February 18

This Day in History

Also on This Day

Lead Story
Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885
American Revolution
Lord Dunmore dispatches note of "inexpressible mortification", 1776
Automotive
Dale Earnhardt killed in crash, 2001
Civil War
Confederate General Lewis Armistead born, 1817
Cold War
United States punishes nations for trading with Cuba, 1964
Crime
Arsonist sets fire in South Korean subway, 2003
Green River serial killer pleads guilty to 49th murder, 2011
Disaster
Avalanche kills 26 in British Columbia, 1965
General Interest
Know-Nothings convene in Philadelphia, 1856
Pluto discovered, 1930
De Valera resigns, 1948
J. Robert Oppenheimer dies, 1967
Hollywood
First Academy Awards announced, 1929
Literary
Toni Morrison's birthday, 1931
Music
Ray Charles records "What'd I Say" at Atlantic Records, 1959
Old West
Murder ignites Lincoln County War, 1878
Presidential
Davis becomes provisional president of the Confederacy, 1861
Sports
Richard Petty wins Daytona 500 after last-lap crash, 1979
Vietnam War
United States warns of forthcoming bombing operations, 1965
World War I
Raymond Poincare becomes president of France, 1913
World War II
Nazis arrest White Rose resistance leaders, 1943

Crime

Feb 18, 2011:

Green River serial killer pleads guilty to 49th murder

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On this day in 2011, in a Kent, Washington, courtroom, Gary Leon Ridgway pleads guilty to the 1982 aggravated, first-degree murder of his 49th victim, 20-year-old Rebecca Marrero. Marrero’s remains were found in December 2010, decades after her murder, in a ravine near Auburn, Washington. After entering his guilty plea, the 62-year-old Ridgway received his 49th life sentence without the possibility of parole and returned to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he was already serving 48 consecutive life sentences, one for each of the other women he killed.

In the 1980s, residents of Washington State were terrorized by the so-called Green River Killer, whose first five victims’ bodies were discovered in or near the Green River in King County (whose largest city is Seattle) in the summer of 1982. The strangled bodies of more victims soon appeared around King County; all were women, most of them young and many of them prostitutes, runaways and drug users. Ridgway, a thrice-married truck painter from Auburn, became a suspect after one of the victims was spotted getting into his truck. However, when questioned by police, he denied any knowledge of the slayings and passed a 1984 polygraph test. In 2001, he was finally arrested after DNA evidence (a technology not available when he began committing his crimes) connected him to some of the killings.

In a controversial 2003 plea deal, Ridgway admitted to the murders of 48 women between 1982 and 1998, and prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against him if he cooperated with police in locating the remains of dozens of his victims. Ridgway reportedly claimed to have murdered more than 60 women in King County, although authorities at the time could only find sufficient evidence to link him to the 48 slayings. (Ridgway’s plea deal was limited to murders in King County; if, in the future, he is linked to unsolved killings in other counties or states, he could be eligible for the death penalty.)

Ridgway told authorities he began to think of murdering prostitutes as his career, and did it “because he hated them, didn't want to pay them for sex, and because he knew he could kill as many as he wanted without getting caught,” according to The Seattle Times. The serial killer said he picked up women off the street, strangled them in his home or truck, and meticulously hid their bodies near natural landmarks (such as trees or fallen logs) in an attempt to keep track of them.

At the time of his 49th conviction, Ridgway had been linked to more murders than any other convicted serial killer in U.S. history.

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This Week in History, Feb 18 - Feb 24

Feb 18, 2003
Arsonist sets fire in South Korean subway
Feb 18, 2011
Green River serial killer pleads guilty to 49th murder
Feb 19, 1851
Angry San Francisco vigilantes take the law into their own hands
Feb 20, 1974
Atlanta Constitution editor is kidnapped
Feb 21, 1961
Rockefeller imposter and convicted felon born
Feb 21, 1994
Double agent Aldrich Ames is arrested
Feb 22, 2006
Gang commits largest robbery in British history
Feb 23, 1885
A remarkable reprieve for a man sent to the gallows
Feb 24, 1981
Harris is convicted of murdering Scarsdale Diet doctor

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