Dana had even pointed out that the Mountain View Cemetery Road was a favorite shortcut for Gary, although she hadn’t recognized the Star Lake site. New construction made it look entirely different from the way it had a year or two earlier. She’d indicated many spots along Frager Road where she and Gary had made love: next to the PD&J Meat Company, under a large tree near the Meeker Street (Peck) Bridge, and in Cottonwood Park.

When Haney asked if she and Gary had ever gone to any areas near the SeaTac Airport, she nodded. “We used to pick blackberries and apples near the empty houses—close to the runway lights.”

Like Heather before her, Dana had quickly discerned that Mary Ridgway “wore the pants” in her family. If Gary wanted to buy a truck with money from his own bank account, Mary wouldn’t let him withdraw the cash until he agreed to buy the pickup she and his father had chosen. As for Tommy Ridgway, Gary’s father, he’d had little clout in the family. Mary screamed and scolded him much of the time. Once, she got so angry with him that she had broken a plate over his head. Dana had come to feel sorry for her father-in-law.

Although Mary Ridgway often criticized Dana’s housekeeping or accused her of neglecting Chad’s health, the two women reached an uneasy peace because Gary was very devoted to his mother. He worried about her and sought her approval.

Oddly, just as Dana and Gary moved in together in 1972, Mary Ridgway told her son that she was receiving threatening and obscene phone calls. “Gary would go and give her a ride to her car [at work] and make sure it was okay,” Dana said. Gary had even told Dana that some man had exposed himself to his mother.

“You never knew who it was that was threatening his mother?”

Dana shook her head. “No. No. But it went so far that she got a gun and carried it with her. There was somebody—a man—calling and making suggestions over the phone.”

Dana didn’t mention anything about Gary’s alleged jealousy when she went out dancing with friends or stayed until closing at the Eagles’ Lodge, and they didn’t ask her. According to her, their marriage had ended for more mundane reasons. “There was no communication,” she said. “There was no real relationship. I felt that he just wanted somebody to keep a house clean for him and do the shopping and the cooking. He was always in the garage with his cars, working on them, doing something. All he wanted was food and sex, and that was it. Any time we did talk, it would end up in arguments.”

Jim Doyon had asked if her husband ever verbally degraded or criticized her. “He ever call you a bitch or a whore when you were having sex? Ever try to slap you around? Knock you down? Keep you under his thumb, so to speak? Belittle you?”

And Dana had shaken her head. “No, no. He liked playing little games. Chased me around the house, and caught me in the hallway and took my clothes off there. You know, things like that.”

Whatever Gary Ridgway might have done to strangers, he apparently hadn’t carried any grossly perverted fantasies into his home—at least with his first two wives. A lot of men are intrigued with thoughts of bondage, far fewer with choking, and that activity had happened only once with Dana. So far, the investigation into his domestic life indicated that he was somewhat selfish, domineering with wives, but submissive to his mother.

Mary Ridgway had directed a large part of her son’s life—his finances, his wives’ housekeeping, child care, his clothes, his major purchases—and, not surprisingly, his first two wives had resented it, although each of them acknowledged that his reading skills were those of a third-grader and paperwork confused him.

It had been different with his third wife. Rather than resent her mother-in-law, Judith Ridgway had admired her. And Judith had been with Gary for twenty years. Indeed, Judith had apparently taken over Mary’s role as Gary’s caretaker. Green River investigators would find that she was anything but domineering, but in many areas of his third marriage, Judith handled their money as if Gary was a child who couldn’t cope with the daily tasks of life. While he was a punctual and steady worker at Kenworth, she paid their bills and gave him spending money. They were both frugal people who preferred saving money to spending it.

Mary Ridgway died of colon cancer in the summer of 2001, and by then Judith had taken over the things Gary wasn’t able to do well.

49

WHEN MATT HANEY returned to the Green River Task Force on loan from his new position on Bainbridge Island, he fully expected to be part of the team that would arrest and question Gary Ridgway. He was the resident “Ridgway expert.” Just as he had carefully orchestrated the search warrants and sweeps of Ridgway’s property in April of 1987, he now outlined the questions that he would ask Ridgway when he was arrested. Because Ridgway had solicited sex from the police officer decoy, the task force’s time line had accelerated; they feared he was on the prowl for victims again. He’d been arrested before—back in the early eighties—and that hadn’t stopped him from killing. Haney worked overtime, wanting to be sure he had an organized approach for his part on the postarrest interview team.

And then, Lieutenant Jim Graddon called Haney in to inform him that he had been removed from the roster of those who would interrogate Ridgway. “You’ll be replaced by Jim Doyon,” Graddon said flatly.

Evidently there had been a meeting among the brass where the decision was made. Haney had no quarrel with Doyon, and he wondered if the last-minute edict was because he was no longer officially a King County officer. He suspected they had decided it would look better for the department to have someone from inside the sheriff’s office make Ridgway’s arrest.

It was a bitter disappointment for Haney, particularly after he had taken such an abrupt leave from his new job with the Bainbridge Island police to come back to help in the Green River probe. But he accepted his new assignment from Reichert and Graddon. Haney would not be there to see the denouement of his long held conviction that Gary Ridgway was the Green River Killer. Instead, he would accompany Sue Peters and question Judith Ridgway at the exact time Gary Ridgway was being arrested, and try to get her out of their home before the media trapped her.

Shortly thereafter, Dave Reichert and King County prosecutor Norm Maleng would call a press conference to announce that Ridgway had been captured. All of it would be carried out with a virtual synchronization of watches, as meticulously choreographed as a military invasion.

Ridgway had no idea that the trap he had evaded for two decades was about to slam shut on him. He went to work as usual on Friday morning, November 30. Haney and Sue Peters had already contacted the Kenworth plant supervisors to let them know that there would be police activity that Friday, but there must be no forewarning to anyone at Kenworth.

First, Peters and Detective Jon Mattsen drove to the Kenworth plant to interview Ridgway. He had been under surveillance for weeks, but he didn’t know it. When his boss told him someone wanted to talk to him about designing a truck, he walked toward the two detectives with no sign of recognition. He didn’t remember Peters or Mattsen from earlier conversations, and seemed surprised to hear that they were from the sheriff’s office.

They questioned him about Carol Christensen, telling him that her now-grown daughter wanted to know more about her, and they were following up on her mother’s case. Ridgway didn’t seem nervous as he looked from one detective to the other in response to their questions, his pale eyes blinking behind thick glasses. Yes, he said he had known Carol Christensen from going into the Barn Door Tavern.