Conversations With A Killer | Mind of a Monster: Ted Bundy & The Green River Killer | ID

[00:00:01]This podcast explores themes of murder and rape. Listener discretion is advised.

[00:00:07]>> The victims are typically young women, many of them runaways and prostitutes.

[00:00:11]The sheer number of murders raises suspicion that a serial killer is at work.

[00:00:15]>> The mountains of Washington offer some excellent terrain for hiding bodies.

[00:00:20]You're not finding a large number of the bodies.

[00:00:22]>> He said to us like, why would I change the way that I killed these women cuz it was working.

[00:00:27]>> I had a problem with killing women back then.

[00:00:30]>> Do you think of that as an illness?

[00:00:31]>> I don't know if it wasn't illness or I just wanted to kill.

[00:00:41]>> [music] >> Good things come to those who wait. It's a phrase made famous selling ketchup and a certain Irish beer, but it absolutely applies to the hunt for the Green River Killer.

[00:00:56]November 30th, 2001. It's 3:00 p.m. on a Friday and [music] of a shift at the Kenworth truck plant in Renton, King County.

[00:01:06]As Gary Ridgway leaves the plant, [music] King County Sheriff's deputies arrest him on four counts of aggravated [music] murder. The evidence linking Ridgway to the murders has come from the bodies of Marcia Chapman and Opal Mills found by the Green River on August 15th, 1982, just a month after the very first Green River victim was recovered. The investigation has taken almost 20 years.

[00:01:32]Gary Ridgway has been a suspect for 18 of them. And in that time his home has been searched, he's been questioned, and even passed polygraph tests, but he's never been arrested.

[00:01:45]I want to know why it took so long. And how does it feel when the pieces finally fall into place? And what it's like to be face-to-face with the Green River Killer?

[00:01:56]I'm Dr. Michelle Ward and this is Mind of a Monster. Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer.

[00:02:03]Episode 6, Conversations [music] with the Killer.

[00:02:14]In 1987, when the Green River Task Force raided Ridgeway's home and vehicles, he was asked to chew on a piece of gauze.

[00:02:23]The gauze gently scraped away [music] a sample of cells from the inside of his cheeks.

[00:02:27]Within those cells is Ridgeway's unique DNA fingerprint.

[00:02:32]But, there's a problem.

[00:02:33]Ridgeway's sample is fine. In forensic terms, it's huge. The crime laboratory is not going to run out. However, the amount of biological sample recovered from the bodies found by the Green River is very limited.

[00:02:46]>> [music] >> Perhaps only enough for one go at processing the DNA.

[00:02:51]Finally, in March 2001, 14 years after Ridgeway gave his sample, the last remaining detective on the Green River case went all in on new DNA technology, submitting the biological samples for analysis.

[00:03:05]The gamble pays off and the identity of the Green River Killer is revealed.

[00:03:12]>> Good morning and I want to welcome each one of you to our press conference this morning. Today, I'm announcing the filing of four counts of aggravated first-degree murder charges against Gary Ridgeway.

[00:03:24]If convicted of one or more of these crimes, the defendant would face one of two possible sentences.

[00:03:32]The death penalty or life without possibility of release.

[00:03:37]But, let me simply state, we will not plea bargain with the death penalty.

[00:03:48]>> [music] >> Having started college the year the Green River killings began in 1982.

[00:03:54]By 2001, Patty Eakes has long since graduated law school and joined the King County Prosecutor's Office.

[00:04:01]I talked to Patty about the arrest of the Green River Killer and what happened next for her.

[00:04:06]>> About the time I was about a fifth-year prosecutor, I joined a new division, which was basically a homicide call-out group, where we just responded to scenes and worked with investigators from the time the bodies were found. And in doing that work, I got to know Tom Jensen. He was the last detective kind of left standing, so to speak, who was manning the Green River case. But, you know, there was a little bit of lore around it, but frankly nobody ever thought it would get solved. So, when it did get solved in 2001, you know, I was as stunned as everybody else when I heard about it in the news. So, it was shocking, and then when they reached out and asked me to join the team, I was uh both flattered and terrified, to be honest.

