The Green River Killer

1. EP 01 — The Boy from McMicken Heights

1 min. 23 sec.

Gary Leon Ridgway's birth in Salt Lake City in 1949, his family's move to the working-class SeaTac suburb of McMicken He…

Gary Leon Ridgway's birth in Salt Lake City in 1949, his family's move to the working-class SeaTac suburb of McMicken Heights when he was nine, and the early shaping forces — a domineering mother who publicly humiliated him over chronic bedwetting, an IQ tested at 82, and a quiet outward personality that masked unusual sexual and emotional confusion. Closes on the family geography that would never change. Ridgway would live within fifteen miles of this house for the rest of his life.

2. EP 02 — The Stabbing

1 min. 18 sec.

1965. At age 16, Gary Ridgway led a six-year-old neighbourhood boy into a wooded lot and stabbed him through the kidney.…

1965. At age 16, Gary Ridgway led a six-year-old neighbourhood boy into a wooded lot and stabbed him through the kidney. The boy survived. When asked by police why he had done it, Gary said — 'I wondered what it would feel like to kill someone.' He was a juvenile. He was not charged. The episode closes on the unanswered question that would define everything that followed, and the local Sheriff's office that filed the incident away without a referral.

3. EP 03 — The Navy

1 min. 17 sec.

Ridgway's two-year Navy deployment aboard the USS Continental Divide during the Vietnam War. Shore-leave visits to comme…

Ridgway's two-year Navy deployment aboard the USS Continental Divide during the Vietnam War. Shore-leave visits to commercial brothels in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand. Two cases of gonorrhea. The crystallisation of a lifelong hatred of prostitutes that he would later cite, directly, as his entire motive for the killings. His honourable discharge in 1971, return to Washington, and immediate hiring as a truck painter at the Kenworth Trucking plant in Renton.

4. EP 04 — The Born-Again

1 min. 13 sec.

1973 to 1981. Ridgway's conversion to Pentecostal Christianity, the door-knocking, the public preaching against pornogra…

1973 to 1981. Ridgway's conversion to Pentecostal Christianity, the door-knocking, the public preaching against pornography and prostitution. His second marriage to Marcia Brown, the birth of his only son Matthew in 1975, and the photograph of Matthew he began carrying in his wallet — the photograph he would later use to disarm victims. The collapse of the second marriage, the move to Auburn, and his third marriage to Judith Lynch. The dual life that nobody in his church, his workplace, or his family ever suspected.

5. EP 05 — Wendy Coffield

1 min. 9 sec.

July 15, 1982. Two boys riding their bicycles across a bridge over the Green River near Kent, Washington look down and s…

July 15, 1982. Two boys riding their bicycles across a bridge over the Green River near Kent, Washington look down and see a body in the water. The first known Green River victim — Wendy Lee Coffield, 16-year-old runaway. The arrival of a young King County detective named Dave Reichert at his first major homicide scene. The initial classification of the case as an isolated sex-worker murder. The Seattle Times publishing the first article. The case had its name, but not yet its shape.

6. EP 06 — The Cluster in the River

1 min. 14 sec.

August 12 to 15, 1982. Four more bodies in 72 hours, all in the same six-mile stretch of the Green River — Marcia Chapma…

August 12 to 15, 1982. Four more bodies in 72 hours, all in the same six-mile stretch of the Green River — Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds, Opal Mills, and Debra Bonner. The King County Sheriff's recognition that they have a serial offender. Reporter Carlton Smith of the Seattle Times coining the name 'The Green River Killer' on the August 16 front page. The formal launch of what would become the largest serial-murder investigation in Pacific Northwest history.

7. EP 07 — The Task Force

1 min. 29 sec.

1984 to 1988. The expansion of the Green River Task Force to over 50 full-time detectives under lead investigator Dave R…

1984 to 1988. The expansion of the Green River Task Force to over 50 full-time detectives under lead investigator Dave Reichert and consulting detective Robert Keppel (who had worked the original Bundy case in 1974). The interview of Gary Ridgway as a person of interest in 1983 and 1984. His successful passing of a polygraph in May 1984. His removal from the active suspect list. Keppel's later observation that Ridgway 'fit the profile so perfectly that the profile itself failed.'

8. EP 08 — Ted Bundy on Death Row

59 sec.

November 1984. Detective Robert Keppel receives a typed letter from Florida State Prison. Ted Bundy — five years into hi…

November 1984. Detective Robert Keppel receives a typed letter from Florida State Prison. Ted Bundy — five years into his death-row stay — is offering to consult on the Green River case. Keppel and Reichert fly to Florida and meet with Bundy three times across the next four years. Bundy invents a name for the unknown killer — 'the Riverman.' He suggests dump-site stake-outs. He produces no breakthrough. He is executed in January 1989. Ridgway, the real Riverman, is at that moment painting trucks at Kenworth in Renton.

9. EP 09 — The 1987 Sample

53 sec.

April 8, 1987. King County detectives execute a search warrant on Gary Ridgway's house. They collect a saliva sample fro…

April 8, 1987. King County detectives execute a search warrant on Gary Ridgway's house. They collect a saliva sample from him with his consent, log it as evidence Item GR-87-014, and place it in storage. The DNA technology to match the sample to small biological traces from 1982 crime scenes does not yet exist. The sample will sit in a tagged plastic envelope on a King County evidence shelf for the next fourteen years. He continues to kill the entire time.

10. EP 10 — The Long Pause

1 min. 6 sec.

1988 to 1997. The years in which the Green River killings appeared, publicly, to have stopped — but in reality continued…

1988 to 1997. The years in which the Green River killings appeared, publicly, to have stopped — but in reality continued at a reduced and more carefully concealed pace. The Task Force is gradually scaled down from 50 detectives to 3. Ridgway kills approximately 14 additional victims in this period, including Wendy Stephens, Rebecca Marrero, and Lori Anne Razpotnik — none of whom would be identified until decades later. The dump sites become more remote. The bodies stop appearing in the river.