Episode 673: Gary Ridgway : Redux Part III - The Riverman

There's no place to escape to, this is the last talk on the left. That's one of the cannibalism started. Oh man, I hope Gary can really make his way out of this place. I really think after last week Gary's in a lot of hot water. I sure hope he can figure his way out to get out of this one. Scott, come on Gary, give it a happy ending. Find Christ Gary. Oh Gary Ridgeway should they get himself into a pickle this time. Come back after the commotion break. She'll gear I can get away from the shield. We need more bluegrass rabbits in this story. I'm going to last podcast on the left ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks and I'm here with bluegrass Henry Zabrowski. I was watching this video of a group of people finding a Japanese bluegrass band. I also serve that it took you. That was cool. It looked awesome. They're more white than us. I was very impressed. They don't want to sing white so well. They do. Yeah, truly so. And we've got the man who's been known as browngrass at every campsite he's ever been to. It's Ed Larson. That's right man. I'll spray it large dude. Is your, yeah. You're in like a bear where it's so moan you're written that it does kill grass. Now I tell you what it smells. It's fucking great. My urine smells so bad. It smells itself. Here. Here. God. On that note, we're here ladies and gentlemen. Gary Ridgeway, part three, the conclusion to this series. Stinky urine. So when we last left Gary Ridgeway, the year was 1984. And the murder spree that would make Gary one of the most prolific serial killers in American history was finally coming to a close. But while Gary had supposedly been trying to help the green river task force by writing a letter to the authorities giving tips on how to bring his reign of terror to an end. His near eligible communication had not impacted the investigation in any meaningful way. So in February of 1984, Gary Ridgeway wrote another letter to two Seattle newspapers with the words very important written on the outside of the envelope. We're going to want to open these. They're very important. It helped that it looked like it was written by a zero killer. It's like a big V little eye important spelled wrong. Yeah. It looked like it was from a crazy person. But that's the incredible thing about the Gary Ridgeway is not known at all as a letter writer. You know, you talk about Zodiac, you talk about BTK. No one ever mentions Gary Ridgeway as a letter writer. You could barely paint. Yeah. I legitimately believe what we're seeing here truly is the fact that they weren't cool. The Gary Ridgeway wasn't cool that the Gary Ridgeway letters were in cool. No. And that the Zodiac letters make sense because it's fascinating and it's the puzzle and it's all that kind of shit. And they like all the black dollia stuff is very interesting and compelling. Yeah. And all the repper is compelling and interesting. And BTK stuff is like as douchey as it is. It's still fucking chilling. Yes. Gary Ridgeway was such a bad writer. He bored the investigators out of them taking his letter writing seriously. Do they get lots of like fake letters? Sure. Yeah. Now they always have to decide whether or not the letter is actually from the killer or not. It's pretty, it's very difficult and in the midst of the investigation to tell which is which. I know it's not fake. The fact that they found Nancy Guthrie's cat collection right outside of the North Pole. And I'm starting to think that maybe Santa's got something to do with Nancy Guthrie's naughty exit. Oh, she's the new Mrs. Claus. Yeah. Because once he touched her, the oils of Santa oils means she can't be touched by another man. Sure. Yeah, I heard about that. What contained in the very important envelope was a two-page letter. But while the one sent before was ostensibly meant to be helpful, this one was more about throwing police off Gary's trail. Good thing he didn't send it to them. Yeah. This letter was speaking to that point written by a moron. So the letter written as numbered lines with all the words running together with no spaces whatsoever. It didn't have any more of an impact on the overall investigation than the one that came before. But it is still a fascinating artifact. After starting off with instructions in which Gary wrote what you need to know about the green river man don't throw away with no written as in oh, Gary listed off 40 things to know about the green river killer. He's smart. He's tall. He's Asian. Also noticed that he called him the green river man and not killer. Yeah. Yeah, that is true. Well, many of these things to know were nonsensical, like number 11. You work me or nobody. But actually, now that I read it out loud, I think I think he's trying to say you work with me or you don't work with anybody. I don't think that Gary knows. I think that's like one of those like you know how like we don't know what the Eggman means. Yeah. It's so weird to like see a man right as stutter. Yeah. Nobody. But perhaps the most baffling is number 26. Realist man is one man. Yep. I can't make sense of that no matter how many times I read it. I just sat in my fucking office just going, realist man is one man. Realist man is one more. Realist is one man. I don't know. Man is one man. You know the answer to this too real? I do actually. I do believe. Realist man is one man, right? He's meaning it's one guy. It's not multiple killers. Okay, so the realist man is one man. And he's me the most possible the most likely possible suspect is one man. A person who is working alone. I always think of like this one guy in Tallahassee who did heroin. He was always like you want to get real man. Remember that. That's what he's talking about. If you're real I'll stay over here in my fake amazing life then. But hidden within all a Gary's nonsense where actual clues that this letter was really from the Green River killer. Gary wrote about at least four things that were never released in the press. Like number two on the list, which said one black in river had a stone in the vagina. Why? Actually it's a whole that is a lot of it. I don't know. See the stone detail have been kept a secret from the press for just such an occasion as this. As for some of Gary's other predilections like what was mentioned number eight. That one said he had sex after they dead. He smokes not carried in smoke. But he was indeed a committed necrophiliac if committed is the right word here. I actually do think that that makes a lot of sense because he's always wanted. He does want credit, which we now know in the end, right? He wants people to know the exact nature of his crimes. He was super interested in and we know for his behavior after the fact he gets off on it. So that's him directly admitting that he's a necrophiliac and that was a part of the game. But then all of the stupid chap he threw out of the fake cigarette butts that he was stealing from the street and stuff. That's him being like, he said, "Now I'm thinking, that's the night in DHS." You're being like, "Oh, I'm Nana." And when did he send this? This was in 1984. Sorry, 1985, I believe. So it did kind of work. Yeah. Actually, it was February of 1984. Yeah, so he was captured for another one. 18 years. Many years, many, many years, not in that millennium. Yeah. Gary maintained in conversations with investigators later that he would not go back and have sex with the dead bodies in the days after a murder. I've never once gone back and had sex with the corpse days after a murder. Instead, Gary said that he had sex with the bodies right after he killed them. Which he's supposed to technically make a necrophiliac? 100%. If she's dead, you're fucking or it doesn't matter what her temperature is. Because you could put her in a fucking hot bowl of water. If you want to, you could run a bath and make her, you could warm her up. That doesn't make her then alive enough for it to not be necrophilia. Also, I would say that necrophiliac might be the best thing he is. It's definitely got the least amount of victims that know what's happening. But Gary Ridgeway loved to talk once he got him going. And after investigators pushed him on the necrophilia angle just a bit, he admitted that he would return to the corpses over the following days, having sex with them again and again. Quotes until the flies came. Oh, then he had a deadline. Yeah. Oh, that's fine. The man has standards. Yeah, he knows when to stop. Yeah. But the flies come pretty fast. Very fast. I get bitten by flies and I'm alive. Are you blind, Stan? Well, as far as why Gary had sex with some corpses and not others, Gary actually saw necrophilia as a kind of twisted complement. But not for anything physical. Instead, Gary's necrophilia was a commentary on the victims overall the meaner just before their murder. It's nice to know he's not shallow. He's in love with the corpse's mind. Yeah. Gary said that the women who had made him particularly angry, those were the ones whose corpses were left alone after the murder, because to Gary leaving a corpse in some deserted spot. by itself, that was a punishment, a visit from the necrophilia fairy, however, was considered a reward for the corpse. Oh, that's what it is. It's a reward. Yeah. I didn't know that. I should have been. We should be thanking you. Yeah. Did he leave quarters at least? [laughter] You see, you know, that quarter, a new forehead means I'm next. [laughter] Okay. You leave that alone. Now, even though the letter said to the press, is it from a necrophilia fairy? It's just like a crab. Like, I guess no one wants to fuck my corpse tonight. [laughter] Really? For me, the necrophilia fairy looks exactly like the nerve-ending fairy, so you're in stinkies. The same guy. I was the same exact guy. I was definitely thinking when it's stinkies. Stinky, weasel teeth. But even though the letter sent to the press had made mention of details that had not been released to the public, the second-to-last line in the letter made investigators unshures to how seriously they should take it. At the very end, Gary wrote, "There was a book lift at Denny's. I got this ought of it belongs to cop. Call me Fred." If you couldn't decipher that, the writer was trying to say that he had gotten all his information from a notebook that a detective had left behind at a Denny's. Yeah. There was a book lift at Denny's. Left at Denny's. I got this out of it. Okay. It belongs to a cop. So their idea is that that's