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World's Most Evil Killers S03E04
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00:00Seattle, Washington, November the 5th, 2003.
00:12The King County Superior Court.
00:15In front of a packed room, 54-year-old killer Gary Ridgeway
00:19pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder.
00:24Gary Ridgeway is probably the most prolific serial killer in America.
00:29If not, if not the world.
00:31He was a killing machine, a man of extraordinary evil.
00:37When another body was found years later, the terrible death toll hit 49.
00:44He's preying on sex workers or young women who have run away from home,
00:48people who are vulnerable.
00:50He disposes of their bodies in the Green River.
00:53Among the many victims were young girls who'd run away from home.
00:58She was a little girl when she was murdered by him.
01:03She deserved the best of everything.
01:05She deserved to have a very happy life.
01:09Despite police suspicions, it took nearly 20 painstaking years
01:13to gather enough evidence to convict Ridgeway for the murders.
01:18I poked him with my finger in his chest.
01:21I says,
01:22USOB, I know you did it, and we're going to get you.
01:26The man who became known as the Green River Killer
01:29murdered 49 young women
01:32and is suspected of killing many more.
01:35All that makes Gary Ridgeway one of the world's most evil killers.
01:42Seattle, Washington, 1982.
02:06It was here in the Pacific Northwest
02:11where arguably the most prolific serial killer of all time,
02:16Gary Ridgeway, a.k.a. the Green River Killer,
02:20preyed on vulnerable young women, runaways and sex workers.
02:25Gary Ridgeway, it's a special place in the role of serial killers
02:31because we're talking about a man who's responsible clearly
02:36for killing at least 49 women.
02:38After he's murdered his victims,
02:40he disposes of their bodies in the Green River.
02:44Victims' bodies are found in the river.
02:46They're found weighted down.
02:47And he hasn't just raped and killed these women.
02:51He has extended his power and control over them.
02:53So some are found with objects inserted inside them,
02:57stones, essentially.
02:59This was a killing machine.
03:02Operating in plain sight.
03:04What could be more horrifying?
03:08If you walked out into the street and said,
03:11good morning, Gary, you would not say for one second
03:14that Ridgeway was a serial killer.
03:18Elaine Porterfield was a young reporter
03:20with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at the time.
03:25He was viewed as largely unremarkable
03:28and almost kind of uninteresting, maybe a little bit odd.
03:30Gary was a truck painter
03:34for a famous truck-building company here in Seattle.
03:38With his unassuming persona,
03:41Ridgeway was able to commit mass murder
03:43for nearly 20 years
03:45and get away with it.
03:47The fear across the Pacific Northwest was palpable.
03:53I think that this case really did have a significant impact on the community.
03:57There'd been this serial killer on the loose for many, many years
04:01who was named the Green River Killer.
04:03And this person didn't have an identity.
04:04He was this faceless monster.
04:07Every time a body was found,
04:08it was thought that it could be attributed to the Green River Killer,
04:11and that included some cases in Oregon
04:13and all the way up to British Columbia.
04:15And it was terrifying to women going out by themselves.
04:18Virginia Graham's sister, Deborah Estes,
04:20was one of Ridgeway's victims.
04:23You know, we're both small.
04:24She was about, you know, my same height.
04:28She loved the color purple.
04:31That was her favorite color.
04:32And she absolutely adored horses.
04:36She loved horses.
04:38Deborah disappeared in September 1982.
04:42You cannot begin to, unless you've lived that,
04:47you can't begin to understand
04:48the specific hell on earth that that really is.
04:58Candace Diskin's younger sister went missing in 1987.
05:04My sister's name was Roberta Joseph Hayes.
05:08Bobbie Jo, that was her nickname.
05:09I think of her often.
05:11I don't know, she just had a big, beautiful smile
05:13and big blue eyes, and she was a funny kid.
05:18Bobbie Jo's body was not found for four years.
05:21All the while, Candace suspected the worst,
05:25that her sister had been murdered by the Green River Killer.
05:29It was a really tough time,
05:31not knowing where so many people's loved ones,
05:34their daughters, their, you know, where they were,
05:36what was happening to them.
05:39Sergeant Frank Ashley and his partner, Bob LaMoria,
05:42served jointly as supervisors on the Green River Task Force.
05:48They and their fellow detectives worked tirelessly
05:51to track down the man who was arguably
05:53the most prolific mass murderer in U.S. history.
05:57We were finding victims two or three times a week
06:01during certain periods of time during the investigation.
