Prosecutor: Green River Killer Likely Not to Blame for Five Unsolved Lewis County Murders

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Infamous Washington state serial killer Gary Ridgway boasts that he killed 80 women — about 30 more than law enforcement agencies in Washington have identified. 

After two days of interviews with Ridgway, who Chief Deputy Bruce Kimsey, of the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office, called “meek,” officials do not believe several unsolved murders in the area can be attributed to Ridgway. 

“I don’t think he was involved. I think he would readily admit if he were involved in the murders,” said Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer, who traveled on Sept. 28 and 29 to the the U.S. Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, with Kimsey to interview Ridgway. “At one point he said he would to plead guilty to get his number higher, but he couldn’t provide facts to support his claim.”

Kimsey and Meyer asked Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, about five unsolved murders in the county, and seriously suspected him in three. 

They considered Ridgway a possible suspect in the deaths of Mignon Hensley in 1991, Monica Anderson in 1984 and Susan Krueger in 1985. They also asked Ridgway about the murders of Roberta Strasbaugh in 1985 and Diana Robertson in 1986, but didn’t seriously consider Ridgway as a suspect in their deaths. 

The Sheriff’s Office doesn’t have any evidence that any of the five women were murdered by the same person. 

“Except (for) the time period, there’s nothing absolutely to say these cases are linked to each other,” Kimsey said.  “You’ve got the No. 1 serial killer in United States’ history. (If) you’ve got a death, you’d better talk about every case.”

Meyer said he’s been trying to interview Ridgway for three years. Ridgway’s upcoming transfer from Colorado back to Washington provided the impetus to get the interview done quickly, Meyer said. 

“We found out they were bringing him back to Washington … and requested that we could do this interview first,” he said. “I didn’t want him to be mad he was coming back to the state of Washington and refuse to talk to us. I figured this was our one shot.”

Kimsey said they found out Ridgway actually didn’t like it in Colorado. They said he didn’t know about his upcoming transfer back to Washington. 

Ridgway is living in a SHU, or special housing unit, and is in his cell 23 hours a day.

The two spent nine hours over two days interviewing Ridgway. They started by asking him about his murders in King County and about himself. 

They were only allowed to bring pens and paper to the interview. Ridgway was shackled the entire time. 

“You can’t just start out with, ‘Hey, did you kill these girls?’” Meyer said. 

While they learned Ridgway had been to Lewis County and was somewhat familiar with the area, Meyer said Ridgway told them it didn’t make sense for him to kill women or dump bodies in Lewis County, since he lived far away and was not as familiar with the area as King and Pierce County. Ridgway dumped bodies close to where he lived so he could visit the bodies when he wanted. 

“The guy is a pathological liar,” Kimsey said.

Both Meyer and Kimsey said Ridgway seemed meek, mild mannered and somewhat non-threatening. Kimsey noted that he stuttered. 

“It’s easy to see how people would be comfortable getting in the truck with him,” Meyer said. 

In addition to the five women killed or found dead in Lewis County, Meyer and Kimsey talked with Ridgway about 20 of the women he killed in King County, and other aspects of his life before he was arrested. Ridgway claimed to have been “retired” from killing when he was arrested in 2001. They said Ridgway said he killed to exert power over women. 

“We talked about when he was in the Navy and overseas,” Kimsey said. 

While eager to talk about killings in King County, Ridgway wasn’t willing to talk about his time in Asia while in the Navy, Kimsey said, noting that Ridgway said it would “open up a can of worms.”

All detectives at the Sheriff’s Office are assigned a cold case, Kimsey said. Despite the dead end at Ridgway, the Sheriff’s Office will continue looking into the women’s deaths, he said.

“I don’t want to let them just sit there,” he said.