http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_RidgwayGary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), known as the Green River Killer, is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. On November 30, 2001, as he was leaving a Renton, Washington factory where he worked, he was arrested for the murders of seven women whose deaths were attributed to the "Green River Killer". Four murders were linked to him through DNA and three through paint he used at his job. Two years later he pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder, although the estimates run much higher. Ridgway has been married three times and has one son. He carried his son's photo in his wallet to lure most of his victims into his pickup truck. snip
The murders
During a two-and-a-half-year period in the early 1980s, the Green River Killer is believed to have murdered as many as 50 women near the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Most of the victims were either prostitutes or teenage runaways picked up along Pacific Highway South (State Route 99) and strangled. Most of their bodies were dumped in and around the Green River in Washington, except for two victims in the Portland, Oregon area.
In the early 1980s, the King County Sheriff Department formed the Green River Task Force to investigate the murders. The most notable members of the task force were Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert, who periodically interviewed incarcerated serial killer Ted Bundy from 1984 to Bundy's execution and got Bundy to confess to some unsolved murders he was suspected of having committed.
Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 for charges related to prostitution. He became a suspect in 1983 for the Green River killings, in 1984 took and passed a polygraph test, and on April 7, 1987, police took hair and saliva samples that were later subjected to a DNA analysis, which provided the evidence for his arrest warrant.
On November 30, 2001, nearly 20 years after first being identified as a potential suspect, Ridgway was arrested on suspicion of murder for four deaths after DNA evidence linked him to multiple victims. The four victims named in the original Ridgway indictment included Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds and Carol Ann Christensen.