PSK 330 – Adli Psikoloji – English 10 April 2020
Bişir KATİPOĞLU – 040617008
Midterm Case study
“The Green River Killer”
Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), also known as the Green
River Killer, is an American serial killer. He was initially convicted of 48
separate murders. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was
added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the
second most prolific serial killer in United States history according to
confirmed murders. He killed many teenage girls and women in the state
of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s.
Most of Ridgway’s victims were alleged to be sex workers and other women
in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. The press gave
him his nickname after the first five victims were found in the Green
River before his identity was known. He strangled his victims, usually by
hand but sometimes using ligatures. After strangling them, he would dump
their bodies in forested and overgrown areas in King County, often returning
to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them.
On November 30, 2001, as Ridgway was leaving the Kenworth truck factory
where he worked in Renton, Washington, he was arrested for the murders
of four women whose cases were linked to him through DNA evidence. As
part of a plea bargain wherein he agreed to disclose the locations of still-
missing women, he was spared the death penalty and received a sentence
of life imprisonment without parole.
In his early lifetime, Gary grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, he was anxious at
home life, his mother was very regulatory of the house, and various
arguments between the two turned out to be violent. His father was a bus
driver who frequently complained about the prostitutes in the region,
forewarning the future of Gary. He said to a therapist in his youth years, he
had contradictory thoughts of fury and sexual attraction towards his mother,
dreaming about killing her. When he was 16, he lured a boy into the
woodlands and knifed him in his liver, the boy stayed alive. He proved from
