Original subtitles

music

[Narrator]: For two decades,

an unknown killer terrorized the Pacific Northwest.

[Man]: Police found the badly-decomposed nude body

of a woman Saturday night.

[Man]: Another terrible discovery in the woods.

[Man]: A sexual psychopath who preys on young prostitutes.

[Amanda]: Every time they arrive at a scene,

there's multiple women.

They were dealing with something huge.

[Michael]: The number of bodies that are turning up

is almost hard for us to even wrap our head around.

[John]: We're talking 40 people here.

This is unprecedented.

[Stephanie]: Mothers, daughters, sisters, friends,

and they were loved by people and missed by people.

[Dave]: The bodies were piling up.

We had a serial killer on our hands.

[Man]: The victims of the Green River Killer--

[Man]: The Green River Killer--

[Man]: Then called the Green River Killer

ever since the first bodies were pulled from this river.

[Pennie]: The public was running out of patience.

It was like, "Come on, catch this guy!"

[Narrator]: Now, on the 20th anniversary of the arrest

that shook the nation,

we're revisiting one of the most twisted stories

in the annals of American crime to ask

how did this monster remain hidden in the shadows

for so long?

[Stephanie]: He was incredibly successful

at convincing the world that he was Ned Flanders,

just a nice guy and a good family man.

[Narrator]: Why couldn't the cops catch him?

[Frank]: A polygrapher said he didn't do these crimes.

He's innocent.

[Narrator]: And what did those closest to him,

including his own son, know?

[Michael]: Matthew was torn between his love for his dad

versus the reality of what was going on.

[Narrator]: Husband, father, colleague, killer.

This is the Sins of the Father: The Green River Killer.

It was kill, kill, kill.

[Narrator]: July 15th, 1982.

A pair of boys are riding their bikes

across the Peck Bridge just south of Seattle

when suddenly...

[Stephanie]: They stopped for a moment on the bridge,

and as they looked down into the rushing water,

they saw something that caught their eye.

[Amanda]: Initially, they think, okay, is this a mannequin

that's been discarded down in the river,

and they go down to investigate.

[Narrator]: The boys slowly wade into the Green River,

then stop short of the object.

[Olivia]: They actually see it's not a mannequin.

They can see the hair of a young woman sort of flowing

underneath the water

[Stephanie]: She was naked.

She had jeans wrapped around her neck.

[Narrator]: Detectives hurry to the scene.

[Dave]: The Kemp Police Department

determined her name was Wendy Coffield.

The cause of death was asphyxiation.

We had the ligature,

and that was placed into evidence.

[Olivia]: They could tell there was quite a struggle.

Her arm was broken.

There was some visible bruising as well.

[Narrator]: Wendy Coffield is just 16 years old.

Her mother Virginia tells investigators

the teen was no stranger to trouble.

[Stephanie]: She said,

"Well, I kinda knew this was gonna happen.

"She was going down the wrong path."

Wendy was known to be a hitchhiker.

There was also a rumor that she had been on a strip

acting as a sex worker,

so they knew that she was in dangerous situations.

[Amanda]: She was living on the street for survival.

She was involved in drugs.

She'd actually been in juvenile detention

for a recent theft and had snuck on on

kind of a day pass to visit with her family

and she hadn't returned to the juvenile detention center.

[Narrator]: The horrific murder sends shockwaves

throughout the town of Kent.

[Mark]: It's a small suburb, no significant violent crime,

relatively safe environment

what most people would call a quiet community.

So any type of violent crime, anybody would be aware of it.

[Diane]: Everybody was scared. It was just frightening

'cause we had no idea who the killer is.

[Narrator]: While police begin

investigating the teen's killing,

10 miles away in Renton,

it's just another day in the life

for seven-year-old Matthew Ridgway,

on summer break from nearby East Hill Elementary School.

[Stephanie]: Matthew would spend his summers riding his bikes,

playing outside with his friends running around the neighborhood,

coming home too late for dinner.

He had a very good life.

[Narrator]: A life he shares with his single mother Marcia.

[Brittany]: Marcia just had a job at a dental office,

so she wasn't making a whole lot of money,

but she was trying to make ends meet.

Life for any single mom is really hard.

[Narrator]: The pair are still trying to find their footing

one year after Marcia's contentious divorce

from Matthew's father, Gary.

[Brittany]: They had Matthew two years into their marriage,

and everything seemed good

until Matthew was about five years old,

and Marcia tells a story where

they were engaging in BDSM

and Gary choked her, and he went too far,

and that was the first time

that she was really afraid of him,

and she put a stop to any of the activities,

which of course made Gary very upset.

[John]: The relationship that Gary and Marcia had

wasn't great for Marcia.

Gary really wanted her to just cook, clean,

basically do everything.

He wanted sex constantly, two, three times a day,

and that just started to become a bit much for Marcia.

[Narrator]: Gary, for his part, tells friends at his job

at the nearby Kenworth truck factory a different story.

[Diane]: He worked in the paint department.

Mostly worked mornings.

I think we got along because our lockers were so close.

I would go in early,

and he'd be the only one in there,

so we had a lot of time to talk.

He had a crush on me.

He would tell me about his family and his wife.

He gets irate when he thinks about her

because she's screwed him over for child support

and then spousal support.

He could hold a grudge forever.

There was two Garys: nice coworker Gary,

and then there was crazy-eyed Gary.

When he'd get really mad,

his eye would get all watery and crazy-looking.

Don't F with Gary today.

[Narrator]: But when it comes to his son Matthew,

Ridgway is quick to table his anger.

[Diane]: He'd turn into Good Dad Gary,

and he'd have the happy face, his eyes'd start sparkling again

He really did love his son.

Gary spoiled him.

Said he gives him everything he wants.

[Narrator]: Decades later, in a police interview,

Matthew recalls those formative years

with his single dad.

[Olivia]: Gary had a great relationship

with his son Matthew.

Matthew has said that his dad really kind of

went the extra mile to try to make all the time

they spent together memorable and special.

[Narrator]: While Gary and his son enjoy

their carefree summer together, in nearby Kent,

the mood grows increasingly terrifying.

There, on August 12th, 1982,

an employee at a meat packing plant

along the banks of the Green River

is taking a smoke break when he looks up.

[Stephanie]:He spotted something sort of caught up on a log

in the middle of the rushing river,

and he thought, maybe it's a dead animal.

