fate of the pregnant 18-year-old Mary Bridget Mean was finally discovered.

15:42Someone ripped her, killed her, and buried her and her been born baby in a shallow grave on the west side of the highway. By spring 1984, the killer had amassed more than 40 victims. But then something changed. The killings appeared to have stopped. Many thought that he was gone. It's incredibly unusual for a serial killer simply to stop killing. A serial killer will usually only cease murder when he's apprehended or when he dies himself. In 1985, the truck painter from the house in the quiet Kaldasak began dating 40-year-old divorced mother, Judas.

16:42When I first met him, I thought he was quite the gentleman and supplied. And I see love the country music and the dancing. And he was always smiling. He never got angry. And I just thought he was the greatest. I was like, love it first sight. Within months, the house became Judas home. He offered to help me move in that I can move in with him if he... If I like. There was no carpet in his house, so he let me pick out some carpet. He had previous renters in there. He had told me that the little one had wet on the carpet. The house needed a woman's touch. After three years living together, the couple wed.

17:46We were married in 1988. It seemed like the perfect marriage and so he was good to my daughters, played with my grandchildren. My dreams are coming true. Judas would enjoy 13 happy years of marriage while most of the world forgot about the Green River Killer. Most that is, except the men and women of the Green River Task Force. And in 2001, advances in DNA profiling enabled them to compare samples taken from the early victims, including Marsha Chapman. With swabs that have been taken from several men questioned during the investigation. This is the DNA from Marsha Chapman. And this is the DNA from the Green River Killer. And we looked at them and were like, they're the same.

18:47They're the same. It was scary which way. I just... I couldn't believe it. I was just devastated and shocked. I think I went into denial. I wasn't believing it. Only now, with the young men, I was able to see the young men. Only now, with the world discover the shocking truth about Judas Husband. Gary Ridgeway, the most prolific serial killer in US history. During the 1980s, the mysterious Green River Killer had prowled the red light district of Seattle's strip, unchecked, a massing a terrifying body count.

19:56In 2001, a DNA match had connected 52-year-old truck painter, Gary Ridgeway, with the first few victims. He had been identified as the most prolific serial killer in the history of the United States. Each of us recognized that this would be the biggest criminal case in the history of the state of Washington. The prosecution and defense teams would now be able to interview the man suspected of over four dozen homicides. I'm walking down a corridor and I'm going to open the door and be introduced to the supposed Green River Killer. The hundred things are going through your mind and wondering why it is going to be mean. He's going to be crying. He's going to be crazy. And I walked in and like, wow, this isn't what I expected. All right. Pretty good. All of us kind of looked at each other and said, that's the guy that's been alluding everybody for 20 years.

21:01What was remarkable was that he was so normal. Sleep, okay? No, no. Well, that didn't look like the help man there. I got a glimpse of it. Well, it had a post-repeatic mattress in there, so it was good. Okay. No. It was a little bit hot and aerobic. If you did not know what he had done, you would like him. The monster within him was well hidden. People want to ascribe extraordinary traits and qualities to these people. These are for the most part very ordinary individuals, except for the extraordinary crime that they get involved in. So who was the suspected Green River Killer? Gary Ridgeway was born in 1949, the middle of three boys. He lived in a small house, not far from the strip.

22:05His mom was kind of stay at home and then part-time she worked at a department store. His dad drove a bus for the county. Gary sometimes would ride with him on the bus and his dad would say, you know, see her, she's a prostitute. She's, you know, the scum of the earth and would be rate prostitutes and talk about how filthy and bad they were. And then there are a couple of episodes where Gary recalls him leaving him in the vehicle while dad went and had sacks with a prostitute. School friend Terry Rochelle recalls that Gary Ridgeway was more inward than his siblings. His brother was very outgoing and, you know, a bright personality. And Gary was more quiet and withdrawn, I would say, as a good word. He was just a little pipsquit guy, just, you know, somebody's little brother basically, you know, you didn't pay a whole lot of attention to him.