how I know all these super-secrets is that I took some detectives journal from a Denny's. Yes. Is that real? No. No way. Well, that's the thing. No detective would admit that he had left a notebook back at Denny's, but they also couldn't rule that out that someone had left a notebook at Denny's, but just wouldn't admit to it. But he'd get it. He was at the Denny's. Oh, it just happened to be at the Denny's and the detective left the notebook and he grabbed it and he's like, "Ah, or maybe I know all this stuff because I found a notebook at Denny's." After I strangled three underage prostitutes to death, the first thing honestly I want is a moons over my hand. Yeah. And maybe the cop wasn't ashamed of losing the notebook just eating a Denny's. Yes. It's a cop. No one can know it. I had Belgian waffles for dinner. The thing was that this line, it effectively removes the letter from contention concerning things only the killer would know. Furthermore, too many people had handled the letter before it got from the press to the cops. So fingerprinting was impossible. A so-called expert at the FBI also examined the letter and determined it to be inauthentic. So the letter was filed away as close, but no cigar, even though it was absolutely written by the Green River Killer. It does often seem that the guys investigating this specific set of crimes really looked for opportunities to not do it. From what it seems, I did think about that, but these guys really did work their asses off. They did. But it's much wrongly. What it was is, yeah, they just had the worst instincts at every possible moment. And to me, it does kind of speak to Tacoma and how badly people's brains were fucked up. Everyone's brain was fucked up in Tacoma during this period of time. No one's thinking straight. Yeah, Kurt Cobain's life should have been great. Obviously. Oh, you know, you want to know the conversations me and Carolina have had at the house of like how the Tacoma smelter may have led to the Grunge movement. I don't know, I mean, you can't prove it, but it's kind of funny because you very rarely, like we see a lot we talk about, you know, the less dad we talk about corruption. And it's like, what do you do? If they're given their 110%, it just happens to be a bunch of guys that got D's and Cups school. You know, like there's bad at the job. Yeah. And even the FBI coming in can't help them out. Like they're just all sitting there like the guy who gets really mad when he can't figure something out. And that feels like it's all of them. I mean, a bad cop can't solve a murder. Now, I was in jail once in a really shitty town called Bluntstown. And I remember I got locked up for a night because I was got in trouble for smoking weed. Bluntstown, Florida. Yeah, down in Florida. Yeah, it's Bluntstown. We had a blunt. We went to jail for the night. Very funny. Yeah. But I remember when I was in there, I was the guy, one of the guys I was, who else was in the jail? I was like, what'd you guys do? I was like, oh, we're in there for smoking weed. He's like, man, that's the only crime you can't do in this town. [LAUGHTER] A salt, right, forgery, man, I do everything. Yeah. It's hard, though. Don't even try to jail. Now, relatively speaking, the murders tapered off in the spring of 1984. Even though there was still a staggering amount of bodies, 10 between February and May, the deaths were-- Remember, that's some serial killers entire output. It's many serial killers entire output, yeah, especially this time of point in time. So the X5, right? Yeah. Yeah. But the deaths were still coming at a slower pace. But even so, the cops were actually starting to wonder if there might have been two killers on the loose, because Gary would treat a body differently based on where he left it. The body's left on dry land, for example, would be buried or hidden under piles of logs, sticks, or debris. If they weren't buried, the body's left on dry land sometimes appeared to be intentionally posed in sexually-lood positions, which is something that serial killers are known to do because of the secondary trauma it causes to the person who finds the body. BTK was really big on this. But again, investigators were thinking too hard when it came to Gary Ridgeway's motivations. Instead of setting up a scene to be purposefully shocking to whoever found it, like Jack the Ripper's the best example, Gary's bodies only appeared to have been left in lower positions because these bodies were the ones that Gary had returned to for the act of necrophilia. And Gary had not, so to speak, cleaned up after himself following the necrophilia. He just left the bodies in a sexual position. God damn that looks sexy. Oh my god. Oh my god, I got it. Wait a second. I'm a copup. I'm investigating this. I can't be maybe just a couple of minutes. Hi boys. Boone or Jack. Yeah. Oh, that's a lood sexual position. I can tell by my penis. Now while the body count had slowed down in 1984, investigators were still looking for any help they could get in their quest to catch the green river killer. In October of that year, special investigator Robert Kepel received a letter from the most unlikely of sources. Kepel got a letter from perhaps the most notorious serial killer of the century. Theodore Robert Bundy. See, in 1984, Ted Bundy was already on death row down in Florida, but in July of that year, guards had not only found two hacksaw blades in Bundy's cell, but they'd also discovered that Bundy had already cut through one of the bars and glued it back in place so no one would be the wiser. He was two bars away from escaping for what a third time. I can't. It's just a bit of an art project. I'm working on it. Okay. You ever seen the greatest escape? That's just what I'm trying to do, but in a fictional way, you know what I mean? As well, no Bundy was a master escape artist, so it is generally believed that Bundy offered his expertise to the green river task force as a way to delay his execution. So he could buy himself enough time to escape from prison. He of all serial killers, too, was one of those that got so juiced up talking about his own crimes and talking about the crimes of others. It's also just another sexual escape. Yes, it is. Now, as it turned out, the FBI Behavioral Science Unit really was onto something when they started interviewing inactive serial killers so they could catch active serial killers. But the problem is that the serial killers were sometimes better at building a profile than the FBI. In case in point, this Ted Bundy's work on the green river killer. While Robert Restler's profile on the green river killer had been so general that it was useless, Ted Bundy came far closer to nailing Gary Ridgeway than any other person who worked on this case. And that's regardless of Bundy's real motivations in helping the task force, whether it was to buy extra time, give himself a boner, didn't matter. He still did a great job. He would have been a great cop. Well, you know, he was a lawyer. You know, there are plenty of cops who love to murder. They really do. Yeah, they really do. Well, Bundy said that he was only mildly interested in the case until he signed up for a subscription to the Tacoma News Tribune. After learning about the crime scenes and further detail beyond the scant national coverage, Bundy became fascinated. Kepple believed that Bundy saw a mirror image of himself in the green river killer, which is even more chilling when you remember that Bundy was also from Tacoma. And it grown up in the shadow of the same smalting plant as Gary Ridgeway. So Kepple replied to Bundy in a short, one-page letter that agreed to hear Bundy's thoughts on the case. Two weeks later, Kepple received a 22-page reply from Ted Bundy regarding the killer that Bundy liked to call the "river man." And Bundy's take on this is especially impressive when you consider that he made all of these guesses based solely on local reporting from the Tacoma News Tribune. So much better than the Green River killer the river man. Yeah, the river man sounds like the dark musical based upon this story I took them, but they don't stay down I rope them, but they don't get down. Oh, I love a girl when she's lying flat I come and get her and that is that that's why you gotta have friends After reading the letter Kepple flew down to Florida where he let Bundy expand upon his thoughts Bundy said that even though the river man focused on sex workers He was only doing so because sex workers were the most vulnerable subset of women available to the killer check any woman would do Bundy said just so long as that woman wouldn't be missed he specifically said that out loud. Yeah This had nothing to do with the killer having a particular garage against sex workers instead Bundy chalked the killer's choice of victim up to laziness I actually completely agree they were accessible and he knew that they were vulnerable 100% and he because he did kill women who were not sex workers in this Bundy obviously saw himself as superior because Bundy had Admittedly evaded capture after killing pretty young co-eds around the country I mean the murders that Bundy committed if they were committed today they would have been national tragedies Yeah, Bundy was also absolutely fucking correct in how he guessed Gary Ridgeway's motivations and choosing victims I'm gonna say this in a kind of almost this might might be an appropriate analogy Okay, but I kind of you Ted Bundy as a sort of Oracy style serial killer where he views himself as he said But he views himself as like a genius artist almost in a way that elevated serial killing up to a point in which I don't think he would choose to talk about a serial killer that he would feel was at his level I think he looked at Gary Ridgeway as almost like a factory of killing. Yeah a number. It's like a numbers thing Yeah, he got a lot of numbers, but it's but it's one of those things like it's like I'll give you a sports analogy Yeah, okay sure. Yeah, it's like when someone says like yeah, they're a good team, but they're in a shitty conference Like anybody could fucking get that like if I was in that fucking conference anybody I could get those numbers Yes, you know, that's Ted Bundy that's Ted Bundy when it comes to Get it comes to Gary Ridgeway because they are very hierarchical in their brain serial killers They are very of like especially Ted Bundy Gary Ridgeway was they know true crime They these a lot of times they reinvest in true crime and because