Episode 673: Gary Ridgway : Redux Part III - The Riverman

That's one of the cannibalism started.

[music playing] Oh, man. I hope Gary can really make his way out of this room. Oh, I was Gary going to get himself out of this game.

“I really think after last week, Gary's in a lot of hot water.”

I sure hope he can figure his way out to get out of this one. Come on. Gary, give it a happy ending. Find Christ, Gary. Oh, Gary Ridgeway showed to get himself into a pickle this time. Come back after the commotion break.

See, Gary can get away from the shelf. No, no, no, no, no, no. We need more bluegrass rabbits in this story. I'm going to last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with bluegrass injuries of Braelsky. Yeah, I was watching this video of a group of people finding a Japanese.

I'm bluegrass, they serve that. It took you. That was cool. They looked awesome. They're more white than us. I was very impressed. They don't want to sing white so well. They do. Yeah, truly so. And we've got the man who's been known as Browngrass.

Every camp site has ever been to. It's at Larson. That's right, man. I'll spray it large. Dude, is your, yeah. You're in like a bear word. So moan, you're ridden that it does kill grass.

Now I tell you what it smells. (laughing) It's fucking great. My ears smell so bad. It smells itself. (laughing)

I'm not know if we're here, ladies and gentlemen. Gary Rigway, part three, the conclusion to this series. Stinky Irland. (laughing) So when we last left Gary Rigway, the year was 1984.

And the murder spree that would make Gary one of the most prolific serial killers in American history was finally coming to a close. But while Gary had supposedly been trying to help the green river task force by riding a letter to the authorities, giving tips on how to bring his reign of terror to an end,

his near-elegible communication had not impacted the investigation in any meaningful way. So in February of 1984, Gary Rigway wrote another letter

“to two Seattle newspapers with the words very important”

written on the outside of the envelope. We're going to want to open this. (laughing) They're very important. But it helped that it looked like it was written by a serial killer.

It's like a big V little eye important spelled wrong. It looked like it was from a crazy person.

But that's the incredible thing about Larry Rigway is not known

at all as a letterwriter. You know, you talk about Zodiac. You talk about BTK. No one ever mentioned Larry Rigway as a letterwriter. You can barely paint.

(laughing) I literally believe what we're seeing here. Truly is the fact that they weren't cool. Like Larry Rigway wasn't cool. Gary Rigway letters weren't cool.

No. And that Zodiac letters make sense because it's fascinating and it's the puzzle and it's all that kind of shit. And like all the black dolliest stuff is very interesting and compelling.

And all the rapper is telling. It's telling. It's interesting. And BTK stuff is like as douchey as it is. It's still fucking chilling.

Yes. Gary Rigway was such a bad writer. He bored the investigators out of them. Yeah, taking his letter writing seriously. Do they get lots of fake letters?

Sure.

Yeah, they always have to decide whether or not the letter

is actually from the killer or not. It's pretty, it's very difficult and in the midst of the investigation to tell which is which. I know it's not fake the fact that they found Nancy Guthrie's cat collection right outside of the North Pole.

And I'm starting to think that maybe Santa's got something to do with Nancy Guthrie's naughty exit. Oh, she's the new Mrs. Claus. Yeah. Because once he touched her, the oils, the Santa oils

means she can't be touched by another man. Sure. Yeah, I heard about that. What contained in the very important envelope was a two-page letter. But while the one sent before was ostensibly meant to be helpful,

this one was more about throwing police off Gary's trail. Good thing he did sent it to them. Yeah. This letter was speaking to that point. It didn't buy a moron.

So the letter written as numbered lines with all the words running together with no spaces whatsoever. It didn't have any more of an impact on the overall investigation than the one that came before. But it is still a fascinating artifact.

Now, just starting off with instructions in which Gary wrote

“what you need to know about the green river man”

don't throw away with no written as NO. Gary listed off 40 things to know about the green river killer. He's smart.

He's Asian. Also, notice that he called him the green river man and not killer. Yeah. Yeah, that is true. Many of these things to know were non-sensical, like number 11.

You work me or nobody. But actually, now that I read it out loud,

“I think he's trying to say you work with me or you don't work with anybody.”

I don't think that Gary knows. I think that's one of those, like you know how like we don't know what the Eggman means. Yeah. So weird to like see a man write his stutter.

Yeah. Not like that. Nobody. But perhaps the most baffling is number 26. Realist man is one man.

Yep. I can't make sense of that no matter how many times I read it. I just sit. I just sat in my fucking office just going, Realist man is one man.

Realist man is one man. Realist man is one more. Realist is one man. I don't know. Man is one man.

Yeah. You know what the answer to this tutorial? Yeah, I do actually. Okay. I do believe.

Realist man is one man. Right. He's meaning. It's one man. It's not multiple killers.

Okay. So the realist man is one man. And he's me. The most possible, the most likely possible suspect is one man. A person who is working alone.

One man. Realist man is one man. Realist man is one man.

I always think of like this one guy at Tallahassee who did heroin.

And there's always like you want to get real man. You remember that man? That's what he's talking about. If you're real, I'll stay over here in my fake amazing life then. But hidden within all a Gary's nonsense,

where actual clues that this letter was really from the green river killer. Gary wrote about at least four things that were never released in the press. Like number two on the list. Which said one black in river had a stone in the vagina. Why?

Actually it's a whole that is a lot of Gary. I don't know.

“See the stone detail have been kept a secret from the press for just such an occasion as this.”

As for some of Gary's other predilections. Like what was mentioned number eight. That one said he had sex after they dead. He smokes. Now Gary didn't smoke.

But he was indeed a committed Necrophiliaic. If committed is the right word here.

I actually do think that that makes a lot of sense because he's always wanted.

He does want credit. Which we now know in the end, right? He wants people to know the exact nature of his crimes. He was super interested in and we know for his behavior after the fact he gets off on it. So that's him directly admitting that he's a Necrophiliaic.

And that was a part of the game. But then all of the stupid chap he threw out of the fake cigarette butts that he was stealing from the street and stuff. That's him being like, "No, I'm digging." That's the Nutton Diches. Here we like that.

And when did he send this? This was in 1984. It's our 1985, I believe. So it did kind of work. Actually it was February of 1984.

Yeah, so he was captured for another one. Eighteen years. Many years. Yeah, many many years. Not in that millennium.

Gary maintained in conversations with investigators later that he would not go back and have sex. With the dead bodies in the days after a murder.

I've never once gone back and had sex with a corpse days after a murder.

Instead, Gary said that he had sex with the bodies right after he killed them. Which he's supposed to technically make him a Necrophiliaic? Yes. A hundred percent percent. If she's dead, you're fucking or it doesn't matter what her temperature is.

Because you could put her in a fucking hot, the bowl of water.

“If you want to, you can run a bath and make her, you can warm her up.”

That doesn't make her then alive enough for it to not be Necrophilia. Also, I would say that Necrophiliaic might be the best thing he is. It's definitely got the least amount of victims that know what's happening. Yes. But Gary Ridgeway loved to talk once he got him gone.

And after investigators pushed him on the Necrophilia angle just a bit. He admitted that he would return to the corpses over the following days. Having sex with them again and again, quote, "until the flies came." Oh, then he had a deadline. Oh, that's fine.

The man has standards. Yeah, he knows when to stop. Yeah. The flies come pretty fast. Very fast.

I get bitten by flies and I'm alive. [laughter] Are you a flying snail? As far as why Gary had sex with some corpses and not others, Gary actually saw Necrophilia as a kind of twisted compliment, but not for anything physical.

Instead, Gary's Necrophilia was a commentary on the victims overall the meaner just before their murder. I said, "No, he's not shallow." [laughter] The grave is where they were.

Yeah, he's in love with the corpse's mind. Yeah. Gary said that the women who had made him particularly angry, those were the ones whose corpses were left alone after the murder. Because to Gary, leaving a corpse in some deserted spot by itself, that was a punishment.

Oh, that's what it is. It's a reward. Yeah. I didn't know that.

“I should've been, we should be thanking you.”

Did he leave quarters at least?

[laughter] Did he see you? That quarter. Under four head means, "I'm next." [laughter]

Okay. You leave in the room. Even though the letter said to the press. Is it from a Necrophilia fairy? [laughter]

Like, when you just no one wants to fuck my corpse tonight. [laughter] Really? For me, the Necrophilia fairy looks exactly like the nerve-ending fairy. The same guy.

The same exact guy. That was definitely thinking when the step is over. See, he's stinking. He's so deep. [laughter]

Even though the letter sent to the press had made mention of details that had not been released to the public, the second to last line in the letter made investigators unsure as to how seriously they should take it. At the very end, Gary wrote, "There was a booklift at Denys. I got this odd. It of it belongs to Cop. Call me Fred.

