Ash

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Elena

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.

Ash

I'm Ash.

Elena

And this is morbid.

Ash

I've been here before.

Elena

We have been here before. And just right off the bat this. I've decided to combine the last two episodes into one giant episode.

Ash

You're about to get the biggest episode of all time.

Elena

Because I know sometimes you're like, I

Ash

just want to hear the.

Elena

Like, I want to know how this pans out. And I want to see him caught because, you guys know he gets caught.

Ash

I'm actually excited for myself because while I would have been down for either, I really want to hear about him getting caught because I hate him.

Elena

That's the thing. So when I was going through this and I was separating it out into the last two episodes, I said, well, this episode, episode four, technically, is going to be a lot of more, you know, some more victims, and it's kind of gonna be more of like a, you know, a bummer.

Ash

And, like.

Elena

And by the end of it, I was like, I'm not given the payoff, which is like, get this fucker caught. I feel like I don't want to leave you hanging over a whole weekend being like, I gotta wait this long.

Ash

She's thoughtful.

Elena

It's my gift from me to you because it's gonna be a long one because you can hear him get caught. So I combine them. So hopefully that is to your liking. I love that. And I know that the episodes have not been going up at the exact same time that they normally have. Recently, we have not switched schedules or anything like that. And, you know, we've just had one. We've had some, like, stuff, like, private stuff that has been going on that, like, kind of took up a little bit of our time. Everything's okay.

Ash

Everything's fine.

Elena

But it took up some mental space and some time. And so instead of not giving you guys episodes during that time or giving you older episodes, we wanted to give you these fresh episodes. But that meant that they had to come out a little later than expected because on top of all that, Mikey has moved to Canada. So we are having, like, a different production situation here that we're all kind of adjusting to. And so it was just like a whole bunch of things compounding on top of each other that made it so episodes had to come out instead of early in the morning on the day they come out. It came out later that night, but

Ash

they still came out on the same day.

Elena

And this will not be a consistent thing going through. Like, we're not going to be releasing them later on. On in the day now.

Ash

No, we're getting back to the.

Elena

To the OG that wasn't like a. You know, it just kind of happened a couple of times. But yeah, from now on, it'll be the same that you've been used to.

Ash

What is it, Mondays and Thursdays.

Elena

Yeah. Which is. Which is. We've maintained just later in the day.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

But now on, I think you guys usually get them at like 3:00am or something.

Ash

Yeah, I think they post at 3:00am

Elena

like, that day we'll be going back to that kind of thing where it's earlier in the day. And so when you're going off work in the morning, you have it and all that, like. Because I know that that gets put into people's schedules. And we appreciate that we're part of your routine. Yeah, no, it's cool. So we appreciate that. And it'll stay like that. And if they do have to be later, we'll let you guys know if something happens to come up. We don't foresee that happening often at all. But you can't plan emergencies. Yeah, life happens. We honestly didn't know if you guys wanted to hear if they were going to be later in the day. We just didn't know if that was, like, annoying to hear, you know?

Ash

Like, we.

Elena

We never knew. Like, is that annoying to hear that

Ash

it's gonna be later? Like, do you care?

Elena

Is that, like, weird? But now we know you care.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

And we appreciate that you care.

Ash

No, it's cool.

Elena

Again, because, again, being part of your routine and part of your day is pretty cool.

Ash

Like, can't believe we're driving to work together right now.

Elena

I'm glad we're driving to work together. So now that we know you would like to be in the know, we'll keep you in the know.

Ash

Okay. We're all homies here.

Elena

Right? So they. Exactly. So I'm glad we all had this discussion.

Ash

It was good to talk to you

Elena

and like, you know, and everything's okay here. We've just, like. There's just been a few things that popped up, like, privately that just were like, here's the Thing sitting in the ether.

Ash

I'm gonna go ahead and say it and my woo woo people will feel me and my anti woo woos will be like, shut up, girl.

Elena

But honestly, I'm on board with this.

Ash

But you're half woo woo.

Elena

You're like a. I'm on board with this.

Ash

Yeah. This Mercury retrograde.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

Has been kicking us directly in the asshole over and over again.

Elena

Like, dead recordings missing, like things just like machines just failing and dying.

Ash

Lost documents, like poor communication with everyone in the world.

Elena

And just like, it's been bad. It's been rough. But you know what? It's looking up.

Ash

Yeah. I've had appointments that I thought were going to be like one hour turn into, like, way longer. I've had. Well, Mercury's just been mercurying.

Elena

Yeah. Mercury is bullshit.

Ash

It's Mercury reading.

Elena

But you know what? We're getting through it.

Ash

It's over, I think July 23rd. So we're like, we're nearing the end.

Elena

Let's all hang in.

Ash

There's only like a little over a week left.

Elena

Hold hands. We're all gonna be in this together.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Don't touch my hands. Figurative hands.

Ash

Yeah, like, figuratively for sure. Yeah. She's like, nobody's touching you.

Elena

Yeah. I was gonna say. I'm not touching anybody, so.

Ash

And vice versa.

Elena

And vice versa. So. Yeah. I think I'm trying to think of anything else that we should.

Ash

Please just tell us the story.

Elena

Just tell the story.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Not to be rude, but, like.

Ash

No. Shut up. No business. I need to know.

Elena

Tell me the goddamn story.

Ash

Get into it.

Elena

All right, you know what? No business. Buy the Butcher legacy.

Ash

Oh, no, no, no. That.

Elena

That.

Ash

I'll let you. You were like, hey, I was gonna plug my other really important project.

Elena

No, it's okay. You guys know.

Ash

No, no, no. Buy the Butcher legacy. Cause we're. Baby, we're going on tour soon.

Elena

We are. We're going on a little. Little, Little book tour.

Ash

We're gonna do a little book tour.

Elena

And she's doing fun.

Ash

I don't know if you heard. She's doing a live signing.

Elena

Yeah. And somebody from in Maryland gave me a little message and said from one awkward introvert to another, I'm very excited to meet you in Maryland. And I said, I love that. That's the energy right there.

Ash

I'm excited that. I've been to Maryland before.

Elena

Yeah, it'll be fun.

Ash

I've been in a district of it.

Elena

I went there. I went there for a ghost concert.

Ash

Oh, yeah?

Elena

Yeah. And it was great.

Ash

Wait, in Maryland?

Elena

Yeah, Baltimore.

Ash

Oh, you're right. Look at me questioning where you've been.

Elena

I was gonna. You look, you were like, I'm gonna get you.

Ash

I really thought so. I really did.

Elena

No, I saw where.

Ash

I was mad at you because we didn't go to the stories.

Elena

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ash

That's cool.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

Remember that restaurant that we went to, that in New York that PO like used to write in or something? Or drink in the Cellar? Yeah. He actually wasn't doing any business there.

Elena

He was just drinking.

Ash

Maybe he was. Maybe he was writing just, like, up.

Elena

Maybe just, you know, you never lunch. Who knows?

Ash

I don't know his life. You do.

Elena

I don't know his life.

Ash

All right, now, can I let you to get into it?

Elena

Now you can tell me to get into.

Ash

All right, I just. I have never listened to a pod about this story or about this case, like, at all. So I know, like, bits just from being, like, into true crime. But this is one of the wildest

Elena

cases we've ever covered. Oh, yeah. And just. Just wait until they get him.

Ash

Yeah, I've been. I've been. Because he's.

Elena

It's not like he's out here just quiet little church mouse, not saying the worst things that somebody could possibly say. Really don't go into it thinking that because he's a diabolical little. Oh, man. I mean, I had a feeling right in his fucking face.

Ash

He alive still?

Elena

He sure is.

Ash

Let's punch him.

Elena

Yeah, let's. Honestly. Let's go punch him.

Ash

Can we get like a. They should punch him.

Elena

To line up and punch him in the face?

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Every day. Only women. Yeah.

Ash

Let women punch Gary Ridgeway. 2026. Let's go. I needed. I needed a new slogan for this.

Elena

We'll make a sticker.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

So as the investigation entered its fourth year in 1986, the task force was still no closer to finding out who was doing this. But with a killer so prolific, what they did have was many more victims to discover. Yeah, they were not done yet. Not by a long shot. Oh, man. So on the night of September 12, 1983, 19 year old Tracy Winston had just bailed out of King County Jail in downtown Seattle. She was there on a loitering charge, and she was walking down Cherry street when a cab driver that she knew pulled up beside her. Tracy needed a ride to the place that she was staying in North Seattle. And he asked this cab driver who she knew if he could drive her. And he was like, yeah, totally. He's like, I just Have a fair to pick up really quick. I'm headed in the other direction. He said, I'll be back in 45 minutes. Stay here, and I'll see that you get where you need to go safely. Very nice guy.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

By the time he came back, Tracy was gone. I had a feeling it was going to go that way. Yeah. Tracy's path that led to her disappearance was both like and not like many of the other victims. She'd grown up in a very stable, loving family with parents who adored her and whom she adored back. But when she reached adolescence, Tracy started to rebel in the way that a lot of teenagers do. There was also some complex, like, family dynamics. Absolutely nothing abusive or anything like that. Just some stuff that families go through. We all have that, you know. From that point on, Tracy's relationship with her parents, especially her mother, Myrdy, was, like, challenging.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

When she reached her late teens, Tracy fell in love with an older boy whose own sister described him as a con man.

Ash

Awesome.

Elena

He was manipulative, emotionally abusive and demanding. And her mother recalled, she would do anything he asked. And she was gone all the time, anywhere but home, because he wouldn't let him call her.

Ash

What the hell?

Elena

Yeah. Of course, the more Tracy's parents tried to keep them apart, the more it drove them together.

Ash

Yup.

Elena

One day, she ran away and moved in with this older boy. Despite the family's very intense objections to this, it seemed there wasn't a lot they could do to convince her to come back home. Yeah. Again, must be the most helpless feeling in the entire world. I can't imagine. The last time the Winstons saw their daughter was Mother's Day, 1983. Oh, that's awful. The visit was good, but Tracy was careful with what she did and didn't tell her parents. Her mother said, I don't know if she was ever prostituting. I can't imagine that it was a regular thing for her. On the night that Tracy was arrested for loitering, she called her parents from jail and told them what happened. But she also begged them not to come pick her up because she said, I don't want you to see me in here. Not like this. Oh.

Ash

Which that's heartbreaking in and of itself.

Elena

When three months had passed without any word from Tracy, her mother reported her missing. She said, I knew it was going to be bad. I wouldn't accept it in my heart, but I knew. Yeah, she had just, like, she just gone out on her own, and she was just kind of floating around when what Marty Winston didn't know was how long it would take before she would actually get answers to the mystery of her daughter's disappearance. On March 27, 1986, Tracy's skeletal remains were discovered in Cottonwood Grove park, which is not far from the Green River.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

It appeared to investigators that the remains had been placed in the park, but animals had clearly scattered them around the area, and the skull was missing. Oh. Although Tracy was on the task force miss List of missing women, her remains would go unidentified Until 1999.

Ash

Jesus.

Elena

Yes, and that was when DNA technology made it possible for investigators to conclusively identify her. Weirdly, Tracy's skull remained missing, too, until the fall of 2005, when a hiker found it in a wooded area off Highway 18 near Issaquah, south, southeast of Seattle.

Ash

Weird.

Elena

Also a place where Ted Bundy used to dump victims. Issaqua and I think, like Taylor's. Matt Taylor Mountain, I believe it was.

