One of the issues that the police faced when the killings began in 1982 was that forensics were not to the level that the But, unfortunately, many of the remains are too degraded to be able to yield a positive DNA match. Ridgeway supposedly killed 48 women, at least he has admitted to that many, but similar signatures have been found from Vancouver to Portland, and these murders, though many are not solved, are attributed to the Green River Killer (Guillen & Smith, 2003). It is true that some of the victims did not fit the overall profile of teenage prostitute or runaway (several of the women were in their thirties), but they all lived on the streets and most were engaged in prostitution.
Most serial killers, like Gary Ridgeway, choose their victims based on a profile (Douglas, 2007). It is also compelling that he would do so while a massive investigation was happening all around him. It is interesting from a psychological point-of-view why Ridgeway wanted to kill these women in the first place. I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without being caught" (Young, 2008). He told the court, after he was sentenced, that "I also picked prostitutes as victims because they are easy to pick up without being noticed. Ridgeway would later claim that the fact that his mother was domineering and dressed like a prostitute had something to do with why he killed all of those women. Ridgeway went through three marriages and a number of girlfriends before the first killings began in 1982 when he was 33 years old (Prothero & Smith, 2007, 64). A wife and a girlfriend later admitted that he liked to tie them up and choke them during sexual intercourse (Lackey, Jones & Johnson, 2005). He also, during his adult married life, had sexual needs that seemed to foretell his later obsession. Ridgeway committed his first deadly act when he was 16 when he critically stabbed a six-year-old bot. She apparently dominated the entire family throughout Ridgeway's young life, and was a major factor in the breakup of at least two of his marriages (Lackey, Jones & Johnson, 2005). Ridgeway's mother, according to his first wife, dressed in tight clothes and used great deal of makeup. One report says that Ridgeway's mother had such control over him that she remained on his checkbook even after he was married and always had to be consulted when major purchases were made (Lackey, Jones & Johnson, 2005). He was one of three brothers, both of whom still live in the Salt Lake City area, and was the son of a domineering mother. Gary Ridgeway was born in 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This paper looks at the early life of Gary Ridgeway as it applies to the case, the murders themselves, how forensic evidence helped to solve it, the final capture and Ridgeway's day in court. Ridgeway eluded police for almost two decades, even though he was a suspect in several of the disappearances, and was finally caught as a result of DNA evidence garnered from some of his earliest victims. Some believe that as many as 90 women may have been murdered by Gary Ridgeway. Before the slayings officially ended in 1998, a total of 42 women would be thought to be potential victims of the Green River Killer with the potential for many more being added to the list. These women were all relatively young and shared a lifestyle, prostitution and street life, that made them easy targets for a killer. In 1982, the remains of a number of young women started to show up in the area surrounding Seattle.