If you couldn't decipher that. Yeah. The writer was trying to say that he had gotten all his information from a notebook that a detective had left behind at a Denys. There was a booklift at Denys. Left at Denys.

I got this out of it. It belongs to a Cop.

“So the idea is that that's how I know all these super secrets is that I took some detectives journal from a Denys.”

Yes. Is that real? No. No. That's the thing.

No detective would admit that he had left a notebook back at Denys. But they also couldn't rule that out. That someone had left a notebook at Denys, but just wouldn't admit to it. No, but he'd get it. He was at the Denys.

Oh, he just happened to be happy to be at the Denys and the detective left the notebook and he grabbed it. He's like, "Ah, or maybe I know all this stuff because I found a notebook at Denys."

After I strangled three underage prostitutes to death, the first thing, honestly, I want is a moon's over my hand.

Yeah. Maybe the cop wasn't ashamed of losing the notebook, just eating a Denys. Yes. That's a cop. No one can know it.

I had Belgian waffles for dinner. Well, the thing was, this line, it effectively removed the letter from contention concerning things only the killer would know. Furthermore, too many people had handled letter before a got from the press to the cops. So finger printing was impossible. A so-called expert at the FBI also examined the letter and determined it to be inauthentic.

So the letter was followed away as close but no cigar, even though it was absolutely written by the green river killer. It does often seem that the guys investigating this specific set of crimes really looked for opportunities to not do it. And from what it seems, I did think about that, but these guys really did work their asses off. They did what it did, but strongly. What it was is, again, they just had the worst instincts at every possible moment.

And to me, it does kind of speak to Tacoma and how badly people's brains were fucked up. Everyone's brain was fucked up in Tacoma during this period of time. No one's thinking straight. Yeah, Coco Baines' life should've been great. [laughter]

Oh, you know, you want to know the conversations, me and Carolina, at the house of, like, how the Tacoma Smelter may have led to the grunge movement. [laughter] It's a possibility. It's a possibility, I don't know.

I mean, you can't prove it. It's kind of funny because you very rarely, like, we see a lot. We talk about, you know, the less dead, we talk about corruption. And it's like, what do you do? If they're given, they're 110%.

It just happens to be a bunch of guys that got these in cubschool. Yeah. You know, like, there's bad at the job. Yeah, and even the FBI coming in can't help them out. Like, they're just all sitting there, like, the guy who gets really mad

when he can't figure something out, like-- [growling] And it feels like it's all of them. I mean, a bad cop can't solve a murder. Now, I was in jail once in a really shitty town called Blunt's Town.

“And I remember I got locked up for a night because I was, uh,”

got in trouble for smoking weed. Blunt's down Florida? Yeah, down Florida. Yeah, it's Blunt's time. We had a blunt.

We went to jail for the night. Very funny. But I remember when I was in there, I was the guy-- one of the guys I was-- Who else was in the jail?

Who's like, what'd you guys do?

It's like, "Oh, we're in your first smoking weed."

He's like, "Man, that's the only crime you can't do in this town." [laughter] Assault? Right? Forgery?

Man, I do. [growling] Yeah, that's hard, though. But don't even try to jail. [laughter]

Now, relatively speaking, the murders tapered off in the spring of 1984. Even though there was still a staggering amount of bodies

Remember that's an entire--

“That's some sort of killer's entire output.”

It's mini serial killer's entire output. Yeah, especially at this time, point in time. Zodiacs five, right? Uh, yeah. Yeah.

But the deaths were still coming at a slower pace. But even so, the cops were actually starting to wonder if there might have been two killers on the loose. Because Gary would treat a body differently based on where he left it. The bodies left on dry land, for example,

would be buried or hidden under piles of logs, sticks, or debris. If they weren't buried, the bodies left on dry land, sometimes appeared to be intentionally posed in sexually-loved positions, which is something that's zero-colors are known to do because of the secondary trauma

causes to the person who finds the body. BTK was really big on this. But again, investigators were thinking too hard when it came to Gary Ridgeway's motivations. Instead of setting up a scene to be purposefully

shocking to whoever found it, like Jack the Rippers, the best example,

“Gary's bodies only appeared to have been left in the”

repositions because these bodies were the ones that Gary had returned to for the act of Necrophilia, and Gary had not, so to speak, cleaned up after himself following the Necrophilia. He just left the bodies in a sexual position.

God damn that looks sexy. Oh my God. I got it. Wait a second. I'm a cop.

I'm investigating this. I can't be. Maybe just a couple of minutes. Sorry boys. Bona Jack.

Bona Jack. I can tell by my penis. While the body counted slowed down in 1984, investigators were still looking for any help they could get in their quest to catch the green river killer.

In October of that year, special investigator Robert Keppel received a letter from the most unlikely of sources. Keppel got a letter from perhaps the most notorious serial killer of the century.

Theodore Robert Bundy. It's the 1984. Ted Bundy was already on death row down in Florida, but in July of that year, guards had not only found two hacksaw blades in Bundy's cell,

but they'd also discovered that Bundy had already cut through one of the bars and glued it back in place, so no one would be the wiser.

He was two bars away from escaping for what a third time.

I got to hand it. It's just a bit of an art project. I'm working on it. I just want him trying to do it in a fictional way. I mean, as well.

No, Bundy was a master escape artist. So it is generally believed that Bundy offered his expertise to the green river task force as a way to delay his execution. So he could buy himself enough time to escape from prison.

He of all serial killers, too, was one of those that got so juiced up talking about his own crimes and talking about the crimes of others. It's also just another sexual escape. Yes, it is. Now, as it turned out, the FBI behavioral science unit really was

on to something when they started interviewing in active serial killers, so they could catch active serial killers. But the problem was that the serial killers were sometimes better at building a profile than the FBI. Case in point, this Ted Bundy's work on the Green River killer.

While Robert Ressler's profile on the Green River killer had been so general that it was useless, Ted Bundy came far closer to nailing Gary Ridgway than any other person who worked on this case. And that's regardless of Bundy's real motivations in helping the task force, whether it was to buy extra time, give himself a boner,

didn't matter. He's still in a great job. He would have been a great cop. Well, you know, he was a lawyer. You know, there are plenty of cops who loved the murder.

They really do. Well, Bundy said that he was only mildly interested in the case until he signed up for a subscription to the Tacoma News Tribune. After learning about the crime scenes and further detail beyond the scant national coverage, Bundy became fascinated.

Kepel believed that Bundy saw a mirror image of himself in the Green River killer, which is even more chilling

“when you remember that Bundy was also from Tacoma,”

and it grown up in the shadow of the same smelting plant as Gary Ridgway. So, Kepel replied to Bundy in a short one-page letter that agreed to hear Bundy saw it's on the case. Two weeks later, Kepel received a 22-page reply from Ted Bundy regarding the killer that Bundy liked to call the River Man.

And Bundy's take on this is especially impressive and you consider that he made all of these guesses based solely on local reporting from the Tacoma News Tribune. Two things I'm very impressed by right here.

First off, 1984, Bundy's in prison.

Somehow he's getting a local newspaper on the other corner of the country. I'm very impressed by that. Hey, it used to be much more common. Yeah, it's second of all. Fucking River Man's a great man.

River Man is incredible. It's so much better than the Green River killer.

Yeah, the River Man sounds like the dark musical based upon this story.

Oh, the river. What the river. Oh, the river. I took him, but they don't stay down. I rope him, but they don't get down.

“Oh, I love a girl when she's lying flat.”

I come and get her and that is that. That's why you got a half-bring. Yeah, I do a hunting area. That was great. After reading the letter, couple flew down to Florida, where he let Bundy expand upon his thoughts.

Bundy said that even though the River Man focused on sex workers, he was only doing so, because sex workers were the most vulnerable subset of women available to the killer. Check. Any woman would do. Bundy said, just so long as that woman wouldn't be missed.

He specifically said that out loud. This had nothing to do with the killer having a particular grudge against sex workers. Instead, Bundy chalked the killer's choice of victim up to laziness.

I actually completely agree.

They were accessible and he knew that they were vulnerable. 100% and he because he did kill women who were not sex workers. And this, Bundy obviously saw himself as superior. Because Bundy had admittedly evaded capture after killing pretty young co-eds around the country. I mean, the murders that Bundy committed.

If they were committed today, they would have been national tragedies. Bundy was also absolutely fucking correct in how he guessed Gary Ridgway's motivations and chosen victims. I'm going to say this in a kind of almost sub. This might be an appropriate analogy. Okay.