they have considered zero killing to be their job or their career Yeah, no, I wouldn't say Marcy father John Misty The father John misty of zero killing that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I totally get that Well, Bundy also nailed that the river man was nice easy go on and he looked like many of the men that a sex worker might hang out with Safely every day that man that there was nothing memorable threatening or unusual about the green river killer Which described Gary to a tea and smartly Bundy advise the green river task force to keep the body locations a secret So they could stake them out because the river man was almost guaranteed to return to a location with another body If he thought it was safe to do so and had the task force actually done this They absolutely would have caught Gary Ridgeway because Bundy also surmised that no matter how many bodies they discovered There would always be more even if the killing slowed down the only way the river man would stop Bundy guest is if he died Found Jesus or was put in jail for something else He's also Gary Ridgeway told them the same thing He said you should go to where I killed people before and you should wait until I show back up Yeah, he literally said it. Gary's a moron. Yeah, he had said it a year before and Bundy's telling them again Like stake out the body sites. He's gonna come back like fucking the bodies. Yeah, just put put in the work That's it like just hide get a deer blind something talk to the flies. Yeah And they're like we don't Snitch I don't fucking by the hand that feeds I know that I like better than the teddy of a dead little girl It's my favorite thing in the world of God. So she out anyone else spoke copper Well, Bundy also correctly guessed that the river man would have dump sites close to wherever he picked up his victims So there would be as little time as possible between the abduction the murder and the disposal Do you know that he actually said that you know he just recently he came out and talked about this year Gary Ridgeway saying that he had hit kits buried really Yeah, wow. Yep, huh the only with Bundy had was his strong assertion that the green river killer loved watching pornography and horror movies Because Bundy became a crusader against porn and horror near the end of his life In fact, it was Bundy's assertion that pornography and horror movies were the main cause of the serial killer epidemic What an asshole. I mean, we now know this is Incredibly off base because the numbers of serial killers currently operating within the United States is Estimated by the FBI, then this is the most incredible number of all between 25 and 50 50 at most is Ridiculously low when compared to even the most conservative 20th century estimates concerning active serial killers per capita It puts us below 1940 levels and there has never been a time in human history when pornography and horror have been as Available mainstream and popular as they are today. So Ted Bundy's claims which were eventually picked up and amplified by the Christian media It complete an utter horse shit. It was the fucking pollution full stop question fucking answered when it comes to serial killers Horton horrors with makes me a good person. Yeah, I tell you get your Jimmy's out exactly. Yeah Also though I will say now you don't have to stop watching porn. You don't even have to rewind the tape Yeah, you just find a new. It's the best part. Yeah, with streaming. You know, they just started another horror movie for you You don't have to leave to kill yeah, and you know It's great about watching that porn on the internet. I love sharing it to social media. Yeah She can click on that share to Facebook that's my favorite. I love to put a little comment like which she'd be uglier Yeah, then I retweeted obviously because I want everybody to know. Yeah, I blame the rewinding The rewinding okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, be cut because you know people don't like being kind No being kind in the 80s and 90s was usually pretty aggravating and you must be kind to rewind. Yeah, exactly Another mystery solved That even though Ted Bundy painted a pretty good picture of Gary Ridgeway his contributions to the case ended up being just as meaningless as every other attempt to catch the green River killer Mostly because the task force didn't act on any of his suggestions In fact as the news stories about the murder slow to a crawl in the first half of 1985 Many people come to believe that the killer had either moved on or died and as it turned out Gary Ridgeway had somewhat moved on They were so happy when they didn't have to investigate these murders anymore Yeah, well as as they they slowly started getting reassigned starting in 1985 You know that number was at 25 on the task force at its highest and starting in 1985 once the murder slowed down And it's not in the news anymore and nobody's fucking talking about it anymore. Those cops just Start getting reassigned to other cases But nobody could have guessed however with the inspirations behind Gary Ridgeway slow down So when Gary was asked by investigators after his capture as to why he slowed down his killing so much after 1985 His eyes filled with tears, and he said that he slowed down when he met his third wife Judith Has come alone But when you look at the time line When you look at the timeline Gary's pace had already slowed down prior to Gary's first meeting with Judith in 1985 Because you started making Gary a priority with yeah, he starts me putting Gary first Yeah, well kind of sorta as far as what slowed Gary down first. I got two words for you Yard work Gary said that whenever he got angry in the early eighties he'd go out and murder a sex worker to alleviate the pressure Yeah, but by the mid eighties Gary was instead funneling more and more of his anger and to rake in the leaves or more in the lawn This is seriously what he said This is a hundred percent what he said. This is what he told investigators and that's in it rings true because he Everyone always says Gary stopped because of Judith Gary. It was when he met no he slowed down He'd already started slowing down six months before he had eight months before he even fucking met Judith And the only other thing that Gary ever said as to what helped him with his anger Yard work, you know, I actually wonder if there was just one time he came his pants while raking the leaves And then he said great. Thank God. I can do this now. I fucking believe it You know, I moved into a house not too long ago and Julie's been working in the backyard for like nine months And she hasn't killed anyone in a while. It's hard. She's so tired Well, what this shows you is that Gary once again proved himself to be both far simpler and far more complicated than anyone could have guessed. 'Cause he's dropped it as simply as he picked it up. Yeah, now as far as how Gary met Judith, the woman who supposedly stopped him from killing so much, Gary had continued dating women throughout his most active period as the green river killer by using the parents without partner support group as his dating pool from 82 to 84. He's still dating that whole time. That's fucking charming. He's a fun guy. He's a nice funny guy. He's a horrible advertisement for parents without partner. It is. It has seemed to mean well, but none of this is saying anything good about him. We all know who you meet there. But since the green river killer was such a big story, Gary's alter ego became a topic of small talk conversation during one of his dates. The date who brought it up of course had no idea that she was indeed talking to the very subject of their conversation, the green river killer. This woman later recalled that when she brought up the green river killer on her one date with Gary, he got very serious to the point of being physically tense. He then asked her what she thought about the killer and what he was doing. "Do you like it?" "Yeah, actually, it's kind of interesting. So yeah, I have been personally invested in a kind of wondering, should I start killing sex workers?" "Great answer." She didn't really know what to say, so she kind of made a joke. She's like, "Well, you know, if I was prostitute, I'd be getting a new job around about now." But Gary, he actually asked her if she thought that society was better off without all these horlots falling up the street to sea-tap. "Well, I was doing a bit and you kind of made it serious, though. I'm going to go and think, though." Sensing a massive red flag, the woman decided it would be probably best to just agree with anything Gary said from that point on. "Yup, definitely better off. Let's talk about something else." Green River Killer is definitely correct, absolutely Gary. As a woman, yeah, I am on the Green River Killer side. "They keep distracting the good men." But Gary didn't want to let it go. Later on in the date, Gary decided to be up front with this woman by telling her funny story. "I've actually been interrogated by the FBI as the Green River Killer for like eight hours, because you know, one of those missing girls' phone numbers was in my address book, and when the woman said like, "Oh, yeah, Gary's saying a whole thing, but big misunderstanding. I'm friends with this missing girl's sister, and that's why I had the address in my notebook." Green River Killer, that's crazy. "Oh, the buzzer went off. We could go to our table now, but I don't feel very good." "I'm going to go." Gary tried laughing the whole thing off, but this date did not return for a second helping of Gary Ridgeway after that incredibly awkward night. And to think she could have been the one sucking his dick enough for him to stop Kelly and prostitute. All right? The good ones always get away. It's a horrible excuse. How would the cops get your notebook to know that the phone number was in it? Yeah. Stupid. It's a bad excuse. It's a really bad excuse. He's the Green River Killer. She didn't ask any follow-up questions, and she just shook it off, and then got a hold of police later when they asked, you know, does anybody have any information on this Gary Ridgeway guy? She came forward like, "Yeah, yeah, it was weird." Yeah. Now about six or seven months after Gary's most active period ended, he met another woman at parents without partners. This was just after Gary's birthday on February 18th, and he told this woman after they were introduced, actually, I'm still celebrating my birthday. It's got