Gary Ridgway: the Green River Killer and the deal that traded his life for answers

• BornGary Leon Ridgway, 18 February 1949
• Known asThe Green River Killer
• Convicted of49 counts of aggravated first-degree murder: 48 in 2003, one more in 2011
• Killings1982–1998 in King County, Washington, by his convictions; he has claimed more
• Arrested30 November 2001, after a DNA match
• Sentence49 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole
• StatusServing life without parole at the Washington State Penitentiary, Walla Walla

Gary Ridgway is the man behind the Green River killings, the series of murders of women and girls around Seattle that began in 1982 and went unsolved for almost twenty years. A truck painter who had been questioned as early as 1983 and passed a polygraph test in 1984, he was arrested in November 2001 after a DNA test linked him to three of the earliest victims. In November 2003, under an agreement that spared him the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder. In 2011 he pleaded guilty to a 49th. He is serving life without parole in Washington.

The case is unusual because most of what is known about it comes from Ridgway himself. Prosecutors traded a trial for a full accounting: months of interviews, trips to the places where he had left the dead, and guilty pleas to every King County murder that could be corroborated.

This account rests on the Seattle Times’s 2003 report on the prosecutors’ summary of evidence, Associated Press and CNN coverage of the plea and sentencing, HistoryLink, a 2023 NBC News investigation, History.com, and 2025 reports by FOX 13 Seattle and KOMO News, listed at the end. Where they disagree, it says so. In line with this site’s rules, the women and girls he killed, their families and Ridgway’s own relatives are not named.

A painter at Kenworth

Ridgway was born on 18 February 1949. According to the prosecutors’ summary of evidence, as reported by the Seattle Times, he was born in Utah, served in the Navy and spent more than 30 years spray-painting trucks at the Kenworth plant south of Seattle. He married three times.

He would find most of the women he killed along Pacific Highway South, the road running through the suburbs south of Seattle. At the time of his arrest he lived in Auburn.

The river, 1982

In July 1982 the body of a 16-year-old girl was found in the Green River, south of Seattle. Within a month the bodies of four more young women had been found in and along the river, and the King County sheriff set up the Green River Task Force. More bodies followed, left in woods, ravines and near airports and freeways, and by the end of 1984 more than 40 deaths were attributed to the same unknown killer.

Most of those who died were young. Many were working as sex workers along Pacific Highway South or elsewhere in the city, or had run away from home. That, Ridgway later told the court, was the reason he chose them: he believed they would not be missed quickly and that he could go on killing without being caught.

The suspect who passed the test

Ridgway first came to the task force’s attention in 1983, when a young woman disappeared after getting into a pickup truck on Pacific Highway South and a man who knew her later identified the truck as Ridgway’s. Questioned, Ridgway denied knowing anything about her. In 1984 he took a polygraph test and passed.

In 1987 detectives searched his home and vehicles and took a saliva sample. They found nothing that tied him to any victim, and he was not arrested. As leads ran out, the task force was wound down; by NBC News’s account it had disbanded by the early 1990s, leaving a few detectives to keep the case alive. The killings had slowed, but Ridgway later admitted to several after 1985, the last in 1998.

DNA, then paint

In 2001, with DNA testing now able to work with small and degraded samples, detective Tom Jensen sent the 1987 sample to the state crime laboratory. It matched DNA recovered from three of the earliest victims. Ridgway was arrested on 30 November 2001 and charged with four counts of aggravated first-degree murder, three of them the DNA cases. The charges carried the possibility of the death penalty.

In 2003 a trace-evidence specialist working for the prosecution found microscopic spheres of a specialty spray paint on clothing from several victims; the paint was used on a large scale in the area by Kenworth, his employer. Prosecutors charged him with three more murders. A 2023 NBC News investigation reported that the same spheres had been on the first victim’s clothing since 1982 and could have been detected in the 1980s, had the state crime laboratory looked for particles that small.

The deal

Soon after the new charges, Ridgway’s lawyers approached the King County prosecutor, Norm Maleng, with an offer: no death penalty, in exchange for a confession to every killing he could remember and help finding the women whose remains had never been recovered. The agreement was signed in June 2003, according to AP. Prosecutors had evidence for seven cases, and Maleng said afterwards that most of the others would probably never have been solved without it.

Over the next five months Ridgway was interviewed by detectives, prosecutors and psychologists, and took investigators to remote sites where they recovered further remains. On 5 November 2003, before Judge Richard Jones, he pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder, committed between 1982 and 1998. He was 54.

A statement in his name was read aloud in court by a deputy prosecutor, and he confirmed it. In it he said he had killed most of the women the first time he met them, did not know their names and could not remember their faces. “I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight,” he said. He described leaving bodies in clusters near landmarks so that he could find them again, and driving past the sites afterwards.