But I kind of view Ted Bundy as a sort of Morrissey-style serial killer. Where he views himself as he said. But he views himself as like a genius artist Thomas in a way that elevated serial killing up to a point in which I don't think he would choose to talk about a serial killer that he would feel was at his level.

“I think he looked at Gary Ridgway as almost like a factory of killing.”

Yeah, number. It's like a numbers thing. Yeah, he got a lot of numbers. But it's one of those things. It's like, I'll give you a sports analogy.

Sure. Yeah, it's like when someone says like, yeah, they're a good team, but they're in a shitty conference. Like anybody could fucking get that. Like if I was in that fucking conference, anybody could get those numbers.

Yes. You know, that's Ted Bundy. That's Ted Bundy when it comes to Gary Ridgway. Because they are very hierarchical in their brain. Zero killers.

They are very, like, especially Ted Bundy. Gary Ridgway was they know true crime. They, a lot of times, they reinvest in true crime, and because they have considered zero killing to be their job or their career. Yeah.

Now I wouldn't say Marisi. Father John Misty. Wow. Yeah. Well, so Jeff Bundy is the father John Misty.

I'll put zero killing. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I totally get that. Yeah.

Well, buddy also nailed that the river man was nice. He's he going. And he looked like many of the men that a sex worker might hang out with safely every day. That man thought there was nothing memorable, threatening or unusual about the

green river killer, which described Gary to a team. Smartly, Bundy advised the green river task force to keep the body locations a secret so they could stake them out. Because the river man was almost guaranteed to return to a location with another body if he thought it was safe to do so.

And had the task force actually done this. They absolutely would have caught Gary Ridgway. Because Bundy also surmised that no matter how many bodies they discovered,

they would always be more even if the killing slowed down.

“The only way the river man would stop Bundy guessed is if he died,”

found Jesus or was put in jail for something else. You come fucking nailed it. You're also Gary Ridgway told them the same thing. He said you should go to where I killed people before, and you should wait until I show back up.

Yeah, he literally said it. He was a moron. Yeah, he had said it a year before. And Bundy's telling them again, like, stake out the body sites.

He's gunna come back. He's thucking the bodies. Yeah, just put in the work. That's it. Like, just hide.

Get a deer blind. Something. Talk to the flies. Talk to the flies. And they're like, "We don't snitch."

All right. I don't fucking buy a band that feeds. All right. I don't know that I like better than the teddy of a dead little girl. It's my favorite thing in the world.

I'm going to go out to shoot. Anyone else go cover? Yeah. I love toys. Well, Bundy also correctly guessed that the river man would have dump sites, close to

wherever he picked up his victims. So there would be his little time is possible between the adoption, the murder, and the disposal. Do you know that he actually said that, you know, he just recently came out and talked about this year.

Gary Ridgeway saying that he had hitkits buried. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yep.

The only whiff Bundy had was his strong assertion that the green river killer loved watching pornography and horror movies because Bundy became a crusader against

In fact, it was Bundy's assertion that pornography and horror movies were the main cause of the serial killer epidemic. What an asshole.

“I mean, we now know this is incredibly off base because the numbers of”

serial killers currently operating within the United States is estimated by the FBI. Then this is the most incredible number of all between 25 and 50. 50 at most is ridiculously low when compared to even the most conservative 20th century estimates concerning active serial killers per capita.

It puts us below 1940 levels and there has never been a time in human history when pornography

and horror have been as available, mainstream, and popular as they are today. So Ted Bundy's claims which were eventually picked up and amplify by the Christian media, a complete and utter horseshit. It was the fucking pollution. Full stop.

Question-fucking answered when it comes to serial killers. Porting horrors was makes me a good person. Yeah, take it to Jimmy's house. Exactly. Yeah.

Also though, I will say now you don't have to stop watching porn. You don't even have to rewind the tape. Yeah, you just find a new one. Yeah, with streaming, you know, they just started another horror movie for you. You don't have to leave the kill.

Yeah. And you're also great about watching that porn on the internet. I love sharing it to social media. Yeah.

“You should click on that share to Facebook.”

That's my favorite. I love to put a little comment like, "Wish she'd be ugly." Yeah. Then I retweet it obviously because I want everybody to know. Yeah.

I blame the rewinding. The rewinding, okay? Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, people don't like being kind.

No. Being kind in the '80s and '90s was usually pretty aggravating. And you must be kind to rewind. Yeah. Exactly.

Another mystery solved. Fuck. But even though Ted buddy painted a pretty good picture of Gary Ridgeway, his contributions to the case ended up being just as meaningless as every other attempt to catch the green river killer.

Mostly because the task force didn't act on any of his suggestions.

“In fact, as the news stories about the murder slow to a crawl in the first half of 1985,”

many people had come to believe that the killer had either moved on or died. And as it turned out, Gary Ridgeway had somewhat moved on. God, they were so happy when they didn't have to investigate these murders anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, as they slowly started getting reassigned, starting in 1985. You know, that number was at 25 on the task force at its highest. And starting in 1985, once the murder slowed down, and it's not in the news anymore, and nobody's fucking talking about it anymore,

those cops just start getting reassigned to other cases. But nobody could have guessed, however, where the inspirations behind Gary Ridgeway slowed down. So when Gary was asked by investigators after his capture, as to why he slowed down his killing so much after 1985,

his eyes filled with tears, and he said that he slowed down when he met his third wife, Judith.

And last, has come along. But when you look at the timeline, when you look at the timeline, Gary's pace had already slowed down prior to Gary's first meeting with Judith in 1985. Because they started making Gary a priority. Well, he sounds like putting Gary first.

Yeah. Well, kind of sorta as far as what slowed Gary down first, I got two words for you. Yard work. Huh.

Gary said that whenever he got angry in the early 80s, he'd go out and murder a sex worker to alleviate the pressure. Yeah. But by the mid 80s, Gary was instead funneling more and more of his anger and the rake and the leaves are mowing along.

This is seriously what he said. This is 100% what he said. This is what he told investigators. And that's in, it rings true because he,

he, to everyone always says, Gary stopped because of Judith.

Gary, it was when he met no. He slowed down. He'd already started slowing down six months before he even ate months before he even fucking met Judith. And the only other thing that Gary ever said

as to what helped him with his anger. Yard work. You know, I actually wonder if there was just one time he came his pants while rake in the leaves. And he said, great.

Thank God. I can do this now. I fucking believe it. You know, I moved into a house on two long ago. And Julie's been working in the backyard for like nine months.

And she hasn't killed anyone in a while. It's hard. So tired. Well, what this shows you is that Gary, once again, proved himself to be both far simpler and far more complicated

than anyone could have guessed. Because he dropped it as simply as he picked it up. Yeah. Now as far as how Gary met Judith, the woman who supposedly stopped him from killing so much,

Gary had continued dating women throughout his most active period

as his dating pool from 82 to 84.

He's still dating that whole time. Just fucking Sherman. He's just a fun guy. He's a nice funny guy.

“He's a horrible advertisement for parents without partner.”

It is. It is. It seemed to mean well. But none of this is saying you think good about him. We all know who you meet there.

But since the Green River Killer was such a big story, Gary's alter ego became a topic of small talk conversation during one of his dates. The date who brought it up, of course, had no idea that she was indeed talking to the very subject of their conversation, the Green River Killer.

This woman later recalled that when she brought up the Green River Killer on her one date with Gary, he got very serious to the point of being physically tense. He then asked her what she thought about the killer and what he was doing. "Do you like it?" Yeah.

It's kind of interesting. So yeah, this I have been personally invested in kind of wondering, should I start killing sex records? Great answer. I mean, she didn't really know what to say,

so she kind of made a joke.

“She's like, well, you know, if I was prostitute,”

I'd be getting a new job round about now. You know, but Gary, he actually asked her if she thought that society was better off with all of these hurlits, fallen up the street to seek to. Well, I was doing a bit and you kind of made it serious too.

I'm gonna go. I think so. Sensing a massive red flag, the woman decided it would be probably best to just agree with anything Gary said from that point on. Like, yep, definitely better off.

Let's talk about something else. Green River Killer is definitely correct. Absolutely Gary. As a woman, yeah, I am on the Green River Killer side. They keep distracting the good men.

But Gary didn't want to let it go. Later on in the day, Gary decided to be up front with this woman by telling her. Funny story. I've actually been interrogated by the FBI as the Green River Killer for like eight hours. Because, you know, one of the missing girls.

Phone numbers was in my address book. And when the woman said like, oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Gary said, whole thing. But a big mustard. Mr. standing Chris.

I'm friends with this missing girl sister.

“And that's why I had the address in my notebook.”

Green River Killer. Crazy. Guys, just they, oh, the buzzer went off. Like, we could go to our table now. But I have no feel very good.

