Dave Reichert — Hunting the Green River Killer | Part 1
Dave Reichert went into homicide at the King County Sheriff's Office in 1979. In 1982 he was assigned one of the first cases in what became the Green River murders, and he stayed with the investigation for two decades, from detective to task force member to King County Sheriff.
The case began on a river. A rafter floating the Green River saw what he thought were mannequins under the water, then realized they were bodies. On the bank stood a man who waved and wished him a good rafting trip, got in his truck, and drove away. It was Gary Ridgway. Reichert walks through the early crime scenes, the evidence collected and frozen in 1982, and why investigators never assumed water and weather had destroyed it.
Along the way, Ted Bundy wrote to Reichert and his former partner Bob Keppel offering to help. Reichert describes three days with Bundy in prison, Bundy's habit of talking about himself in the third person, and his name for the killer: the Riverman. He then traces a task force that was formed, expanded, joined by the FBI, and finally disbanded by a county spending $2 million a month on the case.
Reichert explains how Ridgway became a Priority A suspect from hand-built lists laid down the length of a hallway, yet passed two polygraph tests and kept the same job for 30 years. He describes Ridgway's habits at work, his three marriages, and what Reichert believes formed him: a childhood stabbing, an unusual relationship with his mother, and a psychopath's complete lack of remorse.
Part 2 picks up when the science finally catches up: the DNA results, the moment Reichert learned the name, and the arrest.
This episode contains graphic descriptions of violent crime.
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Transcript
This episode includes graphic descriptions of murder,
Speaker:sexual violence, and the recovery of human remains.
Speaker:Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker:As he gets closer, he realizes that these are actually
Speaker:real live, uh, bodies submerged under water.
Speaker:And as he looks up on the bank, he sees this guy
Speaker:standing there and the guy waves at him and says, Hey,
Speaker:I hope you have a great rafting trip.
Speaker:Yeah, you have a good day too.
Speaker:And this guy gets in his truck and drives away.
Speaker:(Music)
Speaker:the Green River Killer was, uh, but you could never
Speaker:prove it. 49 women were dead.
Speaker:The man you suspected blended
Speaker:into society for two decades.
Speaker:He was interviewed, searched.
Speaker:He even passed a polygraph.
Speaker:Dave Reichert, you were on this
Speaker:case from the very beginning.
Speaker:What was the first step that
Speaker:finally brought the killer to justice?
Speaker:Well, yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker:The first step really was,
Speaker:um, a little bit of, uh, luck
Speaker:and, uh, yeah.
Speaker:And, uh, and a lot of hard work too.
Speaker:I think, you know, we find that
Speaker:in a lot of police work, right?
Speaker:You, you, you have to put the hard work in too, but you
Speaker:have to pray that you have some, uh, you have some good
Speaker:luck and you have some guidance and, and, uh, um,
Speaker:sort of, you know, led by the Lord is
Speaker:kind of how I like to think about it.
Speaker:But, you know, at, at the early crime scenes, um, we
Speaker:did a real good job and some of the, some of the
Speaker:techniques that we developed back in the eighties
Speaker:actually, you're, they've been refined a little bit,
Speaker:but they're still being used
Speaker:today, uh, throughout the country.
Speaker:Uh,
Speaker:but it was good, uh, good detective work at the crime
Speaker:scenes, hands and knees, uh, through tall brush and
Speaker:blackberry vines down to the river and then, and then
Speaker:taking the bodies out of the river, uh, in a way that
Speaker:protected, uh, any, any kind of forensic evidence.
Speaker:And thinking back, of course, in 1982,
Speaker:um, we didn't have DNA science.
Speaker:Uh, there was no discussion about DNA science, but, um,
Speaker:you know, as we worked with the medical examiner's
Speaker:office, uh, in the autopsies in collecting evidence,
Speaker:very thorough in collecting some spermatozoa and a
Speaker:couple of the victims that were in the river.
Speaker:So you never can assume that because there have been in
Speaker:the river, you know, or out in the weather for two or
Speaker:three weeks, that evidence has
Speaker:been all evidence has been destroyed.
Speaker:That evidence was still there and,
Speaker:um, collected and frozen in 1982.
Speaker:And then of course, in 2001, as, as the state lab
Speaker:progressed in their science of DNA, that 1982
Speaker:spermatozoa collected
Speaker:connected with the science in 2001.
