Gary Ridgway Part II: The Hunt to find a monster

0:20 Testing testing haha, stupid everybody. In serial killer country? My name is Brittany. Ransom, my name is Brian Joyner and this is when Killers get caught a podcast about deep, dives into the lives, and psyche to the Killer's. We love to learn about each week. Brian, I find a True Crime Story that resonated with us. Then I'll discuss one, well-known or lesser known killer. Go deep into their childhood lives methodology. And, most importantly, how they got caught. Then we'll get a little spooky and learn something about the Cryptid through the Supernatural. And instead of talking about our patreon, what, you know, about every week, I guess we should mention. That I was on TV, she's hot, she's icky Last Friday Night on 20/20. I was consulted to discuss, really more the way the internet, handled Brian laundry and the guy who Tito case, hmm. It was a I did a three hour long interview. Yeah.

1:21 I was in a lot. Roughly every 10 minutes, but it was still significantly. Dated my portion of it. But regardless is really great experience and hands down like working with ABC, was quite possibly the most, like group of professional people I've ever dealt with. We gotta, we got a TV star over here. Now, not only Tick-Tock star but a TV star, look at that. But yeah. So this week we're going to make it a little bit different. We're not going to do this weekend. True Crime and instead I'm going to jump right into part, two of the Gary Ridgway podcast. And that's because I have a lot to talk about when someone has 49 victims, it's very difficult to talk about all of them as they are unfolding and being found in the case, which I wanted to do. Like I said last week, we talked about the mask of Gary Ridgway. We learned about his bizarre childhood, his obsession with prostitutes, his loves his losses, his family and really how he managed to pretend to be a regular person while slaughtering 49 confirmed victims. But definitely, they think it's closer to 80 between 1982 and honestly, originally, I said between 1982 and 2001 but really the majority of these were between 1982 and 1984 with Allah.

2:41 Alarming frequency. That's a lot. Yeah. You said he was doing a lot when his wife, no it was after he broke up with his second wife while he was still dating other people. Little confusing to me. Well, you'll find out that once we get to the point where the FBI psychiatrist talked to him at the end. But what we are going to talk about though is the Forty Nine victims the path that the eight Green River. Task commanders 75 task force investigators. Is 10 evidence specialist, three different medical examiner's, a prosecutor's 10, task force Consultants 9 FBI special agents as well as the Des Moines.

3:22 Police Department, took hello police department, Kent Police Department, Thurston County Sheriff's Department, Snohomish County Sheriff's Department, Pierce County Sheriff's Department to Coma Police Department, Spokane, Police Department, Portland, Police Department, Multnomah County sheriff's office, Washington County, Sheriff's Office. He's Clackamas shares, can't office, San Diego, Sheriff's Department, San Francisco Sheriff's Department, San Francisco police department and Las Vegas, Police Department, all dead to capture Gary Ridgway. This was, I mean, this is something that included hundreds upon hundreds of people. Yeah, oh my God, just to catch this one guy. I also want to make a point before we begin and Gary ridgway's, one of the worst killers in US history, only second, Samuel little and even though Is serving 49 consecutive life sentences.

4:14 This case is not closed. There are still roughly 30 women. They believe that he has conveniently forgotten where the remains are still several Jane Doe's, that the police force are still working on today so that those families have some kind of closure. And also, for anyone listening, here's your trigger warning. We're going to be referencing sexual assault, necrophilia, I tried not to go into too much gory detail, but some of it had to be mentioned for the sake of the fact that Um, victims were staged. So we will start with the first victim, it's July 15th 1982, a group of children, actually stumbled across the body of Wendy Coffield voting in Seattle's Green River. She'd been strangled after several days, no one came to identify her.

5:01 She was only 5 foot for about 140 pounds. She was wearing on him jeans, a lace trimmed blue and white shirt and white sneakers. The medical examiner was unsure of her age. Thinking she was a little bit older teen to a younger adult. And in the newspapers, they originally listed her as 25 years old, which might have explained by her family, didn't come forward, because they were like, that's not our daughter. She was identified because she had for rather dainty tattoos and then one biker gang tattoo woohoo. When they release her tattoos to the local newspaper. A tattoo artist said, oh no, she's not an adult she's about 16 years old, I think. She lives in pole up with her mother.

5:45 That's what I said last week and he was last week and I said if I go missing Look for My Tattoos, good idea. Like they put pictures in the artist was like, oh yeah. No, I did that. Am I that yours will definitely recognize. She was like, oh yeah, I remember that guy. Well, Wendy Coffield his mother Virginia was sad but not really all that surprised. Her daughter run away from home and she was worried that her daughter was working the streets and that she hadn't heard from her because she was probably killed by a John Wendy's. Mom said that she had been a pretty good girl and they done the best they could, but when he dropped out of school after her parents divorced, got in trouble with the law, she My often but she usually came home. The papers showed Wendy's picture over and over hoping anyone local would have any idea where she'd been, or, who she'd been with when she died, they withheld the worst details though which was that Wendy had been choked with her own panties.

6:45 It was a very violent death but at the time it was only one. Hmm. So no one thought much of it, right, right. On August 12 1982 Debra. Lynn Bonner was found about a quarter of a mile from where Wendy had been found. She was nude and stuck in Nets and logs in the water. She was in the system, so the police were able to place her pretty quickly. She was 22 years old, and she had been picked up for prostitution in the past, on Pacific Highway South. She'd been seen alive on July 25th, leaving the Three Bears hotel, motel. She told her friends. She was off to catch a couple dates, but she never came back just like Wendy, Deborah. Dropped out of school, she had a hard time finding work. She tried to join the Navy but couldn't pass the. It's not just like a it's a physical but it's also the mental exam.

7:33 Yeah. There's physical and mental exam so she didn't pass. It's actually it's rough when you learn that. Some of these people were really struggling, but they were trying because Deborah was in the process of like starting to study for her GED. She was really trying to like turn around and start. Ash, but you do bills are still coming. Yeah. You have to do what you have to do to survive. She actually had a thousand dollar debt to Pierce County for being arrested there previously. And she had been paying it off, like, $25 a week. You almost paid it all God, she paid $225 by the time she died.

8:13 She still called her parents collect, like frequently. She called her dad, just before she went missing, ask him about an eye operation that she had and telling Him that she loved him. Her friends knew that she was hiding from a boyfriend / pimp. Who was a convicted killer convinced that she owed him? Thousands of dollars? He was, of course, the sensible option for the cops to focus on. At this point, it would be another year before they even thought about Gary Ridgway. So detective, Dave Richard Reichert was put on the cases with Bob Vila Maria and they looked into both of them as two separate murders that is until August 15th. When three more bodies were found a local man was rafting in the shallows of the Green River looking for Treasure and came across Marcy Chapman who was 33?

9:07 She was floating in the shallow water. Next to the naked body of 17, year-old Cynthia Hines, and not far from them was opal Mills. She went missing when she was 1600, people had gotten stuck in some underbrush and her blue pants were tied around her neck. She had bruises on her arms and legs showing that she had fought back Wendy Coffield, and Deborah Bonners. Murders, might not have mattered a whole lot in the grand scheme of Seattle, but three in one day. Yeah, absolutely. In the same spot. Why in the same spot? Well, this was an as this the dump site. Yeah, he was coming back and just dropping them off there. But come on a little further Downstream buddy.

9:48 Well, detective Dave called Major Crimes immediately. Hey, and so that major dick kraske got the call on his pager and he knew it was something bad. Maybe because he never got calls on a Sunday. Now, he had been involved with Ted Bundy. Ted, Bundy's case, when they had discovered all Ted Bundy's dump site out in Issaquah. So, his old boss was like, put on your tie and your sport coat and meet me. So major craft put on his tie and jacket and went out to the Green River because he was like we got another one God. Now before these three women were found the Bundy scene, had been the worst thing that he had ever seen.

10:30 And unlike the first two which more kind of like lackluster body dump site, these were hidden in like thick vegetation. They were also all way down with large Wok. Rock that have been placed on their chests and stomachs, the placement was so precise that from the road you couldn't see the bodies. So if that man had not been on that raft, kind of just hanging An out. Yeah, floating through the shallows. They don't know when they would have found those three bodies. This is so no disrespect to, you know, the victims. But just, I just think of, like, floating out of Susquehanna and he really liked in the river. And yeah, just of a sudden, you see, like a naked body in the water.

11:19 It's like, holy crap. Crazy. Yes, I'd be My mind, I don't write du Helder but he's, I mean, I feel bad that the first people who found the first victim were a group of children, how Woods it's terrible. God asked for these three victims Marshall was identified. First she was 31 at the time when she went missing, she was doing as Tiny by her friends. She had three kids who were 11 9 & 3 years old. Whom she supported by escorting. She left her apartment on August 1st 1982 and never come home Cynthia. It was named next. She was 17 years old and everyone called her cookie. She also made a living on the street.

11:59 She worked the tea sack strip which is just where Marsha used to hang out. Cynthia. Also had a pimp who kept her safe and I say safe in quotation marks because the problem with these pimps and is that once you got in the car, you were alone. Yep. He didn't follow them. Nothing, you didn't write down the name of the driver. Ivers license. Nothing bad pimps, actually told the police, he'd seen her August 11th 1982 that she had gotten into a black jeep. He hadn't written down the license plate. What do you mean security? How are you, taking a percentage of my business? When I'm doing all the work?

12:40 Are you helping me or nothing? That's terrible. Terrible management. Well, they learn the identity of opal because they had drawn a picture of her, as if she were alive and put her in the newspaper, Opals family was devastated. She had a mother father and brother who all cared for her a lot, they lived on the East Hill outside of Kent Washington Opals. Mom told the police that they had last seen her on August 12th. The same day, the police were finding Deborah Bonners body. She'd left to go to Ooh, work and she'd caught her parents at three PM from a phone booth and Angle Lake State Park telling her mom that she had. Gotten a job painting houses with her new friend cookie the other victim and he, they both get picked up at the same time, not see? We're not sure.

13:29 So Both Cynthia and Marcia had a history of sex work but opal did not. Like sometimes she would go like stay at her friend's house for a day and then she'd come home. But that was the longest she'd even been away from her parents house. None of her friends were like they're like absolutely not she would not have been doing and you probably saw her hanging around that right? And he's not her with Cynthia at one point and is since he knew that Cynthia was working the strip. You obviously opal must be to, obviously because you can't have like regular friends that you don't work. Well then I'd have been murdered by the Green River Killer because I got a lot of friends who have done sex work.

14:17 Unfortunately, in the queer Community, a lot of people get kicked out of their homes and this is what they end up doing is so I have a lot of friends who ended up doing that as a survival technique when they were fairly young as well. That's one thing that's going to be pretty consistent with these victims. Has a lot of them are roughly 15 to 18 years old, which is absolutely heartbreaking. But another issue we have here is that Ridgeway assumed that like, almost every woman was trash. So, that's right. You didn't have that heat, right? Yeah. He hated women like, for real. So, Who's like, right?