[00:04:49]>> Were you at all worried about the magnitude of these cases and how emotional and and I mean, frankly, challenging that it would be?

[00:04:57]>> I was. I mean, it you know, at the time that I got asked to work on the case, for me on a personal level, I had a 3 and 1/2-year-old and a 7-month-old. I had just come back from being on maternity leave, and I had done nothing but try murder cases since about 1995.

[00:05:17]This was 2001, and and it takes an emotional toll on you. So, I was really kind of ready to move on to the next phase of my career, try something different. But, when I got the call, there was, you know, I really thought about it, talked to my husband about it, and I just felt like, you know, how do you turn down the biggest serial killer case in the country? Frankly, I work in an office of several hundred prosecutors, most of whom would give their eye teeth to to do that case.

[00:05:44]And I just despite, you know, the the challenge that I knew it would be on a personal level, I felt like it was important to the community. It was obviously a fascinating case. It was on the cutting edge of forensic work at that time. And it was just important to the victims' families, and I I had a lot of experience doing that. And so, I agreed to to join the team.

[00:06:06]>> You took on the Gary Ridgway case with two young children. How big of a commitment was it to take this on?

[00:06:13]>> They said it would be a 2 to 5-year commitment. So, this was like this is all you will do for the next 2 to 5 years and then a potential appeal. So, it was a pretty monumental decision from my perspective to say, "Okay, I'm going to go ahead and do this." Thinking my 7-month-old is could be 5, 6 going into first grade, you know, by the time this case is done. But, you know, the reality is there was just no way I felt like I could walk away from the challenge and the opportunity to bring justice to so many families.

[00:06:44]>> [music] >> As the saying goes, not all heroes wear capes, but take it from me, one [music] of them is named Patty Eakes.

[00:06:52]Taking on the biggest serial killer case in American history [music] with a toddler and a 7-month-old at home is heroic.

[00:07:01]At this point, Ridgway has only been charged with four murders. [music] So, Patty and the prosecution team get to work.

[00:07:09]They review every uncharged Green River case to see if modern forensics [music] can link more victims to Ridgway.

[00:07:17]They send hundreds more items for analysis and get a hit.

[00:07:21]Microscopic [music] spheres of a highly specialized paint Ridgway used in his job painting trucks are found on samples from two victims.

[00:07:29]One of the victims is Wendy Caulfield.

[00:07:31]Hers is the very first body found in 1982.

[00:07:36]18 months of grueling work brings the total number of murder charges up to seven.

[00:07:42]Patty again on what the prosecution did next.

[00:07:46]>> You know, it was disappointing that we only were able to tie him to three additional cases. And [music] we knew that that meant that, you know, there were going to be a lot of unsolved cases and still missing women that we'd never found their remains or didn't know if they were alive or dead.

[00:08:03]So, when the defense approached us about the deal, I was definitely in favor of trading the death penalty, so to speak, uh in order to to get information because I thought it was more important to try to bring some sort of justice to a broader group of [music] women.

[00:08:25]>> The deal was a bargain for Ridgway's life.

[00:08:28]In April 2003, [music] facing trial for seven counts of aggravated murder against a prosecution seeking the death penalty, Gary Ridgway agreed to plead guilty to all seven charges and 40 to 47 additional counts of murder. To escape the threat of execution, Ridgway agreed to give prosecutors a candid account of his killing [music] spree and lead investigators to the remains of a number of his undiscovered victims.

[00:08:57]Patty's boss, the chief prosecutor, decided to go for the deal.

[00:09:01]But he adds a clause to the contract. If Ridgway isn't completely candid, then he could still face the death penalty for any murders he fails to confess to. And so begins the confession of America's most prolific serial killer.

[00:09:17]And Patty Eakes has a front row seat.

[00:09:20]>> So, we essentially checked him out of jail in the dark of night and moved him into our office so that we would have access to him 24/7 and we could talk to him, interview him, take him out cuz, you know, the goal again was to try to find remains >> [music] >> and you can imagine, you know, the the press and what would have happened if people were aware of the information that we were getting and the deal that had been brokered with him before we were actually able to conclude the investigation.

