He lives alone. Never married and failed in relationships with women.” – Theodore Robert Bundy regarding the identity of the Green River Killer, 1984.

Gary Leon Ridgway was born February 18, 1949 to Thomas and Mary (nee Steinman)ma Ridgway of Salt Lake City, Utah. The family eventually relocated to Washington state where Thomas got a job as a bus driver and would frequently complain about the presence of sex workers on his driving route. His mother was employed as a sales clerk at JCPenney’s and was frequently called domineering by the people around her. Gary was the middle child and had two brothers (Gregory Leon born in November 1947 and Thomas Edward) and it’s widely known that his older sibling Gregory was the family favorite. It’s often theorized that he felt inferior to him, who ran for student office while in high school and went on to major in physics at Studied Physics Major at the University of Washington. In comparison, Gary was diagnosed with dyslexia, was held back twice in school, and had an IQ in the low 80’s. An attorney for the prosecution, Patty Eakes was able to shed some insight into Ridgway’s state of mind, claiming the only time she ever saw him express any sort of real emotions was when talking about his own intelligence: ‘he was so obviously limited, intellectually. The one time he genuinely cried was when he talked about how afraid he was of being put on the ‘short bus.’ I suspect that having a brilliant brother was a big thing that shaped him. Gary’s the troubled one, not the smart one. I suspect that was a big issue for him throughout his life. Perhaps being a killer of women was something he could succeed at.’ … ‘He came from a very middle-class family. There was nothing really that remarkable about him.’

Aside from feeling inferior to his older brother, Ridgway’s home life was considered incredibly dysfunctional: he was a chronic bed-wetter until the age of 13, and after each episode Mrs. Ridgway would wash her sons’ genitals. He would later tell psychologists that he had both feelings of extreme rage and sexual attraction toward her, and often fantasized about killing her. Some behavioral scientists feel that his crimes may have been a case of ‘displaced matricide’ and he was unconsciously ‘killing his mother over and over again’ even though he didn’t actually take her life.

Gary graduated from Tyee High School in 1969 at twenty years old and the following year married Claudia Kraig, his longtime sweetheart. He then joined the Navy and served onboard a supply ship after being sent to Vietnam. During his time in the service Ridgway was frequently unfaithful to his new wife, often engaging in activities with sex workers. Despite becoming angry after contracting gonorrhea, he continued his risky behavior without using any sort of barrier protection; the couple divorced in 1972. Ridgway wasn’t single for long and married Martha Wilson in 1973. This relationship also ended in divorce because of his frequent infidelity. He encouraged Wilson to participate in risqué activities like sex in locations where he dumped some of his victims and she even accused him of putting her in a chokehold at some point during their marriage. Ridgway shared a son with her they named Matthew (b. 1975), and reportedly had him in his truck during some of the murders that took place on the weekends. He later admitted to detectives that if his son would have developed any sort of inkling as to what was going on he would have killed him immediately to silence him.

After returning from Vietnam, Ridgway got a job painting semis at the Kenworth Trucking Company, and in 1982 bought his house on 32nd Place South. The same year, teenage runaways and prostitutes began disappearing from major roadways throughout King County, Washington. Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, Ridgway confessed to murdering at least 71 teenage girls and women in the Seattle/Tacoma area (although that number is speculated to be about 90 or more). In order to gain their trust and lower their defenses, on occasion Ridgway would show the women a picture of his son. After a few minutes of sexual intercourse from ‘behind,’ he would often strangle his victims by wrapping his forearm tightly around their necks, then use his other arm to pull back as tightly as he could. Ridgway killed the majority of his victims in his home then dumped their remains in wooded areas. Multiple bodies wound up making their way to the river and eventually washed up to shore, giving him the nickname ‘The Green River Killer.’ Ridgway would frequently contaminate the crime scenes with gum and cigarette butts (even though he wasn’t a smoker or a gum chewer) just to throw law enforcement off his trail. He would also dump his victims body in one place, leave it for a while, then return and transport it to a second location in order to create a false trail; at least two of his victims were transported as far away as Portland, Oregon.

In the early 1980’s, the King County Sheriff’s Office formed the ‘Green River Task Force.’ In November 1984, Ted Bundy contacted the department after seeing an article in a local newspaper about the Green River case. The doomed serial killer was on death row when the murders began in 1982, and a part of me thinks he was jealous of the attention that ‘the Riverman’ was receiving, as he was no longer in the spotlight. So, six years into his death sentence Bundy sent a 22-page letter to King County chief criminal investigators Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert asking if they’d like his assistance to help solve the Green River case. In the letter, Bundy said: ‘don’t ask me why I believe I’m an expert in this area, just accept that I am and we’ll start from there.’ Regarding being contacted by Bundy, Dr. Keppel said: ‘it was a letter from a ‘wanna-be’ consultant and the most unlikely person I ever expected to be of assistance in the Green River murders. The letter came from a cell on death row in Florida; the sender was Theodore Robert Bundy. I was stunned.’ Turns out I was right about my jealousy theory: Keppel and Reichert both stated that they sensed a bit of jealousy from Ted regarding the GRK stealing his thunder. At the time Bundy sent the letter to detectives he was still the primary suspect in many unsolved homicides across multiple states. Because of this, the two detectives accepted the serial killer’s ‘help’ when in actuality they were only interested in seeing if they could get any sort of information regarding their unsolved cases.

In 1972, Bundy graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, and around 1974 young girls and women in the general Seattle area started disappearing. There were rumblings of an attractive young man wearing an arm sling or using crutches as a ruse to help lure pretty young coeds into his car by asking for assistance. After he made a mistake at Lake Sammamish on July 14, 1974 by not only taking two victims on the same day (from the same place) AND using his real name, he quickly left the area and enrolled in law school at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. We all know he was eventually pulled over and arrested there on August 16, 1975. After Bundy escaped not once but twice, he fled to Florida where he was eventually caught after killing Chi Omega sisters Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman as well as sweet little 12-year-old Kimberly Leach.

Two years before Bundy ‘created’ his criminal profile of the GRK, in 1982 FBI Special Agent John E. Douglas had already come up with his own profile that was fairly accurate and mentioned a few key points: the unsub was a divorced, white male who drove an older model vehicle. He often visited with sex workers and was very familiar with the area where he disposed of the bodies. Douglas also felt the killer was somewhere between the ages of 25-35, and it just so happens that at the beginning of his rampage Gary Ridgway was 33-years-old. However, a profile is not considered to be evidence, simply a tool used to help narrow down a list of suspects. Despite Bundy’s impact on the Ridgway case being completely overblown, numerous movies, documentaries, and books have been made over the years simply for the sake of shock value. This is a great example as to how Ted’s capabilities and ‘intelligence’ is frequently exaggerated for the sake of a good story. For some, the idea of a serial killer helping track down another serial killer is straight out of a movie, and the fact that it may have sort-of happened is far too fascinating to be thwarted by facts.

Ted also theorized to Keppel and Reichert that the GRK was returning to his dump sites to have ‘intimate relations’ with his victims: ‘I think he might be … intending to return to the scene to either view his victim, or in fact, interact with the body in some way.’ He went on to tell the detectives that if they ever stumbled upon a ‘fresh grave’ they should stake it out and wait for him to come back. During his allocution, Ridgway admitted that he did indeed return to his victims’ remains and violated their corpses. Bundy also told the detectives that they could possibly catch the killer if they staked out his old dump sites, and Keppel admitted they did that but the media would often show up and blow their cover.

Reichert: ‘Do you think that he parks his vehicle?’
Bundy: ‘Oh sure and just watches. My feelings about the guy is he’s very low key and inoffensive.’ He went on to say: ‘I think there’s an excellent chance that he picked up a number of prostitutes that he has later released for any number of reasons. He knows what these girls are like and what they need. Employment, money, or drugs.’

Once again, Bundy got it right: after he was in custody, Ridgway did share with detectives that he not only would park his pickup truck and watch the prostitutes walk by, but he also promised some of them extra cash or a chance of ‘honest’ employment, even going so far as to staying in touch with few of them by the phone. They were all empty promises, and not a single one was fulfilled.

Bundy also advised Keppel and Reichert that the police department most likely already had contact with the perpetrator of these heinous crimes at some point in the past, saying: ‘there’s a chance this guy has already been reported. Field card here, arrested there, reported over here, license plate shows up over here.’ Again, Bundy got another trait correct: in the 1980’s, Ridgway came into contact with the police at least ten times. Some matters were routine but others involved some of his victims.