He decided to go down, get a closer look,

and at that point,

he realized it was another naked dead woman.

[Narrator]: Police identify the body as 23-year-old

Debra Lynn Bonner.

Her corpse is found less than half a mile

from where Wendy Coffield's was discovered

only a month earlier, and the MO is strikingly similar.

[Frank]: She was also naked and had also been strangled,

and when the detectives began to look into her death,

they determined that she was also a prostitute.

[Narrator]: Detective Dave Reichert

of the King County Sheriff's Office

catches the case and digs in.

[Dave]: Questions in my mind are, you know,

is this related, are these two related?

I knew they were in the river.

I knew they were up against the river bank.

I knew that they were submerged in water.

All those things are kind of going through your mind.

[Narrator]: But before Reichert can connect those murders,

authorities discover two more young women

in the Green River.

[Amanda]: The bodies almost seemed to be staged or placed.

They were in the water.

One woman was facing up, one woman was facing down

with large rocks on them to keep them in that position.

The killer had inserted rocks into their genitals.

It was a horror scene.

[Narrator]: Forty years laters,

Reichert can still vividly recall the nightmarish tableau.

[Dave]: One of the victims was on her back,

and you could see her face,

and one hand was loose in the river,

and as the river swept over them slowly around it,

and her hand just kind of waved back and forth,

and I remember thinking she's just sort of saying,

"Hey, I'm here, I'm right here." You know, "Help me."

And, uh, those are memories, of course,

that stay with you forever.

[Narrator]: Investigators beging processing the scene,

only to make another shocking discovery.

[Dave]: The grass is tall,

it's filled with blackberry bushes,

and I was moving down the bank of the river

and taking notes and photographs,

and we found another young female body

laying the tall grass.

She was unclothed for the most part.

Her bra was pulled up over the top of her breasts.

She had a ligature around her neck,

and it had not been there very long.

[Amanda]: It's like every time they arrive at a scene,

there's multiple women.

They find so much more than they ever bargained for,

and it felt like they were dealing with something huge.

[Narrator]: Police identify the three women as

Cynthia Hinds, Marcia Chapman, and Opal Mills.

[Amanda]: Cynthia and Opal were only about

17 and 16 years old respectively.

They were actually friends.

Marcia, on the other hand, was in her early 30s.

She's a young mom, and she was a known sex worker.

All of these women had been strangled

with ligatures of some kind,

sometimes pieces of their own clothing,

or just the bare hands of an assailant.

[Narrator]: The striking similarities lead detectives

to a grim conclusion.

[Dave]: We did believe we had a serial killer on our hands.

[Narrator]: Word of the killings

quickly spreads across the greater Seattle region.

[Man]: In Seattle this morning,

police are hunting a mass murderer--

[Man]: A sexual psychopath who preys on young prostitutes.

[Olivia]: This story absolutely explodes.

People immediately want to know what's being done.

[Woman]: I'm scared. I really am.

I'm almost afraid to open up my doors.

So now we've gone from a couple of bodies found

to three more,

which brings us up to five over the course of a month,

and the community is terrified,

especially for their daughters, their sisters, their wives.

It really felt like they were dealing with

a mad man on the loose. No one knew if they were safe.

[Narrator]: In nearby Renton, Marcia and Gary Ridgway

keep the increasingly alarming news

from their young son Matthew.

[Narrator]: But try as his parents may

to shield him from the horrors,

Matthew Ridgway will become forever linked to one of

the most prolific serial killers in the history of American crime

[Man]: The victims of the Green River Killer--

[Man]: The Green River Killer--

[Man]: Then called the Green River Killer

ever since the first bodies were pulled from this river.

[Brittany]: A lot of newspapers

called them the Green River killings,

and he became the Green River Killer from that point on.

[Narrator]: Police in King County, Washington

are hunting a man dubbed the Green River Killer

after discovering the bodies of five suspected prostitutes

dumped in or near the river

running through the Seattle suburbs.

[Dave]: The media of course wants answers right away.

The families want answers right away.

[Crowd]: One, two, three, four, we won't take it any more!

[Amanda]: The community is starting to get upset.

I mean, there's literal protesting in the streets

demanding, "Why haven't you found the predator

"that is terrorizing our community?"

[Dave]: We're just at the beginning stages

of the investigation.

We don't have all the answers.

So the pressure is intense, and it's on immediately.

[Narrator]: Although Marcia Ridgway

and her seven-year-old son Matthew are living

just 10 miles away from the crime scenes,

they'll later tell investigators they are quite familiar

with the killer's dumping ground.

[Stephanie]: Marcia did ask Gary about what was happening

with the bodies turning up at the rivers,

and he would just be very dismissive of it.

He acted very chill about the whole thing like,

yeah, this is happening,

but, you know, they're prostitutes.

[Narrator]: With five murdered women on their hands

and no leads,

the task force gets an unexpected break

one month into their investigation

when 43-year-old Melvin Foster walks into the sheriff's office

to file a report.

[Olivia]: Melvin Foster is a cab driver

who works primarily on The Strip,

and he tells investigators he feels that he has information

that could help them find the killer.

[Stephanie]: This particular part of Seattle

was known as the Sea-Tac Strip.

It was sort of right by the airport,

and it became a seedy area that included places like

topless bars running 24/7, and obviously with that,

it brought a good deal of sex work to the streets.

Melvin was very well-versed on the Strip area.

He would often give these girls rides.

He said, it's Seattle, it's raining.

They don't wanna be standing out in the rain,

so I'll give them a ride,

or I'll give them and their john a ride.

[Narrator]: Foster suggest the killer could be a cab driver

and volunteers to help detectives idenitfy him.

[Brittany]: Melvin gave off bad vibes from the beginning.

He was really into younger women.

He'd been married five different times.

He was a former thief who had gone to jail

for stealing a car.

[Narrator]: Investigators are immediately suspicious.

They ask Foster to take a polygraph test,

and he fails it.

[Dave]: I sat down, I interviewed him.

He had first denied knowing any of the victims,

and then when pressed, he knew all of the victims,

had them in his taxi cab.

[Amanda]: It seemed like he wanted

to be close to the investigation,

and investigators are thinking,

okay, is this the person we're looking for?

[Stephanie]: That was, I think, what really made the police feel

that they were on the right path with Melvin.

[Narrator]: Detectives begin round-the-clock surveillance

on Foster, believing it's only a matter of time

before he strikes again.

