by Ann Rule
He had never used a gun to kill, or a knife. “It would have been messy, and they still might be able to scream.”
“Why did you choke them?” he was asked.
“ ’Cause that was more personal and more rewarding than to shoot her.”
He was indignant about the young women who had fought him, leaving bite marks or scratches. He had switched to ligatures that gave his arms more protection—anything that was handy or something he had prepared: towels, belts, extension cords, ropes, his necktie, socks, jumper cables, even his T-shirt.
Only one of the girls Ridgway brought to his house had fought him hard enough to escape his bedroom, managing to reach the front door. She was inches away from freedom when he caught her and killed her in his living room. Although it was impossible to know which victim that had been, it was likely that it was Kim Nelson, who was also known as Tina Tomson.
Had they not been attacked when they were completely off-guard, some of the women he killed might well have bested him. Tina Tomson was many inches taller than he was and weighed as much. Marie Malvar was small but she had hurt him badly, scratching him until he bled and leaving scars that he’d had to pour acid over to hide. Marie had made him very angry—so angry that he said he decided to leave her body all alone in a different place from the other girls. Later, he had tried to find her but he’d been consumed with such blind rage when he left her that he couldn’t find her again for a long time.
Even though Ridgway claimed his anger was a natural reaction to having been cuckolded by his second wife, his interviewers knew that during the time after his divorce from Dana, he had had many consensual sexual partners. It hadn’t mattered. He’d still roved along the highways, continually looking for prostitutes.
He described how he planned in advance how he’d get rid of the still-warm bodies of the victims he choked in his bedroom, protecting his mattress with plastic in case they urinated or evacuated their bowels as they died. “If that happened, then I would have to clean up,” he said mildly, “and do laundry. I never closed their eyes or touched their faces. I dragged them out of the house on plastic or an old green rug I had, and put them in my truck. I got rid of them right away.”
Once, he’d put a small woman into a blue metal footlocker that belonged to his son, Chad.
“What did you do with that trunk?”
“Afterward I sold it at a swap meet.”
Wherever he had formed his ethics—or lack of them—about sex, he was alternately lewd and prim. He explained that he considered masturbation a greater sin than going to prostitutes. Sometimes, he’d had no choice but to seek out the women on the street. He didn’t like “labels,” and took offense when any of his questioners called him a serial rapist. “I’m not a serial rapist,” he complained. “I’m a serial killer.”
Ridgway’s stalking hours depended on what shift he was working at Kenworth, his vacation time, or whether Kenworth employees were on strike. He could verify dates by checking his job schedules. His own memories were precise only in his recall about whether the weather was warm or cold, wet or dry, when he picked up his prey.
53
ONE MORNING a few days after Gary Ridgway began his confessions to Green River Task Force detectives, Jon Mattsen and Tom Jensen were puzzled to find a man whose attitude was much changed. As if by rote, Ridgway gave them his breakfast menu, but rather than smiling at them and saying good morning, he turned away and sat with closed eyes, his back to them.
It was June 18, 2003, and his voice was tinged with anger as he said he’d awakened in the night and begun to think. “The Other Gary came into my mind,” he said.
They wondered who the “Other Gary” was, but it soon became obvious that he was referring to a stronger, angrier persona than he had demonstrated so far.
The Other Gary, he told them, was enraged because of the power and control the detectives had over him. “You guys are trying to control me, but I never slept with a dead woman. Sure, I screwed them a couple of times. The ‘New Gary’ wants me to candy-coat this.”
It was apparent that the man they had talked to until this morning was the “New Gary,” a reasonable man who was pleasant and cooperative. The “Other Gary,” who was also the “Old Gary” didn’t want to talk about the murders and resented being controlled.
“I killed them because I wanted to,” the Old Gary said. “I was mad. I killed forty-nine or fifty people between 1982 and 1985. I killed a lot of them because of my rage and anger at my ex-wife.”
Now the Old Gary wanted to go out and find the bodies of his victims. He would call the shots about where they would go. The man with closed eyes stuttered as he said, “I hated ’em—hated ’em.”