06:06We had victims that were missing for over two years,
06:10that had never been reported missing.
06:12So it made it easy for Mr. Ridgeway
06:14to get away with it as long as he did,
06:18because we were sometimes two or three years behind him.
06:23This killer's story begins over 70 years ago.
06:28Gary Ridgeway was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1949.
06:34The middle of three sons to a ferocious, domineering mother
06:39and a bus driver father.
06:44His parents argued relentlessly,
06:47but he always took his mother's side.
06:50The mother was to become the most signal figure in his life.
06:54The other thing about his mother is this.
06:59Up till roughly age 13,
07:02he had a bedwetting problem,
07:04and his mother would deal with his problem
07:06by personally washing his genitalia.
07:11This kind of behavior is very unusual.
07:13It is going to inevitably lead to a confusion about sexuality.
07:19And indeed, Ridgeway admitted to his psychiatrist
07:25that he had lustful sexual feelings towards his mother.
07:30As a teenager, he was obsessed with sex.
07:34By the time he reaches adolescence,
07:36Ridgeway has got what could only be described
07:39as a supercharged sex drive.
07:43He wants sex all the time, everywhere, regardless.
07:50Ridgeway struggled in school and was held back two grades.
07:55There's also problems with his peers.
07:57He's always the slow one, he's always a bit behind.
07:59So always being the odd one out,
08:01not having that sense of belonging.
08:04And one of the things that Gary Ridgeway learned
08:06to protect himself was to be violent,
08:08was to instill fear in other people,
08:10because that was a kind of armor.
08:12Age 16, Ridgeway viciously attacked a six-year-old boy.
08:17It actually stabs a boy seriously in the liver,
08:19and the child survives.
08:21This episode hints that there is some
08:24completely psychotic, disorganized process
08:28going on just below the surface with him.
08:31Ridgeway was not identified,
08:33so was never charged with the assault.
08:35In 1969, he joined the U.S. Navy.
08:38The following year, Ridgeway married his first wife,
08:41but his mother was still ever-present in their relationship.
08:46This is a woman who was so dominating
08:47that even after he got married,
08:50his mother would decide what clothes to buy him
08:53and that he should wear.
08:54Soon after getting married,
08:56Ridgeway was deployed on a tour with the U.S. Navy.
09:00Unable to contain his sexual urges,
09:03he regularly visited prostitutes.
09:07Wherever he was, he visited sex workers.
09:09And in several cases, he contracted venereal diseases,
09:12which he was angry about,
09:14and which he held against the sex workers.
09:18And I think that just fed on itself,
09:20that anger, that hatred,
09:23that depersonalization of these women.
09:26When Ridgeway returned the following year,
09:30he found his wife had been dating another man.
09:33The couple divorced in January 1972.
09:37A year later, in 1973, he found a new wife.
09:42While he was married,
09:43Ridgeway also found a new outlet for his passions.
09:47Ridgeway suddenly became something of a religious zealot,
09:53a Bible-thumper, he would proselytize.
09:57It's kind of fervent, almost out of proportion,
10:01his interest in religion.
10:05Religion plays a very interesting role
10:07for some subset of serial killers.
10:10The problem is that religion, psychology, medications,
10:17none of them have proven more powerful
10:20than the urge to kill in a serial killer.
10:25Ridgeway and his new wife had a son.
10:28On the surface,
10:30they seem like an ordinary, God-fearing,
10:32all-American family.
10:34Part of him was still a sex maniac.
10:40Another part of him was very guilty about that.
10:44So you have what you might describe
10:47as the Jekyll and Hyde character,
10:49Dr Jekyll, a religious, caring, good husband,
10:55and you have Mr Hyde, of course,
10:57who is still going to prostitutes regularly.
11:02Visiting prostitutes at night
11:04and with his mother ever present in their relationship,
11:08Ridgeway's second marriage ended in divorce in 1981.
11:12Soon after, he had his first run-in with the law
11:16when he was arrested in 1982 for soliciting a prostitute.
11:21The minor charge would be an ominous sign
11:24of the women he would prey on
11:26and the monstrous murders that he was about to commit.
11:32Driven by an insatiable sex drive,
11:36Ridgeway had started to pick up street prostitutes
11:39from the Sea-Tac Strip, the road that connects Seattle
11:42to the neighbouring city of Tacoma.
11:46This is a highway that was frequented by sex workers at the time.
11:50Ridgeway's first victim was just 16 years old.
11:54One night after work,
11:56he picked the sex worker up from the strip.