my birthday month. This woman kindly wished Gary a happy birthday, and the two of them ended up immediately bonding that very night over their many failed relationships. Gary, of course, had his two marriages behind him, but this woman had just ended a 19-year-long marriage the year before, right after her husband had come out of the closet. Her name was Judas, and her streak of bad luck with men was set to continue, because she was destined to become Gary Ridgeway's third and final wife. You left out best. They, they, they, they, they were the final and best, they were the, that was the one that stuck. That was the one where the love came in, man. It really was. It's got a crazy, at least you two, two little guys, just fucking, I wish a block. The pickens must have been slim in Tacoma during the mid 80s, because Judas was fucking blown away by the life that Gary Ridgeway had built for himself. You have four walls, and the home is heated, and this toilet work, this truck, it's so filthy. It's a wonderful film full of hair. Judas was impressed that he had held the same job at Kimworth Trucking for years on it. Oh, my God. Even though everyone at work had started straight up calling Gary Ridgeway, green river Gary, because of how many times he'd been questioned by police in relation to the green river killer. I'm just sick of being single. I just want to settle down. Like can you imagine, like, meeting her after, like, you know, they all meet up for a drink, like, yeah, you know, come out and meet my buddies from work, and they're like, oh, yeah, you're a green river Gary now, huh? Yeah. Oh, we just call him that because he loves prostitutes, you know, and he's been questioned by that B.I. But you know, each time I have been acquitted of any suited crime, it's not for me. She's the personification of if you can't beat him, join them. Literally. Just like, yeah. But do this also found Gary to be kind, attractive, and masculine. Both of them loved country music, both of them loved camping, and both of them loved hunting for treasures as Gary put it at yard sales. They're fucking pack rats. They're hoarders. No, you know what they are. They're anti-groucho people. No, dude, anti-groucho is so far above their radar. Look, these are the type of people who'll go to a yard sale and haggle at like a tinscent candy dish. Yeah. Like, no, no, I give you a nickel, for that ain't worth no more than a nickel. That's a real shopper. Yeah. Judith also likes that Gary didn't have any friends. Most people, that's a red flag, and someone doesn't have any friends. But for Judith, it was a plus, because it meant she could have Gary all to herself. And this whole relationship nearly died right at the beginning. But this truly was a case of a lid for every pot, because Judith showed from the start that she was both willing and able to compartmentalize and eventually ignore Gary's predilections. See, just a few days after Gary and Judith hit it off, the Green River Task Force picked Gary up yet again, after a formal complaint was filed by Penny Bristo. This was years after her near-fatal encounter with Gary. You're telling me this is just a follow-up to a follow-up? Yeah. That's all this is. If you remember, Penny was the sex worker who'd gotten away from Gary after he'd tripped, trying to chase after her, because his pants were around his ankles. Penny's complaint had resulted in the aforementioned polygraph, which, as we said, Gary had easily passed. But Gary decided that it was best to be honest with Judith about his encounter with the task force. He told her what he told them that he was innocent. It was all a misunderstanding. Didn't even know this girl. And if Gary was able to fool the cops and a polygraph machine, he was certainly capable of fooling Judith. For her part, Judith figured that since the authorities had let Gary go, he wasn't the Green River Killer. But if he was, they would've fucking arrested him. So within a matter of months, like three months after Gary had to take a polygraph as to whether or not he was the Green River Killer, Judith moved in to Gary's home near the strip, a home that had up to this point been the site of many, many murders. You know what this tells me? If you're a single guy and you can't find a woman, move to Tacoma. It's a good place. I'll actually. It's a romantic place. I'll amend that. But moving near a smelting plant, there's probably one close, you don't have to move all the way to the Pacific Northwest. There's probably one in your state. You know we turned up the dumb. Yeah. I think a lot of what Gary Ridgeway does is he were kind of turns into that bean bunny version of himself where he's just like, "Oh, I don't know, I don't know." He becomes real simple. And I honestly think many women in a horrific way are super interested in a form of baby like husband, that they can dress and feed and take care of, and then they know he won't fuck around because he's just kind of kept in the house. He's helpless. Yeah. Make him helpless. Like he's a ferret. We'll talk about that later on. You're at the nail in the head, on that one. I could only imagine how haunting and retro-spec their conversation was when he told her about getting picked up by the cops and getting let go, and they all probably just sat there and laughed. Yeah, look at her. It's crazy afternoon. After Judith moved in, the two of them began building a happy, entirely normal life together. They'd take Gary's son Matthew to the zoo on weekends. They'd go on fairy boat rides. They'd had picnics. They'd attend monster truck rallies. They'd pick over the garage sales of the Pacific Northwest for so-called treasures to add to their rapidly-growing pile of junk. A house. Is that it? Is that it? Is that it? Do you see them, like, you know, the 16-millimeter cameras? Yeah. All right. All fast, you know? I'm just like so excited. Yeah. It's the conehead's manta. Get this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Paul Simon playing in the back. Oh, yeah. A Gary said that he didn't have the desire to kill anymore after he and Judith got together, but that's utter horset. Really what Gary meant was that he didn't want to get caught anymore, so the killing slowed down considerably. So where he killed at least 50 women between 1982 and 1985? Remember that fit, at least. At least. And that's like, he had killed, provably killed, 48 women, and it's probably more, and it's all between 82 and mostly between 82 and 85. His body count after meeting Judith, though, was considerably lower. Between 1985 and 1998, Gary Ridgeway killed only four more times that we know of, with an increasing number of years between each kill. That's barely anybody. Right? It's like he's barely sir going off. Come on. Why are you just like, it's like when I was smoking one cigarette a week. Yeah. Well, Gary was trying to put the green river killer behind him. The green river task force continued their investigations, and bodies from Gary's earlier kills were continuing to be found across the areas surrounding Seattle and Tacoma. In March of 1986, two members of the Parks Department found a human skeleton missing its skull sitting at the base of a tree. This was the body of Tracy Winston, who disappeared three years earlier. The head would not be found until 2005 near Issaquah, Washington, because Gary had moved the skull. He went back to the body after a decomposed, grabbed the head, and put it near Issaquah, because he thought it was clever. He thought it would confuse investigators. And that is a, that is a type of necrophilia, I think, in a way, where he would be, he was really invested in his bodies. He loved his bodies, and he viewed them all as belonging to him. Yes, he did. Well, more bones were discovered from other victims throughout 1986, and even though Gary Ridgeway attacked another woman who survived that same year, investigators were still looking elsewhere. Their new suspect was a 52-year-old construction worker named Ernest McLean, billed to his friends. He'd gain the attention of the task force after he told a coworker, "Hey, you know, how I pick up a sex worker and killer." Oh, but they're just having fun. There's just guys help tell us. Tell us how guys talk, cause lots of them talk, yeah, this is boys being boys, boys being boys. I don't know how many times it hurts someone around these offices, be like, you know, I want to do it later. Sometimes I want to get five or six sex workers, I want to tire them up with a rope. I want to cover them, gasoline, and set them on fire, but that's only just because I'm tired. Yeah. You know what, fuck it. Let's just go get a sandwich. Yeah. You don't have to worry. Slow blood sugar. Yeah, I'm angry. Well, McLean and his wife were both surveilled at great expense, but nothing was found to link him to any murder at all. Much less anything connected to the notorious GRK. You know, there is some talk, Gary, who's saying there's now some talk that he probably also left the county and murdered outside of the county as well. So it's quite possible during this time period, if he did indeed kill more who knows he would have killed them outside of the area, or naturally his penis wasn't as active. Mm hmm. They also say that, too, sometimes it's like with BTK is when the sexual desire starts to go down, did you get older? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we have when the testosterone goes down, we had zero killers. They age out. Yeah. Oh, that's why I don't want to kill anyone anymore. Yeah. No, besides the woman I mentioned earlier, who'd survived an encounter with Gary in 1986, a second woman came forward that same year after Gary had choked her again, Gary claimed that she bit his penis and drew blood. That marked the third time that Gary had used this excuse. Gary, our fuse is a believe unless your penis is girl like permissioned for you. We're not everybody's trying to take a jerk out of it. Stop living around so much. I'm sure you think it's you, Gary. All right. Stay in one place. Don't wrap beef jerky around. Yeah. Yeah. Leave it alone. Let her get it. Get her good. Let her get it. Get it in there. Well, the victim Rebecca Gard said that Gary couldn't get hard after he'd picked her up for sex. So he took his anger out on her. This of course is the same thing that had happened to Penny Burstow. So the pattern was staring cops right in the face. But again, Gary was questioned and released because now the cops had that polygraph test to point towards his further proof that dog on it, Gary just had the worst luck on the block when it came to these prostitutes. He just can't catch a break. But this is when the cops find prostitutes, keep dying on me. I just want to support the women that keep biting my pee and I just maybe it's just cause again, it looks like a dry cheat out like it looks like the hard ones, but again, he's not getting arrested for soliciting prostitution. No, he's not. No, he's not. They had to catch you red handed with that shit. Yeah. How about red dick? Even better. But this is when the cops finally started putting the pieces together, albeit at a painfully slow pace. The task force finally got around to talking to the woman we mentioned last episode who had reported Gary as the last person seen with her friend before that friend disappeared. And the task force finally realized that this woman's report had been lost. And so at long last, the task force, regardless of the polygraph results, put Gary Ridgeway back at the top of their suspect list. They interviewed Gary's second wife, Marsha Winslow, who gave them even more evidence, no circumstantial evidence, yes, but definitely good evidence. She told them that Gary had loved having sex with her outdoors. And they asked her, hey, do you want to show us where he had sex with your outdoors? Incredibly, Marsha remembered. So she took him on a ride along and before along the cops realized they're pretty much going on a tour body cluster sites for care for green river killer victims. No, she's like, so what got him, right? She's still like here too, yeah, but over here when we went in my birthday, yeah, I forget one is well, you see the shovel. Yeah. Oh, look at skilled. Yeah. Wow. This, however, was in 1986. And even though there was a lot of circumstantial evidence, they didn't have anything as far as they knew that would hold up in court because the paint evidence was still well. Over a decade from even being examined, much less used, actually, I take that back 15 years from being even examined. As a consequence, Gary continued killing, taking the life of one woman in October of 1986 and another the following February. But the biggest block the cops had was that they couldn't seem to wrap their heads around Gary Ridgeway being the killer because to them, he didn't seem the type. He had a steady job. He'd had several relationships with women that had lasted years each time and he'd passed the polygraph. I mean, at this point in time, even though you already had guys like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy who were obviously like men who had been in communities, men who had held jobs, men who had been married, people still thought, you know, Cyrillus, it's Richard Ramirez. You know, the night that he's like, it's the night suckers. This crazy insane person with sharp teeth who, you know, lives in shitty hotels and free basis cocaine. That's a serial killer. Well, because then because what happens is that if it's Gary Ridgeway, then serial killers can be anybody. And you're right. It's fucking terrifying. Yes. And the cops don't like that. The cops want it to be which, you know, on one hand, I do understand. It's a difficult job. Blah, blah, blah. It's harder. It's hard to investigate murders. It's harder, especially if you don't know the guy that did it, like because most murders are done by somebody that the person knows, like, you know, it's like, it's either like for money. It's practical reasons. So it's extremely difficult to put together. So I can see why every single time it gets a shade more difficult, they're like, well, what the fuck do we do now? Like what do we do now? And they're just also just not great cops. Yeah. Real cops would have picked them up and beat the shit out of them a little bit. They're real guys. But then the problem is that he is that then it ruins all the, it ruins everything and fucks all the, the, and fucks the investigation up unfortunate. That's why God invented gloves and masks. Good work at it. Hit him with the fucking sock. You got to get the sock with the sock. The sock with the sock. That's why God invented sock and soap. No, that should be it. That should be a bar. The sock and soap. The sock and soap. Yeah. Yeah. And just on the, there's a big, on the outside, it's just a big picture of a, there's a denial. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm taking a retirement. See, let's get off. Where's that money? So give us some seed money. It wasn't until April of 1987 that cops finally obtained a search warrant for Gary's homes and vehicles. But they were overwhelmed when they discovered that Gary and Judith were a couple of hoarders that were already two years into building their shared hoard. You can pick up a lot of shit if you're only spending a nickel on each fucking item. Investigators still look through everything, but because Gary never kept trophies and his most active serial killing years were far in his past. They found no physical evidence linking Gary to the Green River killer. It is now more likely than not that he buried it. It is evidence. He did like treasurers and he did have prices, but then he buried them. According to what he just said, like literally like last month, according to this, I'll get into it a little bit at the end. He had one last relationship currently from jail. Wow. This woman seduced him and he explained a lot of other stuff to her apparently. Now, investigators didn't stop at the search warrant. They surveilled Gary and found that he spent hours slowly driving up and down the street to the strip. He would eventually. turned to a parking lot and stop just so he could watch the women standing on the curb who were trying to attract John. You're always trying to attract a John, but none of them trying to get a Gary. I mean, but what they're seeing is that this is a predator. They're watching a predator at work. Judith, meanwhile, believed Gary when he said sometimes cops just make mistakes. They do. Clearly they have the wrong guy here, Judith. Likewise, even though cops questioned several people at Kimworth trucking, Gary still kept his job throughout these investigations. In fact, the guys at Kimworth, they thought the whole Green River Gary thing was fucking hilarious. Of course. It's not so. That would everybody thinks the guys are rape a serial killer. It's different if you all think, "Oh, he's the guy that shat on Stewie's car." You know what I mean? That's a funny story. Oh, that's a guy keeps stealing the lunch at on the break room. That's like a funny story. Well, I think it's a testament to how harmless he seemed. It's true. How harmless he seemed. And it's all the horrible men at Kenworth. Yeah. The horrible men at Kimworth and just how horrible things were in Tacoma at the time. He's so far down the list. I'm sure all of these men know plenty of, or they knew plenty of just horrific, awful people. But especially this idea that they thought that him quoting the Bible and ranting about hurlits of loose women would make him less likely to be the Green River color. Which is hilarious to me. That's funny to me. That's why it was funny. Because Gary would sit in the break room at work. He'd read past just from the Bible out loud, go on, rants about hurlits and loose women. He was so passionate. Spiddle would fly from his mouth. Gary was known even to his neighbors as an anti-prostitution zealot who was obsessed with the so-called wickedness of prostitutes. But they knew for a fact he was fucking prostitutes. They knew for a fact that he was addicted to him. Yeah. Well, I mean, they knew and they didn't know all the same time. Gary was so passionate that he'd even attempted to organize his block to quote "fight prostitution" in the C-Tack area. But when Gary wasn't giving impromptu sermons at work or to his neighbors, he was making obscene sexual remarks to the women at Kenworth. But since this was the 80s, nobody thought that Gary was actually dangerous. His co-worker said that while Gary engaged with everyone, he always failed in every attempt to belong. Because they said that kind of felt like he was making the sexual remarks as a way to fit in. To agree with the boys. To be one of the guys. But everyone was like, Jesus, Gary, no, don't fucking say that. Yeah, we're just talking about fucking or not crucifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about this when the first episode is that the Gary presents as a man, the way he kind of talked about it. He said he never belonged in that. He almost couldn't understand what everybody was saying. It was like people talked too fast. They didn't talk too, so he would just always fade into the background. That's a part of why he, I think in his own mind, he's like, nobody looks at me. Yeah. But despite all these huge waving red flags, the cops still couldn't come up with any hard evidence. So Gary was put back near the bottom of the suspect list for years to come. In 1988, the same year that in America's most wanted style TV special aired focusing on the green river killer, Gary and Judith finally tied the knot after three years together. They then moved out of Gary's former murder house and got a new place in Des Moines, Washington, just South of C attack. But while this was Gary's third marriage, this was the one that actually worked. And it all came down to Gary's mother, Mary Rita. She had never left. She had been in Tacoma controlling Gary's life from the outside this entire time. I thought she died. No, she didn't die until 2001. And she's still just like I saw 9 or 11 on the television screen. Let me see if you pissed your pants, Gary. Check out my big stinky pants. I'll remember Mary for the rest of my fucking life. Well, Mary Rita had remained a constant in Gary's life. And in Gary's first two marriages, Mary Rita had still controlled Gary's finances. And she had a big say in how his wives had handled the housekeeping in the kids. Both wives had therefore greatly resented Mary Rita. She, Mary Rita was a big reason why Gary's first two marriages failed. But Judith, the third wife, she cracked the Gary code. Oh, wow. As it turned out, Gary really was looking for another mommy. Because Judith simply followed Mary Rita's example instead of fighting against her. Judith controlled Gary in the same way as his mother did. And Mary Rita apparently approved. She dressed him. She controlled it like she treated him like a child who didn't know what money was. Like, every