WALLA WALLA, Wash. — This story was originally posted on MyNorthwest.com
Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer and one of America’s most prolific convicted serial killers, is receiving end-of-life care in a Washington state prison, according to five sources with knowledge of his condition who spoke to KIRO Newsradio in recent days. None could provide specifics beyond that.
Ridgway terrorized the Seattle area throughout the 1980s and 1990s, targeting vulnerable women along Pacific Highway South near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA). Most of his victims were young runaways or sex workers who disappeared without warning, their bodies later found in wooded areas throughout King County. For two decades, he evaded capture while becoming the focus of the largest murder investigation in U.S. history.
His 2003 plea deal, which spared him the death penalty in exchange for helping locate victims’ remains, remains controversial to this day.
The 76-year-old killer, who pleaded guilty to murdering 49 women in 2003, has been in declining health at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. The Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) has disputed this claim.
“These are inaccurate rumors,” Rachel Ericson, the deputy communications director with DOC, wrote. “While we are not able to provide much detail about incarcerated individuals’ medical information, we are able to confirm that Gary Ridgway has not had any change to his medical condition.”
The families’ endless grief
“What Norm would say is that Gary Ridgway is not deserving of our sympathy. He is not deserving of our thoughts,” King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion told KIRO Newsradio, invoking her late mentor Norm Maleng, who negotiated Ridgway’s 2003 plea deal. “Norm would want us to focus on the victims. He would want us to think of their family members. These women were someone’s daughter, sister, child. They were loved.”
Casey McNerthney, spokesperson for the King County Prosecutor’s Office, emphasized the ongoing trauma for victims’ families as news of Ridgway’s condition spreads.
“The hard part is those families don’t get the heads up of when it might come on the news,” McNerthney told Seattle’s Morning News on KIRO Newsradio. “There are probably people listening right now who are affected by his cases, and it rattles them big time, understandably so. We get the benefit of changing news stories, or if you’re listening to a podcast or watching a Netflix documentary, you can turn it off when you want to or close that web browser, but the families don’t ever get to.”
In 2013, I became the first and only reporter Ridgway ever agreed to speak with from prison, conducting six exclusive phone interviews with him.
Dawn English still cries when she thinks about Patricia LeBlanc, the 15-year-old foster daughter who disappeared in 1983. Patricia was never officially linked to Ridgway, but English has little doubt he was responsible.
“You hear the word ‘closure’ all the time,” English told me in 2013, her voice breaking. “But there’s something about having a place to go to. We can’t put flowers on her grave because there isn’t a grave to put flowers on. We can’t go and say, ‘It’s Patty’s birthday, let’s take flowers.’ We can release a balloon, which is all we can do. But it just makes me sad.”
Patricia fit the profile of Ridgway’s victims perfectly: young women struggling with homelessness, addiction, or forced into sex work. Women whose disappearances often went unreported for days or weeks. Women who some dismissed as “just prostitutes,” but who had families desperately searching for them.
The killer’s chilling admissions
During my 2013 interviews with Ridgway, the serial killer revealed disturbing details about his crimes with an emotionless tone that was almost more terrifying than rage would have been.
When discussing one of his victims, Ridgway referred to her death with breathtaking callousness.
“That was a stressor, I guess what you call it,” Ridgway told me, speaking about murdering a mother of two as if describing a bad day at work. “My dad died, and I was out, and I think I killed her on a Saturday. She was a stressor. I didn’t kill any more after that.”
A stressor. That’s how Gary Ridgway described ending the life of a woman who had two children.
He also claimed that his killing began earlier than anyone knew. While he was convicted of murders starting in 1982, Ridgway told me he had killed before then, but didn’t realize his victims were dead.
“My first kills, I didn’t know they were dead,” Ridgway said. “1982 was when I said I started killing. That’s when I knew 100% I killed. But I had several of them before that because I didn’t think they were dead.”
When I asked him to clarify, he confirmed: “There are several before 1982 that are not on the Green River list.”
The only media interviews ever granted
“How hard was it to get prostitutes to get in a car with you, especially when there was all the hysteria about the Green River Killer being out there?” I asked him during one call.
“It wasn’t a problem at all,” Ridgway answered matter-of-factly. “My opinion was they were just homeless and needed the money, basically.”
“How would you convince them?” I pressed.
“Normal talking to them, basically,” he said.
That was it. He acted normal. The women, desperate for money to survive, got in his truck. And they drove away to their deaths.
“In prostitution, the guys, the johns, don’t give a crap about the women,” Ridgway told me.
His words remain chillingly relevant today. Along Aurora Avenue in North Seattle, prostitutes still face extreme danger from violent pimps, johns, and predators. In fact, just last year, a man was accused of kidnapping an Aurora Avenue sex worker, driving her to Oregon and locking her in a cinder block cell.
The conditions that allowed Ridgway to prey on these women for two decades persist, making it crucial to keep sounding the alarm before another killer exploits these same vulnerabilities.
Why Maleng made the controversial deal
During our July 17, 2013 conversation, I asked Ridgway directly about his victim count.
“The total number is 75 to 80,” Ridgway said.
McNerthney explained why then-prosecutor Norm Maleng made the controversial 2003 decision to spare Ridgway the death penalty in exchange for information about victims’ locations.
“It was about the victims and their families,” McNerthney said. “The hardest part about that was knowing that nobody would be satisfied, but what Norm thought about was, how do we serve the victims here? Because if you don’t get those bodies found, then you have dozens of young women who are dumped, and you don’t know where they are.”
McNerthney noted the decision was also supported by then-King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, a Republican who later served in Congress.