11:59Sergeant Frank actually supervised
12:01the task force assigned to catch him.
12:05These women were in the area of Pacific Highway South
12:09and that's where he would make contact with them
12:14and abduct them, OK?
12:17And usually these were after hours,
12:19during the hours of darkness.
12:21How he would get them into his car
12:25is anybody's guess.
12:29Ridgeway took his first victim to a desolate location
12:32along the banks of the Green River
12:35just outside Seattle's city limits.
12:38The body of the 16-year-old was found on July 15, 1982.
12:44Detectives later determined
12:46that she'd been murdered about a week earlier.
12:49Sergeant Bob Lemoria supervised the search
12:53at the first crime scene.
12:56The first victim apparently floated down the river
12:59and got tangled up in some brush and the rocks
13:03and her body was exposed in plain view.
13:07Her kidnap and killing in July 1982
13:11would set a sinister pattern
13:13that would result in 49 confirmed murders.
13:16Ridgway typically targeted young women
13:19drawn to the peace and promise
13:21of America's Pacific Northwest.
13:24He's preying on vulnerable women,
13:27so women who are either sex workers
13:29or young women who have run away from home.
13:32They were young women doing the best they could
13:34in the way they knew how.
13:36They were 15, 16, 17 years old, 20 years old.
13:40After his first murder, Ridgway went on a frenzied killing spree.
13:46In just five weeks, he picked up five more women
13:49from the Sea-Tac Strip.
13:52By August 15, 1982, Ridgway had kidnapped,
13:56raped and callously killed all of them.
13:59He dumped one of the bodies near a creek
14:01and four in the Green River.
14:03The defiled bodies were found in clusters along the banks.
14:09The homicides started in, you know, 1982
14:14and the publicity that was being received
14:19or broadcasted by the news media,
14:21every member of this county,
14:24the state of Washington, the United States,
14:26were aware of these murders.
14:28In August of 1982,
14:31a task force was formed
14:32to catch the so-called Green River Killer.
14:36The team scoured the area
14:38and made a series of grim discoveries.
14:41This was the site of three of the victims.
14:48There were two upstream of waves
14:50pushed into the water and waded down with rocks.
14:53A third one was left on the bank
14:56in the tall grass.
14:59I assumed that he thought
15:00he was going to get caught.
15:01He saw somebody and dumped the body and ran
15:03because she didn't make it in the water.
15:05When the call came out,
15:06we would have dispatched the task force.
15:08We would set up a perimeter.
15:10We'd line up
15:11and we would clip every blade of grass
15:13looking for any hairs, fibres,
15:15or anything else that might be
15:17of investigative value.
15:20Analyzing the bodies,
15:21detectives quickly determined a pattern
15:24in the killer's behavior.
15:26He would head to the Sea-Tac strip after work.
15:31There, he would pick up a sex worker
15:34from the side of the road.
15:36The women did not know it,
15:38but then their fate was sealed.
15:42His method of operation, his M.O.,
15:45was taking these women to wooded, isolated areas,
15:49sometimes along riverbanks,
15:51along stretches of road,
15:54so that he would see any approaching vehicles
15:57that would give him plenty of time
16:00to avoid being seen.
16:05Ridgway would park and persuade the women
16:08to get out of his truck.
16:11Then he would attack.
16:14Each victim was manually strangulated,
16:18and the fact that he admitted to the pleasure
16:23he sought out of watching the life seep
16:28out of each of the bodies,
16:29and I feel that that is horrific.
16:34What is more, Ridgway's victims had no idea it was coming.
16:39Ridgway strangled many of his victims from behind.
16:43It gives him, first of all, the element of surprise.
16:45It reduces the likelihood they can effectively fight back against him.
16:49In those few seconds, before his victims became unconscious,
16:54they would be shocked, they would be struggling to breathe,
16:57they would be in pain, they may be trying to fight back.
17:01In about ten seconds, somebody would be unconscious
17:03and unable to respond to you.
17:08He started off strangling with his hands,
17:10but increasingly they put up a fight,
17:13bruised his arms,
17:15and he didn't want to have to explain that
17:16to his friends or to his son.
17:20And so he started using ligatures,
17:23because it meant he didn't have to put his hands on their throat.
17:28By the end of the summer of 1982,
17:31Ridgway had kidnapped, murdered, and then raped nine young women.
17:36He would pick up sex workers and murder them,
17:39and then dispose of their bodies in clusters,
17:41so there would be dump sites
17:43where there were several bodies of his victims.