Speaker:And that was the first nail in the coffin for Ridgway.
Speaker:And there was a second one to come a little later.
Speaker:I understand Bundy had something
Speaker:to do with the solving of this case.
Speaker:Tell us about
Speaker:us about
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I, I was really good friends with Bob Keppel and a
Speaker:lot of your listeners may recognize that name.
Speaker:He's written a couple of books and kind of a
Speaker:compilation of Green River and, uh, the Ted Bundy cases
Speaker:together because Bundy did insert
Speaker:himself into the Green River case.
Speaker:And he did this.
Speaker:So, so Bob, uh, and I worked as partners in the
Speaker:homicide unit in the King County sheriff's office.
Speaker:Bob went on to work in the attorney general's office.
Speaker:And then, uh, he came back to the task force as an
Speaker:advisor because of his
Speaker:experience with the Bundy serial murders.
Speaker:So he and I received a letter from Bundy.
Speaker:I think it was in 1986
Speaker:and the letter from Bundy was really, um, you know, his
Speaker:opportunity to bring his name into the light again
Speaker:because Ridgway was getting all
Speaker:the press here in Washington state.
Speaker:And his pitch was, uh, look, uh, Bob and Dave, um, I am
Speaker:kind of an expert in this field and I sort of know kind
Speaker:of without admitting anything, you know, he just says,
Speaker:I might be able to help you understand
Speaker:how the mind of a serial killer works.
Speaker:So Bob and I flew to, uh, Starke, Florida and visited,
Speaker:uh, Ted Bundy for three days, uh, in prison there.
Speaker:And so I guess the first thing that I think of about
Speaker:that is, is exactly what you said.
Speaker:Is he just trying to get in the headlines again and,
Speaker:and make himself more relevant or was he just that
Speaker:obsessed with his own persona that, that he couldn't
Speaker:help himself or, or was he actually a value to you?
Speaker:Well, I think, um, and the
Speaker:first question is an absolute yes.
Speaker:He was definitely, it's like, okay, he's piling up all
Speaker:of these, um, victims, these bodies
Speaker:and, uh, he's getting all the press.
Speaker:And then of course he's a smart guy.
Speaker:So, you know, he can be of help to us too.
Speaker:think a lot of the investigators, uh, who might listen
Speaker:to this program, who've been involved in serial murders
Speaker:or interested in have read about them, understand and
Speaker:know that one of the traits of a serial killer is the
Speaker:fact that they, they really
Speaker:want to be, it is about them.
Speaker:They want to have the attention.
Speaker:And, uh, you know, with, with Ridgway, for example, uh,
Speaker:he left little clues for us
Speaker:here and there along the way.
Speaker:So he would dump a body and then he would take the
Speaker:skull and put it right next to a, uh, a sign that was a
Speaker:city limits of Auburn and place it right inside the
Speaker:jurisdiction of King County Sheriff's office.
Speaker:And of course, if we walked down the hill and we find
Speaker:the rest of the body, we didn't know it was Ridgway at
Speaker:the time, but it's his effort
Speaker:to bring notoriety to himself.
Speaker:Uh, he reads about it in the newspaper.
Speaker:Well, Bundy was the same way.
Speaker:And so he's inserting himself into this investigation
Speaker:with his knowledge of serial killers.
Speaker:The second question, uh, as it relates to whether or
Speaker:not he was helpful, um, I think in a, you know, in a
Speaker:minimal way he was and that he just sort of confirmed
Speaker:some of the things we already knew about serial killers
Speaker:and maybe knew about Ridgway.
Speaker:And that is that he would go back to the crime scenes.
Speaker:He would have sex with the dead bodies.
Speaker:Um, but, um, it's also confirmed
Speaker:what we were thinking about Ted Bundy.
Speaker:So as Bundy talked to us, he was really talking about
Speaker:himself in the third person
Speaker:and he would do it this way.
Speaker:And he called our guy, uh, Ridgway, the Riverman.
Speaker:So he would say, and that's the title of Bob Keppel's.
Speaker:One of Bob Keppel's books is The Riverman.
Speaker:And he would say, the Riverman
Speaker:will go back to the crime scene.
Speaker:The Riverman probably had a connection to
Speaker:pornographic, uh, material and movies.
