Research Paper On Gary Ridgway

Gary Ridgway is known as the most prolific serial killer in the United States. Over the course of approximately ten years (1980s-1990s), Ridgway self-reported that he killed at least 71 women, if not more, claiming in his court statements to having “lost count”. Gary Ridgway was convicted for the murders of 49 women despite his confessions. The victims of these murders were found to be mostly prostitutes and sex workers that were drawn in to Ridgway’s car, raped, strangled, and dumped into the woods near the Green River (hence the alias name provided to Ridgway by law enforcement). In an interview conducted by police, Ridgway stated how unfair it was that “everyone knows about Ted Bundy, but not about the Green River Killer”, leaving police

He was then listed as a prime suspect when a Green Killer victim disappears but ended up being left behind in the investigation after passing a polygraph test (which was later reviewed and concluded to have actually been failed by Ridgway). In 2001, when he was arrested, yet again, for soliciting prostitution, his saliva sample was ran and turned up as a match to semen samples that has been previously collected in the bodies of three women murdered by the Green River Killer (“The Arrest”, 2013). He was arrested on November 30th, 2001 on the suspicion of murdering four women. He served two years of prison time before a plea bargain, sparing his execution, was issued including a confession to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder in addition to providing assistance for locating his victims (Quad-City Times, 2003). Once the plea bargain was processed, “King County Superior Court Judge Richard Jones sentences Gary Ridgway to 48 life sentences with no possibility of parole and one life sentence. He was also sentenced to an additional ten years for tampering with evidence for each of the 48 victims, adding 480 additional years to his 48 life sentences” (Seattle Weekly,