17:46The next group that we found was on the Starlake Road.
17:51He would park on a curve so that he could see in both directions,
17:55and then he would carry the bodies out and deposit them.
18:00Ridgway later confessed to having had sex with the bodies after death,
18:05in some cases, long after.
18:07The necrophilia, having sex with a dead person,
18:14is extraordinarily rare.
18:17And it's one of the pieces of the puzzle that suggests true psychosis.
18:23To engage in necrophilia,
18:25you have to be completely out of touch with reality.
18:29Ridgway would often revisit the bodies of his victims multiple times.
18:33He would move them, he would have sexual relations with the bodies.
18:38It's absolutely ghastly.
18:41Deborah Estes was one of the many runaways that Ridgway targeted.
18:46Virginia Graham was 16,
18:48a year and a half older than her sister Deborah,
18:51when she disappeared in the summer of 1982.
18:55We were so close in age,
18:57but she had shorter blonde hair.
19:00Like many who take to the streets,
19:02Deborah ran away from what was an abusive family situation.
19:07In Deborah's case, her father was the alleged abuser.
19:13You're literally living with a rattlesnake.
19:17That rattlesnake can be calm one second
19:20and can just absolutely,
19:23if you are not hypervigilant around watching
19:26and you drop your guard for just one minute,
19:29you can seriously get hurt or even die.
19:33On one fateful night in July of 1982,
19:37home life became too much to bear for 14-year-old Deborah.
19:41Probably 2, 3 o'clock maybe, somewhere around there,
19:44my mom woke up
19:45and noticed that my stepdad, Debbie's biological father,
19:49was coming out of my sister's bedroom
19:52and my mom asked him,
19:54well, what are you doing?
19:55And he said, well, I'm just checking on her
19:57like any good father would do.
19:59So, and...
20:02No, he wasn't.
20:04He was there for a totally different reason.
20:07And she left the next day, early, very early.
20:11For Virginia, it's a moment that she still struggles with.
20:16I would have grabbed her
20:18and I would have held on to her.
20:22And I don't know, I don't know what we could have done
20:24because she was 14 years old.
20:27Deborah's mother reported her as missing
20:30to the Seattle police soon after.
20:33On September the 20th, 1982,
20:37Deborah was brought to a police station.
20:39She'd reported that she'd been raped by a client a week earlier
20:43and was there to see photos of the suspect.
20:46It turned out that the man who attacked Deborah
20:48was another serial rapist that was also active in the area.
20:53Just after she'd talked to law enforcement,
20:56a detective dropped her off at the motel that she was living in.
21:00Deborah was never seen again.
21:03She was just 15 years old.
21:06Well, the same day that she got dropped off by the detective
21:09investigating the serial rape cases
21:13was the same day that Gary Ridgway picked her up.
21:16Deborah's desecrated body was found nearly six years later.
21:21She'd been dumped in the debris of a building site
21:24just down the road from where she'd been abducted.
21:28From where he picked her up to where he took her to kill her,
21:32she maybe would have lived no more than an hour,
21:36hour and a half at the most from the time he picked her up.
21:39By the time, you know, they drove and everything took place
21:43and he buried her no more than an hour and a half.
21:48So, um...
21:51Boy, that's a sobering thought.
21:56By the end of 1982,
21:59the death toll wrought by the Green River killer had reached 11.
22:04By dumping the bodies in the river and in the woods,
22:08hard evidence was difficult to come by.
22:10If a body is disposed in water,
22:13then quite clearly a few things will happen.
22:18Evidence can be washed away, trace evidence.
22:21DNA, bloodstains and blood patterns will be washed away.
22:25So it reduces the forensic opportunities
22:29if the body is there for a long time.
22:31Decomposition will hamper the examination.
22:34Even though they found many bodies during the summer of 1982,
22:38the Seattle-based task force had no idea
22:41who the perpetrator might be.
22:44For a suspect pool,
22:45was basically every male over 17 or 18 years old
22:52in the entire world.
22:55And we didn't know whether he was coming from someplace else,
22:58flying in or driving in or what.
23:01With the news of 11 women now murdered
23:04and their mutilated bodies found by the banks of the Green River
23:07as well as in the local woods,
23:10fear spread across America's Pacific Northwest.
23:14A mysterious mass murderer
23:15known as the Green River Killer
23:17was still on the loose.
23:20A truck painter by day
23:23and a serial killer by night,
23:2533-year-old Gary Ridgway
23:27was hiding in plain sight
23:29and living in a quiet Seattle neighbourhood.
