Episode 671: Gary Ridgway : Redux Part I - Wrong Way Gary

there's no place to escape to this is the last on the left that's when the cannibalism started trying to get into the gary ridgeway headspace i uh put a plastic bag over my head for a while this morning to kill off some of those extra pesky brain cells you know just trying to get the guy didn't kill the bitch i'm just like that's the way to get into gary ridgeway i'm gonna kill the bitch you're gonna kill the bitch just because that's his one of his favorite yeah saying see what he does oh yes catchphrase yes yeah i didn't want to get too crazy and violent with it so i just did a really bad job of painting a truck welcome to the last podcast on the left ladies and gentlemen my name is marcus parks i'm here with method actor henry zabrowski because he reminds me a little bit of the what's his name from south park oh timmy timmy no no not timmy jimmy jimmy jimmy yeah little eyes too he's got those little blinky little red eyes the beadiest eyes and serial killing he has that he has the arthur shawcross tell yeah where when they're when they're saying when they're talking about things that particularly make them horny they get real blinky yeah that's indeed yeah and we have the man who doesn't get blinky at all when he gets horny as far as i know it's ed larson yeah no i don't think i think i just shut him and go to sleep see my eyes are wide open it's one long blink i want to see today we have a redo we have a second pass it's yet another look at a serial killer that we covered long ago today we start our journey on gary ridgeway i've brought this up before and i once did one of those like horrible tests like which serial killer are you and i got green river killer yeah you know what i can see it okay yeah you're your blue collar yeah what i like me to do is go i gotta kill a bitch she's a bitch i gotta kill this bitch i like the woods he does love the woods he does he does amongst many other things he does love the woods i was just in renton which is next to c uh c-tac oh yeah i was just there and we had a nice uh place on the right on the right on the lake washington there and i walked through the woods and it's nice you can see why it would get you horny it's real quiet and private too right oh absolutely i was smoking all kinds of weed no it's great but the reason why we're doing this redux is because you know when we were when we did this series back in day we had kind of like it was we're still in the research figuring out how early was it very i mean this is back when it's like i at that point i was still on like six podcasts a week yeah uh and also editing all of them and producing all of them uh so like i was basically like looking at wikipedia pages and like checking out like a couple of like murderpedia pages and trying to put shit together not sleeping much and working like 90 hours a week it was uh insane so it was a let's say a job but it was fun to do but at the same time we did not because normally it's like the opposite normally when we do the old episodes we got into the really graphic shit and we didn't get to all the other like context and stuff where this time it's so wonderful to know that when we got back into it the information's actually way more fucked up than we even ever thought in the beginning and that's great for us yeah no he from my i watched the documentary on hbo max yesterday and i obviously i read the script to prep today he seems like he might be the worst he's up there like it's he's definitely as far as a body count goes he's one of the most prolific in american history samuel little beat him though yeah by a lot um so he is but he is definitely in that area uh of like amongst the worst and you know how i described it described him he does it the kirby puckett style he's simple yeah right you know what i mean he's the bunter that's what this is all about it's on base this is about moving guys around bases moving sex workers to various shallow he's an rbi guy not a home run exactly so as we said many years ago we attempted an episode on gary ridgeway and while we did the best we could with the resources we had at the time we realized after looking at this story again that we didn't really capture the full picture especially considering how new information has come to light that might actually explain the mystery of gary ridgeway see last time we described gary ridgeway as a man who was really only good at one thing he was a dullard but he also managed to evade police for decades as one of the most prolific serial killers in american history despite the efforts of a massive task force in fact before the advent of dna testing the so-called green river killer case as gary ridgeway's murders are known was shaping up to be yet another unsolved serial killer mystery like the zodiac or jack the ripper but the biggest difference between those cases in green river is the sheer volume of victims while jack and the zodiac only got five each gary ridgeway murdered at least 45 women between 1982 and 1984 alone two fucking years and that doesn't even count the women he murdered afterward and the women he possibly murdered before and we've talked about this before with these types of serial killers there's always the ones in which they killed way less than they said that they did and they're doing it for attention and then there's the ones that might have killed way more and gary ridgeway is firmly in the camp of might have killed way more yeah because he even he said i i don't remember i don't i don't remember a heck of a lot i i kind of go in a different direction of my mind and then he's just like starts thinking about it in a way where he like he goes off into a fantasy world and he doesn't even remember and then he said i don't know whether or not that was a dream or that was a fantasy and he's just like he was thinking about killing for so long and he also doesn't remember what was the ones he actually did and what were just a walking fugue state fantasy he was in yeah you know what's interesting is like sometimes like i i bet when i was younger it's catching it's really catching uh when i was younger i remember i used to get in a lot of fights and i remember one fight my biggest fight i don't remember it yeah like i went into like a fugue state and so like it kind of makes sense i feel like violence extreme violence can bring on just you not knowing what's going on it's not violence it's anger because i bet that during that fight you were probably the angriest you have ever been in your entire life i guess i don't even remember i was perfectly fine afterwards and it's the power of man so gary ridgeway would pick up sex workers from the areas around the sea tack international airport and the interstate 5 corridor pretend as if it was going to be a normal transaction then he would strangle women to death before dumping the bodies in isolated wooded areas around the seattle tacoma region gary was able to do this dozens of times because the area in which gary obtained and disposed of victims was almost tailor-made for a serial killer thanks god god did that god and man you're a god and man working together yeah there's a reason i think bigfoot's in those fucking hills yeah well during the years ridgeway was active the corridor where you'd find sea tack airport between seattle and tacoma was known as the strip the strip was essentially a sex buffet of lost women plying their trade on two-lane highways and logging roads which was all prior to sea tax incorporation as the city surrounded by wilderness so all ridgeway had to do was find a place where he could murder someone out of sight and kill someone out of sight and kill someone out of sight and once the deed was done he was spoiled for choice as to where he wanted to dump the body now had ridgeway buried his victims instead of just rolling them into ditches or leaving them out in the open the pacific northwest likely wouldn't have even known there was a serial killer on the loose because his victims were all sex workers whose disappearances likely wouldn't have been investigated well they would have known there was a serial killer on the loose because as we'll get into in the next episode there are about four to six serial killers operating at the same time as gary ridgeway in this area really i also truly think the key to gary's successes was simplicity i think if we're adding he didn't get all fancy with it no no no i think we're adding steps hold like trophies or anything like that right no no well he did it in work he did bad horrific things but he did it in the old-fashioned way by letting it just sit out you know like he was not digging holes if he was digging holes we might have actually created a lot more evidence than he wanted to because he's a fucking moron he might have yeah but after looking at ridgeway again there really is so much more to his story than just a guy with an ag cue of 82 a grudge against women and a bible to clutch whenever he needed justification for his actions because that was last time when we did it like we went really hard on the missionary killer angle that you know he he did it because he uh believed that the sex workers deserved it that he was getting them that he was wiping the earth clean of these sinful ladies it's a lot more complicated than that that's that's way too simplistic oh it's way more complicated than that because he has this push and pull with them you even hear now now that i've watched chunks of questions can see it he had that sort of like the only ones to get me but also they must be killed they must got to kill the bitches because he's like he can't handle the fact that they're the only ones giving him any form of affection at the time and then he got married three times three times it's easy guys i would push back on him not getting any affection oh no gary ridgeway was never ever ever without a girlfriend or wife ladies love gary he was fine for a trailer park he looked all right yeah what he looks fine he looks like a shop teacher side stories lpotl gmail.com please answer eddie i said fine yeah what we missed last time was that ridgeway exhibited a wide range of serial killer behaviors that we saw in many of the most infamous mass murderers of the late 20th century he somewhat attempted to be a kind of btk or a zodiac by writing near unintelligible letters to the press and police and he committed necrophilia multiple times throughout his most active period in other words he exhibited far more complicated behavior than what we had originally covered thank you earlier you shortened jack the ripper to jack and i never heard anyone do that before yeah oh yeah well you know i mean you can call him saucy jack but i think zodiac killer i thought i would look zody hey shut the fuck up but the question people always have about these guys is why they did what they did and while the easy answer is it's they do it because it makes them feel good the real question is how does a mind that gets pleasure from murder develop and why the fuck where there's so many of them during the 70s 80s and 90s where did they all go well now that we're decades past these crimes and we can take a larger view of the 20th century i mean the 20th century is 26 years ago at this point shut up we might finally have an answer here something far more definitive improvable beyond the soul theory that leaded gasoline ruined the brains of the boomer generation but it is going to take us three full episodes to get to that point so i'm going to talk about it in just a few episodes