Speaker:You might want to stake out a downtown area where these
Speaker:pornographic, uh, movie theaters are,
Speaker:he might find him in those theaters.
Speaker:Well, Ridgway didn't do that, but Bundy did.
Speaker:The last question that I asked Ted Bundy was, I said,
Speaker:do you think that, because he was talking in the third
Speaker:person, I, my, I posed the
Speaker:question in the third person.
Speaker:And that was, do you think that Ted Bundy will ever,
Speaker:uh, tell us, tell the police, uh,
Speaker:what really happened in Washington state?
Speaker:And he just sort of smiled and, and, um,
Speaker:uh, nodded, you know, kind of, well, you never know.
Speaker:So we know that the only
Speaker:reason that he did talk, right?
Speaker:Is that
Speaker:he was going to be executed and he played a little game
Speaker:with all of the detectives, the FBI,
Speaker:Bob Keppel and others who are down there.
Speaker:He played this game.
Speaker:How long can I play this out to keep myself alive?
Speaker:And they finally said, okay,
Speaker:you're done.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Let me set the stage here.
Speaker:Have you set the stage?
Speaker:So you, uh, just going back to something that you
Speaker:mentioned about, you know, where he left the skull just
Speaker:outside of the jurisdictional boundaries of one of the
Speaker:municipalities there or the County.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Were you a detective at the time?
Speaker:Were you in homicide?
Speaker:Was it a multi-agency task force?
Speaker:How did it cross jurisdictional boundaries?
Speaker:Who all was involved in that
Speaker:investigation from the get-go?
Speaker:Yeah, that's a,
Speaker:uh, boy, that brings back a lot of memories because
Speaker:that was part of the struggle.
Speaker:Uh, right.
Speaker:I think anyone who's involved with, you know,
Speaker:multi-jurisdictional investigations, you know, there's
Speaker:always this struggle as to who's in charge.
Speaker:And, uh, yeah, I went into homicide in 1979.
Speaker:Um, and, uh, I, I was assigned the first case, uh, in,
Speaker:in the Green River case in, in July of 1982.
Speaker:And, uh,
Speaker:uh, what happened is in, in, uh,
Speaker:July of 82, Wendy Coffield
Speaker:is found in the city of Kent.
Speaker:They started their
Speaker:investigation August of 82, August 12th.
Speaker:Um, I was assigned the Debbie Bonner,
Speaker:uh, case and immediately called Kent.
Speaker:So now we have two jurisdictions working together.
Speaker:Three days later, August 15th, the rafters floating
Speaker:down the river, he sees what he thinks
Speaker:are mannequins, uh, submerged under water.
Speaker:As he gets closer, he realizes that these are actually
Speaker:real live, uh, bodies submerged under water.
Speaker:And as he looks up on the bank, he sees this guy
Speaker:standing there and the guy waves at him and says, Hey,
Speaker:I hope you have a great rafting trip.
Speaker:Yeah, you have a good day too.
Speaker:And this guy gets in his truck and drives away.
Speaker:Well, that was Gary Ridgway because on the bank we
Speaker:found a body that he was taking down to the river.
Speaker:Uh, but because he was caught by the rafter, he just
Speaker:left it up on there on the river bank.
Speaker:Well, again, that was Sunday, August 15th on August
Speaker:16th, we started an internal
Speaker:investigation with about 25
Speaker:detectives, uh, that were gathered up from the
Speaker:precincts on the King County Sheriff's office that were
Speaker:robbery, burglary, those sorts of detectives who could
Speaker:follow up all the leads that we were collecting.
Speaker:As we move forward into, uh, the end of, uh, 1982, uh,
Speaker:we had developed a suspect that kind of looked kind of
Speaker:good, but, uh, other cases were going unsolved.
Speaker:So the administration disbanded the
Speaker:internal task force and left me with six unsolved
Speaker:murders, put me in what we call back then the Ted Bundy
Speaker:room, which is where Bob Keppel
Speaker:worked on his cases all along for a while.
Speaker:So I was up in this, this office, uh, next to the vice
Speaker:unit working these six unsolved by the end of 1983.
Speaker:We were beginning to find more bodies.
Speaker:I was able to get five more detectives to help me.
Speaker:And then in the 1984, we got a new
Speaker:sheriff who said, okay, this is enough.