time you get money, Gary, you bring it to me. And then I'll give it back to you whatever you need. And that also did quite a bit towards removing his ability to get sex workers. And that addiction kind of went away a little bit more. He had to sneak it a lot more. He wanted someone to take it all and change so he could be baby Gary again. Yeah. But due to the skills at compartmentalization, this also made her the right woman for Gary. That's all you need, girls. After years of dealing with Gary's sex worker addiction in one way or another, Judith finally asked Gary what a prostitute looked like while they were driving around one day. Like, yeah, I remember you just used to go to prostitute. What does one look like? You must have lit up like a fucking light bulb. Small life. It's like, finally, it'd be like if Natalie said to me, I really like Dune. I picked up Dune the other day and you're right. It is about the foibles of a charismatic dictator here. What makes this dance so steely? Baby, let me tell you, Marcus, what's an oscillator? There were so many sex workers in this area when Judith asked the question, all Gary had to do was point out the window at that very moment to highlight a woman wearing fish nets and high heels like that's what one looks like. Judith, there's one right there. Judith remembered that she was shocked that a sex worker was out on the streets and broad daylight. Yeah, I thought it was the character gem. But what this tells me, Judith was very much a woman who only saw what she wanted to see, which was perfect for Gary Ridgeway. She'd been living in the strip for years. This is 1988. She's been living in the strip since 1985. The strip was the center of sex work in the entire Pacific Northwest. I simply thought it was a bunch of people that loved the film. Who's that girl? But they were all merely fans of this prostitute named Madonna. And if that happens, it's just a band. It's just she saw what she wanted to see. And that's how it was with Gary. Now as I said, Gary's murder rate slowed down considerably after Judith. After that murder that he committed in February of 1987, he didn't kill again for three years. And he waited another eight years after that before claiming his very last victim in the late 90s. Do you think it like he listened to the song Glory Days and then we got him back in. They're just being like, you know, I'm just not getting it anymore. One thing up there, did you stop being me? Yeah. That's like how I sometimes like we'll put on a corn record or just a few young again. Just to remind everybody that Marcus is still in here. Yeah, I just want to do like, oh, let's listen to some mud vein. Yeah, everybody's mad on us. But now he knows the STP comes on. That's my masculine. That's me working on my masculine. Well, Gary's last victim was a woman named Patricia Yellowrobe. But her death wasn't even considered a murder until Gary admitted to it years later. He'd left her corpse in town fully closed. And the autopsy had stopped once the coroner discovered that she'd also overdosed on opiates the night of her death. They figured out just one more street person who gives a shit. But by the time of the Patricia Yellowrobe murder in 1998, there was only one guy still working for the Green River Task Force, a detective named Tom Jensen. Detective Jensen, however, had rightfully decided that Gary Ridgeway was absolutely their man. But he could only arrest Gary if he could finally get some physical evidence. Luckily for Detective Jensen, the late 90s saw the advancement of forensic DNA testing and the technology to resurrect old DNA samples became available as well. But even so, it would still take another three years before Tom Jensen got access to those tests. But finally, in October of 2001, Jensen took a DNA sample that had been collected from Gary Ridgeway all the way back in 1987. It was a piece of gauze that had just been sitting in a freezer, waiting for the technology to catch up. That sample was sent away with samples collected from three known Green River victims, including the two victims that had been found pinned to the riverbed by rocks way back in 1982, that first cluster of five. At long last, when the results came back, Gary Ridgeway was found to be a perfect match. And those results, those results were delivered 7.45 AM Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. Perfectly, perfect time. Was it fun? Was it like the monopoly? There was like one other trial that was supposed to start that day. Was that monopoly fraud trial? Yeah, that was the whole thing. Yeah, the McDonald's. The McDonald's, the McDonald's, the Monopoly game was supposed to start on September 11th. Yeah, they postponed it. There are a few stories that went under the radar, including this one. Yeah, and my rise to the top of high school theater. Oh, yeah, truncated by neither of them. Investigators, however, wanted Gary Ridgeway dead to rights. He's not wrong, you know. So Detective Dave Riker, the one who tripped over the body at the riverbed scene back in '82, oh, stubby foots. Yeah, he decided to swoop back in to try and take credit for all of Detective Jensen's hard work. Detective Jensen made the only one work in this case for years. No, but it sounds happy to become here. I mean, you get in here, I'm going to really wrap this up. This green lake measure man, we're going to get-- we're going to get the hell out of here. You know I've got nothing but upnights. I'm thinking about this. I fell over the bones. It was me that tripped over the dead prostitute. See, Riker claimed that he had continued to obsess over the green river killer for almost 20 years. See these bags? You see the bags under these eyes? They barely moisturize. I barely go to six flags anymore. We only go once a month. We have to go every week. But he hadn't been a part of the task force for a long time by 2001. But he had been one of the originals. So he arranged for surveillance on Gary Ridgeway. The task force also returned to the second ex-wife, Marsha Winslow, in September of 2001. She again showed officers all the places where Gary had taken her for sex outdoors. And again, the officers were like, oh, these are all body cluster sites. And she's like, yeah. I know. [LAUGHTER] The Lionel fucking guy is sick. [LAUGHTER] All right, but before we do, could you get down on your fours over there in that pile? No, I just got to see what it looks like. Okay, now lay like a starfish. Okay, now flip it over like a brown starfish. Yep. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Let's remind you of. Let me think about this. This is the second time that they had taken her out to see these bodies. The second time was, you know, right around 9/11. The first time was during the fucking Reagan administration. Jesus Christ. Wow, she really got all of America. [LAUGHTER] That's the whole story. [LAUGHTER] Now, Gary and Judith had continued living the good life. And by the summer of 2001, things were looking better never. Of course, we for all of us. Gary's horrible mother, Mary Rita, had finally died of colon cancer that summer. Fuck yeah. And Gary and Judith now lived in a house that was far nicer than anything Gary's parents had ever had. This is the shit that they took from you. Fucking zero-merced. Summer 2001 was incredible. That was the summer I started my career in radio. I moved to Lubbock, moved out of fucking Rochester. It was one of the best summers of my life. Summer 2001 is probably one of the funnest times I've ever had. I kind of remember like living free with my friends and just having so much fun. And then just stop. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] That's right when I started dealing with it. Great for me too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Gary, he was actually old enough by this point. Or he and Judith could begin to look forward to retirement together. Wow. But at long last. That's another thing doesn't exist anymore. But at long last, in 2001, the paint evidence was finally examined. Thankfully, a trace evidence scientist with the incredible name of Chesterine Sveekleik. Wow. What the fuck? Yeah, it's incredible. She's still alive too. Chesterine Sveekleik. Wow. I was going to use that exact-- what a coincidence. I'm doing another run on BG3. It was going to be my high up. She had been meticulous about the fibers and hair is recovered from bodies and dump sites. And those samples certainly helped in the conviction from the DNA side. But Sveekleik also admitted-- that's like a fucking doctor-who-alien race. Sveekleik also sounds like one of those weird C-tier porn sites. Yeah. Well, Sveekleik also admitted that the lab had ignored the paint particles for years. Because they figured their best line towards catch in the killer were the fibers and the hairs. And the come. And the come. And don't forget about the cotton. There's a lot of come. A lot of come. This, as we've said many times, enabled Gary to take 50 plus victims instead of just five. In 2001, trace evidence expert Skit Palinik-- a lot of great names in these fucking forensics people-- he finally received the call to examine the paint dots with an infrared microscope. And it was discovered that the paint dots found on the victims matched the paint dots on Gary's work clothes. By the way, it's not like the fucking technology didn't exist in 1982. It did. It's just a fucking infrared microscope. We're not talking about intense crazy DNA testing and matching all the fucking markers and building the fucking human genome here. It's looking really closely at paint. They specifically didn't care about that type of evidence. They were not looking close. No, they weren't looking close. And they just didn't-- for some reason, they just didn't think like, ah, that's not going to lead to anything. Why bother? Yeah, they're just all covered in it. Yeah. And so by November of 2001, nearly 20 years after the first green river murder, the cops finally had more than enough evidence to arrest Gary Richway. At this point, they had enough evidence to arrest him on seven murders. Now, two weeks before his arrest, Gary decided to indulge himself in some old habits. And he also proved why Judith needed to be in charge of the money. Judith had given him $30 to fill up his truck with gas. But instead of spending his money where he was supposed to, Gary decided to spend that $30 on a young woman who was strolling provocatively along the Pacific highway. It's turned out undercover cop. God damn it, I knew she was too attractive. The sting that caught Gary was completely separate from the green river task force. This, however, was almost serendipitous as far as the task force was concerned, because it was absolutely a sign that they were moving in the right direction. Richway, however, kept the arrest secret from Judith. When he was released, he called her and had her pick him up at the local K-Mart. He claimed that he had been stopped and arrested for leaving his truck's tailgate down. And Judith, long accustomed to not asking follow-up questions, like, why is that a serious enough offense to arrest you? Yeah, like what in the living fucker are you talking about? She just said, all right. Okay, she get that $30. Do you fill up your truck? She's not wrong. You know, I think on some level, it's just like, I find sure. It's so odd that she's incredibly overbearing but also overlooks extreme, like, just things that don't make sense. It's because it's the baby she fucks. Yeah, it's the baby she fucks. I mean, it's the way some people treat their children. They can be super overbearing but then they can completely ignore. Like, say, someone can be very overbearing with a kid but completely ignore their kids' bully. You know, it's that same type of thing. It's like how I was able to convince my mom that my bond was a face. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally just super overbearing but she believed you. No, it's because her brain just decided that you don't smoke weed. Yeah, my son doesn't smoke weed. I remember she found like a whole giant bag of mushrooms in my backpack and she's like, what are these? I'm like, ah, yeah, we should throw those out. They're probably bad. Yes. She's like, oh, yeah, that's right. Like your Jedi. So what time and night was it when you went and fucking sifted through the garbage can? Get those mushrooms back. Oh, I mean, early. I mean, I thought I was selling them, it was fun. (laughing) But yeah, I think with due to the biggest thing is that, you know, she just, it's incredible what someone will ignore when they just don't want to deal with something. There's supposed something as big as being the green river killer. Yeah, they already got enough on their plate. They already got enough to worry about. You know, I don't want to deal with that. So I'm just going to choose to not think about it. I've also seen so much body cam footage of very sad women going down for their men and they should not be doing that. No, they should not be. No, never go down for a man. Never go down for a woman. Never go down for anybody. Never go down for anybody to yourself. I go down for a dog. Yeah, okay, sure. You have a dog commit about your serial crimes. I would fucking, I'd life for it. Yeah. Depends on if it was my dog. Yeah. I go down for Frankie or Georgie. (laughing) Not for like, I mean, I love your dogs, but I wouldn't go down for like Henry's dogs. No, there's no reason to. We're going down for Frankie, but I go down for Carmen. Yeah, I get it. And so Gary, after the arrest, what about you? How do you got any dogs you go down for? I didn't say I was going to say I had to go down. I think I'd go down for Frankie. I like Frankie a lot. Thank you. Did she appreciate it? Well, she is the sweetest dog in the world. Yeah, Georgie on the other hand. She's on her own. She wouldn't fight. She wouldn't. Georgie would flip on you in a fucking second. And like, she would trust any of them. Georgie would not hesitate to make a deal to put your ass in prison for 30 years. Oh, I know that. We don't know that. (laughing) And so, after the arrest, Gary returned to his life as normal, painting trucks and thrifting with Judith. Two task force detectives, however, had gone to Kimworth trucking after Gary's arrest. And they'd asked his supervisors to surveil Gary for any hints that he might be on to their investigation. I'm thankfully Gary ain't that observant. Gary ain't paying attention. They were no hints that Gary knew anything. That anything was out of the ordinary at all. So on November 30th, 2001, just after Thanksgiving, the task force made their move. Gary Ridgeway showed up to work as he had every day for decades. They said Gary was never more than two or three minutes late. And even then, that happened a handful of times. But on this day, his boss asked him to come into his office because there were people there who wanted to talk to him again. And they just thought this was the funniest thing on the face of the planet. That's fucking cops are here to talk to fucking Green River. Oh my god, I guess he's a fucking suspect. Just the Green River killer, and I ran. Go log in there, Green River. Hey, you fucking serial killer, oh my god. Just fucking shut up, guys. I'm so sad about 9/11. Yeah, I bet we all are, man. We're going to fucking go win a wall. I've got a wall. Well, the people who were waiting to talk to Gary were two members of the Green River Task Force who questioned Gary specifically about Carol Christianson. That was the woman that Gary had left in the woods and covered in various foods and gutted trout after he'd murdered her. I remember. Yeah. Gary leaned on his demeanor one more time and he happily chatted for two hours with investigators while offering up his own theories as to why Christianson was killed. Finally, investigators asked Gary if he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Christians. Gary, of course, said no, but the task force knew that was a lie because Gary had been quite loose with his DNA in this particular case. Loose with the DNA is kind of a rough term. Yeah. I mean, just say, "Hey, hey, you get some." It's the best that I could do. It's true. He was. Yeah. What do you want me to say? Like, because there was a whole bunch of calm and are fucking pussies. Yeah. Yeah. Gary's fucking spooge was filling up her fucking glory hole. Yeah. Now I understand. What's happening? Yeah. He came back and did it again and he ate a hot dog and left the other half on top of it. I remember man again. It's hard. It's big, got big dogs at Costco. Well, after Gary lied to the police, detectives thanked him and they left. They actually let him finish out his last day at work. That is another like cop fucking like what the fuck do you mean? You just let him work all day and then you came back and got him later. At this point, I think it's something like they've been hunting him for so long. Yeah. Yeah. Give him one more day. Yeah. Let's let him really. I saw what he was doing to that Chevy. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't eat someone. And someone's gonna need to get that wrap of Dale Earnhardt with his dick out. I imagine they probably just let him go back to work, went back, and like just. Confirmed everything one more time through some high fives around and then went back. Yeah. Yeah. He's gonna be there for the end of the day. Yeah, he definitely wouldn't have been tipped off of the fact that they were talking to him and they ran during that time period. Absolutely not, right? Well, they're just lucky. He's a fucking moron. Yeah. Well, I think at that point, they just sort of sat outside and just waited until the work day was over. They didn't want to make a scene. These fucking cops make me so angry. Yeah. It's so fucking stupid. Well, I could see a cop, he'd be like, I've been chasing him for 20 years. I can wait two hours. Yeah. You want to see him eat lunch? Oh, he's going hell in hearty. Actually, I could go for a soup as well. So eating lunch together when Gary's shift ended at 3 p.m. as it always did. The task force finally at long fucking last arrested Gary Ridgeway for murder. Wow. 1981. Good job, everybody. Oh, good run. We're really good run, Gary. Gary was formally charged with four murders in early December, owing to DNA evidence, and the paint dots added three more charges. So Gary made a plea deal. He'd show the task force where the undiscovered bodies were located and admit to all of the other green river killings. In exchange, the state wouldn't kill him. It took a little while for all this to get worked out. So it wasn't until the summer of 2003, two years later, the Gary Ridgeway, after a lifetime of being a non-intety at best or a joke at worst, he finally found out what it was like to be the bell of the ball. Once Gary started talking, he found that he fucking loved the attention. And it was said by investigators that Gary Ridgeway would have gladly talked for 18 hours a day if they let him. Nobody wanted to listen to him for that long. It was interesting. Originally, when the first cops were talking to him, he was being kind of KG, and they didn't know what to do with him. So they actually had a really good idea in that moment, and they brought a lady in. And a lady cop, Mary Ellen O'Toole came in, and she was like a psychiatrist, and she started talking to him, and she profiled, she was from the FBI, she profiled him so well, because she was like, no one's ever asked Gary how he feels. It's like all this kind of thing. And so she mothered him in a compassionate way, and he was so excited to talk to a compassionate woman. Somebody that's not like, has nothing connected to it, and so he just spilled his fucking guts. So what she showed up with a bathroom and her tits out. I just want to remind you of somebody you love very much. Now after the conversational floodgates opened, investigators finally discovered that Gary Ridray was, as I said earlier, both far simpler and far more complicated than anyone could have guessed. Gary said that he'd picked up somewhere by his estimate somewhere between 6 and 700 sex workers over the course of his life, but when he searched his memory, he sincerely couldn't remember which ones he'd killed and which ones he hadn't. So he could remember a violent act he couldn't ever remember the person involved in said act. Likewise, Gary could recognize locations like fences or trees to remember when and where he'd killed a woman, but he never knew names. Instead, he made up his own names based on details surrounding the murder, like the water tower lady or the one he actually had one that was actually called the log lady, which is crazy. That's everything I was the Pacific Northwest, he also, I don't think he watched Twin Peaks. That's the conversations went on, Gary made the choice that so many other serial killers make during confessions by separating himself from the killer. Gary began talking about the other Gary. The other Gary was stronger and angrier, eventually he came to refer to the other Gary as old Gary. See, old Gary wanted to talk about the more disgusting aspects of the crimes, like the Necrophilia, while new Gary wanted to, and Gary's words, candy coat the murders. New Gary was reasonable and cooperative, while old Gary was standoffish and mean. He definitely thought he was way smarter than he was in this moment of trying to throw everybody off, being like, he's a collection of personalities when he barely has one. Yeah. That one nitpick here, but technically in that moment, he is old Gary, and when he was doing the killings, he was newer Gary, you are nitpicking, but you are correct. You're correct. I mean, that's even fucking, you know, John Wayne Gacy came up with at least an alias, Jack Hanley. Yeah. That's who he said that his alter ego, Jack Hanley was the one who had committed all the murders. He called him like the shadow or something like that, one of those of the demons, the demon, something like that. Yeah, the entity. The entity. The entity. But all Gary Ridgeway is like, oh Gary and new Gary, new Gary's nice, old Gary's means. You know. Yeah. Old Gary, Ridgeway Claim, was the one who'd killed 50 plus women, while new Gary was the whimp who'd only killed four women after meeting Judith. But eventually, investigators got old Gary to confess to murder after murder until the number reached 71 because that's the thing. Gary Ridgeway was charged with 48 because 48 was all they could prove. He confessed to 71. So his body count could very well be far higher than what we actually think because that's the thing. When you think about it, he probably did forget about, you know, the locations of 20 or so women. Dude, he absolutely did. And if you listen to this one woman that built a sort of relationship with him while he was in jail, this honestly, it sounds like, and to be honest, I don't like how they do it. But this, her name is Maria D. Lorenzo and she essentially started writing to him, flirting with him because she was super interested in his stuff. And he started talking about all of this other stuff. This is 2026. Yeah. He's already saying stuff like, there are dozens, dozens that I didn't even get to get her there. But who knows if he's telling it? And at this point, who fucking knows? At the end of his life. Maybe they're confessed because he almost died and he's about to be dead. Yeah. No, he's near death. But we'll get to that in a second. In one example of how Gary would change when he became old Gary. He once told investigators, and this, please Henry, do this exactly as Gary, as the quote says. I had sex with the dead body. Did you Gary's all screwed up? If you want to know what I did, talk to me, I've the one who did it. I've the one with the devil in my head. Yeah, when the guy tells you I'm the one with the devil in my head, believe him. Yeah. You're like, sure. Okay, great. But as to whether there really wasn't old Gary and a new Gary, it really didn't matter. Because by the end of it, Gary Ridgeway had pled guilty to 48 counts of murder with no remorse, no any regret because 48 was all they could prove. He was given 48 consecutive life sentences as a part of his plea deal. But even though Gary has been in solitary confinement at the state pen and Walla Walla Washington since 2004, Gary Ridgeway is incredibly enough still alive today. He gets great health care in prison. Yeah, he does. I'm excited for you to say Walla Walla Washington. Very. Yeah. So incredibly, I've been waiting for like literally weeks to go Walla Walla Washington. Yeah, I call it the next head by the sun. coma. Not that I think about it. I'm almost positive the sonics of Tacoma. Does make a lot of sense, you know? I can see garage rock is sort of like a smelting plants version of music. I mean, yeah, when you shit, when you think about it, yeah, 'cause like psycho, the witch, strict nine, that's all like 1965, '66. It's the same time that all these fucking guys are getting fucked up by this. Oh my god. Yeah. I mean, it was created by the Tacoma smelter. We did it. That's a positive. It is. That's a positive. The first sonics record is one of my favorite records in existence. Wow. Okay. Well, some good, some bad. Yeah. How's that what is? That's life. Well, it was rumored about six months ago that Gary Ridgeway was receiving end of life care in prison, but Gary apparently ducked the grim reaper. He's currently 77 years old, living a life completely separate from the rest of the prison populations. Why, there's not really any post script stories here because Gary's been in solitary for decades now. But while Gary is alive, many of the men who chased him as a part of the Green River Task Force are long dead. Actually, a lot of them died before Gary was even caught, because you remember Gary was in his 20s when he was in all this shit and he's being chased by, you know, Tacoma cops who smoke in their 40s. Yeah. You know, those guys don't live long. It's a lot of stress. But even though Gary should have been arrested half a dozen times before he was finally taken down in 2001, there were still plenty of members of the Green River Task Force who believed until the end of their days that they had done everything they could to catch the Green River killer. But I would say that 71 possible victims, they would probably disagree without assessments. Yeah. Yeah. And that's Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer. So I think one of the big lessons we've learned from this is to keep it simple. You don't want to put a lot of strength on it when you're killing many, many, many people. Your goal is to kill a lot of people. Not everyone needs to be a showstopper. 71 is such a fucking big number. It is. That's a big number for a soldier. It is. You know, like that. My grandfather killed 10 people in World War II. Yeah. Not just a soldier. Those are big numbers for a sniper whose only job is to shoot people in the head. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's huge numbers. It's pretty cool for a serica. It's not cool. You know, in terms of like it, if you think about it, no, it's not cool. You're right. I'm sorry. There is a couple times during this episode that I had to hold back from saying the word cool. And so I understand where you're coming. You can always replace cool with interesting. You're right. Fascinating. Right. Well, I do. I one day will lead us to because I got into a little bit of a whole of like the people that killed the most humans by hands. Sure. And there's like a couple of guys, like obviously ones and not see ones and from a Soviet from Stalin's. Yeah. But it is wild to just think it was just like one guy killed 2,000 people. Yeah. That's crazy. Oh, yeah. That's crazy. That's real fucking nuts. And it turns into a statistic that it does. But not over on patreon.com/lastpodguestanleft. We see each one of you and we cherish each one of you as an individual flame of consciousness. And you can give us money to listen to the show, Ed Free. You also can see last dream on the left live every Tuesday, 5 p.m. PST. And also see movie stories. You can go watch the video of movie stories. And I'm going to say go check it out because I'm really liking the work that we're doing on in Eddie. It's a lot of fun. I'm having a good time with you. We're in the middle of our John Carpenter series right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fucking sweet. Oh, and also I will say tonight July 17th when this comes out to the general public is our second to last JK ultra show. That's right. In Tulsa, Oklahoma. And then tomorrow we're going to be in Oklahoma City. But if you can't make it out, don't worry. You haven't missed JK ultra just yet. Go to lpotl.kizwee.com. That's k i s w e. And you can watch a live stream of our final show in Oklahoma City. And that'll be available for two weeks. So check it out. Go watch it. And then we're going to fucking put this baby to bed. That's right. And we're going to be coming back in March with a brand new last podcast on the left show. But before that happens, y'all are going to be on the road with side stories over the next few months. We haven't got this date yet, but they will be on last podcast and all of that comment. And go see us mid summer screen Sunday, August 9th last panel on the left. We are going to be there doing a panel about horror and all these types of our place in it in the last 15 years of last podcast and go visit. We're going to have a whole last booth. Grab a shirt, grab a comic, bring your album if you got it. Yeah, because we will sign it. And we're going to be there all weekend. It's going to be a lot of fun. Also, I went to mid summer screen for the first time last year. It's fucking fun. It's good. It's fun. Even if we're not there, it's fucking awesome. Make sure you go check out this horror comments. One of the best in the nation. I can't get enough of it. Also, you want to see me on the road? Just go to anytoons.com to find out where I'm going to be next. I got a lot more dates coming at you. Fuck yeah. Yeah, you botch. I'm going to your tab. They're fucking shot. Go to LPN TV. Also, we have a brand new No Dogs in Space, video essay. Yeah. Go check it out on YouTube. No dogs in space. It's based on our Max's Kansas City episode. And we put in a bunch of like cool visuals and chill like that. It's, you know, it's stuff we've recorded before, but it is very cool. But we are three episode or no work six episodes into the new season. So that's actually going to be coming out very soon. Yeah, the LPN YouTube universe keeps expanding. Page seven has their own channel now. It does. Prideerside does. Yeah. Yeah. No dogs. And we got, you know, who's the B all that stuff? If it exists as a show, it's there. Even learn a mouth. Even the old bodies. We have come, we have somehow contained all of that masculinity on camera. I love to see it. Those men just, hmm. God damn. Sometimes let's just watch just stills of them talking. Get so hard just thinking about it. I think about it. Yeah. Just thinking about Mike. Yeah. Yeah. God damn car. We got to get out of your phone. Yeah. We got to come. All right. See you guys. He'll say no, Guy. Hello, the guys who caught this fucking guy. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Detective Jensen did a prayer. He did actually a pretty fucking good job, even though Riker tried taking the credit. So hell, Jensen. Hell, Jensen. Hell, Jensen.