Is this really interesting: Green River Killer

Gary Leon Ridgway , known as the Green River Killer, is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.

Green River killer Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty Nov. 5, 2003, to the murders of 48 women from 1982 to 1998, bringing to an end the largest unsolved murder case in the country.

He carried his son’s photo in his wallet to lure most of his victims into his pickup truck.

Mugshot of Gary Ridgway from his arrest in 2001.

On November 30, 2001, as he was leaving a Renton, Washington factory where he worked, he was arrested for the murders of four women whose cases were linked to him through DNA evidence.

Nearly twenty years after the first victims were discovered, Seattle police officers arrested longtime suspect Gary Leon Ridgway for the homicide of four early victims in the Green River case.

For 15 years, detectives in the Seattle-Tacoma area have been trying to track down the killer, an unidentified man believed to be responsible for the murders of 49 women in King County between 1982 and 1984.

Ridgway plead guilt y to murdering 48 Green River Killer victims on November 5, 2003.

This reckoning of the deaths of almost 50 women in Seattle is distressing not only for the gruesomeness of the crimes but also for reasons probably not intended by Smith and Guillen, who reported on the murders for the Seattle Times.

Kent County police were notified and arrived on the scene to find a 16 year old girl, later identified as Wendy Lee Coffield, with a pair of jeans wrapped tightly around her neck.

Early in August 2003, Seattle television news reported that Ridgway had been moved from a maximum security cell at King County Jail to an undisclosed location.

Four years after Ridgway pleaded guilty to murdering 48 women, King County Sheriff investigators released photos of three victims who were never identified in hopes omeone might recognize their facial reconstruction photos.

Gary Leon Ridgway has confessed to 48 killings attributed to him.

After researching their earlier crime records, they discovered two more victims that were attributed to the Green River Killer.

Serial Killers: Issues Explored Through the Green River Murders by Tomas Guillen Serial Killers is intended to fill a void in the serial killer literature.

Vancouver Detective Jim McKnight said police and RCMP have taken statements from Vancouver prostitutes who said they recognized Ridgway.

Surmising that a serial killer may be on the loose, the police began researching earlier case records.

Now detectives in Spokane, Portland, Vancouver and New Bedford have sought the help of their Seattle counterparts as they try to unravel data patterns in their own serial killer investigations.

In January of 1984, the Green River Task Force was formed.

Most of their bodies were dumped in and around the Green River in Washington, except for two victims in the Portland, Oregon area.

The term “Green River killer” was coined because the first 5 bodies were found in or near Green River in Kent, south King County, WA in 1982.

You can buy it at Amazon.Com or Barnes & Noble, or in the True Crime section of your favorite bookstore.

A six-part examination of how police and other institutions dealt with the worst known serial-murder case in the nation.

Friends and family, questioned about Ridgway following his arrest, described him as friendly but strange.

November 30, 2001 As of last summer, there was only one King County sheriff’s Detective working the Green River Killer case file.

December 12, 2001 Witnesses told police that Green River Killer suspect, Gary Leon Ridgway, spent time in and around Vancouver where 45 women have disappeared.

The Vancouver disappearances began in 1984, at about the same time that the Green River killings ended.

He was again questioned by the Green River task force after witnesses identified his pickup truck and said he had been seen with two of the victims.

Following Ridgeway’s arrest, Canadian investigators visited authorities in Seattle to gather information about the suspect.

King County sheriff’s deputies returned to a site in this south Seattle suburb today where a skull fragment was found the day before.