Not only that, they want to see,

while we have him under surveillance,

if the murders stop, this is another sign that he's our guy.

He was the primary suspect.

He was an odd sort of person.

He was intelligent, but he was different.

[Olivia]:You can see the footage in some of the interviews,

he came off strange.

He definitely made a few strange comments

to reporters that, uh,

really stood out to investigators.

[Woman]: Are you scared at all?

Scared? No.

Fright is for the guilty.

When you think of the profile

of somebody who is targeting young women,

he just seemed to be the right fit.

[Narrator]: Police search Foster's house,

but find nothing.

Still, it doesn't quell their suspicions.

[Mark]: He's saying, like, "I knew a lot of the girls,

"I take the girls different places."

You know, "I've been in a lot of these areas,

"I know these areas."

So things, like, for them, are matching up.

Adam Lyon here. Did you kill all those women or what?

No, but I wish I did. I wish I did know who did.

[Narrator]: When local cab driver Melvin Foster

suddenly inserts himself into the Green River investigation

in the autumn of 1982,

it raises alarm bells for detectives.

Unbeknownst to investigators,

32-year-old divorced dad Gary Ridgway is also raising

the eyebrows of his colleagues at the Kenworth truck factory

with his own strange behavior.

[Diane]: When I first met Gary,

I just thought the weird little stuff he would say

was just like quirks.

Some of the girls that worked there

he couldn't stand, he'd call them sluts

'cause all they wanted to do is hook up and get F'ed,

and I was like, "Calm down, Gary."

Every time he turns red,

I know he's gonna start saying crazy stuff.

He would hide around the shop and stare at people.

My sister-in-law would say stupid stuff to him.

I used to tell her, "What are you doing?

"You're poking the lion!" Just keep in your mind that

he could be the Green River Killer.

[Narrator]: While the killer continues to elude authorities,

he does leave another calling card,

only this time,

it's nearly six miles away from the Green River.

[Man]: Motorcyclist found a badly-decomposed nude body

of a woman Saturday night.

Police do believe that this latest victim

is related to the Green River case.

[Amanda]: She's found in a new spot.

This was a wooded area that was very close

to the airport but still pretty secluded,

pretty well-covered.

[Narrator]: Police ID the body as Gisele Lovvorn,

a 17-year-old sex worker missing for over two months.

[Stephanie]: Gisele was smart. She had a 145 IQ.

She had a lot going for her, but then of course,

she met the wrong guy, and Gisele worked the streets

in order to provide for her boyfriend/pimp.

[Narrator]: Investigators soon realized

they've stumbled upon another dumping site.

The killer's change in dumping venues

initially throws authorities.

[Amanda]:I'm not sure how common it is to switch up your sites.

[Man]: Another terrible discovery in the woods

in south King County.

They fear another victim of the Green River Killer.

[Narrator]: Some suspect he's simply trying to stay

one step ahead.

[Amanda]: At the time, it was all over the media,

so he was probably watching and following these stories

and realized, okay,

this is an area that they're watching very closely.

So I think that was an act of self-preservation,

honestly, to just kind of move a little bit

where we're gonna go to dump these bodies

so that I can evade capture.

[Narrator]: By the fall of 1982,

police attribute six murdered

and scores of missing sex workers

to the Green River Killer.

[Dave]:People became frustrated: the media, the community,

the command staff,

the politicians who were providing the money

to fund the task force,

started to grow a little bit irritable.

[Stephanie]: They were mothers, they were daughters,

and they were sisters, they were friends,

and they were loved by people and missed by people.

They were important to somebody,

and that's what really needed to register,

and I think this became something people could relate to

[Diane]: And I was scared to death

because they couldn't find them.

They were finding bodies every week.

I mean, they were just dropping like flies.

And I thought, man, this is horrifying.

It's like a movie.

[Narrator]: Marcia Ridgway is also

growing increasingly concerned.

The victims all worked in the Sea-Tac Strip

near her ex-husband Gary's place,

a place their seven-year-old son Matthew often visits.

[Diane]: That's the Strip where a lot of the prostitutes

will walk because it's close to the airports,

and there's a bunch of cheap motels up and down there.

And every time I've driven down that roads,

there's at least 20 of them just hanging out down there.

[Brittany]: Marcia was specifically fixated

on the fact that Gary liked to take walks

and go jogging in the area

where these women were being abducted.

[Stephanie]: As time went on, people began to get nervous,

wondering if this man, if he's capable of

killing these people over and over again

where you're finding bodies in clusters around the city,

then he's capable of anything.

[Narrator]: With no other leads,

detectives bring their main suspect back in

for questioning, Melvin Foster.

But the grilling goes nowhere.

[Brittany]:He always denied that he had any direct part

in the Green River killings.

In fact, he told the task force he was going to sue them.

He went to the local press.

He said that they were harassing him.

[Amanda]: More women were actually going missing

while he was being tailed and surveilled,

so it was starting to look more and more like

he wasn't their guy.

[Narrator]: By the spring of 1983,

21 sex workers are reported missing,

including 18-year-old Marie Malvar,

only this time, there's a witness.

[Stephanie]: What happened was,

Marie ended up getting into a vehicle.

This was a maroon truck,

and what was distinctive about it was it had

a spot of primer on it,

and her boyfriend/pimp saw this from afar.

He was watching, and he said it seemed like Marie was arguing

with the guy a little bit but then she got in

and she drove away.

[Amanda]: Marie's boyfriend had a bad feeling about it.

He actually decided, "I'm gonna follow them."

So he's following them,

but then the maroon truck loses him,

and he can't find them.

[Olivia]: Marie doesn't come back that night,

so the next day,

Marie's boyfriend goes to her father's house,

tells him what he saw, and the father says,

"Okay, you and I need to go find that truck."

[Narrator]: The men search the surrounding area

and eventually find what they believe

is the same maroon pickup truck.

It's parked in front of the home of a 34-year-old divorced dad

and paint shop worker named Gary Ridgway.

In early September 1983,

Marie Malvar's family reports the missing 18-year-old

sex worker's last known location to the local police,

the home of 34-year-old divorced dad Gary Ridgway.

Police arrive to question Ridgway when his son Matthew

is staying at his mother's.

The police officer who knocked on the door

had actually gone to school with Gary Ridgway,

so they knew each other,

and the police basically asked, hey do you know this girl Marie?

Gary said no. Do you know where she is? No.

