Green River Killer caught?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

After I wrote my last post above, I went and double-checked some of the news stories discussing the possible connection to killings in other cities. I got a few of the numbers and dates wrong, but in general the picture is accurate. And specifically regarding the date the Vancouver killer is suspected to have begun work, it dovetails even more neatly with the apparent end of the Green River Killer’s known activity: The first prostitute disappeared in Vancouver not in 1986, as I wrote from memory above, but in 1984, the exact same year women stopped disappearing around the Green River. We now pause for goosebumps.

For more specifics, see this Seattle Times story for a discussion of the Vancouver angle on the Green River investigation. One chilling detail I forgot: Apparently the Vancouver serial killer is more of a theoretical law-enforcement construct than an actual confirmed murderer, because no bodies have ever been found. :eek:

42

Even the Devil may quote scripture. Beware of people who pray loudly in a public place. I hope I summarized JC correctly for the above two quotes.

I hope that the trial is helpful for the people of the PNW to get some of their lives back. The perpetrator of these crimes was a monster.

I don’t know whether they have the right guy. I hope that they do.

43

I’m pretty sure it’s in the 40-50 range, but I may be wrong. I hope I’m guessing too high, but I doubt it. I know one of our local papers (The Province, I think), ran a series a while back on all of our missing women. The majority of them were from the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s Skid Row. I hear we have the dubious distinction of having the worst strip in North America, prime hunting ground for someone like the GRK. I think the Aids rate down there is something like 25%. It makes me wonder what the chances are that the killer has been infected? If he has disapeared, and the man they caught turns out to be responsible for only a portion of the killings, maybe the main GRK has died himself.

44

I know this is an ancient thread, but I just wanted to fill in a hole or two. Since this was posted back in December, bodies have indeed been found.
Out in Port Coquitlam, a Vancouver suburb, there is a pig farm owned by one Robert Pickton and his brother. They’ve now charged him with the murder’s of seven women. Most of the evidence has been from teeth of bone fragments. I believe a wood chipper was among the items found. Nice, eh? All the women who have been ID’d so far have been from the Downtown Eastside, Skid Row. There are currently teams of archeologists and students going through the soil with sieves, looking for any evidence. They figure it may take up to a year to go over the whole property.
These women are all, I think, off the list of missing persons mentioned as potential GRK victims. I guess we had our own nasty after all.
Apparently they also own property here in Surrey–right down the hill from me, near our fishing spot (shudder!)

45

BUMP.

Sorry to bump such an old thread, but there’s been a slew of recent developments in the Green River case. The one that broke this morning is the one that convinced me this was worth bringing back. Believe me, it’s a doozy.

First off: The guy they arrested, Gary Leon Ridgway (interesting how serial killers all have middle names in the public’s mind) has apparently been cooperating with investigators in an attempt to save himself from the death penalty. Starting in the middle of July '03, through the present, King County detectives have been turning up bones at old dump sites, identifying the remains of missing women and sewing up old mysteries. While authorities have not confirmed anything, it seems obvious that Ridgway is providing information to law enforcement and helping them find these sites.

This triggered something of a controversy a week or two ago, when the suspicion became more concrete that Ridgway was near to finalizing a deal that would put him in prison for life, rather than on death row, in exchange for the information he was offering. A parent of a confirmed victim cried foul, saying he wanted Ridgway’s blood, and anything else (including, apparently, the peace of mind of the as-yet-unconfirmed victims’ families) was unacceptable. This argument is not yet resolved, because again the authorities aren’t officially confirming anything. (This could be a debate topic, if someone wants to start it.)

However, as of yesterday (10/29), unnamed sources are indicating that the rumors have merit, and that Ridgway will indeed be pleading guilty to more than forty — count 'em, forty plus — killings as his part of a deal that spares him from the needle. This is far in excess of the half dozen or so murders with which he was charged on his initial arrest, and to think that so many cases will be closed is quite remarkable.

