JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL

Secret Lives presents The Green River Killer

Aired January 10, 2014 - 19:00 ET

The 54-year-old Ridgway's chilling confession is contained in a 'statement of defendant on plea of guilty' filed in Superior Court. Below you will find a chilling excerpt from that statement. 'Confessions of a Serial Killer': Why did Israel Keyes kill Bill and Lorraine Currier? This is a rush transcript from 'On the Record,' August 6, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form. The FBI is seeking the public’s help in identifying some of the victims of Samuel Little, who has been confirmed as the nation’s most prolific serial killer after confessing to 93 murders.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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GARY RIDGWAY, GREEN RIVER KILLER: I used my hand, my arm. I pulled it back. I was choking her.
JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, HLN HOST (voice-over): America`s deadliest serial killer speaks.
RIDGWAY: All the rage. I took the towel and wrapped it around her neck and pulled them and killed them.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: A rare and disturbing look into the secret world of a sexual psychopath.
RIDGWAY: Kill, kill, kill, kill.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Gary Ridgway, the infamous green river killer. For nearly two decades, he killed with impunity. Terrorizing the Seattle, Washington, area.
RIDGWAY: I killed because I wanted to kill.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: He escaped the death penalty. Ridgway agreed to months of interrogations, all of it recorded, all of it chilling. These interrogations reveal a man so good at hiding his horrific secrets, that he operated right in plain sight.
RIDGWAY: It was always the sex first, then sometimes killing them after the sex.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Throughout his 19-year killing spree, Ridgway dumped the bodies of as many as 70 women throughout the Seattle area. At the end of a runway, in the woods, and of course, in the green river.
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the green river, the site of where the first five of Ridgway`s victims were found.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Sometimes Gary Ridgway killed as many as four women -- four of them in a single week. Yet this man was a below-average IQ, was never caught dumping a single body.
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s not that bright of a person. But it doesn`t take that bright of a person to murder people.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Ridgway might not have been the sharpest tool in the box, but he was street smart enough to hide his dark, deadly secret desires, by honing a dull, unassuming, every-man facade that fooled authorities, and more tragically, fooled his victims.
RIDGWAY: Here`s a guy who`s not really muscle-bound. Just an ordinary John. And yet, that was their downfall. My appearance was different from what I really was.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Non-threatening, totally unimpressive, even meek. The green river killer spun a web of lies that helped him escape capture, kill, and secretly gloat. But how did he pull it off?
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These were women whose lifestyles were such that they did not regularly check in with their families or their loved ones. It gave him a lot of flexibility and a lot of latitude. It could be months before they would go report them missing, if at all.
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VELEZ-MITCHELL (voice-over): This was the green river killer`s hunting grounds. It was what the locals called the strip in suburban Seattle, Washington. It`s a collection of bars and dive motels, frequented by prostitutes. Gary Ridgway`s victims of choice.
RIDGWAY: I could kill a prostitute, and have a lot less chance of getting caught. You don`t know them, they don`t know you. The police won`t look as hard as they would if it was a senator`s daughter or something, you know.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: But all of Gary Ridgway`s victims were somebody`s daughters. Victims like Janie Rule, her mom Linda still holds on to the postcard sent to her by her daughter just days before she went missing.
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mommy, sorry I didn`t call back. Very sorry. Love you always. And Janie there.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: For Janie, growing up was difficult. Her parents, Linda and Robert, divorced when she was just three. But they remarried 20 years later.
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Janie would rather go to her mom`s. Because mom was softer on her. And I was too hard. And I shouldn`t have been, I guess.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Given her parents` rocky relationship at home, Janie began to wander, at just 14 she ran away from home and into the arms of a man she was living with on the streets.
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was somebody that our daughter thought that she was in love with. He was her boyfriend. He put her out on the streets.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: That man turned her into a working girl and sent her right into the arms of Gary Ridgway. And Janie Rule became another one of the green river killer`s victims. She was vulnerable. She was young. She was a prostitute, the kind of victim as were so many of his killers, who no one would miss until long after the green river killer had killed again.
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These were women whose lifestyles were such that they did not regularly check in with their families or loved ones. It gave him a lot of flexibility and a lot of latitude. It could be months before they would be reported missing, if at all.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Janie Rule was missing for four months before her body was found. The police didn`t immediately identify her, but her mom, Linda, knew what she was watching on TV. And it was her worst nightmare come true.
LINDA RULE, JANIE`S MOTHER: All I saw was them bringing up a body bag. And I knew that was her. Because this body was found out by northwest hospital. So I knew that had to have been her.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Janie was just 15-years-old when she was killed, not that it mattered to Gary Ridgway.
RIDGWAY: Just because I hated them. They`re just pieces of trash to me.
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Once he assaulted his first prostitute and got away with it, it gave him sort of a power over women. And he`d always been somewhat powerless, or been on the fringe. You know, not a good student, not a good athlete. When he assaulted his first victim and got away with it, and assaulted another one, she didn`t report him to the police, and he got away with it. And then, you know, progressed to killing a prostitute, and getting away with it. It just built in his mind as something that he was, you know, finally successful at. And had power and control over those that previously had power and control over him.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: According to the prosecutor`s summary of Gary Ridgway, he seemed to prefer preying on younger women, because they were not adults. They were innocent, and less likely to con him than the older prostitutes. On the other hand, the serial killer seemed to suggest teens may have turned him on more, because they really pleaded hard for their lives.
RIDGWAY: They would be, you know, why are you doing this, why are you doing this, I`m too young to die, don`t kill me. I talked to them before I had sex with them. And I`d done this a few times before. She`s 13, 14 years old. You figured that is true. You kill one, 20, 25, I`d already done this a few times. I thought I had best record in life. But the young ones, you got more when they talked, when they were dying.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: A secret psycho, who would lie to even the youngest victims to feed his insatiable appetite for sex and murder. Gary Ridgway didn`t seem to discriminate.
UNIDENTIFIED UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It didn`t matter to you whether they were white or black?
RIDGWAY: I would much rather have white, but black was fine. It was just garbage. Just some girl, kill her, and dump her.
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VELEZ-MITCHELL: Welcome to the secret lab. I am here with psychiatrist Gail Saltz as well as famed private investigator Vinnie Parco.
Dr. Gail, this serial killer when he was serving in the U.S. military had his first encounter with prostitutes. He was married at the time, and his wife back in the states, cheated on him. He called her a whore. Does that connect with his ultimate killing of prostitutes?
DR

Serial Killer Confession Transcript