14:59 You right. You were right. He might have seen her with Cynthia Hines and thought, Oh, look, she's hanging out with her whole friends, but he also could have just been like, I don't care. I'm picking up this girl randomly, so who knows what really happened. The police tried their best to keep like the worst details out of the press. The whisperings of a serial killer in Kent, killing prostitutes. Was already happening. I mean, got five bodies. So yeah, And as these stories go it's kind of I don't want to say fun but it's you look at other people who are going through something awful, and you don't think it can happen to you. And the prevailing thought in all of the papers at the time was if you're not a prostitute thing, you're safe. But we already see, that's not true because one of the five was not.

15:51 Yeah. So all you had to do was be in the wrong place at the wrong time and Ridgeway would kill you. Now, on the day after the three bodies were, found it crashed began putting together the Green River task force wasted. No time in the past. You and I have mocked police forces for waiting too long or going too slow, but that did not happen here. The initial task force had 25 investigators from King County, Seattle Tacoma and can't police offices kraske and his men had no idea what they were about to deal with. But they had no idea. This was a killing team, a solo killer because recently there had been a tool and so that was a Duo even though that was a weird sort of Duo.

16:37 But one thing that they did know though was that the killer was definitely some kind of smart and willing to adapt his methods in order to stay hidden because the first two were found floating down the river and He adjusted his kill method very quickly, his dump method, right? So hiding them in like trying to pressure them down to the water. Yeah. Got you got smarter in terms of his forensic countermeasures, right? They also realized that he was going to have to find another dump site now, which but they were going to be working completely in the dark. Now, one of the details, they did manage to keep out of the press, was that All three who had been found and the most recent dumb site had rocks that were wedged inside of them.

17:24 So tightly, they had to be surgically removed. This was the kind of thing that knew that this crime had a sexual element to it, they couldn't tell if the women had been raped like the first two victims had but one thing you learn when you look into lust killers and things of that nature is that sometimes when a killer cannot perform, you have that kind of a response, right? He might have done this after he killed them in a moment of anger. And also to prove that he still had some kind of virility hence, why the the phallic symbol phallic item was placed inside the women, okay? Okay.

18:12 But they all had been strangled. The rest of August went by no more bodies being found the city. Calm down a little bit and people stop being anxious. The girls on the street started going back out alone again, the task force decided to use this time. When there was kind of a lull in the active people joining the, or the active crimes happening to begin, looking into missing women, dating back to 1981 and 1982 and trying to see if they had gone missing anywhere near where these three women were found. The next woman who was found was Giselle love worn on September 25th when a biker was in the woods and smelled her remains, hmm.

18:55 She was found nude except for men's socks, that have been tied around her neck. She gone missing on July 17th. Just after her 17th birthday, she was only in Seattle because her boyfriend had convinced her to leave California with him. She'd actually decided to go back home and be with her family, but she ended up going back to their place to get her stuff and he convinced her to stay. Of course. She ended up choosing to work the strip in order to make some money since she hadn't finished high school either, despite the fact that she had 145 IQ really, wow? It's believed that she probably hadn't been paying too much to the news, or You to, you know, realize what was going on. She wasn't from the area.

19:44 Her boyfriend leader told the press that he tried to report her missing but the police ignored him but he was actually wrong, they did add her to the missing women from for the Green River case, hmm. Giselle was the first victim to show that Ridgeway had changed his dump site. And he had escalated from just strangulation to necrophilia Which we know from last week was something that he was going to start struggling with because that was the part that he found to be the most revolting, which is so interesting because we'll find like later on when he ends up finally talking to the FBI psychiatrist. There's so many things that he admits to that are very foul words.

20:34 I didn't even know existed. Oh, new vocabulary vocabulary. Yay. Thing that made him go. You know what I'm crossing the line here having sex with bodies that I murdered already just wow. Yeah, I don't get that. Just no. Well by the time, Giselle was fat in September. The task force had interviewed over. 300 people. They had made a request to the behavior science unit of the FBI for a consult, the only two that could be linked together where opal and Cynthia, who had gone to the same high school together. And also were friendly Deborah, and Cynthia had gone to the same bar and Tacoma, but no one had ever seen them together in the bar or speak.

21:15 So, they just happen to be at that bar near each other, right? Dick cross came up with the first profile. He said he thought they were looking for someone who lived in Pierce or Kings County was familiar. With the Green River. The dump site was not a common In stopping point for many Travelers at this point, the case was only known in Washington and Oregon. The task force moved to a central location at the King County Courthouse which was it in super old building with marble hallways in a really shaky Foundation like legitimately they were told if there's an earthquake, this building might fall, we're going to put you in that one. Okay. Major Crimes field, one big room and then the smaller rooms had like random offices for Narcotics and other things. The Green River task force met In the same room where the Ted Bundy task force met in the 70s.

22:03 It was a small now room up the back steps of 41A they were maps and charts of all of the dump sites on the walls. The phones, pretty much rang all day and all night woman by the name of fa Brooks who delightful cool lady. We'll hear more about her leader because she was probably one of the few cups. He was very media savvy. So she ended up doing a lot of the public interviews, okay? In terms of talking about the Green River Killer, but both say Brooks and Dave Reichert took, most of those calls Faye Brooks had kind of cut her teeth in the sex crimes division. So she absolutely was needed on this case because she had the background of understanding sex criminals.

22:49 In late January of 1983. Now, six weeks into the investigation. A man was laying water pipes found a shallow grave about 100 yards from Northgate hospital. He discovered the skull and immediately called the police, the skull and its bones. Belong to Linda Gene, rule, who'd been missing, since September of 1980 to, she had no soft tissue left. So they couldn't tell how she died. And she had to be confirmed by her dental records, but they already had her missing report. Art in the file, right? She was someone listed as potentially missing based on her lifestyle being in that she was a prostitute. She was 16 years old when she was last seen leaving. Her motel room walking to the Northgate Mall. That was really all they had to go on so Sergeant Bob Holter and Captain Mike's last men of Seattle homicide were quoted as saying technically, we're not calling this a murder, we don't have enough to go on for that, but the results are the same. She is dead and we don't know why. What would be confirmed as a Ridgway victim, right? When he eventually took them to all the sites. But this happens in 2002, I'm just saying, you're finally like a skeletal remains buried in a shallow, grave somewhere in the woods.

24:14 True true, what makes it not a murder? What makes you think? It's not a murder? Well, I mean, the evidence I guess evident, right. There's no evidence they had because the problem is Ridgeway wasn't interesting enough. Since I brought up Gabi booty, do damage with Tito had signs of a strangulation, right? Yeah. Which means there could have been broken bones in her neck. That was not what they found here of these victims. But they were all strangled, they were strangled but they were not strangled to the point of breaking like the hyoid, right? So it was just enough to probably knock them out or Right. Cuz the Gabby's Gabby's was more of a passion. Christ passion.

24:59 Another thing is that sometimes Gary would put his arm around them. Yeah. You don't have. Yeah. You don't have your and that's not the same as putting your hands and that crushing pressure. Absolutely, yeah. Also the same thing is ligature marks or things of that nature. Well, we don't finally ligature marks because these are just skeletal bone, right? White? This the tissues gone. I'm just saying if I find something Skeleton in the woods. Your like this is obviously a murder. Somebody murdered this person. With each murder, they got more suspects and they had to be interviewed and cross off the list. One of those suspects was Gary Ridgway. See, in the spring of 1983 Marine Mammal VAR. She was 18, got into an old pickup truck with a dark-haired man and his 30s or 40s.

25:49 Marie's boyfriend had seen it and he also reported her missing on April 30th. 1883, they went to ridgeway's home and questioned him about her. And one of the, like, really annoying details with this interview that they did here, was that one of the previous victims I told you. She had fought back opal. Had bruises, right? She So scratch the absolute crap out of him. And he one of his arms was jacked up and so when the police came to talk to him, he had two very like methodically lean on a fence to make sure that they didn't see that everything was that that he had gotten like severely scratched, he got in a fight, what happened to, you know, play with the cat or something, huh, right, yeah. So you specifically, like, made sure that when they, they walked up to the house, he was leaning against the fence so that they couldn't see.

26:41 His arm. He knew what he knew. What was up? Now the next set of remains were found kind of painfully on Mother's Day May 8th 1983 by a family hunting, for wild mushrooms. She was found a distance from the strip but to the task force, this felt like the Green River. Killer her name was Carol and Christiansen. She was 22 the single mother of a five-year-old daughter and she gun missing five days. Prior she was really excited because she just found a job after a really long time searching. She lived near the pack Highway and she would frequently walk walk it on foot because she didn't have a car.

27:23 She was a waitress at the bar during Tavern, which was very close to white shutters. And if you remember from last week, that was the bar that Gary Ridgway used to go to for his parents Without Partners event. Yeah, that's the same bar. He met his third wife, Judith in Carol lived three blocks away. The police were sure. She was a victim of the Green River Killer, because her remains had a very strange Rich ritualistic take She had not been raped before she died. She had been strangled, a brown plastic bag was over her head. She was sitting half up with her hands across her stomach. Her body had been dumped in water and she had been re closed but backwards like one of her shoes on the wrong feet and the other one was just gone. There were two cleaned fish left on her chest as well as raw sausage like left on her leg stomach, they I found a wine bottle in her hand and just like the three women in the water, a stone have been placed inside of her. And that was the thing that made it seem like it was a Green River killing.

28:36 Yeah. That's what was almost like he. A ritual asleep. Put her in water because he couldn't take her back to the real. Yeah I kind of got that you get the fish and he put her in like a puddle or something. I thought the fish thing was Kind of like a weird play on the Eucharist and we know that Gary Ridgway did go through a time period where he was like obsessive with Christianity. The real country though was the stone. Yeah. That would have been. He was unable to rape her because of his own physical image issues and for all we know he might have come back and maybe the stone was there to protect her. He later told.

29:19 Investigators that she was special. That's why he had done so much extra with the sausage and the fish and don't ya model? Yeah. Both Carol and her daughter, Sarah were members of the Blackfoot tribe of Browning Montana and her parents lived and Hokum Idaho. So at least Sarah wasn't alone after her mom died. Now, while it's rare that serial killers and for the record, we are definitely at this point in Seattle, referring to him as a serial killer while it's where they kill people. They know personally, it's not impossible because we've talked about this before with The compulsion or the impulse to murder being so strong that sometimes you take rest. Yeah.

30:06 So even though she was a waitress, At the bar that he frequent admitted, it's thoroughly plausible that he might have picked her up because he just needed to kill someone. That itch and Carol Ann was easy. Pickings because she walked right by every day, The King County investigators kept Carol's case, under the Green River Killer cuz it was in his hunting grounds and they had triangulated a general area based on the dump sites that they knew. and, Another weird details. That Carol is the only person Ridgeway would go on to Stage.

