The Green River Serial Killer

Pennie Psy.D. Morehead

Description

This first book by Pennie Morehead chronicles the life of Judith, the wife of Gary Ridgway, the infamous serial killer of more than 48 women. It contains 112 original photographs and letters, many published here for the first time, and reveal the relationship between Gary and his unsuspecting wife, Judith, who was living some of the happiest years of her life while married to a killer. Ms. Morehead also gives an in depth analysis of Gary's handwritten letters from a professional graphologist point of view.
As of this date, despite the diligence of many investigators on this case in locating the victims of the Green River Serial Killer, there remain several bodies of those victims that still need to be discovered.

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Relations familiales
• True Crime
• Murder
• Serial Killers

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780828322775
• Langue: English

Extrait

GREEN RIVER SERIAL KILLER
 
Biography
of an Unsuspecting Wife
 
Pennie Morehead
 

Copyright 2011 Pennie Morehead,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by Branden Books
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
Branden Publishing Company, Inc.
PO Box 812094
Wellesley MA 02482
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-8283-2277-5
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 

 
Dedication
 
To all those who have had their futures stolen
by deceitful lovers
 

 
Acknowledgments
 
Judith, thank you for your courage and trust in me to tell your story. You made the decision to come out of hiding, gather up your wounded self, and take the first step forward. It has been a thrill for me to watch you become stronger.
Jim and Linda Bailey, your support, encouragement, and committed friendship with Judith perpetuated this project. All the work you did, from tedious errands to liaison coordination with critical personal contacts, was appreciated.
Professors Phil Jack and Marcie Sims, I hope that the folks at Green River Community College in Auburn, Washington, recognize the talent and high-caliber character you two possess. Your mentoring and excitement for this book were incredibly inspiring to me.
Mr. Adolph Caso at Branden Books, thank you for taking a chance on me and giving this book a publishing home.
Finally, to my family, thank you for your support. You teasingly referred to me as “certified intense”—a name I deserved.
 
Introduction
 
 
When I first met Judith Ridgway, she was still clinging to the hope that her husband, the infamous Green River Killer, was innocent. She struck me as being someone who had endured a lot in her life, and I assumed this was the result of her relationship with Gary, her husband. However, I soon discovered that there was more to her story than that, and the true irony was that the man, known to have murdered more victims than any other serial killer in the United States, was the hero in Judith’s story.
So, this book is more than a biography. It not only provides a picture of Gary Ridgway through Judith’s eyes, but includes interviews, personal documents, and a professional analysis of Gary’s handwriting. By taking this approach, I am able to provide multiple lenses through which to view the Green River Serial Killer.
To accomplish this, I begin the multi-prong format with a bird’s eye view of Judith, Gary’s wife, as she experiences what begins as a typical day. Without warning, she feels the support walls of her life come crashing down when detectives deliver the devastating news that her husband is the Green River Killer. By taking this personalized approach, I hope to help the reader understand her feelings and reactions to the terrible news.
Then I provide information about Judith’s background so that the reader can learn about Judith Ridgway’s difficult entry into the world and her dramatic, painful childhood. Before Gary, Judith was married to a man who had challenged her will to survive. But Judith did survive!
This will help the reader understand how Judith felt when she met the man of her dreams—Mr. Gary Ridgway. Intimate details of the Ridgway courtship and marriage unfold as the reader is led to the day that Judith’s world ended—November 30, 2001—when the long search for the Green River Serial Killer ended at her doorstep.
 
At this point, I have included interviews with Gary’s close friends, co-workers, and Judith. Even Gary speaks out from prison about his feelings for his wife and what he hopes will happen in her future.
I’ve also included a chapter that includes private photos, cards, and letters from Gary to Judith over the years before and after his arrest, which leads to my professional evaluation of Gary’s personality using graphology, or handwriting analysis.
 
