The Most Bizarre Things About The Green River Killer

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The following article includes mentions of murder and sexual assault.

Green River Killer Gary Ridgway was the ultimate chameleon. Maybe that's true for many serial murderers, but none have lived non-descript working-class lives as long as the man who haunted the Pacific Northwest for nearly 20 years. He got away with more slayings, for a longer period of time than any other American serial killer, according to The Washington Post.

To his acquaintances and family, he was reserved, even-tempered, ordinary. He was a "model neighbor" and even "overly friendly," observed one slightly annoyed neighbor. "When I was out in the yard, I couldn't get anything done because he wanted to talk all the time," Seattleite Paul Winkle told The News Tribune. But conversations with Gary were never about anything. It was all idle chit-chat. Ridgway was a monster wearing the mask of a dull suburban family man.

It was this "banality" of evil, as writes The Washington Post, that kept Ridgway free and on the hunt for so long. But to the women he attacked, he was anything but banal. Rebecca Guay was 19 in 1982. She got into Ridgway's truck like so many others but became one of the few to escape this maniac's clutches. She told investigators (via Seattle PI), "I felt like I was his little revenge toy or something, you know. He was taking all his anger out on me." It would take nearly two decades before authorities would discover how correct she was and for a semblance of Ridgway's twisted motives to be revealed.

Around 1981 18-year-old Jill McCabe Johnson went out with a Seattle-area divorcee named "Gary" who said he "worked in a paint shop." Gary took her out dancing and "seemed nice," she wrote years later for Slate. "His hands didn't stray during slow dances, and he never tried to sneak a kiss."

Innocent as it began they ended up at her place and had sex. But when things got physical, Gary got odd and, "repeatedly started and stopped in a strange way. I really didn't know what to make of it ... He didn't seem to finish during the sex, though he said he did. He was soon ready to go again, but when we heard my roommates come through the front door, he jumped at the sound. 'Who's that?'"

Her roommates had interrupted and perhaps saved her life. Gary asked her out again, but she declined. A few times after that she thought she saw the man's truck loitering outside her apartment. Then, in 2001 when Gary Ridgway was arrested she connected the dots. Green River Gary also worked in a paint shop — and was recently divorced back in 1981! "Finally, I forced myself to consider it for real: Maybe it really was Gary Ridgway I took home one night 40 years ago," she wrote in 2021. "It is not a normal thing to do — to acknowledge to yourself that you may have slept with a serial killer."

Gary Ridgway was married three times. Perhaps it's no surprise his first two marriages didn't last long — the second ended just as his savage killing spree was beginning. Besides that distraction to marital bliss, Ridgway admitted he was also "sorely tempted" to kill both his second and third wife, recounts The Washington Post. His cautious nature, however, made him think better of it.

Ridgway's first wife had an affair while he was in the Navy — Gary actually saw action in the Vietnam war. His second marriage gave him a son, Matthew, but collapsed partially because "he liked to sneak up behind her in the woods and scare her; he choked her at least once before they were divorced."

Ridgway met this third wife at a group called "Parents Without Partners." He and Judith Mawson wed in 1988 as the pace of his monstrous nighttime activities slowed. The couple was compatible, financially secure, and mostly happy. But Ridgway's arrest in 2001 and ultimate confession sent Judith spiraling into a depression she soothed with wine and pills, according to a book about the relationship (via the Kent Reporter). Judith divorced Ridgway in 2002. Today she is still trying to move on. "I get a little bit nervous sometimes when I hear things on the television ... But I deal with it. I tell myself: 'Judith, go forward. Go do something positive, and enjoy life while you can.'"

Prisons were a real breeding ground for COVID-19 during the pandemic of 2020-21. As a result, prisoners had a death rate three times the general population, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. In order to address this, statistic lawmakers gave some truly heinous criminals vaccination priority over law-abiding citizens.

Inmates in Washington state, where Gary Ridgway is serving a life sentence, were "being selected based solely on their age eligibility, not the severity of their crimes," according to My Northwest. An editorial by Jason Rantz from February of 2021, when vaccines were still hard to come by, notes, "a prisoner who committed murder or rape is treated the same as a lower-level offender. But they are, however, having an easier time getting a vaccine than a grandmother in Sultan or a great-grandfather in Tacoma. That's equity in Washington."

