33 Facts About Gary Ridgway

Gary Ridgway killed many teenage girls and women in the US state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s.

Gary Ridgway strangled his victims, usually by hand but sometimes using ligatures.

Gary Ridgway had been a suspect in the murders since 1982 when he was arrested for prostitution, however investigators were unable to link him to the murders at that time.

Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18,1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the second of Mary and Thomas Ridgway's three sons.

Gary Ridgway had a bed-wetting problem until he was 13, and his mother would wash his genitals after every episode.

Gary Ridgway is dyslexic, and was held back a year in high school.

Gary Ridgway had led the boy into the woods and then stabbed him through the ribs into his liver.

Gary Ridgway's IQ was recorded as being in the "low eighties".

Gary Ridgway graduated from Tyee High School in 1969 and married his 19-year-old high school girlfriend, Claudia Kraig.

Gary Ridgway joined the United States Navy and was sent to Vietnam, where he served on board a supply ship and saw combat.

Gary 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.

Gary Ridgway frequently complained about their presence in his neighborhood, but he took advantage of their services regularly.

Some have speculated that Gary Ridgway was torn between his lusts and his staunch religious beliefs.

In court statements, Gary Ridgway later reported that he had killed so many that he lost count.

Gary Ridgway sometimes showed the women a picture of his son, to trick them into trusting him.

Gary Ridgway killed most victims in his home, his truck, or a secluded area.

Gary 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.

Gary Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 on charges related to prostitution.

Gary Ridgway became a suspect in the Green River killings in 1983.

Around 1985, Gary Ridgway began dating Judith Mawson, who became his third wife in 1988.

Gary Ridgway 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.

On November 30,2001, Gary Ridgway was at the Kenworth truck factory, where he worked as a spray painter, when police arrived to arrest him.

Gary Ridgway was arrested on suspicion of murdering four women nearly 20 years earlier after first being identified as a potential suspect, when DNA evidence conclusively linked semen left in the victims to the saliva swab taken by the police.

Early in August 2003, Seattle television news reported that Gary Ridgway had been moved from a maximum security cell at King County Jail to an Airway Heights Minimum-Medium Security Level Tank.

On November 5,2003, Gary Ridgway entered a guilty plea to 48 charges of aggravated first degree murder as part of a plea bargain, agreed to in June, that would spare him execution in exchange for his cooperation in locating the remains of his victims and providing other details.

Gary Ridgway was sentenced to an additional 10 years for tampering with evidence for each of the 48 victims, adding 480 years to his 48 life sentences.

On November 23,2005, the Associated Press reported that a weekend hiker found the skull of one of the 48 women Gary Ridgway admitted murdering in his 2003 plea bargain with King County prosecutors.

Gary Ridgway confessed to more confirmed murders than any other American serial killer.

Gary Ridgway was placed in solitary confinement at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla in January 2004.

In September 2015, after a public outcry and discussions with Governor Jay Inslee, Corrections Secretary Bernie Warner announced that Gary Ridgway would be transferred back to Washington to be "easily accessible" for open murder investigations.

Gary Ridgway was returned by chartered plane to Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla from USP Florence High, on October 24,2015.

Gary Ridgway's victims were not of any specific race or ethnicity; rather, they were all financially poor, and except for three of them, were all younger women and girls between the ages of 14 and 26 whom he found in vulnerable circumstances, often working as prostitutes or having run away from home.

In each case, either Gary Ridgway did not confess to the victim's death, or authorities have not been able to corroborate their suspicion with reliable evidence.