Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), known as the Green River Killer or the Green River Strangler, is an American serial killer who was convicted of murdering forty-nine women between 1982 and 1998 in the northwestern United States. At the time of his arrest in 2001, he was believed to be the most prolific serial killer in United States history, according to confirmed murders.Kershaw, Sarah (November 6, 2003). Truck painter admits he's the Green River strangler. The Post-Standard. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
Most of Ridgway's victims were alleged prostitutes or other women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. Prior to his capture, media outlets dubbed him the Green River Killer or the Green River Strangler, named for the location of the bodies of his first five victims, the Green River in Washington state. Ridgway strangled his victims, usually by hand, but sometimes using ligatures. After strangling them, he would dump their bodies in forested and overgrown areas, often returning to the bodies to engage in acts of necrophilia.
Ridgway had been a suspect in the Green River case since 1982; however, investigators were unable to link him to the murders at that time. Later advances in DNA profiling allowed investigators to definitively link Ridgway to the murders, and he was arrested on November 30, 2001, as he was leaving the Kenworth truck factory where he worked in Renton, Washington. As part of a plea bargain wherein he agreed to disclose the locations of still-missing women, he was spared the death penalty and received a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Early life Gary Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the second of three sons to Thomas and Mary Ridgway. His childhood was somewhat troubled; relatives later described his mother as a domineering woman who inflicted corporal punishment upon her sons for minor offenses. Mary also worked in the men's department at JCPenney, and upon arrival home, would frequently complain about the lack of comportment in the clientele of the store. Ridgway would later tell defense psychologists that, as an adolescent, he had conflicting feelings of anger and sexual attraction toward his mother, and fantasized about killing her. Ridgway's father, whose marriage to Ridgway's mother was volatile, worked as a bus driver and often complained about the presence of prostitutes on his route.
Ridgway, who is dyslexic, was held back a year in high school and exhibited an IQ recorded as being in the "low eighties." When he was aged 16, Ridgway lured a six-year-old boy into a woodland and stabbed him through the ribs into his liver; the boy survived the attack.
Adult life
Ridgway graduated from Tyee High School in 1969 and married his 19-year-old high school sweetheart, Claudia Kraig. He joined the United States Navy and was deployed to Vietnam, where he served on board a supply ship and saw combat. During his time in the military, Ridgway frequently had sex with prostitutes and contracted gonorrhea; although Kraig was angered by this, he continued this activity without protection. His marriage to Kraig ended within a year.
When questioned about Ridgway after his arrest, friends and family described him as friendly but strange. His first two marriages resulted in divorce because of infidelities by both partners. His second wife, Marcia Winslow, claimed that he had placed her in a chokehold. Ridgway became religious during his second marriage, proselytizing door-to-door, reading the Bible aloud at work and at home, and insisting that his wife follow the strict teachings of their pastor. He would also frequently cry after reading the Bible or hearing sermons. Despite his beliefs, Ridgway continued to solicit the services of prostitutes and asked his wife to participate in sex in public or in inappropriate places, sometimes even in areas where his victims' bodies were later discovered.
According to women in his life, Ridgway had an insatiable sexual appetite. His three ex-wives and several ex-girlfriends reported that he demanded sex from them several times a day. He would often want to have sex in a public area or in the woods.
Ridgway admitted to having a fixation with prostitutes, with whom he had love/hate relationships. He frequently complained about their presence in his neighborhood, but he also took advantage of their services regularly. In a statement read at his plea hearing, Ridgway said he hated prostitutes and did not want to pay them for sex. Some have speculated that Ridgway was torn between his lusts and his staunch religious beliefs. Ridgeway had a son with his second wife, Marcia.
Murders Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ridgway is believed to have murdered at least 71 teenage girls and women near Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. In court statements, Ridgway later reported that he had killed so many that he lost count. A majority of the murders occurred between 1982 and 1984. The victims were believed to be either prostitutes or runaways, whom he picked up along Pacific Highway South. Ridgway sometimes showed the women a picture of his son, to trick them into trusting him. They would engage in sexual activity, and after minutes of intercourse from behind, Ridgway would wrap his forearm around the front of their necks and use the other arm to pull back as tightly as he could, strangling them. He killed most victims in his home, his truck, or a secluded area. Most of their bodies were dumped in wooded areas around the Green River, Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, and other "dump sites" within South King County.