Ash

So is that animal scattering it that far, or did they think he held on to it and disposed of it?

Elena

They don't know. That's. That's the thing. So, like, the discovery of this skull so long after they had found all the other bits of the remains.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

It is still kind of a mystery because there were no other bones found in the area or any indication of how it made its way there. So Detective Tony McNabb told a reporter in 2005, Our assumption is that a hiker or a hunter found, and for whatever reason, didn't want to call the police, found it, and for whatever reason, didn't want to call the police and set it alongside the dirt road so someone else could report it. It's quite some distance from any area where we found any other remains.

Ash

Even that's a strange explanation. And also, the more I was sitting here thinking about it, it's like, why would animals move. Like, animals obviously move bones while they're decomposing to get something.

Elena

And they usually move things that are easier to move. Not a skull.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

That's not easy for an animal to. There's not a lot that they can grip onto.

Ash

Right.

Elena

They usually pick up something they can pick up in their mouth.

Ash

Yeah. That's weird, right? That, to me, feels like he disposed of it later and kept it for several days.

Elena

That's the thing. I'm like, what happened there?

Ash

And he never. He never said.

Elena

No, he hasn't said what happened there.

Ash

Weird.

Elena

Now, including Tracy Winston, only three victims were discovered in 1986, all in the spring on May 2, a little over one month after Tracy's remains were found, an employee of Echo Glenn Children's center was searching around Highway 18 for a runaway teenager when they came upon various human bones that appeared as though they'd been sitting in the woods off the road for a bit of time. The remains turned out to be the incomplete skeleton of Maureen Feeney, a 19 year old who went missing on September 23, 1983. The autopsy revealed nothing of use to investigators, but because of the circumstances, Maureen was added to the list as the 35th Green river victim.

Ash

My God.

Elena

And it was because of the location of the discovery and because she's a female queen. Maureen Feeney turned out to be one of the atypical victims in that she wasn't involved in sex work or another type of employment that would have really put her as very accessible to the Green River Killer. That said, she had grown up with very low self esteem and had struggled with some psychological stuff as a teenager, which might have made her a little more psychologically vulnerable to the advances of an older man.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

In January 1983, Maureen got a job working with children at the east side Christian School. And she found a small in law apartment just outside of Bellevue, Washington. Through the job and, you know, her newfound independence, Maureen started to flourish and even started socializing like her confidence was coming up.

Ash

That's great.

Elena

Going to clubs, you know, going on dates. Like having a time been a young girl being 19.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Unfortunately, her life was disrupted in late summer when her landlord informed her that a relative was moving into the apartment, so she was gonna have to leave, which is like up.

Ash

Yeah, that's kind of shitty.

Elena

Yeah. The movement. She would also have to leave her job now. That August, she managed to find a new apartment in Seattle's Central district, and she found a new job at a daycare center nearby.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

She even started dating someone new and was considering moving in with her new boyfriend to California. Okay. Then on September 28th, just one week before her 20th birthday, Maureen disappeared. When a few days passed and no one had heard from her, her parents reported her missing to the Seattle police. But because she wasn't a fit for the Green river victim profile, she wasn't added to the missing list. Three years later, her boyfriend came forward and told police that on the evening of September 28, Maureen told him she was going out to 7 11. He told detectives, I fell asleep after she left and didn't wake up until about 11 that night. She never came back. It's unclear why it took three years to report. He waited years to speak to Police. But there's some reason to believe that he may have been pushing her into more risky behaviors to make money.

Ash

All right, but she had a job.

Elena

Yeah, maybe he wanted. He maybe didn't.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

Just prior to her disappearance, Maureen's employer noticed, quote, a notable personality change. And she even went as far as to tell her boss that, quote, she wouldn't be needing a job for very long because she was coming into money. Her boyfriend also told detectives he thought Maureen might have been looking for a new job since he'd found a newspaper want ad section with various exotic dancing jobs circled and the name Bob written in the margin of the page.

Ash

Huh.

Elena

According to Maureen's mother, she was, quote, a proud girl and a proud individual who wanted to stand on her own. But she vehemently rejected the idea that her daughter would have considered sex work as a means of supporting herself. Whatever the case, something had put Maureen in the path of the Green River Killer, and she had unfortunately met the same fate. Now, a month later, in just a few miles from where Maureen's remains were discovered, another set of skeletal remains were found in the woods. Using dental records collected by the task force, the ME Was able to identify them as those of Kimberly Nelson, also known as Tina Nelson and Star Nelson. Okay. Kimberly grew up in Ann Arbor, but after dropping out of high school in the 11th grade, she made her way to Seattle, and by 1983, she was the sole financial support for her pimp slash boyfriend. Why? It's always men not going out to make money. It's always just some loser man here.

Ash

It really is like, God, just fucking get a job.

Elena

In October 1983, Kimberly was picked up on a prostitution charge and served a short sentence in the King County Jail and was released on the afternoon of October 31st. Halloween. The last person to see Kimberly was her friend Paige, who told police she saw Kimberly getting into a red pickup truck with a man, a white man with dark hair. She said Star wasn't afraid of anyone. She would get in a car with anyone. She was so confident she could take care of herself.

Ash

That's so sad to think that. Yeah, that, like, was, like, a false confidence.

Elena

Yeah. You know, that, like, she probably could take care of herself, but this just. There's some people that is an unstoppable force.

Ash

Exactly.

Elena

Assuming Kimberly disappeared and was likely killed on October 31, that meant she went missing less than a day after Missy Plager was disappeared. Wow. A few days later, Paige was working out by the Strip when the man in the red truck pulled up beside her. And I guess he said, didn't you hang with that tall blonde girl? And she said the question felt very menacing. She immediately was like freaked out by him. The man offered her money to get in the truck with him, but Paige said, no, thank you.

Ash

All set.

Elena

She reported Kimberly missing and gave the description of the man to the police, which, like, yeah, Paige, good for her.

Ash

That's kind of the thing I was wondering. And you and I talked about it off air. Just like he keeps going back to these similar spots. So it's like women are kind of catching on to you a bit here. But also on the same token, one, he's still doing it, and two, it shows what dire straits these women were in because people were aware that there

Elena

was a serial killer and they had trolling these areas at risk.

Ash

But they had to do this job because they needed the money so desperately. And like to think of that desperation and then the end that they met is so heartbreaking because a lot of

Elena

times they're also involved with these men slash pimps that make it so they don't have a choice.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

It's not like they can just stop. Like, these men are dangerous and they're. Yeah, they want their money and you're going to go make that money and they don't give a shit if you're going to get, you know, you could possibly be in trouble.

Ash

Because that's the thing that also needs to be pointed out is these pimps and these quote unquote boyfriends, I hate to even call them in certain cases, were also well aware that there's a serial killer operating in the area. And they don't give a shit.

Elena

No. How are you crazy?

Ash

How are you that detached from a person?

Elena

What's crazy too, is, as we'll find out, Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, he had access to several different cars at this point, which is why sometimes you'll hear a red pickup truck, sometimes you hear blue one, a green one. He was. Sometimes his car would be broken down, so he'd use a family members and they all match up.

Ash

But always a truck.

Elena

Yep.

Ash

It's interesting and I'm glad that you just said that. Cause like, I think in part one, I said like, oh, a green pickup truck. And you were like, actually, no, a blue. And in my head I was like, I thought he drove a green pickup truck.

Elena

Don't worry, that's gonna make a lot more sense later.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

Yeah. Because you.

Ash

Yeah, I'm not wrong.

Elena

Could. Could be both.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

So Paige had reported Kimberly missing and gave the man's description, but nothing came of it. And the next time anyone saw Kimberly Nelson, she was little more than bones carelessly thrown in the woods by the side of the highway. That's so sad. More than a year passed without any new victims or discoveries of old ones. Then on June 27, 1987, the task force was presented with both that afternoon the remains of 17 year old Cindy Smith, who worked as an exotic dancer. They were found in a wooded area just off Highway 18 in Auburn. Cindy lived on and off with her parents in a suburb of Tacoma, but she frequently hitchhiked back and forth to any of the like places. She performed in the clubs. When she failed to return home on March 21, 1984, they reported her missing and Cindy's name was added to the list. If the date she went missing can serve as, you know, the same date as her death, that made Cindy Smith the most recent Green river victim, having been killed six weeks after the murder of Mary West. Okay. Following the discovery of her remains, a full year passed before the next victim was discovered in the late spring of 1988. But this time, it wasn't a more recent victim, but a very early one. Deborah. Deborah Estes had just celebrated her 15th birthday. Oh, my God. When she disappeared on September 20, 1982, she had grown up pretty fast and had already run away from home several times by that point, each time worrying her mother sick. One relative said many years later, life was a game to Deborah. By July 1982, Deborah had run away so many times that her parents had stopped reporting it, assuming it was just no good and she would eventually come back.

Ash

I mean, it's awful, but like when

Elena

you're young, you don't.

Ash

Life is a game in a way. You know, like I said, like I think about the shit I did at 15. My God.

Elena

Yeah. And that's. And like them not reporting her each time she ran away is not to suggest that they didn't care. Want her to return. It was actually quite the opposite. They were just out of ideas and exhausted.

Ash

Well, and you have to think, and I hate to say it, but like, they probably weren't treated great every single time they reported her. Because people didn't. Like the police didn't care about runaways back then.

Elena

No. So that summer they learned that Deborah was spending most of her time with an older friend, a girl named Becky, who had an apartment in the Rainier Vista housing process project. Sorry. They figured that if nothing else, Deborah had a roof over her head and was likely safe. They Were unfortunately wrong. By the fall, Deborah had started dating an older man who turned out to be a pimp. He and Deborah began living living out of motels, staying a few days until they ran out of money, then moving on. Remember, she's 15.

Ash

Yeah, newly 15.

Elena

Remember she's 15 and this is a disgusting individual who's with her. That's a pedophile. The rooms were paid for with the money that Deborah made through sex work. But that all came to an end when Deborah went missing on September 20. So she was being trafficked? Yeah, let's call it.

Ash

Yeah, that's actually these children are being said.

Elena

When they hadn't heard from her in a few days, Deborah's parents reported her missing to the police. They explained the situation and that they suspected she might be supporting herself and her boyfriend through sex work. But each time the officers checked the reports, they found no arrest records for anyone with the name Deborah Estes, not for prostitution or anything else. They had no way of knowing that while Debra had no police record, 15 year old Betty Lorraine Jones had been picked up for prostitution at least four times in recent months. Had anyone known that Debra and Betty Jones were the same person, investigators would have at least known where to begin looking for the missing teenager. But things being what they were, there was no way for anyone to cross reference the names or make any connection. In a case full of nothing but tragedy and outrage, the story of Deborah Estes is perhaps among the most tragic. Just a few months before she went missing, Deborah had been picked up. This. This one, like really is going to getcha. Few months before she went missing, Deborah had been picked up on the strip by a white man driving a blue and white truck. The man kidnapped Deborah at gunpoint and drove her out to the middle of the woods where he sexually assaulted the child and hit her in the face with his gun before tying her up and leaving her in the woods. She managed to untie herself and ran to the nearest house where the homeowners called the police. When they took the report, Debra described the man and the truck and gave them the fake name she'd been using. Okay, Betty. There's no way of knowing whether the first assault had been committed by the Green River Killer, but the description of the man in the truck is exactly him. Had. So they had to sit there now and say, had he let Deborah go only to come back and kill her, get her again? Like, sounds like that might have been the case.

