The women in King County, Washington, lived in fear of the Green River Killer from 1982, when the first victim’s body was found face down in the Green River, to 2001 when he was finally caught. Nobody would have guessed that the person responsible for over seventy murders was their town’s local trunk painter, Gary Ridgway. From 1982 to 2001, the number of dead runaways and prostitutes piled up around the Seattle area. It took police two decades to finally put this man behind bars and it was all thanks to a new style of DNA testing.

All of Ridgway’s victims had a similar profile: they were all either prostitutes or runaways. Ridgway later stated that “[he] picked prostitutes as [his] victims because [he] hated them and did not want to pay them for sex.” His main method of killing was strangling the victims in either his home or his truck. He would then throw the bodies in grass areas or into the Green River. He would often return to the dumpsite to have sexual intercourse with the corpses. Little did Ridgway know, his necrophilia was what would get him caught.¹

A key victim in this case was Marie Malvar, a seventeen-year-old who had begun selling herself to men, likely because her boyfriend was a pimp. While she and her boyfriend were out one night, she left and got in a pickup truck. Her boyfriend began to follow it to make sure she was okay; unfortunately for Malvar and her boyfriend, the driver got away because of a stoplight. Little did her boyfriend know that that was the last time he would see Malvar. He and her family began intensively searching for her. Fortunately enough, her boyfriend got a good look at the truck, and he recognized it when they were out searching for Malvar and anything that could bring her back home safe. The truck he recognized was parked outside of the house that belonged to Ridgway. When police were informed about him, they questioned Ridgway, but they could not legally arrest him because they found no further evidence with which to charge him. Malvar later became known as the first victim linked to Ridgway. It took decades to discover Malvar’s body in 2003.²

Another key victim in this murder investigation was a woman named Kim Nelson, a twenty-three-year-old who disappeared while in Seattle in 1983. While Nelson was out at night, a woman spotted her getting into a man’s truck. She was lucky enough to get a look at the man who was driving the car. With this information, the witness went to the police and began describing the man to a sketch artist. Soon after this, the police realized that the sketch looked a lot like Ridgway, who was still at the top of the list of suspects because of Malvar. They then showed the witness photos of men that fit the profile she described, and she pointed to Ridgway immediately.³

This created probable cause and allowed police to bring in Ridgeway and take bodily fluid samples from him as DNA evidence. It also gave police a warrant to search his truck and house, none of which had any type of evidence to connect him to any of the victims. This ultimately led to a killer being let back on the streets of King County.³

Piles of bodies began to be found all over the Seattle area, not just in the Green River, but also scattered around the woods. As the investigation went on, the police became aware that the Green River Killer tended to have sex with his victims postmortem. Because of this, the police were able to collect semen samples from multiple victims.⁵

Unfortunately, the forensic technology they had at that time was not advanced enough to connect the collected evidence to a person. This eventually led to Dave Reichert bringing in Beverly Himick, a DNA analyst, to work on the case. By the time Himick was on the case in 2001, there were very little semen samples left because of all the failed attempts to match the DNA with the killer. The only thing she had to work with were cotton swabs with very little DNA on them; little did they know, the cotton swabs would be the key to breaking the case. Himick used a new technique called Short Tandem Repeat (STR), which allowed her to create a genetic profile of the Green River Killer. This connected him to four victims. After this, Himick put the information into the national DNA database, which then led them straight to Ridgway.⁶

Another piece of evidence that was used in trial against Ridgway was the paint on three of the victims’ clothes. The paint particles were so small that they could only be seen using a high-powered microscope. This was discovered by a forensic scientist named Skip Palenkik. Although this may not seem like much, the type of paint that was found on the clothes was unique. This type of paint was not sold in stores because it was made specifically for car painting. The paint matched the kind that was used at Ridgway’s job. This made it extremely difficult for the jurors to think that Ridgway was somehow not the Green River Killer.⁷

After the Green River case remained open for twenty years, Ridgway was finally arrested at his worksite in November of 2001 for the murder of four women, and he went willingly to the station. At first, he pleaded not guilty; however, with all the evidence that was piled up against him, Ridgway decided to plead guilty to forty-eight murders that he committed in the span of two decades. To avoid the death penalty, Ridgway made a deal with the police, telling them that he would take them to find all of the bodies that he had left over the years.⁸

Ridgway admitted to dumping the women in threes “because [he] wanted to keep track of them all.” This was ultimately why Ridgway was able to take police to all of the sites and the only reason that he did not face the death penalty while on trial.⁹  Although Detective Reichert knew that this might anger some of the victims’ families, he stated that “the majority of the families were understanding and in agreement that it was probably the best decision given the circumstances.”¹⁰

Finally, in December of 2003, the jury convicted Ridgway on forty-eight consecutive murder charges without the possibility of parole. He was put in the Washington State Penitentiary in 2002. While Ridgway was behind bars, more and more bodies were discovered that were linked to him. In February 2011, another body was discovered that was connected to Ridgway, to which he again pleaded guilty, giving him another life sentence. In 2013, Ridgway claimed to have killed over eighty women, but that has not yet been proven. In 2015, he was transferred to USP Florence, a high-security federal prison in Colorado, which is where he remains to this day.¹¹

Gary Ridgway is the second most prolific serial killer in the United States. There have been multiple movies made about the Green River Killer and numerous books about his unbelievable story. Although it took twenty years, justice was finally served for the eighty plus women who were murdered at the hands of Ridgway. That would not have been possible if it were not for the advances that were made in forensic technology, which is what brought the key factors to the forefront to solve this once cold case. After 2001, when Ridgway was arrested, women were able to walk the streets again without having to fear the infamous Green River Killer.