I'm gonna go. Gary tried laughing the whole thing off. But this date did not return for a second helping of Gary Ridgeway after that incredibly awkward night. And to think she could be in the one second is dick enough for him to stop Kellon prostitute. All right.

They good ones always get away.

It's a horrible excuse. How would the cops get your notebook to know that the phone number was in it? Yeah, they do. It's a bad excuse. It's a really bad excuse.

This is the Green River Killer. And she's fucking haunted by the shit. Yeah. Well, she didn't ask any follow up questions and she just, you know, she just kind of shook it off. And then got a hold of police later when they asked, you know, you know, just anybody have any information in this Gary Ridgeway guy.

I got you can't afford to like, yeah, yeah, it was weird. Yeah. Now about six or seven months after Gary's most active period ended, he met another woman at parents without partners. This was just after Gary's birthday on February 18th. And he told this woman after they were introduced actually unsuitable.

It's got my birthday moon. This woman kindly wished Gary a happy birthday. And the two of them ended up immediately bonding that very night over their many failed relationships. Yeah. Gary, of course, had his two marriages behind him, but this woman had just ended a 19 year long marriage.

The year before right after her husband had come out of the closet. Her name was Judith and her streak of bad luck with men was set to continue because she was destined.

It was destined to become Gary Ridgeways, third and final wife.

You left out best. They, they were the final and best. They were there. That was the one that stuck. Yeah.

That was the one where the love came in man. It really was. Got it crazy. Little, little, little, little guys. Just fucking.

I wish it luck. The pickins must have been slim into coma during the mid 80s because Judith was fucking blown away by the life that Gary Ridgeway had built for himself. You have four walls and the home is heated and this toilet work. This truck is so filthy.

Dude, it was impressed that he had held the same job Kimworth trucking for years on it. Good.

I'm just sick of being single.

I just want to settle down.

“Can you imagine like meeting her after like, you know, they all meet up for a drink?”

Like, yeah, you know, come out and meet my buddies from work and they're like, oh, yeah, you're a green river Gary now, huh? Oh, we just call him that because he loves prostitutes. Dude, you know, and he's been questioned by that PI. Oh, I think I'm gonna do you the each time I have been acquitted of any sort of crime. Good.

Not for me. She's the personification of if you can't beat him, join him. Literally, just again. The truth also found Gary to be kind attractive and masculine. Both of them loved country music.

Both of them loved camping and both of them loved hunting for treasures as Gary put it at yard sales. They're fucking pack rats, the hoarders. Dude, no, you know what they are. They're antique roadshow people. No, dude, antique roadshow is so far above their radar.

Look, these are the type of people who'll go to a yard sale and haggle at like a Tencent get candy dish.

Like, no, no, I gave you a nickel for that.

Ain't worth no more than nickel. That's a real sharper. Dude, it's also like that Gary didn't have any friends. Most people that's a red flag and someone doesn't have any friends. Dude, it was a plus because it meant she could have Gary all to herself.

And this whole relationship nearly died right at the beginning. But this truly was a case of a lid for every pot because Judith showed from the start that she was both willing and able to compartmentalize and eventually ignore Gary's predilections. See, just a few days after Gary and Judith hit it off, the green river task force picked Gary up yet again after a formal complaint was followed

by Penny Bristo. This was years after her near failing counter with Gary. You're telling me this is just a follow up to a follow up. That's all this is.

“Remember, Penny was the sex worker who'd gotten away from Gary after he tripped”

trying to chase after her because his pants were around his ankles. Penny's complaint had resulted in the aforementioned polygraph, which, as we said, Gary had easily passed.

But Gary decided that it was best to be honest with Judith about his encounter

with the task force. He told her what he told them that he was innocent. It was all a misunderstanding, then even know this girl. And if Gary was able to fool the cops and a polygraph machine, he was certainly capable of fooling Judith.

For her part, Judith figured that since the authorities had let Gary go, he wasn't the green river killer. You know, if he was, they would have fucking arrested him. So within a matter of months, like three months after Gary had to take a polygraph, as to whether or not he was the green river killer.

Judith moved in to Gary's home near the strip. A home that had up to this point been the site of many, many murders. You know what this tells me? If you're a single guy, you can't find a woman. Move to Tacoma.

[laughter] Actually a romantic place. I'll amend that. Move near a smelting plant. There's probably one close.

You don't have to move all the way to the Pacific nor the West. It's probably one in your state. Yeah. You know we turned up the dumb. Yeah.

“I think a lot of what Gary Ridgeway does is he,”

he were kind of turns into that bean bunny version of himself, where he's just like, "Oh, I don't know. We've become real simple." Honestly, I think many women in a horrific way are super interested in a form of baby like husband.

Yeah. They can dress and feed and take care of. And then they know he won't fuck around because he's just kind of kept in the house. I mean, he's helpless. They can make him helpless.

Like a fairyt. We'll talk about that later on. You're hit the nail in the head. I could only imagine how haunting in retrospect their conversation was when he told her about getting picked up by the cops and getting let go

and they all probably just sat there and laughed. Yeah, let go. What a crazy afternoon. Can you believe? What a mix of them.

Oh, me. All right. This is like a pink panther film. [laughter] After Judith moved in, the two of them began building a happy,

entirely normal life together. They take Gary Sun Matthew to the zoo on weekends. They go on fairy boat rides. They'd have picnics. They'd attend monster truck rallies.

They'd pick over the garage sales of the Pacific Northwest for so-called treasures to add to their rapidly growing pile of junk. Oh, house in there. To see them like, you know, the 16-millimeter camera. Yeah.

Oh, man. You know, I was like, so excited. Yeah. This is the cone head's montage. Yeah.

[laughter] Paul Simon playing the best. Oh, yeah. Gary said that he didn't have the desire to kill any more after he and Judith got together. But that's utter horseshit.

Really what Gary meant was that he didn't want to get caught anymore. So the killing slowed down considerably.

Remember that fit at least at least.

At least.

“And that's like he had killed provably killed 48 women and it's probably more.”

And it's all between 82 and air mostly between 82 and 85. His body count after meeting Judith though was considerably lower. Between 1985 and 1998. Gary Ridgeway killed only four more times that we know of with an increasing number of years between each kill.

There's barely anybody, right? It's like he's barely certain going on. Come on. Why are you just like, it's like when I was smoking one cigarette a week. Yeah.

Well, Gary was trying to put the green river killer behind him. The green river task force continued their investigations. And bodies from Gary's earlier kills were continuing to be found across the areas surrounding Seattle and Tacoma. In March of 1986, two members of the Parks Department found a human skeleton missing

its skull sitting at the base of a tree. This was the body of Tracy Winston who disappeared three years earlier. The head would not be found until 2005 near Issaqua, Washington. Because Gary had moved the skull. He went back to the body after a decomposed grab the head and put it near Issaqua

because he thought it was clever. He thought it would confuse investigators.

“And that is a that is a type of necrophilia, I think, in a way where he would be.”

He was really invested in his bodies. He loved his bodies. And he viewed them all as belonging to him. Yes, he did. More bones were discovered from other victims throughout 1986.

And even though Gary Ridgeway attacked another woman who survived that same year, investigators were still looking elsewhere. Their new suspect was a 52-year-old construction worker named Ernest McLean. Bill to his friends. He'd gained the attention of the task force after he told a co-worker,

"Hey, you know, co-wrap. Pick up a sex worker and killer." Oh, but they're just having fun. They're just guys help tell us how guys talk. Yeah, this is boys being boys.

Boys being boys, I don't know. How many times have hurt someone around these offices? You're like, you know what I want to do later? Sometimes I want to get five or six sex workers. I want to tire 'em up with a rope.

I want to cover 'em gasoline instead. I'm on fire, but it's only just because I'm tired. You know what, fuck it? Let's just go get a sandwich. Yeah, you know what, you're right.

Slow blood sugar. Yeah, I'm angry. Well, McLean is why for boats available that great expense. But nothing was found to link him to any murder at all. Much less anything connected to the notorious GRK.

You know there is some talk, Gary, who's saying there is now some talk that he probably also left the county and murdered outside of the county as well. So it's quite possible during this time period if he did indeed kill more who knows he would have killed them outside of the area or naturally his penis wasn't as active. Mm-hmm. They also say that too. Sometimes it's like with BTK is when the sexual desire starts to go down and you get older.

Low tea. Yeah. The testosterone goes down. Yeah, Sierra Killers, they age out. Yeah.

“Oh, that's why I don't want to kill anyone anymore.”

[laughter]

No, besides the woman I mentioned earlier who'd survived an encounter with Gary in 1986, a second woman came forward that same year after Gary had choked her.

