Welcome back to the Deep Dive. It's good to be
here. Today we are looking at a set of numbers
that, quite frankly, they defy comprehension.
If you just glance at the stat sheet, it really
looks like a typo. We're talking about the number
49. 49. 49 confirmed murder convictions. That's
49 individual human lives. Mothers, daughters,
sisters, all extinguished by a single person.
And that's just the official number, the one
that... The courts can prove beyond a reasonable
doubt. Exactly. Because that is just what the
court records show. When you actually sit down
with the confession tapes and we have the transcripts
right here, the numbers, they just spiral out
of control. We're talking. 71, maybe 90, possibly
even more. He eventually lost count himself.
And that's the truly terrifying baseline we have
to start from today. I mean, it creates a scale
of victimization that is just it's almost unprecedented
in American criminal history, at least when you're
talking about confirmed convictions. You have
other killers who claim these huge numbers, you
know, Henry Lee Lucas or someone like that. But
in terms of verified bodies, Gary Ridgway is
at the. absolute peak. We are, of course, talking
about Deary Leon Ridgway, the man they call the
Green River Killer. And, you know, I want to
start with a confession of my own here. When
I hear a phrase like prolific serial killer,
my brain, and I'm guessing most people's brains,
it immediately goes to Hollywood. Sure. We think
of the evil genius, Hannibal Lecter type, you
know, someone who is incredibly sophisticated,
a high IQ, playing this game of four dimensional
chess with the FBI. And that is the very first
and probably the most important myth we have
to dismantle right now. Because the reality of
Gary Ridgway is infinitely more disturbing precisely
because he wasn't a genius. Not even close. No,
looking at his background here, I mean, his IQ
was low. In the low 80s, he was dyslexic. He
was held back a year in school, barely made it
through high school. He worked a simple blue
collar job painting trucks at the Kenworth factory
for 30 years. 30 years of the same job. Yep.
He went to church. He was, by some accounts,
that guy next door who mowed his lawn and complained
about the neighborhood kids. And yet this man,
this incredibly average, unremarkable, low intellect
man, managed to evade the largest police task
force in the country for two decades. That's
the whole question, isn't it? That is the central
tension of this deep dive. Right. How? How does
a guy who paints trucks, who isn't some kind
of criminal mastermind, get away with murder
on an industrial scale for that long? Well, it
forces us to look at the blind spots in our society.
Ridgway wasn't a predator who outsmarted the
system in some brilliant way. He was a predator
who understood exactly who the system didn't
care about. The vulnerable. The most vulnerable.
He targeted sex workers, runaways, vulnerable
teenagers who were estranged from their families.
He operated in that gap where society tends to
look away. He literally banked on our indifference
to their fate. So here's our mission for today.
we have a massive stack of sources in front of
us criminal profiles from the FBI, the Green
River Task Force reports, the full details of
his really controversial plea bargain, and some
very recent news from late 2025 regarding his
health and his incarceration. A lot to get through.
A lot. We're going to unpack the psychology of
the man, the gruesome details of his methods,
the massive investigation that eventually caught
him, and this is the part I'm really interested
to get into, the Ted Bundy connection. It's a
true Silence of the Lambs moment. It really is.
asking one monster how to catch another. But
before we get to the investigation, we really
have to understand the origin. Where does a monster
like this come from? So let's go back. Salt Lake
City, Utah, February 18th, 1949. Gary Leon Ridgeway
is born. What do we see in those early years?
You see the cracks forming almost immediately.
The family dynamic was, well, volatile is putting
it mildly. His parents had a terrible marriage.
There was constant screaming, a lot of tension
in the household. But the core issue, the one
that forensic psychologists really focus on.
is his mother. That's a recurring theme in criminology,
isn't it? The mother -son relationship. Unfortunately,
yes. It's a very common thread. Ridgway's mother,
Mary, was described as incredibly domineering.