to explain it and now that we got a whole team working on this weekly grind of ours we can finally tell the story of the green river killer the way it was meant to be told through pantomime you can't hear it you can't hear it it's hard you just imagine describe it if you could oh yeah henry is uh choking his hands now he's making he's crying while he does it and hey that's it you know yeah no stabs or nothing no no he's all jokes yeah the um now i think that there has been a major calm down in this type of stuff because of dna testing i think that people just get caught way earlier uh it's part that is part of it that is definitely a part of it but it's not all people are just as evil now as they were back then but the phenomenon might have changed to more effective attention seeking because i think a lot of serial killing does also involve attention seeking and now it's much easier because you could just get all you need to get a military grade rifle and bring it to a public square and squeeze off a bunch of shots and then you immediately get all the attention you crave yeah now you just do it all at once yeah yeah and there i mean there are other things besides dna testing there's also uh social media people are uh it's noticed when people go missing a lot faster yeah like things like that so yeah people do get caught uh earlier but the kids don't run away anymore they need to stay in their homes now yeah yeah because kids are they don't don't have any function skills so they don't go hang out by the train yards anymore sure now they're all just playing video games yeah like you miss the days when kids ran away now the scariest place to be is on roadblocks but the other thing is is that the 70s 80s and 90s like the the the one-on-one crime like just general all-around crime that is way way way down yeah it's still well i mean there's still just as many lost people around that you can prey on today as there were back then in fact there are more people in this country now than there were back then uh but there are reasons why uh things have calmed down so much and why crime is at its lowest point ever yeah also like i feel like back in the day you would get into a fist fight a cop would catch you like all right boys break it up go home walk it off yeah now you're like everyone just goes to jail yeah so it's also back in the day not the children weren't armed and i think they used to just fight each other and then they wouldn't go back and get guns and then come back and finish the jobs yeah no maybe so maybe no we'll see we'll see i mean but that's the thing we're gonna get more into that in the coming episodes okay but before we get to the story of gary ridgeway let's acknowledge our sources first we've got the classic green river running red by anne rule it is thick 800 pages wow it's a big one yeah and roll she's the same one who you know wrote the definitive book on ted bundy famous true crime author then we've got the source for the juicy stuff which was found in gary ridgeway the green river killer by james richmond and finally we got the new kid on the block murderland by caroline frazier this book was released just last year and for me it really is the final word on why and how the 70s 80s and 90s will forever be known in the annals of true crime history is the era of the serial killer and so without further ado let's get into the story of gary ridgeway aka the green river killer pee pants gary pee pants gary it's a gary leon ridgeway cool name yeah gary leon yeah yeah that's cool yeah he was born in february of 1949 in salt lake city to mary rita and thomas ridgeway these two people hold the distinction of being one of those rare double shots of horrible serial killer parents because both of them absolutely contributed to the horrific mindset that enabled gary to do what he eventually did usually it's just one but this time boom two barrels and that's how we get the killer in america next to samuel little who you know again i feel like he didn't count enough because he didn't really he wasn't proud yeah gary was proud yeah now gary grew up as the middle child in a struggling family that grew their own food and searched junkyards for useful scrap that could be fixed up and sold it was a family trait that gary would carry throughout the rest of his life as a free man it was a practice he called finding treasures it's good because get all this new stuff it's crazy old stuff it's coming it's coming rusty peed pooping great treasure to me you do like this you do this are there scrap families scrap absolutely yeah wow yeah yeah yeah they love they're very popular still to this day yeah my family was we were like firmly middle class we still love going to the dump yeah that's great wow yeah you know they still got the copper wiring you know it's got a lot of copper wiring what data centers let's go so after a short-lived and failed attempt at running a bar together mary rita ridgeway settled temporarily into the role of a housewife while gary's father thomas worked construction and a few stints as a truck driver one job had late hours while the other required thomas to be gone for days at a time once when mary rita was home alone gary's little brother eddie got sick the ridgeways had no money so mary rita took little eddie out into the snow bank to bring his son to his fever down the kid did survive but little eddie came away with permanent brain damage owing to mary rita's attempts at a folk remedy like he was conan sword just held him by his ankles and dipped him into the snow the tang holds little eddie however was not the only person with developmental problems in the family gary ridgeway himself was always described as slow besides being a little bit of a troublemaker he took him a long time to memorize anything and when he did his recall was still full of gaps gary couldn't remember the names of his own pets couldn't remember the names of his fellow children socks scraps dusty spookers get out of here you i'm trying to go to the bathroom he was considered such a lost cause from a young age that teachers would routinely sit him in the back of the class just so he wouldn't bother the other children so they wouldn't have to pay attention they could just forget about him shut up gary the kids with a future are trying to learn gary a slow intellect however wasn't gary's only childhood problem oh no gary ridgeway was a bedwetter which only added to the annoyance that his mother mary rita felt towards him for being slow can we change the distinction here because some people think that gary ridgeway is a bedwetter some people bed wet sure gary ridgeway was a bed soaker yeah yeah yeah he was like a different there's a distinct difference in bed pee pee he's the michael phelps yeah of bed pee pee yeah he was a water bed filler upper yeah some people are 70 liquid gary ridgeway as a child was like 83 like yeah he's like in that first x-men movie where the guy The senator turns into water like that. Yes, that's him. Well, Gary also had severe allergies and a constant runny nose, which he always wiped with his shirt sleeve. His eyes would swell and tears would constantly run down his face, which earned him the nickname Crybaby amongst his fellow children. That, of course, was in addition to the bullying he got just for being slow. By the age of eight, Gary remembered being always sad, always angry, because there was just so many things wrong with him. Little things, but they added up. Out of the three Ridgeway boys, Gary had two brothers. Gary became the primary target for his parents' anger and punishment. It's like the Goldilocks scenario. Yeah, yeah. But for punishing your child. Gary's younger brother, Eddie, he had the brain damage. So he got pity from Gary's mother. And her own guilt about the fever often got little Eddie a pass. But Gary's older brother, Greg, was intelligent and handsome. So his parents were constantly asking, "Why can't you be more like your brother Greg, Gary?" "Why can't you be more like Greg?" "I ask myself every day, Mommy. I ask myself every day. I wish I could be more like Greg." "And honestly, it would be kind of nice if you could maybe put my head on ice a little bit, Gary." "Maybe you should make me a snowman like you made Eddie, because it seems like everybody likes him more." Oh, there's a Greg Ridgeway who's a professor of criminology. It's not the same guy, but I find it interesting. That is interesting. Wow. It's like a guy who runs a hamburger joint named Burger. "Hey, my name's Mr. Cheeseburger." "Alright, that's a whole name." "That's my wife, Bunz." "Mmm." "Mmm." Now, to make matters even worse, Gary's family moved frequently. So Gary never had time to make friends. Wherever the Ridgeway family went, the bullies found Gary. But Gary had no refuge at home either. His father would actually get angry at Gary instead of the bullies every time Gary went out to eat. every time Gary got the shit beat out of him. Now, because he was slow and because the family moved around so much, Gary got held back a grade in elementary school. And it wasn't the last time that this would happen to Gary. But when Gary learned that he was going to have to repeat a grade, something snapped because the kids had nothing but hatred for him and his parents had nothing but disappointment. In fact, Mary Rita came to believe that Gary was just lying about not being able to read. I wish I'd honestly be, this would be, truly be the funniest prank of all time. But it's not, you know, I can't read. I don't know how to read. And so, Gary's legendary anger, the anger that would be unleashed upon the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s, began to manifest itself physically. After learning that he was going to be held back, Gary walked to his school and smashed out several windows by throwing rocks. Tell me, I can't go back to eighth grade. I'm just going to throw rocks. Pile of rocks here and throw these rocks in there. This is like second grade. Second, third grade. It's around there. And I went to a school where our classes were, you know, between 10 and 15 kids, really small. And man, at the start of every school year, it was always the kids who got held back. Because every year you'd get a kid added to your class and you'd lose a kid. Yeah. And those were always the bullies. They were always the angriest kids. Because they were also older and bigger than everybody. Far older, far bigger. Oh, yeah. The kid who broke my collarbone. He was the one who spiked me. He'd been held back twice, I think, by that point. I made him very strong. He was very strong. He was incredibly strong. I think he's dead now. Yeah. There was a guy who straight up, like, shot someone in the head in his front yard. And he was, like, 20 in my high school. Yeah. He's just like, he's smoking with the security officers. Now, around the same time that Gary was being held back, Gary also started experimenting with fire. In second grade, he started playing with matches and eventually set his own garage ablaze. He became terrified and ran away while a neighbor called 911. And even though he assumes his parents beat him for starting the fire, he said he doesn't remember, his experimentation with fire didn't stop. He just learned to do it elsewhere so he wouldn't get caught. So, starting in the second grade, Gary started setting fires in garages around his neighborhood before he could do it again. Before running away when he heard sirens to hide until it got dark enough to safely sneak back home. It's fucking crazy to just know there's this demented second grader, seven-year-old, running around your neighborhood, any open garage, running inside, setting it on fire. Yeah, dude, I feel like that's how you. It's a goblin loose. It is a goblin loose, and that's why. But I think you have full immunity to clonk a little child in the head that's doing that. Like, if you're setting things on fire, setting structures on fire, I think you can get one clonk from a stick. His dad tried. I know. You know what I'd say? I wouldn't say a clonk in the head because that can cause permanent damage. Kick him in the stomach. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go kick in the ass. Like, get out of here, kid. You can tie him up, throw him in the swimming pool. Yeah, that'd be fun as hell. God, these are all great to do when you're a single child. Now, besides the bedwetting and the arson. Besides that. Gary also had a streak of animal cruelty. When he got older, he found that he enjoyed hurting things. Starting with the birds that he would shoot with his BB gun. Gary found that when the birds hit the ground dead, it made him laugh. Another time, in a moment of frustration, Gary took one of his own pet cats and suffocated it by throwing it in the cooler and shutting the lid. And so, that brings us back to the infamous McDonald triad, which, for years, was used to identify serial killers. See, it was widely believed, specifically after true crime got so popular in the 2010s, that if someone wet the bed beyond the age of five, started fires, and engaged in animal cruelty as a child, it was a good indicator that they would become a serial killer as an adult. But while the McDonald triad has since been discredited, or at least criticized, I got curious about the triad's origins when it all came back with Gary Ridgeway. And I got curious as to why people no longer use it as an indicator that someone might be a serial killer. That's because lots of people do it. It's not that uncommon. It's really not. I mean, I'm glad it's not that common. Yeah. But it's not uncommon enough that it's just tied to serial killers. Yeah, I know, but you're a boy. Fire's cool. Steppin' on a lizard's cool. Yeah, you get over it pretty fast. I know that any time I was curious about doing something weird to an animal and stuff, like, the second anything felt, like, bad, I was like, "Ah!" You know, like, my brain would be like, "No, I wasn't into it." Yeah. Well, I always saw that as once you made the jump from, like, cold-blooded, to warm-blooded, that's when you, like, really, that's when the evil really starts. That's what they say. Actually, that is the line, strangely enough. I never crossed that line myself, but frogs beware. I mean, frogs are different. A frog is different than, like, a corgi. Yeah, exactly. It's a big difference. Well, the McDonald triad came from a six-page paper called "Threat to Kill" by a forensic psychiatrist named John McDonald, published in 1963. McDonald was studying violent, psychiatric patients and noticed that bedwetting beyond the age of five, compulsive fire-starting, and animal cruelty appeared in many of the children on these psychiatric wards. McDonald, however, never explicitly said that his triad of bedwetting, fire-starting, and animal cruelty in children led them to become serial killers as adults. It actually didn't even lead them necessarily to become violent as adults. In fact, McDonald only used a sample of 100 patients, and none of the people he studied for the paper had actually committed violence. They'd only threatened it, hence his title, "Threat to Kill." But the pioneers of behavioral science, the FBI, profilers Robert Ressler, Anne Burgess, and John Douglas, whose story was loosely adapted for the Netflix show "Mindhunter," they combined "Threat to Kill" with a book McDonald had written in 1960 called "The Murderer and His Victims." They then ran with the so-called McDonald triad in a direction that even McDonald himself didn't expect, all in an attempt to try and survive. But then they found out that McDonald himself was a serial killer. So, they decided to try and solve the "why" of serial killers. When serial killers began to be a, well, they were starting to acknowledge it. The main issue is, as always we see, is that they want a structural fix that works every time. Sure. So, they'll give you money, right? Because even the guys within these, like the FBI and all this stuff, they have to, like, pitch their own inner projects up the channel. Fix all, like, look, this is how we'll find serial killers and stop them. Well, it was just, it was a part of a, you know, a massive thing. And then all, everybody jumped on it because, like, oh, good, then we can fix serial killers. And it's just like, oh, well, let's hold on a second. Yeah. Now, after the McDonald triad was introduced into the cultural zeitgeist by the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, it became almost a comfort to a lot of laypeople. It was a path towards maybe explaining the act of serial killing, which to most people is something that seems utterly unexplainable, but in 2018, authors Charlotte Parfit and Emma Aileen, they looked at the McDonald triad with fresh eyes and found that while the triad is not necessarily a predictor for future serial killing or even violent behavior, it is most definitely a sign of childhood abuse. And as we know, while not all serial killers have childhood abuse, the vast majority do have absolutely horrendous childhoods. So, we can forgive the BSU for jumping the gun a bit on the McDonald triad. This revelation was actually a fucking, it was a great relief to me personally because I absolutely hit every single point of the McDonald triad as a child. I wet the bed beyond the age of five. I can't even remember. admit it now, as a 43-year-old man, I was absolutely obsessed with fire, and although I'm not proud of it, I dabbled in animal cruelty with various local amphibians in very cruel and increasingly bizarre ways. Memories that disturb me today. Yeah, but it's good that they disturb you. Me too. You know, tie a lizard to a bottle rocket, you know, shit like that. You know, it was boys having fun. See, I was always with the girls. Yeah, you never did that. We played animals, where we'd act like different animals. That's fun. I did that game, but it was always in a pool. I was always a dolphin, and I lost. You know, I didn't wet the bed as much, but I sleptwalked and peed in cabinets. Yeah. That's cool. I sleptwalked a ton, too. Yeah. I had none of these. Really? Yeah. Good boy. You were such a good boy. I was, but I didn't sleep until I was like eight. And there's no extra lizards and fucking queens. Yeah, no, no. I wasn't like that. I wasn't surrounded by nature. Well, it turns out the McDonald Triad is not an indicator that we had the seed of a serial killer or the seed of a violent person laying dormant somewhere inside of us. It is, however, an indicator that my personal childhood environment created conditions where I have to do a shitload of therapy to untangle all the shit that happened to me and around me when I was a kid if I ever want to live a happy and healthy life. It wasn't my fault that I was raised in a West Texas nightmare factory seemingly designed to traumatize people like myself, but it is my responsibility to deal with that shit so it doesn't continue to fuck up my life. Gary Ridgeway, needless to say, never dealt with anything. And the anger he felt as a result of his childhood traumas, which are about to get a lot worse, it was so intense that it contributed to the violent deaths of dozens of people. And, of course, the childhood trauma is only one, of many factors, that led to the creation of Gary Ridgeway. I also think it's Gary's attitude. I think Gary's attitude's got a little bit to do with it. Wow. Henry thinks Gary Ridgeway has a bad attitude. I think that he needs a. People come here for intense hot takes. They really do. They really do. I mean, fuck it, I hope Netflix keeps us after that one. I, for one, think he's a real jerk. Thanks, Norm. Now, when Gary was 11 years old, his family finally moved to the Seattle-Tacoma area, where Gary would live until he was finally arrested decades later. The Pacific Northwest is also where Gary Ridgeway's behavior would greatly escalate in a number of ways, for reasons that we will discuss in depth on episode two. See, Gary's dad got a job driving metro buses in the Seattle area, while his mother got a part-time gig as a salesperson at a local JCPenney. That's what my mom did. Really? She worked at JCPenney's. Really? Pennies. Are you lying about anything in your childhood, about the things that you did or didn't do? No. Mom didn't wash me till I was a wreck. That was Dad's job. I spent a lot of time in JCPenney's, but it was just my mom. You know, that was the card, the place that we gave her credit cards. Yeah, yeah, of course. All of our families did credit card fraud at JCPenney's. Yeah. That's also where the Ticketmaster was. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Wait in line. So, the family bought their first house in an area that is now known as the city of Sea-Tac. But with yet another move, Gary's bed wetting returned with a vengeance. Starting when Gary was around the age of 12, Mary Rita Ridgeway began angrily yanking him from bed when he would wake up and announce that he had wet himself. She'd drag him to the bathroom and throw him into a tub of ice-cold water, screaming the quote, Only babies wet the bed! Gary! Only babies! Are you a baby, Gary? That's a direct quote. I can do it with her. I wet the bed! Okay, do you come into, like, being 12 and be like, hey, just so you know, wet the bed! Oh, man! My bed's all wet, mom! Well, this would be yelled repeatedly while Mary Rita dragged Gary through the house, which, of course, woke everyone up. And it was meant to add to Gary's humiliation. This would happen at least three times a week during this time period. Sometimes it would happen every single night. And this happened up until Gary was about 15 or 16 years old. From 12 to 15 or 16. Years of this. Let's just say I don't know if it was just about the pee-pee, Marcus. Well, we're gonna get into that right now. I don't know if it was. And that's the problem, is that sometimes mommies can be a little naughty too. And that's what you gotta be careful of, because sometimes mommies, if you're too naughty, you make the baby naughty. Hope all of our mothers out there really paid attention to that. Just know that, right? No, you naughty mommies. That's a good advice. Naughty mommy makes naughty baby. Yeah. Write that down. Wink, and that makes angry daddy. Because the return to bedwetting coincided with Gary Ridgway reaching puberty, the mommy wires got appallingly crossed. Mary Rita would often leave her bathrobe open, especially when she was dragging Gary to the bathtub in the middle of the night. And Gary would become aroused at the sight of his mother's big hooters. Because, you know, moms, I always think, you always love when my mom slept in the nude. You know how fucking awesome that was when your mom got done with the panties. She got done with alpha panties, kicked off those heels, stripped down to her bush, and just fucking relaxed. Yeah, it's crazy. I grew up in South Florida, one of the hottest places in the world, and I don't think my mom could have worn more clothes. My mom was so sheathed. She was so clothed. Thank Christ. Well, once Mary Rita got Gary to the bath, she would furiously scrub his genitals until they were raw. Baby's penis is covered