30:49 So, whatever point he thought he was making that day. Well, really never know. But this did tell the task force one detail. They knew this man was not mentally ill. And anyway, it was all to thought out to be the work of someone who was truly crazy. The next victim was found 13 months after the first murder, her name was Sean D'Elia, Summers, she been missing since October 7th 1982, her family had been looking for her pretty non-stop for 10 months. And also when I keep saying SeaTac that Seattle-Tacoma I'm sorry I'm using the so the Sea-Tac Airport she was found near an airport flight path.

31:33 Two days after that, another set of remains were found nearby both Shonda and the other woman were so badly decomposed that they couldn't do a base. Identification Shauna was identified by dental records, but they still don't know the identity of the other one. Wow. Goodness. Gil and Matthews was found September 18th, 1953 missing since April, she's 24 years old, and just like many of ridgeway's victims, she was down on her luck and just trying to survive Gil's, boyfriend, reported her missing. And by the time she was found, he was in prison and he felt so bad that he even agreed to be hypnotized to remember the last time he saw her and he told them that she got into a truck. He actually said that at some point he saw her drive by and he had waved at her and she looked strangely at him and he wasn't sure why she hadn't waved back.

32:36 Hmm. And it was more than likely because at that point, she was being threatened. In October, they found three more victims, 1st, October 15th, Yvonne and Tosh 19 found just off of Highway 18 near I-94 thing. Since May 31st a week later they found constant. No constants known 20 years old missing since October 27th, found near South 192nd Street. Sorry she was found on October 27th, missing since June 8th. Okay. Then they found Kelly Marie where she was 22 and she was near constance's body.

33:17 In fact, the police continued to search that area because they were like this seems like a dump site and so they found Mary Brigid me hen. She was 18 years old when she went missing that was they found her on November 13th that? This was official. This was another dump site. Yeah this was another place that they had to keep looking through. Did Christ was burned by this new crop of bodies, and he decided they were going to cover more land interview, more witnesses, talked to every missing girl in the area and their family. And anybody, they'd come into contact with this, of course, create a massive database, which often led to nowhere, but if there was even the tiniest chance they could get something to go on, he wanted it so far. The only good thing that really come. From this case was that the working girls in Seattle were less afraid of the cops.

34:04 And now Like they were sort of allies, right? And so if like they met a weird guy or somebody like rough them up, they would call the police and be like, yo, I just came from this guy's house and he has like a bunch of knives, just letting you know. Hey, just because a guy has a lot of knives with sword. Does that make him? I'm not making a dig at you. That's actually one of the calls that's reference but now this created a weird sort of cooperation between the Seattle PD and and sex workers, it actually crossed people's mind that since this next crop was one of the the dumpsites was near an airport.

34:54 They were like do you think he's like a frequent flyer? Hmm, like maybe, that's why we're finding them. Sporadically. So and the Sea-Tac Airport is right in the middle of the, the hunting grounds. So kraske reached out to every major airport across the United States and the police precincts near them and said, hey are you having a series of women go missing around this area? And when all those police responded, no, they were like okay but he has to be local. With the fall and the winter on the horizon, they were expecting it to be less women would be on the Strip. So therefore less at risk just before Christmas Kimmy Chi, Pitzer was found December 15th she'd been missing since April 17th at Timmy went missing the same day another girl named Sandy also meant missing, they were both dark-haired 16 year olds.

35:49 Very sweet and kind had hit a defiant rebellious stage in their life. Kimmy did have a boyfriend / pimp, this one was at least able to give them more information about the car. They said it was a pickup truck, it was old green and had a camper attached on the back and there was primer paint on the passenger door. Nice, they printed this description and all the local papers, but there are a lot of old trucks with campers on them because we're literally in the middle of the Wilderness. Yeah, okay. He's back then it was the Wilderness. It's a lot more built up now. In two years, they found 15 bodies and they were any closer to figuring it out. There were a couple promising leads ahead and pound out like Melvin Foster.

36:34 The 63 year old cabbie who got himself put on the suspect list when he walked in and Major Crimes and told them that he had information about all the women eventually, he voluntarily gave a DNA sample and there was no match, so they moved on Mac stack. Lee was the guy who was the convicted killer, who dated Deborah Bronner? He also was exonerated through DNA evidence. John Norris Hanks was a serious Contender as a convicted rapist and murderer, but it was determined that he had actually been murdering people in San Francisco. Oh, not in Seattle. Art is our mistakes are mistakes in France, let's go well. So he ended up getting arrested for those murders in the September of 1980 to which met he was not free during the time when a bulk of these women were found, right? In the dead of winter, they find nobody's the women were still continuing to go missing from the area. So the task force spent the winter working for the work of the nose. 300 leads just before the new year. Frank Adamson Takes Over The Green, River task force. There was a rumor that the Green River Killer could be a cop. And Frank was the former head of the internal investigations unit and he'd managed to be the leader of internal affairs pretty much and still have friends in the police force which meant he was doing pretty good. Good job guy.

38:02 Also crass kid been on this depressing case for two years now, new eyes, new enthusiasm, wait about four new connections. Like, I need a break vacation. There were 40 detectives as part of the task force now and they moved them out of that crappy small Courthouse room into the Burien Precinct area, which was closer to The Hot Zone for the murderers. The state also started pumping a lot more money into the task force that had given kraske. Most of the original detectives on the case were pulled Add back and given a chance to rest. Except for Dave, Reichert Bob, lemuria Ben Caldwell, roubaix ladach, and Faye, Brooks who all were like, now we're staying Frank. Adamson said that he thought within six months they'd have the killer.

38:50 Hmm. He even admits in an rules Green River, Running Red Book. In hindsight we probably should have caught him. But we'll talk more about that later. The first of 1984 victims was found February 14th. Her name was dilys Pledger. She was 22 and she had gone missing in October. She was known as Missy by her friends and Missy. Have been living with someone while, trying to find a new place to live. She had two children, and a life full of struggle. Like so many of the people you're going to hear about today. Both she and her twin brother had been removed from their mothers care when they were five putting different foster homes, Missy very openly grieve, the loss of her family, and she actually looked for her brother until her death.

39:42 Miss. He didn't really want to work the streets. She tried to stay with a couple of her male friends while she was transient and all of them. Had tried to groom her into like a set. It's really interesting and I can't say that I haven't seen this happen in real life but it'd be, it'll be wild. People will find out like that, they're dating. Someone who does sex work and all of a sudden now you got ideas. Yeah, I had a physician job. I literally, I literally had it happen with a friend and I was just like she has been out here doing this for you. What do you think you can do? Yeah, you know nothing about this industry who have no idea. Oh my God but out here making videos, doing all sorts my think I can you know, make sorry if you don't shut the whole hell up.

40:32 How about you start your own business? What yourself sir, it didn't go that way. But that was what's happening here, they're like, oh, you know, you're thinking about doing, you know, Street. I work I can help you girl. No, that's okay. I'm good on my own. I do bad about myself. Well, she tried to avoid it for as long as she could. And so she had no other options left and of course, we know that she ended up in one of ridgeway's vehicles. Yeah. As the frost melted, they found five more women at a new dump site in March. Lise Yates 19 had gone missing just before Christmas on December 23rd. She was found March 13th. 1984, her skeletal remains were found near exit. 38 off of I90.

41:16 This was a whole different location, so they weren't sure. Originally, it was the Green River Killer. It was east of Seattle on the way to the Snoqualmie Pass. and, This made them wander. Could he be a trucker? Hmm. Since those are one of the number comment, uh, serial killer? Yep. Jobs, they found Wendy Stevens. On March 21st. She was one of the youngest victims. She was only 14 years old. She actually also, I don't believe she was a sex worker either. She was run away from Denver. She was found near the Seatac Airport as Addison and his men went back and looked at Old dump sites.

42:00 She was actually the one who remained unnamed and we talked about her earlier this year. Her parents took a DNA test and 2019 specifically to see if their daughter was dead. And if her DNA was logged in any systems in the United States, they then paid for that to be matched further. And in September of 2020, they got an answer and it was released in January of 2021 when you and I talked about it, the next one was found one day later, March 22nd 1984, Her name is Sheryl. Lee Williams, she was 18. When she went missing, in May of 83, she was found near a ball field. Not far from the Sea-Tac Airport. She was a waitress and arrest in a restaurant. Downtown Seattle described by her boss as quiet conservative and conscientious.

42:48 Her put her pet, her mother told the police that she had some issues with drug use in the past, but that she'd never been involved in prostitution. Then on March, 31st 1984, they found two more bodies to loras Williams had been 17 missing since March of 83 and Debbie Abernathy, 26 missing since September 5th of 1983. Delores was found at the Star Lake dumping site, and Debbie was found near the logging a Logging Road off of Highway 410. So, all five of these were found at previous dump sites that were already discussed so far. And that's only because part of the task worth methodology was continuously combing, the area to see if he was going to continue dumping in the same locations.

43:33 But they're still finding old body is once a year, these are older bodies. So, yeah, they're still fighting people who went missing in 82 and 83 So he definitely got. He was hiding those pretty well. They're just finally little missing like little little Pebbles, welcome. One of the weird details with AB Debbie Abernathy was that a man was later walking down, the highway highway 18. He found her driver's license. She was from Waco, Texas and turned it in. So then they went back to that area of a separate was a separate Highway, and they found her son's birth certificate. And so, for some reason as he's driving, Away from the crime. He takes her like stuff and throws it into the wind. The guy or Ridgeway.

44:20 What have? And the question is, why? Yeah? Why this one weird that that's him saying like, hey come find her because you all suck or is this just his way of trying to get rid of the stuff? No, he's probably leaving bread crumbs, if you wanted to get rid of him, he would have liked burn it or accept it or something. He was leaving bread crumbs from them with follow, And like March 31st, there's no time to breathe because April 1st, brings two more bodies. Terry. Renee Milligan 16, missing since August 29th of 1982 Sandra Kate, Gabbert 17, missing since April 17th 1983. Terry had been working the street when she went missing her boyfriend, reported her missing and then he disappeared the motel manager where the to have been living said that he'd seen Terry arguing with another girl, just like everybody else on this list. Terry was a bright girl, good student. She had a baby in middle school and that's why she had dropped out of school to take care of her. Baby Sandra had also dropped out of school and Sandra's mother had discovered her working the streets. And her mom was like, listen, you could get yourself killed doing This but Sondra was confident that she was better than those other girls.