Ash

Yeah, it very much does. What the. And months. Yeah, like to let months go by. Months and also to think that her shitbag of a boyfriend, quote, unquote, still left, knew that she went through that and just sent her right back to the streets to do it again.

Elena

Yeah, he wants his money.

Ash

Holy shit.

Elena

And I'll give you a little hint for the end here. It's entirely possible that this happened and that Gary Ridgeway didn't even know that she was the same person. Because he states himself, he doesn't even remember half of these girls faces.

Ash

That's nice.

Elena

And he said, I didn't know most of their names. And then at one point he says, like, I literally didn't care. I don't care about them.

Ash

Wow.

Elena

Like, that's his attitude later is he's like, why the fuck would I care? So it's entirely possible that he picked up Deborah, did this by her, and then happened to pick her up again and had no idea that he had done it. Because I'm sure he's done this to other women and young girls.

Ash

Well. And then you have to wonder, like, did he change his appearance slightly and was he driving a different vehicle? That's why she trusted to get into it.

Elena

Exactly.

Ash

That's so you don't know, like, what

Elena

are the fucking odds? Or did he kidnap her again?

Ash

Yeah, well, that's the thing. He kidnapped her in the first place. Right?

Elena

Now, Deborah's name was among the first to go on the task force list of missing women. And Dave Reichert and Faye Brooks spent weeks interviewing hundreds of people who might have come in contact with her around the time she went missing. But it all amounted to nothing. Her parents and friends had no information that they could, the detectives could really use. And her pimp slash boyfriend denied anything. Like he didn't know anything about her disappearance or her sex work. Telling the investigators, I warned her that being out on the streets was dangerous. But you sent her out on the streets to make you money. Yeah, but he's not gonna say that.

Ash

Useless in every sense of the word.

Elena

The mystery of Deborah's disappearance was finally solved on May 30, 1988, when a construction crew clearing a field near the Panther Lake Elementary School. Jesus Christ. I don't know if you're noticing this, but suddenly he's dumping bodies near places where children are. Yeah, I noticing that he turned up something unexpected. A worker was digging post holes in the earth when he turned up what appeared to be a large rock. But when he reached down and pulled the object out of the hole, he realized it was in fact a human skull. The discovery caused all the work in the area, obviously, to come to a stop. And the task force and a forensic team was brought out to remove the remains and search the area for any other victims. A few days later, just as he'd done a dozen of times before, Bill Haglin from the Emmys office. Bill is working overtime for real. He managed to identify the remains through dental records, and they were those of Deborah Estes.

Ash

That's so sad.

Elena

Now, the last set of remains to be discovered in the 1980s were those of Andrea Childers, who went missing in 1988 at the age of 19. Andrea had grown up in California, but moved to Seattle in 1983 to live with her mother and her stepfather. Her grandmother recalled she wanted to be a dancer. She gave lessons, and she was very good. Oh. Andrea arrived in Washington on March 29, and just two weeks later, she was gone. The last time anyone saw her, she was waiting for a bus downtown. Wow. So, initially, Andrea's name was added to the task force list of missing women. But then, about a year after she went missing, Canadian border authorities reported that someone with that name crossed the border into British Columbia. Oh. Based on that, it was assumed that she was alive, so she was removed from the list. Turned out that was.

Ash

But it could have just been a double name.

Elena

On October 11, 1989, human bones were discovered out by the Sea Tac airport, just a few hundred feet from where the remains of Constance Naon and Kelly Ware's remains were discovered in 1983. Using dental records, the remains were quickly identified as Andrea Childers. She'd likely been there the entire time. The task force and search team combed the lot when the bodies were first discovered in 1983. Really? Yeah. Task force member Bob Evans said, we walked right over Andrea Childer's body, where it was found, I mean, and just didn't even know. We had experts, our top people, even bloodhounds, that somehow it was missed.

Ash

And they do believe that they missed it, not that.

Elena

Yeah. They think that she'd been there the whole time.

Ash

Interesting.

Elena

Yeah. By 1990, signs that the killer was still active were becoming fewer and farther between. In the spring, when the weather got warmer, sex workers returned to the streets in larger numbers than before because it kind of felt like the danger was gone again. Spokane Police Lt. Jim Hill said, that's disturbing, because if this guy's still in town, and we have to assume he is, then there's no reason to think he won't hit again. Right. As one of the few remaining members of the task force, Hill was invested in the case, and like the others, he was determined to see it through to the end. The problem was, after nearly a decade chasing the Green River Killer, the task force was no closer to catching him than they ever had been. In fact, by that point in the investigation, there were nearly 600 possible suspects.

Ash

Whoa.

Elena

And none of them were really compelling.

Ash

How do you have 600? Non. Also, it's that many? Yeah. For real. Thank you.

Elena

You're welcome. Yeah, hill said. We've had people we've paid a lot of attention to, but we wouldn't call them a suspect. Damn.

Ash

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Elena

Ew.

Ash

So do the best thing for your kids, teachers, and stock up on the ultimate classroom favorite. Maybe it'll make them their teacher's favorite student. They definitely have a favorite. Don't even get me started because again, you know, it was me. For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex. Chilling. Crime cases are mysterious, but finding coverage shouldn't be. With the State Farm personal price plan, you have options and can personalize your plan to help create an affordable price so you can get back to cracking all of life's bigger cases. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Head to statefarm.com to get a quote. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state.

Elena

Now, to make matters worse for the task force, the election of a new sheriff in King County, James Montgomery brought a new pair of eyes on the budget and a new set of priorities. In a statement to the press, Montgomery said he was, quote, not real encouraged about the case being resolved. He said the longer the case languishes, the less likely we are to resolve it. So his solution was to reassign several of the task force members to other duties with a plan to reassign them permanently as soon as possible.

Ash

So we're just gonna get rid of the task force?

Elena

Yeah, he's just reassigning a bunch of them.

Ash

Gonna ignore the problem.

Elena

And despite what feels like a defeat at this point, the remaining.

Ash

Because I'm sorry, he's just like, yeah, we can't figure it out, so we're gonna stop trying.

Elena

Yeah. Why keep trying, you know, bro?

Ash

What?

Elena

Yeah, you'll see in the dialogue with the Devil documentary on Hulu that I've talked about. Like, I'm definitely talking about the Ted. I want to watch that. Bill Kraski, one of the task force members said they had asked for more money at one point, and one of them looked at him and said, and I quote, why? It's just a bunch of hookers, isn't it, bro? And Bill Kraski. And he was like, you.

Ash

It's a bunch of women, children.

Elena

And he was like, pissed. He was like, that bothered.

Ash

Like, you're talking about 14, 1516 children, young ass women.

Elena

And he. He even said back to them, look, he. He said, yeah. And my response was, well, yeah, and they're human beings too.

Commercial/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Elena

Like, what the fuck?

Commercial/Ad Voice

Wow.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

Can you imagine just being that careless

Elena

about the task force members gave a shit. It was people in the higher up positions that were the ones that were throwing up roadblocks.

Ash

I mean, think about the years that the task force dedicated to this. And then to be told. I can't imagine having worked on this case for years and years and then just them being like, well, go do this now.

Elena

Well, in a New York. Coming in and being like, fuck that.

Ash

Like, I'd be like, fuck you. Yeah. What do you mean?

Elena

You just get to take this position,

Ash

but if you want to keep your job, you have no choice. That's so fucked.

Elena

Yeah. But the remaining members vowed to continue to plug away at this case. They were not being deterred.

Ash

Reminds me of True Detective.

Elena

Yeah, it really does. Now, as spring turned to summer, the Green river task force, once 40 members strong, was cut from four members down to two.

Ash

2.

Elena

Dave Reichert and Faye Brooks.

Ash

I mean, bad bitches, but yeah. Two.

Elena

Two.

Ash

You're leaving this massive case where we have over 30 women and children, let's be real. Murdered, and you're leaving it up to two people to solve it.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

Which, like, I have faith in those two people. That's not me saying I don't. Like, Are you kidding me?

Elena

That was in the summer. Then in September.

Ash

You weren't even done yet?

Elena

No. Then in September, they just disbanded it all together.

Ash

What the.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

So where do we go from here

Elena

with the King County Council? The same one that told them. Isn't it just a bunch of hookers citing the significant cost and lack of progress?

Ash

Yeah, it costs money.

Elena

You're not finding anything, so fuck it. Who cares about these women? So with the task force now essentially defunct. Ridiculous. The cases were reassigned to the appropriate law enforcement agencies. And then just as everyone was starting to wonder whether the Green River Killer had indeed moved on. And this was all, yeah, I guess we're just. Because I love that they were like, you know, maybe he moved on. Maybe that's it. And it's like, yeah, do you still want to investigate the women that are missing?

Ash

Right.

Elena

And already find justice for them? Maybe, I don't know, like, we're just gonna let him move on. Let it be someone else's problem.

Ash

And there's been multiple times in this case where they were like, maybe he moved on and he didn't So I think history tells us this motherfucker sticks around, unfortunately.

Elena

And just as they were doing that same thing, like, just really going with the pattern.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Saying maybe he moved on. A new body turned up.

Ash

He said, I didn't.

Elena

Yeah. In the late 1980s, Marta Reeves had hit a rough patch in her life and turned to cocaine as a means to cope with her depression. In a short time, she developed a very expensive and very tough habit.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

That soon began causing problems in her marriage. And by 1990, she was estranged from her husband and four children, living in a motel in Seattle's central area, and supporting herself through sex work. In early March, she called her husband and asked if he could send her some money. But he explained he didn't have any to spare. And Marta said, okay, then I'll have to work all night. And that was the last time anyone heard from her. Oh, man. In April, Marta's husband received an envelope in the mail, which just. And it just had the local post office as a return address. And inside was her driver's license, which someone had probably, they thought just picked up and dropped into the mail to return it, which is nice. Six months later, on September 20, 1990, mushroom hunters walking in the woods near Highway 410 found skeletal remains and some rotting clothing. It took the M.E. several months to identify the bones, but in January 1991, they were identified as Marta Reeves. As with all the others, Bill Hagland, our poor Emmy, I know, was unable to determine how she died, other than to say it had indeed been a violent death, despite having been discovered in the same location as several other victims. And the fact that she was kind of in the typical victim profile. Seattle police stated they didn't think she was a Green river victim, and that would remain the case for many more years.

Ash

And why they. Why didn't they think that?

Elena

I'm not really sure.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

They just kind of like. That happens every once in a while where they'll be like, yeah, I don't think this one's it. And you're like, why? What about it is not that?

Ash

Also, can I ask a possibly dumb question?

Elena

Probably not dumb.

Ash

If the remains are skeletal, how could they tell that it's violent? Like, the. The manner of death?

Elena

He could have told from, like, a broken bone. Yeah. Really? Like a broken bone. Cut marks on a bone that can't be attributed to, like, an animal, you know, in this case, I don't think there was, like, cut marks on a bone. He wasn't.

Ash

But maybe broken blade.

Elena

But if there was broken Bones or, you know, bones out of place in that way.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

You know, there's like. It's really hard.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

To determine if it was a violent death that way. But he must have had some kind of indication.

Ash

Gotcha.

Elena

It's not so unreasonable for local investigators to assume that Marta hadn't been a victim of the Green River Killer, only because as far as they knew, he hadn't claimed a new victim since 1984. So there were definitely other scenarios at this point. Like, it's not like, you know, they're never getting. Because again, this was in 1991 that they found her.