23:37The police in the area were struggling
23:41because who would suspect Gary Ridgway's inoffensive,
23:45talkative, plain, ordinary-looking man?
23:50There was no horn, there were no tails.
23:53He wasn't wearing a great black cloak.
23:55Gary Ridgway was the man next door.
23:58You would not have noticed him.
24:01He's your average Joe.
24:03He's somebody who fits in.
24:05He's somebody who you wouldn't be scared of
24:08because he doesn't look like a monster.
24:11The killer was preying on young, vulnerable runaways
24:14who work the streets near the Sea-Tac airport.
24:18He knows that he's got an easy target group here,
24:21so that's going to allow him to get away with it
24:23for an awfully long time.
24:25Ridgway would simply pick young women up
24:28from the side of the road
24:29as they solicited sexual services.
24:32I don't think any of them would have believed
24:35that somebody who looked as inoffensive
24:37and as Joe average as Gary Ridgway
24:40would be capable of murder.
24:43After what seemed a lull over the winter
24:45when no new bodies were found,
24:48in the spring of 1983,
24:50Seattle's serial killer struck again.
24:55In the evening of April the 30th,
24:57Ridgway drove to the Sea-Tac strip
24:59where he picked up 18-year-old Marie.
25:03Like so many of his victims,
25:05she sold sex to survive.
25:07She also had a boyfriend who acted as her pimp.
25:11When he saw her get in Ridgway's truck,
25:14his gut feeling told him something was not right,
25:17so he decided to follow them.
25:20The boyfriend saw her get into the car
25:22and he was trying to go to her rescue,
25:24but he couldn't because he got stopped
25:27at an electrical signal light.
25:30When she didn't return home,
25:32a few days later,
25:33Marie's anxious boyfriend and her father
25:36desperately searched the area.
25:37The boyfriend and the girl's father
25:41strove around the areas trying to find it,
25:44and they were worried about the girl
25:46because they were also aware of the Green River murders.
25:53The two men made a remarkable discovery.
25:57While patrolling them,
25:58or while driving around checking the areas
26:00for their girlfriend and daughter,
26:03they found this truck that matched the description
26:05that the boyfriend had seen,
26:07and it turned out to be Gary Ridgway's.
26:10Ridgway's distinctive truck sat in the driveway
26:13as a detective questioned the 34-year-old car painter
26:17at his house.
26:19With Marie nowhere to be seen,
26:22the officer did not pursue the lead.
26:25Marie's badly decomposed body
26:27would be found 20 years later.
26:31However, Ridgway would remain on the police's radar.
26:35But in the spring of 1983,
26:39the killer slipped through the net.
26:42Just a few days later, on May the 3rd,
26:45he killed again.
26:47This time, he radically changed his M.O.
26:50He attacked 21-year-old Carol Ann,
26:54a local waitress and a single mother.
26:58Carol Ann was somebody who wasn't a sex worker.
27:01She was somebody who knew Gary Ridgway,
27:04and that the two of them had had sex.
27:07And afterwards, Gary Ridgway had strangled her.
27:10But it wasn't enough for him to just kill her.
27:13He engaged in some rather bizarre behavior
27:15with Carol Ann's body.
27:17So he put a grocery bag over her head.
27:21He left two gutted fish on her body.
27:23He draped an empty bottle of wine over her torso,
27:29and he'd left ground-up sausage meat on her hands.
27:34Carol Ann's body was found some 20 miles east
27:37of the Sea-Tac Strip in Maple Valley, Washington.
27:41And this woman was different than the other victims.
27:45It was maybe the only time or the first time
27:48that he killed a non-prostitute.
27:52And what do we know about Ridgway's response to doing this?
27:56He did something that I've almost never heard of
28:00in a serial killer.
28:01He laid beside the body, and he cried.
28:08And crying is something serial killers don't do.
28:12And what I would like to suggest this tells us,
28:15what it teaches us, is that even the devil himself
28:21has a moment where he sees clearly enough
28:25what depravity and evil wreaks in his soul
28:30to be touched humanly.
28:34By the end of the year,
28:36the desecrated bodies of 24 women
28:39had been found by shocked passers-by.
28:43Many more had been reported missing,
28:46and the suspicion was that they too
28:48were the victims of the Green River Killer.
28:53Body parts were scattered all over the Pacific Northwest.
28:57He's been dumping bodies up and down the Green River,
29:03taking some of them to the neighbouring state of Oregon.