Is there anybody here with you?

No. And the police left.

They didn't ask to go inside, they didn't look inside.

They didn't press him any further.

[Olivia]: That's as far as it goes,

which, to a lot of people, may seem crazy

with so many women going missing and being murdered.

[Amanda]: Maria was considered a missing person

and was added to a list of names

that were actively being investigated,

and her story just kind of faded into the background.

[Narrator]: For his part,

Gary Ridgway quietly returns to his job

at the Kenworth truck factory

and spending weekends with his son Matthew,

who turns 11 that same month.

[Diane]: He loved his son.

He'd say he was a good kid,

and he was proud of him and stuff.

He'd talk about how smart he was.

[Narrator]: But while Gary and his son retreat

to their happy home, outside, the darkness grows.

By the end of November 1983, police have recovered

the bodies of 13 young women

and list an additional 25 missing.

Investigators look for a pattern to the locations,

but can't find one.

However, they do find other similarities.

[Amanda]: The one thing that's connecting

all of these cases to each other

was the cause of death.

All of these women were strangled.

[Narrator]: It's a fetish Marcia Ridgway knows well

at the hands of her ex-husband, Gary.

[Amanda]: Marcia said the sex became more aggressive,

a little more violent, that they were going into

some things that she wasn't very comfortable with,

experimenting with a little bit of bondage and BDSM,

and this was scary for Marcia. She really did not like it.

[Stephanie]: The marriage between Marcia and Gary

was a very unequal and toxic one.

He was very controlling with her,

and I think that this stemmed from his first wife

leaving him for somebody else.

That level of rejection for him, he never wanted to feel it again

Gary Ridgway's first wife, Claudia,

he basically married her right out of high school.

The two of them had a little bit of

a whirlwind romance.

One could say it was highly physical,

and then they got married at the end of the summer.

[Narrator]: After graduation, Gary enlists in the Navy

and is deployed to the Philippines.

[Stephanie]: While he was away,

Claudia started seeing somebody else,

and by the time he got back, she was in another relationship,

so this marriage ended very poorly.

[Michael]: I think Gary Ridgway, who was so susceptible to

profound feelings of rejection and abandonment,

lashes out and he accuses her, "Oh, you must be a prostitute

"if you're off sleeping with other people."

[Narrator]: On May 8th, 1983,

authorities discover what they believe

is the Green River Killer's 14th victim

when they find the body of

21-year-old Carol Anne Christensen

in a wooded area southeast of Seattle.

But some members on the task force

aren't so sure.

[Stephanie]: When Carol's body was found,

it was completely different from all of the other victims.

She was found with an empty bottle of wine

in her hand and there were fish laid across her body.

Another weird thing was she was dressed,

but her clothes had been put on backwards.

[Amanda]: It was just a bizarre scene

that seemed very meticulously staged,

almost in a ritualistic way,

and it was very headscratching for investigators.

[Narrator]: And there's another anomaly.

Unlike like most of the other victims,

Carol Christensen isn't a sex worker.

[Stephanie]: She was a single mother raising a child

and she had just gotten a job working at a restaurant.

On her second day at this job,

she was scheduled to come back that evening at the dinner shift

She never came back to work that night.

She never came home to be with her young daughter,

and everybody who knew Carol

knew that it was completely out of character.

[Frank]: The detective that was working that

had pretty much eliminated her ex-husband

and had pretty much come to a dead end.

[Dave]: There were detectives that believed that

it wasn't connected, but there were those of us

who said, look, she's been strangled

and she's been placed in the woods,

and we're in the middle of a serial murder case

where females strangled, placed in the woods

should be on our list

as a possible potential Green River victim.

Reichert and his colleagues went out.

Carol Anne Christensen is not only declared

the Green River Killer's 14th victim,

she may hold the key to crack the case wide open.

[Frank]: They found a very small amount of semen

on the outside of her clothing, and that was collected

basically for a blood type analysis.

We were looking for actually a blood type,

because DNA was not a science, it was too soon.

The science was not quite there yet.

[Narrator]: In the early 1980s,

DNA analysis hasn't become standard

in criminal investigations,

so authorities preserve the sample hoping one day

it will prove the lynchpin in their case

and finally bring

the Green River Killer to justice.

[Man]: Medical examiners pick up the remains

in a relatively small bundle readying them for autopsy.

Detectives say they expected to find one skeleton

after a skull was found Saturday,

but the unexpected discovery of three has left them shaken.

[Stephanie]: Over the following weeks,

they would go on to find four more bodies

in this same area, this cluster,

and one of these women was 18-year-old Mary Bridget Meehan.

She was eight months pregnant.

[Narrator]: Unlike the other victims,

Meehan does not come from a broken home.

She was born to an Irish Catholic family.

She was very religious.

This was a very good family.

With Bridget's parents, they cared very deeply,

and they tried to protect her, but in the end,

she did end up getting in with the wrong crowd,

even though she was very smart.

Every couple of weeks,

another girl's body was turning up.

Every time you turned on the news

or opened the paper, you saw,

"New Green River Killer victim found."

[Dave]: In January of 1984, a new sheriff was appointed,

and right away said,

"We need to do something about this case,

"and we're going to put together an enhanced taks force"

because the bodies were piling up,

because we had so many leads.

We just needed help.

[Narrator]: By the end of 1984,

authorities have recovered a total of 27 bodies,

and 14 women are still missing.

Because the tip linking Gary Ridgway with Marie Malvar

is never registered with the task force,

investigators are left with one viable suspect.

Did you kill all those women or what?

No, but I wish I did.

I wish I did know who did.

I talked to the detectives and I asked,

who are your suspects?

Who's your best suspect?

And David's best suspect at the time was Melvin Foster.

[Narrator]: When Foster suddenly puts his car up for sale,

an undercover officer buys it for $1200,

hoping a thorough search will provide them

with the evidence they need.

[Dave]: We discovered nude photographs

in the trunk of his car of young prostitutes.

We found women's clothing and underwear

hidden under the mat and under the backseat.

[Amanda]: They comb it top to bottom,

but in terms of evidence, they come up with nothing.

[Narrator]: Then, in 1985,

just like that,

the killings appear to stop.

[Amanda]: A lot of times, this will happen

if a suspect was maybe arrested on other charges.

Maybe the suspect died without investigators

ever knowing who this person was.