But that’s not all. Hold onto your hats, kids:

Because apparently, in this plea agreement, Ridgway will be admitting to at least one murder in 1998. :eek:

That’s right. According to this morning’s paper, Ridgway provided information on at least two deaths that fell outside the official 1982-1984 time frame investigators defined as the Green River Killer’s prime activity period. What’s worse, one of the two women was classified as an “accidental death” by drug overdose by the King County Medical Examiner, and not considered a homicide at all. :eek:

Remember, Ridgway was one of three or four top suspects back in the original investigation; he attracted attention early and was questioned and scrutinized repeatedly for months and years. The revelation that he could have continued his extracurricular activities even under such a microscope is just… I can’t think of a word. Tragic? Terrifying? Appalling? All of the above, really.

Ridgway has a court appearance scheduled for the middle of next week, though nobody’s talking about what will happen on that day. After so many years of uncertainty and lurking fear, it’s simply mind-blowing to think that all of this could be wrapped up in just a few days.

More information here.

46

Scary stuff, people.

I have little of actual interest to add here, only that Scotti I totally understand your loss of innocence, as it were, because John Gacy was in my house as a guest for a post-Thanksgiving party 11 days before his arrest. I was 13 or 14 at the time. Even though Gacy’s victims were male, and I am a female, it shook me up.

And, the second time I felt that “Holy sh*t, I maybe just cheated death” feeling was on my way home from a retreat in Seattle. I knew NOTHING about the Green River killer (it may well have been on the national news, but I rarely see TV) and on the plane on my way home, I picked up a paperback book called “The Green River Killer” that someone had left on the plane. I thought it was fiction, and I started reading it, then quickly realized it was non-fiction… and I’d just been in that area, and the killer was still at large! Freaked me right the heck out, let me tell you.

I hope that the police have indeed captured the killer, and that justice is served and people can sleep at night again in peace.

47

UPDATE

It’s official. Within the last half hour, Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to forty-eight (48!) murders in a deal that keeps him off death row.

That’s the largest confirmed body count by a single serial killer in U.S. history. Others have claimed more (Bundy said his total was in the hundreds), but this is the largest substantiated number of kills by one murderer.

I can’t believe it’s really over.

48

Cross-posting this from the other thread:

It’s not over yet. He’s having the plea hearing as we speak – I have it live on the radio, most of the local stations are carrying it. He is scheduled to plead guilty to 49 counts of first-degree aggravated murder, in exchange for life without the possibility of parole.

The debate this has engendered is whether it is appropriate for a serial murderer to be able to bargain information on who he has killed, and where the bodies are, in exchange for having the death penalty taken off the table. That’s basically what Ridgeway has done. The State of Washington has agreed to the plea bargain in order to discover as much as possible about the victims and the locations of their remains, and to save the State the $3-5 million it is estimated it would cost to actually have him put to death. Many of the family members have a real problem with this; they think he should stand trial, and they think he should be put to death.

Ridgeway has been cooperating with the authorities in attempting to recall who he killed and where he left their bodies. The chilling thing is, he’s killed so many women that he’s not sure he can remember them all.

49

Someone will possibly be along with a more complete transcript, but in the meantime, this exchange between the prosecuter and Gary Ridgeway:

Repeat 48 times, in a monotone (as a talk show host put it, "just another day at the office).

I am . . . ill.

50

Obviously this is just speculation, but it seems to me there’s a better-than-even chance he’ll be executed in the end despite this legal dodge. If I remember the numbers accurately, there are half a dozen bodies he’s probably responsible for that are not covered by his current plea arrangement: two that were found in Pierce County (just over the line from King County, which is where the current proceeding is based), and four in Oregon, a state which also has the death penalty. Personally, I’m not a supporter of government execution, but in this case I’m willing to offer the families a ray of hope (if that’s the right word) that all Ridgway (note, no E) has done is buy himself an extra couple of years until the other corpses catch up with him.

51

In Texas courts, he wouldn’t stand a chance. I’ll go with the wishes of the families of the 48 women he killed as to whether his punishment fits the crimes he has commited.

Slight sidebar: have y’all seen this story about the sheriff’s office employees ordering the anti-Kobe t-shirts with a picture of a man hanging on the front?? I never thought I’d defend Kobe, but wow. If he’s guilty of rape, he should do his time, I believe. This seems a bit over the top, though.

Foxnews link:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102252,00.html

Hanging? I’d reserve that for sadists like Gary.

52

IIRC, a serial killer in Wisconsin managed to escape the death penalty, or so he thought.

