Associated Press
SEATTLE — The defense team for Gary Leon Ridgway, charged in the deaths of four victims in the Green River serial killings case, was awarded nearly $300,000 by a judge Monday for independent DNA testing and analysis.
King County Superior Court Judge Brian Gain also approved a defense request to assign three more attorneys to Ridgway’s team. They include the public defenders who initially were assigned, Mark Prothero and Todd Gruenhagen. One more will be chosen later, and a fourth could be assigned if prosecutors seek the death penalty.
Ridgway’s lead attorney, Tony Savage, was hired by Ridgway’s family. But Savage said Monday the additional attorneys, plus two defense team investigators and two paralegals also approved by Gain, would be publicly funded.
"The fellow was a truck painter for 30 years, so what kind of an estate can you amass?" Savage said.
Besides independent DNA testing and other analysis, the more than $290,000 awarded on Monday will pay for a defense forensic pathologist and a computer specialist who will help attorneys navigate the thousands of computerized documents they will be given, Savage said.
Gain moved the case from suburban Kent to the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle. Ridgway was scheduled to be arraigned in Seattle on Tuesday.
Savage said his client is upbeat even though the complexity of the case could mean a long wait for trial.
"Mr. Ridgway is not despondent. He is not in despair. He certainly doesn’t like the prospect of a year-and-a-half to two years in jail waiting for this. But he’s upbeat, as his attorneys are," he told KOMO-TV.
Meanwhile, King County Sheriff Dave Reichert announced that a sheriff’s captain, a sergeant and two police detectives were added to a task force investigating the Green River case.
Reichert said the task force will be headed by Capt. Bruce Kalin, who served on an earlier Green River task force in the 1980s.
The task force was reconstituted following the arrest last month of Ridgway, 52, of Auburn. He is charged with aggravated first-degree murder in the deaths of Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds, Opal Mills and Carol Christensen.
The Green River case covers at least 49 women who were killed between 1982 and 1984. The first victims were found in or near the Green River in Kent.
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