45:31 Both of them were found near the Star Lake dump site. We're not done yet though. April 2nd, my aunt Smith found also near Star Lake. She'd been missing since March 3rd 1983, she was from Walla Walla Washington and she was seen in front of this hotel. So it was a red lion. You know, those Hotel. Yeah, it was directly across from the airport and apparently even though this was considered to be like a nice hotel in the area there, definitely were always women at the bus stop in front of the Red Lion. Who were, you know, what was it, like a picked up? Yes, nice hotel. What This hotel and itself is linked in to well, over a dozen of the murder victim.

46:18 Oh God. One of her friends. Reported that they saw her get into a dark pickup truck with a white guy. Never saw her again. April March is on April 20th. They find him. Murray Thompson. She was 21 been missing since July 25th 1983 her skeletal remains were found under a green trash bag, along with the bones of animals near Highway 18 in a very remote location. Now, hers was an interesting one because she was found by a psychic named Barbara. Kubik Patton. Who truly believe that she was speaking with a deceased who were telling her where the bodies were found, she was super upset that too. Task force wasn't listening to her. She even tracked down and Rule and like interrupted.

47:02 And while she was having dinner And and was just like, listen, you're going to have to find a body to make these suggestions, listen to you because nobody agreed with her. And so she started showing up a dump sites. and when she found, She found Amina Agra Schiff who was on the missing list but was ultimately not one of the Green River Killer victims and then she found Tina Thompson. They ended up giving her a polygraph tests just to make sure she wasn't involved. You sure you didn't do any of this. So we're only in May of 84 and we've already found 10 women, which is more than the previous year.

47:50 They Brooks. At this point, had to step up and become the media Maven that she was because she was the only person who really had a lot of like, media training at that point. So they looked at their previous list of suspects and they kept coming back to Gary Ridgway their Muslim much evidence though. Although he had been arrested for trying to pick up a police officer and they had interviewed him about that missing girl, he'd been seen with, they didn't have any physical evidence to say that, this like skinny guy was anything other than a creep, but they want to talk to him again. So in May of 1984, they brought him in and questioned him because it was all they could do at the time. He of course, denied any involvement, and even agreed to a polygraph test. Now unfortunately, we know, The parameters of machine are off and had it been calibrated correctly, he would have failed. But they went with the information they had at the time, damn it.

48:43 And they had to move on to other potential Killers. For the time being though, Gary was just a creep and they were going to keep an eye out for him. If his name came up again, at the end of May on the 26th, they found the remains of the 26th, Green River victim. How poetic Colleen Brockman, she'd been missing since Christmas Eve 1982. It is believed that Colleen was the last of the Washington State victims. She was only 15 years old when she went missing and she it away from home. The reason why there's confusion here is because at some point, Gary went back and moved the bones around, they found bones of victims that of from dump sites and Washington. They found some of those bones in Oregon which really confuse things.

49:31 Yeah, that's because Gary Ridgway looked at the remains as, if they were like, it was like a possession and so like he moved them around like they belong to him. but, Colleen live with her dad near Lake Washington, the Lake, Washington, ship canal and her dad wasn't sure why she had left this time, but she taken a lot of her stuff with her and he tried to get law enforcement involved because they were like, maybe if she gets arrested and has to go to juvie or something, then we can get her like some point, a court-appointed therapy Colleen had turned to prostitution to provide for herself while she was on the run.

50:13 And of course Right? He ended up in the dark pickup truck. Yeah. Now, the next few months things kind of slowed down in terms of finding bodies the lull. Again, again gave people a false sense of security and even though local PD were trying to encourage women to avoiding the strip of the highway are near the tea, sack Airport, They just people weren't you can't stop because people need money. Yeah I get that. well, so during this time period, Dave Riker and Robert keppel decide to talk to Ted Bundy and he reached out to them.

50:56 He actually kept on ended up writing a book about these interviews called the river Man, Ted Bundy and I hunt for the Green River Killer and Bundy was the first to offer up the idea that the river man as he called him, was going to go back to the body's over and over again, this wouldn't be confirmed for quite some time actually and they couldn't really use any of the information that they were kind of gleaning from Ted Bundy in the actual investigation, because he was a convicted murderer. I think about it right. The lightning, right, right, right. Yes. But what these interviews what these letters and ultimately they did go fly to Bundy in 1986 and talk to him, but what these interview show, Dave, was that serial killers are a lot alike. Capel will continue corresponding with Bundy for the next two years eventually, they went to interview him in person. October 12 1983, Mary Sue.

51:54 Bella was found 366 days after she went missing near Highway 410, milepost 37. She was 25 which made her a lot older than his usual victims. Her family tried to get her out of the life of working the streets, but she been struggling. Since she was young, she was streets wise and a lot smarter than the other girls. But she also had a problem with drugs and alcohol. One of the things that I mentioned a lot about her was that she was very kind to other people on the street and tried to help them. She had even called the police and reported a guy that she met on September 12 1983 who had creeped her out. She was looking out for the other girls who were working. Was it Gary?

52:38 There's do you not know, not know. She said he had a lot of knives and this guy had a lot of nice car. That's the that's the one I was telling you about that, people like that. Actual workers called the bed. I'm just saying you don't have knives in your car though, and you have them like displayed in cases at your house, right? Yeah. Okay. It's a little different. That report was actually added to their case File a month later though, she was gone and her mother kind of had an idea that she was gone to marry always called her every other day and probably one of the saddest details about Mary. Sue Bellows case, is that her mom Sue velman died from cancer, never knowing what happened to her kid.

53:22 No, that's terrible. Since Mary been found near Highway 41, they decide to keep working that area and they discovered the remains of Martina author. Lee on November 14th 1994. She was 18 and she was last seen, May 22nd 1983 outside of the my place, Tavern, a hunter, found her along with wet porn magazines, and smut books. Oh God! Can you imagine what he's using up? Using those for out there? Yeah. 1984, and it without much fanfare, notice appearances. No remains found third Christmas, that would pass with family, still not knowing any information and just like that, it was 1985. In January, don, dr.

54:11 Don re-released details about four sets of remains that, they still had no name for they had found remodeling in the first star league victims pelvis and one of her arms had been dislocated and woman by the name. Well, Gail, Matthew's sister remembered that her sister, had been injured in a boating accident, and she had fractured her pelvis. And so they were able to get the x-rays and confirm that. The first Star Lake victim was Gayle Matthews. Shirley Ann, Roy was 15 when she went missing in June of 1983 and they found her March 10th 1985 near Star Lake. These were old remains. and so, People started telling themselves.

55:05 Maybe the Green River. Killer has moved on, maybe he's in jail. Maybe he died. Hmm, like the Zodiac, right, let's say like, the Zodiac, the task force was like, maybe he just moved to a new area and it's still killing people. The next two victims. Were surely Murray Cheryl and Denise, Darcel Bush, Shirley was 18. And Denise was 23, they were found on June 14th and June 12 and it actually brought the best thing for the case. The FBI officially joined, the investigation. There have been phone calls like back and forth with John Douglas and but this was actually sent like 10 investigators, because these were also another marked change. Those girls were found in the suburbs of Seattle in a city named Tigard and both have been missing since the fall of 1982. So another dump site, a different one. Yeah.

56:09 The FBI refer to this case, as major case, 77 green murders. And it was good at the FB I joined because that made this a bigger deal. September brought the discovery of Mary West, 16, missing since February 6, 1984. And then with the feds joining, there was now a million dollar Federal grant to expand the task force in November. People were sure there was going to be an arrest now. Hey still didn't come nothing. Yeah, that's the original politician who had backed the first task force was no longer in office his name As Randy Ravel and his replacement Tim Hill, wasn't all that enthusiastic about the task force at this point. So the FBI started looking at the woman's disappearances and writing summaries about each of the reports looking for patterns in their lives and behaviors racially, the victims were all over the place and it seemed the killer didn't have any racial preference.

57:08 They were all strangled though in some way, sometimes manually or through some kind of ligature. They did have one woman who had survived To being raped, step beaten and stabbed her name was Myra Bell from Oregon. She had probably given the most detail to the guy, but still like it would like the unfortunately, the definition is still like a white guy with a beard kind of skinny in a truck like it's still not good enough. These little white guys like that. Yeah. Some of the most Brilliant Minds in policing are now working on this case, we're talking for like three and a half years.

57:51 They spent over eight million dollars. The FBI sent 10 more ages to the task force. Everyone was optimistic. This was it right? It had to be. Now, one thing people talk about, is, the DNA evidence DNA sequencing was still very new. Like, I saw an article that said, like, first killer found through DNA evidence in like 1985. Oh, oh, right, we're at the beginning of DNA being used in the court system, right? Yeah. But still, they were like, if this is a thing that could happen in the future, we're going to try and get as much DNA evidence as we can. We're clipping all the fingernails of all the victim. Yeah, you know, things like that. Add Hanson, a member of the task force came up with the idea of listen, instead of us going to all these dump sites, which are up and down Hills and Ravines swamps and stuff. Why don't we just hire professional surveyors to Traverse this area and give us proper Maps which turned out to be a genius idea and it freed up the task force instead of them you know mucking up their way through it to work on others. Stuff, route.

59:04 True. Now, just before the new year, they find Saint Denis major December 30th. She was 20 when she went missing. December 24th in 1982, she was actually unidentified until 2012. her family watched a documentary on Gary Ridgway and they went Sandra was around there that time. Wasn't she? And so they gave they specifically called up like, King County Sheriff's department and we're like, we would like to offer up our DNA and they were able to compare it and she was positively identified, mmm, That's terrible. You just watching a documentary of watching a documentary about a serial killer and you're like, Dad, didn't you say that? I'm Denise used to live in Seattle before she went missing. Do you know what?

59:55 Yeah, you're right. Oh my God. Brutal right? Yes, So, John Douglas updates his initial profile because he had sent one to the task force when they were just calling back and forth. And he actually a made himself officially available to the task force, in January of 1986. That's because he had gotten like really sick. What's the word? I can't remember the name of the illness, gosh, it's the one. Unimportant, I didn't write down those a pose that you can get when you live in close contact with people in college.

1:00:36 And we had to get a shot for it is like mono or something. It's that's, it's not mono but it's one of those it starts with an M but yeah, he had gotten that illness and he had been sick for a while so he was fully recovered in January of 86. So he came over. I mean I was good because they found Jane Doe 17 who is between the age of 14 and 18 years old. They assumed be by the age of her bones that she'd been missing from 80 to 84. She's still one of the young woman, we don't have a positive ID for 8284. Wow, which lends to the belief that this started before 82.

1:01:17 Yeah. Which is another reason why I don't believe his little bull crap about my wife cheated on me. That's why I just had to start killing people as I cry. You were assaulting people while before then as soon as you were able to, you were doing it. Exactly. The second profile for the Green River. Killer was pretty close to the first though. Douglas was sure the killer was in good, physical shape, and Outdoorsman, but he also drank and smoked, he said, this guy was not neat, he'd be nocturnal drive, a very conservative. But vehicle souvenirs and trophies were very important to him. As well as newspaper clippings about the murders. Both allowed him to relive the thrill.