[00:09:54]>> For 5 months in 2003, Gary Ridgway lives under armed guard in the basement office of a commercial building in total secrecy.

[00:10:04]He's interviewed almost every day and taken [music] out on field trips into the woods to look for the remains of women he killed and dumped there.

[00:10:12]Patty, on moving Gary Ridgway into the office.

[00:10:16]>> I mean it was bizarre to say the least.

[00:10:19]The you know, to move him into our office space. You know, all of a sudden it was like, okay, well, we're going to do this and the only safe place is to do it in our office. So, we got out butcher paper and taped over all the windows and and shall put a security system on the door and took the evidence room where we'd stored all this and cleaned it out and put a mattress in there and created a space where it would be his room and he could be guarded. We had a SWAT team group of detectives. There were eight of them and four of them did 12-hour shifts, you know, 7 days a week basically to take care of them. You know, they took one of the bathrooms, the men's bathroom and put a camping shower bag in there so that he could groom himself in there and he was basically walking around our cubicles.

[00:11:00]Obviously, you know, always guarded and he was always in chains.

[00:11:04]>> What's he like?

[00:11:05]>> He was so incredibly unimpressive to be honest. I mean, he's not only not physically very big, but he was also just disarming in how I don't know, non-threatening is the probably the wrong word, but he was kind of goofy, I guess is what I would say.

[00:11:24]You know, he's 50-some years old and he's just obviously not very smart um and it was kind of shocking to be honest to actually have a conversation with him, listen to him and realize this guy is really, really not smart. And so, you know, that's kind of the way he came across most of the time. He liked women, and I was one of the only women down there, and so he frequently, you know, greeted me, wanted to chat with me, say hello to me, and and he was polite and nice, and and I often had to remind myself, you know, I'd I'd respond back in the polite way that, you know, my parents taught me to, and I'd be like, "Why am I responding to his greeting?" You know, when he's like, "Good morning, Ms. Eakes." And I'm like, "Good morning."

[00:12:08]I'm like, "Why? Why am I doing [laughter] that?" You know, but it just that natural instinct that you have. But that's kind of the way he was. He would frequently try to find reasons to to start up a conversation and chat, and you had to really remind yourself what he was capable of.

[00:12:26]>> It isn't just King County prosecutors who want to talk to Ridgway. There are Green River Task Force detectives, FBI investigators, specialist psychologist, and even the Sheriff of King County.

[00:12:39]Sheriff David Reichert had Ridgway's chains removed and sat down, just the two of them, to talk man-to-man, almost 21 years to the day after Ridgway started killing.

[00:12:51]This is a recording of that conversation.

[00:12:56]>> See, you know who I am?

[00:12:58]>> You're Mr. Reichert, yeah.

[00:13:00]>> You're David Reichert.

[00:13:01]>> Yeah, what do I do?

[00:13:02]>> You're the county sheriff.

[00:13:04]>> Have you ever wanted to talk to me?

[00:13:06]You ever thought about contacting me sometime? You know what I did back in the '80s.

[00:13:11]>> Yeah, you were in Western Washington.

[00:13:12]>> And what were you doing? You were out there killing prostitutes.

[00:13:15]>> killing prostitutes, yeah.

[00:13:17]>> Then I was out >> Well, you were out uh >> What was I doing?

[00:13:21]>> You were out finding them.

[00:13:23]>> Finding the prostitutes?

[00:13:24]What else was I doing?

[00:13:26]>> Investigating the uh the suspects and and what is that talking to families and stuff.

[00:13:32]>> I was the lead investigator. Did you know that?

[00:13:34]>> I think I did remember you were the lead, yeah.

[00:13:37]>> Yeah. But more than that, I was looking for you, wasn't I? Cuz you're the guy.

[00:13:42]>> Yes, I am.

[00:13:42]>> Right?

[00:13:43]>> Mhm.

[00:13:43]>> We've got a lot of things in common, I kind of don't we?

[00:13:45]>> Mhm.