Maybe they had a big life change that just, maybe they moved away

I mean, there are things that can happen

that kind of trigger these cooling-off periods

in a serial killer investigation.

[John]: To go from that sort of volume

to really not seeing much movement at all.

Kind of made things more difficult, you know?

People just don't stop killing out of the blue.

Serial killers continue to kill until they're caught,

so this was very hard to work with

for the Green River task force.

[Narrator]: But the killer doesn't disappear

before first passing a macabre milestone.

He becomes the most prolific serial killer in US history

with a body count in the 40s.

[Michael]: The number of bodies is almost hard for us

to even wrap our head around.

At a certain point, they stop being individuals

and it starts being a statistic.

[Frank]: It was terribly depressing,

working these cases and not solving them

and thinking there's other victims out there,

and in some way, you know, we're repsonsible for that.

I was burned out. I'd gone to too many scenes.

Too many bones, too many dead bodies.

[Narrator]: As the task force stalls,

life for Gary Ridgway heats up

when he begins dating 41-year-old Judith Mawson.

[Amanda]: Judith had been coming out of

an abusive relationship herself, and so when she meets Gary,

he's sort of like the all-American man,

and they connected immediately.

It was almost like love at first sight

between the two of them.

[Stephanie]: She thought he was handsome and strong and safe,

and he was good to her.

I think that's what attracted her more than anything,

the way he treated her,

the way that he made her feel about herself.

[Pennie]: Eventually, Judith found out that

Gary was the father of Matthew, and Judith got to know Matthew,

and she really, really liked the boy.

They went on bicycle rides, they went camping,

they went hiking.

[Narrator]: Hiking in the same woods

the Green River Killer's secretly depositing his victims.

Then, years after Marie Malvar is last seen climbing

into a dark red pickup of an unknown john,

the task force learns the identity of the man

she was last seen with: Gary Ridgway.

They also discover Ridgway had been picked up

for soliciting prostitution three years earlier in 1982.

Investigators ask Ridgway to come in for an interview,

and he readily agrees.

[Stephanie]: He had this very open tone.

He'd be like, "Hey, guys, what's going on?"

And Gary basically said,

yes, I've had sex with prostitutes before,

but I didn't kill any of them.

and then they asked him to take a polygraph.

He said, okay.

[Olivia]: It's somewhat unclear what happened with

Ridgway's polygraph, but it's been widely reported

that he passed.

It definitely wasn't the smoking gun

they were looking for, and in light of that,

they let him go.

[Narrator]: Once again, the case stalls.

That's when investigators get a surprising offer

from an unlikely ally.

[Dave]: We received a letter from Ted Bundy,

who was in prison in Starke, Florida,

and the letter said, "I've been following this case,

"and I believe that I can be of some help.

"Don't ask why I think I can be of help,

"but just know that I know I might be able to help you

"and your investigators get into the mind

"of a serial killer."

[Narrator]: At the time,

Bundy is the most notorious captured serial killer

in American history,

suspected of killing 30 women across seven states

between 1974 and 1978.

Detectives fly to Florida to meet with Bundy on death row.

[Dave]: I remember when I first met him,

and he was so excited.

Wanted to shake hands, just so, you know,

"Pleasure to meet you and have you here in my prison,"

and I remembered thinking, how many lives

has this hand squeezed out, has snuffed out?

[Narrator]: The men talked for hours,

with Bundy offering some surprising insights.

[Stephanie]: One thing that Ted Bundy did say that

he believed that the Green River Killer,

whoever he might be, could be returning to the scenes

and having sex with the dead bodies of his victims.

[Amanda]: Ted Bundy infamously is also a necrophile,

so it's almost like he could see

the monster in himself playing out in

the Green River Killer.

[Brittany]: Nobody at that point had even considered

that the Green River Killer was also a necrophile.

It's a whole different layer of disgusting.

[Narrator]: In June 1986,

the skeletal remains of 19-year-old Kimberly Nelson,

a known sex worker last seen on the Sea-Tac Strip

three years earlier,

are discovered in a wooded area 35 miles east of Seattle.

Paige Miley, Nelson's associate, tells detectives that

after her friend disappeared,

she was approached by a strange man in his mid-30s

driving a maroon pickup truck.

[Amanda]: She was actually able to sit down with investigators

and give a description of this man that led to

what was, really, the first comprehensive

usable sketch

to be presented in this case.

[Diane]: You could tell it was Gary.

It's a mirror image.

The hair, the piercing eyes, the nose, everything.

It looked just like him.

[Narrator]: Shortly after police release the sketch,

20-year-old Rebecca Garde comes forward with this claim

about a man who picked her up.

[Narrator]: Garde recalls the man was also driving

a dark-colored pickup truck with a canopy top over the bed,

and he's a dead ringer for the composite sketch.

[Stephanie]: She says, yes, that looks like my attacker,

and then she starts going through mugshots,

and she picks out the mugshot of Gary Ridgway.

[Narrator]: Based on two eyewitness accounts,

investigators believe they are zeroing in

on the Green River Killer,

37-year-old divorced dad Gary Leon Ridgway.

[John]: They had Gary's photo in the system,

and when they showed it to Paige Miley

and Rebecca Garde Guay, they said, "That's him."

[Olivia]: Rebecca coming forward with her story

and ultimately identifying Ridgway as her attacker

was really what put him in the forefront

as the prime suspect.

[Narrator]: Police immediately place Ridgway under surveillance

[Stephanie]: They followed him, they watched him,

they saw him going to the Strip, they saw him talking to women,

but he never killed anybody.

[Narrator]: On April 7th, 1987,

police search Ridgway's vehicles,

home, and work locker.

[Diane]: One of my friends called me at home and said,

"You're not gonna believe this.

"They came and got a bunch of stuff from Gary.

"They took his clothes and everything."

It felt like a punch in my stomach.

[Narrator]: Investigators comb through every item

in Gary Ridgway's possession, looking for anything

that might connect him to the murders.

The news leaves Gary's son,

Matthew, who is 12 years old at the time, confused.

[Stephanie]: Marcia told Matthew to say, "No comment,"

most likely because she didn't want him involved.

She didn't want his face on the news.

She didn't want him to be known as the son of

a potential killer, or even a suspected killer.

[Narrator]: Perhaps no one's more shocked than

Ridgway's new girlfriend, Judith Mawson.

[Judith]: He was reassuring me that everything would be okay.

It was painful.

Judith was crying.