29:07The Green River Task Force spent countless hours and days
29:12carefully gathering all the fragments of evidence they could
29:15from across the Northwest.
29:17The task force investigators were spending a lot of time on bone finds.
29:23We would launch the whole entire task force
29:26and spend a lot of investigative time,
29:29only to find out at the end that it was an animal bone.
29:33All the while, the killing of young women continued.
29:37By the end of 1984,
29:39the toll of victims had reached 42.
29:42Sadly, the police were nowhere nearer to stopping
29:46the Green River Killer.
29:48Believe me, all of the investigators wanted so much
29:51to solve this case and prevent somebody else from being killed.
29:56Frank actually was brought in to supervise
29:59the Green River Task Force in May of 1984
30:02in the hope of finally solving the case.
30:06These detectives, each and every one of them,
30:09put their heart and soul into solving this investigation.
30:12For each victim that was found,
30:14it impacted the morale of the detectives
30:18who were hoping that there would be no more
30:20victims of the Green River Killer.
30:24The next year, 1985,
30:27Ridgway met the woman who would become his third wife
30:30at a parents-without-partners meeting.
30:34They seem to have quite an idyllic relationship.
30:37She thinks very highly of him.
30:39He's somebody who is a kind of pillar of the community.
30:42His third wife provided quite a lot of assistance to Gary
30:45in terms of looking after his finances
30:47and that kind of thing.
30:48So, things that he wasn't particularly capable
30:51of doing himself.
30:53At the same time, the killing spree seemed to slow.
30:58His third wife was later to say,
31:01I think I saved many lives because I loved him.
31:05It's a most poignant remark
31:09and one that strikes to the heart.
31:14You embrace a serial killer and you save lives.
31:19I don't think for a moment she thought
31:21he was a serial killer when she married him.
31:24But, my goodness, I find it heartbreaking.
31:27But Ridgway's urge to kill could not be stopped for long.
31:33The man who had now killed 46 women
31:36picked up 21-year-old Bobbie Jo Hayes in February 1987.
31:42Her sister, Candice, recalls those trying times.
31:46In 1991, her remains were found.
31:51So, four years after she went missing,
31:54her remains were found on Highway 410
31:56outside of Seattle in Auburn.
32:00So, that was...
32:02..that was terrible for the family, as you can imagine.
32:07Like so many of the young women
32:09that Ridgway kidnapped and killed,
32:12Bobbie Jo sold sex to survive.
32:14A single mother of five,
32:17she was known to frequent the Sea-Tac Strip,
32:20Ridgway's hunting ground.
32:22Bobbie Jo also worked the streets of Portland,
32:25two and a half hours south of Seattle.
32:29I would see her, you know, downtown.
32:32I would see her on Aurora Avenue, near where we grew up.
32:35Though they shared the same mother,
32:37Candice's sister, Bobbie Jo,
32:39lived with their father and his new wife.
32:42She wasn't treated very well.
32:44There was a lot of drinking involved.
32:46So, she pretty much ventured out on her own
32:49at about age 12, hit the streets.
32:52You know, I would see her with her Johns,
32:53I would see...
32:54And, you know, my heart just broke.
32:56She deserved the best of everything.
32:57She deserved to have a very happy life.
33:00Um, and then I'm sorry
33:02for not being able to help her more.
33:06That's probably all.
33:07When Bobbie Jo's remains were finally found,
33:12it ended years of torment for Candice and her family.
33:17Not knowing can be just as hard as knowing.
33:20It's bittersweet.
33:21Nothing good about it,
33:22but I no longer have to drive Aurora Avenue
33:25looking for my sister,
33:26because that's what I did for years.
33:28I'd be driving, and I was just constantly aware
33:30of myself looking for her,
33:33um, hoping to see her with a John,
33:36you know, or in somebody's car or something.
33:39By the spring of 1987,
33:42the death toll wrought by the Green River Killer
33:44had reached 46.
33:47When some green carpet fibres
33:49were found among the remains of several of the victims,
33:52a warrant was issued to search the home and workplace
33:55of Gary Ridgway,
33:56who was already on the police's radar.
34:00The fibres, as it turned out,
34:01showed that some of the victims
34:03had been in the same environment
34:04before or after they were killed.
34:09One month after Bobbie Jo disappeared,
34:12on April the 8th, 1987,
34:15the Green River Task Force
34:16searched the home of Gary Ridgway.
34:18A young couple renting rooms above Ridgway's garage
34:22helped with their inquiries.