Again, Gary claimed that she bit his penis and drew blood. That marked the third time that Gary had used this excuse. Gary, if you was a believer in a lesser penis's girl like Parmesan, if we're not everybody trying to take a look out of it. Stop laughing around so much. I'm sure you think it's you, Gary.

All right, stay in one place. Don't rap beef jerky around. Yeah, you're leaving them all. Let her get her good, let her get her good, let her let her get her good wide. Like, get it in there.

From the victim, Rebecca Gard said that Gary couldn't get hard after he'd picked her up for sex. So he took his anger out on her. This, of course, is the same thing that had happened to Penny Burstow. So the pattern was staring cops right in the face. But again, Gary was questioned and released.

Because now the cops had that polygraph test to point towards. It's further proof that doggonic Gary just had the worst luck on the block when it came to these prostitutes. He just can't catch a break. This is when the cops find prostitutes. Keep dying on me.

I just want to support the women. But keep biting my pee. And I just, maybe it's just cause again, it looks like a dry cheeto. Like it looks like the hard ones. But again, he's not getting arrested for soliciting prostitution.

No, he's not. No, he, they at the catch you red handed with that shit. Yeah, have a red dick. Even better.

But this is when the cops finally started putting the pieces together.

I'll be at a painfully slow pace. The task force finally got around to talk into the woman we mentioned last episode, who reported Gary as the last person seen with her friend before that friend disappeared.

And so, at long last, the task force regardless of the polygraph results, for Gary Ridgeway back at the top of their suspect list.

They interviewed Gary's second wife, Marsha Winslow, who gave them even more evidence.

Sir, some substantial evidence, yes, but definitely good evidence. She told them that Gary had loved having sex with her outdoors.

“And they asked her, hey, do you want to show us where he had sex with you outdoors?”

Incredibly, Marsha remembered. So she took him on a ride along. And for a long, the cops realized they're pretty much going on a tour of body cluster sites. For Gary, for Green River Killer victims.

And she's like, so what got him, right? She's still like, here too. Yeah. But over here when we went in my birthday. Yeah, I think that's what it's like.

You see the shovel? Yeah, oh, like a skeleton. Wow. This, however, was in 1986. And even though there was a lot of circumstantial evidence,

they didn't have anything as far as they knew that would hold up in court. Because the paint evidence was still well over a decade from even being examined, much less used. Actually, I take that back. Fifteen years from being even examined.

“As a consequence, Gary continued killing,”

taking the life of one woman, an October of 1986, and another, the following February. But the biggest block that cops had was that they couldn't seem to wrap their heads and carry Ridgeway being the killer because to them, he didn't seem the type. He had a steady job.

He'd had several relationships with women that had lasted years each time. And he'd passed the polygraph. I mean, at this point in time, even though you already had guys like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, who were obviously like men who had been in communities,

men who had held jobs, men who had been married, people still thought, you know, it's Richard Ramirez, you know, it's the night, it's the night sucker. It's this crazy and sane person with sharp teeth who, you know, lives in shitty hotels and free bases cocaine.

That's a serial killer. Because then it, because what happens is that if it's Gary Ridgeway, then serial killers can be anybody. And you're right. It's fucking terrifying.

Yes, and the cops don't like that. The cops want it to be, which, you know, on one hand, I do understand. It's difficult job, blah, blah, blah. It's hard to investigate murders.

Especially if you don't know the guy that did it. Like, as most murders are done by somebody that the person knows, like, you know, it's like, it's either like for money, it's practical reasons. So it's extremely difficult to put together.

So I can see why every single time it gets a shade more difficult, they're like, well, what the fuck do we do now? Like, what do we do now? Like, and they're just also just not great cops. Yeah, real cops would have picked them up and beat the shit out

in a little bit. They're real guys.

But then the problem is that he is,

then it ruins all the ruins, everything, and it fucks all the, the infoxy investigation up unfortunate.

“That's why God invented gloves and masks.”

Good work at it. Hit him with the fucking sock. You got to get the sock with the sock. So sock with the sock. That's why God invented sock himself.

Yeah. Well, that should be it. That should be a bar. The sock itself. The sock itself.

Yeah, I know. Oh, I'm just telling that there's a big, on the outside. It's just a big picture of a Vincent Diagon. That's it, did not have for a go on.

Oh, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah I'm taking a retirement. We're going to get a worth of that money. So give us some seed money.

It wasn't until April of 1987 that cops finally obtained a search warrant for Gary's homes and vehicles, but they were overwhelmed when they discovered that Gary and Judith were a couple of hoarders that were already two years into building their shared hoard. You can pick up a lot of shit if you're only spending a nickel on each fucking item. Investigators still look

through everything, but because Gary never kept trophies and his most active serial killing

years were far in his past. They found no physical evidence linking Gary to the green river killer. It is now more likely than not that he buried it. Very good evidence. He did like treasures and he did have prices, but that he buried them. According to what he just said, like literally like last month according to this, I'll get into it a little bit at the end. He had one last relationship currently from jail. Wow, this

woman is strict seduced him and he explained a lot of other stuff to her apparently. Investigators didn't stop at the search warrant. They surveilled Gary and found that he spent hours slowly driving up and down the street to the strip. He would eventually turn into a parking lot and stop just so he could watch the women standing on the curb who were trying to attract John. He was trying to attract a John, but none of them trying to get

a Gary. I mean, what what they're seeing is that this is a predator. They're watching

mistakes. They do. Clearly, they have the wrong guy here, Judas. Likewise, even though

cops questioned several people at Kimworth's trucking, Gary still kept his job throughout these investigations. In fact, the guys at Kimworth, they thought the whole green river Gary thing was fucking hilarious. Of course, I was not though. That would everybody think to the guys are rapist, serial killer. It's different of you all think. Oh, he's the guy that Chad on Stewie's car. You know what I mean? That's a funny story. Oh, that's a guy

keeps stealing the lunch out of the fucking little of the breaker. And that's like a funny story. I think it's a testament to how harmless he seemed. That's true. How harmless he seemed and all the horrible men and Kenworth. Yeah. Yeah. The horrible men and Kimworth and just how horrible things were in Tacoma at the time. He's so far down the list. They I'm sure all of these men know plenty of or they knew plenty of just horrific awful people.

But especially this idea that they thought that him quoting the Bible and ranting about harlot's of loose women would make him less likely to be the green river color.

“He's hilarious to me. That's funny to me. That's why it was funny. Yeah. Because Gary would”

sit in the break room at work. He'd read past just from the Bible out loud, going rants about harlot's and loose women. He was so passionate, spittle would fly from his mouth. Gary was known even to his neighbors as an anti prostitution zealot who was obsessed with he so cold wickedness, suppressitudes. But they knew for a fact he used fucking prostitutes. They knew for a fact that he was addicted to them. Yeah. Well, I mean, they knew and they

didn't know all at the same time. Gary was so passionate that he'd even attempted to organize his block to quote fight prostitution in the seetack area. But when Gary wasn't giving him prompt to sermons at work or to his neighbors, he was making obscene sexual remarks to the women it can worth. But since this was the 80s, nobody thought that Gary was actually

dangerous. His co-worker said that while Gary engaged with everyone, he always failed in every

attempt to belong. Because they said they kind of felt like he was making the sexual remarks as a way to fit in to agree with the boys to see one of the guys. But everyone was like, Jesus, Gary? No, don't fucking say that. Yeah, we're just talking about fucking or not crucifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about this when the first episode is that the Gary presents a man the way he kind of talked about it. He said he never belonged in that. It was like,

he almost couldn't understand what everybody was saying. It was like people talked too fast. They didn't talk to so he would just always fade into the background. That's a part of why he

“I think in his own mind, he's like, nobody looks at me. Yeah, but despite all these huge,”

waving red flags, the cops still couldn't come up with any hard evidence. So Gary was put back near the bottom of the suspect list for years to come. On 1988, the same year that in America's most wanted style TV special aired, focusing on the Green River Killer. Gary and Judith finally tied the knot after three years together. They then moved out of Gary's former murder house and got a new place in Des Moines, Washington, just South of C Tech. But while this was Gary's third marriage,

this was the one that actually worked and it all came down to Gary's mother, Mary Rita.

She had never left. She had been into coma, controlling Gary's life from the outside,

this entire time. I thought she died. No, she didn't die until 2001. And she's still just like, I saw 9 and 11 on the television screen. Let me see if you pissed your pants, Gary. Let me see if you pissed your pants, Gary. Check out my big stinkie bird.

