GREEN RIVER KILLER

Gary Leon Ridgeway known as the Green River Killer, is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. On November 30, 2001, as he was leaving a Renton, WA factory where he worked, he was arrested for the murders of seven women whose deaths were attributed to the "Green River Killer". Four murders were linked to him through DNA and three through paint he used at his job. Two years later he pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder, although some estimates run higher.

Ridgway confessed to more confirmed murders than any other American serial killer. He actually couldn’t remember all his victims but he knew where most were buried because he would revisit their graves to be intimate with them again. It haunts me to this day that I just completely misinterpreted one of the main signs as to his identity. I don’t know if it could have helped bring him in before anyone else was murdered by him and I never will know if I could have saved any of these women. My burden was in “seeing” him clearly and not being able to do anything about it.

In an interview I saw with him he said he just enjoyed killing these women, it gave him a rush. He took out his aggressions on mainly prostitutes because he considered them filth and despised them. He once claimed that prostitutes did to him "what drugs do to a junkie."

What I “Saw”:
I first remember becoming aware of this case through Erik … he bought me the paperback book in 1990 that on the cover offered a large reward for anyone who could find the Green River Killer. I had hardly started reading it when I started “seeing” him and his victims. I first saw him cruising in a pick-up truck along darkened streets … he was “window shopping” … waiting for that stir inside him that he had to feed. I know that sounds awful but it was as if you were at a buffet and saw a dish that you simply knew you would have to have. He felt like that. Except that his hunger was sexual. I couldn’t stay with his ‘visions’ long, they were just too depraved. I did see him moving the dead women around as if they were a carcass of his recent kill as if he were deer hunter with no more or even less feeling towards what they once were. If ever I saw into a ‘hunter’ of women it was Gary Ridgeway. They were just diseased animals that he was ridding the world of while he also got pleasure. He truly didn’t feel anything but sexual desire and disgust for these women.

The biggest break that I got while seeing the visions was that he kept checking his rear view mirror so I got to see him … problem was that he was so non-descript that he fit the same description as thousands of men in the late 70’s early 80‘s. White, medium brown hair that covered his ears, medium brown mustache, full lips, no scars or moles, sometimes glasses, nothing unusual. Later I saw him in the reflection from the water and I saw that he was average weight, average height, average build … this man was just plain average all the way around. I could have picked him out of a lineup but they would have to arrest him first which didn’t happen.

Here is the part that I will never get over. Without knowing it I had a vital piece of information. I knew what he did for a living and never “got it”. The biggest flaw in my “second sight” is that often some things are left up to my interpretation of what I am “seeing”. I sometimes “see” an important fact but it’s given as if it’s a clue in a game of Charades … I will be ’shown’ something in action but I have to not only put it together but put it together correctly. In this case I totally missed it. I kept ’seeing’ the killer painting his truck … over and over I would see him do this. I was so focused on what color his truck was and trying to see a license plate or some make and model but never did, that I missed the big picture … actually the trucks kept changing so over the years I just quit trying. Erik and my family knew what facts I did have and even they couldn’t interpret the changing color of the trucks so we shelved any hope of me helping to find this killer and stopping him.

The day that Gary Ridgeway was arrested I couldn’t get to the TV fast enough … I wanted to see if they had the right man … Sure enough there sat the man that I had seen so very many years ago … older but the same. I actually got sick to my stomach when they gave his background story and they said “Gary Ridgeway, the 54-year-old former truck painter …” I was crushed that I had missed that .. I was all over it, and had been for years, the flashes were telling me that his occupation was painting trucks not that he was hiding his truck from discovery!! Erik was blown away as well when he learned of this mistake that I had made in interpreting my flashes. Of course he tries to tell me that I couldn’t have done more than I did and let it go but I can’t help wonder if I could have helped them catch him before he killed anymore of these prostitutes that he hated but who had once been someone’s little girl, or sweet sister or tragic mother.

May all those women he killed finally be at peace and may they be there to embrace their loved ones when they pass over. back to KNOWN EVENTS