She controlled everything in the house. She inflicted
corporal punishment on Gary and his brothers
for even the most minor infractions. But it wasn't
just about discipline. Ridgway later revealed
a very, very disturbing internal conflict he
had regarding her it's it's difficult to talk
about but it's essential to understanding his
psychology this is where it gets dark fast It
does. He admitted to investigators that he had
feelings of sexual attraction toward her. But
at the exact same time, he harbored intense fantasies
about killing her. That's wow. That's a lot to
unpack for a young boy. That is the nexus of
the pathology right there. You have the fusion
of sexual desire and violent rage, and it's all
directed at the primary female figure in his
life. It creates a kind of wiring in the developing
brain where sex and death or sex and violence,
they become inextricably linked. He couldn't
separate the two. He couldn't. And since he obviously
couldn't act out that specific twisted fantasy
on his own mother, he eventually projected that
cocktail of lust and hate onto other women who
he saw as acceptable targets. And his father
wasn't exactly helping the situation? Not at
all. His father, Thomas, was a bus driver. He
would come home from his route and complain constantly,
almost obsessively, about the sex workers he
saw on the streets. He demonized them. He called
them filth. So you've got this perfect storm
brewing. A perfect storm. You have the mother
creating this internal confusion of desire and
violence. And you have the father standing there
pointing a finger and telling him those women
on the street, they are trash. They are less
than human. It gave Gary Ridgway a target class
for all of his repressed rage. And we see the
first I mean, the first real explosion of this
violence when he's just 16. I think a lot of
people assume the Green River killings in the
80s were his start, but there was a huge precursor.
A massive red flag that somehow gets overlooked.
At 16 years old, he lures a six -year -old boy
into the woods. Six years old. A child. And this
wasn't a playground fight that went too far.
This was predatory. He took this child into a
secluded area and he stabbed him. The knife went
clean through the ribs and punctured the boy's
liver. And the boy survived. Miraculously, yes,
he survived. But just think about the psychology
of a 16 -year -old who is capable of that. That
is a premeditated, predatory attempt on a human
life. And for what? For nothing. There was no
motive other than the hatch itself. And yet he
just moves on. How does he not end up in the
system after something like that? He graduates
high school. He joins the Navy. He did. He served
in the Navy during the Vietnam War on a supply
ship. He even saw combat. And this is where the
behavioral patterns we see later really start
to lock in. While he's in the military, stationed
in places like the Philippines, he is frequenting
sex workers constantly. And he's married at this
point. He married his high school sweetheart
right out of school. That's right. He contracts
gonorrhea and brings it home to his wife. And
despite her being, you know, justifiably furious
about the infection and the betrayal, he doesn't
stop. He continues doing it, often without protection.
It just shows a complete and utter lack of empathy
or any concern for consequences. He simply didn't
care. So what did his friends think of him? The
people around him? The description that comes
up over and over is friendly but strange. Friendly
but strange. That's that uncanny valley feeling,
isn't it? It's exactly that. It's the mask of
sanity. He could function. He could hold a job,
get married, go to family barbecues. But the
wiring underneath it all was just completely
fundamentally wrong. So let's move forward now
into the 1980s. This is when the nightmare begins
in earnest for the people of King County, Washington.
The timeline generally starts around 1982. That's
when the bodies start appearing. The peak of
his murderous activity was this absolute frenzy
between 1982 and 1984. I mean, we are talking
about women and teenage girls disappearing sometimes
every other week. The pace was staggering. And
he was hunting along a specific stretch of road.
The Pacific Highway South. The Sea -Tac Strip.
He called it the strip. It was his territory.
He knew that area intimately. He knew the women
working there were often estranged from their
families or living on the margins of society.
He knew they wouldn't be reported missing immediately.
That wasn't an accident. That was a calculated
part of his modus operandi. Let's talk about
that MO, because there is one detail in the police
reports that honestly just chills me to the bone.
The prop he used. The picture of his son. It's
so, it's diabolically manipulative. It is evil
genius in its simplicity. He would pull up in
his truck a potential customer, and to gain a
woman's trust, he would show her a photo of his
little boy that he kept in his wallet. It's a
signal. It's a perfect signal. He was saying,
look at me, I'm a dad, I'm a family man, I'm
safe, I'm a nice guy. And it would lower their
defenses completely. It would make them think
he wasn't a threat. And once he had them in the
truck, or took them somewhere secluded. Once
he had them isolated, sometimes in his home,
sometimes in his truck, often in the woods, he
would engage in sexual activity. And then came
the chokehold. He didn't use a gun. He didn't
usually use a knife for the murders themselves.
