Gary Leon Ridgway Escapes Execution
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: In return for pleading guilty to 48 murders, Gary Leon Ridgway escapes execution. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars when he is sentenced, perhaps six months from now. The Green River killer made gruesome history yesterday in a courtroom in Seattle, becoming the nation's most prolific serial killer.</s>JUDGE RICHARD JONES, KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON: Mr. Ridgway, is it your desire to plead guilty to the 48 charges of aggravated murder in the first degree because you believe that you are guilty of each of those offenses?</s>GARY LEON RIDGWAY: Yes.</s>HEMMER: The 48 women were killed over a span of two decades. Robert Keppel, a former King County homicide detective from Washington State, is the author of a book titled "The River Man." He's with us live this morning in Huntsville, Texas. Good to have you with us and good morning, Robert. Thanks for your time.</s>ROBERT KEPPEL, FORMER DETECTIVE, KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON: Good morning to you.</s>HEMMER: For the sake of history, back in 1984, this man fell under suspicion for a short time. How was he able to escape any sort of identity or any tie-in to these murders until the years 2001?</s>KEPPEL: Well, basically when his information first came up in 1983, actually, he was picking up a prostitute by the name of Maureen Malvar (ph) and the Des Moines Police Department actually went to his house and knocked on his door regarding that disappearance. They were not part of any task force effort at that time, so that lead became part of maybe 12,000 other leads that the task force had to investigate. And then as the task force was doing its follow-up routine work, they discovered this particular lead and jumped on it heavily in 1987 and did a huge investigation of Gary Ridgway at that time but were unable to get enough evidence against him to actually charge him with murder. They had enough evidence to serve a search warrant, but not to charge him with murder.</s>HEMMER: So for almost 20 years, then, they're drafting support from so many different individuals, trying to track down this killer. One person who emerges is Ted Bundy. What did he contribute to this investigation?</s>KEPPEL: Well, it's kind of eerie what he contributed, basically. He wanted to be a consultant to this investigation back in November of 1984. And with that, Dave Reichert, the sheriff of King County, and I went down to talk to him about the Green River killer. And at that time he mentioned some things that were rather interesting, which turned out to be positive. And that was the fact that maybe we should think about staking out crime scenes in an effort to hopefully the killer would come back to that crime scene. The problem was by the time we got that information in 1984, everything was counter-productive because all we were finding were skeletal remains. We did not have a fresh body. So that hampered any effort on our part to be able to stake out those crime scenes.</s>HEMMER: Robert, I want to -- I know you were listening in the courtroom yesterday. So chilling. We've used that word a number of times throughout the morning here, but nothing really fits what we heard yesterday other than that. Listen again to court from yesterday.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight. Is that true?</s>RIDGWAY: Yes, it is.</s>HEMMER: So lacking in emotion yesterday. A number of people have commented on that. But more to the point of his punishment now. Is it true that he now escapes the death penalty completely or is it your understanding that if other murders are tied to him that he may face death for the crimes he committed?</s>KEPPEL: He has a chance for that, but more than likely, in all the murders I've studied, all the way up through when I retired in 1999, there's not a whole lot of physical evidence that they could tie to him. But I think what he has is a chance either in another jurisdiction someplace -- because all he pled guilty to yesterday were the murders within the limits of King County alone. And so the rest of the State of Washington is at risk for him.</s>HEMMER: Robert Keppel is an author and investigator. He's live in Huntsville with us today. Thank you, sir, for your time today. Appreciate it.