It had started, he said, with Wendy Coffield. “I don’t give a shit about where I killed ’em. I didn’t give a shit about them or their jewelry. Carol Christensen meant nothing to me. The fish I put on her were to attract animals. I dragged ’em by their feet. All of them didn’t piss me off. Some I wasn’t mad enough to kill.”
Either this was another personality fighting its way out of the “New Gary” of 2003, or it was a clumsy attempt to present himself as a multiple personality. “I had sex with them afterward. They weren’t human, I guess. I didn’t give a shit. I bit [one of them] on the breast. I didn’t know Mary was pregnant. The New Gary is a wimp.”
Ridgway seemed genuinely angry as he spouted out filthy admissions for half an hour, his eyes squeezed shut. Jensen and Mattsen picked up on the dual method of interrogation the prisoner was suggesting. Perhaps even he couldn’t tell them everything he had done unless he could hide behind “the Old Gary.” That was fine with them. They pretended to respond to this angry man.
“The man who talked to us yesterday, the New Gary, was a real man,” Tom Jensen said, but the personality now onstage wasn’t buying it. The Old Gary was in charge and he insisted that he didn’t let women control him. “I had sex with every one of them but the pregnant one. I dumped a bag with cans [off the bridge] on 216th. Maybe they had prints on them.”
He continued to talk about how much he hated women, interspersing his monologue with details about evidence. “I left some jewelry by a tree near IHOP. I’m in charge now and I’m not gonna take it. I took three or four pictures of women under the Red Lion, and then I tore them up. I did write to the Times or the P.I. Don’t waste your time looking under my houses.
“I killed two ladies after I met Judith.”
Ridgway, whichever version this was, swore frequently although his grasp of scatological words wasn’t very extensive. “Old Gary” or “New Gary,” he had a limited vocabulary. He recalled killing one victim on the floor of his white van, using a cord pulled tight. “They’re all pieces of trash to me—garbage.”
“Why?” Jensen asked.
“Women always had control of me. They used me. I did cry after sometimes, but that was the good part of me. I’m the Old Gary now. The jewelry’s gone. I left it at Kenworth or in the airport and some Laundromat. I left some in a covered part of a light pole, and in a seam in some concrete beside the Safeway, and then I peed in a corner by the fence.”
They let him vent as he jumped from one subject to the next, not sure if this was an act. “That ‘burn’ on my arm isn’t acid,” he said. “It’s where Marie Malvar scratched me. I had scratch marks on my back…. Once I dropped [a victim] on her head off the tailgate.”
Jon Mattsen asked him about the cluster site near Exit 38 near North Bend, but Ridgway wasn’t sure. “I did roll one down the hill at Star Lake,” he said. “I didn’t kill no damn dog. I had control of those bitches. I didn’t have no love. Nobody loved me. So fuck ’em all! The New Gary is too soft. He’s not gonna hurt anyone.”
“What’s the Old Gary gonna tell us?”
Still turned away from the detectives questioning him, Ridgway’s eyes remained closed. “I killed a black lady in Ballard and one by a hospital. I took two to a graveyard by Washelli, and there’s one by Kmart, one by Leisu
re Time. I did take a head to the Allstate parking lot in Oregon. There was blond hair on the head. There’s three separate parts of bones on that funny-sounding road [Bull Mountain Road in Tigard], but I had a head that I lost.”
This seemingly furious Ridgway told them that he’d worn gloves and switched his shoes from tennis shoes to his Kenworth shoes in an effort to throw them off. He’d replaced the tires on his 1975 Ford pickup so they couldn’t be traced. He’d cut out some newspaper clips for information on what the task force was doing, and said he’d read four pages of a book that had information on evidence. He’d given two earrings to a girlfriend’s daughter. Now he moved on to the girl who got away: Penny Bristow.
“There was one lady I strangled without killing—on 188th. Nice lady. Dark hair. I left her there, naked, and took her purse, but she didn’t have any money. Sometimes I took their wallets and put their money in my pockets.”
He mentioned a woman he’d talked to near the airport, and had “motel sex” with. “I picked her up later and I took her someplace and I killed her. I know that for sure.”
