Suspect Charged in Green River Slayings

Gary Leon Ridgway, a truck painter from Auburn, was charged Wednesday with four counts of aggravated murder in the Green River serial killings case.

King County Prosecuting Atty. Norm Maleng said he has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty, but he said he would not allow Ridgway to plead guilty in exchange for assurances that his life would be spared.

“We will not plea-bargain with the death penalty,” Maleng said.

Public defender Mark Prothero said they would question the techniques used to collect, preserve and test DNA samples taken long ago.

Also Wednesday, detectives finished searching the last of four area homes where Ridgway has lived since the killings began.

The case has baffled investigators since 1982, when women’s bodies were found in or near the Green River in Kent, south of Seattle.

Forty-nine women, most of them prostitutes or runaways, were believed to be victims of the serial killer.

Ridgway, 52, is charged in the deaths of Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman and Cynthia Hinds, whose bodies were found in the river on Aug. 15, 1982, and Carol Christensen, found May 8, 1983, in woods in nearby Maple Valley. Hinds and Mills were both teenagers. Christensen was 21 and Chapman was 31.

Maleng said there is no statute of limitations for murder.

“For the victim, the loss is ultimate. For the family, the grief is permanent, and for the community, the harm and danger do not diminish with the passage of time. Justice is a concept that never gets old,” he said.

Authorities said they were finally able to link Ridgway to the crimes by using new DNA technology to match the saliva to fluids found on three of the victims.

The fourth victim, Hinds, was linked to Ridgway through circumstantial evidence, investigators said.