She was sobbing into his chest and asking, "What is happening?

"Why are they talking to you?"

And she said that Gary was calm, matter-of-fact.

He just simply said, "The police are doing their job,

"and they're looking at a lot of different individuals.

"They made a mistake. "They got the wrong guy.

"Everything's gonna be fine."

[Amanda]: I can't even imagine how frustrating

this entire investigation must have been

for the task force,

because now they've had multiple strong leads,

and they have another really strong lead

pointing them to Gary Ridgway.

[Stephanie]: However, the police found nothing.

Literally nothing.

Nothing in his house, nothing in his car,

nothing in his locker, completely clean.

[Brittany]: Gary Ridgway came off as a normal loving dad,

a doting husband.

[Narrator]: One year later,

Ridgway's luck continues to improve

when he and his girlfriend Judith Mawson marry.

[Amanda]: They have a lovely little intimate wedding.

A neighbor hosted it in their yard.

One of his coworkers is his best man.

It's just a very happy joyful time.

Judith really loved Gary's son Matthew,

and Matthew spent a lot of time at the house

with Gary and Judith.

They really blended their families

in a pretty seamless and beautiful way,

and they had a lovely life together.

[Judith]: He made me feel like a newlywed every day.

[Narrator]: It seems Gary is finally ready to turn the page

on his contentious divorce with his ex.

[Brittany]: Gary shows up at Marcia's house

with a box of women's lingerie and clothing items,

and he insists that these must be things

that she left at the house, and Marcia tells him,

"Well, these are all items from a much smaller woman.

"Take them back," and he goes,

"Oh, well, I thought they were yours."

And he just leaves the box at her house

in an almost perverse way of letting her know

that he's having sex with other women.

[Narrator]: As Gary and his new bride

quietly enjoy their new life together,

the Green River task force continues to stall.

In 1989, it disbands entirely,

bringing its six-year manhunt to a painful end.

[Dave]: I was angry about that.

All those years of beating your head

against the wall with all that information.

I packed all my stuff up in a little cardboard box.

I said, well, you know, after all that effort, this is it?

[Amanda]: I think people really felt like

this was a cold case

and that they may never know what happened to these women

or who was responsible for their deaths.

[Narrator]: Nearly 40 murders remain unsolved.

Close to a decade passes without the discovery

of any new bodies.

It seems like the Green River Killer's

long shadow over the Seattle area is finally receding,

but Dave Reichert can't let it go.

In 1997, he's appointed King County Sheriff

and reopens the case.

[Dave]: The pictures of their faces

and the pictures of the sites where they were found,

they're still fresh in my mind.

To be able to be all of a sudden

be in a position now to make that decision,

we're going to solve this case.

[Narrator]: Reichert's recently heard of

a new cutting-edge technology

that might finally help crack it:

DNA testing.

[Dave]: There was a lot more discussion about DNA science

and the progression of DNA science and where it was

and the possibilities of some lab being able to examine

our DNA evidence.

[Amanda]: They were able to collect semen

from three of the victims.

They also had some DNA from the suspects.

They had some saliva.

They also had a little bit of hair.

[Narrator]: If investigators

can connect the victims' DNA samples to those

collected from their potential suspects,

it could be the smoking gun they need to bring

the mysterious killer's nearly 20-year reing of terror

to an end.

[Narrator]: Two decades after the disocvery of

the Green River Killer's first victim,

Sheriff Dave Reichert is on the verge of cracking

the deadliest cold case in American history.

[Brittany]: The crime lab called Dave Reichert

and said that they think that they have enough

to potentially make a connection.

[Narrator]: In 2001, the Washington crime lab

matches the DNA profile of the semen

found on one of the victims to a suspect.

Reichert recalls the moment he received the landmark news.

[Dave]: I looked at Tom and I said,

"Tom, are you trying to tell me that we caught the guy?"

And he just kind of smiled a little bit,

and then he reached into his pocket

and he pulled out this envelope and he handed it to me.

He says, "Yeah, Dave, and his name is in here."

I opened it up, and it's the mugshot of Ridgway

when he was arrested in early 1982

for patronizing a prostitute.

It was quite an emotional...

Quite an emotional moment.

[Narrator]: Gary Ridgway,

the unsuspecting father, husband and factory worker.

On November 30th, 2001,

after nearly two decades terrorizing the Seattle region

and captivating the nation,

investigators quietly arrest Gary Ridgway at his job

at the Kenworth truck factory.

[Amanda]: They actually just let him finish his shift,

and they confronted him as he was walking

out of the building, and allegedly,

when they read him his rights and arrested him,

he just sort of said, "Okay."

[Dave]: As he walked past me, I looked him straight in the eye,

and he looked at me, and I said, "Got you, asshole."

[Diane]: My brother called me and he said, "Guess what?

"They caught the Green River Killer!"

And I said, "His name wasn't Gary Ridgway, was it?"

And he goes, "How did you know?"

I'd been telling you, I worked with him at Kenworth!

I was one of the fooled, because he could be charming.

He could be fun, he could be helpful.

He's a very intelligent person.

[Narrator]: Police bring in

Ridgway's 26-year-old son Matthew

now serving with the Marines in California for questioning.

[Michael]: When you listen to those tapes,

Matthew's behavior and emotional range

was very underwhelming, very flat and two-dimensional.

I get the sense that Matthew was torn between

what he thought of his dad, protecting his dad

and his love for his dad versus the reality of

what was going on and trying to accept it.

[Amanda]: He couldn't fathom this man,

the man he knew, the man he loves,

being the Green River Killer. It wasn't possible to him.

[Narrator]: Gary's wife of 13 years, Judith,

is also in shock.

[Judith]: I was in shock that day when I heard someone

driving up in the driveway and...

It's-- I couldn't believe it.

I still can't believe it, but it has happened.

It was like a brick wall dropped in front of me,

and didn't know what to do.

Everything stopped.

[Frank]: When you hear this for the first time,

your reaction is, no way.

"There's no way, I know my dad,"

or, "I know my husband."

"There's absolutely no way.

"They've got this completely wrong."

So you basically have a cube, and on this side of the cube

is the killer, the hunter, the predator,

and on this side of the cube

is the father, husband, caretaker,

and it depends on which side you want to show to the person

you're dealing with.

[Narrator]: On December 18th, 2001, Ridgway enters court,

and makes this stunning declaration.

[Man]: Mr. Ridgway, his plea is not guilty to all charges.

