Ridgway talks no easy task for detectives

By Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Last November, when King County sheriff's detectives asked Gary L. Ridgway about the first time he killed, he cobbled together a memory from the 1960s, when he was a young teenager.

He said he swam up behind a boy, maybe 10 years old, at Angle Lake south of Seattle, wrapped his legs around him and drowned him. He said he left the limp body underneath a dock on the north side of the lake, in the deep end "on the other side of the ropes."

"What do you remember?" pressed Detective Sue Peters. "Seems very upsetting to you, so I think you're gonna have to give more details."

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Ridgway responded: "Ah, it's more ah, it's, ah, it's upsetting because I don't remember, um, if I did this or if it's like I said, a dream."

This tantalizing clue — as well as what the detectives did with it — illustrates the tedious and oftentimes confusing nature of the interrogation last year of the Green River killer.

The detectives had the opportunity to talk to Ridgway when he agreed to provide information about his victims in exchange for being spared the death penalty. He is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to killing 48 women. The Sheriff's Office this week released thousands of pages of interview transcripts resulting from that plea deal.

According to the transcripts, some of the detectives poked and prodded Ridgway for more information about the drowning. They had him draw a map of the lake. They tried being his friend, then confronting him. Either way, a typical response from Ridgway was:

"Just remember about, you know, wrappin' my legs around some, some, ah, kid or thinkin' about it. You know, and sometimes thinkin' is, ah, turns out to be reality, and a lot of times it doesn't."

Other detectives tried to corroborate what he said. Detectives Kathleen Larson and Raphael Crenshaw contacted the parks and recreation department, checked death notices with the coroner's office and even asked The Seattle Times research staff for archived clips of all drownings in the area during the 1960s.

A 2-1/2-year-old toddler named Jimmy Guy Colby wandered away from home in June 1964 and drowned in the south end of Angle Lake. About the same time, a high-school student drowned while swimming across the lake with his buddies.
 
"We didn't find anything that came even close to what Ridgway was describing," Larson said yesterday.

Was it a wild goose chase? Was Ridgway jerking around the task force? Was it a dream? Was it real?

On one hand, Ridgway has been described as a man of, at best, modest intelligence. One of his own trial attorneys once said, "He missed being in special ed by the skin of his teeth."

But transcripts show he was also stubborn, slow and maybe sly. He said he thought often about how not to get caught, and what forensic evidence he was leaving behind.

Detectives acknowledge Ridgway was hazy on details, maybe selectively or perhaps because of the sheer number of killings. But they are convinced he has killed dozens more women than the 48.

"Did he do this? I don't know," Larson said, referring to the drowning. "He's a sociopath and a pathological liar. He was always telling us something he felt we wanted to hear or for whatever reason he felt would benefit him."

Researcher Sandy Freeman contributed to this report.

Michael Ko: 206-515-5653 or mko@seattletimes.com

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