Serial Killer Gary Leon Ridgway
A
15 year old prostitute was picked up on the Strip by a "
pocked face man" with a
blonde mustache. After climbing into the car, the man forced her by
knife, to lie down on the floorboard. He drove her to an area called
Horsetail Falls where he beat and tortured her. He forced her to lie on the hood of the car while he raped her. After the rape he stabbed her repeatedly with a knife. Due to the
loss of blood, the prostitute passed out and awoke some time later to discover that she had been covered by brush. Peering through the brush, she could see the man standing there, calmly smoking a cigarette and staring at the pile of brush. She lay still for some time until the man finally drove away, after which she crawled to the road and summoned help from a
passing car.
The police created a sketch of the killer from her detailed description, a picture that was broadcast on national TV 4 years later (see side note).
In 1986, the case involving the disappearance of
Marie Malvar (04/30/83) surfaced again. In 1986 the police still had no leads on the case. They acquired a new computer system that made the task of cataloging and tracking the massive quantity of evidence and suspects much easier. The computer system began spitting out one name over and over again –
Gary Ridgeway.
Ridgeway had been arrested in 1982 for attempting to pick up an undercover policewoman posing as a prostitute. Two years earlier he had been arrested for attempting to choke a prostitute (he claimed "self defense" - the prostitute had bitten him while performing oral sex). Also in 1982 he had been approached by the police as he sat in his pickup truck near the little league fields. He had a prostitute in the truck, a prostitute that later herself became a victim of the
Green River Killer. In 1984 he had come forth to the police and offered to assist in their search, claiming that he had known one of the victims.
Murders: 71
Ridgeway would later become known as the “
Green River Killer” for his killing spree throughout the 1980s which will result in him becoming one of the most prolific serial killers in history of American. He would kidnap prostitutes and murder them after sexually attacking them.
Ridgeway later said that
murdering young women was his “
career”.