“Yeah, I remember Mary for the rest of my fucking life. Well, Mary Rita had remained a constant”

in Gary's life. And in Gary's first two marriages, Mary Rita had still controlled Gary's finances, and she had a big say in how his wives handled the housekeeping and the kids. Both wives, therefore greatly resented Mary Rita. She, Mary Rita was a big reason why Gary's first two marriages failed. But Judith, the third wife, she cracked the Gary code. Oh, wow. As it turned out, Gary really was looking for another mommy. Because Judith simply followed Mary Rita's example

instead of fighting against her. Judith controlled Gary in the same way as his mother did. And Mary Rita apparently approved. She dressed him. She controlled that way. She treated him like a child who didn't know what money was. Every time you get money, Gary, you bring it to me. And then I'll give it back to you whatever you need. And that also did quite a bit towards removing his ability to get sex workers. Pick up in that addiction kind of went away a little bit more. He had to sneak

it a lot more. You wanted someone to take it all and change so he could be baby Gary again. Yeah. But Judith skills a compartmentalization. This also made her the right woman for Gary. That's all you need girls. After years of dealing with Gary's sex worker addiction in one way or another,

day. Like, hey, yeah, remember, you just used to go to prostitute. Well, what does one look like?

Oh, you must have lit up like a fucking light bulb. It's like finally, it'd be like if Natalie said to me,

I really like Dune. I picked up Dune in the other day and you're right. It is about the foibles of a charismatic dictator. Yeah, what makes this dance so steely? Maybe let me tell you. Marcus, what's an oscillator? Yeah. There were so many sex workers in this area when Judith asked the question, all Gary had to do was point out the window at that very moment to highlight a woman wearing fish nets and high heels like that's what one looks like. Judith, there's one right there.

“Judith, remember that she was shocked that a sex worker was out on the streets and brought”

daylight. Yeah, I thought it was the character gem. But what this tells me, Judith was very much a woman who only saw what she wanted to see, which was perfect for Gary Ridgeway. She had been living in the strip for years. This is 1988. She's been living in the strip since 1985. The strip was the center of sex work in the entire Pacific Northwest. I simply thought it was a bunch of people that love the film, who's that girl? They were all merely fans of this prostitute named Madonna.

No, she just she saw what she wanted to see. And that's how it was with Gary. Now as I said, Gary's murder rate slowed down considerably after Judith. After that murder that he'd committed in February of 1987, he didn't kill again for three years. And he waited another eight years after that before claiming his very last victim in the late 90s. Do you think it like he listened to the song glory days and they've got him back in.

“They're just being like, you know, I'm just not getting rid of any more. What did I get married?”

Did you stop being me? You know, it's like how I sometimes like we'll put on a corn record or sure. Yeah, just to remind everybody. Yeah, I just wanted to do like, oh, let's listen to some mud vane. Yep, man. Oh, not when now he knows the STP comes on. That's my masculine. That's me working on my masculine. Well, Gary's last victim was a woman named Patricia yellow robe. But her death wasn't even considered a murder until Gary admitted to it years later.

He'd left her corpse in town fully closed. And the autopsy had stopped once the coroner discovered that she'd also overdosed on opiates the night of her death. They figured out just one more street person who gives a shit. By the time the Patricia yellow robe murder in 1998,

“there was only one guy still working for the Green River Task Force, a detective named Tom”

Jensen. To detect a Jensen, however, had rightfully decided that Gary Ridgeway was absolutely

their man. But he could only arrest Gary if he could finally get some physical evidence.

Luckily for detective Jensen, the late 90s saw the advancement of forensic DNA testing and the technology to resurrect all DNA samples became available as well. But even so, it would still take another three years before Tom Jensen got access to those tests. But finally, in October of 2001, Jensen took a DNA sample that had been collected from Gary Ridgeway all the way back in 1987. It was a piece of gauze that had just been sitting in a freezer,

waiting for the technology to catch up. That sample was sent away with samples collected from three known Green River victims, including the two victims that had been found pinned to the river

bed by rocks way back in 1982, that first cluster of five. At long last, when the results came back,

Gary Ridgeway was found to be a perfect match. And those results were delivered 745 AM Tuesday, September 11th, 2011. Perfectly perfect time. It wasn't like the monopoly. There was like one other trial that was supposed to start that day. Was that monopoly fraud trial? Yeah, that was a cool thing. The McDonald's, the McDonald's, the monopoly game was supposed to start on September 11th. They postponed it. There are a few stories that went on to the radar, including this one.

And my rise to the top of high school theater. Oh, yeah, truncated by nobody. Investigators, however, wanted Gary Ridgeway dead to rights. He did not run. So detective Dave Ryker, the one who tripped over the body at the riverbed scene back in '82. Oh, stubby foot. Yeah,

Yeah, that didn't even been the only one working this case for years. No, that's how

“it's happened to come here. I mean, you get in here. I'm going to really wrap this up. This green,”

go like, master man. I'm going to get, we're going to get the hell out of it. You know, I've been nothing, nothing but up nights. I'm thinking about this. I fell over the bone. It was I that tried to do. So Ryker claimed he had continued to obsess over the green river killer for almost 20 years. See these bags? You see the bags under these eyes? I barely moisturized. I barely go to six flags anymore. We only go once a month. But he hadn't been in a part of the task force

for a long time by 2001. But he had been one of the originals. So he arranged for surveillance

on Gary Ridgeway. The task force also returned to the second X-Wife Marsha Winslow

in September of 2001. She again showed officers all the places where Gary had taken her for sex outdoors. And again, the officers are like, Oh, these are all body cluster sites. And she's like,

“yeah, I know. All right, but what do I do? Can you get down in your fours over there in that”

pile? I'm going to see what it looks like. Okay, now lay like a starfish. Okay, no flip it over like a brown starfish. Yep. Yeah. I was just reminded me of. Let me think about this. This is the second time that they had taken her out to see these bodies. The second time was, you know, right around 9/11, the first time was during the fucking Reagan administration. She's just Christ. Wow. She really got all of America. It's all story. Now, Gary and Judith had continued

live in the good life. And by the summer of 2001, things were looking better never. Of course,

we for all of us. Gary's horrible mother Mary Rita had finally died of colon cancer that summer. Fuck you. Gary and Judith now lived in a house that was far nicer than anything Gary's parents had ever had. Oh, the summer they took from you fucking zoomers. Summer 2001 was incredible. That was the summer I started my career in radio. I moved up. Love it, moved out of fucking Rochester. It was one of the best summers in my life. Yeah. Summer 2001 is probably one of the funnest

“times I've ever had. I kind of remember like living free with my friends and just having so much fun”

and just stop. Yeah. That's right when I started dealing with great for me, too. Yeah. Yeah. Gary, he was actually old enough by this point where he and Judith could begin to look forward to retirement together. Wow. But at long last, another thing doesn't exist anymore. But at long last, in 2001, the paint evidence was finally examined. Thankfully, a trace evidence scientist with the

incredible name of Chesterine Sveakleak. Wow. Yeah. It's incredible. She stole live, too.

Chesterine Sveakleak. Wow. I was going to use that exact one of the coincidences. I was going to do another run on BG3. It was going to be my idea. She would be meticulous about the fibers and heres recovered from bodies and dump sites. In those samples, certainly helped in the conviction from the DNA side. But, Speakleak also admitted, this is like a fucking doctor who alienates. It's obvious. Speakleak also sounds like a like one of those like weird like sea to your porn sites. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Speakleak also admitted that the lab had ignored the paint particles for years because they figured their best line towards catching the killer were the fibers and the hairs. And the come and go and go to the con. There's a lot of con. This is we've said many times, enabled Gary to take 50 plus victims instead of just five. In 2001, trace evidence experts skip Palinic. A lot of great names in these fucking forensics people. He finally received the call to examine the paint dots

with an infrared microscope. It was discovered that the paint dots found on the victims matched the paint dots on Gary's work clothes. But anyway, it's not like the fucking technology didn't exist in 1982. It did. It's just a fucking infrared microscope. We're not talking about intense, crazy DNA testing and matching all the fucking markers and building the fucking human genome here. It's looking really closely at paint. They specifically didn't care about

that type of evidence. They were not looking close. No, they weren't looking close. And they just didn't for some reason. They just didn't think like, "Ah, that's not going to lead to anything. Why bother?" Yeah, they're just all covered in it. Yeah. And so, by November 2001, nearly 20 years after the first greener vermerter, the cops finally had more than enough evidence to a rest Gary richway. At this point, they had enough evidence to arrest him on seven murders.