[00:13:46]>> What do you think? What what are some of the things that are that we have in common?

[00:13:49]>> Well, we're about the same age.

[00:13:50]>> Yeah. I'll I'll be 53 in a couple of weeks. How How old are you?

[00:13:54]>> I'm 53 uh 54.

[00:14:00]I think next year.

[00:14:01]>> So, you're you're older than me.

[00:14:02]>> Yeah.

[00:14:02]>> Well, what else do you think we have in common?

[00:14:05]Did you know I was I'm dyslexic?

[00:14:08]>> No, I didn't know that.

[00:14:09]>> Yeah.

[00:14:10]And that's and you are too.

[00:14:11]>> Mhm. Mhm.

[00:14:13]>> And that's weird.

[00:14:14]What do you think?

[00:14:15]>> That's That is weird, yeah.

[00:14:16]>> Yeah. What else do you think we have in common?

[00:14:19]>> Well, raised in King County.

[00:14:22]Um mother and father never divorced.

[00:14:27]>> Yeah.

[00:14:27]>> Um >> Mine did finally though. Did you know that? Yeah. My mom was real strong, too.

[00:14:33]>> Mhm.

[00:14:33]>> I think that's I read that about your mom. She was a pretty strong personality.

[00:14:37]>> Yes, she was.

[00:14:38]>> Yeah. So was mine.

[00:14:40]>> If you think the conversation between [music] the sheriff and the serial killer is full of weird coincidences, it gets even stranger [music] after this.

[00:15:03]King County [music] Sheriff David Reichert is talking to Gary Ridgway, building rapport out of their alarmingly similar backstories.

[00:15:12]The two men seem to have lived parallel lives until the 1980s. [music] >> Hey, you know what? Think about this. I mean, we're we're pretty tied on this case, you know?

[00:15:24]You started and when when did you start killing?

[00:15:26]>> I started killing in '82.

[00:15:29]>> '82?

[00:15:30]>> '82, yeah.

[00:15:31]>> I started working this case in '82.

[00:15:33]>> Mhm. So, you've been with it the whole time.

[00:15:35]>> And so have you.

[00:15:36]>> Mhm.

[00:15:38]>> And so that means you and I have stood in some of the same places.

[00:15:42]You know, I stood on that river bank right where you stood.

[00:15:49]>> Mhm.

[00:15:50]How much time you think >> passed between when you were there and and when I was there? Do you have any >> That one day that the fisherman was uh this guy that saw me, probably 3 hours.

[00:16:03]>> 3 hours?

[00:16:04]>> maybe.

[00:16:05]>> Now, that didn't come out of the book, did it?

[00:16:07]>> No, I'm just I'm just guessing here.

[00:16:08]>> You're just guessing.

[00:16:09]>> Yeah, I saw that guy in the raft, you know, coming down the the boat.

[00:16:14]And it wouldn't have been much more than uh and >> So, he actually did see it drive away.

[00:16:20]>> I I didn't think he saw me drive drive away.

[00:16:22]>> He saw you on the bank?

[00:16:23]>> Saw me on the on the on the on the road, like I said.

[00:16:26]>> So, you really talked to him?

[00:16:27]>> No, I really didn't.

[00:16:28]>> not I'm not just making that up.

[00:16:31]>> Of course, Sheriff Reichert was still just Deputy Reichert 21 years earlier when he was assigned to investigate the first of Ridgeway's victims. Reichert went on to be the lead investigator on the Green River Task Force. And as the two men keep talking, Reichert can't let go of the moment he stood on the bank of the Green River a couple hours after Ridgeway stood in the exact same spot having dumped a body there.

[00:16:57]>> Have you ever thought about that?

[00:16:58]>> Mhm.

[00:16:59]>> That I was standing there just a few hours after you were there.

[00:17:01]>> Mhm.

[00:17:02]>> Have you?

[00:17:03]>> And that's why I wanted to sit down and talk to you.

[00:17:05]>> You know, I I talked to Ted Bundy.

[00:17:07]>> Mhm.

[00:17:08]>> And uh I'll tell you what, he people said he was smart.

