Green River Killer
In 1982, the remains of a number of young women started to show up in the area surrounding Seattle. These women were all relatively young and shared a lifestyle, prostitution and street life, that made them easy targets for a killer. Before the slayings officially ended in 1998, a total of 42 women would be thought to be potential victims of the Green River Killer with the potential for many more being added to the list. Some believe that as many as 90 women may have been murdered by Gary Ridgeway. Ridgeway eluded police for almost two decades, even though he was a suspect in several of the disappearances, and was finally caught as a result of DNA evidence garnered from some of his earliest victims. This paper looks at the early life of Gary Ridgeway as it applies to the case, the murders themselves, how forensic evidence helped to solve it, the final capture and Ridgeway's day in court.
Backstory
Gary Ridgeway was born in 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was one of three brothers, both of whom still live in the Salt Lake City area, and was the son of a domineering mother. One report says that Ridgeway's mother had such control over him that she remained on his checkbook even after he was married and always had to be consulted when major purchases were made (Lackey, Jones & Johnson, 2005). Ridgeway's mother, according to his first wife, dressed in tight clothes and used great deal of makeup. She apparently dominated the entire family throughout Ridgeway's young life, and was a major factor in the breakup of at least two of his marriages (Lackey, Jones & Johnson, 2005).
Ridgeway committed his first deadly act when he was 16 when he critically stabbed a six-year-old bot. The police did not pursue the complaint. He also, during his adult married life, had sexual needs that seemed to foretell his later obsession. A wife and a girlfriend later admitted that he liked to tie them up and choke them during sexual intercourse (Lackey, Jones & Johnson, 2005). Ridgeway went through three marriages and a number of girlfriends before the first killings began in 1982 when he was 33 years old (Prothero & Smith, 2007, 64).
Murders
Ridgeway would later claim that the fact that his mother was domineering and dressed like a prostitute had something to do with why he killed all of those women. He told the court, after he was sentenced, that "I also picked prostitutes as victims because they are easy to pick up without being noticed ... I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without being caught" (Young, 2008). It is interesting from a psychological point-of-view why Ridgeway wanted to kill these women in the first place. It is also compelling that he would do so while a massive investigation was happening all around him.
Most serial killers, like Gary Ridgeway, choose their victims based on a profile (Douglas, 2007). It is true that some of the victims did not fit the overall profile of teenage prostitute or runaway (several of the women were in their thirties), but they all lived on the streets and most were engaged in prostitution. Ridgeway supposedly killed 48 women, at least he has admitted to that many, but similar signatures have been found from Vancouver to Portland, and these murders, though many are not solved, are attributed to the Green River Killer (Guillen & Smith, 2003). But, unfortunately, many of the remains are too degraded to be able to yield a positive DNA match.
Forensic Evidence
One of the issues that the police faced when the killings began in 1982 was that forensics were not to the level that the science needed to be in order to conclusively...
Green River Serial Killer The investigation into the case of the Green River killer stretched from 1982 to 2001, before Gary Ridgway was finally arrested for murdering 48 women. Ridgway's case is distinguished by the length and expense of the homicide investigation. This paper examines the investigation into the case of the Green River killer. Early years The so-called Green River killings got their name in 1982, when the first victims were found.
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