No, his preferred method was strangulation. He
would attack from behind, wrap his arm around
their neck in a sleeper hold. And strangulation
is a very... It's a very intimate, personal way
to kill someone. It's not quick. It's not quick.
It requires physical dominance. It takes time.
You have to look at the person. You have to feel
the life leaving their body. For him, that was
part of the ritual, the control. And then he
would dump the bodies. Which is how he gets the
name, the Green River Killer. That's right. The
first five victims that were discovered were
found in or along the Green River. But he used
clusters of woods all over South King County,
near the SeaTac Airport in remote areas. To him,
these women were disposable. He treated their
bodies like trash. But, and this is a... Really
difficult part of the story to discuss, but it's
essential to understanding his psychology. He
didn't just leave them there. No, he went back.
He returned to the dump sites. Frequently, he
would go back to the locations where he loved
them, and he would engage in necrophilia with
the decomposing bodies. God, I have to ask. Why?
I mean, beyond the obvious depravity, was it
just about sexual gratification or was there
something else driving that particular behavior?
Well, this is where it gets even more twisted.
Ridgway had a sort of a pragmatic logic for it.
He later explained to investigators that having
sex with the body has actually reduced his urge
to go out and hunt for a living victim. Wait,
wait. He saw it as a safety measure. In his mind,
yes. Necrophilia was a way to limit his exposure
to getting caught. It scratched the itch so to
speak without the risk of abducting another person.
That is one of the most horrifying things I have
ever heard. He's risk managing his serial killing
by sexually assaulting corpses. It is. It shows
that his primary motivation above all else was
self -preservation. He was also taking other
forensic countermeasures. He would remove their
clothing to delay identification. He would scatter
gum wrappers or cigarette butts that didn't belong
to him at the crime scenes to confuse investigators.
He was trying to plant false evidence. Exactly.
He was thinking, maybe not like a genius, but
he was thinking about how to get away with it.
There is one specific anecdote about his countermeasures
that I found completely unbelievable. The trip
to Oregon. This is one of the most chilling stories
in the entire case file. He knew the police were
on high alert in Washington. The Green River
Task Force was all over the news. So he decided
he needed to move some of the evidence. He dug
up the remains of some of his victims and transported
them across state lines to Portland, Oregon.
His thinking was that it would confuse the jurisdictional
boundaries between police departments. But he
didn't go on this trip alone. No. He took his
young son with him. Oh, my God. He told his son
they were going on a fun camping trip. So you
have to picture the scene. You have a man driving
his truck down Interstate 5. His child is in
the passenger seat, probably excited, sleeping,
playing a game. And there are human remains in
the trunk of the car. It's that compartmentalization
again. The dating father. taking his kid camping,
literally inches away from the evidence of his
own monstrosity. It speaks to a complete and
total lack of moral integration. There was no
connection between those two parts of his life.
He could switch roles instantly, flawlessly.
So bodies are piling up, 1982, 1983. The police
are obviously not blind to this. The King County
Sheriff's Office forms the Green River Task Force.
And this was a massive undertaking. At its height,
it was the largest, most expensive murder investigation
in the country. Detectives like Dave Reichert
and Robert Keppel, they were working around the
clock, but they were just drowning in information,
thousands of tips, thousands of potential suspects.
And what's so frustrating looking back is that
they actually had a huge clue right at the very
beginning, but the technology just wasn't ready
for it. The paint. The paint. Tell us about the
paint. In 1982, on the clothing of one of the
very first victims, forensic teams found spray
paint. Not just paint, right? It was something
specific. That's right, they were microscopic
spheres of spray paint and overspray. But here's
the absolute tragedy of it. In 1982, forensic
analysis wasn't advanced enough to pinpoint the
exact chemical composition or link it to a specific
batch or company. So that... Evidence, that crucial
clue, it just sat in an evidence locker. And
if they could have tested it back then? If they'd
had 21st century technology, they would have
seen that it was a specific high -end industrial
paint, an Imran paint used at the Kenworth truck
factory. Where Gary Ridgway worked every single
day. Exactly. He was spraying trucks with that
exact paint. It would have been a direct physical
link between him and a victim at the very start
of the investigation. But that evidence, it lay
dormant for 20 years. Unbelievable. force is
struggling. They're getting desperate. And in
1984, they do something that feels like it's
straight out of a movie. They decide to go see
a consultant. This is the Hannibal Lecter moment.
