R.J. Parker - The Serial Killer Compendium

A task force was set up by the King County Sheriff’s Office named the Green River Task Force. As this was obviously the work of a serial rapist/killer, and hence a Federal crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation soon became involved. The mid 1980s was also the start of what the F.B.I. calls ‘profiling.’ In short, profiling is a behavioral and investigative means that is intended to assist investigators to profile unidentified criminal subjects or offenders. Offender profiling is also known as criminal profiling, criminal personality profiling, criminological profiling, behavioral profiling, or criminal investigative analysis.

The Green River Killer later stated, when he was incarcerated, that he had killed so many women that he’d lost count. Most of his victims he would either dump in the Green River or in a wooded area that he would visit frequently. Ridgway would often return to his victims to have sex with the corpses (an act of necrophilia). He would also bring debris such as cigarette butts, and gum to contaminate the area, in case the police found the bodies. That way, they wouldn’t find just his D.N.A. alone.

Ridgway was arrested on a prostitution charge in 1982 and by 1983 he was a suspect in the Green River killings. He was given a polygraph test, however, and passed it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 1987 that police obtained a DNA test from Ridgway. In 1982, Ridgway killed sixteen women and twenty-three in 1983. He killed another ten after that, spread out over several years. Again, this are confirmed kills. Most likely the actual numbers were higher.

Judith Mawson married Ridgway in 1988 after dating for three years. Around this time, Ridgway stopped killing. He later said that once he was in a relationship with Mawson, the urge to kill was not there for him because he truly loved her.

As I said a couple paragraphs back, his DNA was collected in 1987 for analysis. Back then it took a long time to acquire comparison results. On November 30, 2001, the police arrived at Ridgway’s place of work, the Kenworth Truck Factory, with an arrest warrant in hand.

Arrest, Incarceration

Ridgway, the serial killer, was arrested for the murder of four women; Opal Mills, sixteen, killed on August 12, 1982; Marcia Chapman, thirty-one, killed on August 1, 1982; Cynthia Hinds, seventeen, killed on August 11, 1982; and Carol Ann Christensen, twenty-one, killed May 3, 1983. Obviously the F.B.I. have not connected Ridgway to all the killings yet because Carol Ann was actually his twenty-third killing. After the indictment, and more evidence was obtained, three more victims were added to the charges of murder: Wendy Coffield, sixteen, killed July 8, 1982 (Wendy was Ridgway’s first victim); Debra Bonner, twenty-three, killed July 25, 1982; and Debra Estes, fifteen, killed September 20, 1982.

The Green River Killer was finally captured, and on December 18, 2001, Ridgway was arraigned on charges of multiple murders and brought into the courtroom by several security officers. He seemed relaxed during his ten-minute appearance. Aloud, prosecutor Jeff Baird read the detailed charges for each victim, mentioning their names each time, saying that Ridgway caused the death of each woman, and referred to them all as human beings. In reply, Ridgway's defense attorney, Tony Savage, said, "His plea is not guilty to all charges. Let them prove it. I don't think they can.” Ridgway was ordered to appear in court again on January 2, 2002, when the King County prosecutors would be seeking the death penalty. In the meantime, Ridgway was held without bail.

It was reported in August of 2003 that his lawyers, led by Anthony Savage, were close to a plea bargain deal that would spare Ridgway the death penalty in return for his confession and assistance in locating the victims in the Green River murders. So, on November 5, 2003, Ridgway entered a guilty plea to forty-eight charges of motivated murder in the first degree as part of the plea bargain that would spare him execution. In exchange, he would collaborate in locating the remains of his victims and provide other details. In his statement supplementing his guilty plea, Ridgway explained that all of his victims had been killed inside King County, Washington, and that he had transported and deposited the remains of the two other women near Portland just to confuse the police.

On December 18, 2003, King County Superior Court Judge, Richard Jones, sentenced Ridgway to forty-eight life sentences with no possibility of parole, and one life sentence, to be served consecutively. He was also sentenced to an additional ten years for tampering with evidence for each of the forty-eight victims, adding 480 years to his forty-eight life sentences.

Ridgway resides at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington where another notorious killer lives, Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler.

Jeffrey Dahmer

The Milwaukee Monster

Victims (17)

Background

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, in West Allis, Wisconsin, to Lionel and Joyce (nee Flint) Dahmer. Jeffrey was considered a normal boy until around ten years old. However, he lacked interest in activities or hobbies; he withdrew from friends and family; he would ride around on his bike in search of dead animals so that he could take them home and dissect them. He once went to the extreme of putting a stake in a dog’s head. By the time he reached his teens, Dahmer was a full-blown alcoholic.

At seventeen years old, Dahmer was always having fantasies about killing men and having sex with their dead bodies, but he did not act on his fantasy until just after he graduated high school in June, 1978. He picked up a hitchhiker, Steven Hicks, nineteen. They had sex, drank beer, and after that, Hicks wanted to go home. Dahmer did not want Hicks to leave and struck him in the head with a ten-pound barbell, killing him. Needing to dispose of the body, Dahmer cut the body up, packaged it in plastic garbage bags, and buried the bags in the woods behind his home. That was his first kill. It would be another nine years before he killed again.

Dahmer went on to attend the University of Ohio State for one semester. He drank most of the time, missed a lot of classes, dropped out, and then signed up for the U.S. Army. Of course, being an alcoholic, his stint in the army did not last long. Two years later, in 1981, he was discharged and went to live with his grandmother in West Allis where he lived for the next six years.

On September 15, 1987, Dahmer was in a hotel room with Steven Toumi, twenty-six, after spending the night at a popular gay bar. Dahmer later confessed that he did not know how he killed Toumi, but when he woke up, Steven was dead, and he had blood on his mouth. He went to a store, bought a large suitcase, stuffed the body inside it, took the suitcase to his grandmother's basement, had sex with the corpse, masturbated on it, dismembered it, and threw it in the garbage.

While staying at his grandmother’s, she noticed increasingly strange behaviors in her grandson over time. She found a fully dressed male mannequin in his bedroom closet; another time she found a .357 Magnum pistol under his bed, and then there was that terrible smell coming from the basement which Dahmer said was just a dead squirrel he’d brought home and dissolved with chemicals. In 1982 he was arrested twice for indecent exposure and then, in 1986, masturbated in front of two boys and was arrested again, but only got a slap on the wrist.

His grandmother had had enough of his weird behavior, the foul smells in the basement, the arrests, his late night outs. In 1988 she asked him to leave. At the time Dahmer was working at a Chocolate Factory and decided to get an apartment closer to his work on the west side of Milwaukee. Just one day after he moved into his apartment on September 27, 1988, he was arrested again for drugging and sexually molesting a thirteen-year-old boy. He was found guilty, fired from his job, sentenced to five years probation and one year working in a release camp for offenders, and was required by law to register as a sex offender.