One victim did stand out to Ted as not being a victim of the GRK: Amina Agisheff, saying, ‘it seems to me those circumstances, but not necessarily, eliminates Agisheff as a victim of the Riverman. This is most likely because at 36 she was older than many of the other victims, and the minute amount of time between Agisheff’s disappearance and that of Wendy Coffield.’ When Ridgway was in custody, detectives inquired about an unsolved murder just to see if he would confess; he denied it saying, ‘why if it isn’t mine? Because I have pride ….. in what I do, I don’t wanna take it from anybody else.’

About the convicted serial killer, Keppel said ‘Bundy was right on the money all the way around. He knew what to expect out of this guy. That’s the experience of a real killer.’ Reichert commented that Bundy had several traits in common with Ridgway, especially regarding his mindset: ‘first off, there’s no remorse. He doesn’t have any feelings toward anybody, his family included. And that’s what I saw in Bundy and what I saw in Ridgway.’ In an interview with the New York Times, Reichert said: ‘like Mr. Bundy… Mr. Ridgway craved attention and control and was prideful when discussing his killings.’

In 1985, Ridgway started seeing Judith Mawson after they met at the White Shutters Tavern; he eventually made her his third wife in 1988. Mawson claimed in a 2010 TV interview that when she moved into his house the floors were bare and there was no carpet. Detectives told her that Ridgway most likely wrapped a body in the carpet and never bothered to replace it. He did in fact bring most of his victims back to his house before murdering them. In that same interview, Mawson mentioned that her husband would frequently leave for work very early in the morning on some days, telling her it was for ‘overtime.’ She theorized that Gary must have committed some of his atrocities while allegedly working this early morning OT. Judith went on to say that she had no knowledge of his activities until she was contacted by detectives in 1987, even claiming to have had no knowledge of the Green River Killer at all due to the fact that she did not watch the news or read the paper.

During an interview with writer Pennie Morehead in prison, Ridgway pointed out that while he was married to Mawson his kill rate greatly decreased due to the fact that he was happy and genuinely loved her. In fact, of the 49 women he slaughtered he only killed three while he was involved with Judith. In an interview with the same reporter, Mawson said: ‘I feel I have saved lives … by being his wife and making him happy.’ She at one time called Ridgway the ‘perfect husband’ and that despite being together for 17 years he always treated their relationship as if they were newlyweds. Ridgway did confess he was tempted to kill Mawson on multiple occasions, and the feeling only passed when he realized it would have increased the odds of him getting caught. Despite his psychopathic tendencies, Ridgway did admit that he loved his wife.

Gary Ridgway’s first attempt at murder wasn’t a very successful one: he was sixteen and went after a six-year-old boy in his neighborhood. The children weren’t fighting or disagreeing about anything in any capacity: they were just two kids from the same neighborhood that had just met moments earlier. The young boy was close to home when Ridgway asked if he wanted to go build a fort in the wooded area nearby. Moments later, he stabbed the child in his midsection, puncturing his liver. ‘Why did you kill me?’ the young child implored to Ridgway, who simply laughed and answered, ‘I always wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone.’ He served no jail time for this crime. About this, Ridgway told Bob Keppel, ‘a boy was playing and I stabbed him inside. Didn’t kill him…. I just took the knife outta my pocket and stabbed him in the ah, side…I wanted to see how to stab somebody.’

Many of Ridgway’s victims were known to be sex workers, teenage runaways, and women in other vulnerable circumstances. After the first five bodies were pulled out of the river the press granted him the nickname ‘The Green River Killer.’ Ridgway typically strangled his victims by hand but on occasion would use ligatures. After taking their lives, he would leave their bodies in overgrown, wooded areas in King County, often returning to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them. As a side note, this sounds almost exactly like behavior Bundy participated in. Ridgway was originally convicted of 48 murders, however in 2011 one more conviction was added to the count, bringing the total number up to 49. This helped establish him as the second most prolific serial killer in United States history. The first is Samuel Little, who confessed to the murders of 93 women across multiple states between 1970 and 2005. He died in prison in 2020.

Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 on charges related to soliciting prostitution. He officially became a suspect in the Green River killings in April 1983 when 18-year-old Marie Malvar disappeared after being seen getting into a truck that looked exactly like Ridgways. Her pimp and boyfriend Robert Woods remembered the vehicle because of the way it ‘sped up:’ from his experience, Johns usually drove away much slower. The following day, Woods and Malvar’s father went looking for the mystery pickup and found it parked outside of Ridgway’s house in his SeaTac neighborhood. Unfortunately, there was not enough evidence for police to arrest him, and of course he denied any contact with the missing teenager. Even though police had no evidence to prove he was lying it did help put Ridgway on their radar.