in urine. Baby's penis needs to be cleaned by mommy. Yeah, it's crazy we got all these quotes. Yeah. That was a direct recording. She would overly focus on cleaning his privates while barely dressed herself. Bobby, I think you missed me somewhere around the top. Then she'd vigorously dry him off when she was finished, and Gary remembered many an erection during this whole process. Gary in fact said that his so-called sexual awakening came while his mother was scrubbing his junk with a grimace on her face. Oh, look at what you've done, you pig. Oh, look at this. Oh, look what you, oh, you disgusting, urine-covered dick. Oh, I hate how covered in piss and shit you are. The pig, you got that from your mother. Yes. Getting called a pig. My mommy. I gave her old Henry's mommy. She treated him like a bad dog. Yeah. Yeah. And later, Gary said that he was both angered and incredibly horny every time his mother scrubbed the urine from his genitals, which of course fused anger, hatred, and sex in Gary's developing mind. And keep in mind that this is not something that happened once, twice, five times, ten times, three times a week for years, if not every night. For years. Could I ask you both, like, let's say you were fathers, and you were, like, let's say, let's put yourselves in this kind of scenario. Mr. Ridgeway? Yes. I'm Mr. Ridgeway. Yes. And you, like, noticed every single time, you know, they're bringing him in there, they're washing all the pee-pee off of his penis, and he's getting super hard, right? And the boy keeps getting older. Right? At some point, when he gets hard, like, do you think that, like, there's no, like, putting some brakes on the process here? You're assuming that the father ever got out of bed. Thomas, like, that was the thing. He's lucky. Thomas Ridgeway would just stay in bed. It's not like he would come in and supervise. But what if you saw your son getting hard every time his mom was your teenage son? Mm-hmm. Every time she washed his genitals covered in urine, he got hard from it. This conversation's gonna be had. Yeah. Yeah. Would you be like, this is what I'm doing. This should probably. I think we should let his coach do this. Like, this maybe is a teacher's job. They should be doing this at school. Yeah. I just think he was just not present, you know? He's probably just hammered and smoking cigarettes in the other room and not giving a fuck about his family. He had a real dad. He was also, he was terrified of Mary Rita. Like, Mary Rita was an incredibly domineering woman. But don't worry, I mean, he's, his contributions to Gary Ridgeway's pathology is gonna be coming up soon. Mary Rita's got those big ol' stinky bags. That's right. She's big stinky bags. Big ol' stinky floppy bags. How I wish I was Baby Gary. Since the area where the Ridgeway family had moved to was not yet a city, their home was surrounded by woods where the Ridgeway boys would explore and play. Gary, therefore, became very familiar with the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and that familiarity would later be used to find all the right spots to hide bodies. Partly, though, Gary was going out into the woods to avoid the constant conflicts between his parents. Mary Rita had become more dominant over the years, ordering Thomas to beat their children when she thought they deserved it. Gary, therefore, began to view his father as weak and soft, while women in general became monsters. Mary Rita also got far more serious about religion. The Ridgeway boys were brought to Mary Rita's Catholic church every Sunday, but their father was barred from coming because the local priest had a problem with the divorce, of course, Thomas had before his marriage to marry Rita. This, of course, caused even more rifts. Let's go, Gary! We're going to church where your father's not allowed! Let's go, Gary! Oh, you got urine all over you. Let me really watch him. Let's go! Your father's not allowed at God's house! Let's go, Gary! Your impression is scaring, Marcus. Oh, let me pack my tits! I forgot to pack my tits, they're loose! And stinky. Yeah, they're big, yeah! Yeah, it's before they made tit deodorant! Big, stinky bags. Big, stinky flopping bags! Even though Mary Rita was obviously noticing her son's bath time boners. Did I see you at JCPenney's earlier today? Sexual pleasure was something that was discussed with scorn in the Ridgeway home. Mary Rita herself taught her boys that masturbation was one of the worst sins of all. She actually told them that it was better to rape a woman than it was to masturbate. So much changes. This is what Gary was being told right as he entered puberty. And the shit that Gary was hearing from his mother resulted in a myriad of abnormal sexual habits. He became a neighborhood window peeper, spying on girls in his neighborhood before being chased off by a parade of angry fathers. In one instance, Gary believed when an older girl came over to his house with friends to watch TV, that all he had to do to have sex with her was to surreptitiously put his erection in her field of vision by pulling his shorts to the side and showing off his erect penis. It seems that the, uh, the, uh, the elevator has to reach its floor. Ding-dong. Over here, over here. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I actually, uh, just watched a body cam where a guy, um, would hang out at a gas station with his penis in a penis pump, and he would, like, get it all engorged and open the window, and he would do this thing where women go by. He'd go, "Excuse me, miss, may I interest you in this?" Ugh. It's awful. I hate when they're nice. Yeah. It's, like, almost worse. It's like, yeah, it's like a Grey Poupon commercial. Yeah. Well, supposedly, Gary watched TV with his neighbor and a whole group of his older brother's friends, and he tried this bizarre little game over and over again for months. The girl never once reacted. Great. Or, at the very least, never acknowledged it. She did the right thing. Well, she should just, sort of, stop going over there. Yeah, she slugged him in the fucking mouth. Yeah. And so should some of those boys. Yeah. Well, you know what it is. But I think no one noticed. That's what he said. He said, he always said that no one noticed. No one said anything. And I think if he was bullied as much as he was, 'cause this is, like, his older brother's friends. Yeah. And, like, I know neither of y'all got older brothers. I got two older brothers. When your older brother's friends see anything to make fun of you for, they go for it. Like, they go for it fucking hard. But what an ultimate example of what Gary's sort of talking about, right? He can't even pull his dick out and get a reaction. He's in this area of all these kids and he's going like, "Anybody see what Gary's doing? Anybody see what Gary's doing?" And he's in the corner! And everybody's just gone, and he's like, "Nobody cares. Nobody cares if Gary pulls his penis out." And that's exactly how he got away with it for so long. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Now, Gary was a loner, both before and after puberty. And since he believed masturbation was a sin that was worse than rape, he got his jimmies out by becoming a "froteur." How do you. actually, how do you. Froteur? Honestly, let's not put the French fucking spin on it. I never heard the word before in my whole life. It's a "frauder." Frauder. You can call him just a fraud. Fraudage. Yeah. Yeah, that's one of the. that's the term. It's when you rub up or brush up against somebody for sexual pleasure. Ah, yeah, of course the French thought of that. But you know, it's like, they do it on the train, like, it's it happens a lot in New York City. It's the thing of where you just kind of like, the guy just sort of lets the tip of his penis touch ya. Or it's also trying to rub up against a woman's breasts, you know, just like this. Yeah. And you're always making it look like an accident. Like, oh, sorry, but very much doing it on purpose. Yeah, people who walk around with the palms of their hands facing out and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Are you a "froteur"? No, I got grabbed. Okay, yeah. Yeah, men love. See, I've been frauded several times. I've been "frotted" myself a few times. Yes. But it was also around this time that Gary found that killing living creatures made him feel better about his anger. After suffocating the aforementioned cat at the age of 14 and throwing the corpse amongst the local roadkill, Gary found that killing something, killing anything, it made him feel strong and important. While Gary was discovering this disturbing quirk to his personality, his father took a second job at a mortuary and quite unwisely decided to be open and honest with his son about everything he heard while working with the dead. Thomas Ridgway would tell the teenaged Gary stories about a co-worker who would commit necrophilia with the female corpses. He would go into grotesque and unnecessary detail with his young son about his co-worker's necrophilia. Son, this is a funny story. I don't know why you're not laughing. Son, this is a funny story about the time I saw Carlos and we Eiffel Towered that old blind woman. Stop taking notes and tell a story! You know, it's just so interesting. Goddammit, every fucking time you say that we don't spend any time together and the moment that we find something that I think that we're going to connect on, you just blow me off! So, what's it like? Well, this caused necrophilia to become central to Gary's sexual fantasies because he began to believe that when you were having sex with a corpse there were no feelings involved one way or the other. It could be super casual. Yeah. Thomas would also be quite vocal about his personal hatred towards sex workers. He thought they were subhuman. And even though Gary would become a frequent customer on the block, both with sex workers he did and did not murder, he would hold the same opinions as his father throughout his life. Now, as far as his mother went, she also overshared with Gary when it came to the sexual escapades that came as a result of her work at JCPenney. Henry, did your mom ever talk about her sexual escapades at JCPenney? How sexy things got? The worst part is when I learned how she knew the term Bukkake. And at first I thought it was because she had went by the sushi area in the food court. And it turns out, no, no, no, no, she met Mr. Yakimoto. No, no, she never had sex there. No. I don't think so, because when we went to JCPenney's, you gotta remember, that was a classy place for us. Sure. Oh, yeah. That was the classy place. That's where I got my communion suit. Yeah, well, JCPenney, I mean, Dillard's was always considered to be above JCPenney. You! Oh, you! You guys had, we dreamt of Dillard's. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Occasionally we'd go to a Bloomingdale's. Or a Burdine's. Who are you? What are you? Oh, Mr. Vanderbilt? Over here? Don't even get me started on service merchandise. No, my mom never fucked or got sucked or fucked or got fucking gaped in a JCPenney's. At least that she told you about. Yeah, I'll call her. Yeah, and honestly, I'll call her and ask. Just keep it if she tells me and she wouldn't tell you. I'm trying to personally, I'm trying to separate the art from the artist. Dillard being her motherhood of men. Understandable. Well, Mary Rita would tell Gary how much she enjoyed measuring men who needed to be fit for pants. Some men, she said, would get involuntary erections from her touch. Like you, Gary! Usually when I'm drying them off! Others would emit a certain scent that Mary Rita would inhale while she knelt in front of their crotch. That's not real. No, it's like a musk. Yes, people shoot scent out of their crotch? No, she's smelling a guy's dirty ass balls. Yeah. She's turned on by smelly balls. Yeah, she's turned on by smelly balls. And she told her son about this. Yeah, which is like the most, like truly one of the, yeah, sure you could be into dirty, smelly balls. God bless you. But I'm saying that, you know, you just save that for the quilting room. But think about this. He's got, his mother is talking about how much she gets turned on by smelly balls. Her, his father is talking about like, yeah, you can fuck a dead girl. It's fine. It's okay. And this is what Gary Ridgway's fucking grown up with. Is it bad that I just got deja vu? It's interesting. It's certainly interesting. This used to be my playground. But Mary Rita also continued pushing her son around to the point of depression and deep embarrassment, even beyond the bedwetting incidents. So Gary began fantasizing about murdering his own mother in great detail. He thought about stabbing her in the heart, choking her to death, and setting the house on fire with her still inside. Still house on fire. Set the building on fire. Gary even fantasized about torturing his mother, thinking often about what it would be like to sew up her vagina with a needle and a thread. It'd be difficult, but also I'd be proud if I could do it. Just because I finally finished something I wanted. I mean, that's the first time you showed creativity. Yeah! Just trying to stay positive. It does show vague creativity. I bet you he just watched his mom preparing the turkey one year for Thanksgiving. He's like, "Uh, that's a good idea." From fantasizing about killing his mother, Gary moved on to fantasizing about raping and killing his classmates. He began following them home with a massive erection while thinking about all the horrible things he wanted to do. Gary privately referred to this as "patrolling" because these serial killers do love their little terms. For their little games. It's all validating. It's all the shit in their head that makes a nice structure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gary's constant rage translated itself into property damage breaking and entering excessive drinking and theft but Gary found that the only thing that really released the pressure valve all the way was violence and Gary's first violent act towards another human came in 1965 when he was just 16 years old this is like out of Stephen King novel it really is in a wooded area beside Gary's high school Gary stumbled upon a six-year-old kid dressed as a cowboy innocently just playing for some reason seeing this child enjoying an afternoon playing cowboy this filled Gary with uncontrollable rage was he an Indian I don't think he had any Cherokee so he approached the boy with a plan he asked the kid if he wanted to go into the woods with Gary where they'd build a fort together because Gary said there were a lot of people around quote would like to kill little boys like you so when Gary got the kid out to the woods and the kid picked up a stick Gary pulled out his knife and stabbed the kid in the head with a knife and stabbed the kid in the head with a knife and stabbed the child in the torso hitting his liver Gary watched and laughed as the blood flowed out of the wound and filled up the child's cowboy boots but instead of finishing the act Gary simply walked away the boy made his way to the road and was found bleeding out by a teacher he survived but Gary Ridgway would not be named as the perpetrator of this crime for another 36 years this of course was after he was arrested as the Green River Killer and he began listing his crimes the cops looked back at the records looked and found when Gary said it happened that there was a kid who was stabbed dressed as a little cowboy it all happened Gary Ridgway could not remember the names of his childhood pets but he had a near photographic memory of every single crime he ever committed that's not true he would well depends on what he'd like because of the you could tell that he fantasized and thought about the stuff that was important to him yeah it's there's there's a lot more photographic there were some things that were hazy let's just say he was all fucked up he's all fucked up but I mean it just turns out for somebody who couldn't remember his pets it was shocking how many uh different shallow graves he could remember different places he could go I just can't believe he was dressing up like a cowboy at 16 no I was getting high and shit no no the little boy was dressed as a cowboy oh no Gary Ridgway was like pew pew I'm a cowboy today howdy I hope you ready to settle up and go down to the ranch oh so the kid was much younger okay yeah the kid was six years old oh I see it all makes sense now I'm sorry it's all right but while the incident with the little cowboy was Gary's first act of serious violence against another human he also very likely committed his first murder around this time later Gary would say that he was unsure if his first murder was a hallucination or a dream which as you're about to find out is a common one of Gary's confessions there is however usually evidence linking Gary's hazy recollections to real life events so they are worth taking seriously in 1964 Gary said that he and a younger boy were swimming in a lake near Seattle when Gary suddenly wrapped his legs around his swimmate's neck and dragged the kid into the water below Gary said that the kid did fight back but Gary held the kid underwater until he stopped moving and once the kid was dead Gary said he pulled his body under a nearby dock and left it floating there now while that might have been a hallucination or a dream public records show that two boys did indeed drown in that same Lake during the same year Gary recalled drowning this boy so it is possible that Gary was responsible for at least one of them and it's not uncommon for serial killers at this age when they're teenagers uh especially even if they end up killing women later on yeah to kill little boys and to just kill anyone well they're around a little boy yeah and that's uh but it sounds a lot like Ted Bundy it sounds a lot like there there's that story you know with Ted Bundy with a little girl when he was a little girl and it matches all his mo's later on actually and we'll find that uh Gary Ridgeway and Ted Bundy share a lot in common but even though Gary's life was becoming increasingly dark both within and without he actually evened out once he got to high school he actually began dating and eventually got a pretty girl named Claudia Craig to go steady after the two of them met at the supermarket where they both worked interestingly Claudia's mother later said that when Gary came over to their house when you know he was 16 17 he'd just sit there and never say a word one day she said that he came over and just sat in a chair for a full eight hours didn't say a word to anyone that's fascinating he just stared at the wall he's just weirdo dude he's just always been he doesn't know how to human like he's like he doesn't know how to be a human being that's better than jammering on for eight hours that is true that is true it's all fine if it wasn't Gary Ridgeway I'd far rather forget that he was there than to get to the end of the eight hours like if you bring that kid over here one more time I'm a murder I hate Gary Gary smells like pee yeah but by the end of it Gary Ridgeway came out of high school in 1970 with the reputation of a normal if dim-witted individual he'd been held back twice by the end of it and therefore graduated at the age of 20 barely able to read or write wow but since this was 1970 and the draft of the Vietnam War was in full effect Gary was actually smart enough to join the Navy to avoid the army because in 1970 guys like Gary Ridgeway i.e guys that were poor and not too bright they were amongst the first to be handed a rifle before being sent away in the jungles of Vietnam God he would have been a great Vietnamese corpse over there so after going through basic training in San Diego Gary was assigned to the USS Vancouver in the Philippines making him yet another serial killer who served in the Vietnam War but came nowhere near combat so interesting seven or eight wow that we know of at the very that and that's just that we know who are the some of the popular ones I don't know David berkowitz um uh Leonard Lake yeah Leonard Lake he he definitely yeah he was a big liar I think Arthur Shawcross maybe yes I'm pretty certain Arthur Shawcross Henry's dad yeah my daddy only could kill my dreams well like so many other serial killers in Vietnam Gary Ridgeway discovered the wide world of sex workers overseas David berkowitz was another who uh got very involved with sex workers over there yeah you can barely tell yeah you don't know apparently though something happened to Gary that he would never actually discuss which is surprising considering how Gary would talk about pretty much anything once investigators got him going Gary said that something happened with sex workers in the Philippines that he never got out of his system something that was so bad that he said he probably should have gone to counseling for it but Gary refused to elaborate any further on what actually happened probably got the kicked out of him by a pimp maybe maybe yeah yeah well one thing that Gary definitely talked about was how the Philippines kick-started his lifelong fetish for inserting foreign objects into vaginas oh he said this developed from experiences with local Filipino sex workers who would walk up to sailors reach under the skirts and pull out pre-inserted beer bottles straight from the vagina wow were they cold they were very warm these beer bottles would then be handed over to a potential customer I suppose as a way to impress or titillate American sailors what did we just learn from the Anton LaVey series what have we learned about old men recently I they were disgusting yeah older men and what they liked was actually way grosser than even what we like now you mean men that from that time from that time period yeah there's something about like like that being like my the stories I heard from my dad when he used to go to hogs and heifers it was a lot of girls peeing and things and heifers oh yeah the original coyote ugly yeah really yeah that's what it's all based off of it's just a lot of old play that we weren't you know there was like panty raids yeah you know yeah before they put up with a lot more they stopped putting up with stuff yeah I didn't think that's I think that's what changed he said stop stop like a lot of Navy men at the time Gary caught gonorrhea twice during his time in the service but he surprisingly didn't place the blame for that on the sex workers he said they actually treated him well and they introduced him to the more erotic sexual practices beyond the vanilla Missionary position he means doggy style that's what he became obsessed with Gary would however also later tell his second wife that he developed a hatred for these same Filipino sex workers so Gary had developed a relationship with sex workers that was to say the least messy he both loved them for giving him pleasure and he hated them for what that Sin represented but even though Gary was having sex with women in the Philippines who both were and were not sex workers he had shipped off to the Navy as a married man his high school girlfriend Claudia