When a forensic psychiatrist asked Ridgway if he thought he had a mental illness, Ridgway replied that he used to have a problem with “killing women,” the government said in its statement about the case. Asked why he thought that was an illness, Ridgway responded, “I don’t. I don’t know if it was an illness, or just, uh, I just wanted to kill.”
Sounds a lot like Mailhot.
Like Mailhot, Ridgway was raised in a seemingly stable home, in McMicken Heights, Washington. When Ridgway was arrested, his friends and family described him as friendly but a little strange. It seemed incongruous that the same man who went door-to-door for his Pentecostal Church was also obsessed with prostitutes and had dysfunctional relationships with women, according to the government’s statement.
After Ridgway’s arrest both a prostitute and his second wife—Ridgway had been married three times and had a son—testified that, in 1982, he had placed them in a choke hold using a police-type hold, with his forearm and upper arm—the same way Mailhot choked his victims. Ridgway once claimed that prostitutes did to him “what drugs did to a junkie.”
In 1982, Ridgway began murdering prostitutes and dumping them in the area around King County, Washington. A lot of the young women were teenagers and almost all were prostitutes, who met their fates while working the streets. For twenty years the murders and disappearances of the women were attributed to a suspect police dubbed the “Green River Killer.” Although investigators believed that the Green River Killer stopped killing in 1984, Ridgway told police that he continued to kill, albeit at a slower pace, until 1998.
Both Mailhot and Ridgway ultimately decided to plead guilty to murder. Ridgway, who wanted to escape the death penalty, decided to plead guilty to aggravated murder in the first degree for all the murders he committed in King County.
In June 2003, police began a five-month interview process with Ridgway. After detectives confronted him with all of the Green River murders, as well as similar unsolved murders, Ridgway said that he killed over sixty women in King County.
Early in the interviews Ridgway said he hadn’t planned to kill any of his victims, but ultimately admitted that once he managed to get a woman to his house, he killed her, regardless of how she acted or how he felt. Like Mailhot, Ridgway refused to confess to murders he didn’t commit.
Ridgway told police he really didn’t remember the specifics of each murder. Prosecutors theorized that his inability to recall the details of the killings was also the product and symptom of his psychopathy. He didn’t remember because the women didn’t mean anything to him as individuals, but rather just existed to satisfy his needs.
“[L]ike I said before, they don’t mean anything to me,” he told police. “And I … and once I’ve killed ’em, I didn’t kept it in memory. I just knew where they … I dumped ’em.”
During his interviews with police Ridgway explained the methods he used to find and kill his victims. Like Mailhot, Ridgway used the same methods for hunting, killing and hiding the bodies of his victims. Ridgway claimed that he only killed street prostitutes. Like Mailhot, Ridgway decided to kill prostitutes because it was so easy.
“Uh, prostitutes were the—the easiest,” he told police. “I went from, uh, havin’ sex with ’em to just plain killing ’em.”
Again like Mailhot, Ridgway also picked up hookers because he figured police wouldn’t look very hard for a missing prostitute. And he also said it would be more difficult for police to investigate the murder of a prostitute because they moved around so frequently.
Ridgway was right—police were often delayed in their investigations because most of the time nobody filed a missing person’s report on a woman; and even if a report was filed on a woman, police had a hard time tracking down her last movements. And sometimes other people would say they’d seen the missing victim even after she had been murdered. In the case of Christine Dumont, the cop on duty when her sister tried to fill out a missing person’s report said she wasn’t missing because he had just seen her the previous night.
A victim’s race didn’t matter to Ridgway, nor did it matter to Mailhot. They were equal-opportunity murderers who viewed all prostitutes as garbage.
“[J]ust … just garbage,” Ridgway told investigators. “Just somethin’ to screw and kill her and dump her.”
The women Mailhot and Ridgway picked up went with them willingly because they weren’t afraid of them. Women went with Mailhot because they thought he was clean-cut and attractive, and they got into Ridgway’s vehicle because they figured he was such a small man, he could never be the “Green River Killer.”
Both men preferred killing their victims in their homes. When they managed to persuade their victims to go to their houses, each of the men did what he could to put the women at ease by showing them around. Mailhot offered Teese Morris some food and a beer. He gave Audrey Harris a tour of his apartment. Ridgway showed his victims his son’s room to reassure them that he wasn’t dangerous.
“They look around and everything, they’re getting more secure as you go,” Ridgway said in an interview with police. “They look in the bedrooms, nobody’s in there, nothin’s, you know, ‘There’s my son’s room.’ ‘Hey, this guy has a son, he’s not gonna hurt anybody.’ His name’s written on the door and it’s empty and it’s got his bunk bed there, toys on the floor… .”
Although Mailhot and Ridgway both choked their victims—it was more personal that way—Ridgway murdered his victims after sex. But for Mailhot, it was never about the sex. It was about the power and control—as it was for Ridgway as well.
It appeared, however, that Ridgway was more depraved than Mailhot because he told police he often went back to the place where he had dumped a victim’s body to have sex with her corpse. It was free, he said.
While Ridgway went to great lengths to dispose of his victims’ bodies—sometimes he posed them, other times he covered them up—Mailhot just wanted to get rid of his victims’ remains as quickly as possible.
