[music playing]
DAVE REICHERT (VOICEOVER): Back then, there was a meatpacking
plant here along the riverbank.
And one of the employees had walked
out to the back on the riverbank to have a cigarette.
And as he looked out over the river, he saw a body.
Of course, I didn't know that, two days later, I
was going to be called back to that riverbank
just upstream for two more bodies.
DAVE REICHERT: Marcia Chapman was on her back.
And she had large boulders on her thighs, upper shoulder,
but one arm was free.
And then I remember her one hand just kind
of waving as the current passed over her body,
and the river moved on downstream.
And to me, it was almost as if she were saying, here I am,
help me.
Of course, it was too late.
As I processed that scene, I found another body.
It would be right about in here, about halfway down the bank.
We come across Opal Mills.
DAVE REICHERT (VOICEOVER): So here's
a 16-year-old girl laying on her stomach,
a large bruise on her buttocks, a ligature around her neck,
lying face down.
And you know, we just started doing our job.
You could go from one end of Pacific Highway South in South
King County, just south of the city of Seattle,
and drive for 3, 4 miles along that strip-- they
call it Pacific Highway Strip--
and count over 100 prostitutes.
They were out there in just huge numbers.
Prostitutes are the perfect victim.
Their job is to stand on a street corner
and wait for somebody to drive up, make a deal for $20,
jump in the car, drive away, and they disappear into the night,
never to be seen again.
And every time you turned around, a body was being found.
We weren't making progress.
We were just continually collecting humans, dead humans.
You cannot forget, I can't forget,
I don't think any of us will ever forget the years we
spent picking these bodies up.
They're stuck here.
[music playing]
We have a report from one of the young ladies on the street
that she'd been assaulted.
She describes the person, and we identified him as Gary Ridgway.
Ridgway's name came up in a couple of different spots.
And so a tip sheet was generated.
And it was assigned to Matt Haney.
Matt Haney is a person that I would call a very tenacious
bulldog kind of personality.
Matt took that investigation and followed up
every lead on that tip sheet and was very convinced that Ridgway
was an outstanding suspect.
MATT HANEY: We started putting him under surveillance.
And sure enough, he's still out cruising.
He's still out there obviously watching
girls working the street, because we
were watching him watch them.
It just goes on and on.
If you had to write a script, this is what a--
how a serial killer would behave and act.
It would fit him.
He did all the right stuff.
And the little pieces of the puzzle keep kind of collecting.
And he doesn't go away.
What you end up building is probable cause.
And we searched his house.
We searched his locker at work.
We searched his vehicles.
There was nothing there during the 1987 search that would
cause us to make an arrest.
I never had a thought that we weren't going to catch him.
I just wondered how, when, and where.
And I knew I wanted to be a part of it.
We had bodily fluids that we had taken from the river victims
and from other victims who were intact.
The very first girl that we got a DNA typing profile from
was off of Marcia Chapman.
This was one of the girls found in the Green River.
DAVE REICHERT: Tom Jensen had called and said he needed
to meet with me right away.
Ah, it was probably by the time I got in there,
I think I had it in my hand.
I had-- just had it all in an envelope.
Tom said, hey, I just want to show you
some of the information that's come back.
And I said, OK.
We're sitting at a table, and Tom pulls out a piece of paper.
And he says, OK, I just want you to know,
this is the DNA of the suspect that was
found in such and such victim.
I could feel my heart start to beat a little bit faster.
And then I gave him this final thing.
And I said, this is the DNA profile
of the Green River Killer.
So I looked at Tom.
And I said, Tom, are you trying to tell me that we
have identified a suspect?
And he looked at me like-- and so then
I handed him this envelope.
And he says, his name is right here.
And he goes to hand me the envelope.
I didn't even grab the envelope.
I told him-- I said, I don't even need to open that.
I know who it is.
It's Gary Ridgway.
And he kind of looked at me.
And he said, you're right.