Craig had actually agreed to marry Gary before he went off to the Philippines Mary and pee pants Gary man yeah it's men or dogs unbelievable you take on that piss soaked gentleman and then he's gonna go and get covered in fucking gonorrhea and the war. By the time they got together, he'd cleared up the pee-pee. The bedwetting stopped when he was about 15. I don't know if it ever leaves your spirit. You know what I mean? In the doc, it said that he got gonorrhea and chlamydia and that he resented the sex workers for it. And that's kind of like why he started killing people down the road. The doc simplifies it. That's a huge simplification. Yeah. Yeah, that's a massive, massive simplification. Doesn't chlamydia untreated make you crazy? He was treated. Oh, okay. Yeah, because he got treated at the military hospital. He went and got. VA. If you catch a ghost, up and get for it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And really, all of these details in true crime, it's really hard to pin down what's real and what's not. Did he get gonorrhea twice? Did he get gonorrhea once and chlamydia once? It's his story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he lies, too. Yeah. Now, Claudia was left back in San Diego, but she was just as unfaithful as Gary. And because both of them were unfaithful, the marriage fell apart less than a year after they got married. Gary branded his wife a whore, even though he had also stepped out. Dozens of times. And Gary's hatred towards women grew even more. Now, he had tried a few relationships after returning from the Philippines to Washington State. But after he found that he couldn't make anything last more than a few months, he returned to sex workers. All while his rage towards women continued bubbling in his belly. After Gary received an honorable discharge after 23 months in the Navy, he got a job at a plant called Kenworth Trucking that specialized in the production of medium and heavy-duty commercial trucks. 18-wheelers and such. And there, it was discovered that Gary had an affinity for detailing vehicles, which involved painting the lettering, logos, and stripes that indicate which truck belongs to which company or which trucker. Because this is the age of the trucker. Yeah. Convoy! This is when truckers, they were the ones killing sex workers with impunity. And we should have, you know, like, we celebrated them by saying, here you go, here's some PTSD. Kings of the road they were! But Gary did not start off as a master detailer. And whatever Gary did, he always started off making mistakes. But once he got it, he could nail it. The only thing that would trip Gary up is if some part of the process changed. And Gary fucked up so often that he got the long-lasting nickname, Wrong Way, because of how many times he would have to repaint an entire truck after using the wrong color or the wrong kind of paint. Wrong Way, Ridgeway, get it? He did not. He did not like the nickname. He did not like being called that, because they would call him Wrong Way Gary. Yeah, Wrong Way Gary! Wrong Way, which is replaced Piss Pants Gary. And he's just been like, I'm going to burn that whole building down. As far as his reputation at work went, Gary was known as friendly if overbearing, because what gave people pause was Gary's behavior towards female employees. On many occasions, Gary would approach a female co-worker and massage their shoulders without asking them. This was 1972. His behavior was shrugged off as, oh, Gary, he's friendly. He's just a little too friendly, but essentially harmless. I think all the sex-working kind of made him weird with ladies. He might have. Yeah. But even though Gary was a creep, he never had trouble getting wives, much less girlfriends. And he met his next wife, Marsha Winslow, using a tactic that would probably get him pepper sprayed in this day and age. It's just hard out there for women, okay? And the bar is extremely low, and it is only just raised about three inches, maybe. Well, in 1972, Marsha Winslow was driving a scenic loop that circled Lake Washington, and a car very suddenly pulled up quickly and closely behind her own. Marsha pulled over, assuming it was a cop that was trying and somehow failing to give her a ticket, because, if we're being honest, it's not like Gary Ridgway, he did not, the women that he was with were also, they were about as smart as he was. Yeah, I get it. It kind of, it comes up over and over again. You have to be. Yeah, exactly, because any intelligent woman would just shit him out. Yes, this woman was pulled over by him in a way that is very frightening. Very frightening. In the fact that she's just like, no. Okay, I guess I'll see what he wants. But instead, it was Gary Ridgway who introduced himself as an interested romantic party. Just wanted to say you were speeding back there. Into my romantic inclination. Incredibly, Marsha was charmed by his clean-cut appearance and his military manners. And even though he accidentally called Marsha by his first wife's name the first time they had sex. Classic. Marsha and Gary quickly moved in together and were married by 1973. Now, while Gary's first wife said that his sexual habits weren't anything special, Gary insisted on anal sex with his second wife, Marsha, and sometimes talked. She tied her hands and feet with belts from bathrobes. He started getting into bondage. How do they do it upside down in Asia? Gary also began exploring his fetish for having sex outdoors, usually off hiking trails or campsites. Incidentally, he and Marsha would have sex in many of the same places that Gary would later hide the bodies of his murder victims. Aww. Cute. Eventually, Gary became so fond of having sex outdoors that he installed silk-screened wallpaper featuring forest scenes on the headboard of his bed so he could still, quote, enjoy the view while having sex indoors. It's like, well, I'm going. If you could just stop moving your head around because I got all these pine cones. I'm putting these pine cones next to your head. On these trips, though, Gary's behavior was also becoming more sinister. He would suddenly disappear into the woods during hikes so he could practice being completely silent to the point where his wife was worried that he wasn't coming back. And then, at the height of her fear, as she's wandering, saying, Gary, Gary, where are you? He'd either jump out from behind a bush and go, ha! Or he'd grab her arm from behind. Later, Marsha would say, quote, He liked to see how softly he could walk so that he could be just totally nizeless. And he could do it, too. There's an exclamation point on that. He could do it, too. Because that's the thing. The voice that I hear is just like, Yeah, he liked to see how softly he could do it, too. You know? You know, he sounded like a snowcat. A lot of people say I sound like a man. Yeah, I agree. Now, Marsha lasted far longer than Gary's first wife. And by 1975, Marsha had given birth to Gary's first son, Matthew. Where's he at? You know what? Give him his privacy. Side stories, LPOTL at gmail.com. Love to hear from you. I'm guessing wherever he is, he's got a different last name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. After Matthew's birth. Bidge way. Sorry, continue. I know we're supposed to give these people their privacy because it is only right. But I'm always so curious where the fuck they're off hiding to. Of course. You know? Because, I mean, it's got to just destroy you. Most of them are just off trying to live their lives. Every once in a while, you get somebody who wants to come forward and make it their entire identity. Like Dennis Rader's daughter. Well, she's fucked up. She's all sorts of fucked up. That's very rare. Most of the time, these people change their names. A lot of them in the past, as soon as the guy, the husband, gets arrested, the mother will move, change their name, and never speak to them again. I would just, man, if that was my dad, I would just make sure. I mean, I'm already not having kids, but I would just make sure I don't have kids. Yeah, and you just snip it off. Yeah. Or just do the inside cut. Yeah, kill the butt line. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, God. I know. We don't deserve it anymore. Actually, there is an interview with Matthew Ridgway in the News Tribune from 2000 fucking, from, it was updated in 2021. Wow. And it's him being like, it's just weird because, like, my dad never used racial slurs. He never yelled. He never talked about prostitutes. It was just, I mean, I don't know. He just, he was just trying to be a father, like you see in the TV shows. Father knows best. Gary knows best. Gary knows best. That's how bored we all were during COVID. Matthew Ridgway came out of hiding to talk about his father. Actually, I give you some attention. I didn't know you guys noticed. I've been twitching from home. Well, after Matthew's birth, Gary got far more religious. But rather than following in his mother's Catholic footsteps, Gary joined several Protestant churches, as if one church wasn't enough. Marcia described Gary as being almost, fanatical about religion after the birth of their son. He would read the Bible both at home and at work. She said that tears would fall from Gary's eyes during church services, and he'd spend his nights watching TV while clutching his Bible. Gary even started walking door to door in his neighborhood, trying to convert his neighbors. But he would get furious when those neighbors inevitably slammed their doors in his face again and again. Is that common, like people being really religious and also being serial killers? No, not really. They're usually atheists? It depends. Because there's a whole subset. There's the missionary killer. There's a subset of killer that is entirely religiosity-based. It's all like their own fantasy world. So it really depends. Largely, it would turn into a new category. He is a guy that would use the Bible for what I'm going to— My call, my fucking Sunday morning psychiatrist call, is the fact that he used it as like, Like a lot of people use it, which is the possible Hail Mary pass at the end of life. And that he was constantly trying to validate the feelings that he was feeling because weirdly it all came from this like emotional place. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's very easy with Christianity to come to the conclusion that women are evil because there are many churches that preach that specific thing. And many verses in the Bible that talk about it and the whole story of Adam and Eve and every single woman that is ever around Jesus Christ is always just tempting him and doing it. It's almost like they they've been putting that idea that women are evil, expendable whores in our brains ever since we started this whole process. Yeah. And it's the Catholic Church still won't let women be priests. And whenever they want to get more involved, they put them in a habit and stick them in a building. You want to know why? It's because I'm starting to think it's because women. Hold people accountable. Yeah, I think that might be a part of the function. Yeah. Also, I remember him saying in the doc that he that he thought that he would be forgiven if he asked for it. Sure. That's the Hail Mary that Henry's talking about. It's it's there's always that back pocket. They always got to look at David Berkowitz. That's all it is. He's Mr. Jesus now. Yeah. Yeah. When David Berkowitz and Gary Ridgway die by by the rules of Christianity, both of them are going to heaven. Them. It's going to be them. Charlie Kirk, Michael Jackson, all of our favorite. Conor McGregor. Gary's main church was Pentecostal and his pastor and steal, which is bad. Yeah. Bad idea for him. And his pastor instilled even more archaic views about women beyond the horrible shit his parents had already taught him. The Pentecostals taught that wives and daughters wouldn't make it to heaven if they didn't obey their husbands. And even something as small as having short hair or wearing the. Color red. Both of those things, massive sins for women. What if it's our hair? But even worse, it grows out of her cutter, cutter, fucking head off, cutter, sucking head off, save it. This, of course, caused a rift in Gary's marriage, just like it had in his parents marriage, although the male and female roles in Gary's marriage were reversed. But speaking of Gary's mother, Mary Rita soon became the main pressure point in Gary and Marsha's marriage. For some reason, Mary Rita had access to Gary's bank accounts, and she made her opinions known concerning how Gary and Marsha spent their money. People are weird with that shit. Really weird about it. On weekends, Gary would spend his free time with his mother instead of his wife. But Marsha soon discovered that it was probably for the best if Gary went on these visits alone. One night when Marsha came along, Thomas and Mary Rita got into a fight and Mary Rita got so worked up that she smashed a plate over her husband's head. Now, Thomas left the room without saying a word, which had become a pretty common reaction from Gary's father throughout Gary's life when his mother got abusive. But by the early to mid 70s, Gary's head was filled with a bunch of Pentecostal bullshit about how women were supposed to act. And Mary Rita had only become more domineering after she'd been promoted to a manager position at JCPenney. You can't fuck with that shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it wrong that I'm like, rightfully so? Working nine to five. So the idea of how a woman was supposed to act as it was presented in Gary's Pentecostal church, that became mixed with Gary's hatred towards the fair sex, which edged him closer and closer towards serial murder. After Gary got switched to night shifts detailing trucks and Marsha started taking classes during the day, the relationship began to dissolve. Marsha then got gastric bypass surgery and lost a lot of weight. It's always a warning sign, fellas. And she used her newfound confidence to start a career as a professional singer, entertaining locals at nearby bars. I just love her life. I love it. Her life is insane. She's fucking on a great trajectory. I don't like this family, Gary. I'm getting a bypass and I'm becoming a singer. I've had a thing about it, Gary. Gary always making a big deal about the Bible. But my Bible's the songbook of Liza Minnelli. Gary, of course, hated his wife's new lease on life, and he started accusing her of sleeping with other men during her late nights entertaining. This was, of course, projection, because Gary had never stopped seeing sex workers throughout his two marriages, despite what the church might have to say about it. Because remember, he still thinks that masturbation is one of the worst sins in the world. Things between Marsha and Gary came to a head one night when they returned home from a party where they'd both been drinking. They argued all the way home. But when they pulled into the driveway and Marsha got out of the car, Gary hung back. He then snuck up behind her using his silent technique, and he began choking her so she couldn't see who was doing it. Marsha actually thought for a second that some stranger was indeed attacking her, but she soon realized what was really happening. See, after Gary let go, he tried dodging around the other side of the car like a fucking little kid trying to get away with something. Then he emerged pretending to be shocked that, oh, my God. Some guy just tried choking you. That's crazy. You wouldn't believe it. I saw him. He had beady eyes and big, dumb mouth. Ringo hair. Mustache. Mustache. Marsha, of course, knew that Gary was the perpetrator. But for Gary's part, he said that this was the moment when something vicious and evil had been unleashed. He later admitted that choking her had majorly turned him on. He said, quote, Well, after that, I wanted to have sex with a prostitute and kill her doing that. Direct quote. And one of the many things it's hard to pin down concerning. This is what I like. It's so hard. We go through everybody. So it's like, oh, do what you love. And then you never have to work a day in your life. And actually, what Gary shows is an exact example. When your passion becomes your work, you actually never stop working. Yeah, that's true. Epiphanies aren't always good. Yeah, there's been a couple of eureka moments that have been pretty bad for us. Really bad. Yeah, the same guy who created leaded gasoline also created CFCs. We could have used two less eurekas from that guy. You could just see the guy pouring COVID-17 and pouring 18 together into one vial. Now, one of the many things that's hard to pin down concerning Gary Ridgway is exactly when he began murdering women. He told investigators that it was, quote, very possible that he killed several women during the 1970s. But his memories were hazy. The best he could offer was a vague memory of killing a sex worker while he was living with Marsha. But he could only remember that something went wrong on a so-called date and that he probably killed a sex worker during that date. That's just saying this is just how many he killed. Yeah. It's weird. I kind of believe him. Yeah. Oh, 100 percent. I absolutely believe him. He's not smart enough to lie. And he's he's not a Henry Lee Lucas. There is he brought he corroborated quite a bit of what he was talking. About later on. It's just, you know, it's just hard when you look at him and you're like, you can't believe how much devastation this little fucking idiot did. But you can also tell that he's also trying to figure out, like, what happened? He's he's trying to figure out, like, that's why he's talking. He talks so much. And he's like, he even it's a he's a mystery even to himself. And when they do those right. We'll get into it later on. When they do the thing where they drive him around and stuff. And he's just been like, thank you, Mr. Grayson. Thank you so much. And he's just like this nice little man. And he's like whistling and stuff. Now, according to Marsha, Gary kept coming home later and later throughout the mid to late 70s. And he'd often walk through the door wet and covered in dirt with no other explanation other that his car had broken down again and again and again. She also noted that Gary always kept several rolls of a protective plastic covering called this queen in the bed of his truck and several of his later victims. And she also noted that Gary always kept several rolls of a protective plastic covering called this queen in the bed of his truck and several of his later victims would, of course, be found covered in the same variety of plastic wrap. And, you know, he got that from his detailing job. Yeah, of course. So no fingerprints on that? No, actually. So he must have used gloves. Yeah. Well, this is it really depends, dude, because it's like in terms of the technology, fingerprint technology is really nowhere near anything that they show on movies and television. Yeah, it is. So it's such an. In exact science. And it's so not dependable that it's so hard to do because you have to you have to make sure nobody fucks up the scene. Yeah, it has to be pristine. And I guess it's all covered in dirt, too. Well, also remember, like his victims were usually found two, three days later, sometimes years later, some weeks later, years later. This is the Pacific Northwest. It's fucking raining all the time. Yeah. You know, so that makes forensic evidence like fingerprints really difficult to lift. Now, investigators tried their damnedest to pin down Gary's first kill. But the best Gary could do was vaguely recall two or three times in which he thought he'd killed a woman. In these incidents in the late 70s, Gary said that he might have strangled women, then left their bodies in the middle of the street against the fence in a popular park or lying against a newsstand where they would definitely have been found. But Ridgway said that he'd never heard any reports in the media about these women. So he concluded again and again that he had only choked. These women until they'd lost consciousness. And after Gary left them, he thought that they'd just woken up and walked away, saying, quote, you'd figure it. Yeah, she'd wake up if she wasn't dead. You'd figure. Yeah, you would. If I was a bit man, which I am, I'd put $10,000, then I'd kill those women. And by 1980, Marsha had finally had enough of Gary Ridgway. That summer, she told Gary to go out and treat himself to a nice breakfast, alone. And while he thought it was a strange request, he still did what he was told. Simple guy. Simple little guy. Simple guy, simple gal. Go get some breakfast. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine you come home, you know you're in trouble. How much trouble you're in if your wife goes, hey, go get some fucking breakfast. Go off, get breakfast. Go get breakfast. Honestly, that'd be a great way to deal with fights. Yeah. I just keep driving. But when Gary came back home, he found a moving van in the driveway and a very surprised Marsha, who she had expected to have all of her shit and all of her son's shit packed up and gone by the time he returned. Didn't you go to the goddamn Shoney's? I thought you were going to the buffet. No, as a matter of fact, I actually stopped by the Burger King and I got some French toastings. It was actually pretty fast for me. Because, you know, Marsha thought that she could get all of her stuff moved out in the time it takes a man to eat a stack of pancakes. Like I said, not the brightest ball either. Yeah. But regardless of Marsha's cognitive abilities, Gary was extremely upset that Marsha had left. He'd wanted to be a normal family. And now he'd had his second marriage fail after seven years. And they've also got a five-year-old son together. Gary's anger only grew when he found out he had to pay child support. But the new expense certainly didn't stop him from doling out 20 bucks a blowjob to the sex workers he continued picking up around the Sea-Tac Strip. Later, a forensic psychiatrist asked Gary why he wanted to hurt sex workers in the first place. And Gary lamely offered that it was because women had hurt him. Specifically, his first two wives. Gary, in fact, said that he had thought about killing Marsha because he didn't want to be seen as a loser with two failed marriages. Gary even speculated that if he had just killed Marsha back in 1980, he would only have the murder of one woman on his conscience instead of 50-plus. And he actually used that number. He said 50-plus. Because by the end of it, Gary himself only had a vague idea of how many women he'd killed. But he said the only reason why he didn't kill Marsha is because he didn't want to kill Marsha. Because he knew he would be the prime suspect. Which proved that for Gary Ridgway, killing was absolutely a choice. Yeah, so it's weird. He's stupid, but he knows that. You see, well, that's because this is what being stupid, that's like one of the biggest injustices about being stupid. Is that you can be stupid and know you're stupid. He's just smart enough to know how stupid he is. And