1:01:57 Douglas was sure. He was in his mid 20s to 30s and that his homicides reflected a certain rage and anger that meant he was never going to stop. Now, around this time, they had some new suspects, anger, Rasmussen, and elderly, man who had a barn full of pictures of women, and also posted advertisements trying to get women to come live with him. They all thought he was a total creep, but definitely not strong enough to carry corpses up and down Hills. The second suspect was Gary Ridgway who had claimed, he only choked a girl because she bit him while she was being serviced, right rev the time. They believed that the killer had a job that required him to visit the dump sites or drive by A them and ridgway's job at Kenworth Trucking wasn't far off, but it didn't require him to travel, right? Yeah.

1:02:42 Because he pointed out to that one girl was like, hey, that's where I work at as right. Yeah. Also they couldn't see someone with a full-time job stalking women and planning this out. So intensely. See one of the things they thought was that this was being planned out but Gary later explained that it was not planned out at all, it was very impulsive. It's very weird. Not, they should mention that like you got a full-time job. You go wife. Yeah, he had a lot going on. Like how do you find time for this thought, it's hot. Listen, I just want to talk to you. How do you find time to murder, right? He really was doing a lot which is why he wasn't killing as much with Judith, but he's not married to Judith yet, right? Right.

1:03:31 Yeah, So he's doing his third wave. No, yes they're dating. Yeah, okay. And they live together, but okay, okay. Any kid mmm-hmm. Now he was really hanging out with his kid. So these had to happen happened like Monday through Friday. If he was seeing his son every weekend and they were going to things and fixing toys and cars. Yeah. But they decided to pass on Gary Ridgway as a suspect temporarily because they were like, he's too busy to be doing all this. Also, he did pass a lie-detector test. They decide to fix it on this guy named bear Barney taken board.

1:04:14 He was middle-aged. He was obsessed with killing dogs, and he would do it in many different ways. Like traps rifles, Groats, knives, ice picks. Several people had actually called the police on Barney chicken burger more. Like, are you sure he's not the Green River Killer. He's in fact, he had even inadvertently. Worked beside a police informant at a cement mixing job. And police were like hey you worked with that guy? Can you tell us about him? And so the informant was like, listen, he strong athletic, he spends all his free time in the woods, he loves to kill things and he loves to talk about killing things. In fact, taking Borg had even shown the informant, his Library, full of books and magazines about human anatomy and how to kill people. Ticking Borg.

1:05:03 Also visited a lot of sex workers so they decide to spend most of January, interviewing everyone, he knew February 6th, 1986, the FBI, and the task force went to the ticking board house, which was a block from the pack Highway. Hmm. They'd already picked Barney up on his way home from work. He had been getting a ride home from his boss and they like ordered him out of the car. Oh Doom, he was questioned for hours, the police picked up every blood-stained. Item in his house to try and test it, it was eventually proven that ticking Borg was just a weird guy, but he wasn't a murderer. No, he just knew how to kill people and, you know, he just like wants to read about it, but he doesn't know how to do it, right? Okay.

1:05:45 I guess he's a, he's a hobby. Yes, I guess. So, in the meantime, March 27th, 1986 brought the discovery of Tracy Winston, she was 19 had been missing since September 12 1983. She wouldn't be identified for another 16 years and that's That's because her mandible was missing and so were all of her teeth. Mmm, the leader of the task force Frank, Adams, and was just faced in a lot of backlash and he was tired. He would go on to run it until January 1987. But even as early as March of 86, he knew He knew that his time was coming to an end spring brought. The discovery of maroon Marine Sue Feeny, who have been missing since September of 1983, she was found on May 2nd, her bones were withered and south of the juncture at Highway 18 and Highway 90. June 14th, Kimberly Nelson was found near I-94. She was 21 years old when she gone missing November 1st 1983. Heartbreakingly, her father died. A few months before she was positively ID. And then her sister had a nervous breakdown after so much grief in such a short amount of time and I understand Miss Nelson, because I've been there The end of June brought the discovery of Cindy and Smith 17 missing since March twenty first, Nineteen Eighty-Four probably. The only good thing that happened in 1986 was that women had stopped going missing from

1:07:16 the area and it was definitely a sign of the Green River, Killer had slowed down, or stopped or moved on. And then just like that, they stopped finding bodies to huh. At the end of 1986, it was decided, the task force would be downsized. 25% of the crew was sent to different departments. Adamson was given the bad news. And he knew that that meant he was going to be next. His boss actually called him in. And went listen, we got a job. You could be a major and Maple Valley and you could like leave a major. You say, well I mean, so when he told his boss, he's like yeah I'll go to the new Precinct, his boss is like you made the right choice pretty much implying that if you didn't take this job, you were gonna lose your other one. Yeah.

1:08:04 They brought in Jim Pompey to take over the now slightly smaller task force, he hadn't kept up with all the details and so he was kind of fresh eyes. There was this Sort of hope that the killings would stop and the task force would just disappear and everybody would just forget what had happened. Now, Jim Pompeii song name pop up over and over in their system and he just couldn't let it go. First there was this time this guy got arrested for picking up a prostitute and she was actually come. This was the same guy who'd gone parking with Kelly came again assess and she'd never been seen the same man who admitted to strangling Penny Bristow after she bit him the same man that Jim Julian. Had talked to in front of the KFC, where many of the women who had gone missing like to hang out the same man who drove will pick up Chuck's and match the description of every Witness who described the Green River Killer, like it's so surprising, how he was a call Early here. The Gary Ridgway, they knew he was happily married had a young son, and 1984, he passed the polygraph test. He didn't fit the parameters of the original profile Pompeii was like, I don't care.

1:09:10 We're going to put them under surveillance. They submitted evidence for a search warrant for Gary, ridgway's house and on April 8th. 1987 they picked him up. This was everything. It was a search warrant for his car, his father. Father's car. His wife's car, as well as his house and his locker at camera. Trucking, they also demanded hair samples from Ridgeway and this is also when he gave the saliva sample, that would eventually get him caught, it would take weeks before they got the results of the initial symbols that they took from his house. Weirdly enough Gary didn't threaten to sue the police officers, which is what most of the previous suspects did afterward. He just went back to normal like they kept him under surveillance. He was he However, kind of pissed off that his co-workers started calling him Green River, Gary. Well, sir, it won't be dumping bodies a Green River. Well, it's kind of thing.

1:10:01 I wondered if maybe he wasn't getting the attention, he wanted. What do you got if you want the attention of being a murderer of being someone who controlled women? Not being made, fun of my being made fun of by his coworker? Well, I'm sorry sir. But if you were my cool work I'd make fun of you too. Well, 1987, they only discovered the remains of one woman, Cindy and Smith 17 when she went missing in March of 1984, she was found on June. He 7th, 1987 off of Highway, 89 near Green River Community College. James Pompey, didn't actually get to be task force leader for very long because he went diving in 1987 and he resurfaced to quickly God and died from a pulmonary embolism.

1:10:45 Why y'all do that? Wait, just wait. Lieutenant, Greg Boyle took over temporarily and it was given a Bobby Evans in. 1987, the task force actually had other losses. To several detectives got leukemia. During this time period had to leave others. Had heart problems. One was just super depressed and had a like breakdown and was like I'm done being a police officer forever over the course of this five-year investigation. It took a toll on the people of trying to find him. And then I was 1988. They discovered Deborah. Lorraine asked as she was 15, when she been missing and she been gone for nearly six years. Wow, she was found on the 200 block of South 346 Street where they were going to be building an apartment complex. Now, they had started construction there in 1982 and they are getting around to the point of, I guess, adding a, what's the word playground?

1:11:42 So, when they went to dig the holes to put the swings in, they found a o with skeletal remains. Originally, they had they immediately took her body to the. I mean, we're like we need to know. Has she been there since 1982? Or was she put here more recently or put here? Because originally when that gets they raised the entire area they flattened it. They also just dropped a load of dirt on the spot where they were going to build. So they were worried about whether she had been put in the truck. Hmm. But it was determined that she died in 1982 so that was her initial spot where they her body was dumped. Okay?

1:12:27 her family had they really tried like going so far as to Appear on Oprah January of 88, like months before they find her. And they were asking for any information, they could find Deborah's. Mom was like, listen if we can't get her home maybe she'll be the one to break the case. This exploded the possibility of murderers though, because over a six-year period, there have been hundreds of laborers, truck, drivers electricians and plumbers on the site, they had to get a master list of all the contractors and began working their way through it, connecting that and to any of the potential women on the list, testing the paint chips found on her clothing. They discovered it was a very expensive paint called Ameren manufactured by Dupont used on commercial vehicles. And if you remember someone, we talked about Painted commercial vehicles for his entire career.

1:13:30 I don't remember. Well, the first TV show about Gary Ridgway was released September 7, 1988. It was called Manhunt a chance to end the Nightmare. And this was kind of the task force last ditch effort to try and find some information. They talked to everybody families them are victims, the FBI, all the detectives, they got 16,000 phone calls that night. And by the end of the week, they had 2,000 new suspects. Nice. Lovely. They found Andrea. Well, here's the problem.

1:14:11 No, it didn't help at all. What they already have the person in their records and they've interviewed him. Now three-time what knows he might not be the guy you talking about your other people out there. You'll go to the whole world. Okay, well, they find Andrea Marie. Chowder on October 9th, 1989 buried near the South Airport dump site. She had been 17 when she went missing April 14th, 1982. Hmm, which lets us know that he's been rotating these dump sites. She probably was one of the first people to be left near the airport.

1:14:56 So I'm saying this is so planned out, so this me he had a list of potential places. He could drop the bodies, right? Yeah. Never put one more than one there at a given time. Exactly. Wow. It's just that you guys found them at this one spot and then you save it for a while searching and then they keep finding more near they all come from like different time, period. Yeah, it's not like he's changed. He's not changing them. While you're searching for though. He's like, rotating from spot to spot as he's killing. With him, it's weird. Yeah. Well the task force fixate on a guy named Bill Stevens he had a mask kind of like Ridgeway but ultimately he wasn't the killer, the guy was a liar who pretended to be different important jobs and he'd try and impress sex workers. It was weird.

1:15:42 Reflex where okay? Okay, 1990 came. The task force was on the verge of just being completely cut, most of the Manpower and the money got pulled back into major crime unit. It was Pared down to 17 people by 1998, spent fifteen million dollars. The public looks at it, like, they had wasted a lot of money. The thing is this task force did have some pretty one like great detectives. I mean, literally it had the creators of the Behavioral Science unit, who wrote the book on profiling, right attached to this. In fact, one of the Special Agents from the FBI, his name was Paul Lindsay who had come on in 1986 and really believed that they could find the Green River. Killer ended up telling Frank.

