Gary Leon Ridgway: The Green River Killer

Gary Leon Ridgway was born February 18, 1949. He had a troubled home life his mother was described as domineering. As a young child he witnessed more than one violent argument between his parents. He did very poorly in school and the other kids would describe him as quiet and easily forgettable. He wet the bed until he was 14, when his mother would witness it she would make him march naked all the way into the bathroom. Then she would bathe him which made him very uncomfortable and made him start having both sexual and violent fantasies with his mother. He committed his first crime his first crime when he was 16, which he had stabbed a boy and the boy survived. According to the victim and him himself he walked away laughing and said “I always

wondered what it would be like to kill someone.” He graduated when he was 20 and married his 19 year old high school girlfriend Claudia Kraig. He joined the Navy and was sent to Vietnam, where he served on board a supply ship and saw combat. While he was in the military, he began frequenting numerous prostitutes and contracting gonorrhea. which didn't stop him. After a year him and his wife divorced. He got married again which did not last long when she claimed that he had put her in a chokehold. He was also still having sexual relations with the prostitutes and wanted his wife to have sex in public areas, sometimes even in areas where his victims were later discovered. Around 1985 Ridgway began dating Judith Mawson who became his third wife in 1988. She described to the police how he would leave early for work in the morning, for the overtime pay he said. Mawson suspected he was committing some of these murders during that time. She claimed that she did not know anything about the “Green River Killer” until she was told by the police in 1987.

While they were married his crime rate went down and he claimed he truly loved her. Mawson told a local television reporter “i feel i have saved lives by being his wife and making him happy.” According to women in his life, he had a strong sexual appetite. He would demand sex from his 3 wives and ex girlfriend several times a day. He is known as the American serial killer or the Green River Killer. He was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders and later confessed to nearly twice that number. Part as his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the biggest American serial killer. He murdered a bunch of women and girls in Washington State in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Most of the women he murdered were said to be prostitutes and the other women were in vulnerable situations, including underage runaways. He was given the nickname “The Green River KIller’ after his first 5 victims were found in the green river at the time his real identity was not known. He would usually kill the women by hand but sometimes he would kill them by using

ligatures. After he would strangle them he would usually dump their bodies throughout the forest, he would often return to the dead bodies to have sexual intercourse with the bodies. He became a suspect in 1983 in Green River Killings. In 1984, he was questioned after the boyfriend of a prostitute who went missing had identified Ridgways truck as the last truck that his girlfriend had gotten into before she vanished. In 1984 Ridgway was arrested for soliciting an undercover posing as a prostitute. He was brought in for questioning and agreed to take a polygraph test which he had past. On November 30, 2001 he was leaving the a truck factory which he worked at he was arrested for murders of about 4 women, which was found through his DNA. Worried that the DNA would confuse the jury, the detective wanted more evidence. He interviewed Ridgways ex-wives, and old girlfriends and discovered Ridgway had taken one girlfriend for picnics and outdoor sex in various areas where the other bodies were buried. In just 10 years he was believed to have murdered 71 women. Ridgway began each murder by picking up a women. a prostitute. He would show the women a picture of his son to gain trust. After having sex with her he would strangle them from behind. He killed them usually in his house, his truck, or a secluded area. Ridgway knew he would facing execution and he did not want to die. In a plea bargain he agreed to fully cooperate with investigation. For months detectives questioned and getting details from Ridgway. He took them to locations where the bodies where and disclosed how he killed each one and the evidence threw off the police. In 2003 he was sentenced to life in prison for committing more serial killings then anyone in the U.S. An additional body was found in 2011, with Ridgway receiving another life sentence. In 2013 he claimed to a TV interview to have committing about 75-80 murders. When Gary Ridgway was arrested in the Green River serial murders, his younger brother was just trying to let the news sink in.
He told detectives he couldn't picture his brother killing young women but conceded, "Well, anything's possible."
Ridgway's son knew his father was a suspect years ago but never thought there was anything to it.

The arrest made him think of Ted Bundy, he told detectives -- and how that notorious killer's personality enabled him to be "one guy one minute, and the other guy the other minute."

That's how he suddenly thought of his

father.