Speaker:We're going to, we're going to get
Speaker:down and dirty on this, on this case.
Speaker:So he formed a, an enhanced task force, which, um, then
Speaker:we went into a separate vacant school building.
Speaker:We included, uh, places, uh, uh, police departments
Speaker:like the Seattle police department, Pierce County
Speaker:Sheriff's office, Tacoma PD, Kent PD those places that
Speaker:we were finding bodies and or
Speaker:that victims were missing from.
Speaker:So then we had this multi-agency,
Speaker:we weren't making a lot of progress.
Speaker:So then of course the newspapers start putting a lot of
Speaker:pressure on us to, to bring in the
Speaker:people that really can solve the case.
Speaker:And that's the FBI.
Speaker:So, yeah, right.
Speaker:So right.
Speaker:So we bring in the FBI where the
Speaker:sheriff does with a lot of pressure.
Speaker:The FBI said, we're not going to do
Speaker:this unless we're running the case.
Speaker:Sheriff says that ain't happening.
Speaker:So they said, okay, we'll give you agents, but we have
Speaker:to have our own supervisor because they're not
Speaker:reporting to the lowly King
Speaker:County Sheriff's office sergeants.
Speaker:So they had their own FBI supervisor with the, and we
Speaker:had agents from all over the country that didn't even
Speaker:know what rigor mortis was or
Speaker:lividity or any of those things.
Speaker:So we had to teach them some homicide investigation,
Speaker:techniques and some knowledge and they
Speaker:stayed, they, they develop a suspect.
Speaker:They searched the guy's place.
Speaker:It falls apart.
Speaker:They then say, okay, we're out of here.
Speaker:They leave.
Speaker:And
Speaker:in 1990, March
Speaker:the, the County council says we're
Speaker:spending $2 million a month on this case.
Speaker:We're not going to solve it.
Speaker:So they disbanded the task force myself, detective Tom
Speaker:Jensen, detective Jim Doyon
Speaker:were the last three to leave the,
Speaker:um, sexual crimes unit, sexual assault.
Speaker:And I was fortunate enough to be on the sergeant's list.
Speaker:I was promoted to the area and work the area where all
Speaker:the bodies were being found.
Speaker:Most of the bodies were being found.
Speaker:And most of the victims were being found.
Speaker:And so I was still taking tips, graveyard shift,
Speaker:sergeant and still looking for
Speaker:the killer while I was out there.
Speaker:These two detectives were taking
Speaker:tips and the major crimes unit.
Speaker:Then I fast forward.
Speaker:I became the sheriff in 1997.
Speaker:The DNA science came together with, I mentioned the
Speaker:1982 science and that's where
Speaker:we started surveillance on him.
Speaker:And then we also had some science
Speaker:around, um, microscopic paint spheres.
Speaker:He was a painter at Kenworth trucking and we connected,
Speaker:uh, three bodies through
Speaker:microscopic paints, paint spheres.
Speaker:one victim that was buried for six years.
Speaker:Uh, a construction crew was at a site and uncovered some
Speaker:human remains and stopped immediately.
Speaker:We went out and processed that scene.
Speaker:We were able to recover a piece of clothing worn, which
Speaker:we think was her, uh, top that she was wearing.
Speaker:Of course it had a decomposed because it was cloth, but
Speaker:in the decomposing material,
Speaker:we were able to protect that.
Speaker:And the other thing that we had to look into and attach
Speaker:to it was, um, microscopic paint spheres that the lab
Speaker:discovered and they had a new way of comparing, um, the
Speaker:Mike, those microscopic paint spheres to his coveralls,
Speaker:which were recovered in a 1986 search
Speaker:warrant of Kenworth trucking from his locker.
Speaker:So they match those two.
Speaker:We charged him with three more.
Speaker:So we had now seven cases, um, to charge him with, and
Speaker:then we went forward from there.
Speaker:I want to remind our, our viewers, our listeners, uh,
Speaker:this is Heroes Behind the Badge.
Speaker:You're listening to Dave Reichert.
Speaker:Heroes Behind the Badge is sponsored by Citizens
Speaker:Behind the Badge, the leading organization in support
Speaker:of the men and women of law enforcement.
Speaker:You can find us on CitizensBehindtheBadge.org.
Speaker:That's CitizensBehindtheBadge.org.