23:05Just kind of in the shadows, I would say most of his life. At school, the struggling Ridgeway failed to make an impression. However, at parents' evenings, his mother Mary did. All the women kind of sat back and looked at her and strange because she would wear a big, bufant hairdo and lots and lots of makeup, short skirts, which were not really the style in those days, especially for a mom. She just always seemed like she was trying to be very glamorous and not like our moms at all. I always remember her wearing kind of the tight shorts and low cut tops and longer hair. She was very, very attractive lady. Ridgeway admitted wetting the bed throughout his childhood and well into his teens. When he would wet the bed, his mother would put him in the, get in the bathtub and wash him and wash his genitals.

24:09During one bath, her robe fell open and she was naked underneath and he felt arousal at that. And at the same time knew that it probably wasn't, that wasn't a good thing to feel but he felt it. He talked about having some sexual feelings towards her. He described in some detail, watching her when she was in a bathing suit and looking at her and thinking that she dressed pretty provocatively. This overly sexualized person washing her son's genitals and you realize that most teenage boys are having an awful time with dealing with their own emerging sexuality. It has to have had an impact on some way. Boys need to see their mothers as asexual. It is very, very destabilizing for an adolescent boy to see his mother in a sexual manner. It's very hard for an adolescent boy to imagine his mother having sex with anybody including his father.

25:14And so when a mother behaves in a sexualized or hyper sexualized way, it's very unsettling for an adolescent boy. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at my dogs. As Ridgeway got older, he started showing signs of destructive behavior, starting fires. And as a teenager, he took his first step towards murder. He approached a first grader, a six-year-old boy that he saw playing in a lot near his house. The boy was dressed up playing cowboys in the Indians and he kind of lured him into the bushes and completely unprovoked, stabbed the little boy in the stomach and nearly killed him. He told the boy that he just wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody.

26:16And after he stabbed him, he took the knife and wiped it off, wiped the blade off on the little boy's shoulder. And you know, just walked away. And actually nobody ever connected him to that. A serial killer's need to have some concrete proof of what they're doing. I mean, you can think about something. But until you've done it, you don't know how it's going to turn out. And so what the serial killer does is experiment. Often they will commit an act like a trial run. Ridgeway eventually finished school two years late due to his slow progress. The following year, age 21, he married his steady girlfriend and joined the Navy. When he returned from his deployment to the Philippines, his wife admitted that she had had an affair with a friend of theirs. That was when he first started kind of referring to her as a whore and using other derogatory terms.

27:19And that was kind of the beginning of a series of relationships that never quite panned out for him. During the early 1970s, Ridgeway got a job spray painting at the Kenworth truck manufacturers. He then met and married his second wife. He was very much into having sex, often repeatedly throughout the day, as frequently pretty much as women would agree. They would go out in the truck and he'd love to have sex in public where they could be discovered at any time. But after having a child, their relationship deteriorated. His wife left him when his son was about five. And that really hurt him and that was when he started to go frequent prostitutes. Ridgeway claimed he became addicted to prostitutes. He had in fact been quizzed by police about his activities on the strip several times during the eighties.

28:23Even passing a lie detector test when grilled about the Green River murders. When you're subject to someone without a conscience who has no regrets and no remorse and no real concern, they can pass them. He was a magnificent liar. He had an ability just to go and talk and he would just talk and tell stories. And for a while, I assume they were true. And when I would go into visit Gary at the jail, he would tell me that everything's okay. He didn't do it. He didn't hurt those women. He didn't kill them. And I would believe him. As he was questioned in 2001, Ridgeway continued to protest his innocence.

29:23Up to this point, Gary had been maintaining that they had the wrong person. Well, he had had sex with many prostitutes. He hadn't killed any. And that was essentially going to be the defense. But when forensic evidence surfaced, tying him to three more victims, Ridgeway's story changed. Myself and another attorney were in the meeting room waiting for Mr. Ridgeway. I don't recall what we were talking about, but we both had smiles on our faces when he walked in. And he said, oh, you won't be smiling when we're done. I've been lying to you all. I've been manipulating everyone for all these years. I killed them all. Only now would investigators discover the true shocking horror of the Green River Killers crimes. In 2003, 54-year-old truck painter Gary Ridgeway admitted he was the Green River killer that had eluded capture for almost two decades.

