As Baird read Ridgway’s statement aloud, there were muffled gasps and grief-stricken faces in the crowd on the other side of the courtroom’s rail. “I killed the forty-eight women listed in the State’s second amended information. In most cases, when I murdered these women, I did not know their names. Most of the time, I killed them the first time I met them and I do not have a good memory of their faces. I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight….
“I killed them all in King County. I killed most of them in my house near Military Road, and I killed a lot of them in my truck, not far from where I picked them up. I killed some of them outside. I remember leaving each woman’s body in the place where she was found…. I picked prostitutes because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex. I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without being caught.”
The entire summary of evidence would be released later. Baird and the other prosecutors had brilliantly winnowed down thousands of pages of police follow-ups and statements into a horrendous document recounting the crimes of a man consumed with cruelty and killing for more than forty years.
It didn’t seem to trouble him; Ridgway answered “Guilty” in a monotone voice forty-eight times as the names of the dead girls—and four who had no names—were read aloud. Either he didn’t care about them or he had no affect at all. It was probably the former. Never once in discussing his crimes had Ridgway appeared to have any remorse or regret as he talked with detectives about the murders he had committed; any emotional pain he’d felt was for his losses. There was no way to describe it verbally, but now they saw what he was, a roving predator who had perfected his techniques for luring the vulnerable with the same bland vacuity he demonstrated in court, killing them efficiently as he robbed them of air, allowing himself no more than an hour to load them into his truck—headed for the wilderness where he would throw them away.
Any living creature deserved better, and these were human beings sacrificed to fulfill his sexual appetite and assuage his rage, a rage the cause of which seemed unclear even to him. Gary Ridgway demonstrated a seemingly endless capacity as a killing machine.
As the charges were read, it was apparent that there were some unexpected and heretofore unknown victims who came after the young women who had become familiar to those who followed the Green River cases. In the months of interrogation, Ridgway’s questioners had discovered that the murders had not stopped in 1984 or even 1985. After Judith moved in with him, the fires of his rage had been somewhat banked but not extinguished. He continued to patronize prostitutes and sit in dark spots along the Strip, watching the girls, seeking prey. On weekends, he had attended swap meets and garage sales with his trusting wife, gone camping and gardened. And he’d rarely missed work. But he had still found time for his favorite hobby: killing.
And killing was what he was all about. The spontaneous erections of his teenage years were long since gone even in the eighties. The women who went with him had had to perform oral sex to harden his penis enough so he was able to get behind them for intercourse. More important, he’d needed that position so he could choke them with his forearm. If they didn’t die from his throttling them, he stood on their necks to finish the job.
He had perfected the murder part, and he got better over the years at hiding the dead girls. It must have been a matter of some pride for him that it had taken so many years to find some of the victims from the 1982 to 1984 spate of killing. He had apparently varied his master plans to throw the detectives off as the years rolled by—into the nineties, probably past the turn of the century.
THE BODY OF CINDY SMITH, the “Punky Brewster” girl who had just come home from California happily betrothed, hadn’t been found for thirty-nine months. Children playing in a ditch near Green River Community College in June 1987, took a stick to poke at a pile of debris. They screamed and ran home when a human skull rolled out. With dental records, Cindy had been identified almost immediately. Ridgway had been confident that he could lead task force investigators to where he had left the rest of her body, but he faltered. He was confused because he was certain he had left Cindy as a beginning focal point to start another cluster site, and failing to locate the bodies he considered his property upset him. Finally, it became obvious that new roads had been built, changing the topography of the area. He could only place Cindy’s resting spot from aerial photos. Once he did that, he visibly relaxed.
THE SECOND VICTIM he’d disposed of in that general area fit his description of the S.I.R. auto race way site, but she hadn’t been on the Green River list. Patricia Barczak was nineteen when she was last seen on October 18, 1986. A pretty, bubbly young woman with thick, frosted brown, shoulder-length hair, she had just completed a course in a culinary school and was on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming a baker of wedding cakes. Like most girls her age, Patty was somewhat gullible when it came to men. Just before she disappeared, she was dating a man who’d led her to believe he had a successful career working at the Millionair’s Club. Because she lived in Bellevue, she didn’t know that the club, spelled without the usual e, wasn’t an exclusive social spot but rather a shelter for down-and-outers, a longtime Seattle fixture that provided meals and day jobs for men on the streets. After she discovered that her boyfriend had grossly exaggerated his status, she had trouble getting him out of her house and out of her life. To avoid him, she had to meet her girlfriends someplace else, just to get a breath of fresh air, hoping in vain that he would be gone when she returned. But he had no home to go to, and he had staked out a claim on the couch of the apartment Patty shared with her roommates. He became an early suspect in her case.
Her worried mother told Bellevue detective Jim Hansen that Patty hadn’t picked up her paycheck at the Winchell’s Donut Shop where she worked. When Hansen found many of her things, including her backpack filled with personal and religious items that mattered to her, in her “boyfriend’s” possession, he was on the hot seat, though the detective couldn’t absolutely link him to her disappearance.
So Patty Barczak wasn’t placed on the Green River victim list. When her skull was found in February 1993, two hundreds yards off Highway 18, near the entrance to the S.I.R., sheriff’s captain Mike Nault was doubtful that she could be a Green River victim. The timing was off; the profile for the GRK said he liked to leave the bodies of his victims in the wilderness where he could revisit them and fantasize. Patty’s skull was out in the open, near a freeway.
Even so, the girl who hadn’t called her frantic mother for seven years shared certain characteristics with the other victims. Animals might well have moved her skull from where it had been originally. There was a remote, but possible, chance she had met the Green River Killer. But it was impossible to determine the cause of her death because no other bones were found. Her skull was buried in an infant’s casket.
Ridgway had missed the news stories in 1993 when Patricia’s skull was found, and that disturbed him. He had meant to surprise the task force investigators by giving them this new cluster, offering up at least one new victim. Although he cared nothing for their names, faces, or lives, he prided himself on keeping track of their bodies. And he was slipping. He was finally able to verify that he’d left Patricia Barczak close to the S.I.R. exit from the freeway, and within a half mile of Cindy Smith’s skull. He referred to her as his “S.I.R. Lady,” just as he called other victims things like “the Log Lady” and “the Water Tower Lady.” He remembered that Patty had been a little overweight, and had dark hair, which, for him, was a detailed description. Only he knew if he’d left complete bodies or just their heads. Toward the later years, he had apparently decapitated many bodies, leaving the heads many miles apart from the torsos to confuse the task force.