by Ann Rule
Most of the decor did smack of another era, but it appeared to be a comfortable home where an average American family might live. There were multicolored crocheted afghans with the familiar zigzag pattern draped over the backs of couches and recliners, flowered pillows, life-size ceramic cats on the floor, a fully equipped oak entertainment center, arrangements of artificial flowers, wood stacked by the fireplace, and framed prints of angels, flowers, and ships. One frame held twenty family pictures. Mary Ridgway was in several, wearing harlequin glasses with her black hair teased into a high bouffant style. There were photos of Chad as a child, and some that were probably of Gary and his brothers in their early years.
The furniture was plush and solid. None of it seemed brand-new, but it looked cozy. “They were major pack rats, though,” one of the searchers said. “There was too much of everything in that split-level house, but it was clean, dusted, and reasonably neat in the living room and kitchen area.”
The master bedroom had a lovely floral bedspread and its double closet was filled with his and her clothing, ironed and carefully hung on hangers that all pointed the same way, shoes lined up neatly beneath.
When the crime scene team moved to the other bedrooms, however, they opened doors and stood back, stunned. “Oh, man!” one breathed.
Every available space, except for pathways, was filled with towering stacks of things. These rooms obviously weren’t to be lived in, but were only for the storage of items that had been packed tightly and saved, or possibly resold. Both of the Ridgways appeared to be consumed with a desire to squirrel things away, possibly just for the sake of having them. The forensic searchers had heard that they were regulars at swap meets, but this was bizarre. The rooms were orderly enough, but chock-full. The couple must have spent hours arranging and stacking their obviously secondhand possessions.
The living-dining area and the kitchen were sprinkled liberally with knickknacks, but these rooms were packed so tightly that the Washington State Patrol technicians couldn’t begin to process them for possible evidence, and they were grateful that that wasn’t part of their assignment; the task force detectives would have to go through the boxes and bins.
Although Judith had said she was rarely away from Gary, she had visited relatives from time to time. The WSP technicians knew there were often spots suspects didn’t think about wiping clean. In each house they processed, the team members looked for latent fingerprints and flecks of blood under protected surfaces, along edges of shelves and on the undersides of tables. Picture frames were often a good source for partial prints.
They lifted several for comparison, but these, too, would prove to be disappointing.
Outside the Auburn house, investigators were carefully turning dirt over around rhododendrons and other bushes, lifting up sod and leaving excavated squares and rectangles in an organized grid dig. Judith had been upset at the thought that her beloved poodle might be dug up from its grave, so they were careful to rebury it. “They were digging the heck out of the yard,” one state technician commented, “but really trying not to kill the stuff that was growing there.”
Even in gray December, anyone interested in gardening could tell that this was a carefully tended yard, and the Ridgways’ neighbors told detectives and reporters that gardening was one of Gary’s main topics during over-the-fence chats. He kept his lawn in top shape, and he and Judith spent a lot of time working side by side in their garden spots. All of the earth moved in the massive digs was replaced, but no buried bones were found. Wherever the bodies of the still missing victims were, they weren’t hidden within the sanctity of Gary Ridgway’s properties or former homes.
After she was allowed to move back into her house, Judith Ridgway went to the sheriff’s department’s Burien precinct and waited patiently to see someone. She seemed so lost and timid that a Community Service Officer and a volunteer who often helped out with clerical tasks approached her to see if they could help her. They were surprised when they heard her last name.
“She had come to find out how she could file for damage compensation for her house after it was searched,” the volunteer recalled. “She seemed bewildered by everything that had happened. She told us that the police wanted her to testify against her husband, but that she couldn’t do that—she was too frightened at the thought of getting up in front of all those people in the courtroom. We felt sorry for her.”