1:16:31 Adamson Captain, I am humbled. just like, We're the best of the best and we're at a loss. Dave Reichert, who had been there since the beginning as a young detective. Now, headlines on his face and grey hair, some of the original task force had just retired. Many of them just losing the will to keep fighting I kind of had no sympathy for them. Like, I feel bad that you all spent. This like, all this time, like searching for this person that you've already interviewed, like, three different times, it's rough. I see, because I don't feel like this is the same thing as what happened with Yorkshire Ripper.

1:17:17 I guess why? I keep thinking of because one, they also interviewed the Yorkshire Ripper like nine times, yeah. But Like it was out of Dave records. Like he didn't know how polygraph testing Merc wasn't his fault that it was done wrong. You know, like bringing offerings belief that he had passed and back. Then we put a lot more weight and to polygraph testing than we do. Now this is true. Yeah, so they were like oh this guy passed the test, he's just a weirdo, let's estimate again. And the we have a history of dealing of dealing with sex workers but this is an area. Because of where the airport is, that has a lot of sex workers and we've interviewed a lot of men who enter, you know what I mean? So I understand what I everybody was really feeling kind of demoralized because in the past 18 months, all of their top suspects have been cleared.

1:18:12 Except for Gary, Ridgway they found Martha, Reeves September of 1990, she'd actually gone missing in 1990 as well and like, it's really interesting because in the Green River Running book, Look. I feel like an rule kind of glossed over this, but this was the first like fresh kill 1990. Yeah, in like years. Since like 84, he killed. He, she went missing in 1990 and he killed her in 1990, that meant he was back on his bullshit. Yeah. Marta had was 36. She's also one of the older victims because normally he had a thing for teenagers, she called actually the night that she went missing, she called her husband and asked for money.

1:19:00 He did not, he declined because she had a serious cocaine problem and they were separated She said kind of sadly. Okay. Then I'll have to work all night. Her husband, was he delivering the mail about a month later, it had her driver's license in it. It's very common to, if you find somebody's wallet or driver's license, you put it in the mail and you deliver it back to their house, right? So there's no guarantee that that came from Gary Ridgway, but he did go to the police with it and by the time they tried finger, it had been touched like 12 different times. They couldn't get clear print to put it through the database anyway. She was found ultimately near Highway 410, one of his favorite spots. Over the next couple of years, they find Roberta Hayes on September 11th 1991, missing since 87 Patricia bark. Sack on February 3rd 1983, missing since October of 86 Patricia, yellow robe, and August of 1998, missing since January of 1998, another one in the same year, just proof that he hadn't stopped but he had slowed down so much that they weren't gaining any new information about the crime, right?

1:20:10 And then we came to 2001, Gary secure, he's like, I fooled, these cops their bums, I passed that polygraph test. But if they pick me up again, I won't take it again because, you know, maybe won't have faith. Yeah, - a test them again, just in. Begin on the surface, the task force was gone, but in reality, it was kind of like just waiting. Now, Frank Adamson had moved to the new Criminal Justice Center, South of the airport and he was chief of criminal investigation. Action Unit. Bob keppel got a doctorate wrote a couple books taught a course, called homicide of the University of Washington. It was wildly popular. Hmm.

1:20:50 Dave Reichert continue to move up through the ranks when the police chief in King County decided to move on to the suburbs, they actually offered the job of police chief to Adamson but he passed on it. Dave was almost 50 and He decided he wanted to be police chief of King County. In fact, in rural actually helped him campaign to get the job. Nice. So one of the main cops on the ground, with the Green River task, force meant that it wasn't over. Sodium DNA sequencing, a come a long time in a decade or so, and they still had those hair and saliva samples. So they have this new technique and it had been developed in 1996 and the state has started running evidence through the new system with the do need new DNA evidence, but With the way the backlog, there was just a tremendous backlog, so it would take five years before Gary. Ridgway's sample, that he gave to get properly sequenced and put in the system, right?

1:21:56 Yeah. In the meantime though, Dave's like, listen, we're going to go through all the old evidence. And he sends it to Beverly hemic, who's part of the Washington State Patrol crime lab and they rent all the fingernails of the victims to look for trace evidence. They swab, any ligature marks that they had for cellular you know data this is actually probably the grossest detail in the whole thing so they still have pubic hair from a victim and when they went and looked at it under a microscope, there were Still a couple of sperm cells what clinging to a piece of hair. How what they found three different good bits of DNA from three different women, three different victims and then they had that sequence, DNA profile from Gary Ridgway and all three victims matched.

1:23:03 Oh ho ho Somewhere. They came down on him hard. He was 52 and still arrogant as ever. He was charged with Marcia Chapman opal Mills Cynthia, Hines and Carol and Christiansen on November 30th 2001. There was a lot of Triumph in Washington state and Rule said in her book, that she saved the voicemail she got from Dave Reichert which was him calling and yelling into the phone. We've arrested the Green River. Killer I just love that I would do the same. Oh my God.

1:23:43 Yes, now I will let you know how much time passed so in rule as written a lot of books and she was involved with kind of talking to the people who worked, the Green, River case from 1982 and on, and the time period from the time that first murder happened to the time they caught him. She wrote 19 books About different cases, that's a books. It had really been a long time for a lot of people, but it wasn't over yet. Now the task force is like, nooner know he's responsible for way more than four. So now, they're like, task force reanimated.

1:24:27 They pull everybody back. They pour over every single detail. They have about Ridgeway discovering discrepancies from his prior. Testimony that hadn't seemed back in. Important back then, like him lying about the fact that his first wife wasn't a skinny blond. Really? She had been overweight and a brunette and her weight loss had triggered his insecurities. He had a weird thing about blondes, he like in a real creepy way and one of the interviews I read from him, he talked about how blondes were special. Then the task force began. Just the awful task of interviewing. Everyone who had known Gary Ridgway. Ever or worked with him ever?

1:25:13 Well Gary. Yeah, he seemed a little weird but you know, he's just the everyday guy. Well, no, actually one of his former co-workers recounted a story where he had given her a ride home and they were talking about the case and he kept asking her like oh they they deserve what happened to And those prostitutes and you never be a prostitute, would you? And she realized in hindsight, like, holy hell, I guess I answered his questions correctly. When he have killed me, if I told him that I would consider being a prostitute. Anybody would, that's what I'm saying? Everybody's got a price, I feel like everybody's got a price. That's just me, though. Personally, oh my God.

1:25:55 I remember them talking about what's-her-name China. Yeah. But like they, Like so-and-so paid her 50 thousand dollars to be in the threesome with them. I'm like that's a lot of money. That's more than most people make a year to go be with t.i. entitled that's good - oh my God and tax-free yes just saying everybody's got a price but regardless what yeah one of his co-workers he like gave her a ride home and like was real creepy and she was just like I'm not going to take a ride from Gary anymore because it's true. A lot of stuff. They real, they learn the real reason. His marriage has failed and because he tried to choke her several times and interviewing his second wife, that's when they learned about all the different places that he liked to go and have sex with and how those ended up being places. He eventually dumped the bodies, they interviewed Judith as well and she was completely none.

1:26:48 The wiser super blindsided they spent hours upon hours talking to his son Chad, and that's how they learned. That Gary had maintained the facade of being like a good father. They actually originally placed him in an ultra security cell in King County jail, so that guards could watch him 24/7. They were worried that he might and himself. His mug shot was on the cover of every newspaper in North America and and Rule didn't remember ever meeting him. But apparently, Gary, Ridgway new, an and knew that an was looking into his case because her daughter Leslie called her the next day. December. First and said he was at a book signing, So apparently, Leslie told her mom that he'd show up, didn't pick up a book, didn't buy anything, and he would just stare at, and the entire time, like it bothered her and brought her so much that she had told her, there was a weird guy here who was staring at you, but and was just like, this is what celebrity. Yeah, it's part of being a celebrity. Yeah, apparently Leslie had also seen him at some of her mom's speaking engagements to.

1:27:59 So she had been keeping an eye out. For this weird guy. One of those speaking engagements and said, no one knows who the Green River Killer is or what he looks like for all. I know he could be sitting here tonight and he was home on because he wanted to know what she knew about him. Talking about a creepy situation. Yeah. Oh my God, they went back. They looked over all the old crime scenes, with new crime Tech's. There were some, I couldn't get to you because they had been built on or paved over. They completely ripped apart the Ridgeway house, he was formally charged with four murders on December 5th. And then December 8, the governor allocated 500,000 dollars for DNA, testing the other 45 victims to see if they could be connected to him too. Captain Bruce Caitlin took over the task force, they began quietly.

1:28:52 Buying all of his old trucks that they could find a lot of them were scrapped and you know, push them a little squares but they did find a few in his house. They also cataloged every bead every piece of jewelry that they could find it belonged to them. Now the task force got to move into a fancy new building in the beginning of March. In 2002, ye not one that's falling apart. Awesome. Now there was funding To try and connect him to these 48, murders the time. The 14 investigators kept all this information close to their chest though. The information they were sorting through was Monumental and they didn't want any of this getting out. They actually recovered his work overalls from his job. And those paint specs that they had found. They found, they found paint specs on eight different people and they were able to confirm Wendy Coffield had that same pain on her.

1:29:45 Deborah asked is Deborah Bonner. So they charged him with those murders on March 27th. Yeah, nice. Now, interestingly enough, normally with the passage of time it makes it harder to make to fix things but because forensic capabilities had improved so greatly and this like 15 year time period. This was actually better for them and just all I can say is thank God that Dame Reichert and Dick kraske were as meticulous as they were with the the crime scenes because there's A lot of cases that got blundered in the 80s and 70s, it was running over a price because people just walked through the crime scenes and messed him all up, right?

1:30:27 Right. There was a situation at the, the river with those first three bodies where dick craft actually noticed that they had put the bodies in the wrong back. Like the names were messed up and he was like, stop stop stop. We got to redo this whole thing, so like at least the two of them had been so mad. Nicholas. Because now we had all this evidence to go retest again. So they were moving towards having a trial in 2004 of course we never get to a trial there was a deal. Negotiated on June 13th 2003 that said if they agreed not to seek the death penalty against him, he would plead guilty to all the homicides in King County, the ones the police know about and the ones they didn't implying.

1:31:15 There's some you don't know about Now something must have happened with that deal because originally they said it didn't go through but there were four more sets of remains that were found in 2003 Pammy and not aven't. She's fed on August 16th, 2003 15. When she went missing in 83 the woman currently known as Jane. Doe be 20 found on August 21st, 2003, April butcher. Mm found August 30th. She been missing since August 18th 1983. Now, the task force does something. Here that is completely off the wall. See when someone's in prison, everything they do is being loved, right?

