Serial Killers and Mass Murderers Project

This project discusses the case of Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, who murdered numerous people across the US for 20 years. The project describes his background, methods, and area of operations, and summarizes the case, including the period, location, and number of victims. The project also relates Ridgway to the MacDonald Triad theory and proposes a typology that describes his motivation, location, and organized or disorganized factors.

SERIAL KILLERS AND MASS MURDERERS PROJECT 1
Serial Killers and Mass Murderers Project
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliate
Date

SERIAL KILLERS AND MASS MURDERERS PROJECT 2
Describe the killer’s background, methods, and Area of operations.
Summarize the case: period, location, number of victims, etc
The Background of Gary Ridgway
Gary Ridgway was also known as the Green River Killer. He was involved in the unusual
killing for 20-years.He therefore became one of the individuals who murdered numerous people
across the world in the history of US (Wiest, 2016). The DNA evidence made Ridgway to be
caught and convicted in the long run. In his childhood, he had sexual attraction to his mother.
While in schooling, Ridgway always came last in class .It can be concluded therefore that he had
a low I.Q which was below average of 8.2. At his younger age of 16, he took a 6-year- old boy
into the woods where he stabbed him. After completion of high school at the age of 20, he made
an effort to join the Navy. During his military service, Ridgway had an insatiable sex desire, and
this drove him to have more sexual intercourse with many prostitutes.
He began killing people in 1982 where the first victim body was located in Green River
in King County. The body of the victim was found to be Wendy Lee, whom he made to suffer
before he took the body and tossed into the river. He therefore ended the boy’s life even before
he enjoyed much of life. Her murder remained unsolved because there was insufficient evidence
to give weight to the case (Moulton, 2016). Most of the victims were the prostitutes who were
murdered brutally in the hotels and bars. This was the most wonderful place for Gray Ridgway to
solve his problem of insatiable sex. The most murders done by Ridgway occurred in 1982 to
1984.
During that time there was a continuing report of women and young girls disappearing.
Around Sea-Tac Airport and woods along the river was regular for the discovery of skeletons.
The most victims were found necked having been, sexually abused .Such victims were of the age

SERIAL KILLERS AND MASS MURDERERS PROJECT 3
ranging 12 to 31. This led to the formation of the Green River Task Force to investigate the
murders, and the suspect list grew. The task force relied on the old-fashioned police work to
piece together a profile since DNA, and sophisticated computer systems were not around during
the early 1980s (Earle, 2017).
The case was different in 2001 when the task force which was made up of detectives who were
young knowledge of computers as well as the knowledge about DNA research. The previous task
force had preserved DNA evidence which was inadequate enough to arrest the killer. Ridgway
was arrested later in 2001 and charged for murdering a 20 year old boy. The evidence was found
to be the DNA which matched that of Gary Ridgway and other victims (Murray, 2017). Gary
Ridgway confessed killing 61 women and other 71 women, but he could only 48 victims of
which he admitted to have done in King County.
Determine which of the theories from Week 2 relate to this killer and show why you made this
determination.
The MacDonald Triad theory
The theory states that there are typically three common characters depicted among
children which is associated with murder. The theory categorizes them as bed wetting past the
age of five, five setting and animal cruelty. Such behaviors were observed to be frequent in most
aggressive and sadistic patients. It is usually under rare occasion that the offenders exhibit all of
the three behaviors in their past. In the case of Gary Ridgway, it is true to relate him to this
theory of MacDonald Triad since in his childhood, Gary had formed a habit of being attracted
sexually attracted to the mother. Again while at the age of 16 years, he captured a young boy of 6
years old whom he later killed by stabbing him. MacDonald Triad theory which states the
characters of bed wetting and animal cruelty.

SERIAL KILLERS AND MASS MURDERERS PROJECT 4
Form the case study, it can be seen that when Gary was a teenager at the age of 16, he
took a 6-year old boy into the woods and stabbed him. Based on that it can be said that he never
applied any particular method, however he was being driven by cruelty to other people or young
teens. So being cruel to others gave him a ground of selecting the boy and later stabbed him
(Aggrawal, 2016). The second scenario was when he was driven by insatiable sexual desire to
have sex with the prostitutes and other individuals who worked along the Highway. Thereafter
he could brutally murder them.
From the case study, it can be seen that none of the victims did something which could
provoke the killer from the onset. The killer was doing the murder from his motive to attain his
interest. Even though at one instance when the killer was testifying, he mentioned that he killed
one of the victims since the victim bit the boy during the process of having sex orally. The
murdering offense was as a result of self-defense mechanism. However for the case of the six
year old boy, he did not do anything apart from choking him and later laughed off (Lepard et al.,
2015).
No. Most of the victims, in this case, are not responsible for their deaths. This is because
most of the victims he was murdering were prostitutes who were doing commercial sex work to
earn a living. Therefore the killer ought to have paid after the service and leave them to continue
with their business (Bichler et al., 2017). Even though for one circumstance where the killer was
using self-defense
By analyzing all of the above information, you should now be able to propose a three-part
typology and explain your analysis. Your typology should describe the killer's motivation,
location, and organized or disorganized factors.

SERIAL KILLERS AND MASS MURDERERS PROJECT 5
The typology which describes Gary were both being disorganized and cruel. The
motivational factor selected in the case study was being cruel because Gary caused pain to others
intentionally by choking them illustrating the cruelty as the motivational aspect. However he
failed to take that into account and this caused distress to others. Consequently, he enjoyed doing
that to victims (Earle, 2017). For the location, county was selected because most of his
operations were done at the King County where he murdered many prostitutes. Even though he
murdered people ruthlessly, he can be considered as an organized person because he murdered
others and later hid evidence in one particular location. It therefore took so long for him to be
identified by the detectives until the modern detectives were in operation and applied the
technology for thorough such.
References
Aggrawal, A. (2016). Necrophilia: forensic and medico-legal aspects. CRC Press.

SERIAL KILLERS AND MASS MURDERERS PROJECT 6
Bichler, G., Lim, S., & Larin, E. (2017). Tactical social network analysis: using affiliation
networks to aid serial homicide investigation. Homicide studies, 21(2), 133-158.
Earle, H. (2017). Framing Violence and Serial Murder in My Friend Dahmer and Green River
Killer. The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, 7.
LePard, D., Demers, S., Langan, C., & Kim Rossmo, D. (2015). Challenges in serial murder
investigations involving missing persons. Police practice and research, 16(4), 328-340.
Moses, S. K. (2019). Forensic Archaeology and the Question of Using Geographic Profiling
Methods Such as “Winthropping”. In Forensic Archaeology (pp. 235-244). Springer,
Cham.
Moulton, D. W. (2016). The Unexpected Consequences of Classifying Exotic Dancers as
Employees or Independent Contractors under the FLSA. NCL Rev. Addendum, 95, 83.
Murray, J. L. (2017). The role of sexual, sadistic, and misogynistic fantasy in mass and serial
killing. Deviant behavior, 38(7), 735-743.
Wiest, J. B. (2016). Creating cultural monsters: Serial murder in America. CRC Press.