From jail, Ridgway wrote to Judith in his cramped, misspelled style. Trusties Xeroxed his letters, hoping to sell them as collectors’ items, perhaps on eBay, unaware that, legally, the contents belonged to him and not to them. He told Judith that his years with her were the happiest of his life. And while that may well have been true, investigators were not at all convinced that he had stopped his stalking and prowling during the many years they had been together.
Predictably, he had been denied bail when his case came before a judge. Gary Ridgway did not appear in person but waived that right and let his attorneys Mark Prothero and James Robinson, from the Associated Counsel for the Accused, speak for him. As for the information that the public waited for avidly, there wasn’t much. They weren’t even afforded a glimpse of Ridgway being led down the marbled halls of the courthouse in the custody of several armed deputies.
On December 5, Gary Ridgway was formally charged with four counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Ann Christensen. Every corpse but “Cookie” Hinds’s had provided DNA that matched Ridgway’s, but the circumstantial evidence linking Hinds to the other cases was overwhelming. Again, Ridgway remained in his ultra-security cell, perhaps afraid to face the public’s rage. Legally, he wasn’t obligated to appear at these early hearings, but, at some point, he was going to have to come out and enter a plea.
Prosecutor Norm Maleng announced that he would not plea bargain with Ridgway. If convicted, he would face either the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole. He said that senior deputy prosecutors Jeff Baird and Marilyn Brenneman would represent the prosecutor’s office in the marathon legal procedures that lay ahead.
Without a defendant to film, the media turned to the usual interviews that accompany every high-profile crime. The Ridgways’ neighbors and co-workers voiced their shock that someone on their street or in their workplace should be arrested for such heinous crimes. They recalled a quiet man who had seemed anxious to make friends, their reactions very much like those Matt Haney had evoked when he canvassed Gary’s former neighborhood in 1987.
The only thing Ridgway had done to annoy any of his neighbors around his Auburn property had been to cut down many of the towering firs on his large lot, but that was his choice. And back on 218th and 32nd Avenue South, neighbors who had lived there in the eighties recalled how he had tried to organize a block watch targeting prostitutes, telling them that he suspected sex workers and their johns were parking nearby, leaving needles and condoms in the street. He had appeared to be obsessed with the wickedness of prostitutes, even though it seemed unlikely that their quiet street would attract sex for sale.
At the Kenworth plant in Renton, Ridgway’s co-workers realized how on target they had been when they referred to him as “G.R.” and “Green River Gary.” Aside from his tendency to invade the personal space of female employees, he had been a somewhat pathetic fixture at Kenworth, a rather slow man who tried to be gregarious. “He’d go out of his way to be friendly,” one co-worker said. “You’d see him coming down the hall and he’d be smiling and all happy. If he didn’t know your name, he’d still say, ‘Hi, friend!’ If he was standing by the coffee machine and you walked by, he’d stop you and buy you a cup. In the cafeteria, he’d sit with groups and join in the conversation, but he wouldn’t contribute much. He just wanted to belong real bad.”
Other Kenworth employees remembered Ridgway’s bizarre transformations from a Bible-quoting fanatic to a man who made obscene sexual remarks as he sat in the cafeteria. In either mode, his actions had be
en inappropriate, but not ominous. A few people who had known him said “I told you so,” but not many. Most were flabbergasted to see the man nobody had paid much attention to at the top of the nightly news.
THERE WERE RUMORS that Ridgway’s wife and brothers had come to visit him in jail, but they weren’t substantiated.
Jon Mattsen interviewed Ridgway’s younger brother, who was currently living on their deceased parents’ property. Although Gary had once helped him get a job at Kenworth, it was obvious the brothers weren’t close to one another or to their older brother. Younger than Gary by two years, Tom Ridgway appeared to know virtually nothing about him, his life, his motivations, his fears, or what hobbies he might have. “I know he always had a girlfriend, somewhere,” Tom told Mattsen, but he didn’t know anything much about Gary’s three marriages beyond what Mary Ridgway had told him.