1:31:56 Other prisoners are watching guards, you're watching information gets leaked people, talk about things. The task force didn't want that. So what they did was they pretty much told the governor. We're going to keep him here at the building where the task force says. For you'll be under armed guards, they literally made a cell for him. So at the office, that's the Green River, task force, that's his prison. They made their own present for him, huh? They kept him living down the hall from where they were investigating him 24 hours a day and they would just show up and come talk to him and kind of mess with them like just be like, all right time for interview.

1:32:38 It's like middle of night. Oh my God. When he finally started talking though, he started talking a lot. He spoke to psychiatrist FBI agents homicide detectives. He was almost like happy about the attention. He went out with the investigators and began showing them where bodies were and connecting the dots that they didn't have fully connected. On September 26th 2003, he even alerted them to the body of Marie Malvern, the one that started them looking into him from the beginning. When she'd been the one who was seeing getting into his crappy, Crappy. Their little truck on April 30th 1983.

1:33:23 He was like, yeah, yeah, you were right. I did kill her. You know, who, you know, who, Well, so interestingly enough while Ridgeway enjoyed the attention, sometimes they'd find a detail or something on a map and they pull them out of bed and cuff him and take him out in like the middle of the night over the course of the interviews. He came clean to all forty eight murders, specifically those in King County because that was the deal that they made. And as I said last week, there is a theory that he has other victims in other areas, but since he very desperately wants to stay alive, he's not going to say anything, right? Now, Ridgeway claimed that he would kill whenever he got angry. These were never premeditated murders.

1:34:03 And he blamed those rages on the women around him like the women at his job getting raises or promotions when he didn't, or when he would have to pay child support for his son, which side note, you got to pay child support every month buddy. So once a month you just get mad and go on a random Killing Spree quickly. or like he got mad when he bought the house and he said that the The sellers were so cheap that they taking all the light bulbs out of the house. Well, he said, he would get so angry that he couldn't sleep and he had to just go out and relieve the pressure. Yeah, we know this is a lie that he told him. Yeah.

1:34:48 Because he kept telling investigators over and over all I want to do was have sex with them and kill them. He didn't remember any of the women's faces, but he knew in startling detail everywhere that he had dropped a body, he worked through years of memories with them. He talked about keeping toys in his car, so the victims would be disarmed. He admitted to bring some of them back to the house. Showing them his son's room. And actually he and that's what he says, not premeditated, but he learned that when you kill someone, sometimes their bladder goes so he would make the women go to the bathroom before so that they had an empty bladder. So that when he murdered them it wouldn't make a mess on his bed, smart, I guess.

1:35:39 He also discovered through trial and error that if they were having sex in doggy style, that was the best way to kill them. Oh, so you can talk to her from behind, right? He would say, oh, I heard somebody, if they were outside and the girl would look up and he would reach over and grab her behind the neck and choked her out or if they were near the airport and airplane went overhead and the girl looked up, that would be the moment he grabbed her. One of the things I was really intrigued by is that usually Killers like this, have a racial preference, a physical preference for their victims and like well I said he didn't have like a thing, he really liked blondes, you only killed like five. He really didn't have any preference for his victims because they had virtually no meaning to him. They were just a means to an end. They were blank voids in his memory. He admitted the choking them was more rewarding than shooting them, though.

1:36:32 He did threaten them with guns, These are also the interviews where he references being cuckolded by his wife and like I said, I looked far and wide for any proof that this happened, outside of Gary, ridgway's mind the investigators didn't believe it either because he had many consensual girlfriends while he was doing this between 1982 and 84. Yeah, no one was cheating on you or cuckold and you then buddy. No one else. No partially through these interviews. He starts mentioning The other Gary. And so he starts talking about, I know, I'm sorry. Oh God, come on, just talking about the other Gary who's stronger and angrier and this Gary's mad because the police have complete control over him.

1:37:19 And the old Gary would talk about murdering and the new Gary said he never had any sex with corpses now. They weren't sure if he was trying to present himself as being mentally ill, but regardless, he was telling them the facts and that's all that mattered to them. This is also when he told them that that jewelry that they had been looking for his trophies, he had left those things at the airport and also at his job. So he would leave pieces of Jewelry in the bathrooms and then he would get like a little high whenever he would see. The women at his job, wearing those pieces. And that kept them out of his house. Come on, come on.

1:38:06 He also admitted that he hated how much control women out over him and he always hated it. Oh my God. Shut up. Oh, the police. How exhausting it was to have to wear, gloves, and change his shoes, or tires all the time. So that they wouldn't be able to find him. Well, don't do it. The real Clincher do was enter his interviews with dr. Mary Ellen. O'Toole, she got him to talk about his childhood. Now she intrigued him by saying she wouldn't talk to him and she said, listen, the FBI doesn't care about how many bodies a person has like, there's plenty of crimes, we don't interject into. Hmm, she said I need to go through a verification process with you to see if you're worth my time.

1:38:49 He's like, okay. She's like the verification process. As you got to tell me about your childhood. So she walked so Gary walked her through a lot of the things we talked about last week, right? He told dr. Atul that he thought his victims bodies belonged to him as long as they weren't discovered and he admitted to all sorts of sexual compulsions do you know what fra tourism is? Because I didn't hear that word before. Broader is broader is MM no I have no idea. Well apparently this started when he was young fra tourism is when you rub your Genitals on. Somebody else without their consent.

1:39:30 I think I have heard of this new word for Brittany. Never heard of that in my life. He also would expose himself to people when he was younger. He stalked women that started when he was 12. Where is MM? Rape murder for sexual release and yes he absolutely admitted straight up to dr. O'Toole necrophilia. He even discussed how he and moves skeletons to Oregon so that the police wouldn't find their bodies and wouldn't take them from him. All his porch Willie's. Take his toys away. Now dr. O'Toole was the one who zeroed in on a how awful Gary's Ship with his mother was and how those baths that creeped us out, had been very stimulating for Gary and that he would get a hard-on while she was cleaning him and he would see his want.

1:40:18 He looked at his mom, like she was one of the women in like the nude magazines and that he would like peek at her and like sneak looks at her, if she leaned down, like he would like look through her shirt. That when she measured him for close, he would get turned on and see. That's why one of the things that I like struggle with is that story that he told her about how his mom used to tell them stories about how. When she would measure men at the park, our department store, she could like see their hard-ons. I'm like, is this you projecting? Yes.

1:40:59 Oh my God. Make. Someone said he insisted though. He never touched his mother but that seeing her nude made him want to touch other women. And that started when he was 10, he said he never resented his mother but he did want to stab her. And he started stalking women at 12 years old and that he had necrophilia desires long before he ever actually did it. Hmm, he pled. Guilty, officially on November 5th, 2003, and he was given 48 consecutive life sentences on December 18th, 2003, They would find one more victim. December 21st. 2010, her name was Rebecca Marrero. She was 20 when she went missing, December 3rd 1992, Becky at left her son with her mom and said it like made a joke saying she was going away for a long time.

1:41:50 Her mom kind of took her seriously and didn't report her missing until 1984 Her skull was found at the bottom of a 200-foot ravine, which is interesting. Because in his interviews, Gary talked about wanting to be able to find one of those bottomless Minds that they say are in Washington. So perhaps he thought he had gotten rid of Becky by throwing her into the ravine. They added one more life sentence to his 48. Just after his 62nd birthday. Oh my God. And so what else happened to the other people involved in this case? Well, Dave Reichert went on to be the US Representative to Washington's 8th Congressional District from 2005 to 2009 teen. He is now retired Stu Peters took some time off went to Africa on a safari in 2004 then she came back and Began trying to find the identities of the unknown victims. She along with Detective Denny gulla create a program called the highway intelligence team hit and that team goes, and checks on the working girls near the sea. Tack strip not to arrest them, but to let them know they are resources and that they're there to help, they have been able to help women.

1:43:05 They've had people call them in the middle of the night. They also log these women's scars and dental records, smart, very when some of the young women. Asks, here's why she says so something like this happens again we can find you. Yeah. Randy mulanax were ran a seminar for law enforcement agencies around the country to teach them, about what they learned about. The Green River Killer Bob, gabo, edged, writing her and Kevin O'Keefe went back to Seattle PD. Frank Adamson retired, Richard kraske retired but Colwell retired medical examiner, Donald Rhea retired. He lives on an island where he learns about boat murder Motors and stuff.

1:43:48 Nice, big Bill hagelin worked, identifying bodies in foreign countries until he died and chain 21. Along with Bill Danny, Nolan, Paul Smith, Ralph without McAllister, Kim Pompey. Jim, sorry. I said Kim Jim Pompey, dr. John, Baird bridge and Tony Zagora all died. After this case, Matt Haney became chief of police on Bainbridge Island in Washington. Hmm, Robert Capa was a professor in criminology until his death. This year. In June of 2021, Chad Ridgeway is a Marine most of the victims and Gary's Ex-Wives and anyone who had anything to do with him in that vein have no interest in being involved in anything good smart.

1:44:34 Like I told you last time, Judy has finally made it to a place where she can be in a relationship and trust people again right. Yeah she's dating again right. Great. Yeah. She has a boyfriend named David. Yay Judah. Yes and Gary is serving his sentence in Washington State Penitentiary and Walla Walla. Washington. He will never be released. Yay. And there is the story of Gary Ridgway. Look at that. That was good one, and you finished it on our 40th episode. I did. That was the goal here. But now you see why I couldn't do it in one. No, no, no, that just cut my whole part out, just you just talked a whole episode.

1:45:17 Go right ahead for an hour and 45 minutes right now, my God never mind. What did you have talked about this week? Oh well, you see. This week and Ryan's world. So, Halloween's over. Yeah, everybody hope everybody had their got their festivities out of their system. Like, I mean, whatever you enjoyed yourselves and then you celebrated the next day, which would be the day of the dead. If you do, celebrate the Day of that, someone actually asked me that in my lab, the other day.

1:46:08 They were like, do you celebrate today the dot? And I was like, well, I'm not Mexican so that, Cultural appropriation, but I appreciate that. You want people to know more about it. This is true. Yeah, it's a great day. I it's really cool. And I if someone invited me to be a part of it, I absolutely would go. Yeah, 100%. You just can't be doing it by yourself and no, no. Can't be the Columbus thing. People's cultural events. Just don't do that. Hmm, it's like how we do it for I guess. St.patrick's day. We are a lot of people do that, you know? You know what I mean? American version of st. Patrick's day isn't even it's not, it's not, it's like what we do for Mayday.

1:46:50 We're just like what or snow Cinco de Mayo. They're like yeah, this is a totally celebrating a battle in Mexico, drunk time. We just any at any point Americans. Try to drink. Anytime we can get drunk be for fun. It's super weird. Yeah, but yeah, like we're like they have them pretty sure. I definitely cried watching KOCO, that's a great one. And then the definitely cried watching The Book of Life to think. I watched that, what's a good movie? It's a great one. I don't care if they're cartoons. Oh care, I'll watch them light automatic cartoons are good. Yeah. Anyway, you know, the days over Halloween is still in our hearts today. I bring you a tale brought To Us by one of our patrons. Maggie.

