12. Ridgway’s Serial Killing
Ridgway began killing in the early 1980s, when he started picking up prostitutes, teenage runaways, and other vulnerable women, along Route 99 in King County, Washington, and taking them home. There, he usually choked them to death with his bare hands, but sometimes, just to switch things up, he garroted them with a cord or wire. He dumped the bodies in remote forested areas, and often returned to the corpses to have sex with them. Authorities suspected that a serial killer was on the loose when sex workers and teenage runaways started disappearing along Route 99. After the first five bodies surfaced in the Green River, the press dubbed the unknown culprit “The Green River Killer”. In 1987, suspicion fell upon Ridgway when many prostitutes working Route 99 – which he drove to and from work – gave descriptions of a suspect who resembled him.
The Truth Comes Out
Investigators discovered that the disappearance of many victims coincided with Ridgway’s days off work. He was taken into police custody, but passed a polygraph test, and allowed investigators to take hair and saliva samples. Released for lack of evidence, he was soon back on the prowl. Finally, in 2001, a new generation of detectives began making effective use of computers in investigating the Green River Killer. They also had access to modern DNA techniques that had not existed in the 1980s. When Ridgway’s hair and saliva samples, carefully preserved since 1987, were sent for DNA analysis, they returned a match tying him to 4 victims. He was arrested, and entered a plea bargain in which he disclosed the locations of dozens of still-missing women. In exchange, he was spared the death penalty, and was sentenced instead to life in prison without the possibility of parole.