Ash

Yes. That's quite a while.

Elena

1984 is when they last thought he claimed a victim. So it's not crazy and unreasonable to think like, this does happen, unfortunately. Like, women are killed a lot.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

And so it's like, Especially in that area. Yeah. And so I don't. It's a.

Ash

It.

Elena

As much as we're like in an echo chamber right now of this case, it's not unreasonable that like, they wouldn't be at this point. Other cases have come and gone, other people have been killed, isolated cases have happened.

Ash

Right.

Elena

So we can look at it and be like, why would they think that? Like, but it's like.

Ash

But it's years, I guess, all those years later that gives some clarity.

Elena

Yeah. So he's like, you know, but. But just because they didn't know about any victims after 1984, to be clear, that doesn't mean there weren't any.

Ash

Right.

Elena

That's just the last one they knew about. Now, on the afternoon of February 7, 1987, Roberta Hayes was released from King County Jail, where she was serving a short sentence for a prostitution charge. It wasn't the first time. Despite being just 21 years old, Roberta had been arrested several times in the past. She'd had a difficult home life growing up, and by the time she was 18, she was supporting herself through sex work. Her difficult history notwithstanding, she had made a pretty big effort to stay in touch with her family. And she could always be counted to show up for her family and to show up at her grandparents house for birthdays and Christmas like she was with them. She was connected.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

When they didn't hear from her for an extended period of time, they reported her missing. For some reason, Roberta Hayes never made it onto the task force list of missing women, despite fitting the victim profile pretty much to a T. Regardless, at some point in February 1987, she crossed paths with the killer and met the same unfortunate fate as the others. On September 11, 1991, Roberta's remains were discovered in the underbrush alongside Highway 410, not far from where several other victims had been discovered in previous years. As far as the medical examiner could tell, her body had been there since she disappeared, and she'd simply gone unnoticed, which is wild.

Ash

That's awful, too.

Elena

It would take almost two more years for them to make a positive ID. And that was in February 1993.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Once again, despite the obvious connections to the Green river case, in this one, the local authorities declined to consider Roberta a Green river victim at the time. My thought on this whole thing is they know how many women are already on that list and have. This has not been solved. They're already disbanding the task force. They're already doing all this shit.

Ash

So they're hesitant to addiction.

Elena

They don't want to keep adding to this list of victims because then it gives them reason, public outcry, reason to say, hey, how are you not solving this? And more victims are being added to the list. Right.

Ash

Like, put more money towards this.

Elena

So I do wonder if that had something to do with it.

Ash

I wonder.

Elena

I don't know. That's just me speculating.

Ash

It's called being speculative.

Elena

Exactly. Regardless of whether they considered Roberta Hayes a Green river victim, him. That's exactly what she was. And her death proved that rather than having stopped killing, the Green River Killer had merely slowed down his activity, which was, you know, a rare thing among serial killers. It's not like they do this all the time. And it was a known pattern. Yeah, but not unheard of.

Ash

I wonder if there's a reason for that.

Elena

It turned out there was another victim between 1984 and 1987 that had yet to be found. But that was gonna change. Okay. Patricia Barczak was 19 years old when she went missing in the fall of 1986. She didn't have a history of sex work, but when she disappeared on October 18, 1986, she had just completed a culinary course and was on her way to her dream of becoming a pastry chef. Oh, my God. Ann Rule actually wrote later, like most girls her age, Patty could be a little bit gullible when it came to men.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

According to Rule, just before Patty disappeared, she had been dating a man who told her he had a very successful and lucrative career. But she found out that he was, at the very least, exaggerating that alone. Oh, man. Due to his wild exaggeration about his employment and possibly some other relationship stuff, she ended that relationship and took great Pains to avoid seeing him, which was like, kind of a relatively difficult task because he always seemed to be hanging around.

Commercial/Ad Voice

Huh.

Elena

Now, in late October, when Patty hadn't shown up at work for a few days or picked up her paycheck, her mother reported her missing to the Seattle police. And despite not matching the victim profile, her name was added to the task force list. As years went by and other victims were identified and moved from the missing list to the victim list, Patty's would be one of the last names remaining still there even after the task force was disbanded. Wow. Now, on February 3, 1993, a survey crew found a human skull alongside Highway 18 in Auburn, just outside Seattle. Now, at first, the investigators suspected that the skull might belong to Tracy Winston, whose remains were found in March 1986 without a skull. Okay. But a few days later, the ME Used dental records, and they found that the remains were those of Patricia Barchak, whose name had recently been published along with the others remaining on the list, even though she had been on the list for so many years. The local authorities once again declined to identify Patti as a. A Green river victim. Police Captain Michael Nalt told reports the killer selected sites where he could revisit and fantasize. This place is not like that at all. And what he would also. He also said that he was not convinced that this man would kill somebody who was not a sex worker.

Ash

He already has.

Elena

Or, like, implied that, but, like, he has.

Ash

He has.

Elena

So it's a little surprising that Michael Nalt would have jumped to such a crazy conclusion here.

Ash

Yeah. And what does he mean? Like, this is not that kind of place. Like, where he would come back.

Elena

Like, the place where she was found was not somewhere. I'm like, where exactly is a place that you would come back to visit a dead body?

Ash

Because I'm like, doll, he's going to all kinds of places.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

What?

Elena

And it's even weirder because Nalt had been working on or adjacent to the Green river case for at least a decade.

Ash

Interesting.

Elena

And more than most, he definitely should have known that not all the killer's victims were sex workers.

Ash

Right.

Elena

And that they've been found in a lot of places. That many places you wouldn't want to revisit. But.

Ash

But you're not a serial.

Elena

Don't think in your brain. Think in his brain.

Ash

Right. It's one of those. It's like we were talking about with. What's the profiler's name?

Elena

John Douglas.

Ash

John Douglas. Like. Like, sometimes these things are just a matter of opinion.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

Like, obviously, very informed, educated opinion, but.

Elena

But sometimes you're off.

Ash

Yeah. Well.

Elena

And whether he wanted to add Patty's name to the list or not, she was in fact a Green River Killer victim.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

So they.

Ash

It seems like they just didn't want

Elena

to say that he had come back. I think so too.

Ash

Like they were. And especially now that they didn't have the budget.

Elena

That's what I think is they were trying to. And that's just me. And that's my opinion. My opinion is that it seems like they were not. Not super eager to put them on the list because it was not helpful.

Ash

Right.

Elena

So by the late 1990s, the Green River Killer had started to kind of fade from public memory a little bit,

Ash

which is really fucked.

Elena

The task force updates, which were before, like a regular part of the daily news cycle, they went away with the dissolution of the task force in 1990, and there hadn't been a discovery of a new victim or remains since the discovery of Patty Barchak in 1993. Okay. The five year silence was enough to make the city of Seattle conclude that after a decade of terror, maybe he did just stop. I mean, it's been a long time. Yeah. You know, or at the very least, they thought maybe he died.

Ash

I was just gonna say maybe he

Elena

died or maybe he got arrested for something else. Yeah. That obviously was wishful thinking.

Ash

Oh, man.

Elena

Now, little is known about the Green river killer's final victim, 38 year old Patricia Yellow Robe. Patricia had a history of arrests for prostitution, and unfortunately, she was also dealing with some substance abuse problems that could be expensive and also put her in dangerous situations to kind of fund those. Those down on issues. So she disappeared in January 1998, and when her family hadn't heard from her for an extended period of time, they reported her missing.

Ash

Did you say 1998?

Elena

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. On the evening of August 4th, 1998, the owner of All City Wrecking, a construction business in King county, closed up his office. And he was just taking like one more look over the wrecking site, just closing up, locking the fence to go home when. And he said everything was fine. When he returned the following morning, he discovered the body of Patricia Yellow Robe. Oh, man. She was laying just outside the fence on the east side of the lot. And he said he was absolutely sure that she was not there the night before. Okay. So that's scary.

Ash

That's horrifying.

Elena

During the autopsy, the ME took swabs and submitted the sample for testing. But the amount of semen found in the sample, which they did find, semen, was too low to produce a viable DNA profile as to the cause of death. The examiner concluded that the cause of death is acute combined opiate and ethanol intoxication. The circumstances seen investigation and postmortem examination indicate that the manner of death is probable accident.

Ash

But she was found, like, dumped?

Elena

Yeah. So the final victim of the Green River Killer wasn't even considered a murder victim. And she wouldn't be for several more years when the killer himself finally identified her as his last.

Ash

Wow. Yeah.

Elena

Isn't that scary?

Ash

I just don't understand why. Like, because it basically sounds like accidental overdose or like that.

Commercial/Ad Voice

That.

Ash

Right, that's kind of what was implied there.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

And she was found in, like, where was she found?

Elena

In a. It just dumped on the other side of a fence.

Ash

Like, what?

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

That doesn't make sense.

Elena

I know. Now, with 45 known victims. 45 and more suspected victims, the Green River Killer would be the most prolific serial killer in American history at that time. A very gruesome and disgusting position that he would hold until 2018. But his notoriety wasn't just because of the number of people that he murdered, but also his ability to kill undetected for nearly two decades.

Ash

Yeah, that's insane.

Elena

All while inconspicuously dumping bodies, only to move them later in some kind of weird hide and seek game. Because that's what he would do. He was putting them in one place and then moving them to another place.

Ash

Oh, that's bizarre. Now, we talked about anybody that's done that. I can't really think of anybody. That's weird.

Elena

Despite the countless hours invested by the task force members and the honestly, like, what appeared to be, like, endless resources put towards this case at the time, investigators never seemed even remotely close to discovering the identity.

Ash

Well, like you said, there were 600 catches.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

And they were like, I don't even

Elena

think they did it now. At least that's always how it appeared. In fact, whether they knew it or not, detectives had been very close to the killer at various times during the investigation. You talked about one of them. Yep.

Ash

Up.

Elena

But bad communication and a series of just kind of, like, snafus kept them from making an arrest. And it wasn't until the dawn of the 21st century and the adoption of several new investigative tools and technologies that the identity of the Green River Killer would finally become known. And finally, after 20 years, he would be held accountable.

Ash

That's insane.

Elena

We're here, guys.

Ash

Okay?

Elena

We're gonna catch him. Let's go. We're gonna catch him.

Ash

Previously. We were gonna end there, weren't we? We were gonna end exactly where we were. I felt that was like a cliffhanger. No, she said, I won't do that.

Elena

No, we're gonna catch this. This time, we're gonna end on a good note.

Ash

What a gift.

Elena

Now, although the task force had several suspects over the years, like we said, over 600 at times, there was never any compelling evidence into any one of them that would have justified an arrest warrant. Unfortunately, there was, however, one name that continued to come up every so often, starting with the disappearance of Marie Malvar in 1983. Now, Marie is the one. Remember that her father and her husband or boyfriend went to this house with her brother. With her brother, and they talked to Gary Ridgeway, and then he was let go. And the detective, no, I don't have any girls in here.

Ash

And the detective said, he didn't look like a serial killer, which.

Elena

What?

Ash

Hello?

Elena

When Joe Malvar told his daughter's boyfriend Bobby, to run down the street to call the police, he and the other men were fairly certain that they had found the man responsible for Marie's disappearance.

Ash

He knew it, and they had.