He was probably referring to Keli McGinness, who had never been found. It may have been her severed head he took to Oregon with him, losing it in a culvert near the Allstate building.
The Old Gary was on a roll of rage, but it was sporadic now. “I didn’t hug ’em and kiss ’em at all. I didn’t give a crap about ’em. I had sex with a dead body [near where Connie Naon was found]. The other Gary’s [the New Gary] all screwed up. If you want to know what I did, talk to me. I’m the one who did it. Sometimes I tore up I.D. on the highway and threw it out. For that short time, I was in control. I’m the one with the devil in my head. The New Gary didn’t want me to come out. I don’t have rage anymore, but I got mad last night. I don’t have no rage no more.
“I’m in control now. You put words in his mouth. I didn’t give a shit about sleeping with them. The numbers of victims came from me. I don’t know if the New Gary can get back in. I killed ’em at S.I.R. [Seattle International Raceway], Green River College, 410, Riverton, Highway 18. I didn’t shoot no women. Two on Black Diamond Road, Carnation Road…”
He faltered. “The old one…The new one just flipped back in.”
Gary Ridgway’s voice was softer, tired sounding, but he hinted he had more to say. Mattsen and Jensen tried to bring the Old Gary back, but he wouldn’t come out. It was doubtful that Ridgway was a multiple personality. It seemed more believable that he had seen too many movies about multiples. And, in the Northwest, there had been massive coverage of the tapes of the “Hillside Strangler”—Kenneth Bianchi, arrested in 1980 for serial murders of young women in Los Angeles and Bellingham, Washington. Bianchi had done a very convincing double-personality. Ridgway’s acting wasn’t even in the ballpark.
Still, the session was very productive, if repugnant. Whether it was the Old Gary or the New Gary, he had admitted countless murders provoked by his fury at women in general. He had planned the murders and the disposal of the victims’ bodies.
It wasn’t yet nine thirty in the morning and he had filled the interview room with ugly admissions. The man Mattsen and Jensen had encountered at first seemed to have had his say, but the New Gary wanted to tell them things. He wanted to talk about the death of Giselle Lovvorn, the seventeen-year-old genius whose body was found at the south end of the deserted airport property.
“Chad was with me when I picked her up,” he said. It had been on a weekend, and his son was staying with him.
Jensen and Mattsen exchanged a quick glance. This seemed so far outside the pale of what any father would do. But Ridgway went on talking, and he was currently “the New Gary,” at that. But he assured them that he had left Chad—eight or nine at the time—in his truck while he walked the woman he called “LaVerne” well out of sight. The sex was over quickly, he explained, and then he had choked her with his forearm as a plane flew over.
“To be sure, I tied my black socks together and around her neck, and twisted the knot with a twig until it broke.”
“Did she fight you?” Mattsen asked.
“I can’t remember.”
“How could you kill a woman right in front of your son?” Jensen asked.
“I was in charge,” Ridgway said, but in the New Gary’s mild-mannered voice. “We were out of sight.”
“How long were you gone from Chad?”
“Probably five or ten minutes. When I came back, Chad asked where did the girl go. I just told him she lived nearby and she’d decided to walk home.” He remembered that he took his son someplace, then came back alone to move the girl’s body deep into the weeds.
They took a break. If Ridgway didn’t need one, the two detectives certainly did.
Facing his questioners, the regular Gary was still with them. He apparently didn’t get that whatever persona he affected, his confessions were odious. They had to convince him that nothing shocked them, but that wasn’t true. However experienced Ridgway’s questioners were, it was virtually impossible not to be taken aback by the complete and utter lack of feeling he demonstrated.
He did seem uncomfortable about giving the details of his intercourse with the corpses of the women he’d killed, and, for once, talked around his perversions, avoiding questions he seemed to anticipate.
“We have evidence of necrophilia,” Mattsen said calmly. “You wouldn’t be the first person, or the last, who did that.”
“Yes…I did lie about that. I had to bury them and take them far away so I wouldn’t go back to have sex with them. I had an urge to do that. It was a sexual release that I didn’t have to pay for. Maybe it gave me power over them.”