Dave Riker and Robert Keppel, they get on a plane
and they fly to Florida State Prison to interview
Ted Bundy. Bundy is on death row at this point.
He is, without a doubt, the most famous serial
killer in America. And they basically ask him,
how do we catch this guy? What's he thinking?
And Bundy was fascinated by the Green River Killer.
He even gave him a nickname, the River Man. And
Bundy, drawing from his own horrific experiences,
offered some incredibly accurate insights. What
did he tell them? He told the detectives that
this killer wasn't done with the victims after
they died. He was the one who suggested that
the killer was probably revisiting the dump sites
to have sex with the bodies. Which was exactly
what Ridgway was doing. Bundy saw it immediately.
He recognized his own pathology, his own brand
of evil in the Green River Killers' actions,
and he gave them specific actionable advice.
He told them, if you find a fresh grave, don't
dig it up, don't touch it, stake it out, wait.
He will come back to his victims. It's just so
eerie that Bundy could see into Ridgway's mind
so clearly. Did the police actually use that
advice? Did they try to stake out a grave site?
They tried. They set up surveillance on graves.
But Ridgway was either lucky or just cautious
enough. He never walked into one of their traps.
But Bundy's profile of the man they were hunting,
it was spot on. Now, we have to address the fact
that Ridgway was a suspect during this time.
This isn't a case where he was a total ghost
until the end. Not at all. He was on the radar
very early on. In 1983, a victim named Marie
Malvar disappeared. Her boyfriend actually saw
the truck she got into. It looked like Ridgeways.
He even followed it for a little bit. He gave
that description to the police. So bring him
in for questioning. They did. He was interviewed.
But you have to remember, Ridgway's persona was
friendly but strange. He was cooperative. He
seemed helpful. He denied everything, of course.
And then in 1984, he agreed to take a polygraph
test. The lie detector. We always hear about
how unreliable these can be, but in this case,
it literally let a monster walk free. It gave
him a pass. He passed the polygraph test. And
in the eyes of the investigators at that time,
that was a huge deal. It allowed him to slip
back into the background. He went from being
a prime suspect to just one of thousands of potential
leads. And all the while, the killing continued.
Let's talk about that background he slipped into.
Yeah. Because while he is committing these atrocities,
he is living this bizarrely normal, almost performative
double life. He gets married again, doesn't he?
He does. And during the second marriage in the
mid 80s, he becomes fanatically religious. Fanatical
really is the right word for it. The reports
say he's going door to door, proselytizing for
his church. He's reading the Bible out loud on
his lunch breaks at work. He's breaking down
in tears after sermons. It's a massive overcompensation.
evil with this public display of holiness. But
the contradiction is right there on the surface.
He's demanding his wife follow these incredibly
strict religious teachings to be modest and pure.
But then he's also demanding that they have sex
in public places in the woods, sometimes in the
exact same wooded areas where he had dumped bodies.
That is just it's sickening. It's like he was
getting off on the risk or the proximity to his
own crimes, even with his wife. It's all about
power and ownership of those. Those woods were
his domain, his kingdom of death, and he was
bringing her into it without her knowledge. Then
we get to the third wife, Judith Mawson. They
married in 1988. And this part of the story always
fascinates people because you always have to
ask that question. How did the wife not know?
And Judith Mawson has spoken about this extensively
in interviews since his arrest. She honestly,
truly did not know. She describes him as a loving,
attentive husband. She said he would leave for
work early in the morning, telling her he had
to work overtime shifts at the truck factory.
But he wasn't going to the factory. No, that
was his hunting time. But she believed him. Why
wouldn't she? He was bringing home the paycheck.
He was a good provider. Ridgway actually made
the claim later that he killed less during his
marriage to Judith because he truly loved her.