Elena

That's him.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

And he was correct. But when Des Moines police officer Bob Fox spoke to Gary Ridgeway, the homeowner, he felt confident that he had nothing to do with Marie's disappearance.

Ash

I can't believe I ever complimented that man's name.

Elena

Yeah. And it wasn't. It wasn't simply the matter of, like, one person's word over another that made Fox think this. He said it was really largely the fact that Ridgeway was remarkably honest with him, including that he'd been arrested in the past for soliciting sex workers. He was like, yeah, I have. Ridgeway seemed believable, especially compared to Bobby, Bob Fox said, who was initially dishonest with detectives and was very vague on descriptions which, like, okay, I get that part of it. I'll get you. Now, Ridgeway's name came up again the next year when Rebecca Garde, who is also in that dialogue with the Devil documentary about Ted Bundy. She talks in that documentary. I urge you to listen to her. I know.

Ash

I really want to watch that.

Elena

She reported a previous sexual assault to the tax task force. According to Rebecca, in 1982, she was hitchhiking after work, trying to get home. She had been picked up by a man in a truck who was described as. How she described as having beady little eyes.

Ash

Yeah, he does have.

Elena

Take a look at Gary Ridgeway. And she was driven out to a remote location far into the woods. She said she had never gone out that far before, but they went into the woods to complete a transaction. However, this man could not get an erection and became irate and started going after Rebecca, knocking her to the ground. He got on top of her, pushed her face in the dirt, and simultaneously wrapped her. His arm tightly around her neck to Joker. Oh, my God. After 10 or 15 seconds, she managed to break free of his hold by biting him as hard as she could, which like, yup, that's our girl. That's my girl, Rebecca. And she ran. She ran deep into the woods. This is at night? Yeah, in the woods.

Ash

So scary.

Elena

He's close behind her, following her, and has a vehicle and. But he saw her run towards a brightly lit trailer off in the distance. So he dropped off, went back to his truck and drove away. Damn. She was reluctant to report the case at the time, of course. Clearly, because she was engaging in sex work. She was worried she might be arrested. And she didn't think she would be believed or that anything would come like, about it, you know? And so she didn't tell anyone. But two years later, the Green river murders were at their peak. So she said, this might be important. I gotta tell somebody. Good for her. Good for her. After listening to her story, detectives put together a photo array of six similar men. And she immediately pointed to Gary Ridgeway and said, that's who did it.

Ash

Are you kidding me?

Elena

She is the only survivor of the Green River Killer.

Ash

Holy.

Elena

That we know of.

Ash

Holy shit.

Elena

Now, following Rebecca's identification of Ridgeway, task force members interviewed him and confronted him with the allegation. Huh. And he confessed that he had, quote, unquote, dated Rebecca. He meant it as a euphemism for prostitution. That's what he called it.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

But later he claimed he, quote. And this was later, after he was caught for the crimes. And he said he, quote, choked her as a reflexive reaction to her biting his penis.

Ash

What?

Elena

And nothing else came from this? He wasn't charged with anything.

Ash

That's wild.

Elena

So he was like, oh.

Ash

And so she was exactly right. That she wouldn't.

Elena

That's absolutely right.

Ash

Like, her word wasn't better over his. Yeah.

Elena

So. Because what happened, she said it. I didn't think anything would happen.

Ash

That's so sad.

Elena

And her whole reason for coming forward was, I don't want this to happen to anyone else.

Ash

Yeah. And look at that. What'd you say?

Elena

That was 1982. That happened to her, like. And it was like 1985 when they actually talked to him.

Ash

Think about how many women would possibly still.

Elena

She came forward to try to help those women.

Ash

Yes. She had the right idea.

Elena

And certain people on the task force were willing to do something, but nobody else was willing to give them anything to get a search warrant or an arrest warrant. Like. Like they tried, but other people in this whole law enforcement. Yeah, that's so. So the following year, Ridgeway's name came up again when detectives were going back through the files and re interviewing old suspects. This time, Gary went so far as to volunteer to take a polygraph exam, and he passed it.

Ash

Hot dog, trench coat.

Elena

Exactly. There's your hot dog in a trench coat. Because also, as we'll find out, he is very likely a clinical sociopath. That's how he was able to fix it. Like they can do that.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

So he was ruled out as a suspect, though. Again.

Ash

Oh, my God.

Elena

Although he'd volunteered to take and ultimately pass that polygraph exam, Ridgeway's name came up again in 1987 following the discovery of Cindy Smith's remains. This time, they were able to get a warrant to search his house. Stop. Now, according to the Seattle Intelligencer, which reported on the information in the search warrant that was used to search his home, it was because of several factors. Several of the victims were seen by witnesses getting into pickup trucks that were blue. Green. At the time that this was witnessed, Ridgeway had access to his brother's 1970 aqua pickup truck, which can be seen as.

Ash

Seen as blue or green or green. In fact, Elena and I, yeah. Consistently will argue over what color a certain thing is.

Elena

Blue and green, we see completely differently. What she sees as blue, I see as green and vice versa. It's vice versa.

Ash

It's so weird.

Elena

When I read all these, I was like, holy shit. That would have happened.

Ash

Absolutely.

Elena

You would have seen it as blue. I would have seen it as green.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

And it's aqua. It's in the middle.

Ash

I remember we shared a scarf once, and you were convinced it was blue. And I was like, this scarf is green.

Elena

Yeah. And I was like, no.

Ash

And you said, no, it's you. That's why.

Elena

And then one of them had said that they saw him get her get into a red truck or a red vehicle.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

He had a maroon vehicle as well, but it was in the shop during the time when people were seeing him in the green and blue one. So it all matches. Also, metal fragments containing aluminum were recovered from five of the sites where bodies were drum dumped at Green River, North Bend, Carrison road, State Route 18, and State Route 410. And this is a quote from the article. Task force detectives have learned that aluminum is a metal which is commonly used at the Kenworth Truck Company where Gary Ridgeway is employed. Also in the search warrant, green polyester trilobal carpet fibers were found, and they looked all to be from the same source. And they were found at three separate dump sites. According to statements that have been obtained from witnesses who have been inside of Gary Ridgeway's house. Task force detectives have determined that there was and may still be green carpet in the bedrooms. Now, a previous. The person who owned the house before Ridgeway, he provided police with a photograph. Badass. Showing the shade of green on the carpet at the time of the sale to Ridgeway. Wow. And that was in 1981 that he sold the house to Ridgeway.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

King county sheriff spokesman, Sergeant John Urquhart.

Ash

Oh, bitch. Relation.

Elena

Which I'd like you here. I'm gonna let you in on my side quest. I'm about to find out if I'm related to this. You better believe that I'm going to find this.

Ash

John's all up in ancestry.

Elena

You gotta ask him. Yeah.

Ash

Like, you're down.

Elena

Yeah. Now, John Urquhart, Sergeant John Urquhart said that he could not discuss whether the carpet fibers and metal fragments found at the sites were linked to Ridgeway. Okay. I don't think they were ever able to definitively at the house, link them to him.

Ash

I mean, also, you have to think of the science at that time. That was probably very difficult.

Elena

Yeah. So a search warrant was granted because of all those things. They searched the house and they took, quote, hundreds of items of evidence that was like carpet scraps from his truck. Ropes, paint samples, plastic tarps. They were all seized and given to the Washington State Police crime lab for testing, but none of it linked him to the victims.

Ash

Which is crazy, because you would think that, like, if they found those fibers on the victims, they had been in his house at some point. And again, we've said so consistently throughout, I think, all three parts of this. Where is he keeping people? Because they're not being discovered for so long.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

But then he's, like, moving. Now I know he's moving them about, so I'm like, were they at his house?

Elena

They were.

Ash

They were at his house. Okay.

Elena

At times. Yeah.

Ash

That makes sense. Yeah. Oh, my God.

Elena

He was also just very careful, really. And he tells them that. He said that was one thing I wanted to do, was make sure nothing was left or. Or connected us. That's how. And he says, that's how I was able to get away with this.

Ash

So did he, like, clean people up?

Elena

I think he did whatever he needed to do.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

But during the search, investigators collected one piece of evidence that ended up being very useful. Okay. And that was a saliva sample taken from gary Ridgeway in 1987. A saliva sample wouldn't have been much use, you know, in the course of identifying a specific, specific killer. But the sample remained on file. And years later, when the technology allowed for DNA typing, former task force member Tom Jensen submitted the sample for testing.

Ash

Nice.

Elena

In September 2001, forensic scientist Beverly Hemmick developed Ridgeway's profile from the saliva and compared it to a few samples they had collected from victims remains and discovered that Ridgeway was a match for the DNA collected from Marsha Chapman in 1982.

Ash

Wow.

Elena

Himmock also compared it to the DNA profile that they developed from the. From a pubic hair found on Opal Mills and discovered that was the match as well.

Ash

Forensic science.

Elena

Oh, my God.

Ash

So I love it. And just the fact that, like, saliva doesn't degrade over time. Yeah. Like, they are able to that degree that. Like that that many years later. I'm sure it degrades to some degree.

Elena

And just like Beverly being like. Yeah. So I developed a DNA profile from this spit.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

Bev, you're a superhero for real. I hope you know that. That's insane to be able to say that statement.

Ash

That's some scarpetta.

Elena

Yeah. You say to me, I developed a DNA profile from spit.

Ash

You. You don't even have to say from spit. Period before that.

Elena

That's crazy.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Fascinating. Now, the two positive matches turned out to be just the beginning. While Hammock was comparing profiles to the victims, Washington State Police forensic scientist Gene Johnston was also comparing his profile to the evidence in storage at the state police barracks.

Ash

Oh, honey, there's more.

Elena

During that process, John discovered that Ridgeway's sample was a match for vaginal swabs taken from Carol Christensen, conclusively ruling out literally every other person in the world but Ridgeway. Wow. The evidence against Gary Ridgeway was beginning to pile up.

Ash

Gary, your days are numbered.

Elena

Your days are numbered. But while the DNA connected him to a few victims, they were a long way from proving conclusively that he was the Green River Killer. Still, there was enough evidence on hand to get an arrest, and they could at least bring him in for questioning. While the King County Sheriff's office began preparing to arrest ridgeway. The DA's office made the surprising decision to reform the Green river task force. Okay, correctly assuming that they would be an asset in building the case against Ridgeway. And they were all right, the 90s. And they said, let's review the remaining unidentified victims, the cases or those that are still missing, and let's keep bringing upon him.

Ash

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Elena

Yeah, we've all been there.

Ash

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Elena

Now. On November 30th, detectives from the task force arrested Gary Ridgeway as he left work at the Kenworth truck factory in Renton.

Ash

I love it.

Elena

He was informed that he was being arrested in connection with the Green river murders of 49 women.

Ash

You know, that his heart just fell out of his butthole.

Commercial/Ad Voice

Well.

Elena

And Dave Reichert said, I always felt like Gary Ridgeway was one of the top five suspect. Absolutely. Always a top five. And Gary Ridgeway was always one of those right up in front.

Ash

I mean, your name comes up that many times, and especially your name comes up so much that they're able to get a search warrant. That's huge.

Elena

And how frustrating must it have been for, like, Dave Reichert and like Faye Brooks and all that to watch it, to be like, I know he's probably the guy, and we have nothing on him, and we can't search him. We can't arrest him. We can't bring him in for questioning, like, for so long just to be able to.

Ash

Whoever arrested him to be like, listen, we fucking got you.

