The Green River Serial Killer and Necrophiliac Was A Christian Married Father
There was a television special on a few days ago about Gary Ridgway, who is the Green River serial killer.
Several aspects of this pervert’s life are relevant to subjects I discuss regularly on this blog, so keep on reading…
Ridgway had upwards of around 70 women victims, most in age of about 15 to their early 20s, though a few may have been around 12 or 13 years old.
Most of Ridgway’s victims were prostitutes, some were runaway kids.
Ridgway later admitted to authorities to occasionally going back and having sex with the dead bodies of his murder victims.
Here is how this pervert’s story is relevant to this blog:
Point 1. Marriage and Parenthood Do Not Make People Into Godly, Mature, Responsible Adults
I grew up in Southern Baptist churches. Both my parents were Southern Baptists.
Like many other conservative Christian groups, Southern Baptists peddle some untrue and un-biblical notions about marriage, natalism, and the family unit: they tend to assume and they will also sometimes teach, that marriage or parenthood are necessary to make a person fully adult, mature, godly, responsible, and ethical.
Gary Ridgway is yet one more example of how marriage and/or parenthood do not make a person loving, godly, ethical, sexually pure, or responsible.
Not only was Ridgway a married father, but, according to at least one of the web sites I read about him, he was at one time a regular church-goer, he read the Bible, and listened to sermons.
The article indicates that Ridgway took his Christian faith quite seriously, at least for a several year interval, but like the BTK serial killer Dennis Rader (the BTK serial killer of women was (Link): also married and a church-going Christian), he learned absolutely nothing from the sermons he heard in church, nor the passages he read about in the Bible – the very faith that teaches people not to murder or rape others.
The very faith that instructs people that sex acts are intended only for one woman and one man who are married to one another.
The very faith that teaches that all people are deserving of respect, in part because every individual – even women who work as prostitutes – are made in the image of God.
The very faith that instructs people to “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” And I cannot think of many people who want to be kidnapped, tortured, raped, or killed.
The articles on Ridgway say he was married at least three times.
One article did say that the most marriage did for Ridgway – at least the third marriage – was to curtail his killing spree.
(Ridgway was married twice before. I am not sure of the timeline, if he was murdering women during his first two marriages, in-between, or after.)
The article says that while Ridgway was married to his third wife, he did not murder as many women. (He murdered at least three that police know of during his marriage to Mawson, his third wife.)
But obviously, being married – and a father (one article says he has one son) – did not halt his rape and killing of women completely.
The Wikipedia page says that this depraved sicko even used a photo of his son to lure his women victims into a sense of security – the message is, he’s a father of a young son, so he can be trusted – as though childfree or childless men are not as upstanding or trustworthy.
Christians: you have to get away from your false Nuclear Family Gospel. The only thing that “saves” a person is acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Savior – not marriage, and not having children.
There are plenty of un-married and childless adults out there who are not fornicating, and they are not raping people and/or murdering people, as this married, Christian father was doing over a decade.
Point 2. God Does Not Reward or Withhold Spouses From People Based on Merit or Morality
Another conservative Christian teaching I was subjected to while growing up is that marriage will not happen for anyone – male or female, but especially not for females – who have sex prior to marriage.
Baptists, and other Christians, will teach or imply in their sex, dating, and marriage sermons, that if a single adult wants to get married, that God will only reward that person with a spouse if that person remains sexually abstinent, is “good,” godly, nice, and loving.
Plenty of us adult singles have followed all the usual Christian teaching on those matters yet still remain single past our 30s and beyond. And yet, perverted deviant pieces of trash such as Gary Ridgway was married three, count them THREE, times!
I’ve lived a clean life style and cannot even make it down the aisle time number one, while meanwhile, this piece of garbage was hiring prostitutes, getting sexually transmitted diseases, having affairs on his wives, AND he was raping and killing teen girls, but he was married.
Did God with-hold spouses from Ridgway for being a murdering, raping, fornicator? No, he sure did not.
So, Christians out there: stop teaching that marriage is a reward that God only grants the good, godly, and mature. It obviously is not true.
I feel sorry for Mawson – she was the third wife. She says she had no idea her spouse was a rapist and a killer. She sounds heartbroken.
Unless a woman has a mental disorder herself, no woman wants to marry a man who is a rapist, a murderer, or who cheats on her, and/or who utilizes prostitutes. Those are most certainly NOT the behaviors of a “Prince Charming.”
