13. The Serial Killer Addicted to Prostitutes
Gary Ridgway (1949 – ) was obsessed with prostitutes in the worst possible way: he could not get enough of killing them. Born in Salt Lake City, Ridgway grew up in a poor neighborhood, raised by parents who often engaged in violent arguments. He had a bed-wetting problem until he was 13, and whenever he wet the sheets, Ridgway’s mother would wash his genitals. He informed psychologists that in his teens, he had been sexually attracted to his mother, even as he fantasized about killing her. His father, a bus driver, was given to complain about the proliferation of prostitutes in and around the neighborhood. The end result of that background was that Ridgway, also known as “The Green River Killer”, ended up convicted of killing 48 women, most of them prostitutes, and eventually confessed to killing 71.
Violent Beginnings
A dyslexic with an IQ in the 80s, Ridgway’s violent criminality began in the 1960s, when at age 16, he led a 6-year-old boy into the woods and stabbed him in the liver. The child survived and described Ridgway walking away laughing. After high school, Ridgway was drafted and sent to Vietnam. Upon his discharge, he got a job painting trucks, and spent 30 years doing that. A family man, although one who had trouble keeping a marriage going, he was married three times. Ridgway was also a regular churchgoer, described by many who knew him as a religious fanatic. He was also into hookers, and long before he started killing them, he was a frequent customer of prostitutes.