Background
The name 'Green River Killer' refers to the deaths of young women, many of them living in poverty and working on the street, in the Seattle–Tacoma area of Washington State from the early 1980s onwards. The first remains were found in 1982 near the Green River in King County, and most of the victims went missing between 1982 and 1984. Following up on reports of missing women whose lives were lived on the margins of society was among the hardest parts of the investigation in those years.
This page is written to remember the victims not as statistics but as people whose families searched for them for years.
Investigation
After the killings the King County Sheriff's Office set up a dedicated task force in 1984. Many people were questioned over the years, but the case stalled for a long time. The key turned out to be advancing DNA technology: biological evidence found on a victim matched a sample taken years earlier.
Gary Ridgway was arrested on 30 November 2001 while working at the Kenworth truck plant in Renton. The arrest brought a resolution to the case roughly twenty years later.
Work carried out by county police, state agencies and federal officials at different times showed how complex the file was. Thousands of tips were examined and some suspects were watched for long periods, but in the 1980s the available evidence was not sufficient for a definitive result. The preservation of biological evidence is what made it possible to resolve the case years later, and it became a lesson in why evidence should be kept.
Court proceedings
On 5 November 2003 Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder; in return he avoided the death penalty and cooperated with authorities in showing where remains were located. On 18 December 2003 Judge Richard A. Jones sentenced him to 48 consecutive life terms without parole.
In 2011 he was convicted of a 49th murder after pleading guilty to the killing of a woman whose remains had been identified in 2010, bringing the sentence to 49 consecutive life terms. Ridgway is held at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Where it stands today
The case is one of the best-known examples of DNA analysis resolving a cold case years later. Ridgway claimed responsibility for a much higher number of killings, but only cases that could be verified were legally concluded. Questions about some victims' identities and unanswered questions for families keep the case an open wound.
On this page Dark Location remembers women whose names risk being forgotten.
The case is a reminder of why files on missing women, especially those living in precarious circumstances, deserve priority.