According to a Department of Corrections memo from February 2, 2021, prisons were vaccinating all inmates over 65. Green River Killer Gary Ridgway was 72 at the time and eligible under the plan. Washington Governor Jay Inslee defended the policy noting guards can spread the virus beyond prison walls. Shockingly, however, Ridgway was also nearly released during COVID via a lawsuit that sought to unleash two-thirds of all prisoners in the state, Ridgway included, according to KIRO Radio. The state supreme court narrowly shot down the proposal 5-4 (via Fox News).

From 1989 to 1993, Joel Rifkin strangled and often dismembered sex workers in the New York area. He made efforts to conceal his crimes but was sloppy. In 1993 he stored a body in his mother's garage in the summer heat for three days. He then drove a truck with no rear license plate to dump the decaying corpse. Predictably, he was spotted by police and a high-speed chase ensued. Rifkin panicked and crashed into a utility pole situated, ironically, in front of a courthouse, according to Biography.

Rifkin confessed to 17 killings and when police searched his home they found a book on the then-unidentified Green River Killer, according to an Oxygen documentary, via Meaww. This along with other articles on serial killers he saved are described as "almost how-to guides for him."

Rifkin himself thought he compared favorably to The Green River Killer. "Some of the events were unconsciously copycatting. He [Ridgway] buried one, I buried one. He went from water to land, I went from water to land. He placed one by an airport, I placed one by an airport. He did things in clusters, I did things in clusters." But Rifkin got it all wrong. He saved jewelry, driver's licenses, and other totems from his victims as he "imitated" what he read. Gary Ridgway never hoarded evidence in his home, and he was certainly far too cautious to chauffer around rotting corpses without license plates.

Green River Killer Gary Ridgway claimed that strangling young women — his preferred method — was his actual profession. "Choking is what I did," he proudly told investigators (The Washington Post), "and I was pretty good at it."

Ridgway didn't just have an immaculate record at his day job. As The Post writes, "Ridgway took a more disciplined, careerist approach to serial murder than any other American ever has. He sweated every detail of finding, killing, and disposing of human beings."

Though he was not able to recall all his crimes, the detail he summoned of the 49 killings to which he confessed stunned investigators. His resolve to keep this murder spree concealed was ever more unbelievable. Despite obvious pride in his monstrous labor, he never breathed a word to anyone, not even his third wife, whom he was with for 17 years. She remarked to his attorney, "he treated me like a newlywed." Ridgway kept no trophies, and no evidence was found in his home — even though he admitted to strangling dozens of women there. He made a habit of wearing gloves during his killings and would change his tires periodically to avoid a pattern in his tracks. He'd even toss gum and cigarette butts near victims to throw investigators off his scent. If a victim scratched him, he would cut their fingernails, and shockingly, pour battery acid on his wounds to disguise them as workplace injuries.

Not much is known about the childhood of the Green River Killer, but the few details he revealed to investigators are horrifying.

As a teen of 16, young Gary lured a 6-year-old boy into the woods and stabbed him, just for curiosity's sake. But Ridgway's troubles likely started much earlier, with much more twisted Oedipal roots. In his early teens, Gary was still a bedwetter. His mother would strip the sheets and then hand wash his genitals. Ridgway confessed this detail to a psychologist who believes it speaks to much more abuse. "That is the tip of the iceberg," a neurologist in Washington state told The Washington Post. "Don't believe that is the only thing that happened that was untoward." Experts believe this abuse triggered something dark in Ridgway's already psychopathic mind. "For an adolescent, having your mother wash your genitals would be highly exciting and arousing, but it would also be humiliating," explained a psychologist at UC San Diego.

Ridgway's brutality against sex workers in Seattle is thought to be an extended form of matricide — a long play of vengeance against his own mother. Ridgway admitted to authorities he was missing something quintessentially human, "caring," as he put it. But that's not entirely true. The first woman he hated was his mother. "I thought about stabbing her in the chest or in the heart maybe ... cut her face and chest," he confessed.