No woman wants to marry a dirt bag like that.
Talk about being disappointed and disillusioned after you find out your spouse of so many years has done any of those things, and he seems to have been pretty normal around her!
She says she can never trust another man ever again. I can sure understand why.
Notice in the Daily Mail article linked to below that one of Ridgway’s long time friends – Jim Bailey – who worked with Ridgway for years (they had the same employer) – had NO IDEA that Ridgway was a serial killer. When he found out, the article says, he found it so stunning and disturbing he could not discuss the Ridgway case with anyone for three years after the arrest.
Point 3. People Cannot Always Tell Beforehand That They Are Marrying a Deviant, Abuser, Rapist, Murderer
That detail brings me to this:
Christian television show host Pat Robertson sometimes blames women who write to him to tell him they’ve been married to their husband for so many years and have discovered that their husband is a serial cheater, a pervert, or, their husband has been verbally or physically abusing them for years.
If Jim Bailey, long time friend and co-worker to Gary Ridgway had no clue that Ridgway was the notorious Green River serial killer, how on earth can Pat Robertson blame, shame, and scold Christian wives who write him saying their husband became abusive or perverted after they married?
Robertson behaves as though women should know up-front, before marrying, that the man they are marrying is a pervert, abuser, or serial cheater. But even other men are fooled by deviant men.
How can Robertson expect women to see these behaviors any better than men? A lot of abusers live dual lives – they hide their abusive behaviors from everyone but their targets.
Several people left comments under the Daily Mail article that were critical of Mawson, Ridgway’s third wife, including someone named “Bill.”
As one person, Anna, responded to Bill:
(comment by) Anna, London
(Bill said),
If Judith Mawson really had no idea her husband was a sadistic serial killer after many, many years of marriage, I believe she’s too stupid to have the right to exist.
– Bill, Calif, 03/11/2011 09:12
*************************
(Anna replied to Bill):
If he was able to illude [elude] trained investigators for all those years what makes you think that a woman whom he treated so well and who loved him would be able to figure it out?
The hatefullness of others continualy surprises me.
—(end excerpt)—
And (source: (Link): A&E):
Christine Sarteschi, an associate professor of criminology at Chatham University in Pittsburgh who has published scholarly works on serial killers: Ted Bundy
Although the infamous killer had 36 verified victims, he claimed to have killed more than 100 women. “Part of what was so frightening about him was he could easily fool people with his seemingly normal persona,” Sarteschi says, adding that he disarmed victims through his intelligence and charisma, enabling him to slip into their lives without sparking suspicion.
—(end excerpt)—
From a former FBI profiler who met Ridgway to discuss the murders with him ((Link): source):
“He [Ridgway] had a sense of humor, not a great one, but he did. He responded to questions. You could have a conversation with him. There was nothing remarkable at all about him to suggest that he could be a violent offender at the level that he was. Nothing.”
…The News Tribune previously reported that in public, Ridgway was far from the sinister murderer who preyed on unsuspecting women. He was a churchgoer father who was formerly a member of the military. Neighbors never suspected of mild-mannered Ridgeway ever being associated with the heinous crimes.
—(end excerpt)—
From O’Toole via Newsweek (Link):
O’Toole also spoke greatly about the differences between Hollywood’s portrayal of serial killers and their reality.
While psychopaths have different emotions and no empathy, they can behave normally, work a nine-to-five job, and blend into society like anyone else.
She noted just because Ridgway was able to kill a vast amount of women, he wouldn’t necessarily be aggressive toward a female investigator, as a movie may suggest.
Her first impression of Ridgway was actually that he was respectful and quiet.
—(end excerpt)—
This page also explains how many neighbors and co-workers of serial killers perceive the serial killers as normal, nice, everyday guys before they are arrested for the murders:
(Link): The Blue Collar Jobs of Serial Killers
In reality, however, serial killers often live fairly ordinary lives with normal employment, enabling them to blend in with colleagues.
Their legitimate jobs also offer them one more key perk: an opportunity to help carry out or conceal their crimes, according to experts.
…Rather, they take unremarkable jobs, he says, mostly in blue-collar fields, and figure out ways to use them in their favor.
—(end excerpts)—
Here are a few articles about Ridgway, with relevant excerpts – very pertinent parts have been placed in bold-faced type:
(Link): Biography site: Gary Ridgway
Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Raised near Seattle’s Pacific Highway, a deprived neighborhood near SeaTac airport, Ridgway was a poor student and was sent to Vietnam after high school.
When he returned, he got a job painting trucks, which he kept for 30 years. Though he married three times and was fanatical about religion, Ridgway was a frequent customer of prostitutes.
Ridgway’s slayings began in 1982, when young runaways and prostitutes began disappearing from state Route 99 in south King County, Washington.
(Link): Gary Ridgway – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Excerpts from the Wikipedia page (Link):
Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), also known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders.
As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders.
He killed a myriad of women in the state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s and is now thought to have killed more than 90.
Most of Ridgway’s victims were alleged to be sex workers and other women in vulnerable lifestyles, including underage runaways. It may have been assumed some of the girls were ‘runaways’ after being murdered.
Many of his victims were around 16 years of age, and some were under the age of consent.
The press gave him his nickname after the first five victims were found in the Green River before his identity was known.[4] He strangled his victims, usually by hand but sometimes using ligatures.
After strangling them, he would dump their bodies in forested and overgrown areas in King County, often returning to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them.
On November 30, 2001, as Ridgway was leaving the Kenworth truck factory where he worked in Renton, Washington, he was arrested for the murders of four women whose cases were linked to him through DNA evidence.
As part of a plea bargain wherein he agreed to disclose the locations of still-missing women, he was spared the death penalty and received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
Early life
Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the second of Mary and Thomas Ridgway’s three sons. His home life was somewhat troubled; relatives have described his mother as domineering and have said that young Ridgway witnessed more than one violent argument between his parents.
His father was a bus driver who would often complain about the presence of sex workers.
Ridgway had a bed-wetting problem until he was 13, and his mother would wash his genitals after every episode.
He would later tell defense psychologists that, as an adolescent, he had conflicting feelings of anger and sexual attraction toward his mother, and fantasized about killing her.
Ridgway is dyslexic, and was held back a year in high school.
When he was 16, he stabbed a six-year-old boy, who survived the attack. Ridgway had led the boy into the woods and then stabbed him through the ribs into his liver.
Ridgway’s IQ was recorded as being in the “low eighties.”
Adult life
Ridgway graduated from Tyee High School in 1969 and married his 19-year-old high school girlfriend, Claudia Kraig.
He joined the U.S. Navy and was sent to Vietnam, where he served on board a supply ship and saw combat.
During his time in the military, Ridgway had frequent sexual intercourse with sex workers and contracted gonorrhea; although angered by this, he continued his practice without protection.
While Ridgway was abroad, Kraig had an extramarital affair. Their marriage ended within a year.
When questioned about Ridgway after his arrest, friends and family described him as friendly but strange. His first two marriages resulted in divorce because of infidelities by both partners.
His second wife, Marcia Winslow, claimed that he had placed her in a chokehold.
He had become religious during his second marriage, proselytizing door-to-door, reading the Bible aloud at work and at home, and insisting that his wife follow the strict teachings of their pastor.
Ridgway would also frequently cry after sermons or reading the Bible.
Despite his beliefs, Ridgway continued to solicit the services of sex workers and wanted his wife to participate in sex in public and inappropriate places, sometimes even in areas where his victims’ bodies were later discovered.
According to women in his life, Ridgway had an insatiable sexual appetite.
His three ex-wives and several ex-girlfriends reported that he demanded sex from them several times a day.
Often, he would want to have sex in a public area or in the woods.
Ridgway himself admitted to having a fixation with sex workers, with whom he had a love-hate relationship.
He frequently complained about their presence in his neighborhood, but he also took advantage of their services regularly.
Some have speculated that Ridgway was torn between his lusts and his staunch religious beliefs
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ridgway is believed to have murdered at least 71 women near Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. In court statements, he later reported that he had killed so many that he lost count.
….The bodies [of Ridgway’s murder victims] were often left in clusters, sometimes posed, usually nude. He would sometimes return to the victims’ bodies and have sexual intercourse with them.
Ridgway later explained that he did not find necrophilia more sexually satisfying, but having sex with the deceased reduced his need to obtain a living victim and thus limited his exposure to being caught.
Because most of the bodies were not discovered until only the skeletons remained, three victims are still unidentified.
Ridgway occasionally contaminated the dump sites with gum, cigarettes, and written materials belonging to others, and he even transported a few victims’ remains across state lines into Oregon to confuse the police.
…Ridgway began each murder by picking up a woman, usually a sex worker. He sometimes showed the woman a picture of his son, to trick her into trusting him. After raping her, Ridgway strangled her from behind.
He initially strangled them manually.
However, after many victims inflicted wounds and bruises on his arm while trying to defend themselves, Ridgway began using ligatures.
…Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 on charges related to prostitution.He became a suspect in the Green River killings in 1983.
In 1984, Ridgway passed a polygraph test. On April 7, 1987, police took hair and saliva samples from Ridgway.
Around 1985, Ridgway began dating Judith Mawson, who became his third wife in 1988.
Mawson claimed in a 2010 television interview that when she moved into his house while they were dating, there was no carpet.
Detectives later told her he had probably wrapped a body in the carpet.
In the same interview, she described how he would leave for work early in the morning some days, ostensibly for the overtime pay. Mawson speculated that he must have committed some of the murders while supposedly working these early morning shifts.
She claimed that she had not suspected Ridgway’s crimes before she was contacted by authorities in 1987, and had not even heard of the Green River Killer before that time because she did not watch the news.
Author Pennie Morehead interviewed Ridgway in prison, and he said while he was in the relationship with Mawson, his kill rate went down, and he truly loved her.
Indeed, of his 49 known victims, only three were killed after he married Mawson. Mawson told a local television reporter, “I feel I have saved lives…by being his wife and making him happy.”
From the Daily Mail article (Link to that):
‘I had the perfect husband… but he was the perfect murderer’: Wife reveals moment she found out she was married to Green River Serial Killer who murdered up to 70 women
November 2011
by Rachel Quigley
Newly single after a failed marriage, she was swept off her feet by a man she describes as being ‘perfect’ and who would later become her second husband.
But it turned out that Judith Mawson’s husband was far from perfect as, after 13 years of marriage, she discovered he was the Green River Serial Killer with the blood of up to 70 women on his hands.
When Judith, 67, met Gary Ridgway at a bar in Seattle in 1985, she recalled he seemed like the perfect suitor – he was handsome, polite, had a good job, and treated her like a lady.
She found a man she adored and wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Two years later they moved in together, a year after that they were married.
‘He made me smile everyday. I had the perfect husband, perfect life. I absolutely adored him.’
But Ridgway was also the perfect killer.
She found a man she adored and wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Two years later they moved in together, a year after that they were married.
‘He made me smile everyday. I had the perfect husband, perfect life. I absolutely adored him.’
But Ridgway was also the perfect killer.
For 13 years Judith was living with the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history. She never suspected a thing.
She told People Magazine that she believed him when he told her his carpet was destroyed by kids and removed and that his ex-girlfriend had taken her bed back. She trusted him when he said he was late because of a union meeting.
[Photo caption of one of their wedding photos:
“Happiness: They married after three years together and she said she lived a perfect life with a husband who made her ‘smile every day'”]
When police turned up at her door one chilly November morning she realised that her ‘perfect’ life with her husband was one big lie.
‘I was crying, no it cant be him. Then I found out that he’d had the carpets removed because he’d killed women on them and there were bloodstains.
‘He’d had sex with some of them on the bed and killed them. I look back and think, “Was my life real with him or did he just use me?”.’
Gary Ridgway, now 62, is suspected of murdering more than 70 women in the Seattle area over a period of 20 years.
…In February of this year he pleaded guilty to a 49th murder, after the skull of Rebecca Marrero, 20, was found. She died in 1982.
When he was first arrested, Judith said she believed her husband when he told her they had the wrong man.
When she visited the former truck painter in jail she said: ‘We were trying to touch each other through the glass. I would cry.’
When he confessed she cut all contact with him and spent the next two years hiding at home in virtual isolation, drowning her sorrows in wine and pain pills.
She told People: ‘I was scared, in hiding, ashamed. I dreamed about him all the time. he kept reaching out to me.’
Jim Bailey, Ridgway’s best friend and coworker said he couldn’t even talk about the arrest for three years after his arrest, he was so stunned and upset.
His wife Linda tried to reach out to her and when it seemed she wasn’t getting any better, she suggested she write a book to help her heal.
Her book Green River Serial Killer: Biography of an Unsuspecting Wife came out in 2007 and though it helped her recover, she said she will never forgive her husband.
‘Telling my story, getting all the poison out of me helped me to heal. But how do you forgive someone who is suspected of killing 70 women?’
Judith has not dated since her husband’s arrest, believing she may never trust another man again but spends her time with friends and at her local church.
(Link): Creepy and Terrifying Details About the Green River Killer
Excerpts:
by Will Gish
Gary Ridgway, Family Man
Gary Ridgway was married three times, and at the time of his arrest, he and his wife lived a respectable life in a quiet area, where his neighbors thought of him as a stand-up guy.
Ridgway also had a son, and would sometimes show pictures of his son to prostitutes to put them at ease before he murdered them.
He Found Choking His Victims “Rewarding”
As is expected from a serial killer, pathological liar, and necrophiliac, Gary Ridgway has said some super,super creepy things.
A sampling of his sinister one-liners: “I don’t know if it was an illness, or just, uh, I wanted to kill;” “My method’s working pretty good. Choking is what I did, and I was pretty good at it;” and “They look in the bedrooms, nobody’s in there, nothin’s, you know, there’s my son’s room. Hey, this guy has a son, he’s not gonna hurt anybody.”
He preferred choking to other forms of murder because “that was more personal and more rewarding than to shoot her.”
Ridgway Went Camping with His Son—and the Remains of Some Prostitutes
In 1984, Ridgway took a camping trip to Oregon, south of his home in Washington, with his son.
He also happened to have the remains of two or three dead prostitutes in his car.
He paid for everything in cash to leave no record of the trip, and dumped the remains in the Oregon area, so as to make detectives think the Green River Killer was moving south.
He then presumably had a nice time camping with his son.
(Link): Gary Ridgway: The Gruesome Story of the Green River Killer
Excerpts:
.. Like his father, Ridgway developed an intense hatred for prostitutes, despite the fact that he frequently used their services. A fanatical Christian who was said to cry after church sermons and Bible readings, Ridgway simultaneously saw sex workers as sinful, but this didn’t stop him from not only having sex with them, but with violating the biblical admonition “Thou shalt not kill.”
...Gary Ridgway was married to Judith Ridgway. In the interview above, Judith describes her life with Gary as normal and filled with love.
When Gary Ridgway was arrested, his wife Judith was completely and 100% stunned to discover Gary was a serial killer and never believed he was capable of violently murdering so many people.
Today she refuses to talk to him and has never visited him in prison.
…The Green River Killer and His Methods of Murder
In 1982 a man rafting in the Green River near Seattle made a shocking discovery: He found three dead bodies floating in the river within thirty feet of one another.
After he contacted police, an investigation was launched. They had all died of strangulation. All three of them had rocks placed within their vaginas to make them sink in the water.
Within six months, a total of six corpses of young females, all of them known prostitutes or runaways, had been found in the Green River.
…Ridgway preyed upon prostitutes who worked along the Sea-Tac strip between Seattle and Tacoma near the airport. He would win their confidence by showing them a picture of his son, figuring it would make him appear safe.
…2. He often returned to his dumping grounds to have sex with his victims’ corpses. He claimed he’d sometimes return to have sex with them “for two or three days…’til the flies came.” It became such a compulsion that he began burying their bodies rather than risk arrest.
…4. TV reporter Charlie Harger, who interviewed Ridgway, said that he described a victim’s head falling off her decaying body with the nonchalance of someone talking about taking their dog for a walk: “He has no emotion about it: For him, it’s like talking about what he had for dinner last night. There is no connection there.”
5. He once said he avoided killing family members only because it would have been easier to get caught.
6. His second wife told police that Ridgway would often take her to have sex where the Green River Killer’s bodies had been found.
…In an unexpectedly poignant twist, Ridgway’s third wife, Judith Mawson, described him as a sweet and loving man. She had married him in 1985 after he’d committed most of his killings.
Of Ridgway’s 49 victims, he only killed three after meeting Mawson. She told a reporter, “I feel I have saved lives…by being his wife and making him happy.”
Mawson described her infamous ex-husband as a good provider and a sensitive man. She had such a positive opinion that at first she didn’t believe he was capable of murdering anyone. She eventually helped write a book about Ridgway that she dedicated to “those who have had their futures stolen by deceitful lovers.”
TV reporter Charlie Harger echoed Mawson’s sentiments and described Ridgway as unsettlingly normal: The strange thing about Gary Ridgway is if you didn’t know the depravity, if you didn’t know the evil that this man committed, you would have no clue when you talked on the phone with him. This man sounds like he would be a perfect neighbor.”
(Link); The Gary Ridgway they knew – published 2001, The News Tribune, by S. Robinson
Gary Leon Ridgway was drawn to the sacred, but addicted to the profane.
He cried at church services and watched television with a Bible in his lap. He sometimes tied up his sex partners, and by his own admission, pursued prostitutes with the ardor of a parched alcoholic.
Those paradoxes mingle in Ridgway, 52, the prime suspect in four slayings linked to the unsolved Green River serial murders.
…Court documents describe Ridgway’s unsavory secrets, but his classmates, co-workers and acquaintances remember a man almost conspicuously ordinary.
They have seen Ridgway’s face on television and in newspapers. They search their memories for some distinctive detail, looking for a potential connection to the largest unsolved serial killings case in U.S. history.
…”When I saw the photo [of Gary Ridgway on a news program] I said, ‘Goodnight, it is Gary.’ I told my wife, ‘That was my neighbor. I went to school with this guy.’
“It was really sad. He never exhibited anything like an oddity that way toward women or anything that I would see that would make me suspect him of having that kind of personality.”
…One of Ridgway’s girlfriends said he was close to his mother but could never please her.
…Winslow remembered Mary Ridgway yelling at her husband “continually.” In court documents, Winslow described seeing Mary break a dinner plate over her husband’s head. He did not retaliate. He got up from the table and left the room.
Bruce Revard lived next door to the Ridgway family throughout the 1960s. As a child, he played regularly with Eddie, the youngest brother.
Revard also recalls the Ridgway parents were strict, especially with the two younger brothers.
The mother would scream at the boys, he said, and the father would spank them.
“I could sit up in my treehouse and look in their yard,” Revard said. “All I’d hear were cries of ‘No, Dad, no,’ as they were getting beaten with a belt or a stick or whatever.”
Snacks after school were forbidden. The boys had to wait until their parents got home.
“A slice of bread after school was not allowed,” Revard said.
…Mendiola saw no signs of the strict parenting Revard remembers, but said he didn’t really know Ridgway’s parents. He said his friend Gary was “just actually a nice guy,” interested in sports and girls.
Other friends and classmates offer similar memories of Ridgway: Personable. Liked cars. Played freshman football. A nice guy, but pretty average. Nice mom, nice dad.
“He didn’t really stand out,” said former Tyee classmate Tim Shinners, 50.
Tyee graduate Terry Rochelle, 52, remembers Ridgway showing up on Saturday nights at a youth nightclub run by the local Methodist church.
At Tyee, Ridgway often got in minor scrapes.
“You’d see him going to the principal’s office, but nothing bad,” Rochelle said.
Revard said Ridgway had no problems with girls in school. Allan Sample, who attended Highline Community College with Greg Ridgway, remembers Gary as a ladies’ man.
“He never had any trouble getting a girlfriend or getting a date,” Sample said.
Ridgway was 20 when he finished high school. Did he start late? Was he held back a grade? Surviving teachers can’t remember.
…The following summer, Ridgway met the woman who would become his first wife.
CLAUDIA
Her name was Claudia Kraig. Ridgway met her in Seattle.
Outdoor and in-car sex marked the young couple’s courtship, according to court documents. They favored a wooded area in Seward Park and a dead-end street off Military Road South – one of the many South King County side roads Ridgway knew well.
They were married in Seattle on Aug. 15, 1970.
…On Sept. 2, five weeks after leaving the Navy and one year after marrying Claudia, Ridgway filed for divorce.
Claudia never came back.
…He laced the memory of his first marriage with venom.
Court documents show he spoke bitterly of the divorce to his second wife and a subsequent girlfriend. In racially charged terms, Ridgway claimed Claudia had moved in with several men and become a prostitute.
He also said he still loved her
MARCIA
Around the middle of 1972, Ridgway met a woman who was cruising the Renton loop. Her name was Marcia Winslow.
Ridgway pulled her over in what Marcia described as “a police-like stop,” court documents say. With his short hair and military manner, Marcia thought he could have been a police officer. He wasn’t, but he told Marcia he once applied to be an officer and was turned down.
They started dating. During their first sexual encounters, he called her “Claudia.”
Court documents say they lived together for a year and married in December 1973. Their only child, Matthew, was born in 1975.
Ridgway introduced Winslow to his favorite South King County haunts for outdoor and in-car trysts: Back roads and wooded dead ends in Maple Valley, Enumclaw and North Bend. Obscure, untended turnouts along Highway 18. Shady spots near Star Lake and along the banks of the Green River.
…Break time [on his job with Kenworth] was Bible time, co-workers said. None could remember him preaching or quoting a particular passage.
But he was social, a friendly guy who knew everyone enough to say hello. He often wore jeans and Western-style or button-down shirts. He carried a squirt bottle and comb to keep his hair and mustache in place.
…Parkhill [a co worker] wasn’t entirely comfortable around Ridgway.
“He’d come up behind me and massage my shoulders,” she said. “He did that to several women down there. I’d try to shrug away from him. I never wanted to make him mad, just for him to stop.”
RELIGION AND SEPARATION
After the birth of their son in 1975, Ridgway and Marcia joined two churches, one Baptist, the other Pentecostal. They knocked on doors. Some were shut in their faces, which made Ridgway angry.
Marcia told detectives he became “fanatical” about religion. He would cry frequently during church services. At night, he watched TV with a Bible in his lap.
He once choked her, she told detectives.
..He liked to sneak up and scare her, Marcia said, seeing if he could walk noiselessly. She said he could.
By 1978, the Ridgways were living in Federal Way near Dash Point State Park. The house was a rambler at the end of a cul-de-sac, surrounded by acres of dense, damp forest.
Their churchgoing tapered off. Marcia told detectives Ridgway began to come home from work later and later, without explanation, often returning to the house dirty and wet. He had no personal friends during their marriage, she said.
…Marcia filed for divorce July 21 and included a restraining order. Ridgway countered with one of his own in August.
…The divorce was finalized in May 1981. Marcia got custody of Matthew.
GIRLFRIENDS
In early 1981, Ridgway joined a Parents Without Partners group and dated a series of girlfriends. Court records provide no names, describing them only as Girlfriends A, B and C.
Ridgway met Girlfriend A in May 1981, and soon moved into her West Seattle home.
Patterns from prior relationships materialized. The couple had sex outdoors in many locations. Twice, Ridgway tied up his girlfriend with her consent.
The relationship was almost exclusively physical.
Girlfriend A had to ask Ridgway to “back off” from his constant demands for sex. She said he had no outside friends, and was “domineered by women.”
Girlfriend A asked him to move out of her home in December 1981.
By then, Ridgway had met Girlfriend B.
They started dating, but they didn’t go to Ridgway’s favorite outdoor locations. They went to her house or to Ridgway’s house on Military Road in SeaTac, which he bought in 1981 and lived in for seven years.
…About 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1981, Ridgway met Girlfriend B at the White Shutters Inn in SeaTac for a Parents Without Partners function.
Ridgway was distraught, she told police later. He said he’d nearly killed a woman. The girlfriend told police she thought he meant a prostitute.
The next month, Ridgway began dating Girlfriend C. Girlfriend B didn’t know it. She found out a few months later and broke off her relationship with Ridgway.
In April 1982, Ridgway was having financial troubles and rented his SeaTac house to Rose Hahn and her husband. He moved into the garage. He was rarely home at night and never on weekends, Hahn said.
…Girlfriend C knew about the arrest [of Ridgway seeing a prostitute].
She told investigators Ridgway regarded prostitutes as “things” to be used.
She said they’d planned to get married, but broke up in June 1984. Ridgway swiftly found another girlfriend, she said.
JUDITH
In 1987, Ridgway met Judith Lynch. He married her in 1988, and the couple bought a home in Des Moines on South 253rd Street. They lived there until 1997.
Ridgway had become an extrovert who went out of his way to talk to his neighbors. He also took an almost obsessive interest in gardening, neighbors said.
(Link): Did Green River Killer Gary Ridgway’s Sexual Obsession Turn Him Into a Serial Killer?
Excerpts:
To an outsider, Gary Ridgway seemed like a regular guy. Married with a son, he had served in the military, attended church and held a steady job. But that image of normalcy quickly crumbled after his unmasking as one of the nation’s most prolific serial killers—and his true nature came to light.
“Gary spent his entire life knowing he was different, but trying to fit in,” Thomas Jensen, the now-retired lead police detective who spent months interrogating him, tells A&E Real Crime. “He did not want to be viewed as a pervert.”
