Gary Ridgway Research Paper

Gary Ridgway was born on February 18th 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was born to his mother Mary Steinman and father Thomas Ridgway. Gary was raised in McMicken Heights, Washington and had an abnormal childhood overshadowed by a bad and unpleasant relationship with his mother.
Gary was a bed-wetter and was believed to be very unintelligent with a very low IQ. He had trouble in school with poor grades. Gary first attempted homicide in around 1966 at the age of sixteen years old by luring a six year old boy into the woods and stabbing him.
The victim survived and Ridgway began developing a serious obsession with porn, which is common in almost all serial killers profiles. He was described by others as strange but friendly man.
Sixteen years after attemptin his first murder, Gary began a rampage of destruction to get rid of as many prostitutes as he possibly could. It's believed he committed his first killing in 1982 but really there is no way to be sure.
Ridgway began to murder working women and dumping their bodies into "The Green River" in Washington State (Which is why he became known as the Green River Killer).
He admitted to choosing prostitutes because he hated them and didn't want to pay them for their services. He believed that because they were below others who actually worked for a livin. He thought he would not be caught and would be able to continue the killings, which he thought of as his job.
The body count continued to add up and the case was news casted nationally. Ridgway was known as The Green River Killer cause he liked to dump many of the victims into the river. Later on he started dumping the victims in special places he called
clusters.
He liked to visit the dump sites and it was discovered later that he raped the corpses which is called necrophilia. He did this so he could replay the murder and be happy in his violence and his nasty sexual acts. He even posed the bodies and left weird things on the bodies, such as fish, and stones, which was never understood.
The King County Sheriff’s office made The Green River Task Force to investigate the murders and was made up of experts such as Robert Keppel, Dave Reichert, and John E. Douglas. The detectives in the case compared him to Ted Bundy who was waiting on his execution for his crimes in Florida.
The Green River Killer was very similar to Bundy. Bundy’s past crimes could help with clues and be able to help them catch their man. Unfortunately Bundy barely helped and seemed to be using the attention as a way to make himself more famous. Even though the cops were really good Ridgway was still unsolved. He was still killing in the mean time. Clues that would help later were paint chips, DNA swabs, and more. These would be the key to convicting him.
Ridgway had been arrested a bunch of times for using prostitutes. During one of his arrests in 1987 hair and saliva samples were taken for evidence. Ridgway was a serious suspect and passed a lie detector test in 1984 and said he had nothing to do with the killings.
None of that matter except for the evidence that the police had that helped convict him. The only way he could avoid the death penalty is to admit to all 48 murders and that’s what he did.