The thing that happened to Gary Ridgway, a.k.a. The Green River Killer
Having been born on February 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Ridgway grew up in a household where both parents — in particular, his mother — were known to get into many violent arguments, which they would then take out on their children in one capacity or another.
This high-stress level — which Ridgway experienced both at home and at school — triggered many bed-wetting episodes until he was thirteen.
These incidents would result in his mother delivering a wave of scoldings and beatings before washing down his genitals.
Gary Ridgway as a child holding his pet feline
According to his later interviews, Ridgway developed an extreme form of ambivalence against his mother — becoming so fond of her that he began thinking of her in a sexual way, yet also angry enough that he wanted to decimate her body.
Many of these psychological and physical torments which Ridgway continuously experienced in his youth, at home, in school, and in the community, impacted his grades enough that he ended up failing high school twice.
Over time, this simmering anger eventually got to the youth, which then eventually earned Ridgway his first serious police record, when at age sixteen, he brought a knife to school and stabbed a six-year-old boy in the liver.
The child survived.
Even after leaving education behind and joining the navy, as well as other working fields, he would be ridiculed and bullied due to a speech impediment among other factors, which not only got him overlooked for better paying jobs, it also made his place of employment feel as unwelcoming as his family home and school had been.
In his later years, he began preaching the Bible by going door-to-door as a self-proclaimed missionary, and according to his second wife — with whom he had a son by the name of Matthew Ridgway, and who divorced him the year before he claimed his first victim — Gary would burst into tears of emotions in his bedroom after reading the New Testament, or after listening to a religious sermon.
By the time Gary Ridgway was in his early thirties, he had begun killing women — starting with Wendy Lee Coffield on July 8, 1982.
On November 30, 2001, law enforcement officers arrested Ridgway outside the Kenworth Truck Factory near Seattle, where he had been working since 1969.
In exchange for avoiding a death sentence, Ridgway agreed to help the police locate the missing bodies of those he had murdered and disposed. Angry relatives stood up and began berating him during the victim impact statements.
Referring to him as an “animal”. Wishing he would have a “long, , suffering, cruel, death”.
“He is going to burn in hell, and that is where he belongs.”
Gary Ridgway looking on without emotion as family members of his victims chastise him on November 5, 2003
As far as Ridgway was concerned, this form of verbal and emotional abuse was all white noise to him.
Having experienced this at home and in public for decades, there were no “angry words” that could unnerve him.
And then…
One man by the name of Robert Rule — whose sixteen-year-old daughter had been Ridgway’s tenth known victim, when she was murdered on September 26, 1982 — approached Ridgway in a different manner.
“Mister Ridgway… There are people here who… hate you… I - I am not one of them….”
Gary Ridgway at the moment he broke into tears at being told by Robert Rule that he had chosen to forgive and not hate him
One great aspect of this particular encounter, was that Robert Rule — who looked a lot like Santa Claus — was in fact employed as a mall Santa.
And in Roman Catholic tradition, Santa Claus is not only the Patron Saint of children, he is also the Patron Saint of pirates, prostitutes… And criminals. Gary Ridgway’s known victims
Mind you, Rule’s “human side” did come back when he said he would still have rather that Ridgway had been executed than imprisoned later in his speech, after describing the ordeal his family endured, but the opening statements were certainly words that the accused never thought he would hear.[2]
Several other family members who came after Ridgway had also chosen to forgive him, some of whom — unlike Robert Rule — had said they supported incarceration over execution.
Ridgway was at first incarcerated in Walla Walla maximum security prison in Washington, only to be transferred to Florence High maximum security prison in Colorado on May 14, 2015.
Gary Ridgway in custody helping officials locate missing human remains
After just five months, Ridgway was returned to his old prison on October 24, 2015, after state residents in Washington alike protested — the former in regards to locating more missing victims, and the latter because of his presence — prompting Governor Jay Inslee of Washington to order him back by aircraft.
According to online users who have seen Ridgway on the inside, he is now a “frail, old man” who is routinely doing medical check-ups while always shackled in chains, under the constant supervision of two or more correctional guards.
What will happen to Ridgway now is a matter for the future to decide.
Either way, it makes one wonder just how differently Ridgway may have turned out… for the better of the world…
Had the world been better to him.
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