Gary Leon Ridgeway
The Green River Killer is a serial murderer whose spree of crime terrorized the area of the nation known as the Pacific Northwest. A quiet region of the United States, in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s, the area was a mix of new urban metropolises like Seattle and traditional rural areas like the mountain, river, and shore country. Later identified as truck painter Gary Leon Ridgeway, the Green River Killer killed so many women an entire population of Washington State was forever shadowed by the very real threat he posed.
Over 90 women comprised a serial killer career so numerous even the Green River Killer, Gary Leon Ridgeway, couldn’t keep track of the body count. Some experts say around 50 women at the very least can be attributed to the Green River Killer. The verdant rural area of Washington was pervaded by fear as a growing number of bodies replenished the Green River with startling and terrifying regularity. A jittery awareness of a murderer in their midst created an unwelcome and foreign atmosphere of doubt and suspicion in this formerly peaceful area.
These brutal, sexually oriented killings came to light when bodies were discovered submerged in Seattle’s Green River. Dead young women of mixed nationalities, young in age and generally attractive were asphyxiated and left with spiky objects lodged in their vaginal cavity. The discoveries of so many bodies disturbed the local population and unnerved people going about their daily lives. The locals began to scan roadsides for bodies and watched for police protection on roads and byways.
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