Gary Ridgway, who terrorized the Seattle region in the 1980s and early 1990s, abducting and killing nearly 50 young women and teens before he was unmasked as the Green River killer in 2001, was booked into the King County Jail Monday morning.
The King County Sheriff’s Office is holding the reason for Ridgway’s return close to the vest.
“Since Gary Ridgway’s arrest in 2001 pertaining to the Green River murder investigation, the King County Sheriff’s Office continues to actively investigate potentially related cases,” spokesperson Brandyn Hull said in an email.
No other information was given.
Ridgway, now 75, has been serving 49 consecutive life sentences at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. He pleaded guilty to 48 murders in 2003 and pleaded guilty to murdering his 49th victim, 20-year-old Rebecca Marrero, in 2011. In exchange for pleading guilty and helping detectives find some of his victims’ remains, Ridgway was spared the death penalty.
Ridgway was booked into jail under his 2001 criminal case, and court records show that both the Aug. 26 order to transport him back to King County and a motion and declaration to seal have indeed been sealed. The order to seal the documents was also unavailable Monday. The Aug. 26 items were the first to be added to the case file since 2017.
In January, the Sheriff’s Office announced that the last known remains of one of Ridgway’s victims, previously known only to investigators as Bones 20, had been positively identified through DNA as Everett teenager Tammie Liles. Liles was first identified as a victim in 1988 through the match of dental records to a separate set of discovered remains.
A month earlier, investigators also announced that a victim previously known as Bones 17 had been identified as a Lewis County teen last seen in 1982. The remains of Lori Anne Razpotnik, who was 15 when she ran away from home, were found in Auburn in 1985.