he can't see. It is like a fog. He can't see all of the reasons. He can't see all of the reasons for the decisions that he makes. Because he works really instinctually and he doesn't have, which shows, again, he would have killed Marsha. If he was going to kill her, he would have killed her. And I actually partially think it's the other, it's the, I kind of thought in my head, this sex should have been free. We should be doing this. She should be loving me. This is like a thing. And when I kill her, it wipes out the whole incident. I feel like there's some of that, too. And then we'll also find out later on, he killed them to freeze them in place. Possibly. Yeah. So then he could do whatever he wants. Not all the time. But sometimes. Enough. I mean, I think with Marsha, the only reason why he would kill her is he would kill her so no one would find out about the divorce. Yeah. Because if he killed her, then he's a grieving widower with a young son and he gets a lot of sympathy from his church, from his peers, from his parents, from everybody. But he knew he was smart enough to know, like, the husband's always the first person. So, yeah. Always a choice for him. Now, not too long after Marsha filed for divorce, Gary was arrested for the first, but certainly not the last time, in relation to prostitution. After cruising for a lady of the night, Gary picked one up and began choking her the same way he choked Marsha. This woman survived and did report the assault to the police. But guess what happened? The police absolutely questioned Gary, but Gary calmly explained that the choking was a justified act of self-defense because the woman, had bitten his penis during oral sex. The charge got dropped. Yeah, yeah, we all know that fucking story. Yeah, buddy, get out of here. No, Ben, no, get out of here. And the cops had no further questions for Gary Ridgway. Cops are great. Damn, that's fucking horrifying. Very bleak. Very bleak. Because, like, even if his case is true, it's still choking a woman. Very bleak. Yeah, still choking a woman. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, and it's. But you forget, Eddie, it's not. It's not a woman to them. It's a sex worker, so she's expendable. Yes. Did he still get arrested for the sex work thing? No. Not worth it. That's what guys do. Well, they can't really prove that. They have to catch you in the act. He said she bit his dick. Yeah. That's what guys do, buddy. Yeah. You know how many whores you choke, right? You know how much you love doing that. My insides just vomited when you said that. You know how much you love doing it. Yeah. That's some really foul shit, Henry. You don't like that? No, I know what he likes. After his divorce, Gary discovered a support group called Parents Without Partners, and he began meeting women that he didn't have to pay to be in his presence. After his divorce was finalized in May of 1981, Gary began dating a woman who is known only as Darla. Darla sounds like she'd be for Gary. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, Darla's for. I would say Darla's for Gary, but Gary's not for Darla. Damn. Now, just like he'd done with Marsha, Gary quickly moved in with Darla in her West Seattle home, although she had no idea what kind of person she was. Darla wasn't really a think-ahead type of gal. No, man, she's a fun lady. She really is. She quickly discovered that Gary was the type who liked sex, and wanted it up to three times a day. And according to Darla, sex was basically Gary's hobby, and Darla liked sex, too, so that was all right. As far as personality went, Darla described Gary as gentle, if a bit dim and detached. But Darla pretty much saw Gary as just a fun fling. He liked having sex outdoors, Darla was an exhibitionist, and since Gary was clean, considerate, and didn't drink much, he was surprisingly safe. Such a barst, you're so low. I like Gary 'cause he likes to fuck outside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hate wolves. That's what I like, I like getting leaves in my clothes. Yeah, hell yeah, that's a branch snapping, oh, I just squirted. Things used to be simpler. Yeah. But Darla and Gary therefore began exploring their sexuality even more. And Gary reawakened his insertion fetish by shoving fruit up Darla's vagina while she was tied up. She did say he never hurt her, and the weirdness of it all was actually quite exciting. From my reading, Gary and Darla seemed like the type of couple who would send nude Polaroids to men's magazines like Gallery for their girl-next-door spreads. Today, they're the type who'd probably upload videos to PornHub under the amateur heading. Nobody knows me. That's what Gallery is, nobody knows. It's only Marcus who collects hundreds of them. You know, you know how, you know your favorite magazine, Bush Hunter. Okay, Gallery, it's better than Hustler, but not as good as Wee, I'll say that. As far as information goes, and as far as, you know. You ever, you don't love, you don't have a subscription to Slit magazine? Dead girl, it's dead girl mother. Hey, hey, you took it to that level. You took it to that place. These are classy magazines. Dead girl month, it's all girls who were alive last month. But while they were all having a fun, sexy time, Gary decided in 1981 that he wanted full custody of his son. Yeah, he needs to be a dad. Darla, Darla, however, already had four kids that were all in the custody of their respective fathers. Yeah, she fucks in the woods. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My father and my first son was the god Pam. Yeah, the green man of folklore. Like I said, you look at these, like, you know, the pictures that they send in, and these old magazines, it's like, what kind of person, what kind of people are these? It's Darla. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Darla, waitress, Pacific Northwest. But she didn't really want to even raise her own kids. Nope. So she certainly didn't want to hand in raising anyone else's. So Darla broke up with Gary, and Gary got another woman to hate. Soon after, though, Gary bought a house on the aforementioned strip in what is now the city of SeaTac between Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. This was the Pacific Highway South, Highway 99 corridor south of Seattle around SeaTac Airport, which was quite the popular spot for sex workers. And so Gary now had a house that was right next to a location where the sex workers were available and numerous. And if we go by what another of his girlfriends said, the one after Darla, this easy access was marching Gary closer to murder. This former girlfriend, whom Gary had also met through the Parents Without Partners support group, said that on fucking Christmas Eve 1981, Gary broke down and told her that he had nearly killed a woman recently. Let's just say, Gary, these confessions are more of a February thing. Yeah. Okay? Because really, honestly, I just want to watch White Christmas. i don't want to do this right now mid-january at the earliest i think so also parents without partners is like a good idea but it should clearly be single moms and single dads all right guys you're sad let's fuck yeah that's all it is welcome to mistakes weekly two months later in february of 1982 gary told another girlfriend that he'd done something and while he didn't say what that something was he did tell his girlfriend to pay close attention to the news in the coming days now no sex worker murders showed up in the news but gary later said that he vaguely remembered murdering a woman at his house around this time and dropping her body off somewhere on highway 18 the identity of this woman if she does indeed exist remains unknown but gary was just two months away from his first official victim whose murder would kick off the news a vicious two-year-long murder spree and a decades-long investigation that of course is where we'll pick back up next time for gary's legendary rampage and a full exploration of the how when it comes to the age of the serial killer god it feels so good to be back in the blood sure like doing true crime i miss true crime honestly yeah so fuck it good work marcus thank you good work everybody good work eddie i didn't do much but watch a documentary patreon.com you can listen to these episodes ad free you can also see last stream on the left live every tuesday 5 p.m pst also go to lp on the left for all of your social media needs i am going to stress you need to go to lp on tv on youtube watch our new hgx too yes if i have to hear one more person says you know why don't they promo these on the show this is the only i know it's at the end we do it at the end because in the beginning it's annoying yes right it's a respect for you we do it at the end but that's the thing is that you don't listen to the end but for those of you listening i love you yeah check out hgx too it's fucking great it really is unbelievable everyone fucking put their best foot forward on that and we have an announcement coming very very soon about bloodbath 77 yeah it'll be coming out very very soon and then we will also be uh go check out we got new things from no dogs coming out we got new things from the brighter side we're coming out we got new things from spun new things from romantasy go and check out all of our various youtube channels yeah right now nerd a mouth too is on youtube yes it is we are we got them on camera we are on camera now and you can really soak it in soaking them nerd soaking our boys soak them in i wish you could be in that room oh man we got two jk ultras left and most importantly if you're sad that you missed the freaking tour we are putting what our last show in oklahoma city is going to live stream out yeah so you guys can get tickets to that stay tuned for exact instructions on that but that is going to be shit next week it's gonna happen i can't wait for everyone to see this show yeah we've refined it over two years yes we've been working on this thing and we're gonna put it to bed and i really want whoever hasn't seen it to see it because it is fucking amazing please we're gonna be in tulsa oklahoma on july 17th and then we're gonna be in oklahoma city on july 18th and then i'm solo running over to plano texas right after that on july 19th so come hang out with me that's where you're gonna meet like what's his name from no country of old men you're gonna go sugar yeah yeah you gotta go over to san angelo for that you know you did you plano you're just too close to texas you're in dallas plano is dallas i know i keep saying plano but it is dallas yeah you're you're you're in dallas and you gotta travel quite far to get to the psychopathic yeah in san angelo one of those days yeah we'll get you out there thank you i appreciate it also this um next weekend july 10th 12th and 13th i'm in the tri-state area come find me i'm gonna be in bethlehem pennsylvania for a salute to bethlehem newark new jersey on the 12th and city winery in new york city with a bunch of uh i booked uh some friends of the round table if i was a little surprise for you guys so that's gonna be a lot of fun that's really nice fuck yeah bringing them chuckle hunters out of retirement and i love to hear it dust them off bring them up we'll be back we'll see you next week hail sweet satan pee pants gary i'm gonna hail my new cousin melody and mitchell who got married right next to the forest where gary ridgeway was murdering these people yay may your union be blessed it's another wonderful connection welcome to the family Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.