Let’s remember Gary Ridgway, the most prolific serial killer in US history, who was born on this day in 1949 (February 18)
With 49 murder convictions to his name (and confessions to a total of 71), Gary Ridgway’s standing as the most prolific serial killer in US history is solid and I hope never exceeded. From around 1982 to as recently as 2001, Ridgway preyed on vulnerable women (sex workers, teenage runaways), which undoubtedly allowed him to get away with murder for so long.
As Wikipedia said:
Most of Ridgway’s victims were alleged to be sex workers and other women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. The press gave him his nickname after the first five victims were found in the Green River before his identity was known.[2] He strangled his victims, usually by hand but sometimes using ligatures. After strangling them, he would dump their bodies in forested and overgrown areas in King County, often returning to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them.[3]
On November 30, 2001, as Ridgway was leaving the Kenworth truck factory where he worked in Renton, Washington, he was arrested for the murders of four women whose cases were linked to him through DNA evidence.[3] As part of a plea bargain wherein he agreed to disclose the locations of still-missing women, he was spared the death penalty and received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
Unlike another famous serial killer from the Pacific Northwest, there will be no one talking about how attractive he is. Gary Ridgway is very, very much a creep. His Wiki page is amazing:
Ridgway had a bed-wetting problem until he was 13,[5] and his mother would wash his genitals after every episode.[6] He would later tell defense psychologists that, as an adolescent, he had conflicting feelings of anger and sexual attraction toward his mother, and fantasized about killing her.
Totally normal.
For further reading:
