1. The Belated Capture of the Green River Killer
The authorities began to suspect that a serial killer was on the loose when sex workers and teenage runaways began to disappear along Route 99. After the first five bodies surfaced in the Green River, the press dubbed the unknown culprit “The Green River Killer”. In 1987, suspicion fell upon Ridgway, when many of the working women who worked along Route 99 – which he drove to and from work – described a suspect who resembled him. When investigators scrutinized Ridgway’s work record, they discovered that the disappearance of many victims coincided with his days off. He was taken into custody, but passed a polygraph test, and allowed investigators to take hair and saliva samples. He was released for lack of evidence and was soon back on the prowl.
Finally, in 2001, a new generation of detectives, who had been children when Ridgway first began to murder women, made more effective use of computers in the Green River Killer investigation. They also had access to modern DNA techniques that had not existed in the 1980s. When Ridgway’s hair and saliva samples, carefully preserved since 1987, were sent for DNA analysis, they returned a match that tied him to 4 victims. He was arrested, and entered a plea bargain in which he disclosed the locations of dozens of still-missing women. In exchange, he was spared the death penalty and was sentenced instead to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
The Tab – Everything that Night Stalker left out about Richard Ramirez and his murders
About – Gary Ridgway, The Green River Killer
Anstey, Roger – The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760 – 1810 (1975)
Black Past – The Zong Massacre
Carlo, Philip – The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez (1996)
Encyclopedia Britannica – Josef Mengele
Foreman, Laura – Serial Killers: Profiles of Today’s Most Terrifying Crimes (1992)
History Collection – Andrew Jackson’s Inaugural Reception Foreshadowed Dark Things to Come
Isenberg, Sheila – Women Who Love Men Who Kill (2000)
Listverse – Top 10 Serial Killers Who Had Even Creepier Admirers
Llewellyn, Peter – Rome in the Dark Ages (1970)
Medievalists – The Cadaver Synod: Low Point in the History of the Papacy
PBS – Africans in America: Living Africans Thrown Overboard
Rowen, Herbert H. – John de Witt: Statesman of the “True Freedom” (1986)
Thought Co – Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer