Ridgway charged in 4 Green River killings

By Gene Johnson

Associated Press

SEATTLE – Gary Leon Ridgway, a truck painter from Auburn, was charged today with four counts of aggravated murder in the Green River serial killings case.

King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said he has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty in the case.

“We will not plea bargain with the death penalty,” Maleng said.

The Green River case has baffled investigators since 1982, when women’s bodies were found in or near the Green River in Kent, south of Seattle. Forty-nine women – most of them prostitutes or runaways – were believed to be victims of the serial killer.

Ridgway is charged in the deaths of Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman and Cynthia Hinds, whose bodies were found in the river on Aug. 15, 1982, and Carol Christensen, found May 8, 1983, in woods in nearby Maple Valley. Hinds and Mills were both teen-agers. Christensen was 21 and Chapman was 31.

Maleng said there is no statute of limitations for murder.

“For the victim, the loss is ultimate. For the family, the grief is permanent, and for the community the harm and danger do not diminish for the passage of time. Justice is a concept that never gets old,” he said.

Investigators this fall were finally able to link Ridgway to the crimes through DNA evidence. Ridgway had complied with a 1987 court order to chew on a piece of gauze, and investigators used new DNA technology to match his saliva to fluids found on three of the victims.

The fourth victim, Hinds, was linked to Ridgway through circumstantial evidence, investigators said.

Ridgway, 52, an employee of Kenworth Truck Co. in Renton for 32 years, was arrested Friday as he was leaving work.

A public defender for Ridgway, Mark Prothero, declined immediate comment on the charges, but scheduled a news conference for late afternoon.

A suspect in the case since 1984, Ridgway was known to have contact with several other victims on the Green River victims list, and county Sheriff Dave Reichert is proposing a regional task force to investigate all 49 deaths, plus more than 40 other deaths of women that have not been solved since then.

Reichert has approached sheriffs in neighboring Pierce and Snohomish counties about a joint investigation, King County sheriff’s Sgt. John Urquhart said.

“We will be very interested in other (deaths) in other jurisdictions that might turn out to have a common suspect,” Urquhart said.

Authorities won’t say whether they think the Green River killer is responsible for any deaths beyond 1984, but the arrest has prompted investigators in San Diego and Vancouver, British Columbia, to review files on scores of slain women for possible links.

Urquhart said his department expects to receive more money this week to cover the costs of investigation, including processing evidence taken from Ridgway’s current home and three previous homes in suburban Seattle.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported today that Sen. Patty Murray secured $500,000 for the county for further DNA analysis and other work in an appropriations bill which had cleared the House and Senate but had not yet been signed by President Bush.

Investigators are looking for links between Ridgway and dozens of other Green River victims whose bones were found in brush-choked lots and forest ravines outside Seattle and Portland, Ore.

In San Diego, where 44 prostitutes and other women were slain in 1985-88, investigators were reopening case files and checking for possible links to Ridgway, Police Capt. Ron Newman said.

He noted that detectives on a 1988-92 task force made seven trips to Seattle to meet with Green River task force members without establishing any firm connection between the cases.

The San Diego County sheriff’s office likely would try to locate a DNA sample to be tested for a match with Ridgway, sheriff’s Lt. Jerry Lewis said.

Investigators from Vancouver, British Columbia, where some 45 women involved in prostitution or drugs have disappeared in the past 20 years and are believed dead, planned to visit Seattle to discuss Ridgway’s arrest.

Urquhart declined to say whether King County had credit card statements or other information on Ridgway’s travels. Such information cleared at least one previous subject.

Investigators continued to search for evidence at Ridgway’s home in Auburn, as well as a SeaTac home where he once lived. Searches at two other previous residences of Ridgway have been completed.