Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer

Gary Ridgway, commonly known as the Green River Killer, was convicted of 48 murders and it has been presumed that Ridgway had killed twice that number (Murray, 2008). Figure 1 is a map of where the police have found bodies of Ridgway's victims, many of his victims were found near or in the Green River in Seattle, which was why he was named the Green River Killer. Also in figure 2, one of Gary Ridgway's victim was found in the Green River by the authorities. However due to the Seattle police department’s “absolute incompetence when it came to investigating the cases”(Philbin, 2009), Ridgway was free to do whatever he wanted to do and murder who he wanted. It was not until 2001, 19 years after the Green River murders started in the year 1982, Gary
Ridgway was finally arrested.
Anthropology:
His biographical information fits under the discipline of anthropology, as anthropologists study the lives and cultures of human beings, whether they are alive or dead. Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah and spent 30 years painting trucks. He married 3 times, had below average intelligence, and was sent to Vietnam after high school when he joined the navy (“Gary Ridgway Biography”). His biography played a huge role in why he disliked women so much, as two of his wives divorced from him and it made him very enraged (Levi-Minzi, 2007).
How he was captured fits under anthropology because he was arrested due to the analysis of his DNA, which fits under forensics in physical anthropology. When police started to suspect Ridgway, they searched his house and took a saliva sample. There was no progress made, until Dave Reichert, a detective, sent samples of semen found on three bodies and the saliva sample to a lab and were tested for DNA in September 2001(Murray, 2008). All of the samples were positive matches and Ridgway was subsequently arrested. Forensics helped to determine the killer before he killed anymore people, which is why this fits under anthropology.
Psychology:
His childhood is classified under psychology because it affected his unconscious motivation in determining behaviour and thought, which is known as psychoanalytical.
Ridgway did indeed had a troubled childhood. His mother humiliated him by making him stand nude in a tub of cold water, while his brothers watched him (Philbin, 2009). His mother also belittled him because he wetted his bed until his early teens (Levi-Minzi, 2007) thus, leading him to over generalising and hating most women. He also had a love hate relationship with his mother, as he wanted to: “Slit her throat with a kitchen knife as relieve his frustrations of never being able to please her” (Levi-Minzi, 2007). Even during his childhood, Gary Ridgway was showing signs of becoming a serial killer.
Choice in victim and method of murder is psychological because of his hatred of women, stemming from his early childhood and anger towards his mother. As stated before, this is psychoanalytical because he targeted specifically women ages 15-38, mainly prostitutes. “Society typically looks down on prostitution as a profession, seeing it as immoral (Levi-Minzi, 2007)”, perhaps Ridgway thought that he could have gotten away with murder because of their
profession?
Ridgway’s personality disorder diagnosis fits under psychology because it is the study of the human mind and the personality of an individual. It was clear that Ridgway was mentally ill. In Figure 3, Gary Ridgway said, “I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight,” when he was asked how many people he killed. He felt compulsive to killing prostitutes (Philbin, 2009). He was also into necrophilia, as he sometimes would go back to his victims' bodies and would have sex with the bodies (Levi-Minzi, 2007). Furthermore, when he was asked if he would have killed his son, Matthew Ridgway in Figure 4, if he walked in on him killing a prostitute he said, “I don’t know” (Philbin, 2009).
Sociology:
The techniques he used to capture and his impact on society are both in sociology because sociology is the study of how people can help develop to societies. As many prostitutes thought that they had no other choice to make money, it would have been easy for Ridgway to pay for their services and drive them to any unknown location to murder them. Moreover, he impacted society by making people consider their opinion on prostitution. Even though prostitution is illegal in North America, they are still human beings, they should still have the right to life. Police regarded death as an occupational hazard of prostitution (Murray, 2008), however this should change and society should not look down on them. The discipline that had the most impact on the individual is psychology. The childhood of Gary Ridgway was the making of a serial killer. His mother, instead of nurturing him, belittled him as much as possible. Nobody stood up for him and he had way too many bottled up emotions. Ridgway was violent because of his troubled childhood, his parents would violently argue in front of him. It is no surprise that he picked up on his parents tendencies of being cruel to others.