That is a very hard pill to swallow, him claiming
to love anyone. But Judith herself has said she
feels that, in a way, she saved lives just by
being with him. And if you look at the timeline,
statistically, the murder rate did drop significantly
during that marriage. But there were still cracks
in the facade. There's the story of the missing
carpet. Oh, right. When she was moving her things
into his house, she noticed there was no carpet
in one of the rooms. Just the bare floorboards.
And years later, after his arrest, detectives
told her, yeah, the reason there was no carpet
in that room is because he almost certainly wrapped
a victim's body in it and hauled it away. Can
you even imagine that? Living in a house? walking
on those floors every single day and not knowing
what happened right where you're standing. It's
the banality of evil all over again. He's just
a regular guy with a missing carpet and a lot
of overtime hours. So how does this whole house
of cards finally collapse? We have to jump forward
to the year 2001. Science finally caught up with
Gary Ridgeway. Back in 1987, during that period
when he was a suspect, the police had taken saliva
and hair samples from him. They didn't have the
technology to do much with them then, but they
kept them. They put them in storage. DNA profiling
technology had advanced light years beyond what
they had in the 80s. It was a completely different
world. They were able to go back into cold storage,
pull out those old samples, and run them through
new DNA tests. And they got a match. They linked
his DNA directly to sperm that had been found
on several of the victims. It was irrefutable.
Irrefutable. And do you remember that paint?
The microscopic spheres from the Kenworth truck
paint. They retested it with modern equipment.
And this time, they could identify the chemical
composition perfectly. It was a one -to -one
match for the specific paint used at his workplace.
The circle was finally closed, the paint and
the DNA. So November 30, 2001, he's leaving work
at the Kenworth factory after his shift. And
the Green River Task Force, they're waiting for
him. They arrest him in the parking lot. After
two decades, it was over. But it wasn't really
over, was it? Because then the legal battle began.
And this is where the story gets incredibly controversial.
Very controversial. Ridgeway was facing multiple
counts of aggravated first degree murder. Washington
state had the death penalty at the time. And
if anyone in the history of the state qualified
for it, it was a serial killer with dozens and
dozens of victims. But he didn't get the death
penalty. He didn't get lethal injection. He made
a deal. He made the deal with the devil, as some
of the victim's families called it. His defense
lawyers approached the King County prosecutor
with a proposal. A plea bargain. What was the
offer? The offer was this. Ridgway would plead
guilty to every single murder they could charge
him with. And, crucially, he would cooperate
fully. He would tell them everything. He would
help the police locate the bodies of the women
who were still missing, whose families had no
answers. In exchange for all of that, they would
take the death penalty off the table. He would
get life in prison with no possibility of parole.
This was a huge, huge decision for the prosecutor
at the time, Norm Malang. I remember the press
conference where he explained his reasoning.
I do too. Malang stood up there and said, and
I'm paraphrasing, Gary Ridgway does not deserve
our mercy. He does not deserve to live. But he
argued that this deal was the only avenue to
the truth. He said the mercy wasn't for Ridgeway.
It was for the families who had been waiting
20 years to know where their daughters were to
bring their remains home. It's a purely utilitarian
calculation, isn't it? Trade the death of one
man for the answers to dozens of unsolved mysteries.
And in that sense, it worked. Ridgeway led them
to more remains. He sat with investigators for
months, for over 180 hours, detailing the crimes
in a cold, detached voice. He admitted he hated
prostitutes and killed them so he wouldn't have
to pay them. He admitted he killed so many he
just lost count. And the sentencing was just
a stack of life sentences. 48 consecutive life
terms, plus another 480 years for tampering with
evidence, one decade for each victim. And then
a 49th life sentence was added a few years later
when another victim was identified. Judge Richard
Jones made it very clear that he would never,
ever breathe free air again. Not for a single
second. So he goes to prison. He sent to the
Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla,
kept in solitary confinement. And for a long
time, that was the end of the story for the public.
But, and this is where we get to the really new
information, the story didn't actually stop in
2003. No, the work of a cold case detective never
really stops. And in the last couple of years,
specifically from 2024 through early 2026, We
have seen some pretty significant movements in
this case. Let's start with the identifications,
because for decades there were victims known
only as Bone 17 or Jane Doe B10. That's right.