30:35A man responsible for the murder of more than four dozen women. Faced with the death penalty, Ridgeway offered to tell the truth about all his crimes in return for his life. On behalf of the victim's families who wanted to know the fate of their loved ones, the prosecution agreed. Ridgeway would now reveal the true horror of his crimes. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at my dogs. Investigators now learned how the Green River killer had so easily abducted and killed his victims, even at the height of the public terror.

31:35He came across as being a very meek and mild, safe person. As a matter of fact, in one situation, he had his child in the car with him when he picked up a prostitute. He looks like a mousey little man. He doesn't look like the kind of person that if you were a prostitute that you would be afraid of. They thought, well, he's a family man. He's safe. And turns out he wasn't. He preferred to take them to his house. Some said no to that, and they would drive to a remote location and you had a truck, a pickup truck with a canopy on the back. And he would convince him to go into the back of the canopy so they could have more room to have sex. What he would do is once he got them in the position, either in his bed at home, where he had pictures of his son on the wall, and they felt a little more secure, or whether they were just hopping in the back of the truck, getting naked, begin with oral sex.

32:46Missionary, at some point, convinced them that he would be able to finish sooner if they would agree to the rear entry position. When I got through having a climax with her, I jumped on her. He'd get his arm around the girl's neck. How much of you pull on her neck? I'm pulling really hard on her neck. How? Just like this. What are you saying to her? Don't fight, don't fight, don't, and I'll let you go. And then choke them with his forearm. I'm feeling, I got a killer, I got a killer, I got a killer. You'll need to go up to kind of like on the top of the hill on this and pull in. Richway guided the investigators to where he dumped dozens of young women.

33:51I just drove in my pick up and camper and parked it, bought her body over and put it a little bit over the hill. His method of recollection was where he had left their bodies. Between this one and that one up there, you think you put like five of them in there? He essentially said the victims didn't mean anything. I have no idea who they are. I don't know if they're black, if they're white, if how old they are, how young they are. I mean, they really meant nothing to me as an individual. What you're getting is what you're gonna get and it's all you can get because I don't remember. To every serial killer, human beings are objects in the homicides that they commit. They're never going to remember the name, they're never gonna remember the face. They'll remember the concrete action of where those bodies are. One of the dump sites that Richway identified was that of Marie Malva, the 18-year-old whose boyfriend had spotted Richway abducting her.

34:57He admitted that when he strangled her, she had fought back harder than any of his victims. Richway claimed he was filled with rage and had wanted to hurt his victims even after their deaths. He admitted he tried to set the lifeless 16-year-old Linda Rool's hair on fire. You know, he seemed throughout the interviews to try to blame a lot of what had happened on the women in his life. That the women that he actually killed were kind of an extension of all the women before who had disappointed him in some way. All the pressure just belted, belted, belted, belted. My releasing bullet was killing them.

35:58He did talk about a number of the victims that he would go back and have sexual relations with them for a number of days after he killed them. Gary, did you revisit any of these? I revisited at least one of them. And when we say revisit, what did you come back to do? Have sex with her? He's like, oh yeah, you know, but then the flies would come and the maggots and then I'd be like, oh, I don't, you know, like he didn't want to do it after the, you know, you were just, I mean, that's the thing. He said it in this, like I'm talking to you, but as if it's totally normal. Now, why do individuals do this? The standard explanation for necrophilia had been sex with someone dead. You can have total control over it. There's no resistance at all. And so you can live out those sorts of feelings with a dead lifeless body.

36:58He's not the one that you're going to turn to and ask, why did you do this and get the deep psychological answer. But one of the things that frequently came up was that he wouldn't have to pay for the sex. Ridgeway's murderous spree had continued unabated until he met his third wife, Judith, in the mid-80s. Gary was so, oh, straight, normal. And loving and gentle, he was so kind around me all the time. He didn't get mad or upset about anything. It seemed like the perfect marriage. When he first met her, he stopped patronizing prostitutes and stopped killing. And then as he put it, he fell off the wagon. Gary would call home and say that, you know, he...

38:03He's going to be late, coming home. So he's going to grab a bite to grab a hamburger and, you know, he'll be late. When I think back now, that was probably one time when he was out picking up someone off of the highway 99 strip. And then he killed again. I'm right in here, somewhere I killed her. I'll pour him. 20 feet. He would tell me he'd call home and say he's going to stop at the junkyard on my home from work. And then when he got home, he didn't really have any parts from that. So that may have been another occasion. And so after having killed maybe 60 girls from 82 to 85, from 85 to when he was caught in 2001, the number of victims is more like 10 or 11.

39:09Mr. Ridgeway, how do you plead to the charge of aggravated murder in the first degree, as charged in count one? Guilty. In 2003, Gary Ridgeway made his plea to the 48 charges of murder that investigators could conclusively tie him to. How do you plead to the charge of aggravated murder in the first degree, as charged in count five? Guilty. When he confessed, and I said when I sat and listened to him say guilty. Mr. Ridgeway, how do you plead to the charge of aggravated murder in the first degree for the death of Marsha Chapman? Guilty. After everyone of the names that they had said. For the death of Mary B. Mehan. Guilty. I just sat there and cried, and that's one of the... I had to put my observation on. Finally sunk in that this is real. He did it. There's someone else inside of him when he went through the door.

40:13And left to go to work. He wasn't the man that I knew. Count 19 for the death of Linda Rule. Guilty. I would think back and think about all those years that I was with him. Were they real? Or was he just using me? How do you plead to the charge of aggravated murder in the first degree, as charged in count 48? Guilty. I lived with him all those years. He could have killed me. He could have killed my daughters. He could have killed my grandbabies. So what made the monster? Was it his unusual upbringing? Or was Gary Ridgeway born to kill? I still don't believe that any child is born to kill. But I think some children have a predisposition to violence. If the child grows up in a safe place for them, where they feel loved, where they attach,

41:20we're never going to know that that predisposition for violence is there. But if that child is born into a home, where they're afraid, where they're neglected, where they're abused, then you have the perfect soil to grow a serial killer. I think that a boy and his mother have a certain relationship, and when that relationship is different, then I think that's when we start seeing those kind of switches turning on and off. This is one of my ominous signs. She was somewhat seductive and so on. These sorts of unhealthy relationships with the maternal figure. People that I've encountered that have prosecuted for murder, I think that their circumstances have driven them to do what they have done in the majority of cases that I have handled, I would say. I did not see that in Ridgeway. I truly believed that he was worn that way, hardwired that way, whatever you want to say.

42:26The Green River killer was definitely born to kill. He was an individual who has this changed gene and culminated in a tremendous number and intensity of homicides. His brain is definitely wired differently. He's a psychopath that has to be a brain mistwiring from the beginning. I don't know about the nurture, nature piece. I think at some point it's a decision. I think we all have some propensities for violence, but you can decide, you can control it. He decided how we wanted to control it. 19 years after Marsha Chapman's body was discovered beneath the surface of the Green River, Gary Ridgeway was sentenced to serve 48 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

43:29In the end Marsha got her justice because it was DNA found on her that they could match with Gary Ridgeway. But in Marsha got her day. That was a good day. It was a good day. Before Ridgeway was led away, Judge Richard Jones instructed him to face the victim's families. There's a tremendous amount of emotion that these family members wanted to pour out for Gary Ridgeway to hear. I can only hope someone gets the opportunity to choke you unconscious. So you can live through the horror that you put our daughters, our sisters, our mothers through. The pain would not go away, but it brought them closer. The one thing that I want you, Gary Ridgeway, to know, I was that daughter at home, waiting for my mom to come home. I think for all of us, as we brought the families up and introduced them, it was really emotional.

44:36I recall Linda Rool's father. There are people here that hate you. I'm not one of them. A very sympathetic, very compassionate individual. What God says to do, and that's to forgive all. So you are forgiven, sir. On one hand, I am sitting next to a person who's done the most inhumane things to other human beings. And then 15 feet away is a person doing the most humane and merciful thing. I wanted him to look out, see the pain, see the anger, and see all the agony that he'd cause in his lifetime. I wanted him to take the visual image with him back to prison. So for the balance of his life, that would be the last public image that he had. You took from me my firstborn child, made her soul in the soul of the other 47 victims, the rest in peace.