Speaker:You can join the hundreds of thousands of your fellow
Speaker:Americans in support of law enforcement.
Speaker:And you can find out all about
Speaker:this podcast Heroes Behind the Badge.
Speaker:So let's continue now with Dave Reichert.
Speaker:I think Craig Floyd has some questions.
Speaker:Um, Ridgway, as I understand it, became a suspect, a
Speaker:strong suspect in the case, maybe as early as 1983.
Speaker:Now you pointed out that obviously some of the evidence
Speaker:against him was not, uh, relevant at that time because
Speaker:you didn't have the forensic science, but, but tell us
Speaker:how Ridgway became a suspect.
Speaker:And, uh, and then I think he
Speaker:even passed a lie detector test.
Speaker:Talk to us about
Speaker:us about that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:He actually passed two, uh, polygraph tests and, and,
Speaker:uh, yeah, he, so, so what we did early on in the case,
Speaker:uh, we began to collect, um, lists.
Speaker:So we collected, uh, because pickup truck was one of
Speaker:the, I mean, one of the only things really we could
Speaker:target as for sure we knew our suspect was probably
Speaker:driving a pickup truck, but we had so many
Speaker:descriptions, you know, gray,
Speaker:blue, red canopy, no canopy cover.
Speaker:Uh, we, we got a list of all registered pickup owners,
Speaker:uh, because the bodies were found, uh, a lot of them in
Speaker:and near the Green River, which is a steelhead, uh,
Speaker:fishing, uh, hole for a lot
Speaker:of people in Washington state.
Speaker:We got a list of all people with fishing licenses.
Speaker:Uh, we had, we had a list of everyone who was arrested
Speaker:for assaulting, uh, women, uh, not just
Speaker:prostitutes on the street, but all women.
Speaker:So we were collecting all of these, these lists.
Speaker:We didn't have a computer in 1982, but by 1986, we had
Speaker:what they called a VAX computer, which would take up,
Speaker:uh, you know, the size of a classroom in a school.
Speaker:And we had 20 people who volunteered to enter the data
Speaker:that we had collected on hard copy documents.
Speaker:And as they entered the data,
Speaker:we could extract the data only.
Speaker:Uh, and that was it.
Speaker:The computer was not able to make any comparisons.
Speaker:Well, we printed out, for example, the people who were
Speaker:arrested for, um, assaulting
Speaker:women and who own pickup trucks.
Speaker:And then we would take those lists and put them down
Speaker:the length of a hallway at
Speaker:the school our offices were in.
Speaker:We'd have two to three detectives
Speaker:or four assigned to those lists.
Speaker:We'd be calling out addresses, license plates, numbers,
Speaker:names, et cetera, uh, and see
Speaker:if we had matches on both lists.
Speaker:So if we had matches of at least three, um, on three
Speaker:lists, that was a priority a suspect priority B
Speaker:priority C if they were on one list.
Speaker:And so Ridgway was one of those on the priority a list.
Speaker:And, um, and he, so he also had an arrest, uh, a few
Speaker:months prior to the beginning of our finding the bodies
Speaker:for patronizing prostitutes, one arrest only.
Speaker:And, uh, and so he became a suspect in that way.
Speaker:But during the time we were looking at him, we had a,
Speaker:uh, one, uh, prostitute who at the time was not
Speaker:considered to be very credible.
Speaker:Come in and say that she had escaped from someone was
Speaker:able to pick him out of a montage.
Speaker:Uh, we put him in with some others and
Speaker:she was able to pick him out of a montage.
Speaker:And this was the basis for our search warrant.
Speaker:And then we went into the, his home and into his
Speaker:workplace, search both, both places.
Speaker:And I mean, we ripped that house apart.
Speaker:And, and we know now afterwards that he did kill, uh,
Speaker:some of his victims in the house.
Speaker:You know, what's really curious to me
Speaker:though, is, is this went on for 20 years.
Speaker:And, and, uh, and, and clearly you've bet you're
Speaker:dealing with him over those, over those years, you went
Speaker:to his house, you went to his business.
Speaker:How did this guy continue to function in society?
Speaker:I mean, did, did he lose his job
Speaker:because he was under investigation?
Speaker:I know he had a family, he had a wife, he had a, uh, at
Speaker:least a son that I'm aware of.