[Amanda]: Ridgway said you don't have anything on me.

You have my DNA on prostitutes, and you already know that

I was with a lot of prostitutes. I admitted that outright,

so why wouldn't my DNA be found on them?

[Narrator]: Prosecutors know DNA evidence alone

will not be enough for a conviction,

but they have another ace up their sleeve.

When investigators examined the work coveralls Ridgway wore

while spraypainting trucks at his job,

they notice small specks of paint.

They then reexamine the clothing

and ligatures recovered from several victims

and discover similar paint specks.

[Brittany]: It was a very specific

kind of paint that was high-end

and only found on trucks

and essentially what Gary did for a living,

and that confirmed that he had killed Wendy Coffield,

Debra Bonner, and Debra Estes.

[Dave]: The paint evidence,

it blew the defense attorney away.

Then they came to us and said, "We want to make a deal."

[Narrator]: But police are only able to connect Ridgway

to seven of his nearly suspected 50 victims.

[Olivia]: Detectives and prosecutors realized

the only way we are going to be able to get

the confirmation for the victims' families,

the only way we're gonna be able to truly close these cases

is if he confesses.

[Dave]: So we ended up making a deal with the devil.

[Narrator]: Prosecutors tell Ridgway if he will make

a full confession and help them recover

the bodies of any other victims,

they won't push for the death penalty.

[Brittany]:Despite the fact that he killed so many other people,

Gary Ridgway was absolutely afraid of dying,

and so the only way to live was to tell the truth,

then he would do that.

[Narrator]: On Father's Day, 2003,

Ridgway leads investigators

to the remains of three additional victims,

including that of Marie Malvar, last seen with Ridgway

when she disappeared in April 1983.

[Olivia]: It really came full circle because

Marie was, really, the first victim

to point investigators in Ridgway's direction

all those years ago when her boyfriend and her father

found Ridgway's truck.

[Amanda]: Looking back now, investigators believe that

Marie may have been present in that home at the time

that police came to question him.

They were just so close so many times,

it's heartbreaking.

[Narrator]: Five months later,

Gary Ridgway finally brings the case to a close.

Guilty. Guilty.

Guilty.

[Narrator]: When he pleads guilty

to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder.

Judith was sitting on the sofa in her home

holding hands with her best friend,

and together, they watched Gary say those words,

"Guilty, guilty, guilty."

She told me that when she saw the tears

running down Gary's face, she saw his lips quivering,

and she thought, "My god, this is it.

"He really is a killer."

You son of a bitch. Why did you do this to me?

Why did you put me through all this?

- [Man]: Good afternoon, Gary. - Afternoon.

[Narrator]: With the Green River Killer now unmasked,

prosecutors and investigators spend the next five months

plumbing the depraved depths of his mind.

[Stephanie]: It's not even so much what he said,

it was the way he said it.

It was so matter-of-fact, so level,

like he was talking about what he had for lunch.

[Amanda]: He's so disconnected and so nonchalant

about his crimes that just seeing him on a screen

makes me feel sick to my stomach.

[Narrator]: Ridgway then makes an even more shocking claim.

His body count isn't 49 women.

It's nearly 70.

And his most disturbing revelantion is yet to come.

- [Man]: Good afternoon, Gary. - Afternoon.

[Narrator]: After admitting to killing 70 women

during his two-decade rampage,

Gary Ridgway finally comes clean about a victim

detectives originally debated was even one of his kills:

single mother Carol Anne Christensen,

who Ridgway now admits to killing and dressing backwards

and posing with food items.

And in another revelation, Ridgway confesses that,

unlike all his other victims,

he and Carol Anne had actually been dating.

[Amanda]: I think they were on maybe their third date.

They'd had consensual sex. She was, you know,

gonna be running late for her shift,

and they were engaged in sexual activity.

She said, you know, "Hey, I have to get going.

"Can you hurry up?" And he completely lost his mind.

[Narrator]: While Ridgway has almost a photographic memory

for the locations where he dumped the 49 bodies,

he remembers little about the women themselves.

[Stephanie]: He didn't look at these women or these young girls

as human beings.

He said that they knew they were gonna die

and they begged for their lives. He didn't care.

[Katherine]: Ridgway put sex workers into a category.

They were worthless.

There was no reason to have any empathy for them

because they were society's throwaways.

[Mark]: All he cared about was the pleasure

and the power that he got from killing them,

and then they were just like objects to be used

and trash to be discarded when he was done with them.

[Man]: Morning.

[Narrator]: Investigators continue probing Ridgway's mind,

hoping to discover what turned him into one of

the most prolific serial killers in history.

He cites his experience with sex workers

while stationed in the Philippines

during the Vietnam War as part of his motivation.

[Narrator]: Ridgway also reveals that it was the breakup

of his second marriage to Marcia and his loss of custody

to Matthew that really pushed him over the edge.

[Katherine]: There's a misunderstanding

that psychopaths have no emotion.

They have a lot of emotions: anger,

um, arrogance.

They certainly can develop relationships.

How deep do their emotions go?

How deep do their feelings go to their kids? We don't know.

[Narrator]: Ridgway also claims that meeting Judith Mawson,

his current wife, in 1985 curbed his urge to kill.

[Amanda]: There was definitely something about Judith

that tapped into some tiny

bit of humanity in Gary.

Gary told me, um, in an interview

that he loved Judith and he thought she was

the best woman for him, and he even told me that

if he had met her earlier,

maybe he wouldn't have killed as many women.

I asked Judith over and over,

"Did you ever witness Gary losing his temper?

"Did he mistreat you?"

And she said, "Pennie, being married to Gary

"was the absolute best time of my life.

"He never mistreated me."

It was completely unbelievable to her

that the other Gary existed.

[Katherine]: Judith wouldn't see any signs because

what signs would we be looking for?

He's not psychotic.

Most of the signs are things that we get out of

serial killer fiction and film.

Those are not signs in ordinary relationships.

[Stephanie]: Gary was incredibly successful

at convincing the world that he was Ned Flanders,

that he was completely harmless, that he was just a nice guy

and a good family man.

[Diane]: How did he keep his shit together?

How did he keep himself so hidden during those times

going back to his wife and coming to work

and talking with us?

I'm thinking he was in a battle.

He was in a battle for good and evil,

and evil usually won.

[Narrator]: Gary also confirms

fellow serial killer Ted Bundy's shocking prediction to police.