53

I wonder offhand if his defense team talked with the team that defended Robert Yates (Yates struck a plea bargain in Spokane to avoid the needle, but was sentenced to death in Pierce County just about a year ago). Though the county budget would have trouble absorbing a major trial of this sort, I can’t say I’d be sorry to see the prosecutor taka a whack at this miserable excuse for a human being.

54

Having grown up in Seattle and living here for basically all of my life, the Green River killer has been , as so aptly described by others posting before me, the local “bogeyman.” Unfortunately, he was very, very real and did some truly evil things.

For those who are interested, King County has posted on the Internet a number of documents relating to Ridgway’s case. The most chilling is the prosecutor’s summary of the evidence, which runs over 130 pages. It details Ridgway’s life and the ways in which he does and does not fit the classic serial killer pattern. It also describes each of the 48 killings that they are charging him with and the ones that they couldn’t yet charge. I’ve read the whole thing and it’s truly disturbing. My wife was unable to finish reading it.

There’s a link to the documents at CNN’s story here.

Out of everyone who’s life was scarred by Ridgway, I think the person that I felt the sorriest for, in an unexpected way, was his son. Obviously, I feel tremendous sadness and sympathy for Ridgway’s victims and their families. But Ridgway committed some unbelievably abominable acts, the least of which was killing a woman, with his son in close proximity. I hope for his sake that Ridgway’s son never reads the summary of evidence.

55

While I was across the border when the Green River Killer was originally making the news, I still felt the horror. I was ecstatic when I learned that they caught this suspect and hoped that the case would finally be closed. I have mixed feelings about the plea-bargain. I guess I’d rather the families had quick and complete closure then to drag it in an uberlong court case. I do find myself wondering if he has any more bombshells to drop.

In Canada we have Clifford Olsen who successfully bargained body information for money. How repulsive is that? Every so often he hints that he still has more information but I don’t think anyone’s pulling out the chequebook anymore.

In Vancouver we have the notorious Pig Farm murderer suspect, Robert Pickton. Unless he strikes a deal, this case that will drag out for years. I haven’t heard anything new on this lately. Before he was arrested, I heard many theories that the disappearances could be the Green River Killer crossing the border into Vancouver.

56

Direct link to prosecutor’s summary here. It’s a PDF, and it’s quite large, so you probably want to right-click and save, and open a local copy. I also linked this document in the Pit thread (“congratulations on your record” or something like that). Warning, the contents are very, very disturbing. (More documents and coverage here.)

Ask and ye shall receive. Enter the chamber of horrors. Sample revelation: “Vancouver residents have recently learned… that fragments of some of these dead women’s bodies may have entered the food chain through the rendering plant…”

Sometimes it seems like Hallowe’en is just redundant… :frowning:

57

Aside: This often comes direct from the media, who will say something like “45 year old Michael John Smith of Red Rock…”

In Australia, we say that to identify as clearly as possible the person being named - if we just said “Michael Smith” then 39 year old Michael Anthony Smith of [another nearby town] might get a little peeved, to say the least.

It’s not enshrined in law or anything, just standard operating procedure for us, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s similar in the US.

58

Thanks Cervaise, that was a good read. My stepfather (ex-Mountie) was asked to work on this case but he turned it down for personal reasons.

59

He won’t last long in prison. Like it or not, what comes around goes around - and the criminals in prison have historically chosen to cull out the ones who they believed weren’t worthy of life. Of course, he’ll know he’s a target - unlike the women he killed, who had no idea they would be raped and murdered.
Squooshed - that’s a good (sad) point - this MF has a son, and how much pain he’s going through I cannot imagine.

If he’d been tried in Texas? Different outcome, I’d say.

60

BLONDE –

Ridgway will not likely be sentenced for another six months or so. Until then, he is in the custody of the Green River Taskforce, which continues to try to work with him (the lying schmuck) to find out more about his criminal history and the women killed.

Once he is sentenced and transferred to prison, he will almost certainly be in protective custody as a high-risk prisoner whose safety cannot be guaranteed in the general prison population. This amounts to being held in maximum security perpetually – in the cell 23 hours a day, including meals, and one hour (or two 1/2 hours) alone in the yard, weather and staff availability permitting. And there’s no guarantee even that will be enough to keep him safe; the other prisoners will only have to catch him alone once.