But she was unshakable in her insistence that Gary rarely, if ever, went anywhere by himself except to work. “We talked earlier about your relationship with Gary,” Haney began, “and I know that all marriages have their ups and downs.”

“He makes me feel like a new woman every day,” Judith cut in quickly. “That’s how I feel. He just makes me feel good.”

“How does he do that?” Haney asked.

“Just by being himself. He’ll come through the door and say, ‘Hello, I’m home,’ with a big smile and give me a hug and a kiss, and [say] ‘What’s new?’ Or years ago, he’d always ask me what needs to be fixed, and, you know, I’d say, ‘The faucet’s leaking,’ and he’d fix it or the washer.” She spoke faster and faster, afraid to let Matt Haney interrupt her. “He’s just always made me feel so good, ’cause he’s always smiling and happy and pleasant.”

“So for sixteen years, you’ve never had a ripple?”

“No, just a couple of little ups and downs, you know.”

“Did you go to court with him the other day?” Sue Peters asked.

“No, it was early in the morning.”

“Did he plead guilty or not guilty?”

“He said he pleaded guilty,” Judith said softly.

“Why would he do that?”

“Because,” she said with a trembling voice, “it would’ve cost a whole lot for lawyers.”

“How much did it cost him to plead guilty? Did he have to pay court fees?”

“He had to pay a fine. It was $700. He said the lawyers would have cost more than that. [He paid it] so that he wouldn’t have to have the lawyers and pay all that, and have all that kind of money going out.”

“So as far as you’re concerned,” Matt Haney asked, “that incident is behind you now?”

“I believe him and I trust him.”

Haney had talked with Mary and Tommy Ridgway a few days after the 1987 search and they had formed a solid wall against the police. In their opinion, their son was being singled out unfairly. But when Haney pointed out lies Gary had told them, their attitude changed. Still, they, like Judith, remained in denial, and when the task force found no solid evidence to arrest Gary, the unpleasantness was all “put in the past.”

Judith said now that she had never asked questions that might have upset him, or, perhaps more frightening, whose answers would have destroyed her perfect marriage. They had been talking for half an hour when Sue Peters asked Judith about her sex life with Gary. Somewhat discomfited, Judith described it as quite normal, although Gary desired intercourse a little more often than she did. No, he wasn’t kinky and he didn’t watch porno movies. Maybe, early in their relationship, they might have watched movies like that once or twice. She thought she might have borrowed some from a relative of hers, but that was mostly out of curiosity. Gary didn’t buy off-color books or magazines. He had never tied her up to have sex, and Judith seemed surprised to be asked such a question. As for “outdoor sex,” why would they want to do that when they had comfortable beds at home and in their motor home?

“All right,” Sue Peters said. “Has he ever done anything that made you feel uncomfortable?”

“No, never.”

Finally, Haney and Peters asked Judith if she remembered that there had been a lot of circumstantial evidence in 1987 to lead detectives to believe Gary might have been responsible for the deaths of the Green River victims. “Are you familiar with the Green River [cases]? Have you followed it through the years?”

“I’ve seen the pictures, and how many vic—And, you know, it’s sad.”

“Is there any information in your house about Green River?” Peters asked. “Any books, or reading?”

Judith’s answer was surprising. “Yes. I’ve kept it, and tucked it away, you know, in the bottom of a drawer, put away. It’s not Gary’s choice. It was my choice. I just kind of kept them and folded them up and stuffed them away.”

They were just at the point in their questioning when it seemed as if Judith Ridgway was going to tell them something important, when the doorbell rang, followed by the phone. All three of them tensed. It was eighteen minutes to four when they had to pause the tape. Haney and Peters knew the media must have discovered Gary’s arrest, and they would all be trying for a scoop for the five o’clock news.

Judith answered the phone. Luckily, it was one of her sisters-in-law, and, without letting her speak, Judith quickly said “I’m busy” and hung up. But then she moved to the front door where someone pounded insistently. Sue Peters managed to step in front of her before she could be blasted by a zealous reporter’s question. Judith didn’t know yet that Gary had been arrested, and having a microphone stuck in her face to hear her initial reaction would be a cruel thing. News cameras caught just a glimpse of Judith’s startled face at the door, then cut fleetingly to Peters before she firmly closed the camera out. What she had to tell Judith was going to be overwhelming. The woman deserved some time to absorb what would change her life forever.

They were back on tape, and back to discussing Green River, but the phone rang constantly, until Matt Haney asked Judith if they could temporarily disconnect it.

“What’s going on?” Judith asked, suddenly suspicious. “Don’t I have a right to know?”

Haney and Peters said they were trying to tell her. “Gary was a Green River suspect back then,” Peters said, speaking of April 1987, “and we recently sent a lot of samples from these women to the crime laboratory for DNA purposes. It turns out that we have three cases now—confirmed—that Gary’s DNA was left inside them, meaning he had sex with them. His DNA was left on three of the prostitutes. So, again, he is the focus of the investigation by the Green River Task Force. And now we have the recent incident on Pacific HiWay on the sixteenth, and it was an undercover police decoy and Gary was trying to meet up with her again for sex—for thirty dollars. I know this is probably shocking to you—”

“Um-hm,” Judith said, her face paling.

“Can you even—Is it feasible that he had sex with these women? I mean, do you believe that?”

Judith shook her head, crying now. But she admitted that Gary had saved some of the articles written about the Green River Killer. Shocked almost silent, Judith agreed to continue to answer questions on tape. She didn’t know that the task force investigators had been following her husband, and she clearly had no idea that he had been driving side roads and making detours on his way to work. She thought he got up before four AM just to be sure he was on time for work at six thirty.

He didn’t shower in the morning, only shaved, drank tea or coffee, and left. She assumed he’d been at Denny’s having pancakes. She was sure Gary had never rented storage space, and nothing in their homes had ever been off-limits to her. She kept repeating that he had no secrets from her. But there was so much about her husband that she obviously hadn’t known. She was stunned.

The floodgates had opened and Judith answered their questions now, flinching at the meaning behind them. No, he had never tried to choke her. He’d never frightened her, beyond coming around the side of their house and saying “Boo!”

“I know you care a lot about him, and you didn’t know him in the early eighties,” Sue Peters said now. “If this ever comes to trial, how would you feel about testifying to what you told us. About the man you know.”

“The man I know is wonderful,” Judith said quietly.

“So would you mind testifying to that in court—the things you know about Gary?”

“I would tell them everything is good about him. He’s been the best. I love him.”

“She was in shock,” Sue Peters recalled. “I don’t think she had any idea that this could happen. She was upset and kept denying that it could be true.”

It was hard not to feel sorry for Judith Ridgway. Gary had come along and brought love into her life when she was crushed by the tawdry end of her first marriage. More than anything, she had clung to the haven of her own house and yard, the husband she trusted. Now, Peters and Haney told her that she would have to pack a bag because a search warrant would be served on that house and property.