Inside the confession

The prosecutors’ summary of evidence, a document of 133 pages filed on the day of the plea, set out what he had told them, as the Seattle Times reported it. He said he strangled almost all of his victims, and told investigators: “Choking is what I did, and I was pretty good at it.” He took care to leave no evidence, clipping the fingernails of women who had scratched him, and he admitted moving some remains to Oregon, to throw investigators off. He left jewelry taken from victims in the women’s restroom at the Kenworth plant and enjoyed seeing co-workers wear it. He also admitted to sexual contact with some of the bodies.

According to the Seattle Times’s account of the summary, prosecutors concluded that he was not mentally ill, and noted that his story changed often and came out in pieces. He told detectives that the 48 counts were only part of the total.

Sentencing

On 18 December 2003 relatives of the women he had killed confronted him in court; a few forgave him. Ridgway wept and apologised. According to CNN, Judge Jones ordered 48 seconds of silence, one for each victim. He criticised his “Teflon-coated emotions”, and sentenced him to 48 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. He was also fined $10,000 for each victim.

The agreement divided the families. Some accepted it as the only way to learn what had happened; others said there should have been no bargain and he should have been executed.

The 49th count

In December 2010 teenagers found a human skull in a ravine near Auburn. The remains were identified as those of a 20-year-old woman who had disappeared in 1982. According to AP, Ridgway had confessed to her killing in 2003, but prosecutors had not had enough evidence to charge it then, and the agreement obliged him to plead guilty to any further King County charges that new evidence supported. On 18 February 2011, his 62nd birthday, he pleaded guilty in a courtroom in Kent and was sentenced to a 49th consecutive life term without parole.

Walla Walla

Ridgway has spent most of his sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. In 2015, AP reported, the state moved him to a federal prison in Florence, Colorado; later reports place him back at Walla Walla. Under his plea agreement he has continued to meet King County Sheriff’s Office detectives about unsolved cases.

In September 2024 he was booked into the King County Jail in Seattle. Court papers unsealed in March 2025 explained why: earlier attempts to find remains from his verbal descriptions had failed, he said he could find the places in person, and from 9 to 13 September detectives drove him to locations where he believed he had left victims who had never been recovered. Officials have not said whether anything was found, and the investigation remains open. He was then returned to Walla Walla.

Where the accounts differ

• The DNA match: AP, CNN and NBC News say the 2001 tests linked Ridgway to three victims, with a fourth charged on other evidence; HistoryLink says his DNA matched that found in four victims.
• When the seven charges were filed: the AP and CNN sentencing reports say prosecutors had charged him with seven murders “by spring 2002”; NBC News says the last three charges came in 2003, after the paint findings.
• Known and new victims: HistoryLink says he admitted 42 killings on the police list and six that were not; CNN reported that six women on the official list of 49 were not among his pleas and that five of the names were new, which would make 43 and five.
• Remains recovered in 2003: CNN reported at the plea that he had led investigators to three sets of remains that summer; NBC News and AP say four.
• The trial that never happened: CNN said it had been set for July 2004; HistoryLink says 2005.
• His own count: History.com says he reportedly claimed more than 60 victims in King County; an AP report in 2015 put his own count closer to 70.
• The year and the number: AP in 2015 referred to his “conviction in 2004”, and KOMO News in 2025 said he was handed 49 consecutive life sentences in 2003; he was sentenced to 48 in December 2003 and the 49th in February 2011.

The portrait

The portrait above is a detail of the coloring page drawn for Bloody America, which gives one killer to each state. On the full page he stands in front of dense woodland with a road running behind him. Around him are a map of the United States with Washington shaded and named, a grim reaper with a scythe in front of a full moon beside the figure “49+”, a coiled rope in a roundel, a heavy chain and a looped leather belt. His name sits on a plaque framed in knotted rope, with “The Green River Killer” and the dates 1982–1998, above two small roundels showing a judge’s gavel and a man behind bars. For other case files, see Randall Woodfield, Aileen Wuornos and Richard Ramirez.

If you find an error in this account, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. Ridgway went from having sex with prostitutes ‘to just plain killing ’em’The Seattle Times, 6 November 2003
2. Gary Leon Ridgway pleads guilty to murdering 48 Green River Killer victims on November 5, 2003HistoryLink.org, 5 November 2003
3. Serial killer pleads to 48 murdersAssociated Press (Lawrence Journal-World), 6 November 2003
4. Green River Killer avoids death in plea dealCNN, 6 November 2003
5. Everett father’s words draw tearsAssociated Press (HeraldNet), 18 December 2003
6. ‘Green River Killer’ sentenced to life in prisonCNN, 19 December 2003
7. ‘Green River Killer’ pleads guilty to 49th murderAssociated Press (NBC News), 18 February 2011
8. Green River serial killer pleads guilty to 49th murderHistory.com, 28 April 2011
9. Documents: Green River killer transferred to avoid isolationAssociated Press (HeraldNet), 5 September 2015
10. How a crime lab missed evidence that could have stopped the Green River KillerNBC News, 3 March 2023
11. Reason for Gary Ridgway’s Seattle visit releasedFOX 13 Seattle, 7 March 2025
12. ‘Green River Killer’ Gary Ridgway returned to King County to locate more victim remainsKOMO News, 8 March 2025

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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