1:47:44 Oh, is this what Maggie? You were talking about the disk or? Yeah, I was like if I find some stuff about I'll definitely cover. So cool. She's gonna be so high. Yeah, and there's like what s shallow for her right, right? Listen. That's you gotta be what you want. Shoutouts, be it become a patron, become a patreon. Let's talk about. You always are anyway. Yeah, hi Maggie. I told you I'd use it, but so I'm using it today. I love getting stories from people. By the way, hint hint, Just just in case. So this is the story of The Point Lookout Lighthouse, which may be haunted. Well, I'm pretty sure it is haunted. Didn't you say something about it? Being the most haunted lighthouse in America is the most haunted lighthouse in America, which is apparently, a thing.

1:48:34 I was gonna say I didn't know that there were like a list of yeah lighthouses. You're never going to get me into a lighthouse because I'm not going up 12. Flights of steps. Look. I kind of wanted to be like a Lighthouse Keeper. Then you'd be good at going up. The steps. Yeah. You tried to climb the steps to get up here? You were winded. Just look. Your steps are like steep. Okay. Are, aren't they freaking Steve? And I cannot leg day all the steps in Old buildings are like that, which is the same way they are in lighthouses. Well, I could probably grow up doing that, so it's different. Alright, I'll be a young lady housekeeper anyway.

1:49:18 So this Lighthouse is located inside of the Point. Lookout State Park in Scotland, Maryland. It was used for, you know, mostly house things. You know, the warned ships of the, the, the shore and stuff. You know, hiding underwater Lighthouse. I'm hiding underwater, Utopias, or Being access to a Utopia in the sky. You know, there's always a man, there's always a lighthouse D now that we've got a weird comment on her thing on. What thing. Someone thinks that Brian laundry is gay and that's why he killed gabbi petite. Oh my God.

1:49:59 We're gonna start getting some of those kinds of emails through our website. No, please don't. I don't want to hear that shit. Back to the lighthouse anyway, you lost anyway, when I was reference to freak, In BioShock out. If everybody got that you played it before. Anyway, this Lighthouse looks cool. It's sticking out of a one and a half story house. It's awesome looking. It's a I think it's red, right? Yeah. It was constructed in 1839. I don't really dive deep into like I don't like, I don't like diving deep into the background of some things because I think, you know it Would be born.

1:50:42 Talk about what's it? The point. The other point look out. Yep, Lighthouse Lighthouse. Yeah, but you said looks creepy. Well, it's cool because it's sticking out of the house. It's so tiny. Yeah. Okay, I will go to that one. Always huge. I think of a lighthouse. I think of those like impossibly tall building. I know she's meaner horrible. Sorry, I'm sorry. No, you're fine. Anyways, we yeah. I don't like diving deep because I think it will be boring. And who wants to hear me talking about boring things? We were talking about spooky things, okay?

1:51:22 But it this like this is story is a funny story attached to this one, like the, the history of, you know, all the keepers that were that lived there. So there's this guy his name was William would okay? Dude was known for being very clumsy. So clumsy that he broke a lot of the mirrors and Lighthouse. And his pay was withheld for a year. Wow. A year here. Imagine not being paid like you're working, but you're not getting paid for any of that because you broke so much stuff. Yes.

1:52:02 Oh, that's awful. So there's an incident where he allowed a cat to get into the lantern oil. One of the lantern oil barrels for Lighthouse and that had to be replaced, which only added more to his debt. So do was just like, he's just Very clumsy person. All right. Please head. That's wild though right here. Like you owe us. Your years pay like Jesus. I think on the website I was reading. It is said his his salary. Like what he actually like, got paid was like, $325, something like that? Well his hole.

1:52:49 Thing as a keeper of Lighthouse. But that's what them deducting, all the stuff. Yeah breaking. Yeah, this is wild goodness. So I don't remember I don't know if you remember Maggie, satanists and Discord but during the Civil War, there was a lot of stuff built around this area. Well, Maryland area. Okay. Specifically Point Lookout, so there was a hospital built. On the coast, the cape, whatever. The point where ever, you want to call it wherever it is, Point Lookout, is that There's a hospital of Medical Hospital.

1:53:29 They're built for Union Soldiers, okay? In 1960, 1862 the Confederate soldiers were held at said hospital as well. Then a prison camp was built and a house poww soldiers. This was named Camp Hoffman. Okay. There are also rumors that the Keeper at the time kept prisoners there as well at the Lighthouse, okay? And when I say kept, I mean, I think they meant that they eat, like, either to keep her or the assistant Lighthouse. Keeper were Confederate sympathizers, so they, yeah. Yes.

1:54:18 He, they would hide the soldiers in there. But what to say, Website. I read this on is like. Well, there are all like, there are psychics. I came in and he said that there were Confederate prisoners, that were being held there against her will. So I don't, who knows. Actually, I found a lot of these stories that I'm going to read to you about the lighthouse, in the encounters that people have dealt with our from, you know, the people W the the the PO W soldiers and you know, it's the same Civil War soldiers or just haunting the place.

1:55:04 So apparently this p.o.w. Camp it was only designed to hold 10,000 people. Write a lot of people. Yeah, but guess what, you really tried the actually fed him fit in there around 20,000 people. So, very quick stuffed inside of that small living space. Okay. Living conditions were yes. Less-than-ideal author of The point that it's a book. It's a book is called Point. Lookout, prison camp for confederate for Confederates. Author is Edwin Warfield of housings of Burning.

1:55:48 Sands and freezing, cold and rotten tents. It is a story of senseless shootings by guards, the story of Despair and death of 4,000 prisoners, many of whom could have been saved, Indeed, terrible times three had by a lot of people. Give me a sec. Well, that was some that was some fun background information, right? Yes. It's a. Lots of murder and death. Yeah. Just some a lot of bad prison. What I stopped. It's all.

1:56:30 We're here. Hey everybody. So we had some technical difficulties this week during recording. So basically, whatever stories I was telling at the end, it got cut off. So here I am doing a solo and I'm just going to, I'm just going to like real a two stories for you about this lighthouse. And call it a day. And hopefully next week, we won't have any issues with audio. So the first one first story comes from Ranger at the Lighthouse, at that actually had to park.

1:57:14 His name is Kevin hook and this happened in September of 1999, Wonderful evening. I was sitting in the living room and the small white house across the road from the fishing pier, the room face cells, and towards the road that the soldiers used to March into Point Lookout. My dog Timber was nestled at my feet alongside a friend's dog. As we set the thermometer showed a stifling 100 degrees my friend and I were talking quietly. When the two dogs ran panic-stricken into the dining room, both stood in the door and bark continuously into the oven like room, my friend and I were completely dumbfounded.

1:58:02 All of a sudden the room turned bitter cold even though the thermometer still read 100 degrees. The room was Stone Cold in seconds. We could even see our breath when we excelled exhaled. It remained cold for about 30 seconds and then returned to its owner like condition what happened? Why did the room gets so cold? Hook still doesn't know. So that was a I guess a ghost had just walked through the room and made it all nice and chilly, even though it was hot outside, whatever. Anyway, Let me go to the second story. I got So this one is from The Point Lookout, Lighthouse.com, and it is titled, and man on my house, porch and spirit lights. It was the winter of 1996.

1:59:10 I was 19 years old, a friend of mine had just bought a car and we had gone for a day trip to st. Mary's County. Well it was pretty aimless. We just kept driving that day away from Baltimore where we lived and we arrived in st. Mary's County around 4:30 that afternoon, we drove around and had dinner at a greasy spoon style restaurant. We noticed signs for paint St. A Lookout State Park and we decided to go check it out before heading home. We drove down the drive through the park. It was around 8:00 p.m., I guess it was very cold, so cold. It was hard to breathe eyes, would literally singe into wind, we drove down to the end of the road, where the point and the lighthouse were located.

2:00:03 Now, I had never heard of the parks hauntings, so I was not looking to see or experience anything. He parked the car and I suggested we walk over to the water and have a closer. Look at the Lighthouse. We got out of the car to experience a steady freezing wind that made our souls shiver, we walked over to look out over the bay. It was a beautiful sight on a cold, winter, evening return and walked over to the fence. At the Lighthouse. We were right at the Gate of the fence looking at the Lighthouse. When we noticed something peculiar on the steps of the lighthouse, it appeared to be a man in a heavy coat, sitting there staring at the ground.

2:00:55 We sort of froze in our tracks because it's dharwad us quite a bit since the lighthouse was completely dark. We stood there for probably 15 seconds when I suggested to my friend we leave just as we took our first step, the man raised his head and look at us, not wanting to seem suspicious. I said, good evening to the man, the man, suddenly Rose to his feet and turn to the door, my friend and I watched as the man walked, right through the door and disappeared into the porch. We stopped and looked for a minute to see if he was inside the porch. But he wasn't, I suddenly realized that he had just passed through the screen door and vanished on the other side. My friend was about as shocked as I was we sat there for a couple minutes to no avail.

2:01:47 We decided he had seen, we have seen a ghost as we walked back to the car. We sat there, we sat in the heat, trying to give reason to what seemed to be an impossible experience. Then the next weird thing happened. As we were talking my friend suddenly yelled. Look I looked up and saw something that sent shivers up my spine. Something that looked like a ball of light was going inside the house and was Illuminating the porch we watched in amazement as the light flickered and then ceased the whole light show lasted for about 10 seconds, we couldn't believe it. You must have stayed for another hour but nothing happened at the. So I left.

2:02:30 The next day, we went to the library and looked up books on The Point Lookout, Lighthouse. We were surprised to see so many. I read everything I could on the hauntings and was Spellbound that Monday. We called the park and asked them if anyone was living in the lighthouse and until is no. We told him what happened and they explain the haunting at the Lighthouse it was really something else. So yeah, that's another story. Not even like these are all true cows that people have reported about the lighthouse. Not even like stories that could be pasta. People who made up. Well, those are two. I'm ready for you guys, because my kids are acting up and I don't want to Keep them waiting any longer. So thank you for listening this week. Like I said, hopefully next week old, it won't be too bad and you have me and Brittany signing off with you. So if you want to check out more about the podcast, go to the website, it's WinCo's, get caught that calm and there you can see all of our episodes listed. You can even leave us emails or you can leave us reviews on the website.

2:03:46 You can check out britni. Tick-Tock, it's at caught podcast and you can check me out on, whatever liked which I am foxy trainer on Twitch and you can leave his emails, like actual email emails, at podcasts at gmail.com. All right, thank you for listening. Bye bye.