Elena

Well, in. Later that afternoon, when they arrested him, Ridgeway was being booked at the sheriff's office, and he. He requested first that they not contact his wife. He's married.

Commercial/Ad Voice

No.

Elena

Yep. And he said, please don't contact my wife.

Ash

He's married. This. I asked you at one point. You said, we'll get there. And I had a feeling he had, like, a girlfriend or something.

Elena

Yeah. No, he's married. How. How long he's been married? A couple times. Okay, now what? Instead of calling his wife, he told the booking officer, and I quote, you can contact the Green river task force. They know me real well. Yeah, that's a quote.

Ash

He said, don't. Yeah. Don't contact my wife.

Elena

Contact the people who know that I did this.

Ash

I couldn't even come up with something. What.

Elena

Now, do you want to hear about Gary Royjoy and why he possibly, you know, know who he was?

Ash

I want to say no, but, like,

Elena

yes, but this will make you hate him even more.

Ash

Yeah, and I. I need that. I mean, I already do hate him.

Elena

He's always pretty terrible. Now, Gary Leon Ridgeway was born February 18, 1949. What does that make him? A Pisces.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

In Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ash

I'd also like to, like.

Elena

Hold on.

Ash

Let me.

Elena

Let me just confirm that just to make sure he's a Pisces.

Ash

I think he is.

Elena

I think he's, like, right at the end of Pisces.

Ash

God damn it. Aquarius. Aquarius. Oh, I hate that. I love Aquarians.

Elena

I don't know how I feel about Aquarius. So, like, who knows? I know you know, but. He was the second of three children born to Thomas and Mary Ridgeway.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

In the decade after Gary was born, the family, which included brothers Greg and Tom, they moved frequently between Utah and Idaho and finally settled in Seattle, Washington, in 1958. They moved into an area known as the SeaTac Strip. Greg Ridgeway, one of his brothers, said, we literally crawled on our hands and knees over the area around SeaTac where this series of killings was supposed to have happened.

Ash

Wow.

Elena

Which, like, must be really wild. Yeah, that's kind of reconcile. Although they had each other to play with, life for the Ridgeway boys wasn't exactly easy. They didn't have, like, a horrible life or anything. But Thomas Ridgeway worked as a truck driver, but work was often often scarce, and the family rarely had enough money to cover the bills. It was just tough. Yeah. Thomas's job as a truck driver meant that he was often away for long periods of time as well. So Gary and his brothers were mainly raised by his mother, Mary. In later interviews, Greg Ridgeway would describe his mother as a strong woman who was strict with her children. Okay. But according to Gary's second wife, Marcia, Mary Ridgeway was a domineering woman whose treatment of her children she considered to be borderline abusive. Okay. That's Marcia talking. I'm not saying that's the.

Ash

The truth.

Elena

The word of God. I don't know if it's false. I don't know.

Ash

That's Marsha's opinion.

Elena

That's Marcia's opinion. Because, Greg. Yeah. Her own children. That she's just a strong woman and was strict, so who knows? According to Marcia, Gary once recounted an incident in their home in which his parents got into an argument and Mary broke a dinner plate over her husband's head. Damn. That's Marcia saying Gary's account.

Ash

Here's the thing. Different kids within the same family can have vastly different accounts of girl.

Elena

That's true. That's very true. So Gary craved his mother's attention and approval and would do just about anything to get it. Later in his interviews with detectives, Gary claimed he had wet the bed until he was about 13 years old and had, quote, vivid memories of having his genitals washed by his mother.

Ash

Oh, that's super.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

We've Talked. That's like. Come up in other cases.

Elena

Sure has.

Commercial/Ad Voice

And that.

Elena

And it never ends well.

Ash

You can't.

Elena

You can't do that.

Ash

You can't do that.

Elena

You can't do that. Didn't.

Ash

Ed. Was that Ed Gain's mom?

Elena

I think he also had a similar.

Ash

There's been a couple where that's happened.

Elena

Similar bath time.

Ash

You got to teach your kids how to bathe.

Elena

At a certain point, you got to teach them how to clean that.

Ash

I know they're your, like, responsibility and stuff, but there comes a time that's why you teach them, you know, like, privacy happens.

Elena

Now, this eventually transformed in his mind into fantasizing about having sex with his mother.

Ash

I want to die.

Elena

And then stabbing her to death before burning the house down.

Ash

I need a minute. What the.

Elena

It's a lot. Having sex with his mother and then

Ash

stabbing her and then doing arson.

Elena

And doing arson.

Ash

It's a lot of crimes.

Elena

It's a lot.

Ash

And a lot of. Lot of up thoughts.

Elena

Yeah. Yeah. He was always.

Ash

I wasn't ready for that.

Elena

He was never. He was never okay.

Ash

He was never chill.

Elena

He was never okay.

Ash

He never.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

He never got into a flow state.

Elena

No.

Ash

What the.

Elena

Never got into a flow state. As such. As a youngster.

Ash

As a youngster.

Elena

You know that sheriff, the clip we were talking about the other day where he said, you need to chill out, have a seven up, eat a moon pie.

Ash

Quit murdering people. Listen, I said today I ate a moon pie today. If I was a murderer, you know,

Elena

stop everybody in their tracks, it'll get

Ash

you in a flow state.

Elena

But that's. This is one of those things. And we're joking because it's like.

Ash

Because I'm.

Elena

What the.

Ash

So uncomfortable.

Elena

Because I'm so uncomfortable by his childhood. Truly.

Ash

Yeah. This is how I get through things.

Elena

Yeah. It's just. This is how we got to get things. And anyway, Gary, now the thing is his. According to the profilers on the task force, these memories and fantasies mixed together represented Gary's feeling of being humiliated by women.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Which in turn fueled his desire to dominate and eventually kill them. Yeah. Now, Ridgeway's criminal career started very early. In his early teens. At first it was just petty theft, but in time, he moved to setting small fires and eventually to torturing animals.

Ash

Oh, no.

Elena

All harmer hallmarks of the sociopathic personality. A literal poster child of the McDonald triad, which I know is highly questionable at this point, but I had to point it out.

Ash

Oh, it is.

Elena

I think it's not exactly like the

Ash

question of setting fires and torturing animals.

Elena

No, I think it's a McDonald triad. It's like. No, that doesn't automatically make you a serial killer.

Ash

Makes you a weird.

Elena

You do see it in a lot of serial killers. Yeah, he was. He definitely knew that he was psychologically different from everyone around him. He was aware of that.

Ash

I'd say so.

Elena

Which. Most sociopaths are aware of that. Okay. So he became adept at hiding his true feelings and instead just mimicked those of relatively healthier people around him.

Ash

Which is weird because they can. Really? Well, like even just because we've already talked about Ted Bundy. Bundy.

Elena

Ted Bundy.

Ash

Ted Bundy.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

He was really good at that.

Elena

He was like. He just put. He just put on a mask.

Ash

It's that shit creeps me out.

Elena

This is wild. Are you ready to get even crazier?

Ash

I'm actually not.

Elena

By the time he turned 16, Gary's antisocial behavior and worldview finally turned violent. Like towards other people, like, outwardly. One afternoon, he approached a young six or seven year old boy in his neighborhood and asked the boy if he wanted to help him build a fort.

Ash

Oh, no.

Elena

The child agreed. But before they could go anywhere, Gary said, you know, there's people around here that like to kill little boys like you.

Ash

Jesus.

Elena

And then he stabbed the boy in the stomach with a pocket knife.

Ash

What the fuck? Why was he ever allowed to do anything after that?

Elena

Decades later, the victims lived. The victim recounted the experience. He said, I asked him why he did it. The whole front of my shirt was soaked with blood. And he started laughing and he had a smile on his face. And he stood there for a moment with his knife in his hand. I didn't want him to stab me again, but he reached towards me and just wiped the knife off both sides of the blade. One across my shoulder and twice across my other shoulder. He then folded the knife back up and he said, I always wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody.

Ash

What the actual.

Elena

So the boy ran home and to his parents, they called an ambulance. He had obviously the flesh wound, but he had also been cut in the liver. His liver was cut, so he had to stay in the hospital for a long time. And despite the seriousness of the event, the stabbing was never connected to Gary and he was never held accountable. The boy told everybody he did it and they were like, no, he didn't.

Ash

Like y', all, that's attempted murder of a six year old.

Elena

What the. Yep.

Ash

Also is like Pennywise ass way going about It.

Elena

That's a Pennywise ass is right.

Ash

Like, what? God.

Elena

Yeah, he's always been a piece of, apparently. And the older he got, right.

Ash

Aiden just held up a sign that says, oh, the 60s.

Elena

Oh, the 60s, indeed.

Ash

Yeah. Period.

Elena

Because that's it. He was like, hey, that guy stabbed me.

Ash

And then they were like, nah.

Elena

Yeah, shut up.

Ash

Put a band aid on, you're fine. Also, not only like the physical trauma, recovering from psychologically psychological. You never want to go outside and play again.

Elena

And you're. I mean, luckily, he's probably never going to trust anyone again, which at this point.

Ash

But at 6 years old, like, great, there goes your childhood.

Elena

Now, the older he got, the more Gary struggled to keep his rage and destructive tendencies to himself, evidently. And in his later high school years, he was given an, like an IQ test test. After he was held back twice. And the result of the test showed that he had an IQ of 82.

Ash

The IQ test said dumb.

Elena

The IQ test said, you are not the winner.

Ash

He said, you stupid.

Elena

He failed the IQ test.

Ash

Listen, I've never had an IQ test.

Elena

So is who am I stupid? And I say this not because of his iq, because he's Gary, not because of his iq. I am not saying it because of his iq. I'm saying it because he's Gary Ridgway.

Ash

So don't take that and run with it. Okay?

Elena

He's stupid and he's dumb and we don't respect him. No, but he took an IQ test and it seemed to prove that he didn't really do well on tests. So there's that.

Ash

Period.

Elena

But he's stupid for every other reason that we have laid out over four episodes.

Ash

Thank you.

Elena

Now, as a result, he was expected to continue like everyone thought he was going to continue to struggle academically. And it would be assumed that he would probably have difficulty finding work to support himself. But he did graduate from high school in 1969 at the age of 20.

Ash

Oh, my.

Elena

And he got a job at the Kenworth Truck Factory as a painter, but left the job after a few months to join the Navy. And in the summer, Navy took him. Yeah. Hello. In the summer of 1970, just before being shipped to the Philippines, he married his longtime girlfriend, Claudia Barrows.

Ash

That poor woman.

Elena

After the wedding, Gary was sent to the Philippines, where he claims he first started seeking the services of sex workers. Upon returning home in 1972, he discovered that Claudia had fallen in love with another man and she handed him divorce papers, which I said, A plus decision making skills. According to the court Documents. Gary told investigators that his first wife, quote, had become a while he'd been overseas.

Ash

Wow.

Elena

Gare. Yeah, Gare. Once he was back home, he went back to work. Work at the Kenworth factory as a painter, where he would remain employed until he was arrested later that year. And that's another thing that shocked everyone. He had study something that people thought. They said, he's probably not going to be able to hold down a job.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

And I'm pretty sure Ted even might have said that. So he was fucking wrong. Fuck you, Ted.

Ash

Fuck you, Ted.

Elena

He. He, he held down a job.

Ash

Interesting.

Elena

He held down a job and he had a wife. He was very outside of the norm in that way. Yeah. So, but that's the thing.

Ash

Like there are these anomalies.