Yet, in fact, Ridgway was obsessed with deviant sex and frequented prostitutes. That uncontrollable impulse, combined with his aggression and violence, were significant driving forces behind his murderous actions, says Mary Ellen O’Toole, a retired FBI senior profiler who also interviewed Ridgway.
…Sexual Obsession Motivated Ridgway’s Murder Spree
…Ridgway had a string of girlfriends and wives (he was married three times), patronized prostitutes frequently, enjoyed tying up and strangling women and having sexual encounters outdoors and in cars. He seemed to have an insatiable desire for sex.
Moreover, he was a necrophiliac, having sex with some of the decaying bodies. “The whole act of what he did—that included necrophilia—was arousing to him,” O’Toole says.
His proclivities, combined with a deep-seated personality disorder, made him particularly dangerous.
“It was his choice to become a serial killer,” says O’Toole. “He had a psychopathic nature or personality. These are the people without a conscience.”
...Killer Preferred Dead Bodies to Avoid Rejection
O’Toole says Ridgway displayed the classic traits of paraphilia, an intense sexual attraction to atypical objects or situations, informally known as sexual deviance, perversion or just being “kinky.”
…O’Toole says Ridgway felt that rules didn’t apply to him, and that sense of amorality, combined with strong and recurring urges to prey upon, kidnap, strangle and murder, turned him into the violent killer he became.
…The Green River Killer’s disorder facilitated his becoming a serial killer, Hickey says. “He didn’t have to kill people to access the bodies but…his fantasy was being with dead people because they’re not going to reject him. He wasn’t comfortable with real-life intimacy.”
Married Three Times But Still an Enigma
As such, it’s plausible that none of his wives really knew the man they married, says Katherine Ramsland, a forensic psychology and criminal justice professor at DeSales University in Pennsylvania who has written extensively on serial killers and has spoken to one of Ridgway’s wives, Judith.
“Gary treated Judith well,” she says. “She’d had a terrible prior marriage, so she was grateful to have found what seemed like a good man, in comparison.”
Apparently, Ridgway didn’t appear suspicious to those around him.
…As to how the wives escaped the same fate as more than four dozen women, Jensen says Ridgway had a very good reason for keeping them alive. “He was smarter than that,” he says. “He would have been suspect number one in the death of an ex-wife.”
Adds O’Toole, “Just because he didn’t murder them doesn’t mean he didn’t think of it,” she says. “On some level, the women in his life were very fortunate.”
—- end excerpts —
After having read all this information – and watching a documentary – about Gary Ridgway, the sexist, loser, perverted douche who raped and killed girls and women, I feel confident in saying that, contrary to secular conservative and Christian teaching and propaganda..
- Marriage (and parenthood) does not make people more mature, godly, loving, or sexually pure;
2. God does not reward good people with spouses or punish under-performing or “bad” single adults from obtaining a spouse because they are bad;
3. It’s not always readily apparent prior to marriage that the person you are marrying is living a dual life of rape, child molesting, kidnapping, porn addiction, murder, or whatever other bad thing, so judgmental Christians out there, such as Pat Robertson, should stop victim-blaming women who end up marrying abusive or loser husbands.
On You Tube:
Married to a Murderer: Wife of the Green River Killer
Related Posts:
(Link): Regarding Serial Killer Jeff Dahmer – and Including the Three Part Dahmer Series on Dr. Phil
(Link): Pat Robertson’s Insensitive Reply to a Domestic Violence Victim (November 2018)
(Link): Beware of Rapists on Christian Dating Sites
(Link): Convicted Sex Offender on the Run for 20 Years Found Living New Life as Pastor in Alabama
(Link): Secret Psychopath Test Could Keep Dating Apps Safe
(Link): Update on Married Father Who Worked as Christian Radio Host And Who Rapes Children
(Link): Tele-evangelist Body Guard Sentenced for Strangling Wife and Kids to be With Mistress
(Link): Ex-Church Usher Found Guilty of Hiring Hitman to Kill His Wife So He Can Pursue Kinky Sexual Lifestyle With His Mistress (the guy in this story is married AND is a parent)
(Link): Man Who Worked as Preacher Allegedly Drowned His Pregnant Wife To Be With His Mistress
(Link): Beware of HIV / AIDS Infected Christian Male Preachers On Dating Sites
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