34:23They showed us photographs
34:26that they had taken inside the house
34:29that showed that it had
34:30the green tribal-type carpet in there.
34:34Frank Atchley and a team of detectives
34:36entered Ridgway's home.
34:39I saw Ridgway at the house,
34:43and he was smug,
34:44and his mother was there,
34:45and she was screaming and hollering
34:46that we had the wrong guy,
34:49and so on and so forth.
34:51That's when I poked him with my finger
34:53in his chest.
34:54I says,
34:55USOB, I know you did it,
34:57and we're going to get you one of these days.
34:59April the 8th, 1987,
35:02was not that day.
35:04We found no remnant or anything of that carpet.
35:07It had all been removed, replaced.
35:10And even the vacuum cleaner didn't reveal anything that helped us.
35:17He had really cleaned up the place.
35:20Detectives also searched Ridgway's job site in Renton, Washington,
35:24where he worked as a truck painter.
35:26It was 87.
35:30We served search warrantless on his place of employment.
35:33When we got him back to the precinct,
35:37they took a swab of this,
35:40had him chew on a piece of gauze,
35:42which was ultimately his coup de gras.
35:45It would take 40 more years
35:49and a breakthrough in technology,
35:52but the saliva-soaked gauze
35:54with the killer's DNA sealed in,
35:57promised to reveal the true identity
35:59of the Green River Killer.
36:02Seattle, Washington State, 2001.
36:06Since 1982, the serial killer
36:10had taken at least 48 young lives with impunity.
36:15But thanks to groundbreaking advances in forensic technology
36:20at the turn of the 21st century,
36:23the net was finally closing in on the man next door,
36:2752-year-old Gary Ridgway.
36:32Arguably the most prolific serial killer
36:35the United States has ever seen,
36:37outranking even Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.
36:42He looks inoffensive,
36:45but is in fact dreadful,
36:47a man of extraordinary evil.
36:53At the Washington State Crime Labs in 2001,
36:58Dr Beverly Himmick took advantage
37:00of a new technique in forensic technology.
37:05It takes a breakthrough in DNA technology
37:11to finally trap Gary Ridgway,
37:15a man who's been getting away with murder
37:18for close to 20 years.
37:20Called short tandem repeat or STR DNA testing,
37:26the detectives re-examine the saliva
37:28that was captured in the gauze
37:30as they'd asked Ridgway to submit 14 years earlier.
37:34When we started the investigation,
37:36DNA was just coming on the scene in the United States.
37:40And the thing that we finally got Ridgway on,
37:44the DNA, had been submitted
37:45two, three, four times previous for processing,
37:49but it kept coming back inconclusive.
37:53It wasn't until 2001 we got a positive hit on him.
37:57As they were gathering evidence against him
38:00in the autumn of 2001,
38:03Gary Ridgway suddenly re-emerged.
38:07Whilst Gary Ridgway might have stopped killing
38:09for a period of time,
38:10he has not completely turned around his behaviour
38:13or his lifestyle.
38:14In 2001, he is picked up by a police officer
38:17as he is soliciting a sex worker.
38:21He makes the mistake of picking up
38:23an undercover police officer
38:25whom he mistakes for a prostitute,
38:27and that led to his arrest.
38:30Alerted to the incident
38:31and concerned that he might kill again,
38:34law enforcement decided to act.
38:37On November the 30th, 2001,
38:39they arrested Gary Ridgway.
38:42It was unbelievable.
38:44I think at that point,
38:45people didn't believe that he would ever be caught.
38:49It was absolutely stunning and gratifying.
38:53There was a giant collective sense of relief
38:56that a monster was off the street.
38:58The Green River killer
39:00was suspected of killing at least 48 women.
39:04The problem was that with the evidence they had,
39:07the police could only charge Ridgway
39:09with four murders.
39:11And that was enough to warrant a death penalty.
39:14For the prosecution,
39:16it was a bargaining chip.
39:17Gary Ridgway's attorney
39:19contacted the prosecutor
39:22and agreed to waive the death penalty
39:27in exchange for a complete confession
39:31on all the women that he killed
39:34in the King County jurisdiction.
39:37To try and help all the affected families
39:40find out what had happened to their loved ones,
39:43the deal was made.
39:45In 2003,
39:47Gary Ridgway confessed to the dozens of murders
39:50he had committed.
39:52The investigators then contacted the families
39:55of the deceased.
39:57That was a day,
39:59you know what PTSD is?
40:02That's a day that I could feel the emotion
40:04because I was at work.
40:06And the phone rang
40:07and my heart started beating.
40:09And they said,
40:10you know,
40:12we have this person in custody.
40:13He has confessed to
40:16the murders of so many women.
40:18And I honestly,
40:19I thought I was going to faint.
40:21It was shocking.
40:23I never thought in a million years
40:24that I would be getting a phone call like that.
40:26On November the 5th, 2003,
40:30Ridgway appeared in front of a packed
40:32King County courthouse in downtown Seattle
40:34and made his plea.
40:37The first time I saw him,
40:39it was disappointing.
40:40He was kind of a mouse of a man
40:43in the minds of so many
40:45in the Pacific Northwest
40:46as some sort of superhuman
40:48that it was just shocking
40:49to see what a little worm of a man
40:52he actually was.
40:53He tried to apologize at one point,
40:57but the father of one of the victims
40:59interrupted him
41:00with sort of a torrent of emotion.
41:05And Ridgway was unable to speak.
41:08The father obviously just had to address him.
41:15Eventually, you know,
41:16he was gaveled ordered by the judge.
41:18But it was a very intense moment.
41:22The only time Gary Ridgway was affected
41:25by any words that anyone spoke
41:28were when he was forgiven.
41:31Interestingly enough,
41:32that made me more angry
41:33when I saw that.
41:36It's like,
41:37I just poured my heart out to you
41:39what you've done to our family
41:41by taking my sister
41:42and nothing.
41:45He had no facial expression whatsoever.
41:49I didn't get it.
41:51The first time
41:52that they sentenced Gary Ridgway
41:54in 2003,
41:56I couldn't cry.
41:57I was dumb.
41:58There just was nothing there.
42:01Virginia Graham went to the court
42:03to try to understand
42:04why Ridgway had killed
42:06her sister Deborah
42:07over 20 years earlier.
42:09I don't know
42:10how another human being
42:12could do
42:12to somebody else
42:15what he put these girls through.
42:17Being in the court that day,
42:19there were no pictures
42:20of who these victims were.
42:22It was just names
42:23on a piece of paper.
42:24So I wanted him to know
42:26that she wasn't a thing,
42:28that she was my sister
42:30and that she was loved.
42:31So I had that picture
42:32that I showed to him.
42:33She was a little girl
42:35when she was murdered by him.
42:41In November 2003,
42:44Gary Ridgway was convicted
42:46of 48 counts
42:47of aggravated murder.
42:49He was sentenced
42:50to 48 consecutive
42:52life terms in prison.
42:54When a 49th body
42:56was found in December 2010,
42:58dumped in Washington,
42:59Ridgway was given
43:01an additional life sentence.
43:05They found Becky's body.
43:08Her remains were found
43:09by accident.
43:11That was my sister's best friend.
43:13There were so many names,
43:15so many victims,
43:16and I think it's important
43:17that we try and remember
43:18all of those women.
43:20In his final statement
43:21at admission of guilt,
43:23he said,
43:24I wanted to kill
43:25as many women
43:26I thought were prostitutes
43:27as I possibly could.
43:30If anyone truly deserves
43:33the title of an evil killer,
43:37it is unquestionably
43:38Gary Ridgway.
43:40The Green River Killer
43:41murdered 49 young women.
43:44They may be gone,
43:46but for the loved ones
43:48left behind,
43:49they will never be forgotten.
43:50I can always see her face.
43:52She was very fun,
43:53very bright,
43:54big, beautiful,
43:55you know,
43:56blonde hair,
43:56blue-eyed,
43:58angelic little girl.
44:00Sentenced to life
44:01in prison
44:01without the possibility
44:02of parole,
44:04the Green River Killer
44:05will never be free again.
44:07Arguably the most prolific
44:09serial killer ever known,
44:11Gary Ridgway is without doubt
44:13one of the world's
44:15most evil killers.
44:16The Green River Killer
44:46is a place to kill
44:48and the World's
44:49a place to kill
44:49and she doesn't kill
44:51the world's
44:51a place to kill
44:52and the beautiful
44:53character.
44:54The Green River Killer
44:56is a place to kill
44:56and a place to kill
44:57and the most real
44:58is a place to kill
44:59in the middle of an angel
45:00in the middle of an angel.
45:01If you have no idea
45:02about this,
45:03you have no idea
45:05who can kill
45:06and if you don't
45:07do it,
45:08you can find
45:10people in the middle
45:11to find
45:12a place to kill
45:13in the middle
45:14and the goal