By TRACY JOHNSON, ELAINE PORTERFIELD, VANESSA HO AND HECTOR CASTRO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
They called Gary Leon Ridgway an animal, an evil creature, a coward and a parasite, as well as a terrorist and a son of a bitch. They said he was the kind of garbage he considered his many young victims to be.
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Some of the slain young women's relatives were able to forgive him, and some said they couldn't possibly. Not yesterday, when a judge sent the Green River Killer to prison for 48 consecutive life terms. Not ever.
"Never in a million years did I think I would be standing up here, facing the man who killed my mother," said Sarah King, who was just 5 when Carol Christensen disappeared in 1983. "You're a coward. You have useless excuses for what you have done and no remorse."
Yesterday, relatives of 20 of the young women Ridgway killed during the past two decades finally got the chance to confront him in a historic sentencing hearing in King County Superior Court.
The 54-year-old Auburn truck painter turned toward each one, though not always meeting their gaze as he occasionally sniffled and wiped away tears. He later said he was sorry "for killing all those young ladies."
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| Gary Ridgway apologized "for putting a scare in the community" and will spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement for murdering 48 women. |
In slow, halting words, the convicted serial killer apologized "for the scare I put in the community." He called his acts "horrible" and said that he "tried for a long time" to stop killing.
Judge Richard Jones asked Ridgway to turn in the crowded courtroom and look at the tearful faces of the dozens of people he left devastated.
"As you spend the balance of your life in that tiny cell, surrounded only by your thoughts," Jones said, "please know the women you killed were not throwaways or pieces of candy in a dish placed upon this planet for the sole purpose of satisfying your murderous desires."
The judge read the 48 victims' names as he gave Ridgway a life sentence for each murder.
Ridgway pleaded guilty last month, agreeing to trade information about the slayings in a plea deal that spared him from execution.
Though his sentence was expected, the emotional hearing wrapped up the longest ongoing serial murder investigation in the nation's history.
It also let the victims' families tell Ridgway that the young women he strangled and dumped along the now-notorious river or in wooded ravines -- these same women who Ridgway has referred to in interviews with detectives as garbage -- meant everything to them.
Some spoke in calm, measured words. Some wept. Some vowed to remove Ridgway's face from the dear memories of the young women they hold tight in their minds.
Several invited Ridgway, a slim man with dark-framed glasses, to "rot in hell."
Some said they were glad he would wake up each day of the rest of his life in prison, perhaps living in fear of his fellow inmates because of his notoriety.
Others fumed that he would not face the death penalty, a decision that King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said he reached to force Ridgway to reveal whom he killed and where he'd hidden some of the bodies.
"The same lives that you took seem to be the same lives saving yours," said victim Shawnda Summers' sister, Sharse Woods-Summers. "I find that very ironic."
Relatives described the young women whose lives ended abruptly in Ridgway's deadly grasp. Some wanted him to know about them. Some were certain he wouldn't care.
Debra Estes had a bright smile, dreamed big and loved horses, just an "immature teenager trying to find her way in life," according to her mother and sister.
Mary Meehan was an artist who was eight months' pregnant and, according to her brother Dennis, "tough, outspoken and wild."
Christensen left behind the little girl who waited and waited in 1983, then learned on Mother's Day that she was never coming home.
Patricia Barczak goofed around as a child by putting olives on her fingers and dreamed of someday owning a bakery where she could craft beautiful wedding cakes.
Shirley Sherrill was once on the drill team and loved to dance.
Opal Mills was once the chubby-cheeked, pigtailed little girl who dreamed of buying a big house where she could watch cartoons and stay up as late as she wanted.
Her brother, Garrett, recently went to the banks of the Green River in Kent, where his 16-year-old sister's body was found in 1982, and began to cry. He said he feels like he let her down.
He promised her on the first day of kindergarten that he would never let anyone hurt her.
As Ridgway listened in court, he appeared upset at times and broke down when the father of one of his victims offered forgiveness. It was Robert Rule, a white-bearded man with gentle eyes who works as a mall Santa Claus each year.
"Mr. Ridgway, there are people here who hate you," said Rule, whose 16-year-old daughter, Linda, was killed in 1982. "I'm not one of them. I forgive you for what you've done."
As Ridgway gazed at Rule, Ridgway's lips began to tremble. He started to cry and quickly turned away to wipe his eyes.
One of his attorneys, Mark Prothero, said it had been "a monumentally challenging case" and expressed sympathy to the victims' relatives. He said Ridgway was remorseful and even slightly relieved to be caught so that he wouldn't kill again.
But many in the courtroom didn't believe Ridgway felt sorrow, including Sheriff Dave Reichert, who spoke with the serial killer for the last time on Tuesday. He said Ridgway "has taken pride in what he's done, as sick as that sounds."
Reichert said he went to Ridgway in hopes that he'd spill more information. Reveal where he'd hidden the remains of more women. Confess that he tucked away a stash of "souvenirs" from the murders.
"He said he's told us everything, and he hasn't," Reichert said. "We know."
The sheriff said he also took the opportunity to tell Ridgway that "he is a cruel, cowardice monster, a killing machine."
He said Ridgway merely nodded.
Ridgway has two brothers, a grown son and an estranged third wife, who filed for legal separation after his arrest. None of his relatives came to court yesterday, but some expressed their sorrow in a letter read aloud by defense attorney Michele Shaw.
"Be assured that we were shocked to hear that Gary could do the things he has admitted to doing," they wrote. "Clearly, there were two Gary Ridgways."
They said the man they knew was hardworking and reliable and never seemed bent toward anger or ill will toward anyone.
"We had not seen anything that could be considered strange or abnormal," they wrote. "Had Gary shown anything that we thought was improper, we would have brought that to the attention of the authorities."
They, like the victims' relatives, have had to endure new details that have emerged in recent months. Ridgway began revealing details to the Sheriff's Office Green River Task Force earlier this year to spare his life.
He told detectives he killed so many women that he'd lost track. That he couldn't remember names or faces. That he picked up many of them along Highway 99 to solicit sex, then strangled them, usually by attacking them suddenly from behind.
In court yesterday, Mertie Winston told Ridgway that she hoped it was true -- that her daughter, Tracy, didn't have to look at him when she died.
She told Ridgway of the pain of not knowing where her 19-year-old daughter was for 16 years, only to finally have a few scant remains identified through DNA testing. She said her daughter actually knew Ridgway and talked about how he was trying to help her find a job.
"I think the one thing that bothers me, other than the fact that Tracy is gone from our lives, is that you don't remember her," Winston said, "and she thought of you as a friend."
Ridgway's professed lack of memory about the women also gnaws at Joan Mackie, the mother of victim Cindy Smith.
"Well, Mr. Ridgway, maybe you'll remember my daughter Cindy when the door slams on your face in prison," she said.
Relatives expressed gratitude toward investigators for hanging in there to finally solve the murders, and others seethed that it took so long. A few vented rage at the media for intruding into their lives in their most painful moments.
As the emotional hearing came to a close, some of the slain women's relatives felt some relief from the chance to give Ridgway a piece of their mind.
Jose Malvar Jr., whose 18-year-old sister, Marie Malvar, disappeared in 1983 and whose remains were found this year, said his spirit was lightened after he addressed the court.
"It helped a lot," Malvar said. "But I'm still not going to have closure until he's dead. I spoke from my heart. This time, he's not going to get the best of me."
Original article can be found at http://www.seattlepi.com/local/153212_ridgwaymain19.html.