Two weeks before his arrest, Gary decided to indulge himself in some old habits. And he also proved why Judith needed to be in charge of the money. Judith had given him $30 to fill up his truck with gas. But instead of spending his money where he was supposed to, Gary decided to spend that $30

undercover cop. God damn it, I knew she was too attractive. Yes. The sting that caught Gary was completely separate from the greener verter task force. This, however, was almost serendipitous as far as the task force was concerned. Because it was absolutely a sign that they were moving in the right direction. Ridgway, however, kept the arrest secret from Judith. When he was released, he called her and had her pick him up at the local Kmart. He claimed he had been stopped and

arrested for leaving his truck's tailgate down. And Judith, long accustomed to not asking follow-up questions like, "Why is that a serious enough offense to arrest you?" Yeah, like what in the living fuck are you talking about? She just said, "All right. Okay. Do you get that $30? Do you

“feel up your truck?" She's not wrong. You know, I think on some level it's just like, "I,”

fine. Sure. It's so odd that she's incredibly overbearing, but also overlooks extreme like just things that don't make sense." It's because the baby she bucks. Yeah, it's the baby she bucks. I mean, it's the way, you know, some people treat their children. They can be super overbearing, but then they can completely ignore. Like, save, like, someone can be very overbearing with a kid, but completely ignore their kids's bully. Yeah. You know, it's that same type

of thing. It's like how I was able to convince my mom that my bond was a face. Yeah, yeah, yeah, literally just super-bearing, but yeah, she believed you. No, it's because her brain just decided that you don't smoke weed. Yeah. My son doesn't smoke weed. I remember she found like a whole giant bag of mushrooms in my backpack and she's like, "What are these?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, we should throw those out. They're probably bad." Yeah, she's like, "Oh yeah, that's right. Like you're

“Jedi." So what time a night was it when you went and it's fucking sifted through the garbage can?”

That was mushroom style. I mean, early, I mean, I saw a salad, I was fun. But yeah, I think with Judith, the biggest thing is that, you know, she just, it's incredible what someone will ignore when they just don't want to deal with something. There's something as big as being the green river killer. Yeah, they already got enough on their plate. There already got enough to worry about, you know, I don't want to deal with that.

So I'm just going to choose to not think about it. I've also seen so much body cam footage of very sad women going down for their men and they should not be doing that. You know, they should

not be. No, never go down for a man. Never go down for a woman. Never go down for anybody.

Now I go down for anybody else to get self. I go down for a dog. Yeah, sure. You have a dog mid about your serial crimes. I would fucking, I'd lie for it. Yeah, depends on if it was my dog. Yeah, I go down for Frankie or Georgie. Not, not for like, I mean, I love your dogs, but I wouldn't go down for like Henry's dog. No, there's no reason to know. I wouldn't go down for Frankie, but I go down for Carmen. Yeah, I get it. So Gary, after the arrest, Gary retired, what about you,

“Eddie, got any dogs you go down for? I'm sad. I was gonna say I had to go down. I think I go down for Frankie.”

I like Frankie a lot. Thank you. They did she appreciates what she is the sweetest dog in the world. Georgie, any other hand, genre, but she wouldn't. Georgie would flip on you in a fucking second. Georgie would not hesitate to make a deal to put your ass in prison for 30 years. Oh, I know that. We all know that. And so after the arrest, Gary returned to his life as normal, painting trucks and thrifting with Judith. Two task force detectives, however, had gone to Kimworth

trucking after Gary's arrest and they'd asked his supervisors to surveil Gary for any hints that he might be on to their investigation. Thankfully, Gary ain't that observant. Gary ain't paying attention. They were no hints that Gary knew anything. The anything was out of the ordinary at all. So on November 30th, 2001, just after Thanksgiving, the task force made their move.

Gary Ridgeway showed up to work as he had every day for decades. They said Gary was never more

than two or three minutes late, and even then that happened to hand full of times. But on this day, his boss asked him to come into his office because there were people there who wanted to talk to him again. And they just thought this was the funniest thing on the face of the plan. That's fucking cops. You're going to talk to fucking Green River Gary, you're going to go see somebody. It's so speck. It's just the Green River Killer, whatever. You're going to look at the Green River

River Killer. We're going to fucking go win a war. We're two members of the Green River Task Force, who questioned Gary specifically about Carol Christianson. That was the woman that Gary had left in the woods and covered in various foods and gutted trout after he'd murdered her. I remember. Yeah. Gary leaned on his demeanor one more time. He happily chatted for two hours with investigators while offering up his own theories as to why Christianson was killed.

Finally, investigators asked Gary if he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Christians.

loose with his DNA in this particular case. Loose with the DNA is kind of a rough term.

“Yeah. I mean, it's the best that I could do. Sure. Yeah. What do you want me to say?”

Because there was a whole bunch of common or fucking pluses that you want me to say. Yeah. Gary's fucking spooge was filling up her fucking glory hole. Now I understand what's happening. He came back and did it again and made a hot dog and left the other half of the other man again. It's hard. It's big, big dogs at Costco. Well, after Jerry lied to the police, detectives thanked him and they left. They actually let him finish

out his last day at work. That is another, like, cop fucking, like, with the fuck do you mean you just let him work all day and then you came back and got him later? At this point, I think it's something like they've been hunting him for so long. Yeah. Yeah. Give him one more day. Yeah, let's let him really.

I saw what he was doing to that Chevy. Yeah. It was pretty amazing. I wouldn't know. I

want to need someone and someone's going to need to get that wrap of Dale Earnhardt with his dick. I imagine they probably just let him go back to work, went back and, like, just confirmed everything one more time. Sure. Some high fives around and then went back. Yeah. He's going to be there for me. Yeah. He definitely wouldn't have been tipped off of the fact that they were talking to him and they've ran during that time period. Absolutely not, right? Well, they're just lucky.

“He's a fucking moron. Yeah. Well, I think at that point, they just sort of sat outside and just waited”

until the workday was over. Didn't want to make a scene. These fucking cops make me so angry. It's so fucking stupid. I could see a copy like I've been chasing them for 20 years. I can wait two hours. Yeah. I want to see him eat lunch. Oh, he's going hell in Hardy. Actually, I could deal for a soup as well. So I'm eating lunch together. When Gary

shift ended, 3 p.m. As it always did, the task force finally, uh, long, fucking last,

arrested Gary Ridgeway for murder. Wow. 1982 to 2001. Good job, everybody. Really good run, Gary. Gary was formally charged with four murders in early December, owing to DNA evidence and the paint dots added three more charges. So Gary made a plea deal. He'd show the task force with the undiscovered bodies were located and admit to all the other green river killings and exchange the state wouldn't kill him. It took a little while for all this

to get worked out. So it wasn't until the summer of 2003, two years later, the Gary Ridgeway after a lifetime of being a non-intitiate best or a joke at worst, he finally found out what it was like to be the bell of the ball. Once Gary started talking, he found that he fucking loved the attention. And it was said by investigators, the Gary Ridgeway would have gladly talked for 18 hours a day if they let him. But nobody wanted to listen to him for that long. It was interesting

originally when the first cops were talking to him, he was being kind of KG and they didn't know what to do with him. So they actually had a really good idea in that moment and they brought a lady and a lady cop, Mary Ellen, a tool came in. And she was like a psychiatrist and she started talking to him and she profiled. She's from the FBI. She profiled them so well because she was like, no one's ever asked Gary how he feels. It's like all this kind of thing. And so she mothered him

and a compassionate way. And he was so excited to talk to a compassionate woman. Somebody that's not like, has nothing connected to it and so he just spilled his fucking guts. So what she showed up with a bathrobe and her tits out? You just want to remind you of somebody you love very much. Now after the conversational floodgates opened, investigators finally discovered the Gary Ridgeway was, as I said earlier, both far simpler and far more complicated than anyone

could have guessed. Gary said that he'd picked up somewhere by his estimate somewhere between six and seven hundred sex workers over the course of his life. But when he searched his memory, he sincerely couldn't remember which one she'd killed in which one she hadn't. While he could remember a violent act, he couldn't ever remember the person involved in said act. Likewise, Gary could recognize locations like fences or trees to remember when and where he'd killed a woman,

but he never knew names. Instead, he made up his own names based on details surrounding the murder,

like the water tower lady or the one he actually had one that was actually called the log lady.

“No, crazy. I think I was the Pacific Northwest. He also, I don't think he watched Twin Beak.”

I doubt he was a Twin Pink guy. I think it was a bit intense for him. I think he's more of like a

phone list and my phone. It's always like, yeah, the lady from McDonald's and I do it. Yeah. Yeah.

“How you do it? Cross-eyed Frank. Yeah. You're a bad one, names. We've been a big, big, big, big, big”

crime. Yes. As the conversations went on, Gary made the choice that so many other serial killers make during confessions by separating himself from the killer. Gary began talking about the other Gary. The other Gary was stronger and angrier. Eventually, he came to refer to the other Gary as old Gary. See, old Gary wanted to talk about the more disgusting aspects of the crimes, like the Necrofelia, while new Gary wanted to, and Gary's words, candy coat the murders.