There was a strange disconnect among the Ridgway brothers, almost as if they had been raised in a vacuum where family ties meant little. The last times Tom and Gary had been together were at their mother’s funeral and a few years before that, at their father’s funeral. Pressed to recall any other interaction, Tom remembered that he had asked Gary to find a part for his Suzuki Samurai, a 4×4 truck designed to drive off-road. “My life revolves around that Samurai,” he said, and Mattsen looked up sharply to see if he was serious. He seemed to be.
Tom said Gary had to be pretty well set financially because he had thirty-five years at Kenworth, “and he’s a penny-pincher and a Dumpster-diver…. He’d go down to Levitz where they throw [broken] glass-top tables into the Dumpster at night and pick it up. ‘Oh, it just needs a sheet of glass. I’ll just [get] glass and set it on there’ and he’s got a brand-new table. So for a freebie, he’s making thirty bucks.”
Gary’s younger brother was adamant that Gary was always with Judith, and read only free magazines you could pick up at the grocery store like Little Nickel want ads. As far as Gary’s arrests for approaching prostitutes, he’d never heard of them. Tom hadn’t the faintest idea about Gary’s sex life. Indeed, he knew so little about his own brother that an interview with a stranger on the street might have elicited more information.
“What do you think about everything that’s going on?” Mattsen asked, referring to the Green River arrests. “Do you think he could be responsible for—”
“Well, anything is possible, but I just can’t picture it. ’Cause he’s opposite of what I am, you know. I was always the wild one.”
Tom said that Gary had taken their parents’ deaths hard, but that was because Gary hadn’t been the one looking after them—Tom said he and his wife were the caregivers, so Gary seemed surprised to find out how close to death they’d been.
GARY RIDGWAY would be a curiosity in jail, but not a popular inmate. Some of the men in nearby cells recalled that he was pleasant enough and didn’t cause any trouble, but none of them had any respect for a man who had reportedly killed dozens of young women. Later, those who could get close enough urinated outside his cell so that the yellow puddles would flow toward him.
He received a visit from one of Seattle’s venerable criminal defense attorneys—Tony Savage, a gentle and rumpled bear of a man whose signature brown beard of the sixties was now white. For decades, Savage was known for taking on any number of infamous cases where the death penalty seemed sure to be invoked. He was a strong voice for the defense, and one who had always been against the death penalty. Savage had defended dozens of Washington’s most loathsome clients—clearly not with the hope of acquittals but to save their lives. He was a brilliant and kind man who seemed worn down by the decades of dealing with defendants accused of ghastly crimes, but he was good, and if he consented to represent him, Ridgway could not do better.
Asked about Gary Ridgway’s state of mind during the days after his arrest for murder, Savage said, “I think he’s doing very well, considering the pressure he’s under.”
Could Ridgway afford someone like Tony Savage? Probably not, unless Savage did it pro bono or was appointed as a public defender. It was difficult to imagine how any attorney could prepare for a trial where the victim toll might swell to almost four dozen. How long would it take in trial? Years, certainly.
If Savage was going to take on Ridgway, he would need help, a whole phalanx of lawyers and legal assistants. Gary and Judith Ridgway had some equity in their house, though no one knew how much, and several vehicles. There was the house left by Mary and Tommy Ridgway, reportedly for sale for $219,000. But any sale proceeds had to be split three ways, and allegedly the three brothers had already squabbled over that division of property. Even millionaires could go broke paying for the best criminal defense attorneys for years.
It seemed ironic now that Ridgway hadn’t wanted to pay an attorney to defend him on the loitering for prostitution charge. Realistically, the trials that lay ahead were going to cost an estimated $12 million. And most of it would probably come from King County taxpayers.
51
NOW THAT Gary Ridgway had become the defendant and not merely the suspect that many detectives and leaders in the sheriff’s office had long since dismissed, their recollections changed. Everyone from the sheriff on down had jumped onto the “Ridgway Did It” bandwagon, most asserting that they had been convinced of his guilt all along.