He had in fact returned to some of his victim's corpses.

Necrophilia is all about power and control,

which is all Gary was seeking his entire life.

And if you have sex with a live human,

they can say no. They can reject you.

A dead body can't do that.

He had ownership and control over those women.

[Narrator]: Ridgway admits that his desire to kill

quickly became an urge he simply could not control.

[Stephanie]: Killing women, strangling women,

he was good at it, and it was his career,

and he was proud of it.

He really thought he was the best serial killer out there.

[Narrator]: Just when investigators think

it can't get any worse,

Ridgway drops his biggest bombshell yet.

To help accomplish his unspeakable objectives,

the evil father used the person closest to him:

his son, Matthew.

[Amanda]: Gary, from the outside, looked so normal

that it was almost impossible to imagine that anything else

could've been going on.

[Narrator]: Not only could Ridgway control his two worlds,

he could also merge them to achieve his unspeakable ends.

To appear less threatening,

the father would occasionally take his young son Matthew

with him to help lure his victims.

[Narrator]: Detectives ask Gary what he would have done

if Matthew had gotten out of the truck and seen him.

His response is chilling.

[Katherine]: Would he have, who knows,

but that he gave thought to that that his ability to keep doing

what he was doing was far more important

than his son's life.

That tells me that he doesn't have

a deep sense of attachment to his son.

His son is expendable.

Mr. Ridgway, the time has come for the final chapter

of your reign of terror in our community.

Today has been a long time coming

for the brutal murders that you committed.

[Narrator]: One month after Ridgway pleads guilty,

he's sentenced to 48 consecutive life sentences

with no possibility of parole.

[Olivia]: They made sure that

he would never, ever get out of prison.

They knew that he would spend the rest of his life behind bars

[Narrator]: During that hearing, several of the victim's families

stand and condemn Ridgway for his unconscionable actions.

[Woman]: Today is not about Gary Ridgway,

but about my sister, Cynthia Jean Hinds,

and the other 47 women whose lives he chose to take.

For the 20-some-odd years, my family and I,

our lives have been like a rollercoaster, but today,

that rollercoaster has ended.

[Carol]: She was just a immature teenager

trying to find her way in life before it was snuffed out

by Gary Ridgway.

I will never forgive him for that.

He's gonna go to Hell, and that's where he belongs.

[Woman]: I was only five when my mother died,

when my dad told me that she was never coming home.

I found out on Mother's Day.

[Woman]: Gisele was a wonderful, caring, loving young girl.

A few months after she disappeared,

I received a phone call saying they found her body.

We miss her every day, and it will never stop.

Not a day goes by over these years

that I haven't wondered what she would've become.

[Man]: There are many things I would like to say about

my sister, Mary Meehan, and the short life she had,

but I feel it would fall upon

deaf ears from the one individual

Gary Ridgway who needs to hear it the most.

He doesn't care.

He could care less.

[Woman]: You've robbed me of my oldest sister.

You've robbed my son of his auntie.

You offered her a ride and persuaded her

to get into your car.

May God have no mercy on your soul.

You're, in one word, evil.

[Woman]: I heard that she struggled for her life,

and I told my mom, I said,

how am I supposed to live knowing that?

How am I supposed to go through this life

knowing that in my mind?

It was devastating to listen to.

The impact statements were obviously emotional.

There were moments where it almost appeared that

Gary Ridgway himself was getting emotional

about some of these victims.

I'm sorry for killing these ladies.

They had their whole lives ahead of them.

I'm sorry for causing so much pain to so many families.

One of the moments that really struck me

was the father who told Ridgway, "I forgive you."

Mr. Ridgway, um...

There are people here that hate you.

I'm not one of them.

I forgive you for what you've done.

You've made it difficult to live up to

what I believe,

and it is what God says to do,

and that's to forgive.

And He doesn't say to forgive just certain people.

He says to forgive all, so you are forgiven, sir.

And seeing Ridgway actually have an emotional reaction to that,

I think that was profound.

[Amanda]: Gary was sort of forced in that moment

to feel the weight of what he had done.

[Man]: And looking at your life,

it comes as no surprise that you had

such little disregard for the lives of your victims.

You violated the sanctity of every relationship

in your life, including your own son.

When he was of a tender age,

you even used his existence and presence as a means

to gain confidence of your victims.

[Narrator]: In the years since Ridgway's conviction,

other skeletal remains have been found

in wooded areas surrounding Seattle.

Some believe they are Ridgway's additional victims.

[Amanda]: I don't know if we'll ever know

the exact magnitude of Gary Ridgway's kills.

He was put away for 48, he confessed to upwards of 75.

My instinct is to believe that that's true,

but that's something that we just may never

get the answer to.

[Stephanie]: I'm sure there are certain places

where more victims of his are, but he kept those to himself.

It's his little secret, something to hold on to

as he sits in his cell for the rest of his life,

knowing his precious property is out there not being disturbed

by law enforcement or human hands of any kind.

[Narrator]: Whatever secrets Gary Ridgway still has,

he will likely take to his grave.

The 73-year-old serial killer continues serving

his life sentence in solitary confinement

at the Washington State Penitentary in Walla Walla.

Not much is known about his son Matthew

or his wife Marcia.

Both avoid the public spotlight.

And Gary's third wife, Judith, has cnanged her name

and lives in an undisclosed location,

all because of the sins of the father.

[Man]:This was your life, right? You were the Green River Killer.

[Gary]: I don't know how I get it out of my head

to get it to you.

It didn't mean anything to me,

just killing them and get rid of 'em.

[Man]: But I know as you walk out of this courtroom

at the end of the day,

after Mr. Ridgway has been sentenced and gone,

I know that your heart will still be heavy with sorrow.

I ask you to remember those 48 young women

as people who had unexplored dreams,

hopes, aspirations and families that loved them deeply.

Hold on to those memories, cherish those memories,

and try to abandon the others.

Mr. Ridgway, I trust that your lawyers have shared with you

the letters written by the victim families.

I hope you read those letters and I hope you heard the message

of their families as they poured out

their emotions then and today describing the young victims

as real persons,

real persons who were loved and had lives in front of them.

While you could not face them as you took their lives,

if you have a drop of emotion anywhere in your existence,

you will face those young women in your dreams

and private thoughts of your grisly deeds,

and sir, if you have that drop of emotion,

you will be haunted for the balance of your life.