Speaker:And how did in the neighborhoods and, and just be, you
Speaker:know, how people talk and word gets out in the gossip,
Speaker:how did he continue working or functioning at
Speaker:all?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think that's one of the most interesting questions.
Speaker:Uh, you know, the first thing that people, uh, assume
Speaker:is that he was highly intelligent and, uh, he, he's
Speaker:not, he, he's a little rat.
Speaker:For, you know,
Speaker:he's a weasel weasel.
Speaker:And, and, uh, he knew how to
Speaker:maneuver in that street, um, life.
Speaker:And he basically just went unnoticed.
Speaker:He was just sort of incognito.
Speaker:One of those people who moved in the shadows that
Speaker:nobody really paid attention to.
Speaker:Nobody really thought of him as a threat because he's
Speaker:just this little, like you say,
Speaker:let's just use this little weaselly guy.
Speaker:Did he lose his job?
Speaker:No, he actually worked.
Speaker:And that's the other interesting thing because the FBI
Speaker:profile of course is, um, in most of these serial
Speaker:killer cases, they're, they're moving from job to job
Speaker:or they're a person who is
Speaker:transient, doesn't stay in one place.
Speaker:Usually might be a truck driver, for
Speaker:example, and move from state to state.
Speaker:for, uh, for 30 years.
Speaker:And when we first arrested him and brought him in and
Speaker:searched his house and searched his locker, um, then
Speaker:the people at Kenworth trucking
Speaker:began to call him a Green River Gary.
Speaker:And, um, people always knew at
Speaker:Kenworth that he was a little bit odd.
Speaker:He would cover his tracks, um, kind of, by, um, at
Speaker:lunchtime at Kenworth, he would go
Speaker:off in the corner and read the Bible.
Speaker:Uh, but we know that later on, once he started
Speaker:collecting, he did collect souvenirs from the victims.
Speaker:He would walk by the women's restroom at Kenworth and
Speaker:toss, uh, some of those little trinkets in.
Speaker:So for, you know, bracelets, little rings.
Speaker:And then he would get excited when he saw the women who
Speaker:found those in the restroom
Speaker:wearing those items at work.
Speaker:So pretty strange.
Speaker:And nobody at work, like the supervisors or the bosses
Speaker:ever like flagged this or said,
Speaker:we got to get rid of this guy or
Speaker:no.
Speaker:I mean, like I say, he's just, you
Speaker:know, he's just a truck painter and,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:That's
Speaker:just weird.
Speaker:Now how many wives did he have?
Speaker:He had several, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Three.
Speaker:So he had three.
Speaker:So what happened with the first two?
Speaker:Uh, the first two, um, I'm so my memory is a little bit
Speaker:foggy on, on this, but both of them grew.
Speaker:Uh, my memory recalls a little bit suspicious.
Speaker:I know that one of them, I think it was the second
Speaker:wife, um, was the one who he had actually took to one
Speaker:of the sites down at Green River and tried to, uh, he
Speaker:wanted to make out and he was strangling her.
Speaker:And, um, uh, she said, look,
Speaker:like, you know, let's go home.
Speaker:And, and so that marriage ended his last wife, Judith.
Speaker:Um, she, all three of these women were women that, that
Speaker:you might say were, um, had a very low self esteem.
Speaker:We're just looking for, uh, someone who had a good job
Speaker:who could take care of them,
Speaker:provide a home, provide food and shelter.
Speaker:And Judith was told by, by Ridgway,
Speaker:look, don't ask me where I'm going.
Speaker:And when I leave work early in the morning, don't ask
Speaker:anything about if I come home
Speaker:late, it's none of your business.
Speaker:Just know that I'm going to work and everything else I
Speaker:do is, is none of your business.
Speaker:So she didn't ask any questions.
Speaker:this is what he would do.
Speaker:So, um, one morning on the way to work, he would drive
Speaker:down Pacific highway south from his house,
Speaker:sorry, 10 miles north of Tacoma.
Speaker:And he would drive down Pacific highway south.
