Gary Ridgway: podcast appearances and interviews

Gary Leon Ridgway, born on February 18, 1949, is an American serial killer known for the murder of forty-nine women between 1982 and 1998 in the northwestern United States. Often referred to as the Green River Killer or the Green River Strangler, Ridgway's crimes targeted women such as alleged prostitutes and other vulnerable individuals, including underage runaways. His victims were typically strangled, usually by hand but occasionally with ligatures, and their bodies were discarded in forested or overgrown areas. Ridgway reportedly engaged in acts of necrophilia with some of the bodies. He had been a suspect in the Green River case since 1982, but investigators were unable to connect him to the murders until advancements in DNA profiling. He was ultimately linked to the crimes and was arrested on November 30, 2001, when he was leaving the Kenworth truck factory in Renton, Washington, where he worked. As part of a plea bargain, he agreed to reveal the locations of additional missing women, leading to his sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and he was spared the death penalty.