And genetic genealogy has been an absolute game
changer for these old cases. In late 2023 and
into 2024, investigators finally identified Bone
17 as a young woman named Laurie Ann Raspotnick.
She was just 15 years old when she ran away from
home in 1982, and Bones 20 was identified as
Tammy Lyles. And Wendy Steele. She was the youngest
confirmed victim, wasn't she? Yes, she was only
14. For more than 30 years, she was just Jane
Doe B -10. Giving these girls their names back
after all this time is a huge part of that ongoing
mission for justice. But then... Things got really
weird with Ridgeway's incarceration status just
recently. In September of 2024, there was this
sudden, unexplained transfer. It raised a lot
of eyebrows in the media and among the victims'
families. He was moved from the Supermax prison
in Walla Walla to the much lower security King
County Jail. And at the time, authorities were
incredibly tight -lipped. They wouldn't say why.
But documents that were unsealed in March of
2025, just about a year ago now, they revealed
the real reason for the move. And it was exactly...
what the plea deal was all about. They brought
him back to King County to help them locate more
remains. Even in his mid -70s, even after all
this time, they were still trying to wring every
last drop of information out of him. And then,
just a couple of months ago, in December of 2025,
reports started circulating everywhere that Gary
Ridgway was on his deathbed. The rumors were
flying. that he was in hospice care, that he
was receiving end -of -life treatment. Local
radio stations were reporting it, citing anonymous
sources within the prison system. But the Department
of Corrections officially shut that down, didn't
they? They did. They had to issue a formal statement
saying the allegations were inaccurate. They
acknowledged that he has health issues. I mean,
he's an old man now in his late 70s. But they
made it very clear that he is not in hospice
care. The original sheriff, Dave Reichert, who
was there from the absolute beginning, he had
a pretty biting take on that whole rumor. Reichert
has never been one to mince words about Ridgway.
He suggested the rumors probably started because
a photo had leaked in 2024 showing Ridgway in
a wheelchair, but he flat out called Ridgway
a pathological liar. He basically said, don't
believe anything this guy says or that comes
out about him unless we can verify it 10 times
over. It is just wild to me that even now, in
2026, he is still generating headlines. He's
still this dark cloud that hangs over the Pacific
Northwest. He is. And as long as there are still
dozens of suspected victims who have never been
found, that cloud isn't going to go away. The
case is, in many ways, still open. So what does
this all mean in the end? When we step back and
look at the total legacy of the Green River Killer,
what do we learn? I think, well, it's a legacy
of almost unimaginable devastation. 49 confirmed
dead, likely closer to 90, generations of families
destroyed. But it's also a legacy of systemic
failure. How so? Because the Green River case
proved... In the most brutal way possible, that
if you pick the right victims, women that society
has marginalized, women deemed less than, you
can operate with near impunity for a very, very
long time. It forced police departments across
the country to completely rethink how they investigate
crimes against sex workers and runaways. It changed
how law enforcement databases talk to each other.
And it brings us right back to that final difficult
question about the plea deal. It does. It's the
question that still gets debated today. The deal
saved his life. He is sitting in a cell right
now, breathing, eating three meals a day because
he traded the locations of his victims' bodies.
It's the ultimate ethical dilemma for the justice
system. Justice usually means punishment, an
eye for an eye. In this case, they sacrificed
the ultimate punishment in order to get the truth.
So was it worth it? There's no easy answer. There
isn't. If you ask the mother who finally got
her daughter's bones back after 20 years and
could finally give her a proper funeral, she
might tell you, yes, it was absolutely worth
it. But if you ask someone who believes that
justice for 49 murders demands the ultimate price,
they'll tell you that justice was denied. It's
a heavy thought to end on that we have this this.
dyslexic truck painter, a man of low intelligence
who used the simplest forms of manipulation and
relied on society's indifference to become the
most prolific convicted serial killer in American
history. It reminds us that monsters don't always
look like monsters. They don't have horns and
a tail. They look like the guy painting a truck
next to you or the guy sitting in the pew at
church on Sunday. And that, perhaps, is the scariest
part of this entire story. Thank you for listening
to this deep dive into the Green River Killer.
Stay curious and stay critical. We'll see you
next time.