One reason both Mailhot and Ridgway avoided detection for so long was that they did not fit the popular preconceptions of a serial killer. They weren’t really loners—Ridgway was married, and Mailhot had friends and family—they controlled their anger and they didn’t have a known juvenile or violent criminal history. They both also had steady jobs and were well liked by their coworkers. For thirty-two years Ridgway worked in the paint department at Kenworth Truck Company. He earned $21 an hour as a journeyman painter applying designs to trucks. The work was precise and tedious and it required a sharp eye. But it was the perfect job for a meticulous man.
When Mailhot and Ridgway were arrested, their coworkers, friends and families told police they couldn’t believe these men were cold-blooded killers. Ridgway was described as a reliable employee. But attendance records revealed he was not at work on the days the victims he is charged with killing disappeared. Coworkers shared impressions of him: hard worker, smart, meticulous, nice, friendly, too friendly. Others called him odd, off-the-wall and spooky.
The problem was, the people who thought they knew those two men really didn’t know them at all.
“[T]he women they underestimate me, for … I look like an ordinary person, … I, ah, acted in a way with the … with the prostitutes to make ’em feel more comfortable … ,” Ridgway told police. “And, um, got on, ah, got in their comfort zone, got into the … ah, ‘Here’s a guy, he’s not really muscle-bound, he’s not, ah, look like a fighter, just an ordinary john,’ and that was their downfall is … is they … My appearance was different from what I really was.”
Those words could just as easily have been spoken by Mailhot.
Neither Mailhot nor Ridgway had any empathy at all for the women they killed. In the midst of an interview about stealing money from his victims after killing them, Ridgway said, “And, like, uh, uh, um, uh, not trying to go off the subject, but I thought I was doing you guys a favor, killing, killing prostitutes—you guys can’t control them, but I can.”
Like Jeffery Mailhot, convicted British serial killer Anthony Hardy murdered three prostitutes in London, dismembering two of them in an effort to more easily dispose of their bodies. Because of that he was dubbed the “Camden Ripper.” Hardy was convicted in November 2003, around the same time Mailhot was murdering his victims.
Like Mailhot, Hardy had a pretty normal childhood. He did well in high school and studied engineering at a London college, where he met his wife. However, the couple was divorced in 1986. Unlike Mailhot, Hardy got in trouble with the law because he harassed his former wife and also stole a car. He spent some time in prison for his crimes.
Hardy spent the early 1990s drifting around London, drinking and doing drugs. He often lived in fleabag hotels, but he also spent some time living on the street. Unlike Mailhot who was able to keep his mental illness in check, Hardy’s bouts with the disease manifested themselves in a number of ways, including ranting, raving and acting psychotic on any number of occasions.
From 1995 to 1996, he was treated in and released from a mental-health facility. He appeared to be responding to treatment, but on April 24, 1998, he was arrested for being drunk, as well as for rape, a charge that was dropped because the victim declined to press charges.
Then on January 20, 2002, when police were arresting him for damaging his neighbor’s home, police discovered a dead prostitute in Hardy’s bed and arrested him on suspicion of murder. In a strange turn of events, medical examiners determined that the woman died of natural causes and police were forced to drop the murder charges against Hardy.
Then on December 30, 2002, a homeless man looking for food in a trash bin on Royal College Street discovered a bag containing human remains. He took the bag to a nearby hospital, where officials called the police.
When police searched the area, they discovered eight more bags containing the body parts of two different women. They also discovered a trail of blood that led them directly to Hardy’s front door. After gaining access to his apartment, police found a hacksaw with human skin in its teeth, an electric jigsaw, as well as a considerable amount of blood in the bathroom. They also found a woman’s torso wrapped in trash can liners.
Police apprehended Hardy the next day and took him into custody. Police said the two women, as well as the woman who died in Hardy’s bed, were prostitutes who plied their trade to feed their crack cocaine habits. Authorities then reinvestigated the first woman’s death and charged Hardy with three murders.
Anthony Hardy pleaded guilty to all three murders and was given three life sentences. At his sentencing the judge said, “Only you know for sure how your victims met their deaths, but the unspeakable indignities to which you subjected the bodies of your last two victims in order to satisfy your depraved and perverted needs are in no doubt.” And the chief inspector on the case said, “Hardy is manipulative and evil. He is highly dangerous to women.”
Those words from the judge and the inspector could just as easily have been applied to Mailhot.
Then there was serial killer Robert L. Yates, Jr., a middle-aged father of five, a decorated military helicopter pilot, and National Guardsman, who was convicted of fifteen murders, but thought to have killed as many as eighteen women. Like Mailhot’s victims, Yates’s victims were also involved in drugs and prostitution.
And like Mailhot, Yates came from a stable, loving home and led a relatively ordinary life, except for his extraordinary military career. Yates grew up on Whidbey Island, Washington, where his mother died while he was still in high school. (Mailhot’s mother died when he was in high school as well.)
After Yates graduated from high school, he enrolled at Walla Walla College, but he dropped out after only two years. Then, in 1975, he was hired as a guard at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. He worked there for six months. In 1976, he married a woman named Linda, and then enlisted in the army and worked as a helicopter pilot for nineteen years.