Chapter 1 - Buried by Bricks
 
 
November 30, 2001 :
At exactly 3:30 a.m. he got up from his warm bed. The master bedroom was dark and silent on this chilly fall morning. He did not flip on any lights. Didn’t need to. He moved about the room with the automated gestures of a workingman who had been doing this ritual for 32 years.
He’s going in early for two hours of overtime , his wife sleepily acknowledged, partially awake.
His routine was intimately familiar to her. She smiled to herself without opening her eyes, rolling over onto her other side. She thought that she was one of the lucky ones. She had finally made it to a place in life she had never thought possible before. She was Mrs. Gary Ridgway. She had a good husband—a non-abusive husband—who earned a nice living so she could stay at home and pursue her hobbies.
This morning was no different. Gary was quietly dressing himself: climbing into his work jeans; buttoning his plaid, long-sleeve, flannel shirt down the front of his slim torso; always having his white cotton tee-shirt underneath. He crouched down, using both hands to pull white, cotton crew socks over his feet, one at a time while balancing on the opposite foot, and then finally guided his feet into his sturdy, steel-toe work boots. He laced them up tightly.
She knew he would not shower in the early morning. Why bother? He would surely get dirty at work painting trucks all day. She appreciated the fact that when he got to work, he would put on big, industrial coveralls to keep his own clothing from being ruined.
She stretched her legs and moved them to a spot in the bed that still held Gary’s warmth. As she fell back to sleep, she could imagine Gary finding the hot coffee ready downstairs that she had set up the night before. They had a fancy coffee maker now with a timer that could be set at bedtime, and somehow the machine would make the coffee at the precise time she had set it for. She was simply amazed by this advancement in coffee- making technology. Gary’s habit was to pour himself a cup of hot coffee to begin sipping after adding a dribble of cold milk from the refrigerator. Then he would pour all but one cup of the coffee into his dented, several-year-old, Thermos bottle, leaving the remaining cup for his wife to drink when she would get up later in the morning.
The next step in the morning ritual would be for Gary to take two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, his favorite of all sandwiches, out of the freezer. There he would find about a dozen pre-made sandwiches, all peanut butter and jelly, of course, neatly displayed in individual plastic sandwich bags in the freezer that Judith had lovingly constructed. Once in a while, Judith changed up the pattern and made a few ham and cheese with lettuce sandwiches, but she didn’t freeze them. That would ruin the lettuce. She would giggle to herself later, knowing that she had surprised Gary with something different. It gave her a warm, ticklish feeling in her stomach to treat her man to something special for his lunch. And why not? He deserved it. He worked so hard to provide a comfortable lifestyle for the two of them.
Each work morning Gary packed his own gray, weathered, plastic lunchbox with two sandwiches, one orange, and a few additions his wife referred to as “munchies.”The definition of munchies was potato chips or nuts or something else, but it definitely had to be crunchy and fun. A munchie had to be fun.
Judith often wrote short love notes or smiling faces on scraps of paper and tucked them in the lunchbox. Once a week she placed a twenty-dollar bill in the lunchbox so Gary could fill the tank of his truck with gas. He never had to ask. She always knew when it was time.
On this morning, well before it was time for the sun to rise, Gary quietly jogged back upstairs to the dark bedroom where Judith lay sleeping, bent down, kissed her silently on the cheek, then headed back down the stairs and out the front door toward his truck with lunchbox and Thermos bottle in hand. Judith heard the lock on the front door go “click.”A few seconds later, Judith recognized the sound of Gary’s red Ford Ranger start in the driveway just below their second story bedroom window.
Gary warmed the small truck for about five minutes, tuned in his favorite country and western music radio station, and started out on his commute from the driveway of his home in Auburn, near Lake Geneva, to Kenworth Trucking in the Seattle suburb, Renton, Washington (positioned at the southern most tip of Lake Washington), where he held the title of Advanced Painter, Grade l. It had taken three decades for him to reach this level of achievement—working in the elite, enviable class of truck painters at Kenworth.
While Gary drove in the darkness toward work, humming along with the country music on the radio, and Judith peacefully slumbered, neither could know that this would be the last day of their morning routine.
Gary would not come home again.
 
Judith woke up on her own between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m. feeling rested and ready to rise. There was enough filtered, gray sunlight, typical of the Seattle autumn, seeping in the room around the drapes to provide adequate lighting for her morning thanks and visual inventory of her blessed surroundings. While Judith did not view herself as a stereotypically religious person, having no membership in a church, she did possess a reverence for her Almighty God. She had asked for His help on many fearful occasions, and she remembered to give Him thanks for the good things in her life. Judith had reminded Gary countless times, “Remember, honey, the good Lord works in mysterious ways,” a mantra she believed in with all her heart.
From her sitting position in the middle of the imitation French Provincial canopy bed dressed with floral cotton sheets, matching cotton bedspread and pillow shams she had picked up at a garage sal