There were also two confirmed and another two suspected victims found in the Portland, Oregon, area. The bodies were often left in clusters, sometimes posed, usually nude. He would sometimes return to the victims' bodies and engage in necrophilia with them. Ridgway later explained that he did not find necrophilia more sexually satisfying, but having sex with the deceased reduced his need to obtain a living victim and thus limited his exposure to being caught. Ridgway occasionally contaminated the dump sites with gum, cigarettes, and written materials belonging to others, and he even transported a few victims' remains across state lines into Oregon, to confuse the police.
1982–1984: First known victims
The body of Ridgway's first known victim was found in July 1982. A unique kind of spray paint was found on clothing wrapped around the victim's neck, but the paint was not tested for 20 years. If it had been tested at the time, it would have been easier to link the murder to Ridgway. After four more victims were found, the King County Sheriff's Office formed the Green River Task Force to investigate the murders. Task force members included Robert D. Keppel and Dave Reichert, who periodically interviewed incarcerated serial killer Ted Bundy in 1984. Bundy offered his opinions on the psychology, motivations, and behavior of the killer. He suggested that the killer was revisiting the dump sites to have sex with his victims, which turned out to be accurate, and if police found a fresh grave, they should stake it out and wait for him to come back. Also contributing to the investigation was FBI Special Agent John E. Douglas, who developed a profile of the suspect.
Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 on charges related to prostitution. He became a suspect in the Green River killings in 1983, when 18-year-old Marie Malvar disappeared. Her boyfriend and her pimp later found a truck in front of Ridgway's house, which they thought was the same one she had boarded the day she went missing. Ridgway was interviewed in conjunction with that event, and police received several other tips that mentioned him. In 1984, he passed a polygraph test.
1985–2001: Marriage to Judith Mawson, arrest for murder Around 1985, Ridgway began dating Judith Mawson, who became his third wife in 1988. Mawson claimed in a 2010 television interview that when she moved into his house while they were dating, there was no carpet. Detectives later told her he had probably wrapped a body in the carpet. In the same interview, she described how he would leave for work early in the morning some days, ostensibly for the overtime pay. Mawson speculated that he must have committed some of the murders while supposedly working these early morning shifts. She claimed that she had not suspected Ridgway's crimes before she was contacted by authorities in 1987, and had not even heard of the Green River Killer before that time because she did not watch the news. Ridgway said that while he was in a relationship with Mawson, his kill rate went down and that he truly loved her. Of his 49 known victims, only three were killed after he married Mawson. Mawson told a local television reporter, "I feel I have saved lives ... by being his wife and making him happy."
In April 1987, police took hair and saliva samples from Ridgway. The samples collected were later subjected to DNA profiling, providing the evidence for his arrest warrant.
On November 30, 2001, he was at the Kenworth truck factory where he worked as a spray painter when police arrived to arrest him. The four victims named in the original indictment were Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Ann Christensen. Three more victims—Wendy Coffield, Debra Bonner, and Debra Estes—were added to the indictment after a forensic scientist identified microscopic spray paint spheres as a specific brand and composition of paint used at the Kenworth factory during the time when these victims were killed.
Plea bargain, confessions, sentencing Early in August 2003, Seattle television news reported that Ridgway had been moved from a maximum security cell at King County Jail to an Airway Heights Minimum-Medium Security Level Tank. Other news reports stated that his lawyers, led by Anthony Savage, were closing a plea bargain that would spare him the death penalty in return for his confession to a number of the Green River murders.
On November 5, 2003, Ridgway pleaded "guilty" to 48 charges of aggravated first degree murder as part of a plea bargain that would spare him execution in exchange for his cooperation in locating the remains of his victims and providing other details. In his statement accompanying his guilty plea, Ridgway explained that he had killed all of his victims inside King County, Washington, and that he had transported and dumped the remains of the two women near Portland to confuse the police.
Deputy prosecutor Jeffrey Baird noted in court that the deal contained "the names of 41 victims who would not be the subject of State v. Ridgway if it were not for the plea agreement". King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng explained his decision to make the deal: On December 18, 2003, King County Superior Court Judge Richard A. Jones sentenced Ridgway to 48 life sentences without the possibility of parole to be served consecutively. He was also sentenced to an additional 10 years for tampering with evidence for each of the 48 victims, adding 480 years to his 48 life sentences. Later he was given another life sentence after the remains of his 49th victim were found.
Ridgway led prosecutors to three bodies in 2003. On August 16 of that year, the remains of a 16-year-old girl found near Enumclaw, Washington, 40 feet from State Route 410, were pronounced as belonging to Pammy Annette Avent, who had been believed to be a victim of the Green River Killer. The remains of Marie Malvar and April Buttram were found in September 2003.