Speaker:Prostitutes were out all the time, picked up a
Speaker:prostitute early in the morning, had sex with her in
Speaker:the back of his pickup truck with a canopy on it,
Speaker:killed her, left her in the back of the truck, went to
Speaker:work, uh, worked four hours and at lunchtime went out
Speaker:to his truck, drove to a dead end street, had sex with
Speaker:the dead body in the back of his truck, drove back to
Speaker:work, finished out his four hours, drove, drove home on
Speaker:the way home, had sex with the dead body, buried or
Speaker:dumped the body and then went home to his wife and son.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:I mean, that's just so incredibly bold or, that you
Speaker:would leave a murder victim in your vehicle while you
Speaker:go into work and think that, uh,
Speaker:maybe that's the safest place.
Speaker:Who would ever think
Speaker:that
Speaker:you did mention his son.
Speaker:And so he did have a child and, and, uh, you know, I
Speaker:saw some, something else that came up about that.
Speaker:He, uh, was apparently taking his son on a camping trip
Speaker:or something to that effect.
Speaker:And at the same time he had body of a body or bodies in
Speaker:the vehicle, then disposed of them.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, the story that I, um, that I share is one that's,
Speaker:you know, it's sad, obviously, uh, because someone's
Speaker:killed, but sad because this eight year old kid is in
Speaker:the car, in the truck with his
Speaker:dad and they pick up a prostitute.
Speaker:Uh, and, um, he tells his son that he's just picking
Speaker:her up to give her a ride home.
Speaker:And then they stop in a secluded area and he says,
Speaker:yeah, I'm just going to walk her home.
Speaker:She lives through the woods here.
Speaker:You stay in the truck.
Speaker:So they go out into the woods.
Speaker:He has sex with, uh, Giselle Lovvorn was this victim's
Speaker:name, just south of, of, uh, SeaTac airport.
Speaker:There's a road that goes, uh, east and west.
Speaker:He pulls into a secluded area there, uh, walks into the
Speaker:woods, has sex with her, um, and he, he
Speaker:actually tied his socks around her neck.
Speaker:That was the ligature he left there.
Speaker:And we, we believed, I was, um, leading the efforts on
Speaker:recovering that, uh, those remains,
Speaker:she was pretty decomposed, but I recall there was a
Speaker:pyramid shaped rock in the area of her vagina, where
Speaker:her vagina would have been in her pelvic area.
Speaker:The two victims in the river had a pyramid shaped rocks
Speaker:inserted, uh, inside of them, and he said he did this
Speaker:to prevent others from having sex because with, with
Speaker:these bodies, because they were his.
Speaker:Now he does this to Giselle Lovvorn.
Speaker:He goes back to the truck and the son
Speaker:asks where, you know, where is this?
Speaker:Where did this girl go?
Speaker:And he said, well, she decided to walk home by herself.
Speaker:And then they just
Speaker:home.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:We've, we've talked about
Speaker:serial killers on the show before.
Speaker:And at one of the questions that, that just confuses me
Speaker:and I'm sure a lot of people is our, you know, a guy
Speaker:like Ridgway kills 49 women that we know of.
Speaker:And he claims to have maybe killed more than 70.
Speaker:Are you born a serial killer?
Speaker:I mean, is there just something a miss in your brain
Speaker:that, that ends up you going there
Speaker:and killing people to this degree?
Speaker:Or did he have a troubled childhood?
Speaker:Was there some abuse involved?
Speaker:I mean, what created this monster?
Speaker:monster?
Speaker:can only speak about Ridgway really, uh, from my
Speaker:experience with, uh, interviewing him
Speaker:and, and watching all the interviews, um,
Speaker:uh, that we did with him for six months after we, after
Speaker:we arrested him and his pled, wanted to plead, uh,
Speaker:guilty, uh, and, and they agreed to talk to us.
Speaker:But I think with him, um, my, my own personal, uh, you
Speaker:know, unprofessional opinion
Speaker:really is that I think that he was, uh,
Speaker:he was born on, he was born with, I think the, the
Speaker:ability to be easily influenced and, um,
Speaker:traumatized by whatever happened in his childhood, but
Speaker:also think that he was, yeah, he was, he was born with
Speaker:some sort of a defect because
Speaker:when he tells us at 12 years old,
Speaker:that he went to play with a friend who was a little bit
Speaker:younger in the woods and when they had a knife and he
Speaker:stabbed this younger boy and, uh, we thought that he
Speaker:was just making that story up, but we actually found
Speaker:the victim through going back and looking at, uh, and
Speaker:this is where, you know, when people say that we
Speaker:didn't, the task force, you
Speaker:know, really wasn't doing their job.