It wasn’t until June 1983 when Keli Kay McGinness was last seen getting in a pickup truck that looked exactly like Ridgways that he was officially bumped up to a ‘top priority’ suspect. After the 18-year-old vanished without a trace, law enforcement immediately zeroed in on Ridgway and got a search warrant for his house, and despite searching the property with a fine-toothed comb there was not enough evidence found to incriminate him in any crimes. In 1984 Ridgway was administered a polygraph test and passed. On April 7, 1987, law enforcement obtained warrants for samples of his hair and saliva, which was used to successfully match him to semen left behind at the crime scenes.

Roughly 20 years after being identified as a potential suspect in the Green River murder case, on November 30, 2001 Gary Leon Ridgway was arrested as he was leaving his place of employment. He was officially charged for the brutal slayings of four women thanks to DNA evidence as well as paint flecks found at the crime scenes and at his job. A forensic scientist found microscopic particles that matched a specific brand and composition of spray paint he used at his job during the specific time period when these victims were killed.The four victims were Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Ann Christensen. This means it was actually science that led to Ridgway’s arrest, NOT Ted Bundy’s criminal profile. In March 2003 three more victims were added to the indictment: Wendy Coffield, Debra Bonner, and Debra Estes.

As part of his plea bargain arrangement, Ridgway was given a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He was spared the death penalty on the condition that he tell law enforcement where he left the bodies of his victims. He took law enforcement to the locations of where he dumped several of his victims, even sharing with them intimate details on how he killed each one. On December 18, 2003, Ridgway was sentenced to 48 consecutive life sentences at the Washington State Penitentiary; ten additional years were added to each sentence for the crime of tampering with evidence which increased his prison term by 480 years. In 2011, a 49th body was discovered and linked to the Green River killer, adding another life sentence to his already absurdly long term. Gary Ridgway took the lives of more people than Jeffrey Dahmer, Son of Sam, and BTK combined.

Keppel stated, “Our man Ridgway is as clever or maybe even cleverer than Bundy ever thought he was. Because this guy has a methodology to him that is unprecedented anywhere. Try and find a killer that’s gone on as long as he had, as intense as he did, with the apparent ability to turn the faucet on and off any length of time that he wants.”

Ted Bundy was put to death in Florida’s electric chair in January 1989 and wasn’t alive to see the capture of the Green River Killer; he’ll never know how accurate his profile of the serial killer was. Dr. Robert Keppel wrote the book “The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer” about his time spent with the serial killer, and where Bundy didn’t really aide law enforcement in solving the case of “the Riverman,” he was pretty spot on regarding his profile. Unlike Bundy, Gary Ridgway is alive today and is currently 72 years old. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. In Thomas Harris’s 1988 best selling novel “Silence of Lambs,” Bundy was used as inspiration for the villainous Buffalo Bill, who feigned injury when approaching women asking for help before knocking them out then abducting them. Like Buffalo Bill, one of Bundy’s primary methods of killing was strangling his victims. Although Harris has not publicly spoken about the similarities between his fictional killer and Ted Bundy, he did attended parts of Bundy’s Florida trial and even sent him a copy of Red Dragon, which introduced the character of Hannibal Lecter.

Ted Bundy was put to death in Florida’s electric chair in January 1989 and wasn’t alive to see the capture of the Green River Killer. Gary Ridgway is alive as of September 2023 and is currently 74 years old. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. Truthfully, before I started this article I didn’t know much about him; I knew he was married three times but I was shocked to learn he fathered a child. I dug a little deeper into Matthew Ridgway and was a little surprised to learn he wasn’t like Bundy’s daughter Rose/a, and has done some interviews with the media. I want to mention an article I found about Matthew, who remembers a very different version of his father than the one depicted on TV… To him, Gary Leon Ridgway was just ‘Dad’: a frugal, chill man who rarely yelled or raised his voice. That helped teach him how to play sports and never missed one of his baseball or soccer games. The day after his dad was arrested, Matthew told investigators: ‘even when I was in fourth grade, when I was with soccer, he’d always, you know, be there for me… I don’t think I ever remember him not being there.’ He told detectives that he had no idea who his father really was until he was 24 years old, after he was arrested. Gary Ridgway had given him a normal and happy childhood, something that he would always be thankful for. After high school Matthew joined the Marines, got married, and now works as a trained chef. Gary’s father Thomas passed away in 1998 at the age of 71 and his mother died on August 15, 2001.