[00:17:14]Think about this.

[00:17:16]When he started killing at the end, do you know what happened?

[00:17:19]>> He uh let his guard down and did a lot of things that he shouldn't have done.

[00:17:23]>> Is that smart?

[00:17:24]>> No.

[00:17:25]>> No.

[00:17:26]The guy was screwing up all over the place. Then he went down to Florida and went nuts, right?

[00:17:31]>> Mhm.

[00:17:31]>> That's why he got caught.

[00:17:34]>> Mhm.

[00:17:34]>> He didn't do that. We had to catch you.

[00:17:37]No, you didn't do that.

[00:17:38]>> Towards the end.

[00:17:38]>> No, no, no. I'm not buying it.

[00:17:41]You you are organized.

[00:17:46]You accomplished zero in there.

[00:17:49]I know that.

[00:17:51]I've been in this business for 32 years.

[00:17:55]>> Mhm.

[00:17:58]If so, I still did a lot of things I screwed up on. Yeah.

[00:18:01]>> Yeah, [clears throat] but you know what?

[00:18:02]>> I got away with it.

[00:18:03]>> Well, you exactly.

[00:18:05]>> I still have a lot of a lot of witnesses, too.

[00:18:08]Who?

[00:18:09]Pitzer.

[00:18:11]>> Oh, I know about Pitzer. Nelbar. Yeah, I know about them.

[00:18:15]>> Mhm.

[00:18:15]>> All of those. Garde.

[00:18:18]That's not what got you caught.

[00:18:21]>> No, what got me caught was technology that got me caught.

[00:18:24]>> Exactly. That's the point of crime.

[00:18:26]>> Mhm.

[00:18:28]>> You don't give yourself credit.

[00:18:32]>> Sheriff Reichert [music] might just be the only person to talk to both Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway.

[00:18:39]Perhaps even learned the deliberately friendly, complimentary [music] approach he uses talking to Ridgway from his experiences with Bundy nearly 20 years earlier.

[00:18:47]>> [music] >> While both killers make polite conversation with the sheriff, there is a big difference. Ted Bundy keeps the details of his crimes secret until a flood of confessions in the days before he is executed.

[00:19:00]Gary Ridgway's confessions [music] are why his life is spared.

[00:19:04]Ridgway leads investigators to the undiscovered remains of four more victims. [music] And through the details he provides, brings closure to the families of dozens more.

[00:19:15]Having done the deal with Ridgeway in secret, King County prosecutors next move is to inform the victims' families before going public.

[00:19:24]I ask [music] Candy Diskin, whose sister Bobby Joe disappeared hitchhiking home from Portland in 1987, how she found out what happened. So, when did you learn that your sister had been killed by Gary Ridgeway?

[00:19:37]>> Okay, that that was a day that I will never forget. I mean, and oddly enough, my body doesn't forget either. When when I talk about that day, I can still feel it. I was at work. Me and I answered the phone at the post office, and when I answered the phone, the the gentleman on the other line says, "This is so-and-so from the Green River Task Force." And my knees literally buckled. I thought I was going to pass out. It was like, "What?" I even get goosebumps just talking about it, because it was such a it was just a full-body thing. And he said, "Um we have arrested someone for the murder of your sister. They have pleaded guilty.

[00:20:25]And the weird thing about it, it was very very surreal, like otherworldly, because they said, "This is going to be your only opportunity to find out what happened to your sister.

[00:20:36]What we need you to do is we need you to not talk to anyone. Don't tell anyone.

[00:20:42]Don't talk to the media, and come alone." I lived in Florence, Oregon, and I they wanted me to come to Seattle the next day. You know, it was like, "Okay."

[00:20:51]Of course, I got on the phone, called my boss, and just made it happen, because when I heard my last and my only chance to find out what happened to my sister, there's no way I was not going to go up there. I had to lie to my family. I couldn't tell them anything.

[00:21:07]So, that was really, really difficult.

[00:21:10]>> No one knows where you are.

[00:21:11]Like that that was chilling in and of itself. Wow.