INVESTIGATOR (VOICEOVER): We were all saying
to ourselves, is this guy--
I mean, is he still active?
Is he still killing?
Because to the best of our knowledge, he had stopped.
He appeared to be not active when
we were watching him closely.
And then, lo and behold, he gets caught up in a John patrol.
When we learned that he contacted, as we watched him,
a prostitute on the highway, we knew we had to take action.
So we decided to move on him as soon as possible.
RANDY MULLINAX: It was a rainy day.
I remember sitting in an SUV in the parking lot
of the Kenworth parking lot.
As he approached the door of his truck, Jim Doyon and I got out.
And I told him, he's under arrest
for the murder of several women in King County.
And, really, the moment that struck
me the most was when I heard over the radio,
one in custody, 10-4.
I went out to the holding room and, with the detectives,
knocked on the door.
And as Ridgway came out, of course, he knew who I was.
And I looked at him.
And I said, gotcha, [bleep].
The defense attorneys came to the prosecutor's office
and said, we want to talk about a deal.
Ridgway will plead guilty.
He'll tell you about 65--
I think that was the initial number--
65 murders in exchange for his life.
Even after we arrested him, the detectives and I had already
talked about this to a person.
We were all in favor of making a deal.
Look, when you have a chance to solve a 50,
and you know this guy is never getting out of prison ever
again, he will never kill again, and you can give answers
to families that have been waiting for answers for 20
years, I would do it again--
in a heartbeat.
Some have called me, you know, the evil and the devil,
you know, and Satan.
It was December 31.
It was 9 o'clock in the morning.
And I decided that I needed to talk to him one more
time before he went to prison.
You took the lives of 48 women.
You snuffed them out-- more than 48 women.
71, yes. DAVE REICHERT: Right.
You killed them all, Ridgway.
You killed them all. - Mm-hmm.
DAVE REICHERT (VOICEOVER): Somebody asked
me how he got the way he is.
Where did he come from?
And I said, he's not from outer space.
He didn't come from Mars.
He came from right here in our community.
And that's the scary part.
Right here in our neighborhood, this little boy
grew up to become one of the most
notorious killers, not only in this country,
but I think in this world.
When we first walked into court the day
that he was going to plea, that's
really-- that day is when it really hit me that this
was over, that it was ending.
PROSECUTOR: Your statement begins as follows.
"I killed the 48 women listed in the state's
second amended information.
I killed so many women, I have a hard time
keeping them straight.
I picked prostitutes as my victims
because I thought I could kill as many of them
as I wanted without getting caught."
Is that true?
Yes.
JUDGE: And, Mr. Ridgway, is it your desire
to plead guilty to the 48 charges of aggravated murder
in the first degree because you believe
that you are guilty of each of those offenses?
Yes.
He's going to go to hell, and that's where he belongs.
DAVE REICHERT: And the day that he was sentenced,
when the families could get up and speak their mind--
and some were angry, and some forgave him, and--
VICTIM'S RELATIVE: You have held us
in bondage for all these years because we have hated you,
we've wanted to see you die, but it's all going to be over now.
And that is providing we can forgive you.
He's an animal.
I don't wish for him to die.
I wish for him to have a long, suffering, cruel death.
I know he feels no remorse.
His beady, little evil eyes would like to probably choke
everyone that's been up here, but you won't have
that opportunity this time.
You've made it difficult to live up to what I believe,
and that is what God says to do.
And that's to forgive.
And he doesn't say to forgive just certain people.
He says to forgive all.
So you are forgiven, sir.
You are a loser.
You're a coward.
You are nobody.
You're an animal.
I'm angry, and I will always be angry.
I will never have that closure 'cause I will never
have my sister back in my life.
You broke my family apart for 20 years.
I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch.
DAVE REICHERT: And then it was over.
And we had always imagined this huge party and people
popping champagne corks and all kinds of things,
but it was really just kind of a small gathering of people
and a congratulatory kind of job well done.
And everybody now has moved on.