Elena

I mean, there are.

Ash

Look at btk. Yeah.

Elena

Like that you can't. It's not a perfect science. So we can't say that, like, oh, John Douglas got it wrong. So he's not a good profile. It's like, no, he happens to be an anomaly. And how. You can't account for all of them. Now. Later that year, he met Marsha Brown and the following year they married.

Ash

Poor thing.

Elena

Years later, when he was asked about Brown, Gary detective. She would dress provocatively, quote, with a lot of makeup, tight clothes, like a prostitute.

Ash

That's your wife, bruh.

Elena

And also, like, are you. You're not okay.

Ash

I bet she looked great.

Elena

I bet she did. The couple remained married until 1981 when she and when she was interviewed by police, Marsha reported that Gary, quote, enjoyed having sex outdoors and was interested in bondage. Which does not mean he's a serial killer. I'm just saying. No, those are interest. She also stated that he would often be gone for long periods of time. In the evenings, I bet, quote, sometime times returning to the house dirty or wet. That means he's a serial killer.

Ash

If your husband is returning to your home dirty and wet with no explanation, you're married to a serial killer.

Elena

That I'm very comfortable saying.

Ash

Super confident. You should leave him.

Elena

Things began to deteriorate between them in the late 1970s when Gary began exhibiting strange and aggressive behavior towards her. They divorced in May 1981 and she took custody of their six year old son.

Ash

Oh, similar to the one that Gary had stabbed years earlier.

Elena

Yeah. Thank goodness she got custody of that child. Good for her. In the years after that, Ridgeway dated several different women, many of who he met through Parents Without Partners, a support group for single parents. Wait, yeah.

Ash

What?

Elena

Yeah, at one point, his Relationship with one of those women was becoming so serious that they were engaged to be married. But in 1984, she called the wedding off and broke up with him.

Ash

Good for her.

Elena

Just a few months later, Gary met his third wife, Judith, and they hit it off. A few months later, she moved into his house, and in 1988, they married.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

During the height.

Ash

Yeah, that's wild.

Elena

Like Gary, Judith had a history of failed relationships and at least one bad marriage in her past. But the truth was, all she really wanted was to be a good wife and a good mom.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Huh. Judith was just going into this with eyes wide open.

Ash

Sweet Judith.

Elena

After her marriage fell apart, just before she turned 4 or just after she turned 40, she started to feel like those were things she was never going to get to be. But then she met Gary at the Parents without Partners meeting, and everything seemed to fall into place. He. She later told detectives, he treated me just so gently and perfect. He didn't rush or push. He wasn't forward or anything because it

Ash

was during the height of everything else. So he was getting that out elsewhere.

Elena

And he spent his entire life hiding his true self, everyone around him. And his third marriage was no different. After he always had a strong command over what people did and didn't know about him. And he managed to show Judith exactly what she wanted to see while simultaneously keeping the less savory things, like all of his run ins with the law completely away from her.

Ash

Wow.

Elena

Still, it wasn't all an act. It seemed as though Gary did have genuine feelings for Judith.

Ash

Is he capable of that?

Elena

Whatever genuine feelings he is capable of having, he had them. Okay, okay. Like between the summer of 1982 and when he met Judith in the spring of 1984, the Green River Killer was known to have murdered 45 women at that point during that time between when? Before, like in the summer of 82,

Ash

until he met Judith, he had already killed 45 women.

Elena

After he met Judith, there was only four more murders spread across 15 years.

Ash

So I wonder if that accounts for some of it.

Elena

It obviously we're like, crazy. He only murdered four people in 15 years when he was with Judas.

Ash

Still horrific.

Elena

But it's in. It's a relative thing. It's when you're looking at before her 45. Yeah. With her four spread out over 15 years. That's wild.

Ash

It is.

Elena

And it shows you that there was something here. I mean, again, that's what we know of. I was gonna admitting things. So, like, this is what he's admitted to. Who's to say, who knows if there'll be more that end up getting put in that 15 years. But it is a very interesting, very btkish kind of situation.

Ash

Well, and you, like you said earlier, like he was bringing some of these women to his home, so the fact that he's married, I'm sure made that

Elena

a lot more difficult.

Ash

So maybe that was part of it. Maybe, yeah. I mean, he had. He had a failed marriage because he was gone for so long.

Elena

At a certain point, urges don't go away.

Ash

Didn't do that anymore.

Elena

Like what was happening during that.

Ash

Yeah, I don't know.

Elena

But. On December 5, 2001, the King County District Attorney charged Gary with four counts of aggravated murder in the first degree for the murders of Carol Christensen, Cynthia Hines, Marcia Chapman, and Opal Mills, all of who could be tied to him directly through DNA evidence. Four months later, the prosecutor provided written note to the court and to Gary's attorney that he intended to seek the death penalty.

Ash

Good.

Elena

They also made it clear that they intended to go to trial as soon as possible, with an expected date of March 2020. 2003. While the prosecutor's office began building their case against Ridgeway, they received word from one of the private labs contracted to process the evidence. The lab had managed to match the paint flecks discovered on Wendy Caulfield and Deborah Estes, or Estes. Excuse me. To a highly specialized type of paint used at the factory where Gary worked.

Ash

Wow.

Elena

Since Caulfield and Estes had been discovered along with the remains of Deborah Bonner, it seemed more than likely that Bonner was killed by the same person. On March 27, 2003, the prosecutor added three more counts of murder against R. Ridgeway. And when he was arranged for the additional counts, Gary pleaded not guilty and a trial date was set for July 2004.

Ash

Do you remember any of this trial?

Elena

I do. I was gonna remember this happening because I remember being on the news and I was like, whoa.

Ash

I was too little.

Elena

And I was very interested in true crime at this point. So I remember I was like, what the.

Ash

Yeah, cuz you were about to graduate.

Elena

Yeah, I was.

Ash

And you went to college. For criminal justice.

Elena

For criminal justice process. Now, as the trial date approached, the task force members worked tirelessly to find evidence connecting Ridgeway to the other victims. But despite their best efforts, there was like, no new evidence to be found. Although they still have the seven murder counts, four of which were slam dunks thanks to DNA. They were. There was 40 other victims who were going to be denied justice. Yeah. And not really have their cases solved, which is now. With the trial date just around the corner and Ridgeway facing the death penalty, his defense attorney reached out to the prosecutor's office with a little proposition. If the district attorney was willing to take the death penalty off the table, Ridgeway would provide a full account of his activities between 1982 and his arrest, including details on as many victims as he could remember. Wow. To Those in the DA's office, it seemed a better path to get justice for all the Green river victims, even if it did mean allowing Gary Ridgeway to live.

Ash

I mean, life in prison is worse than finishing.

Elena

So on June 13, 2003, both parties signed the plea agreement, and Gary agreed to provide, quote, quote, complete, faithful, and candid information concerning his crimes in King county and answer all questions during interviews conducted by the police or the prosecuting attorney. The deal also required him to plead guilty to aggravated murder in the first degree for all 49 victims and disclose the details and whereabouts of any other previously unknown victims. But if at any point the prosecutor's office learned that he had not been completely honest, the deal would be completely void, and he would once again get the death penalty. Okay, so there was no benefit to him doing this.

Ash

I was just thinking to myself, isn't it interesting that serial killers, like, not all of them, obviously, but some of them are afraid of death?

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

Like, that's such a weird concept to me.

Elena

You think you own it, right.

Ash

And you're like, Ted Bundy.

Elena

Was Ted Bundy his pants over the idea of being killed? Yeah. He brutally murdered and tortured one women.

Ash

And it's weird because I feel like a lot of times, like, sociopaths and psychopaths, like, don't have the same fear that, like, you and I do, but they. They seem to fear death.

Elena

Yeah. And I wonder. This is just me thinking out loud.

Ash

Yeah. Just to kind of talk about it first.

Elena

Like, you look at Ted Bundy and you look at Gary Ridgeway, what we're gonna find out is they are both necrophiliacs.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

They would go back to the scenes.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

They would rape the corpses.

Ash

So fun.

Elena

Maybe the reason they fear death so much is because they come so close to it. And they also see how death progresses, and they see what happens afterwards. And they watch it bit by bit, phase by phase.

Ash

Yeah. And are so up close and personal

Elena

that they know that's what will become of them. So I think it's like, in their face. So they're more thinking of that side of it than somebody else would.

Commercial/Ad Voice

Be.

Ash

Yeah, no, I. I think you're on to something there. But it's just so interesting that they care because, like, I mean, maybe this is just the way.

Elena

Well, they're not about it too. Like, they have narcissistic tendencies. They don't want to end up a rotting corpse somewhere. It's like, we're all going seen it. They don't want to end up like that.

Ash

Yeah, it's. It's. It's such a. We could do like a whole episode talking about it.

Elena

Yeah. It's not their perfect projected image. A dead body.

Ash

That's not.

Elena

I don't get to control that image.

Ash

I think that's another piece of it too, is like, I don't get to control this.

Elena

What happens afterwards. They need to be in control, and that is the least control.

Ash

I think that's a huge part of it.

Elena

Yeah. Now, beginning in June 2003, investigators spent five months extensively interviewing Ridgeway, during which he confessed that, quote, he killed over 60 women in King County.

Ash

So that makes you wonder even more about that.

Elena

15 years. Yep. Throughout their interviews, Gary provided a lot of detailed accounts of each murder, including information on seven additional dump sites and victims that had not been considered Green river victims during this period. He also took investigators to each dump site and provided directions to the graves of four women from the task force list of missing women. Pammy avent, who disappeared October 26, 1983. April. April Beram disappeared April 18, 1983. Rebecca Marrero, disappeared December 3, 1982. And Marie Malvar disappeared April 30, 1983. Because the deal had already been signed, he would not be charged with their murders. That's so shitty now. At first, Scary seemed to go out of his way to minimize his behavior. He downplayed the violence, the more disturbing aspects of the case. And when asked why he wasn't being entirely forced forthcoming. Because they were like, we have the evidence.

Ash

We know what you did.

Elena

He told detectives, quote, a popular true crime author will write a book about him, and he wanted to portray himself in the best light possible. I think we're past that point, darling. Yeah, that ship has sailed. That ship has sunk to the bottom

Ash

in the best possible light.

Elena

Like. Excuse me, what?

Ash

Like you've killed. You just admitted that you've killed over 60 women. There's no light, doll.

Elena

No, no, the. He was reminded at that time of the potential for the deal to be completely void if he isn't entirely forthcoming. And that seemed to make him a little more cooperative.

Ash

Not so crazy again.

Elena

He's stupid. So they had already told him about this and he was like, oh, I can lie to them still. And then he admitted, I'm bullshitting you because I don't want somebody to write about me later. And they were like, you remember? And he was like, oh, those, like stupid.

Ash

I can't get past the best possible. Like, that's next level now.

Elena

Throughout most of the interviews, Ridgeway either demonstrated a remarkable lack of insight into his behavior or made self serving claims to distance himself from the heinous things he did. His initial explanation was that he never intended to murder anyone, but he said, inevitably the women would do something to trigger my rage, and the next thing I knew, I was choking them.

Ash

Their flight fault.

Elena

When asked about his anger, he always had someone or something to blame it on. Usually women.

Ash

Yep.

Elena

Eventually, when he realized there was no incentive for minimizing his role or his actions and nobody believed his, he stopped downplaying things and acknowledged that he simply had a deep hatred for women. And quote, once he managed to get a woman to his house, he killed her regardless of how she acted or how he felt.

