Gary Ridgway

Gary Ridgway

Debbie May Abernathy,,
victim

Biography
Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949. He painted trucks for a truck company. He was married three times. Gary’s previous wives have claimed that he had a bad temper and he had tried to strangle one of them. While he was a teenager, he approached a young boy playing alone in a field near his house. He befriended the boy and gained his trust, only to stab him and flee. Luckily, the young boy was able to get medical help, and he survived. , and those who knew him in his childhood will say that he was a disturbed boy.

Murder
On August 15, 1982, the two dead bodies were found in the Green River in Seattle. These were the first victims of the infamous Green River Killer. Throughout the eighties and possibly into the early nineties, there were dozens of bodies found throughout Washington. All of the bodies were young, pretty, female, and most of them were prostitutes. All were strangled to death, and most of them were raped. The police even found some evidence that suggested that some of the women were sexually violated after they were killed. The police had no clue who the Green River Killer was for almost twenty years. But with the help of witnesses, including a woman who had escaped Gary’s attempted murder, he became a suspect. By the late nineties, forensic science had greatly improved. Semen that had been collected near where three of Gary’s victims were found was compared with Gary’s DNA. The samples matched. Combining the DNA with other evidence the police had collected, they felt confident and ready to arrest Gary for the murders of Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman, Carol Christensen, and Cynthia Hinds. After some intensive work, the police finally convinced Gary to confess in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. He pled guilty to forty eight murders, although the police suspect that there were more than that. Even Gary admitted that he was not sure of how many women he had killed. Today, police are still slowly uncovering the remains of Gary’s victims, and there is no doubt that he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

-page author: Anna
-left photo courtesy of www.metrokc.gov
-right photo is public domain