Speaker:Uh, can you imagine decades later, us tracking down a
Speaker:eight year old boy who was stabbed in the woods.
Speaker:Um, we, we got a, uh, class, uh, uh, yearbook and we
Speaker:were able to track this kid down in California, who's
Speaker:now a grown man, obviously.
Speaker:And he relates the same story that he was stabbed with
Speaker:a knife by Gary Ridgway, um, in the woods.
Speaker:And the reason, so we asked Gary why he did it.
Speaker:And he says he, he's always felt like he wanted to know
Speaker:what it was like to kill someone.
Speaker:So he believed that he killed this
Speaker:little boy, but he, but he didn't.
Speaker:So he had to obviously have some sort of a propensity
Speaker:toward that kind of crime at a,
Speaker:you know, at a very young age.
Speaker:um, he had a very unusual relationship with his mother.
Speaker:Uh, I wouldn't go into detail, uh, about that, but he
Speaker:did say that he saw his mother, uh, his sunbathing
Speaker:nude in the backyard, um, at a very young age and
Speaker:started having fantasies about having sex with his
Speaker:mother, his mother, uh, according to Ridgway, uh,
Speaker:showered him until he was in his teens.
Speaker:She's the one who, who washed him and scrubbed him and,
Speaker:you know, until he was 14, 15 years old.
Speaker:And, um, she, he was very upset with her because he
Speaker:felt like she was cheating on his dad because she was
Speaker:very friendly and flirting with men at, uh, the
Speaker:clothing store that she worked at
Speaker:and it was a men's clothing department.
Speaker:And he saw her interacting with him.
Speaker:So she felt, he felt that
Speaker:she was unfaithful to his dad.
Speaker:So he got pissed off at that.
Speaker:And then his first marriage, um, he went into the Navy
Speaker:and he, uh, learned that his wife was cheating on him.
Speaker:And so then he, he just had this bad attitude.
Speaker:All women are bad and I'm going
Speaker:to, I'm going to kill prostitutes.
Speaker:Did he ever
Speaker:have any remorse, Dave, that you know of?
Speaker:I mean, you're talking about a guy who, who doesn't
Speaker:sound like all is altogether.
Speaker:Obviously.
Speaker:Was there any remorse at all?
Speaker:at
Speaker:Well, and that's the, you know, that's the
Speaker:psychological, um, uh, identifier here too.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:He's a, he's a definitely a psychopath.
Speaker:There's, there's no, no remorse at all.
Speaker:But with a psychopath, the way I understand it, you
Speaker:know, in my unprofessional opinion, uh, they have, uh,
Speaker:no remorse, but they, they know the
Speaker:difference between right and wrong.
Speaker:They know what they were doing.
Speaker:Uh, you know, it is wrong and therefore they can't
Speaker:plead, of course, insanity.
Speaker:So he's not insane.
Speaker:He just, he just knows what he's doing is wrong, but
Speaker:he's going to purge the world of prostitutes.
Speaker:And in fact, uh, you know, one of the things he said
Speaker:was he, he really hated men who
Speaker:were, um, uh, uh, abusing children.
Speaker:And so one of the things I said to
Speaker:him is I said, well, you know what?
Speaker:That you should hate yourself then
Speaker:because you, you abused children.
Speaker:And he got this shocked look on his face.
Speaker:Like,
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:you might be right.
Speaker:But he again, yeah, no remorse whatsoever.
Speaker:He had more guilt, I think, in taking the jewelry items
Speaker:that I mentioned before and
Speaker:stealing, uh, things than taking a life.
Speaker:In fact, he, he took the life
Speaker:and felt they belong to him.
Speaker:And he would place some of those victims
Speaker:who actually meant were special to him.
Speaker:Uh, he would put in specific places.
Speaker:If they really pissed him off, they fought.
Speaker:One of the victims fought him hard and bit him, uh,
Speaker:real bad bite mark on his eye on his forearm.
Speaker:He was so, he said, so pissed off at her that he put
Speaker:her all by herself in the woods.
Speaker:In 1982, a sample was collected from a victim in the
Speaker:Green River and frozen. 19 years
Speaker:later, it was about to give up a name.
Speaker:That's part two.
Speaker:Subscribe so you don't miss it.