[00:21:16]>> I made the drive up there and I honestly felt like I was in a a movie. It was, you know, come here to this location.

[00:21:23]There were all of these big black vans, SUVs, you know, big black SUVs with uh men in suits and very, very secretive.

[00:21:32]They ushered me to the back of this hotel. They put me in a vehicle with actually with the chief of police of Seattle. He drove me to another hotel where they got me out and they walked me down this corridor.

[00:21:46]Um of course with people on either side.

[00:21:49]I I I honestly did not know what was going on at this moment. I just kept thinking to myself, this is about Bobby Joe. You're going to find something out.

[00:21:58]So, we get to this hotel room and this like special knock on the door and they open the door and there's about six people in there.

[00:22:05]They just sat down and laid it out to me. They told me everything and so that kind of took my breath away because there was absolutely no question that he was the person that killed her.

[00:22:18]And I, you know, I left there really sad but really grateful that I learned that.

[00:22:25]>> [music] >> Because he pleaded guilty, Gary Ridgway does not [music] stand trial.

[00:22:34]His 48 murders are summarized and read aloud in the courtroom at a poignant hearing on November 5th, 2003.

[00:22:41]In this clip, prosecuting attorney Jeff Baird reads number 29 on the list.

[00:22:48]She is Maureen Malvar, whose father linked Ridgway's truck to her disappearance just a few months into the killings.

[00:22:55]But Ridgway talked his way out of any suspicion when police paid him a visit.

[00:22:58][music] >> Count 29 charges you with the aggravated murder of Marie M. Malvar.

[00:23:08]Your statement about Ms. Malvar's murder reads as follows.

[00:23:13]In King County, Washington, on or about April 30th, 1983, with premeditated intent to cause her death, I strangled Marie M. Malvar to death.

[00:23:28]I picked her up planning to kill her.

[00:23:31]After killing her, I left her body just off 65th Avenue South, near Auburn.

[00:23:39]Is that your statement?

[00:23:41]>> Yes, it is.

[00:23:41]>> Is it true?

[00:23:42]>> Yes.

[00:23:44]>> Six weeks later, on December 18th, 2003, Gary Ridgway is sentenced to 48 life sentences in prison with no chance for parole.

[00:23:54]At the sentencing, family members of Ridgway's victims have their chance to speak directly to him.

[00:24:00]Patty Eikum introduced family members to the court before they spoke.

[00:24:05]>> The next family to address the court is on behalf of Carol Christensen, whose murder is charged in count seven.

[00:24:12]Present on behalf of Ms. Christensen are her uh daughter and her other family members, and I believe her daughter, Sarah King, K I N G, would like to address the court.

[00:24:27]>> Never in a million years did I ever think that I would be standing up here facing the man that killed my mother.

[00:24:36]I was only five when my mother died, when my dad told me that she was never coming home.

[00:24:44]I found out on Mother's Day.

[00:24:47]There's nothing that anybody can say or ever do for me that will bring my mother back. There is nothing that will ever change the things she missed.

[00:24:59]She's never going to be a grandmother.

[00:25:02]>> [snorts] >> The one thing that I want you, Gary Ridgway, to know, I was that daughter at home.

[00:25:10]I was that daughter at home.

[00:25:13]Waiting for my mom to come home.

[00:25:16]And I've had to grow up for the last 20 years, and this has been my life.

[00:25:23]I've had to defend my mother.

[00:25:26]She wasn't a prostitute. She was a mother. She was a wife. She was a sister.

[00:25:33]And we miss her.

[00:25:35]>> Even as the daughter of one of his victims fought back tears, Ridgway sat facing her, cold and emotionless.

[00:25:44]It's a moment that speaks to one of the biggest questions the interviews with Ridgway tried to answer.

[00:25:49]A question I've sought to answer in my own work.

[00:25:53]Why?

[00:25:54]The simple answer? Because he didn't care.

[00:25:58]A psychopathic serial killer like Gary Ridgway can listen [music] as someone describes the life they've lived since he murdered their mother and not show emotion, because he's not feeling it.