New Gary was reasonable and cooperative, while old Gary was standoffish and mean. He definitely

thought he was way smarter than he was in this moment of trying to throw everybody off being like

he's a collection of personalities when he barely has one. Yeah. That was a nitpick here, but technically, in that moment, he is old Gary. And when he was doing the killings, he was newer Gary. You are at picking, but you are correct. You're correct. But I mean, that's even fucking, you know, John Wayne Gacy came up with at least an alias, Jack Hanley. Yeah, that's who he said that his alter ego, Jack Hanley was one who had committed all the murders. And when Ted

Bunny called him like the shadow or something like that. Yeah, one of those of the shadow, the demon. Something like that. Yeah, the entity. That's the, yeah, Bunny called that the entity. But old Gary Ridwig is like, Oh, Gary and New Gary. New Gary. Nice. Oh, Gary's mean. You know, old Gary, Ridwig claimed was the one who killed 50 plus women. Well, new Gary was the whim, who'd only killed four women after meeting Jews. But eventually investigators got old Gary

to confess to murder after murder until the number reached 71. Because that's the thing. Gary Ridwig was charged with 48. Because 48 was all they could prove. He confessed to 71. So his body count could very well be far higher than what we actually think. It could be because that's the thing. When you think about it, he probably did forget about, you know, the locations of 20 or so women. Dude, he absolutely did. And if you listen to this one woman that built a sort of relationship

with him while he was in jail, this, uh, honestly, it sounds like good. And to be honest, I don't like how they do it. Um, but this her name was Maria de Lorenzo. And she essentially started writing to him, flirting with him because she was super interested in his stuff. And he started talking about all of this other stuff. This is 26. Yeah. He's already saying stuff like, there are dozens dozen. So I didn't even get to get her there. But who knows if he's telling it. And at this point,

who fucking at the end of his life? He's ready to confess because he almost died and, uh,

he's about to be dead. Yeah. No, he's, he's near death. But we'll get to that in a second. And one

example of how Gary would change when he became old Gary. He once told investigators and this please Henry do this exactly as, uh, as a Gary, as the quote says, I had sex with the dead body.

“Did you Gary's, oh, screwed up. If you want to know what I did, talk to me. I've the one who did it.”

I've the one with the devil in my head. Yeah, when the guy tells you, I'm the one with the devil in my head. Believe him. Yeah. You're like, sure. Okay. Great. But as to whether they're really wasn't old Gary and a new Gary, it really didn't matter. Because by the end of it, Gary Ridgeway had pled guilty to 48 counts of murder with no remorse, no any regret. Because 48 was all they could prove. He was given 48 consecutive life sentences as a part of his plea deal. But even

though Gary has been in solitary confinement at the state pen and Walla Walla Washington since 2004, Gary Ridgeway is incredibly enough. Still alive today. He gets great health care and present. Yeah, he does. I'm excited for you to say Walla Walla Washington. Very, very, very, so incredibly. I've been waiting for like literally weeks to go, Walla Walla Washington. Come on. The next head by the sun. It's at a walla Walla. No, they were all Seattle,

but it just, it's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. I actually know,

“I think the sunics are Tacoma. Not that I think about it. Thanks a lot. I'm almost positive”

the sunics are Tacoma. Does make a lot of sense? You know, I can see the Raj rock. Sort of like a smelting plants version of music. I mean, yeah, when you think about it, yeah, because like psycho, the witch, strict nine. That's all like 1965, 66. Strict nine. It's the same time. They're all these fucking guys are getting fucked up by this smile. Oh my god. Yeah, I was created by the Tacoma Smelter. We did it. That's a positive. It is. That's a positive.

some good, some bad. That's how it is. That's life. Well, it's rumored about six months ago

“that Gary Ridgeway was receiving end of life care in prison. But Gary apparently ducked the grim”

reaper. He's currently 77 years old living a life completely separate from the rest of the prison populations. Why there's not really any post-script stories here because Gary's been in solitary for decades. Now, but while Gary is alive, many of them in who chased him as a part of the Green River Task Force are long dead. Actually, a lot of them died before Gary was even caught because you remember Gary was in his 20s when he was in all this shit and he's being chased by Tacoma cops who smoke in their

forties. Yeah. You know, those guys don't live long. It's not stress. But even though Gary should have

been arrested half a dozen times before he was finally taken down in 2001, there were still plenty of

members of the Green River Task Force who believed until the end of their days that they had done everything they could to catch the green river killer. But I would say that 71 possible victims they would probably disagree without assessments. Yeah. Yeah. And that's Gary Ridgeway, the green

“river killer. So I think one of the big lessons we've learned from this to keep it simple.”

You don't want to put a lot of strength on it when you're killing many, many, many people. Your goal is to kill a lot of people. Not everyone needs to be a showstopper. 71 is such a fucking big number. It is. That's a big number for a soldier. It is. You know, like a grandfather killed 10 people in World War II. That's just a soldier. Those are big numbers for a sniper. He's only job is to shoot people in the head. Yeah. Yeah. That's huge numbers. It's not cool. If you think about it,

no, it's not cool. You're right. I'm sorry. There is a couple of times during this episode that I had to hold back from saying the word cool. And so I understand where you're coming from. You can

always replace cool with interesting. You're right. Fascinating. Righteous. Well, I do.

I one day you will lead us to because I got into a little bit of a whole of like the people that

“killed the most humans by hand. Sure. And there's like a couple of guys. Like obviously,”

one's a Nazi. One's from a Soviet from Stalin. It is wild. Just think it was just like one guy killed 2,000 people. Yeah. That's crazy. Oh, yeah. Great. That's real fucking nuts. And it turns into a statistic. That it does. But not over on patreon.com slash last podcast and left. We see each one of you and we charge each one of you as an individual flame of consciousness. And you can give us money to glyphids of the show at free. You also can see last stream on the left.

Live every Tuesday 5 p.m. P.S.D. And also see movie stories. You can go watch the video of movie stories. And I'm going to say go check it out because I'm really liking the work that we're doing on a netty. It's a lot of fun. I'm having a good time with you. We're in the middle of our John Carpenter series right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fucking sweet. Oh, and also I will say tonight

July 17th when this comes out to the general public is our second to last J. K. Ultra Show. And

Tulsa Oklahoma. And then tomorrow we're going to be in Oklahoma City. But if you can't make it out, don't worry. You haven't missed J. K. Ultra just yet. Go to L. P O T L dot Kizwi dot com. It's K. I. S. W. E. And you can watch a live stream of our final show in Oklahoma City. And that'll be available for two weeks. So check it out. Go watch it. And then we're going to fucking put this baby to bed. That's right. I'm coming. And we're going to be coming back in March with a brand new last podcast

on the left show. But before that happens, y'all are going to be on the road with side stories over the next few months. We haven't got this date yet, but they will be on last podcast and all of that comment. And go see us mid summer screen Sunday August 9 last panel on the left. We are going to be there doing a panel about horror and all this type of our place in it in the last 15 years of last podcast enough. And go visit. We're going to have a whole last booth. Grab a shirt, grab a comic,

bring your album if you got it. Yeah, because we will sign it. And we're going to be there all weekend. It's going to be a lot of fun. Also, I went to mid summer screen for the first time last year. It's fucking fun. It's good. It's fun. Even if we're not there, it's fucking awesome. Make make sure you go check out this far or comment. It's one of the best in the nation. I can't get enough. But also, you want to see me on the road. Just go to eddytunes.com to find out where I'm

going to be next. I got a lot more dates coming at you. Fuck yeah. Yeah, you botch. I'm going to get him. They're fucking shot. Go in the LPN TV. Also, we have a brand new no dogs in space video essay. Yeah, we'll check it out on YouTube, no dogs in space. It's based on our Maxis Kansas City episode. And we put in a bunch of cool visuals and felt like that. It's you know, it's stuff we've recorded before. But it is very cool. But we are three episode or no work. Six episodes into the

expanding. Page seven has their own channel. It does prider site does. Yeah, yeah, no dogs and we got,

“you know, who's the bee? All that stuff. If it exists as a show, it's there. Even learn about”

even the old bodies. We've come. We have somehow contained all of that masculinity on camera.

I love to see it. Those men just, hmm, God damn. Sometimes that's just watch just

“stills of them talking about. Get so hard. Just thinking about it. I think about it. Yeah,”

I was thinking about Mike. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got to get out of here. Yeah. We got to get out of here. Yeah.

Hell, uh, the guys who got this fucking guy. Yeah. Yeah, finally Detective Jensen did a pretty,

“he, he did actually a pretty fucking good job even though record try taking the credit. So,”

hell, Jensen. Hell, Jensen. Hell, Jensen.