Ridgway admitted to returning to the bodies of about ten of the women he had left close to the Strip. “That would be a good day, an evening when I got off work and go have sex with her. And that’d last for one or two days till I couldn’t—till the flies came. And I’d bury them and cover them up. And then I’d look for another. Sometimes, I killed one one day and I killed one the next day [and] there wouldn’t be no reason to go back.”
He had returned to one victim to have intercourse with her body even though his eight-year-old son was asleep in his truck thirty feet away. When he was asked what would happen if his son remembered that and threatened to tell, he wasn’t sure.
“Would you kill him?”
“No…I might have.”
Penny Bristow, the one girl who got away from Gary Ridgway, had always felt that he only wanted her dead, and that live sex hadn’t mattered. Even though he’d demanded fellatio, he had no erection. “I don’t even know why he took his clothes off,” she said. “His face looked white, clammy, cold. His arms and everything were cold. His hands. He was a totally different person and he kind of made me think that, if he did kill me, since he wasn’t interested in me sexually before that, he probably would have tried to have intercourse if I was dead.”
DR. MARY ELLEN O’TOOLE may have come the closest to uncovering the early childhood events that had the devastating impact on the way Gary Ridgway viewed women and why he developed the aberrations that consumed him. O’Toole had initially explained that the F.B.I.’s Behavioral Science Unit didn’t have time to consider the cases of every serial killer referred to them, and they didn’t even care about how many victims a man might have taken. “They’re not all equally interesting to us,” she said. “I would need to put you through what I refer to as a ‘verification process.’ ”
It was a challenge Ridgway could hardly have resisted. He had always wanted to be interesting, and he’d been anxious to present his perversions to her.
“At what age did you realize that there was something wrong with you?” O’Toole asked.
He thought it was when he was about ten. His “red flags” were his forgetfulness, his breathing, his allergy problems, and his depression. Dr. O’Toole said that was not what she meant; she was more interested in his paraphilic behaviors, a term she had to explain to him, starting from “personality dis
orders,” which he seemed to grasp, and linking that to the abnormal sexual desires he had practiced: frotteurism, exposing himself, stalking, voyeurism, rape, murder for sexual release, and, finally, necrophilia.
Although he would deny it for a long time, Ridgway felt that the bodies of his victims “belonged” to him. As long as they weren’t discovered and removed by the Green River Task Force detectives, they were his. “A beautiful person that was my property—uh, my possession,” he told O’Toole, “something only I knew, and I missed when they were found or where I lost ’em.”
“How did you feel, Gary, back in the eighties when the bodies were found and taken away, those times they were discovered,” O’Toole asked. “How did it feel?”
“It felt like they were taking something of mine that I put there.”
That was, he explained later, why he had taken some of the skeletons or partial skeletons to Oregon. It was to confuse the task force detectives because he didn’t want them to find and remove any more of his possessions. He’d often wished he could find some of the old “bottomless” mine shafts that still existed in southeast King County so he would know he had a secure place to leave the corpses of his victims. The bodies were both a burden to get rid of and treasures he wanted to keep.
O’Toole was particularly interested in his relationship with his late mother, and it proved she had good reason to be suspicious. Gary Ridgway had, indeed, had an inappropriate relationship with Mary Ridgway. When he was thirteen or fourteen, she had both humiliated him and sexually stimulated him after he wet his bed, something that happened at least three times a week and sometimes every day. “She said to me, ‘Why aren’t you like [your brothers]—they don’t wet the bed. Only babies wet the bed. Aren’t you ever going to grow up?’ She degraded me. I didn’t feel much love at that time.”
But his mother spent fifteen minutes or more soaping, washing, and drying his penis and testicles, even though he often became erect when she did that. She had also appeared half naked in front of him, and even though he felt depressed and ashamed, he admitted to O’Toole that he had been sexually aroused. “Well, here’s a woman like the ones out of the dirty magazines—she’s got smooth legs, smooth figure, and breasts, tight skin…. She had breasts and a flat stomach and I probably saw her, maybe walked into the bathroom [when she was] on the toilet. She didn’t have a penis or anything like that. [She was] someone that could turn somebody on, turn me on a little bit.”