[00:26:11]When I say Ridgway didn't care, I don't mean that he was indifferent or apathetic. I mean that the part of his brain that processes caring isn't like the rest of ours.

[00:26:22]When a killer doesn't care about his victims at a fundamental neurological level, he's as deadly as they come.

[00:26:29]Patty Eakes gives me the prosecution team's take on why Ridgway's mentality made him so dangerous.

[00:26:36]>> Jeff used to say that God had made the perfect serial killer in Ridgway, because he eliminated all the things that usually trip serial killers up, like their egos, their need for more excitement, their need for attention.

[00:26:48]You know, those are typically the the that kind of lead serial killers to get caught because they leave clues or they take you know they try something different and and it doesn't work out as well and and he said you know and Ridgeway was that person who had all those things that usually trip people up were kind of stripped away and what was left was just the killing instinct and you know the fact that he always felt like and he said to us like why would I change the way that I killed these women cuz it was working.

[00:27:15]>> Gary Ridgeway embodies a perfect storm of character traits that both enabled his evil and crucially contained it.

[00:27:23]Buried deep in secrecy.

[00:27:25]With 48 confirmed kills and around 20 more suspected, there's clearly not an ounce of caring for his victims.

[00:27:33]Remaining undetected for 20 years however requires an obsessive interest in self-preservation.

[00:27:40]He's disciplined ensuring he isn't seen when he picks up a victim.

[00:27:44]Only a couple of sightings traced back to him the entire time he was active.

[00:27:49]Ridgeway is also meticulous when it comes to the handling and disposing of his victims' bodies. He always wore gloves with his dates and would often clip their nails if there'd been a struggle.

[00:27:59]He removed jewelry and clothing almost never leaving anything at the scene.

[00:28:04]And despite not smoking or chewing gum, he would leave wrappers and butts to throw off investigators.

[00:28:11]And it worked. Despite spending $15 million investigating the Green River Killer, it is technology that gets Gary Ridgeway caught.

[00:28:21]His self-control as Sheriff Reichert pointed out is what sets him apart.

[00:28:26]But Ridgeway characteristically puts it down to something much simpler.

[00:28:32]>> Why do you think you were so successful?

[00:28:35]>> With the women is they wouldn't expect somebody my size to be a serial killer.

[00:28:42]They wouldn't expect that I was not muscle bound.

[00:28:44]>> But you're pretty strong.

[00:28:47]>> Well, I uh >> uh I didn't I didn't work out or anything, but I'm I'm pretty strong to pick those bodies to where I put them.

[00:28:56]>> Serial killers come in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life and every corner of the globe.

[00:29:02]Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway may share some similarities, their upbringing in King County being the easiest to point to, but every one of them is a coincidence.

[00:29:13]The only true similarity that they share is that they are psychopaths. And while it might sound like an alarming statistic, one in a hundred of us are also psychopaths.

[00:29:24]Most become people we depend upon in society, surgeons, CEOs, even police officers, but a tiny proportion channel their unique brain functioning into killing.

[00:29:35]When all said and done, King County and the communities that were affected by Bundy and Ridgway were just incredibly unlucky.

[00:29:43]Some social factors played into the killers' hands, but there's nothing in the water that bred these two monsters.

[00:29:50]Technology, particularly surveillance cameras and advanced forensic techniques, mean that the terror Bundy and Ridgway imposed in the '70s and '80s is hopefully a thing of the past, a horrible, painful sign of the times.

[00:30:06]>> [music] >> Mind of a Monster, Ted Bundy and [music] the Green River Killer, is produced by Arrow Media for ID.

[00:30:16]The executive producer for ID is Jessica Lawder.

[00:30:20]Arrow Media's producers are Tristan Goodly and Abby Heron.

[00:30:24]Audio engineering by Mahoney Audio Post and Paul [music] Bradshaw.

[00:30:28]Our production managers are Donna Higgins and Alexandra Kelly. Our production coordinator is Jody [music] Tanner Wild, and our researchers are Claudia Slowik and Isabel Wilson.

[00:30:40]Arrow Media's executive producer is John Owens.

[00:30:44]I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Ward.