Ash

Which is so weird because he's married to a woman.

Elena

Woman.

Ash

I never understand that.

Elena

Yeah, I don't get it.

Ash

Like, what makes, like, obviously all of these women were great women, but like, what makes your wife different from your murder victims?

Elena

Like, I need more of that now. In the end, Ridgeway confessed to nearly all of the victims on the Green river list and six unsolved homicides that had not been on the list. When he was confronted with their photograph, he was like such a dick. Like, such a dick. He couldn't really recognize any of them. And he said, it's. I didn't. The women's faces don't, don't mean anything to me.

Ash

Wow.

Elena

And then he said, and once I've killed him, I didn't keep it in memory. I just knew where they were, where I dumped them. That's your memory. Yep.

Ash

So you did keep them in your memory, you idiot.

Elena

While he may not have had a very detailed memory of some of the victims, Ridgeway was very forthcoming when it came to describing the process. He explained that he would spend hours before and after work driving around Seattle until he found a woman he liked. Then he would beckon her over to the truck. And he consistently claimed that he only killed sex workers. But it's known that he did not only kill sex workers. His explanation was that they were the, they were the group he had the easiest access to. But the members of the Task force believed there was definitely a psychological motive for victimizing that particularly.

Ash

Absolutely. There was. There was.

Elena

During their interviews, his misogynistic worldview and hatred for women became increasingly undeniable. He repeatedly referred to his victims as garbage and was fully committed to killing them. He said, I always had it in mind to kill them. So completely changed. Finally, he told detectives, he killed almost all his victims in the same manner. During sex. He would come at them from behind and wrapped his. Wrap his arm around the victim's throat and choke her down to death. When asked why he chose to strangle his victims rather than use some other means, he said, because that was more personal and more rewarding than to shoot her.

Ash

That is so dark.

Elena

Once the woman was dead, Ridgeway said he, quote, quickly disposed of her body, usually within half an hour of killing her. He would use a tarp, and he would drag the body out to the truck, remove their clothing, jewelry, anything else that might leave evidence. Their clothing would be thrown away at a nondescript location, and then he would leave the jewelry in various women's bathrooms. So he could get a thrill out of thinking that someone had found them and was wearing the victim's jewelry.

Ash

That is like.

Elena

That's beyond what.

Ash

Oh, my God.

Elena

Like, went to women's bathrooms, like, public bathrooms. It would leave them there to, like, oh, I gotcha. Because he's like, someone's gonna take it, and they're walking around wearing their jewelry. Oh.

Ash

And, like, that's also just a way to, like, violate them even more and

Elena

to violate women he doesn't even know living strangers.

Ash

Wow.

Elena

So he's violating women left and right. We don't even realize it, because imagine hearing that and thinking, oh, I found something in a bathroom in Seattle during this time.

Ash

Holy. That. That is like a. That's a crazy thing.

Elena

Now, the victims were always dumped in one of Gary's preferred dump sites, all over, which he referred to. He thought that he considered them sacred places, which is very Ted Bundy.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

Ted Bundy also considered his dump sites very sacred places to him.

Ash

Why were they sacred?

Elena

Because he would come back.

Ash

No, no, I know, but, like, what made the. Is it just the fact that he came back?

Elena

That made it sacred? Yeah, they were sacred because of what he made them.

Ash

Okay.

Elena

After leaving a victim at one of the sites, it was entirely common for him to return to visit the remains, some of who he confessed to sexually abusing, sometimes long after they had been dead. According to Gary, he would have killed more women, had the process of getting rid of the bodies not been so time and labor intensive. He said, I had to take them all the way out there. Waste of my time and gas. Waste of your time and gas.

Ash

Is that why you did it for 20 years? And he definitely didn't feel.

Elena

He said he would have kept going. He would have kept going. It was just kind of a pain in the air. Ass.

Ash

You made that decision after 20 years? No. You got caught.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

That's why you stopped.

Elena

As for how he'd managed to get away with so many murders for such a long period of time, that was simply a matter of personality and luck. He said outside of his wife and co workers, he really had no friends, no social contacts. So he kept his activities to himself, and that really wasn't a problem. He was also very vigilant when it came to avoiding detection. Over the years, he developed a kind of innate ability to pick up women in a matter that. In a manner that avoided detection and really wasn't witnessed by a lot of people. And once he'd killed his victim, he was meticulous about getting rid of any evidence that might tie him to the body. And he was meticulous. The other thing working in his favor was the poor communication of the various law enforcement agencies working on the case and various other failures on the part of some investigators. For example, if Des Moines officer Bob Fox had asked to look around his house for Marie Malvar car, the case would have ended there. He would have found Marie. Yeah. Dave Reichert said, we found out she was already dead in the house when they knocked on the door. Oh, my God. So her whole family and boyfriend are out there. We're outside, and he's saying to investigators, there's no girls in here. And they said, okay. And she was in there. It would have ended, oh, that's awful.

Ash

But also, they couldn't have gone in

Elena

there without a search warrant. No, they couldn't have. But they could have pursued that a little further.

Ash

No, absolutely.

Elena

And Dave Reichert said she fought and bit him on the forearm. He had bite marks on his forearm. So to hide it, he poured battery acid on his arm to burn the bite marks off.

Ash

What the.

Elena

Yep. It was also during these interviews that detectives learned how close they'd been to catching Ridgeway during the investigation. Reflecting on the first cluster of victims discovered in the Green river in August 1982, Reichert recalled, quote, he was the guy on the bank of the river, referring to the man who waved to the kayaker who discovered the women.

Ash

I knew it.

Elena

That was him. He said that Was me.

Ash

That is like something you see in a movie.

Elena

You couldn't even make that up.

Ash

That's so fucked.

Elena

On November 6, 2003, Gary Ridgeway appeared in court to finalize the terms of the plea deal. And as part of the deal, he was required to make a statement regarding his actions. It read, in part, in most cases, when I murdered these women, I did not know their names. Most of the time. I killed them the first time I met them and do not have a good memory of their faces. I killed so many women, I have a hard time keeping them straight. I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex. I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.

Ash

Why was he allowed to speak?

Elena

That's for his plea deal hearing.

Ash

Nobody wants to hear what you have to say.

Elena

After he read the statement, the court reporter read the 48 counts against Ridgeway, and he pleaded guilty. The following month, on December 18, he was back in King County Courthouse for sentencing. And that's when families were allowed to read their victim statements. For nearly two full days, one family member after another spoke of their loved ones, the grief victim they've that they've wrestled with since they disappeared, and in some cases, their hatred for the man responsible for their deaths. Carol Christensen's daughter Sarah said she wasn't a prostitute. She was a mother. She was a wife. She was a sister. No matter what you say, I will never, ever, ever forgive you. Others, like Mary, me and's brother Tim, kept their statement short. He said, I can only hope that someday someone gets the opportunity to choke you unconscious 48 times. May God have mercy on your soul. Have no mercy on your soul.

Ash

Yeah. Good.

Elena

Throughout the days long outpouring of grief and anger, Ridgeway sat beside his defense attorney, listening, nodding, occasionally wiping his eyes. Imagine defending. When his time came to respond to the families, he stood up and addressed the courtroom. And he said, I've tried to remember as much as I could to help the detectives and recover the ladies. I'm sorry for the scare I put in the community.

Ash

You gotta be fucking kidding me. The scare?

Elena

Now that's what you chalk it up to. After all the statements were read, King County Superior Court Judge Richard Jones sentenced Gary Ridgeway to 49 life sentences to be served consecutively.

Ash

Period.

Elena

And his statement let's hear it. Let's hear it. He said. As you spend the balance of your life in that tiny cell surrounded only by your thoughts, please know the women you killed were not throwaways, pieces of candy in a day placed upon this planet for the sole purpose of satisfying the murderer's desires while you could not face them as you took their lives. If you have a drop of emotion anywhere in your existence, you will face those women in your dreams and private thoughts of your grisly deeds. And sir, if you have that drop of emotion, you will be haunted for the balance of your life.

Ash

Good. And then he snapped his way out of the courtroom.

Elena

Gary Ridgeway was removed from the court and taken to Washington State Penitentiary to serve his sentence. Sentence. He is still there. And at various points he has been re interviewed by investigators regarding open cases. And as of now, no new victims have been confirmed. Wow. And that is the Green River Killer case. AKA Gary Beady eyed Ridgeway.

Ash

The fact that he came across law enforcement's desk as often as he did.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

And was able to remain undetected for that long.

Commercial/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Ash

Is next level. It's. It's just. I think it's just a product of the time.

Elena

It really is. And it. And it's a product of the time, but it's also.

Ash

He was.

Elena

He was meticulous. Unfortunately. That doesn't mean he's smart. That doesn't mean he's capable. It doesn't mean he's superior in any way. He's just. Is good at covering his tracks well.

Ash

And also he's not something to be proud of. You also have to think he was meticulous for the time.

Elena

Yeah.

Ash

He left saliva. He left.

Elena

He sure did.

Ash

He left carpet fibers. It was just. We didn't have the science back.

Elena

Yeah. If we, if we had the technology we have today, he wouldn't even be considered meticulous. You. And also it's like if. If some people had pushed a little further and not kind of assumed things about certain people or just taken it lightly, he could have been caught. When he answered the door.

Ash

He wasn't.

Elena

So Magar was behind him. It's awful. Yeah.

Ash

Pouring battery acid on his arm.

Commercial/Ad Voice

Which.

Ash

What the. Yeah. To be able to even do that like hollow.

Elena

I'm looking for a fun fact.

Ash

Oh, you're going to get it. You're going to get us the fun fact. I was about to. You. You put in a lot of work.

Elena

I think I'll put in more. Look at that. I found a crazy one. Tell us I don't think we've done this one before. Is it fun or is it insane?

Ash

It's just like, whoa, tell me it

Elena

is kind of fun. Male angler fish, they don't just mate, they fuse with the female.

Ash

Oh yeah, I did know that.

Elena

They. So they're tiny. The female is always bigger and they bite onto her and then gradually dissolve into her body.

Ash

Yeah. She doesn't need them.

Elena

And they only leave a sack of sperm that she can use when she wants to have eggs, period. So she just decides, I think I'm ready now.

Ash

Now.

Elena

Now that I've dissolved the father.

Ash

The things I could say. Yeah, the things I could say, honey. The things that are in my head right now that I just won't say aloud. But you know that I won't commit to recording.

Elena

But that's a fun fact.

Ash

I can't say much. I can't even say anything. But guys, I'm obsessed.

Elena

I hope you enjoyed that we this long ass episode. But yeah, I had to give you that good ending.

Ash

Yeah.

Elena

That he's gonna sit his ass in

Ash

jail, tiny little cell.

Elena

And I is being haunted.

Ash

He is. Because he had to have some like, even like the judge said, like drop of emotion.

Elena

And I like that he said you couldn't face them when you killed them. He pointed that out. He said, you little coward. You little coward. Yeah. So he'll be serving 49 consecutive life sentences. Good bye, Gary.

Ash

Bye. We'll never think of you again.

Elena

Nope.

Ash

So we hope you keep listening and

Elena

we hope you keep it. We.

Ash

But not so worthy. You almost forget to end your show because I very much almost forgot.

Elena

I had a feeling.

Ash

I was just like, okay, you can stop it.

Elena

That's it. Bye.

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