Robin Laananen
Attorney Tony Savage says he believes Ridgway is not guilty.
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JUDY RIDGWAY is one of the few people left who thinks her husband isn't responsible for the 49 Green River murders. Judy, 57, and Gary Ridgway, who observed his third month and 53rd birthday in King County Jail last week, had what she calls a happy 17-year marriage. "He was the best thing that ever happened to me," she said the other day.
But on Friday, Nov. 30, 2001, King County Sheriff Dave Reichert announced that authorities had arrested "the" Green River killer. Though Ridgway was charged with just four of the murders and has pleaded not guilty, the media onslaught that followed echoed that interpretation, suggesting the 20-year-old serial killings had been solved with the capture of an Auburn truck painter, a suspect since 1983. King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng continued the drumbeat, issuing a press release and 18 pages of court documents; he hinted that the death penalty was a near certainty if Ridgway is convicted.
More than 600 stories have been aired or published locally since the arrest, most reasserting the prosecutor's claims. Investigator Bob Keppel's 1995 book The Riverman, recounting the quirky tale of imprisoned serial killer Ted Bundy trying to solve the Green River murders, has been reissued with a police mug shot of Ridgway on the cover. He is labeled "one of America's most elusive serial killers," now "finally apprehended."
"They're going to blame him for the disappearance of Amelia Earhart before they're done," says one of Ridgway's attorneys, Anthony Savage, referring to the ongoing review of the 45 other Green River murders and more than 100 similar West Coast homicides being scanned for Ridgway connections.
But public perception doesn't necessarily translate into a conviction. Just ask Ronald Goldman's family.
And Tony Savage, 71, the grand old man of Seattle criminal defense attorneys, plans to make his case and hopes to convince a jury that the Milquetoast-looking 5-foot-10, 155-pound, dyslexic Gary Ridgway, a homeowner often seen walking the family poodle, is not the force of evil behind the nation's largest unsolved serial killings case.
"He's not guilty," Savage says. "That's the defense. That's where we start."
There is a difference, of course, between innocent and not guilty. It's the difference between "Did he do it?" vs. "Can they prove he did it?"
To date, Ridgway's explanations and denials have been mostly unheard in the court of public opinion, from which comes the pool of jurors who will decide his fate. The prosecutor's office has leveled its charges and outlined its case; Maleng says he will not comment further on the evidence. He has several months to decide if he'll seek the death penalty and says he won't use it to plea bargain with Ridgway, a Navy vet with a grown son from a previous marriage.
Ridgway's defenders are undaunted. Savage and a tiny band of associates have begun reinterviewing witnesses, retesting evidence, and reviewing perhaps a million pages of findings and statements contained on stacks of CDs in preparation for a trial that may begin in 2004 and cost more than $15 million.
Through interviews with Savage and others, we outline aspects of that planned defense.
Preponderance of Evidence, meet Reasonable Doubt.
THE 1982-84 Green River killings were so named because the first victims were discovered in or near the river, starting with Wendy Lee Coffield, 16, on July 15, 1982. The 49 victims are connected by their ages (young), sex (female), lifestyle (some runaways but mostly prostitutes who often worked the SeaTac stroll), and manner of death (strangulation, in the cases where cause could be determined).
Their remains were found at seven remote multibody disposal sites. The bodies of seven presumed victims have not been found, and only five were found all or mostly intact. Four of those, Carol Christensen, 21; Opal Mills, 16; Marcia Chapman, 31; and Cynthia Hinds, 17, are attributed to Ridgway.
Prosecutor Maleng says he can show that Gary Ridgway was not working at the times the four women were last seen or killed. But when, exactly, were they killed?
The evidence he has so far reviewed, says Savage, indicates that "they haven't the faintest idea when these girls died. They can put some within a day or so. In some cases they just don't know." An attorney working with Savage, Michele Shaw, says Ridgway was working overtime on some of the dates in question. "The overtime [shows] up on his paychecks," she says, and provides at least partial alibis.
The defense is likely to also explore whether all of the women in Ridgway's case were Green River victims. Christensen was discovered in Maple Valley, unlike the other three. She was also uniquely posed by her killer: fully clothed, a bottle of Lambrusco wine balanced on her stomach, two trout laid across her chest, a small mound of sausages in one hand. But since the tavern worker had been strangled with a ligature, as were many Green River victims, she eventually was added to the gruesome list.
"I mean, this Green River business," says Savage. "Any dead body out there is a Green River victim, including bodies that haven't been found."
Then there's the question of motive. Ridgway has maintained his innocence for two decades yet openly admits he was hooked on sex. Two ex-spouses and some former girlfriends and prostitutes claim he liked to have sex outdoors (one former girlfriend said they sometimes had sex thrice daily), and a few of these "camping and hiking" trips took place near some of the death scenes.