Critics pointed out discrepancies and mistakes, a phenomenon in every high-profile murder case. Although Dave Reichert was hesitant about giving away too much about the continuing investigation, he often commented that he had been the “lead detective” in the Green River probe since the beginning. He had, indeed, been the first King County detective to be designated to a lead position, but only in the Debra Bonner, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Marcia Chapman cases. No one questioned that he had worked doggedly alongside his fellow task force members on the dozens of cases that followed until he made sergeant in 1990. But, of course, no single investigator had been the sole “lead detective,” and many others had been assigned as “leads” as the unsolved homicide cases grew in number over the years.
Matt Haney had written the 1987 search warrants for Gary Ridgway’s vehicles and property, and assigned Reichert to handle the sweep of the first, most suspect, house off Military Road. Jim Doyon and Ben Colwell had been in charge of investigating Carol Christensen, Kimi-Kai Pitsor, Yvonne Antosh, and the woman known only as Bones #2. Rich Battle and Paul Smith were the leads in the murders of Giselle Lovvorn, Shawnda Summers, and Bones #8. And Port of Seattle investigators Jerry Alexander and Ty Hughes had traced the movements of people connected to Mary Bridget Meehan, Constance Naon, and Bones #6.
Early on, Sergeant Bob “Grizzly” Andrews and Randy Mullinax were responsible for women still missing. Mullinax was probably the most diligent in keeping families informed and comforting them. Sue Peters handled Keli McGinness’s investigation. And, of course, there had been numerous Green River Task Force commanders—from Dick Kraske to Jim Graddon. Dave Reichert had been away from the Green River cases for almost eleven years when, as sheriff, he reactivated the task force in the fall of 2001.
Although Reichert was a natural focus for the media—the first deputy ever to rise through every step in the department to become sheriff—he could take neither the credit nor the blame for all that had happened over the previous twenty years. As could be expected, there had been great gains and ignominious mistakes made in the hunt for one man among at least forty thousand suspects. Reichert and Tom Jensen had not been in the Ridgway camp, but the DNA tests had convinced them. Now, Reichert appointed Bruce Kalin, who had worked on an earlier Green River Task Force to head the further investigation of Gary Ridgway.
Two items of actual and circumstantial evidence that might well have added to the case against Gary Ridgway had, unfortunately, been lost. When Opal Mills’s clenched hand was unfolded in August 1982, investigators had seen a straight, brown Caucasian hair—a hair undoubtedly yanked from her killer’s head—just like Gary Ridgway’s. It had been bagged, sealed, marke
d…and lost. In 1982, the root tag couldn’t have been matched to Ridgway with DNA, in any case. Fifteen years later, it might have been possible.
The license plate number that Paige Miley, Kim Nelson’s friend, had given to an early task force member had also been lost. That might very well have led to Gary Ridgway nineteen years earlier, but by the time Paige was hypnotized, she could not find it in her subconscious mind.
Matt Haney was disappointed that two task force members hadn’t questioned Mary and Tom Ridgway in any depth when their house was searched in 1987, nor committed their conversation, if any, to a written report. Now, of course, both of Gary’s parents were deceased, and anything they might have contributed about the way his mind worked was lost forever.
The harshest critics of the Green River probe were DNA experts who decried the sheriff’s department’s long wait to employ the newest forensic science to pinion Ridgway. With the task force long disbanded, there was apparently no one in Reichert’s office who realized that the saliva sample Matt Haney, Jim Doyon, and WSP criminalist George Johnston had retrieved from Gary Ridgway in April 1987 and frozen could have been tested by 1996. While the new technique known as STR-PCR (short, tandem repeats polymerase chain reaction), requiring only minuscule amounts of test material, had been in place since then, the sheriff’s office didn’t submit suspects’ test samples to the WSP crime lab until March 2001, and the state lab had been using STR-PCR for almost two years.