While in the U.S. Army, Yates received a number of awards and medals. When he left the army, Yates got a job as an aluminum smelter and also joined the Washington National Guard, where he achieved the rank of chief warrant officer 4 and flew helicopters. Like Mailhot, Yates was well liked by his peers and thought to be very good at his job.
While they were investigating the murders of a number of women, beginning in the early 1990s, police zeroed in on Yates and discovered that there was a one-year period from spring 1997 to spring 1998 that Yates had been unable to fly the helicopters because of a medical condition. They also discovered that a number of prostitutes were murdered during the time when he wasn’t flying.
Mailhot and Yates had something else in common—they both liked to drive through the red-light district in their neighborhoods picking up prostitutes.
Much like Mailhot’s family and friends, none of the people who knew Yates believed him capable of such heinous crimes. In fact, when Yates was arrested, his family issued a written statement describing him as a loving, caring and sensitive son, a fun-loving and giving brother, an understanding, generous and dedicated father, who enjoys playing ball, fishing and camping with his kids.
Yates, forty-eight, pleaded guilty, in 2000, to the attempted murder of one woman and the murders of ten other women in Spokane County from 1996 to 1998. He also admitted to murdering two other women in Walla Walla. Yates was sentenced to 408 years in prison.
Prosecutors in Pierce County, Washington, also charged Yates with the aggravated murders of two other women, Melinda Mercer and Connie LaFontaine Ellis. At trial prosecutors told jurors that Yates killed for the thrill of it and because he enjoyed sex with his dead victims. Although Mailhot didn’t have sex with the women he murdered, he also killed for the thrill of it.
Yates and Mailhot were alike in so many ways that Yates’s statement to the jury could have been written by Mailhot.
Yates told the court that he prepared his statement so that he could say everything that was in his heart. The first thing he did was apologize to everyone he had hurt by his evil deeds. But he never apologized to his victims.
“‘To all my victims’ families, to my family and to the people in the community, to the families of Melinda Mercer and Connie LaFontaine Ellis, I know you are suffering great anguish. I find no words to comfort you, to explain, justify or soften all the evil, pain, separation and death that I’ve caused,’” Yates read aloud. “‘The world is a frightening place, and I’ve made it more so for many. I’ve caused so much pain and devastation.’”
Yates said hundreds of people were hurting and grieving because of his acts. He said he let sin enter his life and take over his soul until it caused him to commit murder. He said sin blinded him and he was powerless to defeat it.
“‘There were times—long periods—when in between my horrific crimes, there were periods of relative calm,’” he said. “‘Nothing evil happened. But that sinful nature, which wrought so much recent violence, never really left.’”
Yates said he couldn’t rid himself of his sinful nature. He said his guilt was like a disease eating away at his soul. Like Jeff Mailhot, Yates said it was something he just couldn’t share with anyone else.
“‘I lived a double life,’” Yates said. “‘I stayed in denial—denial of my needs, denial that someone, somewhere, could help me. Through my denial, because I couldn’t face the truth, I thought I could be self-correcting, that if I kept it all to myself, someday it would all go away. That’s denial. By my denial, I blinded myself to the truth—the truth that no one is so alone in this world as a denier of God. But that was me, alone and in denial.’”
Finally Yates said he began looking at all the ugliness inside him and exposing it for what it really was. He said the best thing that could have happened to him was to be arrested and held accountable for his actions. He said it was time for him to stop being in denial and face the truth.
“‘If God is the creator of this universe, then there are no unimportant people, and I took the lives of these loving, wonderful, important
people from you,’” Yates said. “‘I feel your hurt every day and it won’t go away. It never will. I’ve devastated your hopes and dreams. I’ve left you with only photographs and memories instead of warm family gatherings, cherished hugs and future happiness. The opportunity to say farewell or clear up misunderstandings was not afforded you.’”
Like Mailhot would do at his sentencing hearing, Yates again apologized to all the people he had hurt—everyone except the victims themselves.
“‘Nothing I have said here today will justify or excuse my wrongs or even make sense of them. My compassion goes out to all I’ve hurt…. There are so many innocent victims in all of this—families, friends and communities, my family, who had nothing to do with any of this. I’m so very, very sorry for what has happened. There are inadequate words for me to express my guilt, my shame and my sorrow for having devastated you in taking away the wonderful people, the wonderful, loving people, the warm human beings you cared for so much. It’s my prayer that you will look to God to help fill the hollow I’ve left in your hearts. I apologize to all of you, and I thank the court for allowing me to speak.’”
Yates currently is on death row at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington.
Mailhot, Ridgway and Yates all thought they were doing a good thing murdering prostitutes and getting them off the streets.
But why did Mailhot, Ridgway and Yates kill? They didn’t suffer from the same kind of mental illness as Anthony Hardy did, so they couldn’t use that as a reason for murder. Instead, they murdered their victims deliberately and methodically. Although Mailhot expressed genuine remorse for the families of his victims, neither he nor Ridgway nor Yates expressed remorse for the women they murdered.
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