'Green River Killer' wants to help police find other victims

Green River Killer Gary Ridgway gave his first interview since being sent to prison for life. The Green River Killer says that he killed as many as 80 women, not 49.

|
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
Gary Ridgway, the so-called Green River Killer, appears for his sentencing in Seattle in 2003. Ridgway now says he might be able to locate the bodies of some of his Green River victims who were never found.

Serial killer Gary Ridgway says he might be able to locate the bodies of some of his Green River victims who were never found.

Ridgway told KOMO  radio that the Green River Task Force mostly kept him in a van in 2003 when he directed them to sites in the Seattle area where he dumped bodies in the 1980s. He'd like to revisit every site on foot and says he could have had as many as 80 victims.

"Ridgway is a sociopath and pathological liar" who likes notoriety, said King County sheriff's Sgt. Katie Larson, who was a member of the task force.

It's possible he killed more than the 49 women for which he was convicted, she said Tuesday. But, investigators are confident they did everything possible to recover all the victims.

Ridgway was arrested in 2001 after advances in DNA technology enabled authorities to link a 1987 saliva sample to some of the bodies. He pleaded guilty to 48 murders two years later, agreeing to help authorities locate as many remains as possible. He pleaded guilty to a 49th murder in 2011.

The killing spree took its name from the Green River where the first bodies were found.

Ridgway, 64, is serving a life sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

The SeattlePI.com reports that "The contentious plea deal struck by former King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng required Ridgway to admit guilt in all his King County killings. In exchange, Maleng agreed not to seek a death sentence, so long as Ridgway pleaded guilty to the charges.

Additional charges elsewhere in the state or country, which are not precluded by the agreement, have not followed. The serial killer remains a suspect in dozens of other disappearances, but has yet to face charges elsewhere."

The SeatlePI also notes:

During a lengthy police interrogation following the 2003 agreement, Ridgway admitted to killing dozens of Seattle-area women but was not charged in those disappearances in which his story couldn’t be corroborated by other evidence. Prosecutors were not convinced Ridgway was being truthful or -- as Ridgway admitted -- able to remember all the women he killed.

"I killed so many women, I have a hard time keeping them straight," Ridgway said in 2011, after another of his victims was discovered.

KOMO plans to air more of the exclusive interview with Ridgway this week.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Green River Killer' wants to help police find other victims
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0918/Green-River-Killer-wants-to-help-police-find-other-victims
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe