The protagonist of today's story is the second-largest serial killer in U.S. history, killing at least 48 victims. Most of the victims' bodies were found in a river flowing from Wyoming into Utah in the United States, called the Green River. Thus, Gary. Ridgeway also had a nickname, the Green River Killer. The local residents, who lived in fear for 20 years in his shadow, are the protagonist of the story, Gary. Lyons. Ridgeway.
Gary. Lyons. Ridgeway
An overly "noisy" childhood
Gary was born on February 18, 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the second oldest in the family, with an older brother and a younger brother. Gary's family was not wealthy, and his father, Thomas. Newton. Richway was a truck driver with a cowardly personality, in today's parlance, "strict wife control"; Gary's mother was a strong and violent personality. As a child, Gary often saw fierce quarrels between her parents and even fights (her mother often had the upper hand). So Gary not only disliked his mother, but hated her very much. Because in addition to beating her husband, the mother will also punch and kick her three sons.
In addition to this, Gary often wet the bed as a child. The condition lasted until he was 13, and his mother washed Gary's genitals with water after each bedwetting. As a teenager, his anger and the stigma of his sexual organ encounters made his mother the first person she wanted to kill.
Gary as a young man
At the age of 11, gary's family moved to Washington State, where gary suffered from dyslexia and had a grade in high school. Normal people's intelligence test scores are between 90 and 109 points, while Gary's test score at that time was only 82 points, which belongs to the middle and lower levels. When he was 16, Gary took a 6-year-old boy into the woods and stabbed him. Afterwards, Gary laughed and kept wondering what it was like to kill people. Luckily, the little boy was able to save his life.
Unhappy marriages
In 1969, Gary graduated from high school and married his 19-year-old high school girlfriend, Claudia. Craig married. Soon after their marriage, Gary joined the U.S. Navy and was sent to Vietnam to fight in the war. Gary often had sex with sex workers, but he contracted gonorrhea due to improper protection. But he didn't change anything, still didn't carry out any security measures. At the same time, Gary's wife also cheated on Gary during his enlistment. In 1970, just after Gary was discharged from the army, the two divorced. Since then, Gary has been calling his ex-wife Claudia. Craig was "the prostitute".
In 1973, Gary married another woman named Marcia. Winslow's woman married and gave birth to a son, Matthew, in 1975. Ridgeway. Even so, after getting married, Gary continued to prostitute. Marcia was a little fat and later lost weight rapidly due to a stomach surgery. After losing weight, she is more attractive in the eyes of men, and Gary is jealous and the shadow of his ex-wife's affair, so she always suspects That Marcia is cheating, so the marriage between the two is rifted. In addition, Gary became obsessed with religion, reading the Bible aloud from time to time at work and at home, and wept while reading the Bible after prostitution.
Gary was troubled by his own prostitution and his firm belief in religion. The negative emotions generated in between are naturally given to Marcia, and there is another reason why the two eventually divorced, that is, the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Gary's powerful mother, who controls their finances, will blame Marcia for not being a proper mother and not taking good care of her children, nor a qualified wife, dressed frivolously and unruly. Gary acts as an intermediary and does not take a stand, participate in, or coordinate the quarrel between his mother and his wife. In this way, the dispute between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law intensified, and finally, in May 1981, the two officially divorced.
After this divorce, Gary talked about three girlfriends one after another. All three girlfriends have said the same thing "Gary's sexuality seems like a bottomless pit".
Green River Killer
In July 1982, the bodies of two women were found in the Green River in Gold County, Washington. On August 15, three long-dead bodies were found in the Green River. The killer strangled the victim, tied a stone to the green river, and after the autopsy, the police found that the women had been sexually assaulted. On August 16, the local police held a press conference to announce the establishment of the Green River Investigation Team and named the unknown killer "Green River Killer".
During the investigation, the police found that the five victims were prostitutes, so the police launched an investigation in the famous local red light district. Female police officers trap prisoners disguised as prostitutes in the red light district, while male police officers pose as prostitutes to interrogate sex workers. But it does not have any effect, because of the particular nature of the work, no one wants to reveal their private life, in order to survive, standing on the side of the road to solicit customers, at any time there is a risk of encountering the "Green River Killer" and continue to work. There was even a prostitute who said, "He's not going to find me, I'm smart enough to tell if he's a good guy or a bad guy, and I'll ask if they're Green River Killers." Two weeks later, police found the prostitute's body in the river.
In September 1982, the Green River Killer changed the pattern of crime by moving the bodies to a dump in the eastern suburbs, where the garbage piled up and made the work more difficult. The policeman had the heart to kill the Green River killer, and day and night to distinguish between evidence and garbage, because there was so much garbage, the police found more than 10,000 pieces of evidence from the garbage heap. At that time, there were only more than two hundred pieces of evidence for common criminals.
On September 12, 1982, 20-year-old Tracy was arrested for prostitution, and before he was released from prison, he called his parents and firmly stated that he wanted to be a new person. However, she disappeared on her way home and was dumped into the wild by Gary, where she was not found until a few years later. At that time, the identification technology had no way to identify. However, this later became a key piece of evidence.
By the end of 1983, a total of 15 bodies had been found. By 1984, the number of members of the task force had been increased to 40 criminal police officers. The Green River killers seemed to be deliberately mocking the police incompetence, and in the time that followed, almost every half month a victim was found, and the number of women who had died had reached 26. Serial killers mark corpses to a greater or lesser extent, and Gary is no exception, putting stones in the lower body of the victim every time.
However, due to insufficient physical evidence, the progress of the investigation has also stagnated. At this point, the task force found Ted. Bundy asks him to help with the depiction of the criminal mind. Ted doesn't like the Green River Killer, he thinks he will only attack sex workers, so he didn't tell the police too much, only that Gary Wasaac was a necrophilia, and it was very likely that he would return to the crime scene and re-assault the body.
Sure enough, Ted's analysis was not wrong, and the police began to pay attention to the situation, and set many traps, although Gary was not caught, but more evidence was obtained.
In 1985 Gary met a man named Judith. Lynch's woman, the two began dating. In the summer of 1986, the body of the 34th victim, 19-year-old Winston, was found. Multiple witnesses unanimously specified that the killer was driving a pickup truck. The police immediately began to consult the clues about the pickup truck in the past.
First arrest
At this time, a case of disappearance of a woman in 1982 caught everyone's attention, and the woman's name was Mary. Mofa. She was spied on by his pimp boyfriend in a pickup truck, but ended up missing. After Mary's boyfriend calls the police, the police lock up gary, the driver of the pickup truck, and arrest him, but Gary successfully passes the lie detector procedure, so Gary rules out the suspicion of being the "Green River Killer".
Gary was arrested for the first time in 1982
Second arrest
This time, the police decided to investigate Gary again, and the police insisted that Gary was the Green River killer, but Gary's IQ was low and it was impossible to admit it. The two sides were deadlocked again, and the police used the lie detector again, and used it twice. But the evil door is that every lie detector test result is normal, and as three years ago, in desperation, the police can only release Gary again...
Successive "arrest of the wrong person" has made the police a laughing stock of all sectors of society.
In 1988, Gary and Judith. Lynch married, and the marriage between the two of them lasted until Gary's arrest in 2001. In the 13 years that the two lived together, Gary committed only three cases. In March 1990, due to the delay in the investigation and the long absence of new victims, the Green River Investigation Team was disbanded in situ, and only the leader of the group was still investigating hard.
Arrested
In 1999, advanced DNA technology brought a breakthrough to the investigation of the case, and the original evidence could lead to new clues through DNA testing. Tracy's body, discovered in 1982, has been kept at the local forensic office because Gary habitually placed stones in the body, a move that allowed the police to extract Gary's semen from Tracy's body. Since Gary was the number one suspect at the time, the police immediately compared the results with Gary's saliva.
The lone team leader reconvened and began to secretly investigate Gary. On November 30, 2001, police arrested Gary, who was 52 years old. Gary still pleaded not guilty, saying the evidence could only show that he had had sex, but not that he had killed someone. At this time, the two sides have been deadlocked for another 2 years, and the families of the victims have lost patience and trust in the government.
On December 18, 2003, Gary finally turned himself in to the police because of an agreement with the police that he would not be sentenced to death.
The "Green River Killer" case was finally settled, Gary was sentenced to 48 years in prison, and the unsolved case that had plagued the police for 20 years was finally closed.