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Man Pleads Guilty to 48 Murders
'Green
River Killer' Targeted Young Women; Plea Spares Him From Death
Penalty
By GENE
JOHNSON, AP
SEATTLE (Nov. 6) - Uttering the word ''guilty'' 48
times with chilling calm, Gary Leon Ridgway admitted Wednesday he is the
Green River Killer and confessed to strangling four dozen women over two
decades - ''so many women I have a hard time keeping them
straight.''
''Choking is what I did and I was pretty good at
it,'' the 54-year-old former truck-factory employee said in papers
submitted as part of his plea bargain.
Ridgway, a short figure with glasses, thinning hair
and a sandy mustache, pleaded guilty to more murders than any other
serial killer in U.S. history.
He struck a plea bargain that will spare him from
execution for those killings and bring life in prison without parole for
one of the most baffling and disturbing serial killer cases the nation
has ever seen.
For a half-hour, he listened in court with an utter
lack of _expression_ as his own accounting of how he picked up each victim
and where he dumped the body was read aloud. In the most matter-of-fact
way, he confirmed the details, responding ''yes'' over and over in a
clear but subdued voice.
''I wanted to kill as many women as I thought were
prostitutes as I possibly could,'' he said in a statement that was read
aloud in court by a prosecutor and opened an extraordinary window on the
twisted mind of a serial killer. He also said: ''I killed so many women
I have a hard time keeping them straight.''
He said he left some bodies in ''clusters'' and
enjoyed driving by the sites afterward, thinking about what he had done.
He said he sometimes stopped to have sex with the bodies.
Victims' relatives wept quietly in the
courtroom.
''It was hard to sit there and see him not show any
feeling and not show any remorse,'' said Kathy Mills, whose daughter
Opal was 16 when she vanished in 1982. Opal's body was found in the
Green River three days later.
Ridgway's lawyers said he was, in fact, sorry and
will express that to the families at the sentencing, which will be held
within six months. Defense attorney Tony Savage said Ridgway's emotions
came ''in private, in emotional ways, in tears and in words. ... He
feels terrible remorse.''
''The Green River nightmare is over,'' King County
Prosecutor Norm Maleng said after the proceeding.
But Sheriff Dave Reichert - one of the first
investigators on the case as a young detective - said that the
investigation continues and that charges in more cases were possible.
Under the plea bargain, Ridgway is not protected from the death penalty
in other jurisdictions. He has not been charged elsewhere, but admitted
dumping victims outside the county and in Oregon.
Other serial killers have bragged of murdering many
dozens of victims, but Ridgway's plea agreement, signed June 13, puts
more murders on his record than any other serial killer in U.S.
history.
John Wayne Gacy, who preyed on men and boys in
Chicago in the 1970s, was convicted of killing 33 people. Ted Bundy,
whose killing started in Washington state, confessed to killing more
than 30 women and girls but was convicted of murdering only three before
he was executed.
At a news conference, Maleng said his first
reaction to striking a deal that would take the death penalty off the
table was no: ''If any case screams out for the death penalty, this was
it.''
But he said he finally agreed to bring a resolution
to dozens of unsolved Green River cases. Investigators had evidence to
pursue charges in seven cases but had exhausted their leads in the
others, and the victims' families - including those whose loved ones had
never even been found - deserved answers, Maleng said.
Since signing off on the deal, Ridgway has worked
with investigators to recover the remains of some victims. Ridgway has
been married three times and has a son, but none of his family members
or supporters attended the hearing.
''Justice and mercy for the victims, the family and
our community, and that is why we entered into this agreement,'' the
prosecutor said.
The Green River Killer's murderous frenzy began in
the Seattle area 1982, targeting mainly runaways and prostitutes. The
first victims turned up in the Green River, giving the killer his name.
Other bodies were found near ravines, airports and freeways.
The killing seemed to stop as suddenly as it
started, with prosecutors believing the last victim had disappeared in
1984. But one killing Ridgway admitted to was in 1990, and another was
in 1998.
In many cases, the killer had sex with his victim
and then strangled her.
Ridgway said in his statement that he killed all
the women in King County, mostly near his home or in his truck not far
from where he had picked them up.
''In most cases, when I killed these women, I did
not know their names,'' Ridgway said in the statement. ''Most of the
time I killed them the first time I met them, and I do not have a good
memory of their faces.''
He said he preyed on prostitutes ''because I
thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting
caught.''
''I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate
most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex,'' he said. ''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.''
He stripped the victims of their clothes and stole
their jewelry, leaving some of it in the women's bathroom at the plant
where he worked as a truck painter. He said he got a thrill from
thinking a co-worker might find and wear the items.
He also told investigators that when he was in his
mid-teens, he stabbed a 6-year-old boy for no apparent reason. The
victim, who now lives in California, told investigators Ridgway lured
him by asking if he wanted to build a fort, then sank a knife into his
liver.
The victim said Ridgway laughed as he bled, then
wiped the blade off on the boy's shoulders. The boy spent weeks in a
hospital recovering.
Ridgway, who was from the Seattle suburb of Auburn,
was arrested in 2001 while leaving work. Prosecutors said advances in
DNA technology let them match a saliva sample taken from Ridgway in 1987
with DNA samples taken from three early victims. He was also connected
to some of the victims by microscopic particles of paint found on the
women; the paint had come from his workplace.
Ridgway had been a suspect as early as 1984, when
the boyfriend of victim Marie Malvar reported that he last saw her
getting into a pickup truck identified as Ridgway's.
But Ridgway told police he did not know Malvar.
Later that year, Ridgway contacted the King County sheriff's Green River
task force - ostensibly to offer information - and passed a polygraph
test.
AP-NY-11-06-03 0303EST
11/05/03 19:52 EST
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.
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