“If you don’t have that decision to have Ridgway plead guilty to life in prison, multiple counts, and lead investigators to the bodies, the dump sites, then for 40-plus years, you don’t know where your mother or sister or daughter is,” McNerthney said. “And it’s that unhealed wound, which always will be there, but not having the body is just extra insulting.”
Failed final search in September 2024
Even as his health deteriorated, Ridgway continued manipulating authorities. In September 2024, King County Sheriff’s Office detectives secretly transported him from Walla Walla to King County under armed guard for what would be his final attempt to locate victims’ remains.
“He was brought back under armed guard, and sheriff’s office investigators went out to sites where he said that he might be able to find more remains. They didn’t find those,” McNerthney confirmed during a recent KIRO Newsradio interview. “That’s the big question of was he being truthful? Was he not? He knew he was never going to leave prison. So, did he just want a field trip, and was he causing more heartache, or was he actually being genuine? And I’m not sure that we’ll ever know the answer to that.”
Court documents obtained by KIRO Newsradio show detectives brought Ridgway to multiple locations over several days. They found nothing.
“Many of the things he was telling detectives just didn’t jibe,” said one person with direct knowledge of the searches. “Some investigators believe he was making up new locations entirely as a sick boast.”
The victims who narrowly escaped
A woman named Susan, who asked that her voice be altered when she spoke to me in 2013, believes she narrowly escaped becoming Ridgway’s sixteenth victim in 1983. Her friend, Sandra Major, got into Ridgway’s truck that night despite Susan’s desperate pleas.
“She kept telling me, ‘It’ll be fine, I’ll be right back.’ And I said, ‘Don’t go, don’t go, something’s wrong.’ And she went anyway, and she never came back that night,” Susan recalled.
Susan described Sandra’s dreams: “She wanted to go to college. She wanted to be a mother. She wanted to be free of the life that she had found herself in because of a very sick man who convinced her into it, and she will never have that chance now.”
The courtroom confrontation
At his 2003 sentencing, families finally had their chance to confront Ridgway. Their pain filled the courtroom:
“I was only five when my mother died and when my dad told me that she was never coming home,” one victim’s child said.
“A lot of Christmas and a lot of birthday parties we missed because of you,” another family member said.
“He’s destroyed my life,” a mother testified. “My daughter’s life.”
“Our daughter, my wife, and I, she was 16. She was still a little girl in my eyes,” a father said.
During my interviews with Ridgway, I heard none of this remorse.
When I asked why he killed, his answer was chilling: “At the time, I was angry at going through a divorce and just getting back at my ex-wife.”
No compassionate release despite failing health
The Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) is prohibited from disclosing details of Ridgway’s medical condition due to federal health privacy laws.
When contacted by KIRO Newsradio, the DOC adamantly denied rumors that Ridgway might receive compassionate release for end-of-life care.
“I don’t think so. I sure hope not,” McNerthney said when asked about the possibility during a KIRO Newsradio interview.
He said the prosecutor’s office was unable to comment on Ridgway’s current health status.
A legacy of unanswered questions
As Gary Ridgway nears death in his Walla Walla prison cell, he takes with him the truth about potentially dozens of victims. Former Sheriff Dave Reichert said in 2013 that he believes the real number could be 65 to 70. During my interviews, Ridgway claimed 75 to 80. He even suggested he killed before 1982, victims who were never connected to the Green River cases.
Rob Fitzgerald, a former military investigator who spent years searching for Green River victims and communicated regularly with Ridgway, experienced the manipulation firsthand. Fitzgerald had dedicated countless weekends to searching dump sites with high-tech equipment, building a relationship with Ridgway in hopes of finding remains and bringing answers to the families of missing women.
During one of our 2013 conversations, I confronted Ridgway directly about whether he was lying to Fitzgerald.
“Gary, let me ask you this, and I will just be honest with you here,” I said. “Because Rob hasn’t found bodies. Are you playing a little cat-and-mouse? Are you getting your rocks off right now? Are you telling him a story?”
There was a pause. Then Ridgway started to answer: “No, the deal is down the road, what I want to do is … Well, you know, down the road I want everything to be…” He stopped mid-sentence. “I’m not going to answer that question, no.”
It was one of the few times during our interviews where Ridgway seemed caught off guard, refusing to answer rather than offering his usual matter-of-fact responses about murder.
Fitzgerald believed Ridgway was stringing him along for attention.
“I think he wants to show the world that, ‘Here I am, Gary Ridgway, the truck painter from Kenworth, the guy who everybody thought was slow since elementary school. But here I am, and I’m the best at something,’” Fitzgerald told me in 2013.
Susan, the woman who escaped Ridgway in 1983, has found a different path. Now working to help other women escape sex trafficking, she told me she even prays for Ridgway.
“I pray that he can somehow find the same peace,” she said. “I’m not going to allow him to take one more minute of my life with bitterness. I’m going to take what his sin did to others, and I’m going to turn it around for good.”
But for families like Dawn English, there is no turning around the loss. Her foster daughter has still not been found.
“There are all those other girls that society looked down on, but they have families that love them too,” English said. “They can go to the cemetery and take flowers.”
The end
When Ridgway dies, likely “soon” according to the five sources familiar with his condition, he will have spent 24 years behind bars for ending at least 49 lives. Possibly many more dating back before 1982.
Gary Ridgway called one woman he killed a “stressor.” Her children called her Mom.
He referred to his victims as problems to dispose of. Their families call them by their names every single day.
Soon, the Green River Killer will be dead.
The families of his victims will still be serving life sentences.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
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